A Review of the Orion macOS Browser

Riccardo Mori, on morrick.me:

Orion’s approach is utilitarian. It doesn’t want to win users with a fancy UI or quirky æsthetics to appear ‘different’. Its user interface is not that different from Safari. Its design philosophy has to do with how the browser works, not how it looks. And today a browser should be fast (in a Web that’s getting progressively bloated and dragged down by intrusive, resource-consuming scripts), privacy conscious, and adhering to the web’s standards. And that’s what Orion is and does.

The current private beta is very impressive. It’s crazy fast, and the extensions support mean almost no compromise. The only reason I’m still on Brave is that the BI tool/data lake we use at work seems very optimized for Chrome. It’s also useful to experience the tool the same way 90% of my users do.

I also suspect the other reason for not switching is the boring UI — I agree this is a feature for most people and makes sense for the product. But some coolness would probably drive me to reach for it more often.

Discord Is a Black Hole for Information

From knockout.chat:

The problem with this is that 99% of the conversations that take place in Discord are missed. So many solutions to so many problems are just swept away in a never ending cascade of chat messages which remain undocumented elsewhere.

I don’t enjoy discord communities. I understand the appeal to have a similar hive-mind more in things different than work, but I don’t have time for them. I much prefer to participate in forums like Obsidian’s, the asynchronous nature of it works for me.

Maybe I’m just getting internet-old. I experienced compuserve boards, loved Newton mailing lists, spent hours on PalmOS forums, joined IRC chats for Apple Events, and I’m not into whatever’s next.

There’s no KPI in Habit

Careful with adding benchmarks when defining new habits. At the beginning of any habit, its compliance is the most important measurement. It’s binary: either you do it or not.

Once the new habit starts to become more natural, then optimization has a place.

I just feel into this trap recently, and only by reminding myself of non-zero days, was I able get started again on working the habits.

Tidbits for 2022 Week 6

• Voiceliner: free voice transcript outliners for iOS and Android.

• Aeromatic: AeroPress recipies app for iOS.

• Zavala: Extremely clean free outliner for macOS/iOS.

• Centro 365: browser extension to quickly get to Microsoft 365 administration pages.

• Minimal 5.0: my preferred theme for Obsidian got a great update with new colors schemes.

• Docflipper: macOS Cmd + Tab utility that ads a bottom row of bookmarks (Folders, URLs, URLs Schemes). Subscribed and added to my login apps.

• Start11: Didn’t know Stardock was still around. People seem to be enjoying this Start menu enhancement on Windows 11.

• QSpace: A very powerful look macOS Finder enhancement.

• Replacicon: Great utililty to easily replace icons on macOS. Is it worth $5 for something I’ve done manually over years. Yes

• PanWriter: Free markdown two pane app for Mac/Windows/Linux. Good to have around.

• Padbury Clock: My favorite macOS screensaver is back!

Mermaid Diagrams Coming to Github Markdown

From github.com:

Support for displaying Mermaid diagrams has appeared on GitHub’s top list of feature requests since 2015. In its absence, many developers simply added screenshots to their Markdown. Today, we’re excited to add native support for Mermaid wherever Markdown is supported (e.g., issues, repositories, discussions, gists).

Great news. Currently that way I deal with mermaid diagrams in GitHub issues is either: a screenshot — which is static and a pair — or an external image to the mermaid live — a potential security issue.

This change will make me push mermaid diagrams a lot more with the team.

The Long Way Back to the Same Place

The possibility of connecting 2022-01-26 Free Plugin to Trigger Shortcuts from Obsidian sent me down a rabbit hole of moving this blog’s content creation from Drafts to Obsidian. Of course, I redid all bookmarklets and Shortcuts which grab links and quotes for them to open in Obsidian now.

All worked great, until… mobile. While Obsidian on the Desktop is a joy to use, on iOS it’s workable. Since I use iCloud as the sync engine — not sure if the same thing happens on their own sync — any time I could start on the app, you can be sure that it will take a few seconds to sync existing files. This is a pain for appends, because it usually means the new content can be lost.

And now I’m at the point in which the grass was greener on my original side of the fence. Will give it another week before I break everything again. Setting up separate configs for Desktop and Mobile in Obsidian seem like a good next step. I’m going to break that next.

A Man With a Plan

I had a plan. Ironically I even wrote a drafts post about the morning page and how it’s becoming too much like a morning task list. And then… life happened.

Slowly at first, then faster than expected, broken datasets on the day everyone has their January reports due threw my day into a debugging frenzy.

Lunch skipped — which worked out fine because I wanted to do a 24hr fast this week — by end of day the biggest fires were out. But there’s still smoke in the ticket system.

This is the paragraph that should have closed my ramblings about the morning page not being as productive as I hoped:

I must remember that the point of the exercise is the exercise. Enjoy the doing, not the before or after.

It might make little sense on this post, but that’s the insight: the morning page cannot be judged by its influence on the rest of the day, that’s too big of a burden to put on a harmless practice.

SpaceX’s new Starlink Premium

Jon Porter on theverge.com:

[…] the new service includes a larger high performance antenna and advertises speeds of between 150 and 500Mbps (20 to 40ms latency), up from the 50 to 250Mbps (20 to 40ms latency) promised by its regular service. Premium also claims roughly double the upload speeds at 20 to 40Mbps, compared to 10 to 20Mbps for the standard tier.

It’s $2,500 for the antenna, and $500 a month, so clearly for the enterprise. Expensive, but if you’re in a place without good wired internet, not a crazy ammount.

Ok Blogger

I usually tell myself that I blog to leave a window into my thoughts for my kids. A snapshot of my mindset in a moment in time.

As I struggle to contain my 6yo access to YouTube and TikTok, I wonder if I’m not barking at the wrong tree. Is a written journal — outside all platforms and with a domain that’s only cool to me — even going to register in their radar? Is this blog the 50 years remove equivalent of a weekly editorial from a ham operator?

The truth is that I write because I want to be recognized. I have thoughts, ideas, hacks that I believe are valuable. So then, I want to be an influencer? Seems to me that written content influencer are few and far between. Never mind having millions of followers, the coolest writers I follow fall flat when I try to share them, even with my wife.

So what’s the point? The truth is: kicking off the script in Obsidian that results in these words being published on my website is one of the most sure-fire ways to bring a smile to my face.

It’s solved then, I blog for me.

Framework Raises Series A

Nirav Patel on frame.work:

We’re using this $18M to fund development of upcoming product categories and the long roadmap of new modules and geographic expansion for the Framework Laptop. Much like our products are built around longevity, we’re building this company for the long haul.

People seem to love their Framework Laptops, and in a world where MacBooks aren’t an option, it would be on my top list using Pop!_OS. Happy to hear they have runway for new product categories.

Let the Error Happen

I’ve fallen into the bad habit of optimizing before having an MVP. This leads to a higher rate of abandoned initiatives than usual.

Iterations are a way to help with this, but sometimes you just want to create, deliver and be done with it. Cut once.

Maybe documenting how it should work, and then delivering the unfinished initiative is the shortcut.

Social Networking Plans for 2022

Inspired by others, I’ve taken some action on my social networking for this year.

• Mastodon¹ Dedos De Frente Instance: an effort to push our geeky Spanglish slack group to twitter-like group — with dreams of it being a community later. I’ll write about Posts vs Chats later, but right now it’s meeting a lot of resistance.
• RSS: used to be this was a given, but recent posts of people celebrating RSS makes it less clear. I’ve been using RSS for 15+ years for my river of news and don’t plan to stop anytime soon. Lots of blogs and geek website, using Feed Wangler with the Reeder app.
  
• Tweetdue: a shortcut that forces me to write 42 characters into my microblog before opening Tweetbot. This works best with my usual setup of removing Tweetbot from Siri & Search on iOS and adding it to Spotlight»Privacy on the Mac.
• Deleting old tweets: being doing this since last year using TweetDelete, it deletes tweets older than 3 months. This gives them a more ephemeral feeling.
• Web Instagram and YouTube: I’ve deleted both apps and only visit them on the web version. With YouTube, this has the added benefit when done with the Vinegar Safari extension of not seeing ads.

In addition to hiding Twitter apps, I also block it (alongside Instagram and Youtube) in the early morning and at the end of the weekdays with Freedom — and during the morning on weekends. This has really helped in cutting the impulse to go there when I’m running away of another task.

I’m missing a photo sharing part in all of this, although Glass looks great, my needs are more toward family photo sharing. So for now posting into my microblog and mastodon will do.

Looking ahead, the group mastodon instance is the only iffy part of the plan. If it doesn’t catch on, I’ll likely go back to Micro.blog. But I’ll cross that river later.

Free Plugin to Trigger Shortcuts from Obsidian

Federico Viticci, on macstories.net:

With Obsidian Shortcut Launcher (or ‘OSL’), you’ll be able to trigger any shortcut you want from Obsidian, passing along values such as the text of the document you’re working on, its name, text selection, and more. Obsidian Shortcut Launcher is free to use and works on iOS, iPadOS, and macOS.

Whoa. This sounds very powerful and useful. Thinking I could go crazy with the options — however, it’s nothing I couldn’t already do with Drafts. Don’t get me wrong, the plug-in is really exciting. It’s more of a note-to-self before heading down a rabbit hole with it.

Too late. Already thinking of ways to migrate existing Shortcuts to this.

Fred Wilson on Covid

Fred Wilson, avc.com:

It is time to stop obsessing about Covid. It is time to stop politicizing Covid. It is time to stop tweeting about Covid. It is time to stop reading about Covid. It is time to start healing and it is time to start moving on.

Food for thought. I don’t think we’re out of the woods yet, but I completely agree that we need to move on from COVID news as entertainment.

Tidbits for 2021 Week 49

• Magnet Links: Safari extension that sends links to Put.io.

• File Picker: Access your local files and folders on the web.

• Speediness: Mac speed test app based on thenetworkQuality command-line tool.

• Otto Tabs: extension to group/stack tabs and removed duplicates. Works great in Vivaldi.

• Shortery: Automate Shortcuts on Mac.

• tldraw: A tiny little drawing app with collaboration.

• Writer: web plain text editor. Drag and drop files to open them.

The Correct Usage of Peruse

merriam-webster.com:

The effect this had was to split the broad “read” meaning of peruse into two narrower meanings: one that referred to carefully examining or reading something, and the other that referred to casually looking at or reading something. These two meanings aren’t contradictory; rather, they are just two sides of the same coin.

Well, learned something new. I always thought it was used in a skimming context.

Against All Odds

My brother in law is fighting an uphill battle. A political contest in an unfair electoral system. With backstabbing former alliances and very limited funds. All in a community where he has been working for at least 10 years.

It’s a just cause. And very likely a lost cause. But he’s there. Vocation, craziness or weird career choice. All three would be my guess.

I’m not into sports, yet Ted Lasso’s it’s the hope that kills you vs do you believe in miracles? plot line connected with my electoral history. A very long losing streak with a pendulum of both these extremes.

I believe in hope. I believe in putting in the work. I believe in Chola. This won’t likely be the year — but he’s building something important that will make a big difference someday. He’s also learning a ton.

And where his tireless intensity drives me crazy sometimes, it’s also a big part of his future triumph.

Apple Announces Self Service Repair

From apple.com:

Apple today announced Self Service Repair, which will allow customers who are comfortable with completing their own repairs access to Apple genuine parts and tools. Available first for the iPhone 12 and iPhone 13 lineups, and soon to be followed by Mac computers featuring M1 chips […]

Regardless of this being a reaction to the right to repair legislation, or out of the goodness of their hearts, this is great news.

Tidbits for 2021 Week 46

• beorg: iOS org-mode plain text files takes manager with iCloud, Dropbox, WebDAV sync services.

• Tabs Switcher: Safari and Chrome switching between tabs & windows on macOS.

• micro: modern terminal-based text editor Sublime-style multiple cursors.

• BetterDummy: dummy display for Apple Silicon/Intel Macs to have custom HiDPI Resolutions. Works great.

• Canvify: iOS app to preview how a photo would look like on the wall.

• Microsoft Edge for Linux available.

• Reminders Menu Bar: menu bar app to view and interact with reminders.

• TopNotch: hide the notch on new MacBook Pro’s.

So Fast, So Numb

Productivity is suffering. I need to gain altitude, perspective. Differentiate the tasks from the projects, the important from the urgent, the long term from the… screaming headline.

Lower quotas and intermediate packets are the short term plan. Long term? Be a manager that can both teach and make.

A Brief History of Space Missions Lost to Human Errors

Jatan Mehta, on blog.jatan.space:

Here’s a brief history of some major missions lost because of very avoidable human errors, and which aren’t programmatic failures like the Space Shuttle.

Some of these I’ve heard but I had the details wrong. Others, I had no idea. Good read.

PineNote eInk Tablet Announced

Lukasz Erecinski, on pine64.org:

• Announcing the PineNote, one of the most powerful devices of its kind on the market
• Quartz64 based; specs include — fast refresh e-ink panel with multiple frontlight settings, RK3566, 4GB LPDDR4 RAM and 128GB eMMC flash storage
• Wacom panel compatible with many EMR pens: we will offer our own
• Available this year for $399; early adopters batch includes EMR pen + magnetic cover (later sold separately)

Similar as the android e-ink devices, this platform is far from user ready. Yet I’m still extremely happy that this category exists and continues to grow.

And of course, I dream of the day someone ports NewtonOSis to it.

The Internet as Physical Places

Jatan Mehta, on personal.jatan.space:

If we think of what you put out on the internet in terms of physical places, this is what they are like.

• Social platforms like Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube → Hotel rooms

• Free Blog or Website → Rented house

• Website/Blog + Domain → Home

This framework resonated with me.

Six Colors Boox Nova Air Review

Jason Snell, on sixcolors.com:

The Boox Nova Air is an impressive piece of hardware that’s let down by its software. Despite Onyx’s attempts to add software to make the experience better, it’s still pretty far short of a good reading experience. The freedom to do anything I could think of on an E Ink screen only revealed to me why other devices with E Ink displays are completely locked down, with specific functionality tuned to specific hardware.

Just ordered my iPad mini 6, but for sometime I was strongly considering this device. Sadly one of its main features — Android app support — doesn’t sound too great. However, for some specific uses the Boox Nova Air seems like a good option.

Apple Unveils New Macbook Pro

apple.com:

Game-changing MacBook Pro with M1 Pro and M1 Max delivers extraordinary performance and battery life, and features the world’s best notebook display.

Of course Apple’s newsroom is going to be full of adjetives, but this time they all appear true.

Some notes:

• These MacBook Pro’s come from another timeline, where the 2015 versions were continually improved and the terrible butterfly switch keyboards models never existed.
• We need to wait for the benchmark, but I’m confident these notebooks will live up to the extraordinary performance marketing.
• The battery life of the plain M1 processor is amazing, and these new models seem to be even more so.
• Seems a waste to run the beautiful screens in clamshell mode as I do half the time.
• The design is functional. I really like it. Makes sense because I went 5 years without upgrading by work 13in MacBook Pro — and only upgraded to a MacBook Air when repairs forced me to.
• The screen has a notch. Looks weird, but I rather have those pixels than a wider top border.
• Touch Bar is gone. Did I mention I went 5 years without upgrading? Touch Bar was also part of it.
• Pricing starts at $1999 and goes up to the heavens. But I think both 14in and 16in base models are the strongest Apple has shipped in forever.

While I could make a case for one of these machines, I’m going to hold on for the next MacBook Air. As I said before, this M1 wonder has been the best notebook I’ve had, and slowdowns are something I rarely experience in my Obsidian, Excel, Microsoft Edge, Outlook Web¹ workflows. What I really need want is an external 5K monitor. And sadly Apple is not taking my money yet on it.

However, if you’re in the market for a Pro machine, and have $3k to spare, you can’t go wrong with this lineup.

Tidbits for 2021 Week 42

• komorebi: free tiling Window Management for Windows.

• Keypoints: upcoming Mac note-taking and PDF highlighting app which stores notes in Markdown format.

• Keyb: type with one hand on macOS. Hold down the spacebar, and the left and right half of your keyboard swap places.

• Obsidian Dynamic ToC: plugin for creating Tables of Contents that stay updated with document.

• Sloth: native Mac app that shows all open files, directories, sockets, pipes, and devices in use.

The Tao of Mac on Windows 11

Rui Carmo, on taoofmac.com:

I’m a bit weirded out by this, but, overall, the multitasking UX on Windows is actually better than on the Mac for me right now.

In all the review videos, this is what makes me both curious and envious. Mac window management is stuck on the Snow Leopard era. With smaller screens and less powerful multitasking than we have now.

Just like with other Windows windowing features, I hope 3rd party apps implement them soon.

Markdown Footnotes now supported in GitHub

github.blog:

You can now use footnote syntax in any Markdown field!Footnotes are displayed as superscript links. Click them to jump to their referenced information, displayed in a new section at the bottom of the document

My blogging workflow is mostly based on Drafts and Shortcuts - but for a while I used Github Issues with labels and Integromat. It worked really well, but the lack of footnotes was the main blocker.

Already used it in a couple of work issues.

Tidbits for 2021 Week 40

• ActiveTab: makes it easier to spot the active tab in Safari 15 on Mac by drawing a line below it. How far have we fallen.

• Texty: native macOS app for Google Messages. Looks clean and fast — dreaming of a day I can use this for GoogleFi.

• WhichSpace: menubar item that shows which space is currently active on macOS.

• tape it: iOS App for songwriting & audio recording. Looks simple and powerful. Looking for way to use it.

• BrowserParrot: local browsing history search engine for Chrome, Brave, Firefox, and Safari. Currently on macOS only.

• Barrier: software that mimics the functionality of a KVM switch for Windows, macOS, Linux, FreeBSD.

Stephen Hackett on the New iPad mini

Stephen Hackett, on 512pixels.net:

Its small size — and lack of a first-party keyboard case — means that I don’t feel any tension about not using it for work. Its form factor has freed me up to use the iPad how I want, without feeling like I’ve relegated an amazing tablet to something below its station in life.

I’m flipping my 2018 iPad Pro 11in for the new mini. It seems to be the digital moleskine / new Newton™ I’m always looking for.

Weekly Work Review

Every Friday at 4pm, I have a 42min meeting with a link to an Obsidian file. The file contains the following template:

• Emails Sorted
• Review Folder 1 Projects
• Next Week Calendar
• Things Work Tasks
• Sort Download Files Folder Tidy.app

Each has a link that makes it actionable on the Mac¹. The intent of each:

• Email Sorted: my passive aggressive version of InboxZero. It allows me to reach a clean inbox, but allows a lot of email snoozing.
• Review Folder 1 Projects: opens the folder, and I try to have no more than 5 folders there. Inactive’s or done projects are moved to 4 Archive.
• Next Week Calendar: opens Fantastical. I try to move around meetings from a high-level view, and make block some focus time.
• Things Work Tasks: although most of my tasks are in Obsidian, there’s still items that will fall in my Things work area.
• Sort Download Files: Use Folder Tidy to sort the Download folder. Afterwards I’ll usually rescue some files to either add to a project above or group into a folder and send to 4 Archive or to a 2 Areas sub-folder.

This check list is linked at the end of my weekly notes with the name Weekly Review 2021w38.md for historical reasons.

Debugging as a Project Stage

In a typical meeting where the team has neglected QA and is flying head-first into a release wall, I would throw the cliche at them:

Measure twice and cut once.

Far from being true, this is a last ditch attempt to soften the (crash)landing. In reality — if involved earlier — I would have found a way to transmit the opposite:

Guesstimate quickly, then measure and cut multiple times.

Rarest is the case when there’s enough information on a new project or implementation where you can accurately estimate what you don’t know. There’s all sorts of tricks in which you multiply what you expect based on other experiences.

For best results I’ve found that you must incorporate debug time after the design as part of the overall process. In the majority of cases, the debug part will take considerably longer — regardless of how long to design takes.

Thinking your design is proven because of the time it took, will take you down a dark path. Design and debugging are independent. If you do have a hard date, take time off the design and give it to debugging. It will not be pretty, but it will deliver.

Tidbits for 2021 Week 39

• OK JSON: Format and View JSON on macOS. Careful with what you paste online.

• macOS Tiger Wallpaper: beautiful Mac OS X Tiger (2005) wallpaper remixed for 2021.

• bonsai: interesting Web Browser for “research”. Some new usable new paradigms here.

• Mirror Magnet: Floating Camera Viewer for macOS. Useful for presenting.

• Peek v2: Advanced Quick Look for 324+ filetypes.

• Overbrowsered: open links in the most recently used browser, instead of a default one. Still using Choosy, but I like this model also.

• Booby Track: keep track of breastfeeds, on iPhone and Apple Watch. TMI, but this would have been useful 4 years ago.

• WebCrate: web based link organizer. Very interesting.

Mindset Snapshot at Forty

Turned 40 today. Here’s a snapshot of the mantras and tenets of my personal OS. I have picked up these from friends & family, reading and remixed my own¹. Some I’ve had for a long time, other’s have become important more recently.

• Mind the Joy: be mindful of the moment — even stuck in traffic with screaming kids, you’re together, safe, loved and heading to a home. Very few moments in our life are one’s we rather not-exist than be in them.

• Think Positive: this is a better take than Marcus Aurelius’ not being afraid of tomorrow. Things have an amazing way of working out. Of course there’s a lot of biases and human adaptability behind this, but who cares? Use it to your advantage.

• Be Proactive: a recent reframing of be a good person from Marcus Aurelius’– at least much more actionable.

• Writing Helps Thinking: doesn’t matter if it’s on a napkin you throw away or a text file, all thoughts are ephemeral until you attempt to externalize them. Writing is the simplest, cheapest, fastest and best lifehack you have.

• Never Keep Score in Relationships: specially in marriage. If you are thinking in terms of net-positive or negative, you’re doing it wrong and somehow it always shows. We’ve been part of tribes for millennia, we all have a sixth sense about it.

• Find the Fun: it takes less effort than being mad. It’s like polarized sunglasses for reality — doesn’t change it, but it gives you more detail with less strain.

• Remove Negatives Before Adding Positives: helps a lot in buying gadgets, but applies to everything.

• Put on Your Mask Before Helping Others: works in flight emergencies and in life. Notice that you still help others, but careful with continuously placing others needs ahead of yours. The burden on you will be multiple times more than the benefits of the other. Or if flipped: a slight delay on taking care of the other might not be noticeable for them, but provide a much needed breather for you.

Hope you notice the lack of productivity in the above. I’ll revisit this soon, but it’s not an accident.

Summer of the Mini Tablets

This year’s batch of e-Ink mini tablets have awakened something within me. The existence of sub $400 tablets with a readable screen, pen support and moleskine size is a great thing for a still in-recovery Newton fan as myself.

The top two in my radar are:

Both of these devices use an Android based OS, which allow it to run Google Play apps — like Amazon Kindle — with a little configuration. Of course anything with a high refresh rate or wide color range won’t work great. But most reports are that for reading, they’re fine.

Note taking is limited to the included apps for the same reason — any Android app (like Nebo) would have a terrible screen lag.

[minitablets2.png](minitablets2.png{||} Here’s where the rumored mini elephant in the room shows it’s head: the iPad mini 6 is expected to be an all screen device, in the same form factor as the iPad Air. In other words, a beautiful beast of a tablet. With all the power of a regular iPad — and it’s ease of distraction.

I also expect the iPad mini to increase its $399 base price, in addition to at least $100 for an Apple Pen. Which makes the a checklist comparison difficult. They are really different categories.

So while I will maybe go with a cheaper/smaller Android eInk reader-only device in the future, I do love the idea of these devices. And you can bet someone will be running the NewtonOS on these for fun soon. For sure awaking something within me then.

Tidbits for 2021 Week 34

• Monterey Themes for Alfred: collection of Alfred Powerpack Themes inspired by Apple’s macOS Monterey appearance and accent color schemes.

• Spotiqueue: Terribly simple macOS app for keyboard-based queue-oriented Spotify client.

• ShowyEdge: super clear indicator of the current input source for macOS.

Tidbits for 2021 Week 33

• Fastmarks: powerful keyboard-driven bookmark manager for macOS. Almost ready to add this to my toolset.

• Dropbox Capture: Windows and macOS screen capture app. I’m happy with my Xnip and Cleanshot combo, but maybe useful if you use Dropbox.

• Fugit: nice looking digital desktop clock for macOS.

• Titls: iOS widget that adds titles to homescreens.

• Sniptt: end-to-end encrypted secrets via a one-time URL. Destructed once viewed, or after specified expiration.

Squatting or Kneeling May Be Beneficial for Health

Emily Gersema, on pressroom.usc.edu:

The USC-led team has shown that resting postures used before the invention of chairs — like squatting and kneeling — may hold the answer, as they involve higher levels of muscle activity then chair-sitting.

I enjoy these reminders that practices thousands of years old are still applicable — even advantageous:

In fact, the Hadza are sedentary for about as much time — around 9 to 10 hours per day — as humans in more developed countries. However, they appear to lack the markers of chronic diseases that are associated, in industrialized societies, with long periods of sitting.

I’ve started doing some flat feet kneeling as part of my stretch routing.

1password Abandons its Native Mac App

Jason Snell, on sixcolors.com:

A banner Mac app and app developer has abandoned a platform-native app for the same web-based wrapper it’s using on Windows. Even if it’s the best Electron app you’ve ever seen, it won’t be the same—and more than that, it says something painful about the future of Mac software.

Jason put in words my conflicting initial feelings regarding 1Passwords 8 move to Electron + Rust.

Still, my fatalistic reaction was tempered as first looks of the beta version started coming out:

https://twitter.com/craigmod/status/1425647740483080195

https://twitter.com/mattbirchler/status/1426218303039623171

The end to my hysterics came with Michael Fey post on blog.1password.com regarding how they ended with the current front-end:

Ultimately we decided for a two-prong approach. We would build two Mac apps. One written in SwiftUI that targeted the latest operating systems and another using web UI that allowed us to cover older OSes.

This would have been what I expected to happen — what an old school macOS dev shop would have done. Yet, no plan survives encountering reality (as in, Apple’s APIs):

Despite the fact that SwiftUI allowed us to share more code than ever between iOS and macOS, we still found ourselves building separate implementations of certain components and sometimes whole features to have them feel at home on their target OS.

They tried, they planned for it, but it didn’t work out as expected. It still stings, because 10 years ago AgileBits would have never considered not having and fully native app. It’s that loss that bothers me, not so much the front-end tech stack. Specially given my current most used app, is an electron infidel.

Readwise’s New Obsidian Integration

readwise.io:

This integration will automatically sync all of your highlights with Obsidian including enriched metadata and a powerful template system for formatting your exports to your bespoke preferences.

It’s official, and working great.

elementary OS 6 Odin Available

Cassidy James Blaede on blog.elementary.io:

It’s been a long road to elementary OS 6—what with a whole global pandemic dropped on us in the middle of development—but it’s finally here. elementary OS 6 Odin is available to download now.

Very good looking release. In a world where I have to abandon macOS, elementary and POP!_OS would be my two first choices.

First Look at the Official Readwise Obsidian Plugin

Ben Newton on Medium.com:

With this new plugin, you can continuously bring in your latest highlights, along with the metadata for books, or articles, or tweets from your Readwise account into Obsidian. From there, you can incorporate the notes into your note-taking work flow.

There’s a few community ones, but I’ve been waiting for the official version to rethink some of my current workflows — specially the ones that use Goodreads.