Rob Fahrni

Like usual I have so many things in my read later queue it was difficult to sort out what to share. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoy sharing it. 🧡

Jerry Fahrni: “While most of my jobs have been forgettable, three stand out as my favorites. Why? Hard to say. Each had something unique to offer that I have been unable to replicate elsewhere. In no particular order, here they are:”

I love my brother. He’s one of the smartest, driven, most athletic, tough, loyal, people you’ll ever meet. He likes to win, whatever that means to him. It’s engrained in him. When he was a kid he was a great student, why? Because he enjoyed being at the top of his class. It was winning. No, he didn’t rub it in people’s faces. He’s also a pretty quiet man.

I could tell you story after story about Jay, or Jerry as is his birth name, but I just don’t have the patience to write that story today. Needless to say, I consider him quite accomplished, and I’m a fan.

This piece doesn’t surprise me. He’s very self deprecating, to a fault, but he honestly believes what he says about himself. So, if you can get past the opening parapraph, this is a really good piece about his favorite jobs over the past 25-years.

I also really appreciate his writing style and wish I could write as well as he does. It’s a true gift. I think he’d be happiest writing for a living. He’s written a ton of blog post about all kinds of things, but mostly about tech in the pharmacy space. He’s written a self published book about Pharmacy Clean Rooms and he has some unplublished works about other things, including his thoughts on building strength in the gym.

I’d love to see him get a job at a well respected newspaper or start writing fiction. He’s always been a great story teller. It’s why we always made him be Dungeon Master when we’d play D&D as teens. 😀

The Guardian: “Perhaps a different way of approaching the question would be to ask: What kind of country do you want to live in? One in which every individual is free to make decisions concerning his or her health and body, or one in which half the population is free and the other half is enslaved?”

The entirety of this leak about the overturning of Roe vs. Wade has me in knots. I cannot believe it may actually happen, in 2022. Haven’t we had enough bad news since 2016? Guess not. The GOP has always been the party of cruelty. They want to control people at all costs.

If you don’t believe they’re coming for your rights, think again. They want an authoritarian government.

The Nazis banned abortion.
The Bible does not ban abortion.
The Jews of Jesus’ day never banned abortion.
Abortions are legal -and free - in Israel.
And there’s no apostrophe in the word “Nazis.” #RoeVWade https://t.co/ASk411qLuZ

— John Fugelsang (@JohnFugelsang) May 3, 2022

Steve Beschloss: “I don’t like liars. I don’t like them when they’re elected to political office. And I surely don’t like them when they lie to land a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court.”

There are two things in life I cannot abide; Liars and Bullies. Five Supreme Court justices lied to get on the court. Five.

"Radical Left": Healthcare, Student Loan forgiveness and equality for all.

"Radical Right": Women must carry their rapist's baby. All citizens must conform to Christian law. Election violence encouraged. Book burnings."

Ask yourself. Which side sounds "radical?"

— Tea Pain (@TeaPainUSA) May 6, 2022

Ged Maheux: “Legal scholars are already predicting if the right to privacy goes, which Row is based on, then same sex intimacy, interracial marriage, contraception and more will also be made illegal in Republican controlled states.”

Yep. Ged understands what’s at stake. Take a bully that loves to lie and sprinkle in hate and being a control freak and what do you get? The GOP.

Jim Ray: “I’m probably just not as plugged as I perhaps once was, but it seems like we don’t get good writerly blogs any more. Maybe that’s more an extenstion of we just don’t get any good blogs anymore.”

I love reading Jim. He is a great writer and I wish he’d do more of it. Maybe with Social Networks becoming a bit of a shit show these days more folks will dust off their editors and write more on their personal blogs.

I love reading blogs so much I made my own feed reader. Shameless self promotion time: Get Stream. I think it’s pretty decent for a 1.0 release.

Barn Finds: “The Karmann Ghia was a sports car marketed by VW as a 2+2 coupe from 1955-74. Internally known as the Type 14, some of the mechanical bits of the Karmann Ghia was borrowed from the VW Beetle with styling by Carrozzeria Ghia (Italy) and hand-built bodywork by coachbuilder Karmann (Germany).“

I’m not really a car guy, but I could become one if I had the time, money, and room to work on old finds like this Karmann Ghia. I’ve always wanted to restore a car from the ground up. I’d also love to do a full electric conversion of an old rig.

puck.news: “No, these studios aren’t suddenly flipping the streaming switch to off, nor should they. Streaming remains the potential growth engine, and the future of the industry. But for certain titles, the streaming-vs-theatrical debate has taken a turn. Like maybe Pixar’s Turning Red should have generated a few hundred million bucks for Disney, and then become a huge hit on Disney+, just like Encanto did.”

Streaming has finally hit a bit of a snag. Netflix of all places has lost a lot of its value recently and it sounds like they’re going to pull back some of their production as a result. I personally don’t like the idea of it. I’d love to see higher quality content. Big movies. Better documentaries.

My favorite streaming platform as of this writing is HBO Max. They’ve given us great original content and have been running blockbuster movies before anyone else. The Batman being a prime example. Which, by the way, is better the second time. Loved it.

Tech Community - Microsoft: “Microsoft’s upgrade to Windows 11 is largely considered the smoothest we’ve ever had. The Microsoft Digital Employee Experience team was able to upgrade 190,000 employee devices in just five weeks. We learned a lot so, in this post, I’m sharing our learnings with you to help with your deployment journey.”

I don’t use Windows at all these days. It’s not that I hate it or anything, I actually think it’s a wonderful operating system with leadership that actually loves developers. Windows has carried around so much backward compatible baggage for so long I feel like Windows 11 could be the right choice for me going forward if I ever get around to installing it. I’d still love to write some cross platform C++ to underpin Stream so I can have iOS, Mac, and Windows versions. 😀

I’m being silenced by big tech pic.twitter.com/KbC0IZhiSF

— Taylor Lorenz (@TaylorLorenz) April 23, 2022

Y’all ready to see the bump Stream got when Musk announced he was buying Twitter!

Drumroll please. 🥁

Yep, I got that nice day of three downloads!

I am greateful folks do take the time to consider Stream. 🙏🏼

Feed Wrangler: ”I will be shutting down Feed Wrangler next year, on March 1, 2023. This date is one year since the last member was billed for their subscription. No further membership fees will be charged to any existing members.”

One of the requests I’ve received for Stream is support for Feed Wrangler.

At some point I applied for API access and never heard back. I supposed I have my answer now.

Sorry to any Stream users interested in Feed Wrangler support.

I will say this, this is how you shut down a service. One year to move and a fully tested and ready to go way to send your data to the new service.

“Underscore” David Smith is a class act.

Holding hands with Kolby

I’m composing this at 5:30AM, flying down the highway, Mötley Crüe’s Dr. Feel Good on the radio. We’re headed to Durham this morning to watch our granddaughter play soccer. I’m really excited to see her run around the field in a clump with all the other kids.

Where the heck is a Starbucks. I need coffee. ☕️

Richmond Times-Dispatch: “From sassy deviled eggs to a Duke’s heart with an arrow through it, guests can choose from a variety of pre-drawn Duke’s designs. These small and medium sized tattoos – intended for arms and legs only – would typically run $150.”

Not gonna lie. I was ready to do this. 🤣 Lucky for me they were already booked up. No Dukes Mayo tattoo for Rob.

Apple: “Genuine Apple parts and tools can now be purchased by US customers”

If you visit the website Apple setup for this you’re gonna think you’ve landed at some sort of scam site. Don’t worry, it’s not a scam. You’d think they’d have hosted it somewhere at apple.com, right?

The Daily Beast: “Although one senior U.S. official admitted to me (somewhat uneasily) that “Austin said the quiet part out loud,” it soon became clear that the U.S. was publicly willing to own the new goal of turning Russia’s unprovoked, brutal escalation of its ongoing eight-year war in Ukraine into a lasting and meaningful defeat for the Kremlin.”

I have this weird feeling Putin has some kind of terminal illness. Perhaps he just realizes he’s getting older. It seems like he wants to go out in a blaze of glory.

Hopefully that doesn’t include a nuclear cloud.

Daring Fireball: “I know that as a pundit, spending Apple’s money is easy, but UI Browser seems like a tool Apple should have purchased long ago”

I’ve heard the name Bill Cheeseman but never knew what he did. The man is calling it quits at age 79. Wow!

NPR: “He also took issue with the many Biblical references to rape, bestiality, cannibalism and infanticide. “In the end, if Jimmy and Susie are curious about any of the above, they can do what everyone else does – get a room at the Motel Six and grab the Gideons,” he wrote.”

I know some mighty fine people in Florida, but it’s also home of some really crazy people.

Yet another example of authoritarians losing their collective mind because the United States continues its march to become more liberal and they can’t cope with it.

Before you know it they’ll be burning books and recruiting young folks to be an army of tattle tales, complete with little arm bands signifying their importance.

The Ringer: “Saul Goodman had a toupee. He wore colorful suits and a pinky ring. And he drove a boat-sized Cadillac. On the surface, he was a cartoon attorney—the kind that may have even popped up in the ’90s on Mr. Show, the beloved sketch comedy series Odenkirk created with David Cross. Yet there was much more to Saul than that.”

Bob Odenkirk is an amazing actor. I really loved him in Nobody.

Dead State: “MyPillow CEO and pro-Trump conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell wants you to know that he finally has the goods to prove the 2020 election was stolen which will lead to the election being overturned as soon as — this Thursday.”

Oh, it’s that nutter again. Dude, give up. There was no fraud.

The baby birdies behind the wreath on our front door are getting big. 😃

Also, look at all that poop on the door! 😂

Already missing my Exeter Coffee Co family, but happy to be home. 🧡

The Verge: “On Apple’s App Store Improvements page, the company says: “We are implementing an ongoing process of evaluating apps, removing apps that no longer function as intended, don’t follow current review guidelines, or are outdated.” There isn’t a time stamp on the page, so it’s not immediately clear when Apple published or last updated the post.”

Nick, while I’m not upset about the removal of one of my apps, it doesn’t contain any ad frameworks or analytics of any kind.

It’s actually really simple, isn’t used by many, but is liked by those who do use it.

An update is in the works. I hope it’s allowed back in.

— Rob Fahrni (@Fahrni) April 24, 2022

Earlier today on Twitter I replied to another iOS developer that I wasn’t upset about my app being removed from sale. I made it for myself and it works perfectly fine, thank you very much, but it doesn’t have a bunch of users. Folks that use it, seem to like it.

However, when I saw the paragraph from The Verge I pasted above, it kind of pissed me off.

Look, my app, Arrgly, isn’t pretty and doesn’t do much, but it works exactly as intended. Key here is “it works.”

When Apple says ”removing apps that no longer function as intended, don’t follow current review guidelines, or are outdated.” I wonder which of those Arrgly falls under? My guess is, it’s been deemed outdated? Outdated compared to what exactly?

Anywho, if you’re an Arrgly user I’m working on an update that makes it less goofy looking, but it will work the same as it ever did.

Home Sweet Home.

Kim and I laid our heads on our pillows at 4AM EST. Pooped out but really happy to be home.

SFO to IAD 🛫

Here we go.

Puck News: “While Zaslav and his team were quietly signaling their desire to pump the brakes on CNN+, sources familiar with the matter said, Kilar told Zucker and Morse—and, in the final weeks, just Morse—to proceed apace for launch in Q1 2022. He seemed to believe, some said, that if he could force CNN+’s launch before the merger, it might actually get a chance to fly.”

Breaking: CNN+, the streaming service that was hyped as one of the most signifiant developments in the history of CNN, will shut down on April 30, just one month after it launched. Here's our initial story – more to come https://t.co/JElI3cVyDF

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) April 21, 2022

One. Month. In. Everyone involved must be reeling. Scott Galloway had a show on CNN+ and he’s been so quiet about the whole deal, which is really surprising given how vocal Professor Galloway can be.

UPDATE: Saw this after posting.

My tv career came to an (abrupt) end on Thursday. However, also found out @HatchingChange follows me.

So,,,not a bad week.

— Scott Galloway (@profgalloway) April 23, 2022

In the end there’s not much to tell, I suppose. One brand wanted a separate streaming service, the new parent didn’t.

Freaking Rectangle: “A typical coding interview starts out something like this: “Write a function that reverses letter order of words in a string.” Then for the next half hour or more, the candidate scratches out something on the white board (or a shared text document if they are lucky). This approach is weak for a number of reasons”

I really like this idea. Writing code on a whiteboard or in a text document is super stressful. I absolutely hate it, truth be told.

Actually looking at a hunk of code and doing what amounts to a code review feels really nice to me. When I interviewed at WillowTree, part of the process was reviewing a pull request. Knowing how you interact with other folks on your team through a code review can be very telling, not only from a technical perspective, but speaks loads about how you treat and interact with others.

Can you review a hunk of code and keep ego and opinion out of it, while teaching and showing empathy? That’s critically important. Building people up, not tearing them down, is a gift.

TL;DR - If you’re a dick in your PR comments, I don’t want to work with you.

TechCrunch: “Twitter says the idea to feature the Toolbox apps on its platform came from its discussions with the developer community. Developers told the company they wanted to improve users’ experience on Twitter, and, more critically, they wanted distribution so people were aware of their product.”

Twitter has a lot to make up for. In 2012 Twitter decided it hated developers of client applications.

This doesn’t feel like it’s built for client code as much as it is for folks who want to integrate into Twitter. That’s not a bad thing.

I hope they allow client developers to go deep with their new v2 API’s.

Raw Story: “On Thursday, writing for POLITICO, Kyle Cheney outlined how the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol have already dropped “bombshells” about the events of that day and the state of U.S. democracy — even before they deliver their final report.”

We’re really gonna kill democracy. I have no idea how to fix all the damage done by the GOP and TFG.

TechCrunch: “Brian Armstrong, the chief executive of Coinbase, believes Apple’s App Store rules have hampered the company’s product roadmap, accusing the iPhone-maker of banning features from their app and generally not being friendly with the cryptocurrency industry.”

What could a phone need to make it better for crypto currency?

I can’t imagine Apple doing anything specifically for it until it is as accepted as the coin of the realm.

Building a special phone seems like a more likely outcome. Let them build one or two on top of Android and see how it goes.

Early days.

The Cut: “Fuentes, now 20, says she and Daisy De La O had been inseparable ever since they met as high-school freshmen in Huntington Park, just outside Los Angeles, where they grew up. By the time she posted the emotional montage, it had been more than three months since 19-year-old De La O had been found stabbed to death and wrapped in a roll of carpet outside her Compton apartment complex.”

Such a sad story. Our government institutions fail us and folks find a way.

From the start, we knew the App Store was a symbiotic environment designed to create value-add for Apple devices by giving devs great tools to make apps to entice customers to Apple, whilst also ensuring to deny devs any ability to ever remotely threaten Apple's position of power

— Steve Troughton-Smith (@stroughtonsmith) April 23, 2022

SFO 🛬

Now, we wait. Flight to Dulles boards at 4:01PM.

By the time I arrive home it’ll be 12:45AM Sunday. Then a two hour drive home.

Looking forward to seeing Kim and sleeping in my own bed.

FAT to SFO 🛫

Bloomberg: “The Obamas are each willing to commit to appearing in an eight-episode program, which for some bidders isn’t enough of a commitment to justify a deal comparable to those for shows like “SmartLess,” “Call Her Daddy” and “My Favorite Murder.” Those shows appear weekly, or with a frequency to close to that, while Higher Ground’s programs featuring the Obamas have been limited series.”

This is kind of a no brainer to me. You don’t need much to produce your own podcast and sell ads.

Hire a couple people and get to recording. Seriously, it really is that simple.

A couple good mics, recording software for your Mac or PC, a quiet room, and something to talk about.

There. You have a podcast.

As for ads. I’d bet folks would line up to give you money for a few ad reads.

I can hear it now! President Obama doing a read for ED meds!

Instant hit.

Grandpa’s Airborne patch on his Army uniform.

As youngsters my brothers and our friends would play football here. It’s Exeter’s Memorial Building.

It’s a fairly good sized flat field of green grass. It was perfect for tackle football with a Nerf.

The only downside was the caretaker. He hated for kids to use it for football and would run us off.

At the time the thought never crossed my mind but I’d bet some kids liked to destroy stuff. We didn’t. We just wanted a nice field to play football on.

I’m sitting there, now, writing this post. It’s a great place to relax on a bench and listen to the birds.

Your best bet is to pick a distribution medium that gives you portability of your content and some measure of your audience. Today that would be SMTP (email), RSS (podcasting), SMS, Usenet, Tor, Telegram... When we open source @tumblr it could be one of these.

— Matt Mullenweg (@photomatt) April 17, 2022

Now isn’t that something? I hope Mr. Mullenweg finds a way to federate WordPress and Tumblr with other systems, like Twitter.

But this, this is a neat way to start something like that.

We’re entering an interesting time. I feel like we’re on the crux of Twitter, WordPress, insert your favorite system here, becoming peer systems. Data flowing freely between them. Rolling up into whatever UI you prefer. Feed Reader, Twitter, Mastodon, Micro.blog. The list of potential rendering tools is as long the the list of publishing tools.

[CNN](https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/15/politics/read-mark-meadows-texts-mike-lee-chip-roy/index.html): _“The messages reveal how two GOP allies of then-[President Donald Trump](https://www.cnn.com/specials/politics/president-donald-trump-45) lobbied and encouraged the White House in its efforts to overturn the election. The text messages were obtained by the House select committee and reviewed by CNN.”_

It’s chilling to see a US Senator propose a plan in writing to ignore the will of the voters & steal an election. That’s precisely what this is. https://t.co/GrNNT3xA2I

— Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) April 16, 2022

If, after all of this, we don’t do something to kick these jerks out of office we absolutely deserve the dictator we’ll get.

It’s no wonder the GOP didn’t want a January 6 investigation.

Unbelievable.

Om Malik: “Since everyone has decided that Elon Musk’s $54-a-share offer for Twitter is just a troll, the question remains who else can buy the company? Is there a suitor who can digest Twitter and deal with all its baggage? Or is the company destined to be a middling underachiever?”

I've now been asked multiple times for my take on Elon's offer for Twitter.

So fine, this is what I think about that. I will assume the takeover succeeds, and he takes Twitter private. (I have little knowledge/insight into how actual takeover battles work or play out)

(long 🧵)

— Yishan (@yishan) April 15, 2022

Musk loves toying with the market.

This is just another pump and dump game for him.

jfo: “Languages are often judged initially on their ‘Hello, world!’ program. How easy is it to write? To run? How easy is it to understand? It’s a very simple program, of course, one of the simplest, even… just produce a little text, and display it, what could be simpler?”

This is a great, geeky, review of the classic ‘Hello World’ program.

9 to 5 Mac: “An in-depth report from Bloomberg last week explained that many employees are frustrated by this change, particularly as Apple advertises that its products make remote work easy… and yet it won’t allow full-time remote work for its own employees.”

I’m sure we’ll be hearing more about return to office from lots of people.

Daring Fireball: “Netflix has built an incredibly valuable brand, and part of that brand’s foundation is that Netflix is a premium service that doesn’t do rinky-dink shit like force you to watch unskippable ads.”

I don’t want me no ads, but if the price of Netflix continues to rise… who knows?

Remotion Blog - Dan Wood: “Given all that, it probably won’t surprise you to hear me say: I wish more people built native instead of going the Electron route. Here’s why I think native software is worth it.”

Dan Wood is a longtime Mac developer and has created some beloved Mac software. It’s nice to see he’s still at it and a champion for native Mac software.

Protocol: “While the HBO Max product team was working on what Lyons called “paper cuts,” it also began a much bigger project of rebuilding the underlying tech platform from scratch.”

I know how much work goes into developing media streaming apps. It’s not easy.

I was excited to use HBO Max when it was available for my Roku and was surprised how slow it was.

The good news is, it’s getting better, and HBO Max has become my favorite streaming choice. The content is amazing and they land new movies early.

Jet trail

There’s always time to smell the roses.

The Daily Beast: “The Senate voted to confirm Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson as the newest member of the United States Supreme Court on Thursday, delivering on President Joe Biden’s vow to successfully nominate the first Black female justice in the court’s history.”

We got a good one. It’s nice to see such a qualified person sit on the Supreme Court.

Congratulations Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson!

MacRumors: “In time, the Deliveries app will likely stop showing direct tracking information in the app for additional services.”

This is a real drag. I’ve been a Deliveries user for quite some time now. I have no idea why delivery companies would lock this down, unless it had to do with privacy? If that’s the case sign these third parties up, make sure they’re trustworthy, and give them an API to use. One that requires the user to give permission to the app before using it.

Platformer: “On Monday, it was revealed that over the past month he has become its largest individual shareholder. On Tuesday, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal that Musk now has a seat on the board.”

Money can’t make you happy, but it can buy you a seat on Twitter’s Board.

It would be really great if some of these companies could have some sort of Peon Board. A board of normals, the unwealthy, the unpowerful, to help offset the power held by a few. A super wealthy few.

Fingers crossed he doesn’t bring back the orange menace. 🤡

Microsoft Edge Blog: “Beginning in Microsoft Edge 100, we’ve updated sleeping tabs to enable pages that are sharing a browsing instance with another page to now go to sleep.”

I had to put this in here because it reminded me of something we did for media streams at Pelco. If the user went from a 2x2 display of video — a grid of four videos — to focus on a single stream of video, we’d freeze the other three streams. That meant we’d keep the structure of the pipeline and the attributes to restart it, but we’d release as many system resources as possible back to the OS.

When the user went back to a 2x2, or other layout, we’d thaw the streams and they start displaying video with their corresponding audio stream.

Performance work can be extremely frustrating and add a lot of complexity to software, but, when you get it right it can be very rewarding.

Maddow Blog: “But I was also struck by Trump’s focus on what he still considers one of the key details of Jan. 6: the pre-riot crowd size. In fact, the Republican wants more credit for having brought together anti-election conspiracy theorists, some of whom attacked the U.S. Capitol after having been riled up by Trump’s lies.”

The Former Guy is so egotistical. I’m shocked he hasn’t talked himself into prison.

I never expect him to spend a day in prison. Us normal folk would’ve been thrown in such a deep hole we’d never be mentioned again.

Los Angeles Times: “The walkout came in response to the company announcing Thursday that it would no longer require employees to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 to work in the office, according to an email from Chief Administrative Officer Brian Bulatao that was shared by employees and subsequently posted on Twitter.”

COVID is still a thing and I don’t know about you but I don’t care to have it.

Apparently others are thinking that way.

Bloomberg: “To some, including the 7,500 of Apple’s 165,000 employees who belong to a Slack room dedicated to advocating for remote work, it was bruising. ‘They are trolling us, right?’ one wrote.”

Apple is a fairly backwards company. It’s just in their DNA. They don’t do a lot of things other Silicon Valley companies do. E.G. last I heard, they didn’t have free food, snacks, or even free beverages for their employees. That seems standard fare in most tech companies, but not Apple.

Yeah, it must be amazing working 80 hours a week on an operating system used by millions. But there is way more to life than work.

If you’re at home you can at least somewhat control which 80 hours you work in the week.

Working from home gives me back an hour of commute time a day. I like that. I also love having an afternoon coffee with my wife or having lunch together. It’s just much easier to do random stuff from home.

Grandma’s Roses

We’re really cooking here in the great San Joaquin Valley today. 🥵

<img border=“0” src=“http://static.crabapples.net/apple-rotten.jpg" align=“right” alt=“Rotten Apple”/>Before I came to California I downloaded some movies to watch from our collection on Movies Anywhere.

I’ve watched most of them and wanted to watch something else so I downloaded Dune on HBO Max. Worked perfectly.

I was also able to download You Were Never Really Here on Amazon Prime Video. Worked as expected and I enjoyed the film.

Today I decided I’d download Slow Horses to watch this evening on Apple TV+. It failed, twice as of this writing.

Why? For a company pushing services so hard, why is it so painful? Sure, you can say “But they have a lot of users.” Absolutely, they do. But do you think HBO Max and Amazon Prime are smaller?

It’s disappointing.

One of these days I’m going to run Charles and see what URLs each of these services hits for streaming content.