Elvis, 2022 - ★★★½
A wonderful telling of the bastardry of Colonel Parker.
I’ve disabled cross-posting from micro.blog to mastodon. Going to try letting each be its own thing.
Ferrite 3
Ferrite 3 offers an enhanced, modernised UI all across the app.
I couldn’t edit Hemispheric Views without Ferrite. Believe me, I tried. If Ferrite wasn’t available, I’m not sure our podcast would be either. Version 3 is an insta-upgrade for me. While it has a list of new features, the faster playback speeds are the real seller.
On one of Jack Baty’s blogs, I saw a reference to neofetch.
It doesn’t do a lot, but it looks pretty. I’ve run it on my three machines:
iMac
MacBook Air
Mac mini
Casey Liss on Really Specific Stories
My friend and Hemispheric Views co-host Martin Feld continues to build his other excellent podcast, Really Specific Stories. The latest episode features a guest famous to many of us in Mac-nerd circles: Casey Liss, one of the hosts of the hugely successful Accidental Tech Podcast.
Casey references his experience as a guest on the show on his own blog.
Appearance: Really Specific Stories — Liss is More:
On this episode, Martin and I walked through my path into podcasting, starting all the way — and I’m not kidding — from when I was a toddler. It was a fun discussion, and I’m honored that Martin asked me to be a part of the project.
Of course, I can’t help but mention my own appearance on Really Specific Stories, but I encourage you to binge the whole run.
Excuse me @rosemaryorchard - are you still developing When.Works? Does it work?
I’ve cancelled my Fantastical subscription that expires in March 2023. My need for the bookings service may be declining. That, plus their price increase, means I will go back to BusyCal through Setapp. If it turns out I really need bookings, then I will reassess at the time.
Poor USA. The goalie has been poorly treated by his defenders. ⚽️
The Fantastical price increase is a bummer, because it’s a double whammy for me as an Australian user. Our weakened exchange rate multiplies the scale of the increase.
Spirited, 2022 - ★★★½
I don’t like musicals but I liked this movie.
Oh no, I’m going down a TaskPaper rabbit hole.
Thanks, Medibank data breach. I really appreciate you holding onto my details as an ex-customer, allowing it to be shared on the dark web following its theft. Great stuff.
Is This Thing On?
A mini-revival of an old favourite.
Human-sized Services
My friend Adam at omg.lol is building another special surprise for his customers.
I have taken the pre-alpha version for a spin:
A Weblog · Human-sized Services:
There are now three blogging services that I admire, all of which are run by humans - not corporations. Humans making websites was what made 1.0, back in the Netscape Navigator days, great. Blink tags, under construction logos, and multi-colour Times New Roman font. It was joyous because it was the web at human level.
The Internet is healing.
My mental health energy meter is reading at about 3% today. Can we shut it down today and reconvene tomorrow? 🪫
Web App Barbarians
This article was originally written for the April 2022 edition of Hemispheric News, delivered as part of the Hemispheric Views podcast member bonus program, One Prime Plus.
I love to use native software but it feels like I’m the last of the troops that has been put on the final line of defence, guarding against the marauding ‘web apps’.
It appears that most users are more than happy to load a copy of Google Chrome and run a bunch of web apps in fullscreen mode. This is what I see in my day job, as companies use Xero, Hubspot and any other number of web apps to run their companies.
On a personal level things aren’t much better with Google Apps, YNAB, etc. sharing the platform with a growing number of Electron apps such as Discord, 1Password and Slack (and, of course, Obsidian).
So I end up feeling like one of a declining number of people who prefer an app that utilises the native architecture of the client platform. Either people don’t care or they actively prefer web apps.
I actually think it’s the former (users not caring) combined with development houses caring more about cost management and not actually putting the user first. If they were willing to invest development resources in native applications I am sure people would enjoy them. But they don’t care enough to force developers' hands.
So we end up with the best app to meet profit targets — not the best app.
As much as Apple invests in outlandishly fast and impressive hardware, what’s the point if all it means is that the platform can successfully run more Chrome tabs? Is that really what we have arrived at?
Apple is not helping by not investing in their own first platform applications, either. They are creating meh apps across macOS as they attempt to consolidate development efforts through shared Swift/Catalyst implementations. Nothing seems better or more powerful than it was a decade ago.
I hope that now Apple has its hardware house in order, that it can focus on its software.
I’d love to hold off the web app barbarians at the gate just a few years longer.
Microblogvember 2022, Day 30: I am having to watch online cybersecurity safety training videos. They suck, and the questions at the end are poorly worded.
Embedding Toots in a Blog Post
Sometimes I ask dumb questions:
Sometimes, kind people humour me:
Thank you, @jameskoole@indieweb.social
I can’t sleep so I’m reading my book, Principles. I’m at the section where there are glowing references to amazing “shapers”, such as Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk. Yeah, those latter two are so amazing. 🙄 This book is perhaps not ageing well.