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.
It’s not much, but it’s something. 🇺🇦
OneDrive Files-on-Demand for macOS
Friday, February 25, 2022
Nick Heer at Pixel Envy: 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.
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. 🇺🇦
Zootopia, 2016 - ★★★
Saturday, February 19, 2022
Watched on Friday February 18, 2022.
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. 😢
Wednesday, February 16, 2022 →
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 - ★★★
Sunday, February 13, 2022
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
Friday, February 11, 2022
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.
Using Zavala to post to Micro.blog
Friday, February 11, 2022
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.
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.