Rob Fahrni

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

Dave Rogers: “I think many people who enjoy posting and sharing on Facebook, would be better served by creating and maintaining a blog. You can achieve nearly the same level of ease of discovery through RSS and readers/aggregators, that you curate. What appears in your timeline is under your control. And there’s just enough friction there, in terms of reacting or responding, to serve as kind of a dampening force. Responses can be more thoughtful, the “hot take” can take a moment to cool."

Of course that paragraph caught my eye, but this is a very thoughtful piece by Dave that shares his rekindled enthusiasm for blogging.

500ish: “Facebook is over because they won. Because they have two billion users. Because they created a service which mirrors humanity. And humanity, as it turns out, is not great. I mean, yeah, sure, there are pockets of great. But there are also pockets of awful. And the awful will always overwhelm the great. And Facebook has created the perfect tool to enable this. At scale.”

Zuck only cares about money. Money, money, money, money, money.

He lacks empathy. If he were a more empathetic person he’d realize it’s time to step down as CEO and let someone run the show. The stock would fall, sure, but they’d eventually figure it out and Facebook could, perhaps, become a better place for people. Real flesh and blood people. As it stands now it’s a human emotion targeting system for advertisers and politicians.

Embracing some open web standards could also open Facebook to a broader audience. It could be a wonderful blogging platform and folks wouldn’t need to know what a blog is. Allow folks the option to write in public and not lock it behind Facebook login. Add RSS feeds to it while you’re in there.

It could be a really great destination on the web, instead of the cesspool we have today.

Zuck, step down so Facebook can be better. Go enjoy life, it’s short.

UI is hard.

That’s all. That’s the post.

Morning mocha at Grit.

CNN: “The report also details an extraordinary three-hour meeting in the Oval Office in which Trump tried to win support for a plan to install as acting attorney general a loyalist, Jeffrey Clark, who he thought would help him overturn the 2020 election. In the end, the ex-President was talked out of the move after being told it would trigger mass Justice Department resignations."

If our country cannot arrest, try, and hopefully convict these people of crimes then we deserve to lose our republic and have Trump as dictator.

It’s unbelievable to me that nothing has been done, that Trump is telling his chronies to ignore subpoenas. We’re going to mess around and let our country fall to this man that causes only grief and destruction wherever he goes.

We have to rise up and war must be waged if the Justice Department refuses to take action and Trump is reelected in 2024. Especially if he refuses to leave office after his second term. Then war is inevitable.

Let’s not allow it to come to that. I’d rather see Trump and his associates imprisoned. It’s what they deserve and don’t pull that “We can’t jail a Presidet” bullshit with me. It’s time we did. Trump is dangerous.

Brent Simmons: ”But I kind of think not, because there’s a bigger issue: I expect and hope that eventually I will no longer be a public person — no blog, no Twitter, no public online presence at all.”

Wow. This could be a big move by one of those early Mac developers and bloggers I looked to for inspiration.

Of course I can’t say these thoughts haven’t crossed my mind and I definitely blog less these days. Our hope is to someday live a more nomadic lifestyle, travel the country. I expect that would lead to more blogging.

I can totally see where Brent is coming from.

I know of one person who did this; Mark Pilgrim.

UPDATE: Brent replied to my tweet that linked to this article and thought the title was a bit strong. He’s correct, it is. My mind went to Mark Pilgrim’s “digital disappearance” and I applied that to Brent’s post.

It is a bit over the top. I am sorry for that, Brent.

Ars Technica: ”Facebook—and apparently all the major services Facebook owns—are down today. We first noticed the problem at about 11:30 am Eastern time, when some Facebook links stopped working.”

This is a really good start. Now, just keep them off the air, permanently.

Disgusting company.

I’ve been against this company existing for a long time. Especially when it comes to them owning you. You’re the product.

Take this opportunity to build your own thing. It gets easier and easier with each passing day.

Me, from 2012

Host your content on your website. It’s your brand, it belongs to you. Link to your important content from your Facebook and Twitter account. That’s what the Internet is all about. Links. Facebook is a walled garden. Why trap your content behind those drab blue walls?

Matthias Ott, May 2019

What started out as the most promising development in the history of the Web – the participation of users in the creation of content and online dialogue at scale – has turned into a swamp of sensation, lies, hate speech, harassment, and noise.

The web still has promise but Facebook wants you to believe they are the internet, not just a participant.

The Verge: ’In the Friday filing, Trump argues that his Twitter account “became an important source of news and information about government affairs and was a digital town hall,” where the former president posted his views.’

The Former Guy is such a piece of work.

The way politicians describe their voice as some sort of super special protected speech screams of privilege. How is a politicians voice more important than mine? It’s not, or at least it shouldn’t be. Besides, politicians are supposed to serve the people they represent. Many just love the power they wield.

Heck, if I used Twitter the way the Orange Man did to bully people, organize, and execute an attempted coup of the American government, I’d fully expect Twitter to ban me for life.

Besides, it’s well known that the First Amendment applies to the government silencing our speech. Here it is in its entirety.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

If Twitter has to give back his account I hope they are able to find a way to limit his bullying form of verbal diarrhea to the confines of Special Florida Twitter. Meaning his account starts at zero followers and only allows Floridians to follow him. Twitter and Special Florida Twitter should not be allowed to mix.

I really hope the courts see his attempt for what it is. The last ditch effort of an old man trying to find what little glory he can.

Sometimes I wish we could eject Florida and Texas from our Union.

daringfireball.net

Facebook in Crisis Mode Amid Wall Street Journal Exposé

”What a magnet for sociopaths this company is.”

Sociopaths, all. How in the world can any Facebook employee justify going to work each day? Oh, it’s about the money? Look in the mirror. You need help.

I love thunder storms. The East has great ones. 🌩

It’s no secret I’m an iOS Developer and have been since late 2008. But, I’m definitely not in the pundit class, fanboi class, or must have the newest thing class of Apple fandom.

There’s nothing wrong with any of those classes of people. Some folks just really love Apple products and have to have the new hotness. Let folks be happy I say.

Two of Apple’s latest products caught my eye and that little monster inside me that says ”Rob, you have to get these things” reared its ugly head. I haven’t bought these things, mind, I just want them.

iPad Mini

I still have a first generation iPad Mini. It’s a perfect device for my needs. I love reading on it. It’s also good for watching movies. The battery life and weight are amazing. The thing is super thin. I absolutely love it.

Question is, will I love this new design as much as the first gen? I’d imagine it’s going to be a bit thicker and heavier, not that those items are super concerning, but worth noting.

The new industrial design is absolutely gorgeous in my book. I’m a big fan of the squared borders. No surprise there. I still believe the iPhone 4 was the best iPhone design ever.

The display also looks like a real winner. Heck, anything is going to look amazing compared to my first gen.

Yes, I want one.

Apple Watch Seven

I’m still wearing First Generation Apple Watch. Notice a theme here? I keep my stuff for a long time. I wear it everyday and it’s served me well. I can no longer upgrade the OS but, so far, all the apps I use still operate just fine.

I really dig the curved display effect. Plus, it’s new, and I’d like an upgrade. Honestly an Apple Watch Four, or newer, would be just fine for me. I could probably find an older model for much less. I’d even take a refurb with a protection plan.

All that said I have to believe the latest Apple Watch would blow me away if I used it for a bit.

Yes, I want one.

Buy Them!

Hey, slow your roll a bit. Here’s another thing you have to understand about me. I have a very difficult time spending that kind of money on myself. There is always something more important in our life we need to spend that money on. Wether it’s a new Air Conditioning unit, fridge, or dishwasher, it’s always something. And, yes, we’ve replaced all of those in less than a years time.

When I released RxCalc in 2009 and Stream in 2020 I had high hopes each could earn me $50-$100 a month. Boy, was I way too confident. When the day comes that I can earn that kind of cheddar from my apps I will feel a lot better about buying new hardware. Until then I will hope my lovely wife and girls decide to gift me with one. Like they did with my Apple Watch.

P.S.

<img border=“0” src=“https://static.crabapples.net/misc/flowers.gif" align=“right” alt=“A wonderful bouquet of flowers."/ >I do have plans to improve Stream by adding support for Mac and continuing to improve the experience over time. I’m just very slow so, please, bear with me.