Thord Hedengren, on switchtoipad.com:
It’s a bit too plasticky for my taste, the travel doesn’t feel nice to me, and I’m just not making friends with it.
For $150, you should love a keyboard.
snippetsAmong all the voices in the back of my mind when I’m writing the post: you already said that before always has a front seat.
Here’s Tony Fadell on Steve Job’s iPhone introduction from his book Build:
Steve didn’t just read a script for the presentation. He’d been telling a version of that same story every single day for months and months during development—to us, to his friends, his family. He was constantly working on it, refining it. Every time he’d get a puzzled look or a request for clarification from his unwitting early audience, he’d sand it down, tweak it slightly, until it was perfectly polished.
Of course, if I replied to the voice in my head with the above quote, the laughter would likely be heard outside my head. Still, there’s an important thread here.
Iteration can happen in many ways. And if consciously — or unconsciously — I’m revisiting the same idea in a different post, it should be something to double-down on. Not shy away from.
dailypostsRobie grabbed this book from the shelves of B&N and asked me what it was about. I told him I’d start reading it that night and tell him what I learned. So I loved this booked even before reading the first page.
It’s a great book about the SpaceX early days. Enjoyed that it’s not a how they made it, but rather: in now many ways they almost didn’t. My admiration and appreciation of SpaceX and the new space age we’re now only increased after many of the stories.
COVID-19 restrictions have temporarily impacted the primary iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max assembly facility located in Zhengzhou, China. The facility is currently operating at significantly reduced capacity.
Whoa, don’t recall a similar consumer-facing note from Apple. Hold on to your hats for iPhone Pro resell value as we head into the holidays.
Sadly/luckily(?), doesn’t affect me. Holding on to my iPhone 12 mini. Only thing I’m considering is replacing the battery — since I still have AppleCare+ for it.
snippetsThis experiment has made me think a bit about this blog. I imagine 5typos.net was born like most blogs: with dreams of grandeur and me copying other bloggers.
My first three posts 14 years ago have styles which basically set the tone for all the rest: a link/quote post, a personal note, a longer commentary on a tech feature.
The last 28 daily posts have slowly become easier to write. Not to start writing. But once the kids are in bed, I know any of the half-baked ideas in my head must do.
That’s a change for me. Only Seth Godin writes this way — and he’s really smart. And while I’ve copied his style in the past, it feels uncomfortable to do everyday. Dave Winer’s blog is likely the one I’d stand behind if I had to justify a new style.
But why justify the style? It must be time to face the music and realize my geeky commentary on news is not going to earn me a micro-celebrity status. Nor was that something I wanted.
I blog to write and post. Writing makes me feel good, sharing it on the internet is even better. Would I mess this now if I find an audience?
As I start to go down this rabbit hole, changing the domain name is the first sign I’m procrastinating with planning instead of writing. For now the plan is to finish the monthly experiment with tomorrow’s post — and then decide what the system really is: daily writing or daily postings.
dailypostsOn routine filled, boring days, it’s good to ponder how many people would appreciate a few days like this. No bombs or dramas. No fights or anxiety. Just a simple meh day you can roll your eyes at, and try to avoid repeating by reading some self-help articles.
Of course, you can have a totally not-boring life, and not imply any of the negatives above. That’s an even better quadrant — I think. But a note to self to appreciate the goodness of this spot in the comfort/excitement matrix is not wasted space.
dailypostsThe morning page is becoming a habit at the start of the day, but unlike the evening journal, it lacks structure. On most days, is ends being a forward-looking journal. On others, it’s a reflection to whatever problem or projects I went to bed with. Sometimes it’s personal contemplation, while others a productive plan for the day.
Not sure if my struggle to force it into a productive tool is the right way forward. If its the intent is to give my awaking mind an audience to make some sense, of the morning fight between my monkey and lizard brain.
Regardless, the recipe is simple: blank page and pen (analog or digital), and a free flow of thoughts. It won’t make sense individually, but in aggregate, you’ll see something come out of it.
dailypostsSome days you finish exhausted, but with a sense of accomplishment that let’s with a nice mellow felling. Other days, you barely survive.
On those bad days, I still consider myself lucky that I’m able to say eff it and close the laptop. It’s giving up, knowing that tomorrow you get another round.
dailypostsNew month, yet another monthly report. I’m really getting dividends out of a detailed checklist created over the past few months.
It’s actually a log/checklist I’ve been updating for the past year. But it has help bring down what used to be two full days of report generation to a couple of hours.
As usual, the blank page scares the shite out of me. What helped this checklist get created is that started as a changelog. Over a few months the repeating parts got codified, and what could be automated was scripted.
Next step is documenting the checklist so it can be handed off.
dailypostsHalloween as a celebration of scariness doesn’t hold any particular attraction to me. But with kids, I now enjoy the community aspect it brings.
Granted, you could recreate the community experience in a much healthier way. But as immigrants, it’s also comfortable to have a 3rd party custom we can all vaguely relate to.
Very sure I’ll change my tune in 10 years when Bettina tries to leave the house with some horrifically short costume — but I hope we still have a few more years of geeking out with Robie on how to put the decorations, and arguing with Bettina on how to give out candies.
dailypostsA combination of old age and capitalism bias is making me care about today’s twitter circus news. Never a good sign.
But here’s the thing: Musk is now Twitter’s boss and owner. Does that excuse him for being a tyrannical maniac? Well, no. But it’s his show. He bought for $44 billion something that appears to be worth around $15 billion.
He will cut costs and generate revenue. Setting crazy expectations from one of the few revenue streams Twitter has, seems like a simple way to achieve both.
It’s now make or break time for a lot of teams inside Twitter. I don’t envy them one bit. An almost 20 year old company thrown back into startup mode. The surgery will hurt. The patient might not survive.
There are many reasons why I might leave Twitter. Even more reason for me not wanting to work there. But the current news cycle drama isn’t on them.
dailypostsWhen I started this daily experiment, I was certain that these dailies would end up on my microblog. Au contraire.
Now I’m leaning to consolidate everything back to one blog. The segmentation between this main blog, the microblog and twitter/mastodon is not worth the trouble.
The question then is going to be: is 5typos.net the url for the next 14 years of this blog?
dailypostsSometimes you’re not where you want to be in your life/career/tennis forehand. But a better introspection is to travel back to the past and see how your current situation would look from the past.
Would past Roberto be happy with where present Roberto is now?
You can of course skip talking to yourself in third person — that’s a great first step to not making your past self hate your present self.
dailypostsFrom spreadprivacy.com:
Since announcing the waitlist beta in April, we’ve been listening to beta testers’ feedback and making even more improvements to meet your needs. We added a bookmarks bar, pinned tabs, and a way to view your locally stored browsing history.
Forgot to post this. Not a bad v1. As mentioned before, it uses the Safari engine, so it’s fast with very little resource use. The UX seems slightly off, not in a bad way, just different.
Good option to keep around.
snippetsThe strangest thing happened today. For the first time since February 2020, the office was full. So full, in fact, that even the meeting rooms weren’t available. When 3 of us in the office had a meeting with a fourth that was remote, we had to take it each on our seat.
Here’s the strange part: it felt perfectly natural. Actually, it felt less uncomfortable than trying to involve the remote person when 3 others are in the same room.
Not sure what it means, but some sort of threshold has been crossed. The office is forever changed. And… noise cancellation headphones should be part of desktop equipment soon.
dailypostsI don’t go into the App Store anymore. Just like most retail stores, it’s not worth the trouble.
If an app is not recommended on Twitter, Mastodon, a blogs or website, I won’t go into the App Store to search for it. I’m more likely to go into my purchase history and see if any of the apps has been updated than to use the App Store search to browse.
Which means I don’t really care about more ads in the App Store. It’s just more noise in a place I quick visit with my headphones on.
dailypostsWith the iPhone becoming the only product line still using the Lighting, the writing is on the wall regarding its switch to USB-C.
The current inconvenience of carrying 2 cables is such a first world problem that complaining about it deserves an eye roll. However, the convenience of carrying only 1 cable is a nice aspirational future.
Question is: how much is this convenience worth? Enough to also change my AirPods 3 battery case if/when they make the switch? Not sure.
Might be one of those cases where the last iPhone’s with Lightning will depreciate at a higher rate than usual. Next year is starting to sound like a good year to buy used.
dailypostsI’m in the middle of a role-change at works, and that has thrown a few of my routines out of whack. The biggest one being the Weekly Review.
In a fun one step forward, two steps backs — I’d started doing a short daily review as part of my shutdown practice. While it’s a bit of a pain, I’ve found it extremely helpful to close the day and disconnect. However, when the daily review started failing, it took the weekly with it.
As I procrastinate on today’s daily review by writing this, I wonder if I should refocus on the weekly or bite the bullet finish the work day.
dailypostsThe Keychron K3 Pro is the world’s first low profile wireless mechanical keyboard with QMK/VIA enabled for endless possibilities. Everyone can easily customize any key or create macro commands through VIA software on the ultra-slim yet durable K3 Pro.
Starting at $89 and shipping in “December”. It comes with PBT keycaps and more standard placement of stabilizers.
It looks like a more serious NuPhy Air75, which is a good things for me. If they keep the price under $100, I may get one next year.
snippetsMy book reading has taken a nosedive over the last few months. Some book choices haven’t helped, but that’s no excuse. So it’s time for another experiment.
Starting today I have to read 5 pages of any book daily. That’s the system: fixed number of pages. Hopefully the number can go up in a few months, but that matters less than the daily reading minimum.
dailypostsNot much to say yet. Stage Manager, the main reason I upgraded, is interesting. Will give it a week, but during the first day, it hasn’t gotten in the way.
The new System Settings is atrocious. I may be one of the few that liked the throwback of System Preferences. Since Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar was the OS of my first iBook G3, it was a nice reminder of 20 years of computing.
All in all, I’m always excited with macOS updates — and extra excited if I get a new Window Management feature.
dailypostsWe also have a development team entirely focused on a new Web-based app to allow Day One to work in a web browser in an optimized way while remaining secure and encrypted.
And Coming Soon: Day One on the Web :
We’re hard at work building a web-based version of Day One that will allow secure and encrypted journaling from within your favorite web browser like Safari, Chrome, or Firefox.
I’m happy with native apps. The macOS version did throw Markdown under a bus a few years back — and that made me stopped using it for anything not that is not Journaling.
I still remember Day One Publish — their weblog tool. That was micro.blog before microblog as a thing. Now that they are owned by Automattic, it would be cool to see some publishing integration with Wordpress — as a one-stop blog service.
snippetsIf my über-geekness shows anywhere, it is on how peculiar I am with keyboard shortcuts. Go back a decade on this blog, you’ll find a post about triggering bookmarklets with shortcuts.
Thankfully, present day macOS is a garden for multiple way to go nuts with keyboard shortcuts at the OS level — and darling Obsidian literally allows assigning one to any command. Please hold me.
That said, apps sometimes develop different conventions for similar actions: Things and Fantastical, have completely different commands to go to today. So very uncivilized.
What to do? What to do? Most of the time I try to allow both shortcuts to develop muscle memory. If the apps are different enough — task manager and calendar — it works. Other times, I catch myself using the keyboard commands in the wrong place. This means war. The most logical one must survive — even if you can argue my sanity didn’t.
All is fine… until a third app implements the shortcut that was voted out of the island.
dailypostsericax on news.ycombinator.com:
Obsidian 1.0 introduces two big changes: a UI overhaul and an new tabbed interface. We’ve put a lot of care into making the app more approachable and more accessible. We’ve also prioritized using more native OS features for menus, windows, and many details.
From obsidian.md:
Calling Obsidian “1.0” is a scary thing. It comes with a lot of expectations and means both everything and nothing. It doesn’t mean Obsidian is feature complete, it doesn’t mean it’s bug-free. But it does still mark an important milestone. It means we’re proud enough to drop the word “beta”.We have grand plans to continue making Obsidian the best and most refined thought-processing app for decades to come. Obsidian 1.0 is just the start.
Obsidian completely 2020-12-27 My 2020 Sofware and Hardware of the Year during the first year of the pandemic. Similar to Keynote and Superhuman, it made all my synapsis trigger at once while I shouted “Eureka!” the first time I used it.
I may be exaggerating the first time use, but this is no exaggeration: Obsidian is the tool that generates more value in my software stack. I’m very excited to see where it will go next.
snippetsI tend to go on planning binges, where I over analyze situations and over plan. In many cases I don’t even execute. Which makes these rabbit holes the most pathetic daydreams possible.
The concept of iterating as part of planning has helped me a lot. Over the years I keep trying to manifest it with some catchy habit goal:
But the point is the same: in thinking about solutions to a problem, the point diminishing returns arrives early one. You can afford a few wrong decisions in the same timeframe and end up with a much better (informed) solution.
dailypostsI’ve mentioned non-zero days before. But the gist of it is: on those days when everything got in the way — including yourself — just do one thing. The difference between an irrelevant and a relevant one thing is for you to ponder, we all have the yardstick in the back of our minds.
It’s a magical psychological trick. But it works. Even if you waste a day in an 1x task, which is shameful. That’s still a lot more than a 0x day.
I want to revisit 1x, 10x, 100x and 1000x tasks soon. But what better way to set the stage for it than almost having a 0x day?
dailypostsAlmost missed today’s update. Actually, not sure if I’m going to make even as I write this. Which makes this a great day to check compliance.
Overall it hasn’t been hard. Filtering these posts from RSS and social feeds has worked. It helps me feel ok about writing reflective posts without clear messaging.
Posting the directly with tomorrow’s 12am time has also worked great. It helps me fail forward. Makes me have to opt-out of the post. Might as well finish it.
Finally, days when I get something down in the morning a much much easier. Either creativity goes down throughout the day, or the voice in my head judging each sentence gets louder.
Was going to negotiate with myself to allow snippet post count as the daily post. No dice. Dailies shall continue.
dailypostsI fancy considering myself an early adopter — but with time I’ve become more conservative with core technologies. Sometimes this is reflected on an aversion to beta versions: iOS/macOS, Obsidian, even services like Tana.
Other times, I hold myself back with a technology to give it time. At the moment, I’m really excited to incorporate Whisper from OpenAI voice recognition into my workflow. But instead of diving-in, I’ve setup search alerts to keep an eye out on a less geeky macOS release and/or some sort of online service to take some of the setup pain away.
I’m all about testing the rollercoaster on opening day… I just prefer the afternoon slots.
dailypostsLearn about this concept from the kids violin practice this week. It has two meanings: notes of equal lengths played continuously, and/or a melody that is played an infinite number of times within a song.
Very likely butchering the concepts, but the ideas has stuck with me. There’s something about both definitions that connects with mindless productivity. And the eternal routines we live in — many of us at least.
It also sounds very cool, moto perpetuo.
dailypostsI get anxious on our flights to Venezuela, even when we technically have everything in order. Growing up there taught me rules and reality are not necessarily the same.
The prospect of traveling for weeks from Venezuela to the US, and having the rules changed before you arrive, triggers emotions I don’t want to deal with. Mostly because, who the frak cares about my emotions when others are carrying their children through 7 countries. Myself included.
The Venezuelan migrant situation is complex. As we see and interact with hundreds passing through Costa Rica, my objectivity is clouded. I don’t want to have a smart public policy discussion, I want the problem to not exist. To not be a reminder of a country destroyed. Of a delusional society which dares to half-joke: Venezuela is now fixed.
But regardless how much of a trigger to my precious migrant sensibilities the Venezuelan family asking for money in the corner is… They — and many many more — continue to exist.
dailypostsIf the iPhone mini becomes a similar product line extension as the iPhone SE, I’d think it would fall into a cadence of alternating among each other. Funny thing, both were updated last year, so one of would need to jump ahead this year.
Really hope the mini with iPhone 14 internals is the one that leaps ahead and launches in a few months. Otherwise I see myself sticking with my 12 mini until the regular iPhone 15 next year.
dailypostsI used to change complicated words when reading bedtime stories to my kids. Not anymore. My almost-seven year old and five year old now get the unchanged edition.
This still leads to some tiring results, but on most cases I see their confused faces, followed by a acceptance quick nod.
I like the feeling of stretching their vocabulary, but their English had to get to a level before this made sense.
dailypostsApple’s change in naming from Notebook to Laptop across products, documentation and software is bittersweet. It makes sense, most people call them Laptops, and Notebooks usually require an explanation.
So the most noteworthy aspect of this change is… how not noteworthy it is. But this is the bitter part. Ten years ago, this change would have prompted a never ending stream of expectation from everyone. Well, at least from me.
They’re changing the name to Laptops because Notebooks are going to be a new category.
I fell for this before with the renaming of iBooks ebooks reading app to Books. Which ended up being, just a name change. And it seems this time no one has falling for it. Not even myself.
What does this say to the state of Apple product line? Is it just this complete? Or have we lost the capacity to dream up unreasonable-but-exciting product categories? Probably a little of both.
dailypostsFrom github.blog:
Stay connected and up to date on your work with GitHub Projects on GitHub Mobile, now in public beta. This marks the first milestone to bring GitHub Projects to your hands, so that you can track issues and projects from anywhere at any time. We would love for you to try it out on iOS TestFlight or Google Play (Beta) and give us your early feedback.
Github Issues and Projects keeps getting more features — which is great for us at work since all of our development is based on it. Sadly my most needed feature Ability to add a project to a project, it forever in the future column.
snippetsTwo toys in play today with Micro.blog:
An obvious question comes to mind: why are these daily post here on 5typos.net and not my micro.blog ? I know the answer, but not the reason for it.
Still, the point of this experiment is not a coherent online presence, but to create the habit of writing and posting everyday. This is day 6.
dailypostsLooking forward to either: Apple Fall Event invite, or press release just launching stuff. It did seem like a press release combo announcement fall this year:
A redesigned base iPad would justify an event. However, if the low-end iPad is getting the iPad Air/Pro design language, then that sounds more likely to happen next year to minimize iPad Air cannibalization.
dailypostsI’ve been trying to reconnect a Wyze Cam V2 to my network for about a year. One day it stopped connecting and — it never worked again. I’ve tried everything from factory reset to setting up a temporary 2.4Ghz network. No dice.
The stages of fixing mindset has gone through anger, to acceptance, to a sort of curiosity now. Every few weeks when I’m (likely) procrastinating, I pick the damn thing off the shelf, and attempt to solve the puzzle with some additional twist.
Will it ever be fixed? with each passing day the likelihood seems smaller, but I just can’t give up on the $25 thing.
dailypostsLadies and gentlemen, the weekend… and I’m thinking about some tool changes for Monday:
Workflow based contexts take effort to create and maintain — and when explaining them, it’s hard to not have a giant OCD sign above your hear. However, the act of setting them up is clarifying.
dailypostsThe Twitter sale news circus is making me pause more, not because I care about Twitter — really don’t anymore — but because of the announcement 2022-10-07 mastodon.technology Instance Will Shutdown instance is going away.
Mind you, this is exactly why Federated networks are great. The implication is just a few minutes of exporting, and a lot more minutes of finding another instance. But, the little voice at the back of my head which tells me:
While the tech is great, it won’t catch on because it can’t scale.
I played with Mastodon hosting earlier in the year, with the idea of replacing a Slack group — but that failed miserably. So then, if the tech doesn’t scale, and the 2022-04-15 Mastonaut Mastodon Mac Client is Now Open-Source Free… is it a case of Much Ado About Nothing?
dailypostsSébastien Stormacq, on aws.amazon.com:
Starting today, you can also provision Ubuntu desktops for your developers, engineers, or data scientists.
For this launch, we chose to use version 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish). Canonical has optimized the base image for cloud development use cases. We have preinstalled AWS CLI and SDK.
Initially no support from their macOS client, but this is good news.
WM within AWS are common recipe nowadays1 when some data needs to be manipulated with something web tools can’t deal with. It’s “close” to the data, and destroy the VM afterwards. Reducing the trail of data and leak points.
For me anyway.↩︎
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