Rob Fahrni

Hauling a yard of dirt down to the lower part of our back yard. This will be the third time doing it. It’s very tiring but the payoff will be quite nice. We’ll have a nice place to gather around the fire pit I built a few weeks back. 🔥

Watched My Spy last night. It was really cute. I had some LOL moments. There are definitely some tense moments and violence but it was really good. 🎥

Dub-Dub 2020 day one shirt. Yes, it’s from our friends at The Iconfactory!

I just finished listening to this new Podcast from The Lincoln Project. George Conway is the first guest and it’s really worth hearing what he has to say. It gave me hope we can get the Orange Man out of the Whitehouse. castro.fm

Bloomberg: “The first Mac processors will have eight high-performance cores, codenamed Firestorm, and at least four energy-efficient cores, known internally as Icestorm. Apple is exploring Mac processors with more than 12 cores for further in the future, the people said.”

Lots of hubbub this week in the developer community around Mac transition to ARM chips has been about how can we build ARM apps without ARM hardware?

Think about how we build iOS, tvOS, and Watch apps today. We run them in a simulator. Xcode builds our iOS apps for x86 so they’re actually running in the simulator app on the intel chipset in our computers.

What if Apple spent time developing an emulator? Yes, an ARM emulator. Why not? They have the resources and it’s not like they couldn’t start with something like Virtual Box or do some crazy licensing deal with VMWare or Parallels for that matter.

Given that you’d either fire up the VM and run your entire environment in the virtual machine or maybe they take it a step further and you use Xcode on your Mac, the way you do today, and it fires up a virtual machine app that your newly ported Mac app runs in?

It could happen.

It’s crazy what you can get in a workstation replacement. I wish Apple could do something like this. Especially for the price. Just wild. This is a Serval WS from System76.

If I buy another Windows box it’ll be from them.

I just saw my first firefly since we’ve moved east. I’m unbelievably excited about it. These were not a thing in California.

There is some wonder left in the world.

Almost finished building our fire pit. Time for a beer.

Nothing but the best $5 headphones for Mr. Fahrni.

Yes, I’d own AirPods if they didn’t cost a bazillion dollars and only last for two years. 😀

I feel like I’ve been working on this app forever. 😀

But, I haven’t. It’s been a couple years of fits-and-starts. The last TestFlight build I sent out was, I believe, back in late February.

I only have a few new items to add then it’s all about bug fixes.

What’s left?

Import and Export OPML

I have the core of importing and exporting working fine. It’s what I worked on today.

The one stumbling block I have is where it fits in the UI, like it’s a little thing. I have some ideas, of course, but I’m not thrilled about any of them. I’ll probably pick the least icky idea and do that.

Once that’s done I’d imagine the Export feature will live next to it.

Sharing

This goes two ways. I’d like to add an extension that will allow someone to Add to Stream from a web browser and I’d like to allow folks to share out of the article view. This should allow folks to start a blog post of their own or post to their favorite social media site.

Nice to haves

Extra Icons

I have some beautiful icons to share with everyone and I really hope you all enjoy them as much as I do.

Tip Jar

I’ve struggled with this one a bit. Stream is going to be free. It’s not going to be something folks just gotta have. I did this for me. I wanted an app that was simple and felt more like a Twitter feed. I think it hits both marks.

The reason I’ve struggled with the idea of having a tip jar is I don’t want folks to feel like they have to pay anything for it. I would appreciate it but it’s not necessary.

Wrapping up

I have a few bugs I’m aware of, mostly around stripping of HTML tags.

Thanks for following along.

Two things I want to do today.

1. Work on Stream
2. Have Chipotle for lunch.

It’s a bold list. Let’s see if I can make at least one happen.

No real RSS reader has anything to fear from Stream. It’s something I wanted to do, something different. It’s intended to be overly simplistic, probably to a fault, but I’m ok with that.

I doubt many folks will install it. I just had to do it. It’s so close.

I need to buckle down and finish Stream. It’s been months since I last worked on it. 😟

Can someone please hire my daughter to do some kind of design work?

New York Times: “If you want to understand why podcasting is killing, he says, you first need to appreciate the world-changing, brain-rewiring transformation in how we consume information.”

I wonder if people understand the subtle difference between a podcast and content locked behind a proprietary format? Super subtle.

In a nutshell Podcasting is spoken word, published as a feed - RSS or other open type, in an open audio format, like MP3.

If I can’t subscribe to it in my podcast player of choice, it’s not a podcast.

I’m not a good enough developer to work for you.

Even if I were, I wouldn’t want to work for you.

Thanks for asking.

Time to get in on the action.

Here goes: Custom Watch Faces, iOS stability and performance improvements, and macOS stability and performance improvements

That’s it.

I’d really love to have a Dumbledore watch face.

The weather is conspiring against us. It makes working outside fun when all it does is rain all weekend. 😀

I’m surprised some enterprising Trump Youth hasn’t had this idea yet.

Camp COVID is an exclusive summer camp. You pay $100,000.00, plus the cost of any hospitalization, to attend this all inclusive summer camp. We’re talking high end camp here. Not s’mores and hot cocoa by the fire. It’s all opulence, all the time, complete with Trump golden toilets and a lifetime subscription to Trump Steaks.

Here’s the catch. There’s no social distancing. You can do whatever your little heart desires. Want to visit the lake to do a little kayaking? Do it! How about drinks and dancing at the on site night club? Do it?

It’s two weeks, zero quarantine, and no pesky government telling you want to do! Bliss.

At the end of two weeks you are required to visit the quarantine center on site for the following two weeks where you’re tested daily. At the end of the two weeks you’re released.

If you test positive you’re put back into the Camp COVID grounds to fend for yourself. No staff on site.

You can, however, choose to call a friend or loved one to come pick you up.

Good luck and enjoy your stay at Camp COVID.

Folks talking about WWDC on Micro.blog? Zero. 🤯

I’ve been thinking about models for making a little money from my iOS apps. I only have two at the moment and they’re both free on the App Store. Neither app has been downloaded in large quantities. RxCalc – a pharmacokinetics calculator – has around 10,000 users and Arrgly has a super tiny user base – I built it for myself and decided to share it. And, yes, I know the name and UI are completely goofy.

I’ve been working on a new application called Stream and I’ve gone round and round in my head about monetizing it; should it be FREE, free with in app purchase, free with tip jar, or up pay once up front?

So many choices.

My initial thought was FREE with an In-App Purchase Tip Jar. This would allow me to, hopefully, make a few bucks from it and I could reward users with additional icon sets and color schemes.

Then I happened across Ko-fi. It looks like a nice way to make a few bucks off of my hard work and not give Apple 30%. On the flip side I wonder how much I’ll lose because folks have to visit my site to tap on the Ko-fi button to support my apps.

If anyone reads this, and knows a little about Ko-fi, could you let me know if it’s something I could, or should, use to support my apps?

Just send email to rob.fahrni@gmail.com.

I was back in Seattle in my dreams. I was interviewing at Visio, the company, not the app. The job was moving Visio to Windows UI 3.0. Great dream.

Will we get an ARM Mac? Probably, maybe? Who knows? /shrug

I’m pretty certain I’ve opined about this before, but my weblog is a mess at the moment and I can’t find the reference to it.

What if the ARM Mac is really an iOS based laptop? Seriously.

Think of the 12in MacBook. Some folks really loved the thing. It was teeny tiny. Just imagine the 12.9in or 11in iPad as a laptop. The darned thing could be super thin and light. It could even have the same square design or Apple could adopt the curved edges of the current MacPro lineup. It doesn’t really matter.

Think about this. It could be slightly heavier than an iPad Pro but lighter than a MacBook Air. That is a class of computer I think a lot of folks would really love.

What if it had a crazy long battery life because they could pour battery into the top and bottom cases? To that end they could move around where everything lives in the computer. They’d have all kinds of space. Full keyboard, full mouse, beautiful display, full touch, and pencil support. Add to that four USB-C ports and you have a potential winner on your hands.

And for the cherry on top I can see Tim Apple stepping out on stage proclaiming “And we call it, iBook.”

The virtual crowd goes crazy.

It’s sunny outside today as I write this. Sitting on the deck, in the shade, birds chirping, and I’m miserable.

Backing Up

We moved to Charlottesville, Virginia, in November 2019. Yes, another wild adventure. This time we did it to be closer to our daughter, granddaughter, and son-in-law. Being in California with our first granddaughter out on the east coast just wasn’t going to cut it. So, we moved.

I took a gig with WillowTree in Charlottesville and we packed up the house – no easy feat – and started for Virginia. It was a whirlwind of selling home a home and buying another, quickly. We cut out of Exeter, California, Sunday, October 27 at about two in the afternoon and arrived in Virginia Friday, November 1. Three adults, three dogs, and four cats – yes, we’re absolutely insane.

Since we arrived in November the weather was changing. Cool, crisp, mornings and rain, lots and lots of rain. That’s OK. We wanted to live in a place with actual seasons. California is a paradise. Most days are sunny. We were up for a change.

We got change. In January we had our first snow. It was glorious. But mostly we had a lot of those crisp mornings with rain. That’s ok. It’s part of the winter and spring season here. As spring approaches the temperatures go up but you still have plenty of rain mixed with bursts of sunshine.

As we rolled into February the Coronavirus pandemic hit. Seattle was hit hard. By the end of February things were getting serious. I left work on March 12 slightly before WillowTree declared all employees should work from home. (Seriously, that was in March? Feels much, much longer ago.)

As I started writing this yesterday – May 2 – I was in a terrible state of mind. With the world in chaos I was only thinking about myself. I was pissed off it was a gorgeous day outside. The sun was shining, the birds were chirping, and I was stuck at home. Nothing to do but yard work.

You see. When we got here and the weather had changed to we and rainy I was looking forward to spring. We live in an area rich in history. I love history. I wanted to explore Virginia. Back to D.C. to see the National Archives. Back to Gettysburg. Back to Monticello. We live five miles away from Monticello.

I’d like to explore Virginia Beach and Carter Mountain here in Charlottesville, enjoy the Monticello trail system. Visit the beautiful little towns all around us. So many things to do and see.

But no. Here I sit, at home. Beautiful Saturday and I’m having a pity party. I expect the earliest we’ll be able to get out and explore is in the spring of 2021.

How dare I. People are dying all around us. I need to pull my head out. Consider others. It’s not about Rob Fahrni. It’s about my loved ones, my friends, and my fellow human.

I’m sorry. I’m an idiot. I’m selfish.

I’m gonna work on that.

Stay safe. See you next spring.