Finished Loki Season 2 and loved it. I wish it had a longer season but then it might have overstayed its welcome? 📺
Finished Loki Season 2 and loved it. I wish it had a longer season but then it might have overstayed its welcome? 📺
Look what arrived in Perth, Western Australia @rknightuk @prami@social.lol
🔗
This shortcut provides a quick and easy way to publish a quote from a Safari webpage (or in-app Safari web view), with or without a comment, to Micro.blog. Just select the text you want to quote, hit the share button in the toolbar, and run this shortcut. You’re given the option to add a comment and review the text before publishing.
I really like this Shortcut that Jarrod Blundy has created.
The RBA slugs the economy with another 0.25% interest rate rise. What a terrible decision. Monetary policy is a blunt instrument that smashes those who can least afford it, and benefits those who already have it.
Duel of the Defaults from @HemisphericViews is building community momentum. Thanks to @rknightuk for creating a collections site.
On Episode 097 of my podcast Hemispheric Views we held a Duel of the Defaults! competition. Jason and Martin fought head-to-head to see who used the most default apps on macOS. As I was the compere and judge of the competition, it wasn’t for me to speak of my choices during the show.
For the sake of the record, and to follow some of our loyal listeners who have blogged their defaults, here is my list:
I encourage you to join in the fun, both by blogging your defaults and listening to our show.
On Mastodon, Jarrod Blundy asked about my score.
I’ve calculated it to be 38!
I’m having fun editing @HemisphericViews this week for E097. It’s a different and fun episode coming up!
Four months ago I took an opportunity for a career change. A move from consulting to managing two Centres of not-for-profit WA Police & Community Youth Centres. It’s been an opportunity to learn, grow and improve. What I love most is working for my staff. The people at Rockingham and Fremantle Centres are first-class. As their manager it’s my job to make their work days better. When employees are happy, customers win. Culture is king.
Tim Cook chasing more of that sweet services revenue. A 16% increase! Even though I don’t use Arcade & Fitness they still have me over a barrel.
I can hardly believe I’ve installed Obsidian again. It didn’t gel with me last time; let’s give it another go.
A fun movie that doesn’t take itself seriously and works as a result.
A fun, heartwarming movie that is a good reminder that sport should be fun.
Molasses moves faster than the plot of this movie. Bad in so, so many ways.
My friend Martin is a great interviewer on his podcast, Really Specific Stories.
And thanks to Jarrod for mentioning Hemispheric Views!
My Appearance on ‘Really Specific Stories’ - HeyDingus:
That, along with this being my very first time on the speaking side of a podcast rather than the listening side, made me quite nervous, but it paradoxically felt both exhilarating and completely comfortable to just chat with an internet friend. All those hours listening to RSS and another of Martin’s shows, the also great Hemispheric Views made it easy to jump into our conversation.
I enjoyed hearing from Jarrod just as much as I did other Internet luminaries such as John Siracusa, John Gruber and Jason Burk.
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This article was originally written for the November 2022 edition of Hemispheric News, delivered as part of the Hemispheric Views podcast member bonus program, One Prime Plus.
Martin has set me a challenge as to what to write about this month. He told me I have to write something about old office technology; maybe an office app feature that I used to use, or something similar.
Because I’m so old, I have many topics to potentially write about; but also because I’m old I have forgotten so many of them.
Ideas that I considered and discarded: fax machines, binding machines, shredders, Lotus Notes, Windows NT Workstation… All great things that I had to deal with that Martin did not.
Today, however, I wish to write about Object Linking and Embedding.
In our current era we take embedding items as a given, notably in web pages, where elements are easily embedded, be they Flickr images, Twitter tweets, or podcast episodes. Adding multiple content forms in a single page is not innovative in 2022.
There was a time, however, where embedding items from one place into another was indeed innovative. It was Microsoft leading the innovation as they pushed the concept of OLE - Object Linking and Embedding. How amazing would it be to embed a live spreadsheet chart into your Word document. Make a change in the spreadsheet, and suddenly the chart data in your report is updated! Incredible! Excel not cool enough for you? No problem, create a view in Access and include that in your Word file. This was a time when the combined power of the MS Office Suite with its stylised puzzle art design on the box, actually made sense. You weren’t using a single application one at a time; you were working within a connected ecosystem.
At least… that was the dream.
Now it’s time to hit you with a dose of the reality from those times I tried to use OLE in a meaningful way within a work context. There were a number of drawbacks that I can recall — and I’m sure there were others that I do not. Let’s work through the shortlist of those I do:
To be fair to Microsoft, they weren’t the only company going down this path. Apple tried something similar with the OpenDoc standard. It too, didn’t deliver.
In hindsight, all these years on, it is evident that this technology didn’t work. The ideas, however, of embedded content and live data, made sense. With web applications backed by database systems we’ve now arrived at a similar destination, albeit via a different route. However, I’m still not sure we have hit upon a complete standard, that OLE tried to deliver.
Maybe one day. For now, though, I do not miss OLE.
Not sure if this is a compliment or a brickbat, but I think I prefer micro.blog as a Sonoma Safari app ahead of the native Mac app. Sorry @manton and @vincent
End of month YNAB life. 😅
I really wanted to watch Cannonball Run! but I got this instead. The 1970s were a simpler time.
I enjoy reading Ross Gittins' articles on economics. He is doing a great job of highlighting the many failures of the neoliberal dogma in Australia.
ROSS GITTINS: What's kept us from full employment is a bad idea that won't die:
Wages have risen in response to the higher cost of living, but have failed to rise by anything like the rise in prices. Why? Because, seemingly unnoticed by the econocrats, workers’ bargaining power against employers has declined hugely since the 1970s.
This is so key. When I was in university, the Phillips Curve was being boosted as the saviour solution. I’ve changed, and economic thinking needs to change as well.
Unions have been neutered. Individualised long-term contracts have nobbled any opportunity for people to achieve meaningful wage growth; unless you’re a CEO in which case your performance bonuses alone will see your income skyrocket year-on-year.
Our major economic problems are that trickle-down economics didn’t trickle—rather it locked in wage growth benefits to the elite—and that the value of capital has been overvalued at the expense of labour. Which benefits the elite, who are the continued proponents of neoliberalism. Wow, who would have thought?
I’ve been using NextDNS for a few years to block ads. Previous to it I used Pi-Hole on a Raspberry Pi. With the terrible AUD-USD exchange rate, I’m contemplating a return to Pi-Hole, but this time via Docker running on a Mac mini. Does anybody have any experience with this setup? I don’t want to have to do a lot of fiddling around and regular maintenance.