November 27, 2020
Jon von Tetzchner on vivaldi.com/blog/:
We are excited for you to test the new Vivaldi Mail. Some people fondly call it M3 and there is a bit of history to this that I’ll share later.
[…]
In fact, I’d admit that one of the reasons for Vivaldi’s existence is to provide a browser with a built-in email client. And today we have the first glimpse of it.
[…]
The cornerstone of Vivaldi is the database. All your mails from all your accounts are indexed, therefore searchable offline. If you prefetch your mails, we index all the content of the mails as well even before they are opened.
Used to love Opera’s M2 — even became an annoying purist that wouldn’t open internal mails that weren’t plain text while I worked there.
Then the convenience of Gmail won me over. But many mail clients later (currently Superhuman), I’m always game to try a new old one.
snippets
November 27, 2020
Luc Beaudoin, on hookproductivity.com:
Hook will soon fully support Obsidian. That means you’ll be able to invoke Hook in the context of an Obsidian document and use Hook’s handy Copy Link, Copy Markdown Link , Hook to Copied Link, and other functions.
Great news. Both apps have become critical in my workflow during the past 6 months. Right now they work together with a bit of friction — still totally worth the effort.
snippets
November 22, 2020
Alex Barredo, on apple.substack.com:
I’m using my faulty crystal ball, of course, but imagine a 2022 Apple laptop line up of: MacBook with M3 for $999, and the then two-year old MacBook with M1 for $849 (say $799 for schools?). Going lower means more buyers, and Apple computers can last for 5-7 years instead of iPhones mere average lifespan of 2-3 years.
Fun and thoughtful crystal ball. For sure the Mac’s release calendar and lineup is going to through some big changes.
snippets
November 15, 2020
Andrew Beyer on blog.1password.com:
[…] we’re announcing a new partnership with Privacy.com. 1Password now lets you create virtual cards in your browser to make online payments more safely. You can create as many virtual cards as you need and control where and how they’re used.
Finally got a chance to test this and in works great. Sadly it needs the 1PasswordX plugin — which doesn’t work in Safari — so I need to go out of my workflow to use it. Will see if it’s easer to open my personal Brave profile, rather than opening the Privacy.com app and doing multiple copy/pastes.
snippets
November 9, 2020
Tidbits for 2020 Week 45
- TripMode 3: if you work remote on slow internet or with data caps, this is the app to have.
- Raycast: VC backed next-gen launcher with multiple integrations (Github, Google Docs, etc). Very interesting.
- Dendron: open-source markdown notes tool built on top of VSCode.
Note taking is officially a fad. W00t.
- Polar: Integrated reading environment for EPUBs, PDFs, & web pages. Love this new crop of geeky desktop apps.
- Cometeer: Nitro frozen coffee capsules. I’d try this.
tidbits
October 26, 2020
Tidbits for 2020 Week 43
- Planet eBook: Classic literature publications with better formatting.
- Bongo Cat: Hit the bongos like Bongo Cat! a meme webapp.
- Tinysheet: tiny spreadsheet with minimal functions, easy to use on mobile touchscreen keyboards.
- Pitch presentation in open beta. Beautiful decks for power teams with integrations. Next Gen powerpoint basically.
tidbits
October 25, 2020
Raman Shalupau, on ksaitor.medium.com:
In this article, I’ll try to recreate the exact timeline of events, the damage, commentary on how this could have happened. I’ll also talk about a few moments that I don’t yet understand (mostly around 2FA) and hope my readers will be able to help me out.
Not much on how it happened, but good reminder that you need to constantly self-audit your security setup. Other than not using Chrome’s password manager, this is not an all too different setup than mine. Curious of wary he finds the attack vector was.
snippets
October 19, 2020
Tidbits for 2020 Week 42
- Maestral: A lightweight and open-source Dropbox client for macOS and Linux.
- PiP-it!: workaround YouTube’s iOS App Picture in Picture limitation.
tidbits
September 23, 2020
Nick Milo’s on the Linking Your Thinking YouTube Channel:
In this video, you’ll learn exactly the simple steps on how to get started with the Obsidian app for note-taking as a complete beginner.
This is the best Obsidian intro video I’ve seen. Subscribed to see how he continues to develop the course.
snippets
September 22, 2020
Carlos Melegrito’s spanner-app.com is brilliant:
Drag a folder, start a server. Build, then export. Spanner makes using Hugo easier than ever. Less set-up, more mark-up.
This is the push/tool I needed to move some old websites from Persona.co to Hugo.
snippets
September 22, 2020
Stefan Reitshamer on arqbackup.com:
So, we decided to implement the entire UI as a “native” UI. It’s got better keyboard navigation, it’s more intuitive, has a smaller disk footprint, and supports drag-and-drop to easily restore files to your desktop or a Finder window. It just feels better.
Happy with the news. Arq 5 with BlackBlaze B2 Is my cloud backup solution — I use Backblaze Unlimited for Ana’s MacBook because it’s simpler. I didn’t initially upgrade to Arq 6 because of the noise around the UI, not that it affected me much, but with backups boring is mostly good.
When Arq 7 is out I’ll do some napkin calculations and consider the move to Arq Premium and streamline my workflow a bit.
snippets
September 22, 2020
Tidbits for 2020 Week 38
- Roam-highlighter: Chrome extension to highlight text on page to copy to Roam/Obsidian. Best one I’ve found, hope it comes to Safari 14.
- Nudget: budgeting iOS app with quick entry and multi-currency support.
- Vill Q: macOs software to draw on screen and making screen annotation. Useful for screen-sharing calls.
- Tageslicht: share your iOS camera view on an external display.
tidbits
September 17, 2020
Amazing Digital Photography course by Marc Levoy:
An introduction to the scientific, artistic, and computing aspects of digital photography. Topics include lenses and optics, light and sensors, optical effects in nature, perspective and depth of field, sampling and noise, the camera as a computing platform, image processing and editing, and computational photography. We will also survey the history of photography, look at the work of famous photographers, and talk about composing strong photographs.
Just getting started on the YouTube videos, but this is amazing.
These 18 videos represent a sequence of lectures on digital photography, from a version of my Stanford course CS 178 that was recorded at Google in Spring 2016.
Marc Levoy is a Standford Professor, the person behind the Google Pixel camera, and is now at Adobe building a camera app. So, he knows photography.
snippets
September 14, 2020
Tidbits for 2020 Week 37
- Shareful: Provides any app with a Share button with a Copy, Save, and Open action.
- Lunar: macOS utility to set brightness and volume on external monitors.
tidbits
September 9, 2020
Sped up footage from an onboard camera during Falcon 9’s launch of the SAOCOM 1B mission — SpaceX’s first launch to a polar orbit from the East Coast.
The angle and sound of this video makes it amazing.
snippets
September 7, 2020
Dave Nania, on shirtpocket.com:
In the meantime, my advice for macOS Betas remains as valid as ever: do not install a macOS Beta unless you have a critical business need to do so. These Betas, even when public, are not for general use, and certainly not for anyone who wants a reliable system for day-to-day work.
They don’t even have an alpha yet. I’m excitedly waiting by the fence on macOS 11.0 while things settle down. Catalina has enough personality kinks as it is.
snippets
September 1, 2020
Tidbits for 2020 Week 35
- Nessie: extremely simple web browser for Windows, based on the Trident engine.
- Screenotate: screenshot manager for Mac and Windows with OCR.
- BlackHole: virtual audio driver for macOS that allows applications to pass audio to other applications.
- Longplay: iOS music player for those who enjoy listening to entire albums start-to-finish.
- Keysmith: create shortcuts for any string of actions you can do with your mouse and keyboard on macOS.
tidbits
August 25, 2020
Charlie Belmer on nullsweep.com:
The Kindle is far from the most invasive privacy app I have seen, but it records a lot of behavioral reading information I don’t like. I’ve been trying to get away from the the Kindle ecosystem for the past year or so, and now use Marvin for reading on my iPhone. I no longer use the Kindle device, though I dearly miss e-Ink.
Good reminder. I don’t think this data is used for nefarious reasons, but it does exist.
It makes me a bit uncomfortable also because I like to remove DRM from my books and convert them to ePUB — which I convert back to AWZ. Since sync works across devices on these files, it’s a safe bet that all the data is also stored.
I’ve been eyeing the Kobo e-Ink devices, but until there’s a good ePUB sync solution with iOS.
snippets
August 21, 2020
Tidbits for 2020 Week 33
- Isoflow: easy isometric diagrams on the web.
- yFi: get notified, automatically reconnect, or ignore a drop in WiFi TX rate.
- Bluesnooze: Turn BT off when your Mac sleeps, and switched on when your Mac wakes.
- MonitorControl: Control external monitor brightness, contrast or volume on macOS.
- macintosh.js: virtual Apple Macintosh with System 8, running in Electron.
tidbits
August 21, 2020
Seher Asaf, on businesstraveller.com:
They can choose to book the room for the night for an additional 25,300 Yen ($233); however, guests staying for a night in the twin bed room can’t sit in the pilot’s seat or “touch the instruments”, according to the hotel. A “transparent acrylic board” will separate the cockpit from the room.
No kinky sim stuff then.
snippets
August 1, 2020
★★★★★
Underground Airlines by Ben H. Winters
This was a powerful read. Racism is both a straight forward and complex subject. A lot of it involves a reality I cannot comprehend because it’s alien to my everyday life. This novel uses the magic of alternate history to peer into that reality.
Story wise it’s a slow burner that eases you into an alternate United States where slavery was never abolished in the south. By the time you’re painted the full picture, shock gives way to sad acceptance how this could have been:
Under the Fugitive Persons Act, those who escape from service are to be captured and returned, anywhere they are found in the United States, slave state or free.
This is an excellent book on its own. But I’ve gone back to that alternate reality a few times over the past month to be a better listener to the recent protests.
July 30, 2020
On Easy Implementations
After a few weeks of pandemic eating, I’m back in intermittent fasting mode. While there are medical benefits for it, the reason IF works for me is the ease of implementation:
- At 6 PM I stop eating until 12 PM the next day. (Minus a coffee with a shot of milk foam for breakfast).
Side benefits are that it curbs my sugar and late night carbs anxiety eating. But when I try to do it the other way around — no chocolate after a healthy dinner — I fail.
The simple implementation can generate other desirable behaviors that would require more complex rules — if you wanted to define the same outcome in the requirements.
Something similar happens with working with a standing desks. It is not that standing is better than seating. For me, it is harder to stand incorrectly for long periods of time, than to slouch in my chair for much longer.
I get tired standing up, which makes me move, then I sit, then I get bored and stand up again. This is a better behavior based on designing my workplace around standing.
These has been a couple of successful cases, I have a lot more failures (doing push-ups before brushing teeth comes to mind). There’s no right one-size-fits-all with lifehacks, because our life’s are different. We are left to experiment, observe results, and try again.
July 27, 2020
On Lack of Control
Mornings are my most difficult time to be a parent. I’ve always been a late sleeper, which makes the 5-6am Daddy, Daddy call challenging. On top of that, I fall into a bad mood as a result for the rest of the ante meridiem activities.
My cheap psychology theory is that even when the kids wake me up at the time I was expected to - the lack of control over it sets me off.
This might me a similar feeling my own team experiences when I call them with a fire at any point throughout the day. It says a lot of their attitude that they haven’t replied with a expletive yet, because there been days I’m ready to throw one of my little treasures out the window at 6am.
July 26, 2020
★★★★☆
Dust (Silo #3) by Hugh Howey
The lack of expectations of the second book and how much I ended up liking it, did a disservice to the final one. A fun but less surprising book. It was a fulfilling end to the trilogy, without all the pieces falling into place — in a way that added realism to the story.
I did miss someone lamenting over the grand plan falling apart in the end. One of the things I enjoyed from the series was the fact there were no evil people, only misguided powerful ones. On this final chapter, the winners and the losers aligned neatly to the good and bad ones.
I’ll look for more books from Hugh Howey, and revisit the world created in my head — because like all good sci-fi, it created an useful parallel universe to be reminded of every so often.
July 24, 2020
Respect and Distrust Your Future Self
Talk to yourself with kindness when writing tasks. Remember you’re passing notes to an older and forgetful person. Be sure to not only define the task clearly, but remind yourself why it exists. Your next week self might be wiser, but it is more distracted about this particular task than your present self.
Next Monday you’ll need the freedom to decide if the task is as important as it sounds on Friday. Mistakes might have been made, but jot down the keywords that’ll help you remember why.
An useful note is the least you can do to someone you’re making do your work.
July 23, 2020
The Sky Is a Big Place
The bombardment of email, chat, video calls, tasks and issues, can feel like the sky is falling during every hour of every day in the work week.
A few years back I watched a TV show about Air Traffic Controllers. When asked about how he dealt with the anxiety of planes full of people flying close to each other the ATC replied:
The sky is a pretty big place.
The traffic controller screen is a concentration of critical data: a flat black and white representation at scale of 3D space. You have to pay attention to it. But don’t confuse it for the real world.
July 22, 2020
★★★★☆
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (Harry Potter, #1) by J.K. Rowling
It’s been 20 years since I read this book and it shows. I did not remember most of it, and what I did was actually from the movie. I’d also forgotten how much of a children book it was, in language and length. The book is surprisingly short! Again, I seem to remember it longer than it was actually was.
Still, it’s a great book. It’s fun to go back to the start of the characters and their world. Reading it as a parent, I really hope Robie and Bettina can discover it on their own terms — unlike Star Wars, which like it or not are influenced by me.
July 21, 2020
On the Contents Page and Pages of Content
Receiving a Wired Magazine in the late 90’s provided me with hours of restrained entertainment. The ritual began by inspecting every page of the issue from start to finish — regardless of the cover.
Physical magazines have an index, but its UX doesn’t require you to choose an article to get started. The experience invites browsing.
This mindset is missing from the a la carte on-demand infinite availability nowadays.
I try to make the effort to mentally switch view modes from an streaming river to something closer to a bookshelf — where the content is not going away, and is available to pick back up. This helps me reduce the anxiety of the paradox of choice, and even adding enjoyment to wasting time.
July 20, 2020
Tidbits for 2020 Week 29
- Camo: Use your iPhone or iPad as a pro webcam.
- Cascable Pro: Use your DSLR or mirrorless camera as a webcam using just USB or WiFi.
tidbits
July 20, 2020
★★★☆☆
Loserthink: How Untrained Brains Are Ruining America by Scott Adams
I did not enjoy reading this book, but it was a good mental exercise. It kept reminding me of light Jordan Peterson — which is not a bad thing, but not what I expected.
The book has useful pockets of knowledge and anecdotes. But every few pages it can’t seem to avoid reminding that he know better than you , which while probably true, becomes annoying.
Why read it then? because now is an important time to read things that challenge you and makes you uncomfortable. In this sense, it’s worth a read.
However, if you haven’t read How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, read that one first. This one suffers from too many as I said on my other book, which doesn’t allow it to stand on its own.
July 19, 2020
Rain or Shine
Weather means different things in different cultures. In Norway they say there’s no bad weather, just bad clothing — which I learned the first time I cancelled a morning run because it was raining.
Back in Venezuela, cancelling would have been normal, because if it wasn’t sunny you’d wait half an hour, and the weather will be fine again.
In Scandinavia you can’t do this because then you might never be able to exercise. They take weather out of the equation because it affects the outcome so much. In the tropics we leave it because it doesn’t.
Makes me wonder if there’s a major element of my everyday life that I should ignore, and get better clothing for.
July 19, 2020
Akkshaya Varkhedi on akkshaya.blog:
After battling with so many apps only to feel guilty for not having the discipline to consistently use them, I’ve finally resorted to the most personal and easy alternative — writing things down.
Well, that’s a crazy idea. Totally valid points in the post though. I just think that throwing everything into a bucket and let the computer figure it out is going to win in the end.
snippets
July 18, 2020
On Crashing Waves
When swimming on a beach with big waves, you fall into cadence in response to each. Whatever works for one wave can be repeated for a whole set, but always one will come that’s different enough that it requires you change your strategy.
You can dip under, swim towards, or maybe even swim back to the beach to catch it. It depends on the wave, your position, your level of energy, etc. With a major force like the ocean, you must adapt — there’s no negotiation.
Sometimes you miscalculate, and you’re literally sweep off your feet. Remember, you can’t fight the wave — you must remain calm a let it carry you. And always keep in the back your mind that once you get out this… there’s another wave behind the current one.
July 17, 2020
Planning and Deadlines
Planning is wishful thinking, which is why optimist make terrible delivery estimates. Pessimists are always able to hit the target from afar better.
But fixing an optimist estimate by multiplying by two, is too simplistic. A better fix is something IT departments do all the time: not give estimates. Brilliant buzzwords like agile and sprints mostly allow us to get away with it.
The actual solution is simple: deadlines. You can get philosophical about planning, waterfall, sprints, etc. But if a products has to be live on a certain day, all BS goes out the window, and a minimum viable product plan will appear.
Deadlines are the reality check most plans need. And just like a meeting without an agenda, you should never one without the other.
July 16, 2020
Corner Cases Are How They Get You
Twitter’s hack yesterday was a serious issue, and signs point to an internal support tool as the vector to the attack. These non-technical attacks are usually attributed to a security lapse with a dose human error. But the core cause always relates to complex processes and systems abstraction to deal with them.
This is not a defense. The attack was luckily used for financial gain, but a similar attack targeting an election day or a tense international situation wouldn’t be a joke. I don’t envy being support at Twitter. You are a global target and especially when WFM, the attacks surfaces are even larger.
I’m very curious to read the post-mortem, hopefully with some related investigative piece. For sure it’ll read like a heist movie script.
July 15, 2020
On Mind Time Travel
I decided not to post today. To break the streak because I was tired/busy/uninspired — and I felt sad. Then I edited a mess of a draft to uncover something postable, and felt immediately better.
The challenge is to time travel the mind to the near future to remember this. To remember the near future when this too shall pass, and I’ll feel better after getting through the day.
But it but it’s hard to remember the future.
July 14, 2020
On Job Descriptions
Q: What do you do?
A: What needs to be done.
This answer sounds like an end of world movie title, but it can also be a typical job description — which few mention on LinkedIn. It also is a sign of a troubled organization.
Doing whatever needs doing implies that either: 1) you have enough clarity and perspective in your organization to correctly assess the needs, or 2) another person has these qualities and does it for you.
In most cases neither scenario is real. The needs of many agendas fill your inbox, and it’s only when you are at capacity, and one of the actual priorities gets delayed that a clear signal breaks through the noise to set it straight. Which still describes a working organization.
Yet, how many non-priority, misunderstood and plain wrong tasks consume time and effort before you reach capacity? How can these corrections of priorities happen more fluently?
Somewhere in the middle of what needs to be done and I just work here, lies the answer.
July 13, 2020
On the Speed of Consumption
Looking at a painting to remember it, to analyze it, or hoping that it awakens something in you — are very different activities.
I’m able to listen at up to 2x to podcasts with information I want to skim . But on other podcasts want to savor the discussion. To be part of the conversation in my head, requiring the pause to assemble my ideas.
Same with books — on many, I want to enjoy each line, but others make want to tell the writer to hurry along, to get to the point. Which thanks to the marvel of reading doesn’t require changing the text in front of you — just how you engage with it.
The amazing variety of content nowadays makes it impossible to define the correct way of consuming any of it. The question then becomes: do you want to expose yourself to as much as possible — risking misunderstanding it, or invest in acquiring fewer content, but of the best quality.
I’ve answered this very differently over the last 20 years, but the overall trend is to use each of these methods as tools — and not be a purist about either corner.
July 13, 2020
Tidbits for 2020 Week 28
- Nudget: clean looking budgeting app for iOS.
- Mimestream: fast native Gmail client for macOS. Impressive.
- Mumu: better macOS emoji picker.
tidbits
July 12, 2020
Howard Oakley, on eclecticlight.co:
Even for a beta, Big Sur has a voracious appetite for disks: as one leading developer, Jeff Johnson of @lapcatsoftware, discovered, when updating from the first to the second beta, macOS swelled to 27 GB in size. This is the result of its use of snapshots.
I did iOS 14 and iPad 14 Public Beta over the weekend. Will likely hold on Big Sur for a while longer.
snippets
July 12, 2020
From ia.net:
Style Check is like a having a personal editor-in-chief on your device, carefully reviewing your text for redundancies, clichés and filler words as you type.
A local Grammarly. Going back to IA Writer for my non-existing longer posts.
snippets
July 12, 2020
★★★★★
Shift (Silo #2) by Hugh Howey
Amazing sequel. Didn’t know what to expect, which made the surprise even more enjoyable. It’s a continuation of the original story is coherent way — without being a rehash. Managing to give more than simple clues about the origin of the universe created, without ruining the mystery.
Being the second book in a trilogy is always hard because it can sometimes fell like any weak plot point is there as a filler. While this book doesn’t stand on its own (no one said it should) it’s a strong bridge to the last one.
5typos.net
| 1Password”>1Password for Linux