Part of me kiiiiinda wants to upgrade my iPad Air 4th Gen, but I don't think I have a really good rationale for it—and I like the old discontinued thin keyboard case more than the Magic Keyboard. (If I really want great typing, I'll bring along a thin mechanical keyboard!)
When I force-quit Google Maps to stop it from whining and it STILL sent a notification saying "I'm connected to CarPlay!", I was like, "Maybe I should just delete you from the phone entirely."
Used Google Maps on the phone for the first time in a while yesterday. The UX has caught up to Apple's in a lot of ways, but it is a *shockingly* whiny app. It wants you to give it *all* access, and if you deny it, it will bombard you with "But it'll be SO MUCH BETTER IF YOU DO" notifications.
My first serious test of the MacBook Pro's nanotexture display, and it's passing with flying colors—basically reflection-free at a outside picnic table, where the (glossy) phone display is all but unreadable. Also, it is 86°F with a 64° dew point and I have hot coffee because I am an idiot.
Through the Emacs keybinding journey:
- left option = meta, right option = option
- both option keys = option, command = meta
- both option keys = meta, command keys = command
I have to use Emacs's native compose for "special" characters, but this still works best for a Mac-native touch typist.
Just caught myself thinking "What's a good website for Mac news, now that MacStories doesn't cover Macs anymore?" (This is not remotely true, if you look at the front page, but it does sometimes feel like their beat has become AI agents lately.)
If you have only one device, that’s a great solution. If you don’t, you’re going to make trade-offs, like using an end-to-end encrypted system that only you have the key for.
I was encountering a few tiny but constant bugs on the Mac (for instance, always prompting “save this password to 1Password?” after it had just filled *in* that password!); 1Password’s upcoming price hike nudged me into trying this alternative.
Okay, I have—in theory—migrated from 1Password to Apple Passwords. Let's find out if this is a terrible idea!
Okay, I suppose I'm finally going to be bestirred to move from 1Password to Apple Passwords. (Which isn't perfect, but it's free, and can export data should I need that down the road.)
Are there any decent toolkits for cross-platform, document-based desktop applications? It seems like it may be Electron or nothing.
For past stores, there was a place in Tampa—maybe Sound Advice, but I'm not positive—with wildly expensive audiophile gear in the front, and a wide selection of cheap records in the back. Today, Bynx, a coffee shop/vinyl store in Orlando, although mostly just on principle.
Hot take: the places with the best Philly cheesesteaks outside the Philly area get local fresh-baked rolls rather than shipping in frozen Amoroso rolls.
I got started doing zines—and one of my first real jobs—with PageMaker. As a weird sidenote, I used a word processor called Nota Bene for years, an offshoot of XyWrite, which also came from ex-Atex people—which is why PageMaker could always import XyWrite files natively.
I feel like I want to get back into music, specifically my own collection, in a different way than I have been—so I'm trying out Longplay, an album-focused Apple Music app.
apps.apple.com/us/app/longpla...
New post: "“Trim Silence”: Threat or menace?" https://coyotetracks.org/blog/trim-silence/
Seeing another round of people mocking audiophile cables with "gold-plated voodoo". Guys, gold-plated connectors are genuinely corrosion-resistant and CHEAP. If you want to mock oxygen-free silver cables hand-twisted by Tibetan monks, go for it, but gold plating is neither overpriced nor woo.
Nathan Fillion (from an episode of “Castle”) making a speechless “uhm” gesture.
I like a fair amount of the articles in The Atlantic and I even watch "Washington Week", but whenever I come across someone describing the magazine as "leftist", I am that Nathan Fillion meme
It seems like there's a dramatic uptick in "the multidimensional vector math used to generate the next statistically most likely tokens in a sequence has suddenly gained actual intelligence" conversation this week.
I may be bidding adieu to one of my silliest gadget purchases, an Ember heated mug. The charging saucer has a design flaw they never fixed, my second one is dying, and I kind of miss going through my old collection of weird coffee mugs anyway.
New post: "Is AI helping you to do work, or just to do stuff?" https://coyotetracks.org/blog/ai-work-vs-stuff/
I'm not sure if I'm getting burned out on tech podcasts in general, or just ones that spend an awful lot of runtime enthusing about AI, but I'm finding myself hitting the skip button way more than I used to lately.
I like my current job and my coworkers—but I'm increasingly missing my "job" being writing and coding for myself, no matter how comparatively tiny the income is.
A dark calico cat who has perched herself on top of a closed MacBook Pro
I am not convinced this is comfortable for either the computer or the cat.
Mercury Weather showing a 20F (-6.7C) current temperature, with a predicted high of 43F (6C).
Welcome to Florida!
A 10-day forecast showing lows ranging from 23-30 F from tomorrow on for a week.
Okay, I get that much of the country/world would say "a week of lows just below freezing, no big deal," but this is FLORIDA.
I love this thought from @gruber.foo, writing about how Democrats need to stop acting incrementally (if at all): "The only way to counter 'move fast and break things' is to move fast and fix things."
I have connived my way into using a Mac for tech writing again at work, so I am going to try swapping Emacs's meta key back to left Option from Command, letting Command behave like a Mac Command key again. (I couldn't do the equivalent on Windows before.)
I don't mind LLM-powered coding assistance, but the more Visual Studio Code rebrands itself as The Copilot Editor™ the happier I am to have switched to Emacs.
For better or worse, just driving along familiar roads in SF's East Bay—the Mission Hills area of Fremont, up to Pleasanton and San Ramon—gives me a feeling of being home that hasn't lessened in three years of living in Florida.
