Uncharted, 2022 - ★★
An absolutely ridiculous movie that made me laugh because of just how preposterous it was.
CODA, 2021 - ★★★★★
It for me right in the feels. Amazing singing and acting. The treatment given to the school duet was incredible.
In Episode 51 of @hemisphericviews we talk Severance. Thanks @neatnik for making a Lumon Industries business card generator.
Australian Consumer Law
This article was originally written for the October 2021 edition of Hemispheric News, delivered as part of the Hemispheric Views podcast member bonus program, One Prime Plus
The Australian Consumer Law (ACL) is an unsung hero for the everyday Australian citizen. In 2011 it was introduced and replaced a bunch of outdated legislation, notably the Trade Practices Act 1974 (Cth). That piece of 1974 legislation was a foundation block of my university degree and I think s.52 is still seared into my brain.
At the time of its introduction I was working in the business lobby, and I remember the doom and gloom scenarios that companies were painting. “It will destroy us!", “where’s the fairness?” were refrains heard all too often. Really makes the heart bleed. 🤷♂️
The legislation was introduced during the 43rd Parliament of Australia, led by The Hon Julia Gillard AC. Yet another achievement of a government that wasn’t thought highly of, but had a history of legislative achievement unlike many others, and certainly any since.
The ACL rebalances the scales in commerce to provide better support to consumers who buy in good faith, but who turn out to have bought items not of merchantable quality. There are a host of provisions, but this is the crux: if a product fails to meet its stated purpose within 12 months of purchase as new, then the buyer is entitled to remedial action, including a full refund. This also can’t be waived by not returning in original packaging, or any other kind of ‘gotcha’.
This is how operation of the ACL can be explained:
When the consumer chooses a refund:
The supplier must repay any money paid by the consumer for the returned goods, and return any other form of payment made by the consumer — for example, a trade-in.
If this is not possible, they must refund the consumer the value of the other form of payment.
A supplier must not:
-
offer a credit note, exchange card or replacement goods instead of a refund
-
refuse a refund, or reduce the amount, because the goods were not returned in the original packaging or wrapping.
A consumer will usually need to show a receipt or other ‘proof of purchase’.
ACL rendered Apple’s traditional AppleCare product obsolete in Australia. For a period of time there was virtually no point buying AppleCare because it offered no benefit beyond that which the ACL enshrined in law. Now we have AppleCare+ and the benefits of cheap screen repairs, but failing equipment is still no reason to consider buying that particular insurance policy.
I’ve experienced some problems with some wifi routers I bought about 4 months ago from Amazon. Upon a reminder from a Hemispheric Views Patron I found the option to make a call to Amazon. Upon determining that I was in Australia, I was offered 3 options. The first two seemed like weird cruddy deals that people in other countries have to put up with (sending the faulty unit back and waiting for a replacement of that part, or accepting a part refund of $130). The third option was my ACL protection - the ability to send the whole thing back to Amazon for a full refund. That’s what I wanted, and that’s the option I took. The other choices paled in comparison.
You see evidence of the ACL quietly in action (and markedly different to other jurisdictions) in everything you buy in Australia. Vendors are required to insert a printed sheet explaining a consumer’s rights. There is no need to complete those shoddy ‘guarantee’ forms to gain warranty protection from the ACL.
This is an area of governance that the Australian government got right, and I’m so glad that it is in operation. And despite all the clutching of pearls, no businesses seem to have gone bankrupt as a result of the ACL.
Thank you to Robert for pointing out issues with my RSS feeds, and for reading my stuff!
I’m still waiting for all my Facebook friends to reach out and check that I’m okay, since my account has been deleted for about a year. I’m sure they’ll get in touch soon.
OneDrive Files-on-Demand for macOS
For example, placeholder files are not automatically created for the entire OneDrive directory, only for files and folders I have opened. This means Spotlight cannot index those files and folders, which means I cannot fully search OneDrive on my Mac. It does not matter to me whether this is Microsoft’s fault or Apple’s. It matters that I am surprised — daily — by new roadblocks in my existing workflow caused by software updates and under-hood changes no user should have to think about.
The whole OneDrive change has been annoying, but this lack of “indexability” is the largest annoyance, because I rely on that for Alfred/Launchbar/Spotlight integrations.
Can we eject Putin from our world? Who is in favour of this madness? Why is annexation of land such a strongly-held desire. I’m sorry for Ukraine. I wish the people of the country all the best for what is about to transpire. 🇺🇦
I don’t know what Putin sees as his end-game, but his actions against Ukraine are beyond the pale and must be globally condemned. 🇺🇦
Volume 2 of my Day One journal has arrived. // @patrickrhone
My 6-year old man broke his leg last night! The bone broke right through, but thank goodness for a great hospital system than got his leg set and in a cast right away. 😢
I’ve adopted the Paper theme, by @amit for my blog. Which also meant upgrading the version of Hugo. I don’t think it broke anything.
Random appreciation tweet for Wayne Simmons. He made playing basketball fun, and was a friend to me when I did work experience at 882 6PR and he was a sales rep. Anybody who played 🏀 in Perth probably knows Wayne and I don’t think anybody dislikes the guy. I hope he is well.
Encanto, 2021 - ★★★
My favourite character was... a house? I was surprised by the ease with which the fractured relationship with Grandma was resolved.
Another day of being sick. Urgh. Tested negative for COVID too, so it’s just a garden-variety flu making my life miserable.
A Second Try With Zavala
Last Time…
When I tried this the first time I used each line of the outline as a paragraph. Maurice Parker, the developer of Zavala, answered my call for help.
He advised:
when you craft your blog post in Zavala, the Topics are headings and the Notes are the paragraph text. Make sure that when you export from Zavala you select the Markdown Doc format. It looks like you exported an outline without Notes using the Markdown List option.
So it seems I made not one, but two, mistakes.
Now I Try Again
So this time, I’ve only got two outline nodes representing the headings, and text in the notes fields for my paragraph.
Into the breach once more, I go.
Using Zavala to post to Micro.blog
- One of the fun things about micro.blog is its inherent openness. It will accept the creation of new blog posts from a host of applications.
- I already have apps including Drafts, Ulysses, iA Writer and MarsEdit configured to send posts to my micro.blog site, so why not add another?
- In this instance, I’m using Zavala, an outliner app that works across macOS, iOS and iPadOS.
- There is a bit of configuration to do to make it work, including the installation of a support app from the Mac App Store called Humboldt, which provides a linkage between Shortcuts and the micro.blog API, as best I can tell.
- Testing
- This is the grand test, whereby I have written this document, and I aim to publish it to my blog.
Thanks @podiboq for suggesting a great improvement to @hemisphericviews.
It’s that time again. Hemispheric Views 049 covers third-party keyboards, the new iPad mini, the weird world of video gaming, and coffee sizes. 🎙
The new Fantastical Openings service may be enough to save me from needing a third-party bookings service. Unfortunately I recently bought a 12-month subscription to one.
It’s nice to put a voice to Phil Nunnally @twelvety who is one of the Internet nice guys. He was a guest on the Thinking About Tools for Thinking show with @andysylvester
Browser Wars
This article was originally written for the September 2021 edition of Hemispheric News, delivered as part of the Hemispheric Views podcast member bonus program, One Prime Plus
No, this is not an article about the failings of Safari 15. I am sure Apple will get that sorted out, because having no idea about which is the active tab is a problem that will impact millions of users.
This article is about finding and selecting a preferred browser for general daily use. Let me preface this by saying that Safari has a huge advantage mainly because of iOS. Even with the changes to the default browser setting, the convenience of Safari on iOS remains streets ahead and it is a nice, fast browser. I’m yet to find a browser option on iOS that gets close to Safari for satisfaction.
Therefore, I’m focusing on daily use on the Mac. Again, the ecosystem benefits push Safari to the fore. Syncing with iOS is reliable. Authentication is critical. I love the connections it has with the ecosystem biometrics (Touch ID, Apple Watch confirmations, Apple Pay), and the best feature is auto-filling of SMS 2FA tokens.
Let me state that from an ecosystem perspective Safari is the best and only choice.
On a laptop, its energy efficiency is another win. I hate running other browsers because I can almost feel them eating my battery life.
As a browser for using the Internet, though, I feel that Safari is falling behind. I seem to run into the issue of “this website is using significant resources” more often. This morning, I had the problem with my bank website. Online banking - a solved problem for the last decade, now struggles to run in a modern browser?
I realise that problems like this should be put at the feet of the website developers. Yet it’s tiresome swimming upstream. With most of the world using Chromium-based browsers this is the “standard” that developers are coding for.
Another issue I find with Safari is identity management with respect to Microsoft 365 hell. I have three work-mandated M365 identities. Even I forget which site needs which log-in. I can tell you, that none of the browsers handle this well.
Firefox has containers which should do the trick. And they did, until they didn’t. At some point it got stuck in an authentication loop and the only thing I could do was delete all my container settings and start again. The alternative is incognito-mode/private browsing, or using a different browser entirely for each login identity. This is why I still like apps ahead of in-browser access.
Back to browser options, currently installed and in some level of active use, I have Safari, Firefox, Edge and Vivaldi. I don’t have Chrome (eww, Google) and I don’t have Brave (eww, crypto).
The Firefox gecko rendering system feels slow, is energy-inefficient, and not being Chromium has the same incompatibility challenges. It did have Containers, but as mentioned, even that broke. Firefox is the biggest loser.
Vivaldi is Chromium-based, seems fast but is super-weird. Sometimes I like it, but most of the time I feel I am using a browser from 2004.
Edge. A Microsoft product. Even being a Microsoft product it doesn’t have a solution for multiple Microsoft accounts. Yet it is Chromium based. And its UI is almost intelligible. It definitely makes more sense than Chrome. It feels snappy. I like it! Edge wins my award as my secondary browser.
What I want to see is a turbo-boosted Safari. I like Safari. I worry that the development team is focusing in the wrong areas, though. I hope they get it sorted out because not until the past year have I even contemplated secondary browsers - it’s been Safari all day, every day.