Rob Fahrni

First fire of the season.

I had to capture this for future reference. This is astoundingly sad.

At its peak (1952), polio killed 3,145 Americans. After a vaccine became available in 1955, all 50 states passed laws requiring polio vaccination before kids can enter public schools.

COVID killed 345,000 Americans in 2020, and has killed 416,000 more so far in 2021.

— Montana FTW! (@dmahugh) November 14, 2021

Tackling the Redesign: ”Finally starting the Overcast redesign, and pragmatic considerations when tackling modernization of older codebases.”

I just finished listening to this episode of Under the Radar from David Smith and Marco Arment.

Marco was sharing the stress he was feeling over the thought of a complete redesign of Overcast, all in one big hunk. The whole time I was thinking DON’T DO IT MARCO! Why? Something this large – even for a small app like Overcast – is very expensive. Marco is a one man shop, so locking himself away for months and months could be very detrimental to the continued success of Overcast. No way should he do it.

Thankfully that was just his mind going through all the steps necessary to come to the conclusion it’s in his best interest to do it bit by bit. Much better idea.

While he’s at it I’d actually encourage him to leave all that underlying Objective-C alone and jump into a little SwiftUI and Combine. He could start with some of his existing table views – SwiftUI Lists – and slowly introduce SwiftUI into his product, if that’s ultimately where his app needs to be.

Another thing he should consider is using Combine before anything introducing SwiftUI. It can absolutely stand alone.

I say these things because I’ve been working on these very dilemmas for a client at the day job. Introducing SwiftUI for simple UI has been quite easy to do and it’s been really easy to slip it into an existing UIKit app.

Picture from Christmas 2008, when I was a gym rat. Loved Muscle Milk Peanut Butter Chocolate, but their Chocolate was also quite good. I’d use it as a snack.

Fairly recent shots. 😄

My brother stopped doing his Saturday Morning Coffee posts eons ago. I thought I’d run with it and share some links with y’all.

Updating The Verge’s background policy: ”We’re doing this because big tech companies in particular have hired a dizzying array of communications staff who routinely push the boundaries of acceptable sourcing in an effort to deflect accountability, pass the burden of truth to the media, and generally control the narratives around the companies they work for while being annoying as hell to deal with.”

Microsoft introduces Windows 11 SE, new $250 Surface Laptop SE for education market: ”The new Windows 11 edition is a simplified version of Microsoft’s newest OS release, customized for the K-12 education market. The new Surface Laptop SE, which starts at $250 , is targeted at the same space.”

Richard Spencer confronted with ‘embarrassing’ evidence as he takes the stand in Charlottesville conspiracy trial: ”CHARLOTTESVILLE — Richard Spencer, the preeminent leader of the white nationalist movement in 2017, took the witness stand in a federal courtroom in Charlottesville, Virginia on Thursday and testified about his role as a headline speaker at the violent Unite the Right rally that resulted in the death of antiracist activist Heather Heyer.”

Forget Twitter Threads; Write A Blog Post Instead!: ”All of the kool kids in Twitter land seem to be jumping on the bandwagon of a very annoying craze. Twitter threads. Please stop; write a blog post instead.”

Aaron Rodgers Didn’t Just Lie: ”Rodgers’ ignorance regarding the science of immunology brings back to life the old stereotype of the big dumb jock. His utter lack of even the most basic knowledge and logic is shocking. In an effort to defend his lying, he stated, ‘This idea that it’s a pandemic of the unvaccinated, it’s just a total lie … If the vaccine is so great, then how come people are still getting covid and spreading covid and, unfortunately dying of covid?’”

A week in the life of Stream, my feed reader.

My favorite bit to look at is what Territories folks are in. I love that my app is being used – at least downloaded – all over the world.

I think about localization often. What languages would I start with? German seems like a good start, but based on the numbers Chinese would be a better bet.

Fall is just about done falling.

Ten months ago today, the sitting President incited domestic terrorists who then breached the Capitol during which time he told them he loved them in front of everybody.

— rands (@rands) November 6, 2021

Of course we the people have zero power to do anything about it. Fortunately he left the White House but he’s still free to do whatever he wants and has wacko backers in the Halls of Congress pushing his fascist agenda.

We will have a king dictator in office if we cannot stop him and his ilk.

web.dev: ”No large project can be successfully completed without the appropriate tools for the job, and it’s for this reason that the Chrome team developed full featured WebAssembly debugging support. It provides support for stepping through the source code, setting breakpoints and pausing on exceptions, variable inspection with rich type support, and even basic support for evaluation in the DevTools console!”

This story about Photoshop Web is a great example of web tools finally supporting languages beyond JavaScript with proper debugging.

I’d imagine Microsoft Chredge and Brave will instantly benefit from these changes.

Safari? Your move Apple.

Aaron Rodgers only lied about being vaccinated against COVID and put himself and others at risk and then blasted NFL leadership for their COVID policies and will probably get to keep his job but at least he didn’t do something career ending like kneel during the nation anthem.

— Levi Fishman (@levifishman) November 5, 2021

CNN: ”While talking with McAfee on his SiriusXM show, the three-time MVP repeated some Covid-19 misconceptions and said he has conferred with podcast host Joe Rogan on how to deal with a coronavirus infection.”

I mean, who could give better advice about fighting COVID than Joe Rogan? It’s so wise of Rodgers to ignore Infectious Disease specialists, like Anthony Fauci, and get advice from a podcast host. Makes perfect sense.

Guess we now know Rodgers is part of the Q nuts or the modern day GOP that worships the ground his orangeness walks on.

I’m not part of a woke mob, Mr. Rodgers. I’m also not part of a conspiracy theory loving political party that turned a deadly virus into a political thing.

Rodgers ignoring actual doctors for Rogan is as smart as Rogan being the starting QB for the remainder of the Packers season.

All the best, Mr. Rodgers. I hope you don’t feel any long term effects and have a long healthy life.

Dumbass.

Really happy with how the finished product turned out.

Fabric in, pipe in, filled with rock, wrapped, and fully covered.

When I plant lawn next spring you’ll never know there’s a French drain under there.

I have a bunch of extra dirt to shuffle around the back yard, but that’s a good problem to have.

Progress!

Good morning, y’all.

Is there a way to bulk edit Categories? I have a TON that came over from my WordPress migration and I’d like to remove about 3/4 of them. Deleting one at a time is kind of painful.

(cc @manton, @help)

Bleacher Report: “He will forever be a Giants icon with an incredible resume that includes three World Series titles, a National League MVP, a NL Rookie of the Year, four Silver Sluggers, a Gold Glove, a batting title and seven All-Star selections."

I’m a Los Angeles Dodgers fan but I can’t help but love Buster Posey. So much talent all rolled up into one person.

Enjoy your retirement, I know the Dodgers will.

Dallas Morning News: ”One post from a widely-followed QAnon social media account said that after being reinstated as president, Trump would step down. The post said JFK Jr. would then become president, Michael Flynn would be appointed as his vice president, and Trump would ultimately become the “king of kings,” according to Newsweek.”

The QAnon people are completely insane.

So darned happy with how this is coming together. I started with a half yard of rock and I think this will get me to the fence.

Rolling Stone: ’I was just going over the list of pardons and we just wanted to tell you guys how much we appreciate all the hard work you’ve been doing,” Gosar said, according to the organizer.’

If this is true it’s a huge indictment of Trump and the GOP folks supporting the effort.

If true and we don’t get folks put away we deserve to lose our Republic.

Apple Music Voice

Horrible, terrible, no good, rotten idea.

Look, Steve Jobs, famously, told the CEO of DropBox what they had was a feature, not a product. That’s what Apple Music Voice is. It’s just a feature they should include as part of your Apple Music Subscription.

Rating: Turd 💩

HomePod Mini

New colors are always a welcome addition to Apple products.

Rating: Winner 👍🏼

AirPods

Apple has a winner of a product here. I don’t have anything more to say on the matter.

Rating: Winner 👍🏼

MacBook Pro

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t care about anything in the announcement except the MacBook Pro offerings.

Boy-o-boy did they deliver.

14in and 16in choices in a variety of configurations to fit all kinds of needs. Wow!

I’ll bet a fully loaded MacBook Pro M1 Max is going to smoke most Mac Pro configurations.

Rating: Winner 😍

Closing Thoughts

Yes, every fiber in my body wants a 16in, 64GB RAM, M1 Max 10-core CPU, 32-core GPU, and a 2TB SSD. I mean, why the heck not! Go big or go home, right?

As it is I won’t be purchasing this dream machine or anything like it for a while. I’ll be sticking with my trusty old 15in 2015 MacBook Pro for the foreseeable future.

Who knows, maybe I’ll hit that big lottery win, then I’ll buy that laptop configuration and a Pro Display XDR. 😃

P.S.

I love color. It’s a real puzzle why Apple insists on giving us two choices of color; silver and gray. That’s just boring.

Look, I’m a Pro, right? I love me some color. My iPhone 11 is purple and I just love to look at it. If Apple would offer an orange one I’d be all over it.

I wish Apple would give us Pro computers with those lovely rainbow colors on the new iMac’s. They’re gorgeous.

It was great, but left me wanting.

I don’t remember when I read the book, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. By this time I’ve forgotten a lot about it, so I don’t know what was added to the story as additional flair or adapted to make it flow better on the big screen, but I really enjoyed it.

In the end this left me feeling like I did with Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. It was a great story, loved it, but it felt like a bridge. A bridge to the finale.

I remember enough about the story to know stuff is about to get interesting. I really hope we don’t have to wait a year for part two. That would be depressing.

Here’s hoping we get the second part during Blockbuster season 2022. 🤞🏼

If Facebook makes a parent company and needs a new CEO for Facebook, I’m available.

I will eliminate the algorithmic timeline and suggestion engine. I will also hire a lot of folks to help eliminate hate groups and misinformation on the platform.

I would open the platform up to researchers so it would be held accountable. Of course these researchers would be vetted.

Political advertising would not be allowed.

I would permanently bad Trump from the platform.

Folks could still keep in touch with their families and see pictures of their grandkids and cats. That is a good thing.

That’s just a beginning.

Finally getting down to brass tacks with the French drain.

Now I just need to get the shell off of the truck so I can go pickup a half yard of rock, add it to the trench, and button it up.

I really hope this does the trick. 🤞🏼

The Guardian: ”In one striking internal study, a Facebook researcher created a fake profile for “Carol Smith”, conservative female user whose interests included Fox News and Donald Trump. The experiment showed that within two days, Facebook’s algorithm was recommending “Carol” join groups dedicated to QAnon, a baseless internet conspiracy theory.”

Again we see Facebook is a garbage company. They’re actively helping to create a whole generation of radicals, domestic terrorists if we don’t stop them.

Folks think I’m overreacting. That’s fine. I just want to maintain and improve our Republic for generations to come. We are so close to losing it because of Trump and his GOP sycophants.

Facebook isn’t helping matters.

Jason Bock via Twitter: ”The underlying events that caused this to happen (or at least that what it seems like is going on) is what’s really troubling. Can .NET devs, who care about OSS, say from now on, ‘we trust MS to do the right thing?’”

This is something worth keeping an eye on. I haven’t written any Windows code in a few years now but why Microsoft would retard their wonderful .NET runtime for the sake of Visual Studio is beyond me.

Visual Studio is a fantastic IDE for development on Windows.

VS Code is a baby brother. Why the two cannot co-exist is beyond my comprehension.

They created an accidental behemoth in VS Code. It’s awesome. It’s cross platform. Devs love it. I have a friend who is a Linux C++ developer and raging emacs fanatic. He switched to VS Code because it ran everywhere and he had a nice build process setup he could run within the editor.

As for Visual Studio. If I were doing professional C++ or C# development on Windows it would, hands down, be my dev environment. It’s just too good to walk away from. The full integration, dare I say IDE, is too full featured to not use it. It’s the best tool for the job in my opinion.

In fact, it will be the IDE I use for the Windows Version of Stream when the time comes. I want that awesome C++ compiler, debugger, and the integration with C# and .NET.

Maybe it’s a lesson for Microsoft. Maybe Visual Studio should be FREE?

I get Xcode for free on the Mac. It’s also a great IDE for doing native work on the platform. It’s the IDE I’ve been using to creat Stream’s Cross Platform C++ Framework.

Maybe Microsoft should adjust their strategy? Charge $99.00 year for a developer program that includes access to a version of Visual Studio Community Edition that 100% supports C++ and C#/.NET development and no other languages. Oh, and it allows you to publish Desktop apps.

It’s all I need, it would put money in Microsoft’s hands, and perhaps allow them to make .NET fully featured?

I thought I’d list some Indie Developers and Small Developers who are worthy of your support.

There are so many making wonderful, beautifully designed, and very useful software.

Let’s give them some attention.

• David Steppenbeck- McClockface
• James Thomson- PCalc
• Christian Selig - Apollo
• Jeff Johnson - Stop the Madness
• Vincent Ritter - Gluon
• Manton Reece - Micro.blog
• Daniel Jalkut - MarsEdit
• Brent Simmons - NetNewsWire
• Iconfactory - Many Apps
• Tiny Podcast Company Ltd. - Castro
• Marco Arment - Overcast
• Simon Støvring - Data Jar