Coyote Cartography
Archive About Also on Micro.blog
  • Jock Lindsay’s Hangar Bar at Disney Springs

    Interior of highly themed 'adventure' bar
    → 4:39 PM, Dec 29
  • At Disney Springs, the replacement area for Pleasure Island and associated parts of the mouse kingdom. Doesn’t seem to be an upgrade on the whole; more “themed shopping mall.” But the Hangar Bar is pretty neat.

    → 4:38 PM, Dec 29
  • Best Hacker News comment in a while, on Larry Ellison joining Tesla’s board of directors: “I will watch this movie just for the part where Elon’s rocket fleet attacks Larry’s island volcano lair.”

    → 8:03 PM, Dec 28
  • Twelve South’s Compass Pro iPad stand is expensive, but it fixes the problems with the Compass 2 and can hold a 12.9" iPad in portrait mode—a terrific way to write.

    → 4:41 PM, Dec 25
  • One of my Christmas gifts is a refurbished Polaroid 600 instant camera.

    → 2:36 PM, Dec 25
  • In some ways the James Museum of Western & Wildlife Art itself is an exhibit.

    Interior of the James Museum, St. Petersburg, FL
    → 2:16 PM, Dec 19
  • Good: I have found a new (to me?) microbrewery in Zephyrhills, Florida, which is pretty good! Bad: my flight arrived the moment a huge party of elementary school teachers arrived for a trivia game. Silver lining: at least I will have beer.

    → 5:48 PM, Dec 18
  • Just found out “Stardew Valley” is available for the iPad, and immediately bought it, only based on the game’s reputation. Hopefully this is not a mistake.

    → 12:44 PM, Dec 18
  • I have to give Bahama Breeze points for having curried goat and oxtail on the menu. I love them, but I didn’t expect a chain “island-themed restaurant” to have the nerve. (Their Painkiller is also legit, although their Zombie is a trainwreck.)

    → 8:29 PM, Dec 17
  • Back in Florida for the holiday break. I pretty quickly embraced California as home, but over the last few years it feels like Tampa Bay & Orlando are, if not catching up, making great strides in terms of restaurants, cafes, and craft beer.

    → 7:14 PM, Dec 17
  • While I get the theoretical appeal of carry-on luggage with charging ports, most airports I go to have lots of places to plug in and charge devices now. Also, I’m the weirdo who’d rather check bags on any flight with layovers.

    → 1:24 PM, Dec 15
  • Pundits talk about how great the speakers are on the iPad, and: okay, but within the physical limitations of the iPad. I often listen to podcasts, and sometimes music, on a Bose Mini Soundlink Bluetooth speaker, and it’s not only better, it’s better by a lot. A whole lot.

    → 11:23 PM, Dec 14
  • The iPad sticker collection is slowly being built.

    iPad Pro case partially covered with various stickers
    → 10:27 PM, Dec 14
  • I kinda want iOS on the iPad to support USB tethering to an iPhone if you have a USB-C to Lightning cable—one in a long list of “things the iPad should still learn from the Mac.” (“You could spend another $150 + $10/month for cellular data!” Yay, thanks.)

    → 7:57 PM, Dec 14
  • I may need this desk sign

    Desk sign reading 'IF YOU WERE IN MY NOVEL YOU'D BE DEAD BY NOW'
    → 11:38 PM, Dec 13
  • So I have a Siri shortcut for “Resume Overcast,” a shortcut donated from Overcast, the podcast player. But I just discovered that Siri interprets it as “play whatever was last playing”; if it was the music player, I get music, not podcasts. What. The. Hell.

    → 1:23 AM, Dec 13
  • Going to make a more concerted effort to try DuckDuckGo again as a search engine. This generally doesn’t go well for me, but we’ll see.

    → 5:47 PM, Dec 11
  • Rosewood Sand Hill has a gingerbread Silicon Valley in the lobby, including Apple Park.

    → 6:04 PM, Dec 10
  • The Hatch, a very Oakland dive bar

    → 12:46 AM, Dec 9
  • A little nonplussed that it looks like while Bluesound is finally getting Airplay 2 integration, other “BluOS” devices—like my A/V receiver—are left out in the cold.

    → 8:28 PM, Dec 8
  • Fieldwork’s “Greetings from Raspberry Park” is technically a “kettle sour,” but it’s awfully close to a fruit lambic. To be clear, I mean this as a compliment, not a criticism.

    → 9:06 PM, Dec 6
  • From the initial reports: yes, the Apple clear case for the XR is better than some of the well-reviewed cheaper ones. I’ll stick with my cheap one, although it’s worth noting that this is the second cheap one I’ve bought and I’ve had the phone maybe two months, so…

    → 6:24 PM, Dec 6
  • Heretical weather app assertion: Hello Weather is better than Carrot in terms of info-at-a-glance.

    → 5:48 PM, Dec 6
  • I’m reminded this morning that as much as I’m starting to truly love the iPad for portable computing, Scrivener on the Mac has a host of tiny differences that add up to more power. Some day I’ll write about that—although only after I write about why I love the iPad anyway.

    → 12:25 PM, Dec 6
  • At $39, Apple’s clear case for the XR is three times as much as Spigen’s. That’d better be one heck of a case.

    → 2:52 PM, Dec 5
  • Let's talk about the Tumblrpocalypse

    Did you hear Tumblr’s getting rid of all the adult sites?

    Yes, the news is going around.

    Man, if only Apple wasn’t so prudish!

    Come again?

    This is all because Apple pulled the Tumblr app in mid-November after they found child porn on the site.

    Apple did pull the app because of that, yes, but there’s no evidence Apple is insisting Tumblr get rid of all NSFW material across the entire site as a condition to get back into the App Store. Besides, Apple has a “17+” rating category for apps, which Tumblr has been in since early 2013. There’s no sign that they’ve been purging other apps in that category.

    But we keep hearing about how strict Apple is! Walled garden and all that. They keep cracking down on user-generated content.

    Apple’s actual guidelines prohibit services “that end up being used primarily for pornographic content,” so sure, there’s not going to be a Pornhub iOS app any time soon. But “incidental NSFW content” is explicitly (stop it) allowed.

    Tumblr’s NSFW stuff is more than just incidental.

    Arguably, but Tumblr’s iOS app has been on the App Store since 2009–almost since there was an App Store to be on. Tumblr said Apple found child porn hosted on Tumblr in a “routine audit”; the word routine implies they audit a random sample of Tumblr sites through the iOS app at least semi-regularly. So it’s damn unlikely it took nearly ten years for Apple to be prudishly horrified by a naughty catgirl pinup.

    Well, if it’s not Apple’s fault, why would Tumblr do this? It’s going to kill their site deader than a doornail.

    Were doornails ever alive?

    It’s just an expression.

    Right. Well, okay. “Tumblr is for porn” has become received wisdom, but there are conflicting reports as to just how much porn is there. In 2012, Tumblr creator and then-CEO David Karp estimated it at 2–4% of the blogs. A web analytics firm a year later estimated it at 11.4%, and a study in 2016 estimated it at a mere 1%, but estimated 22% of the audience was there for the porn.

    That’s all over the map.

    Yeah. The analytics firm used “explicit domain names” as a marker for porn production, which is likely to overestimate, and the later study classified Tumblrs as porn if they could be found by “a large number of search engine queries containing pornographic keywords,” which I suspect underestimates. The chances are that Karp’s estimate was likely the best. While it’s an old estimate, I doubt the percentage of porn Tumblrs increased under Yahoo’s watch, given the Great Tumblr Porn Crackdown of 2013. Let’s keep it on the high end and say 5%, though.

    No way. There are millions of pornographic Tumblrs!

    It’s easy to lose track of just how big the numbers involved are on an absolute rather than percentage basis. There are about 250 million Tumblr users. Suppose only a quarter of them actually post, and only 5% of those post porn. That’s still millions of pornographic Tumblrs.

    What about that figure of 22% of the audience being there for the porn? Is that suspect, too?

    This is really difficult to quantify, because the vast majority of Tumblr users who look at some NSFW content don’t look exclusively at NSFW content. Also, thanks to Tumblr’s reblog feature, you may see NSFW content you don’t explicitly (stop it!) intend to see; that 2016 study estimated more users saw porn that way than saw it by following Tumblrs they’d categorized as pornographic.

    So the real question isn’t how many people see NSFW stuff on Tumblr, the question is how many people will stop using Tumblr if they stop seeing NSFW stuff on it.

    So what’s the answer?

    No idea. I guess we’ll know in a year.

    I still think it’s gonna die. look at sites like LiveJournal and MySpace. Once people start leaving, they don’t come back, especially if the creators they follow aren’t there.

    That’s the million-dollar question, right? They’re going to take a big hit initially, but they probably figure it’ll be balanced out. But there’s a real chance that the big hit gets followed by a slow slide.

    You sound pretty sanguine about this. Doesn’t Tumblr making this move bother you?

    It does. I have a soft spot in my heart for Tumblr; my old tech blog wouldn’t have taken off if it hadn’t been hosted on Tumblr (and probably wouldn’t have survived a few initial “Fireballings” when John Gruber linked to it). I’ve always thought it was underrated as a pure blogging platform. And, yes, I think it’s worthwhile to have a place to share NSFW content.

    But the bottom line comes down to the bottom line. Tumblr is on its third owner at this point and still largely resists monetization, and current owner Verizon is not going to keep running it as a social good. As risky as it might seem to bet that kicking off the pronz will increase ad revenue, it wouldn’t be a bet they’d make if Tumblr as it is now were a sustainable business.

    Do you think it’ll work?

    Maybe? I mean, if you’re asking if I think Tumblr will “die in a month,” or even a year, absolutely not. LiveJournal, MySpace, and Digg are all still around. Fucking Ask.com is still around. Tumblr could have an indefinite life ahead of it as an irrelevant artifact of internet history.

    Come on, give me an actual prediction.

    Okay, here’s the thing. Tumblr hasn’t really changed much in years, and that’s a risk. Making an unpopular policy change that drives high-follower-count users off the site is also a risk. Tumblr can survive those as long as there isn’t anything else that does the job it does, but both of these moves open up space for disruption.

    But as usual with disruptors, we shouldn’t expect The Thing That Replaces Tumblr to look like Tumblr. It might not even be just one thing at all. In fact, LiveJournal’s decline might be a good study: they, too, opened up space for disruption through a combination of site stagnation and stupid policy decisions, but their users didn’t end up all migrating to some LJ-but-better service. LJ was ultimately rendered irrelevant by the one-two punch of Twitter and, ironically, Tumblr.

    So what do you think the lesson is that anyone trying to disrupt Tumblr should draw from all this?

    Money first, naughty catgirl pinups later.

    → 4:57 PM, Dec 4
  • Trying to make a playlist of Christmas songs that I truly like. Either most Christmas songs (or versions) aren’t really that good, or I’m a big damn Grinch.

    → 3:53 PM, Dec 2
  • One of the most fun tiki bars in California, decked out for Christmas.

    → 10:19 PM, Dec 1
  • Someday my smart AV receiver will finally get the update for AirPlay 2 that Bluesound has described as “coming soon” for half a year and counting.

    → 10:29 PM, Nov 28
  • If you’re in a town that has a “Miracle Christmas Pop-Up Bar,” and you like creative cocktails, an effort to get there. (Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, that’s Pacific Cocktail Haven in SF and Paper Plane in San Jose.)

    → 9:44 PM, Nov 27
  • Seriously thinking about retooling my backup strategy and dumping Time Machine. Between Arq Cloud (which I’m switching to from the standalone Arq) and Super Duper, as well as moving more documents into replicated cloud storage, I don’t think I need TM, too.

    → 10:12 PM, Nov 26
  • I don’t think any of my friends who used to follow football still do. (Reminded of that by looking at a TV in the brewery I’m at and seeing Oakland being crushed by Baltimore, and realizing I have no idea if Oakland being terrible this season was expected.)

    → 9:11 PM, Nov 25
  • Comixology is running a lot of Black Friday weekend sales. I bought volumes 2 and 3 of “Monstress” (I already had vol 1) and vol 1 and 2 of “The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl.” I’ll have to see what else I’m missing—I’m not a superhero fan. I may pick up ALL of ElfQuest, though…

    → 6:21 PM, Nov 25
  • Is there a way to make a new post in Gluon? If there is I haven’t found it yet.

    → 5:00 PM, Nov 25
  • Pretty sure this coffee shop has two HomePods as speakers. Tempted to shout “HEY SIRI” just to see what happens, but I won’t.

    → 5:25 PM, Nov 23
  • There’s something kind of refreshing about building a web site with pure HTML/CSS: no engines, static site generators, etc. (Okay: I’m using SCSS for styling, but c’mon, give me that one.)

    → 3:00 PM, Nov 22
  • I am forever going to be slightly sad that with a name like “Bixby,” our voice assistant does not sound, by default, like a British butler.

    → 3:08 PM, Nov 21
  • I went back and exchanged my 64GB iPad for the 256GB one after all.

    → 12:04 AM, Nov 21
  • Well, the air is still terrible here in Silicon Valley, but it’s possible to tell the sky contains clouds now, so that’s an improvement.

    → 7:21 PM, Nov 19
  • Hmm. I was considering buying Coda, as I re-evaluate all my workflows for…everything, but the Mac version has no upgrade price from version 1. Which makes me think there might not be one from version 2.5 to 3, so maybe I should wait for 3, which seems like it’s in the works?

    → 7:09 PM, Nov 18
  • I am annoyed by the iPad’s metal side resting against the metal side of the Magic Keyboard in the Canopy case, so I took some little Velcro squares I bought years ago, cut one of the fuzzy soft squares into strips, and put two of them on the back of the keyboard as bumpers. 👍

    → 3:59 AM, Nov 17
  • Hm. I’m starting to do the rather @imyke thing of putting stickers on my new iPad case, but the two stickers I have put on—one relocated from an old iPad and one I tried to move—have air bubbles. (sad emoji)

    → 8:24 PM, Nov 16
  • Going to eventually take the time to enable all 2FA accounts I have that work with 1Password. Being secure is time-consuming…

    → 6:41 PM, Nov 16
  • The new iPad Pro

    So I bought a new iPad yesterday.

    After a lot of waffling, I made some seemingly counter-intuitive choices:

    • The 12.9" model (up from my original 9.7")
    • Only 64G of storage
    • WiFi only, not cellular

    The rationale for the first one is simple enough. I’ve been using my iPad more than my laptop, and moving to the bigger screen pushes it that much closer to my only-needed portable computing device. Over the last two years I’ve knocked down nearly all the “showstoppers” that keep me from doing my personal work on the iPad, although there are still clunky points–many of which are more due to constraints in iOS.

    So if that’s the case, why go with the big iPad but the baseline version? That’s crazy!

    Well, okay. It is, sort of. But when I checked my previous iPad just a few days ago, you know how much of its 128G storage I was using? 30G. And the three biggest apps were Grim Fandango (which I haven’t played in a year), Garage Band (which I don’t use), and iMovie (which I don’t use). By either deleting or “offloading” a few of the biggest apps, I’m now using less than 24G. The reality is that I don’t edit media, I stream it. When I travel, I’m more likely to have podcasts or books with me on planes than movies. And I keep a lot of documents in cloud storage. I’m not a big photographer, but even if I start seriously using iCloud Photo Library, the iPad isn’t going to need to keep all or even most of the photos on it–that’s what the point of “cloud” is, right?

    Honestly, if Apple had had a 128G version for just $50 more, like they do with the iPhone XR, I’d have taken it. But they’re playing their stupid storage pricing game, as usual, and I’m not.

    As far as the cellular radio goes: I’ll be honest. That was tough. I’m still not positive I made the right call. I end up using cellular tethering a fair amount; I’m using it right now, in fact, typing this at lunch at the office (I don’t want to connect the iPad to the corporate network). Doesn’t that make me a perfect candidate for this?

    Well, sure. But it’s a $150 option now, and after paying that upcharge, then it’s either add it to my cell plan for another $10 a month or pick a “pay as you go” option. A lot of folks do that, treating the cellular radio as insurance and almost never using it. Well, okay, but if you almost never use it, you have less reason not to just put up with the inconvenience of tethering. I use it enough that I’m still considering taking the iPad back within the 14-day window and exchanging it. But it just feels like a lot to pay to save five seconds–yes, those five seconds could add up to a minute or two a week. But even so. Again, if this was a $50 upgrade, I’d have taken it almost without thinking about it.

    So how am I feeling about the new iPad? After less than 24 hours, I love it. I’ll see how it goes in real world usage, but it’s pretty awesome paired with the Canopy and Magic Keyboard (it is so close in width to the Magic Keyboard it almost looks like they were meant to go together). Do I worry I haven’t “future-proofed” this purchase? A little. But I think in practice I’ll be more than okay.

    Edit: I exchanged it for the 256GB iPad Pro, still no cellular (and still in Space Gray), on November 20th. Yes, I decided I needed a little future-proofing, just in case. As of February 2019 I am still not using very much space on it, though.

    → 3:28 PM, Nov 16
  • The internet is sufficiently flaky at the house that I have relocated to a coffee shop with great wifi–the one at Apple Park’s visitor center. (Which is also the closest Apple Store to me.)

    → 7:00 PM, Nov 15
  • I do wish Apple’s iPad Folio cases for the new iPad Pros weren’t so incredibly boring. Yikes.

    → 11:57 PM, Nov 14
  • “Hey Siri, what’s the air quality?”

    → 10:00 PM, Nov 14
  • To make things even more tempting, it’s pretty clear to me that I could get by with a 64GB iPad. I’m only using 30GB on my current one. Really wish there was a 128GB option, though…

    → 9:39 PM, Nov 14
  • Low cognitive load blogging

    Hey, did you know I used to be a blogger?

    Okay, it’s not quite fair to say that I’m no longer a blogger; if you check the Journal tab of my website, I’ve made about a half-dozen posts this year. But that’s way down from the original Tumblr-hosted Coyote Tracks; in the earlier parts of this decade I was at least managing a few posts a month, and occasionally even a few posts a week.

    Ironically, this post is going to join the rest of this year’s flock as another post about blogging. The truth is that I simultaneously miss it and don’t want the cognitive burden of committing to it again.

    I’m edging toward making this microblog my “real, canonical” blog; after all, it can accept long posts like this one, it crossposts to Twitter and can be followed via Mastodon, and it would let me quietly move my main web site off WordPress onto…well, frankly, I don’t know yet, although I’m perversely considering saying to hell with “generators” and moving to pure hand-coded HTML.

    But the main advantage that moving to the microblog—as well as moving to the static site not-a-generator—would give me is freedom from that cognitive load. Okay, too strong: a reduction of that cognitive load. I don’t have to worry about templates more complicated than what BBEdit handles for the main site, and the journal can be updated with any Micropub client (including, of course, Micro.blog’s own client).

    The million-dollar question: if I go ahead and make this change, will I actually start blogging again? When I think, “I should write about the problems I see looming ahead for Apple,” or “maybe I should write about why I’m considering going iPad-only for portable computing despite that last thought,” or “I feel a little like ranting about how ridiculous it is to deride Nancy Pelosi as a toothless centrist,” will I actually do it?

    I don’t know. But I know that making it easier for myself to get there probably can’t hurt.

    → 8:40 PM, Nov 14
  • I think if Apple made an e-ink reader just for Apple Books, I’d be tempted to buy it despite the undoubtedly too-high price.

    → 2:57 PM, Nov 14
  • Handled the new iPad Pros in the Apple Store. This was probably a mistake. (Seriously: I want one, but at those prices I feel like I’d have to commit to having the iPad be my only portable computer. And…

    → 1:27 AM, Nov 14
  • Only a few minutes into the second episode of Amazon’s “Homecoming.” If you hadn’t told me this was directed by Sam Esmail (“Mr. Robot”), I might well have guessed anyway.

    → 10:30 PM, Nov 13
  • Lukewarm take: the iPad’s ecosystem is held back by the App Store pricing and sales model. Ten years ago, $29.99 for a solid productivity app was a bargain—now it’s insanely expensive. And w/o upgrades, the only recurring revenue are highly polarizing annual subscriptions.

    → 8:01 PM, Nov 13
  • Thanks to Micro.blog’s new ActivityPub support, I’m now publishing to Mastodon at @chipotle@micro.coyotetracks.org - I’ll keep “mirroring” at my other Mastodon account for a while longer, but not indefinitely. (I may create a separate, personal/fannish Mastodon account later.)

    → 3:04 PM, Nov 13
  • Okay, I don’t even like superhero comics and movies that much, but after reading a bunch of little tributes to Stan Lee at io9 all in a row, I’m pretty sniffly.

    → 8:14 PM, Nov 12
  • Okay, I’ll need to grab other people to come down here with me sometime, or tag along if other people are making a Paso Robles/San Luis Obispo expedition.

    → 9:46 PM, Nov 10
  • Extremely first-world dilemma: just setting up at a coffee shop in Paso Robles, wondering whether I should go to a microbrewery or a wine bar next.

    → 6:54 PM, Nov 10
  • Pretty sure I was here once four years ago. It seems like a good day for a return visit!

    → 4:03 PM, Nov 10
  • Given the smoke in the Bay Area, I think today’s unnecessary day trip will be heading south instead of north. The air quality index drops from 168 (unhealthy) here in San Jose to 38 (good) just an hour south in Salinas.

    → 2:14 PM, Nov 10
  • macOS, iOS, tvOS, and watchOS are basically forks of the same OS adapted for different form factors and UIs. But are phones and tablets really so similar that they should share a fork? The answer is probably no.

    → 4:23 PM, Nov 9
  • Fairly sure this is the quietest I’ve ever seen Pagan Idol.

    → 8:17 PM, Nov 6
  • Getting a flat white from a robot barista in the San Francisco Metreon. Not bad! (Footnote: the Metreon was, once upon a time, a futuristic shopping/entertainment concept from Sony. Now, all that’s left is a Target, a movie theater, and a food court. With a robot barista.)

    → 6:49 PM, Nov 6
  • Apparently I have two versions of Ulysses installed on my iPhone. Let’s hope I’m deleting the right one!

    → 5:16 PM, Nov 5
  • All right, I may have to see if I can deal with the iPhone XR without a case. As with my iPhone 6, it just seems like it might feel better.

    → 12:50 AM, Nov 3
  • Despite making that complaint about iOS, I enjoy working on the iPad. It’s just so light compared to my MacBook Pro, and it’s really fun to use. Still a no-go for heavy docs-as-code technical writing, but solid for a lot of other things.

    → 8:08 PM, Nov 1
  • Blog post I should eventually write: how text editing behavior that happens at a system level on macOS (or Windows) seems to be implemented at an application level on iOS, leading to frustrating inconsistency between apps and an inability to take operations for granted.

    → 7:50 PM, Nov 1
  • View from the lunchroom at the business park I camp out at sometimes. Turns out the food is good, too (a nice cider brined pork loin with better roasted vegetables than I’ve had at some fairly expensive restaurants).

    → 4:02 PM, Nov 1
  • The mainstream narrative is that iPad sales over the last ~5 years have been disappointing. But should we expect them to sell more like smartphones, or more like laptops? If the former, sales are sluggish; if the latter, it’s a blockbuster.

    → 1:21 PM, Oct 31
  • I’m a little chagrined how much I like having a bigger phone. The XR’s screen size and density is terrific for me.

    → 9:41 PM, Oct 30
  • Rearranging my iPhone home screen. Let’s see if I get used to the new icon positions or give up and switch back.

    → 6:43 PM, Oct 30
  • Prices for the new Apple products are kinda insane, though. Yes, I know, you’re trying to think of some bon mot about Apple always being expensive, ha ha good one I’m sure! But there’s expensive and there’s overpriced, and lately they’ve been really testing that boundary.

    → 11:43 AM, Oct 30
  • This does raise the question: with the new MacBook Air, who is the one-port MacBook for? And even more, who is the two-port MacBook Pro for? (I have one and like it, but I’d have gotten this Air if it had been around then.)

    → 11:29 AM, Oct 30
  • I won’t pretend I’m not tempted by the new iPad Pro. Hmm.

    → 11:20 AM, Oct 30
  • What if a new Mac mini turned out to be the first ARM-based Mac?

    → 1:41 AM, Oct 30
  • Twitter is considering removing likes, apparently. Odd: I’m glad they’re not on Micro.blog, yet I would be annoyed with their removal on Twitter (or Mastodon). I’d rather see Twitter follow Mastodon in ditching the quote post (and possibly reposting, period).

    → 3:50 PM, Oct 29
  • Years ago I remember being in a meeting where we all went around the table saying who we were and what our team was, and one guy said, “I’m Bob. I’m here to say no.” I think more design and product meetings need a Bob.

    → 1:58 PM, Oct 29
  • Ulysses has suddenly gotten weirdly crashy on my Mac. Three crashes in 30 minutes weird. Rebooting didn’t help. Now trying the time-honored tradition of deleting it, along with its preferences and containers, and reinstalling.

    → 9:23 PM, Oct 28
  • I am not saying I am lost without a home button, but

    → 9:30 PM, Oct 27
  • Only in Napa: a combination BBQ joint and wine bar. (I am having the pimento cheese dip and a rosé flight to start.)

    → 8:39 PM, Oct 27
  • Okay. Accounts set up, SIM card transferred (the first time I’ve ever done that with an iPhone, but this is the first one I’ve ever bought outright), fashionably thin clear case installed. I was never in the Plus Club, so this is a Big Damn Phone.

    → 10:57 PM, Oct 26
  • I have my new phone—and can’t set it up until I get home from work. So it’s just sitting in its box taunting me.

    → 2:38 PM, Oct 26
  • Rekindling my deep dislike of not keeping URLs all lowercase (e.g., “/foo/bar/about-UX” instead of “/foo/bar/about-ux”). It is surprising how many things break that shouldn’t.

    → 11:32 AM, Oct 26
  • Really? The online Apple Store is in “be right back” mode nearly three hours before the iPhone XR goes on sale?

    → 12:18 AM, Oct 19
  • Trying to re-acquaint myself with Sublime Text after a couple years away dallying with Atom and VS Code (and the recurring failed flirtation with Emacs). Hmm.

    → 1:28 AM, Oct 17
  • Apropos of nothing in particular, I really want to get to Mesa Grill in Las Vegas sometime.

    → 10:33 PM, Oct 16
  • I’m tickled that full episodes of “Adam Ruins Everything” are available on Netflix now.

    → 9:49 PM, Oct 16
  • First taco, now bagel. Clearly, we should be lobbying for a cheesesteak or Cuban sandwich emoji so we can complain when it isn’t drawn to our exacting standards

    → 2:52 PM, Oct 16
  • Maybe one day the Instant Hotspot feature will work on the first try. Today is not that day. Or the third, or fifth, or tenth try, after many reboots and resets. Remember, It Just Works.™

    → 7:06 PM, Oct 15
  • The Ten Ten Room in Sacramento has deviled scotch eggs and I think this may be my favorite appetizer ever. (Their meatballs in grape jelly are also very good, and not what you are probably picturing from the name.)

    → 10:10 PM, Oct 13
  • Elon Musk apparently wants to produce “Teslaquila,” because his 2018 doesn’t sound quite enough like a “Silicon Valley” plot arc yet.

    → 7:47 PM, Oct 12
  • Not down with the trend of free wifi hotspots requiring an email address to sign in. New low today: Rookies, a sports bar in San Jose, required me to confirm it was a real email address by clinking on a link they mailed. (I had not given them a real email address.)

    → 2:34 PM, Oct 12
  • Wow, the San Jose Mercury News’s web site is astoundingly unfriendly on iOS. I don’t know why I’d think a newspaper based in Silicon Valley might have a clue about how to do mobile web design…

    → 7:12 PM, Oct 11
  • Catered lunch Wednesday at the office is burgers today, and they have the Impossible Burger. So now I know what it’s like when it’s overcooked!

    → 2:58 PM, Oct 10
  • It is relatively hard to find good light text editor themes. Still looking for more for VS Code.

    → 1:35 AM, Oct 10
  • Ironic scooter collision footnote: I was not wearing a helmet, but it wouldn’t have helped. Scraped elbow, banged knee/shin, and twisted—possibly sprained—ankle. The ankle hurts the most, but the elbow looks the worst! 🛴💥

    → 4:53 PM, Oct 5
  • And first scooter collision. My everything hurts. Walking for a while now!

    → 3:40 PM, Oct 5
  • Trying Sunnyslope, a “Brut IPA” from Shadow Puppet Brewing, a dry IPA with “a champagne-like body” (I can definitely see champagne-like bubbles rising in it constantly). I wasn’t sure if I’d like it, but thumbs up. 🍺👍

    → 6:25 PM, Oct 4
  • Okay, tried “dark mode” in Mojave, and…no. I like the concept, but it’s not my thing. Of course, I’m often the only one in a room full of tech writers/developers using a light theme for a text editor, so I guess this is on brand.

    → 10:53 AM, Oct 3
  • Switching back to my Mini Tactile Pro keyboard for a time. Gosh, these keys are incredibly loud compared to the “quiet” version of the Matias switch…

    → 2:32 AM, Oct 2
  • I love many, many things about Scrivener, but its syncing engine is so very much not one of those things. I don’t have any other program that’s so essential to what I do and so nerve-wrackingly fragile.

    → 9:28 PM, Sep 30
  • In an effort to do a little more photography again, I’m finally reinstalling Instagram on my phone, and will do whatever mojo is necessary to connect it up with Sunlit.

    → 7:09 PM, Sep 30
  • Sometimes you don’t want to just go with an “Out of Order” sign.

    → 12:10 AM, Sep 30
  • Apparently I have checked out VW’s web site often enough in my quest to research a new car that Safari has added it to my “frequently visited” site list.

    → 9:00 PM, Sep 29
  • Fairly sure that if I get an Apple Watch it will be the 40mm version. Fortunately my local Apple Store is out so I am saved from serious consideration. (My local Apple Store is the Apple Park Visitor Center. No, really.)

    → 5:17 PM, Sep 29
  • Got a new permanent crown and I am pretty sure I should have asked for anesthetic. Lunch today will be Advil.

    → 1:54 PM, Sep 28
  • I suspect the XR will be better at taking tiki bar shots like this, but the 6 is still game.

    → 9:10 PM, Sep 22
  • Hm. My iPhone claims to have 95% battery health, but today its power level stayed mysteriously at 100% for hours then it abruptly shut off without warning. Twice. On the second reboot, it went into “power management” mode.

    → 7:51 PM, Sep 21
  • I really like my Airpods, but I feel like I should listen to my iPhone with wired headphones while I still have a headphone jack.

    → 5:06 PM, Sep 21
  • Frustrations with “Personal Hotspot” may yet be what drives me to buy a cellular model of iPad next purchase cycle.

    → 1:47 PM, Sep 21
  • I’m strangely tempted to go back to Sublime Text as my editor of choice. For all its weirdness, it’s really fast, and I still don’t think I want an IDE for most work.

    → 11:12 PM, Sep 20
  • Another afternoon working at my favorite inexplicably pretty business park.

    → 6:45 PM, Sep 20
  • That should have been “Lime” scooter, of course. I didn’t catch autocorrect changing it to “Lomé,” but that’s a really fascinating substitution choice. Anyway: I rode the same Lime Scooter back, so 2.2 miles total, in under half the time walking would have taken. 🛴👍

    → 3:07 PM, Sep 18
  • This is the longest ride I’ve taken on a Lomé scooter, over a mile in nine minutes—most of it on the Guadalupe River Trail, which made it safe and fast. Pretty fun!

    → 2:18 PM, Sep 18
  • It may be time for me to say goodbye to my old friend SpamSieve. As useful as it was, in the last year only 11 spam messages got past Gmail/iCloud to SpamSieve’s filters…and it classified 7 of those incorrectly (4 false positives and 3 false negatives).

    → 12:52 PM, Sep 16
  • I’ve been thinking strongly about getting a new car in a few months, even though I could keep my 2010 Mazda 3 (with 136K miles) a few more years. I think it’s in part because I have income for a big downpayment now and my job history has trained me to assume that’s ephemeral.

    → 9:08 PM, Sep 15
  • I think I am going to get an iPhone XR. Possibly in coral. Still not sure about finally breaking down and getting an Apple Watch, though.

    → 8:20 PM, Sep 14
  • “One of the descriptions and labels that we had in the past that I always despised was microblogging," Jack Dorsey says, going on to demonstrate he has no idea what microblogging is.

    → 12:46 PM, Sep 14
  • Apple's topsy-turvy iPhone lineup

    I started thinking about this yesterday, and originally was going to say crazy, as in irrationally expensive. William Schuth expresses this well:

    My strategy had been to buy the mid-tier spec of the best iPhone offered. My iPhone 6S Plus cost me $849 at launch; the mid-tier XS Max is $1,249. That’s a whole Apple Watch worth of price inflation in three years.

    The more I think about it, though, the more I think it’s not as simple as “Apple jacked up the price of the best phone a lot.” They did do that, no question. But they also made the “less-best” phones a lot better. In the iPhone 6, 6S and 7 years, the calculation was pretty straightforward:

    • Get the normal model
    • Pay extra for the Plus model, which got you a bigger screen, bigger battery, and better camera

    Last year, though, the calculation changed a little:

    • Get the normal model (iPhone 8)
    • Pay extra for the iPhone 8 Plus, which got you a bigger screen, bigger battery, and better camera
    • Pay even more for the iPhone X, which got you Face ID, an OLED screen, a bigger battery, the Plus’s camera, and an edge-to-edge screen bigger than the iPhone 8 but not as big as the iPhone 8 Plus

    This year, though, things are even weirder. All of these phones now have Face ID and an edge-to-edge screen. So:

    • Get the presumably normal model, the iPhone XS, which is “iPhone X with some bumps” (like most “S” model years)
    • Pay extra for the iPhone XS Max, which gets you a bigger screen and bigger battery (but the same camera)
    • Pay less for the iPhone XR, which still gets you a bigger screen and bigger battery than the iPhone XS, but drops back to an LCD screen and a slightly worse camera

    So while Schuth’s heuristic ostensibly leads to the $1,249 XS Max, this isn’t the same scenario as we had with the iPhone 6, 6S and 7 where the difference between normal and Plus was obvious, nor is it like last year’s scenario, where the iPhone 8 and iPhone X were starkly different. This year, you have to really want that OLED screen and dual lens camera to make the XS worth it, and you have to really want the Galaxy Note-sized screen to make the XS Max worth it. In many (albeit not all) ways, the XR is the true successor to the Plus versions of years past, and it’s priced like it. The mid-tier XR is $849.

    I wonder how this is going to affect iPhone sales next year. Does the ASP go up, because of the Max, or down, because of the XR? I’m betting the latter is at least possible. Unlike the iPhone 8 vs. the iPhone X, the XR provides a huge chunk of the ooh cool new shiny of the iPhone X, it’s available in unique colors, and it’s not a grimace-inducing price. (Well, no more than the Plus phones were, at the least.)

    This is my upgrade year (I’m on an iPhone 6, no “S”), and it’s going to be a tough decision for me.

    → 2:20 PM, Sep 13
  • Poking more at a lightweight RSS syncing idea by practicing “documentation-driven development,” i.e., writing docs before any code. (Yes, I am a technical writer, why do you ask?)

    → 2:37 AM, Sep 13
  • To my mild surprise, the cheapest new iPhone (the XR) is only $100 more than the cheapest new iPhone four years ago—and bigger with 4x the storage. Make of that what you will; it kind of derails a longer post I was trying to formulate, though.

    → 8:29 PM, Sep 12
  • Apple has actually already designed iPhones with Face ID without notches. They’re just waiting for more Android phones to adopt it, so they can switch later and be like, “Notches? That’s so 2017, dudes.”

    → 2:56 PM, Sep 12
  • Couldn’t help but notice that in the introduction video for the Apple presentation, the runner with the briefcase asks Siri for directions, then realizes they’re wrong and ignores them. 🤔

    → 1:05 PM, Sep 12
  • Hearing “your book made me cry” is a great and touching compliment, yet I feel just a little like a monster for thinking Yay! about it.

    → 6:14 PM, Sep 11
  • Giving Feedbin a try in spite of myself. They definitely have the best web app for an RSS reader; still not sure whether they’re the right “fit” for me, though, given that I prefer reading through native apps.

    → 1:02 PM, Sep 11
  • Went back to look at the codebase for an old story/magazine code I’d worked on six years ago, and discovered it was a Laravel PHP app rather than the Django app I’d remembered. Huh.

    → 11:42 AM, Sep 11
  • Hmm. Feedbin seems neat, but it’s 3⨉ the cost of Feed Wrangler—that just seems like a lot if you use it primarily as a feed syncing service rather than a web front end.

    → 6:52 PM, Sep 10
  • I’m on an eternal but slow quest to find great monospaced fonts, especially for coding and terminal use. Recently been giving Apple’s San Francisco Mono a serious try and I’m surprised at how much I like it.

    → 12:38 PM, Sep 10
  • At this point, sort of waiting for Elon Musk to buy a hotel in Vegas and live in the penthouse, watching The Martian on endless repeat

    → 8:30 PM, Sep 7
  • Kind of want to make a long random drive around the North Bay tomorrow, although that may be somewhat at odds with “must write frantically to catch up with other project.”

    → 1:25 PM, Sep 7
  • Now I am going to deal with vague FOMO feels due to missing #xoxofest. Perhaps I can start a #xoxofomo tag. (Perhaps I shouldn’t.)

    → 11:59 PM, Sep 6
  • Ah, I can tell I’m getting old: two pints of beer—well, technically eight four-ounce pours—drunk over three hours is making me feel a touch light-headed. It’s kind of a shame I’ve developed a serious appreciation for craft beer just in the last couple of years…

    → 9:31 PM, Sep 6
  • Also: while I don’t think I’d describe myself as a Burt Reynolds “fan,” his passing feels strangely like a coda on a particular Hollywood era, doesn’t it? I kinda feel like I should watch “Smokey and the Bandit” again. (For the first time in, like, 25 years.)

    → 9:19 PM, Sep 6
  • Thinking more about my departed friend. I was virtually his political opposite: I’m decidedly left-of-center; he was a conspiratorial-minded libertarian. Trying to understand his worldview shaped my novel Kismet and its not so conspiratorial, but still libertarian, future.

    → 9:05 PM, Sep 6
  • Sending mail from Drafts written in Markdown on the iPad feels like an “achievement unlocked” moment, somehow.

    → 8:25 PM, Sep 6
  • A friend I’ve known almost entirely online died “unexpectedly and peacefully” (quoting from the obituary) last week. Only the obit as confirmation, but the details match too precisely. This puts me in a reflective mood, yet I’m not sure quite what to reflect on.

    → 5:57 PM, Sep 6
  • This seems like such a Santa Cruz way to serve coffee.

    → 4:19 PM, Sep 6
  • I’ve tried several iPhone camera apps over the years that save photos to their own libraries. Now I’m trying to extract everything worth saving from them, and probably need to get serious about using iCloud Photos. And my long-languishing “real” camera.

    → 1:56 PM, Sep 6
  • And, MarsEdit is now set up to work with my Micro.blog. Final, big step for later: moving my existing web site to a static site generator (or going absurdly homebrew and doing it all in pure HTML).

    → 2:15 AM, Sep 6
  • Finally setting up a custom domain for my microblog, now at microblog.coyotetracks.org — this may become my main journal in a future web site redesign. (Yes, I’ll see about making it SSL.)

    → 10:45 AM, Sep 5
  • I wonder if maybe Mastodon needs a little FidoNet in it: just enough hierarchy and agreed-upon process that it’s more resistant to both mob rule and fiefdoms, without losing much of its independent nature.

    → 7:38 PM, Sep 3
  • Hmm: www.bloomberg.com/news/arti…

    → 8:07 PM, Aug 31
  • Giving Readdle’s “Calendars” app a try for the iPad. I love Fantastical on both Mac and iPhone, but on the iPad, it’s always been a bit off for me.

    → 1:24 PM, Aug 31
  • One of the things apparently broken in the current iOS 12 beta: knowing whether there’s a new iOS 12 beta available. Every few minutes I get a modal dialog box reading “There is a new iOS 12 beta available. Please update.” Spoiler: there is not a new beta available.

    → 11:00 PM, Aug 30
  • Hmm. Social Policy (the cafe in San Jose of semi-fame from WWDC) has shifted their hours to be breakfast and lunch only, closing at 2pm weekdays and 3pm weekends. Hard not to see this as a bad sign.

    → 5:12 PM, Aug 29
  • It’s refreshing how fast it is to catch up on Mastodon and Micro.blog. I know that’s in part a function of how comparatively few folks I follow, but it’s also a cultural difference, I think. Also, I think Micro.blog’s deliberate lack of boosts/retweets is a wise choice.

    → 11:03 AM, Aug 28
  • While I’m not a major country fan, I think I like Kenny Chesney’s new album, “Songs for the Saints,” in a mostly unironic fashion.

    → 9:28 PM, Aug 27
  • I’m again wondering whether an updated 12" MacBook would be an ideal travel computing device for me, or if the rumored 11" iPad Pro would be a better upgrade.

    → 6:01 PM, Aug 27
  • I’m surprised at how difficult it is for me to decide between “highly adjustable arms” and “no arms” for a new office chair I’m years overdue buying.

    → 7:13 PM, Aug 24
  • Oddly reminded by @imyke that I might as well go back to Twitterrific again, given that the features that most kept me in Tweetbot are now dead.

    → 2:35 AM, Aug 24
  • Hm. On a lark, I went to the Soylent drink web site, and their messaging has markedly shifted—it’s more conventional, in a good way. Can’t help but suspect their new CEO decided “cryptolibertarian engineer” wasn’t the market they needed to be laser-focused on.

    → 12:27 PM, Aug 22
  • Ah yes, you know your nasal passages are completely blocked when you can’t taste a “Fisherman’s Friend” cough drop.

    → 11:44 AM, Aug 22
  • A ramification of Mastodon’s design that’s not true of either Twitter or Micro.blog: it’s possible for admins of other instances to break your social graph by blacklisting your instance (or removing it from a whitelist).

    → 12:59 AM, Aug 21
  • I think I’m slowly convincing myself I should buy the cellular model of the iPad next time around.

    → 4:54 PM, Aug 20
  • One not-so-obvious advantage I’m noticing that Micro.blog has over Mastodon: client apps. Mastodon clients that I’ve seen generally have that, hmm, “open source UX” feel to them.

    → 12:25 PM, Aug 20
  • I’d intended to stop for a donut, but the line at Stan’s is so long I am getting a bagel next door instead. They’re both bread products of similar shape, right?

    → 1:32 PM, Aug 18
  • A stranger at WorldCon just asked me if I’m an author and if I wrote Kismet. This will make my afternoon slightly brighter.

    → 3:38 PM, Aug 17
  • WorldCon makes me feel young. By which I mean most of the attendees are older than I am.

    → 7:58 PM, Aug 16
  • Interesting anecdata: I’ve been on Mastodon for a year, give or take. Out of 23 followers, 10 of them followed in the last 24 hours.

    → 12:16 PM, Aug 16
  • I’m also moving back to Apple’s own iOS mail client for a while, although I’m immediately reminded of one of its annoyances: they seem to make it unnecessarily hard to delete messages rather than archiving them.

    → 5:37 PM, Aug 12
  • After much faffing around, I have settled on the very old school MailMate. It turns out that it is just way faster for me to triage email with it than “modern” clients.

    → 5:10 PM, Aug 12
  • Okay, I guess this explains why I feel this is an unusually warm evening

    → 9:06 PM, Aug 9
  • Vox’s Aja Romano: “Twitter is at a moral crossroads—and choosing the wrong path.” www.vox.com/2018/8/8/…

    → 3:19 PM, Aug 8
  • Unexpected good tech nerd news: Bluesound, NAD’s sister company who make my receiver’s streaming service integration, is an AirPlay 2 partner, and may actually get Apple Music integration. (AP2 isn’t available for it yet, though.)

    → 1:55 PM, Aug 8
  • One fascinating bit, at least to old-timers like me: this receiver has no radio tuner in it.

    → 10:51 PM, Aug 4
  • Pretty sure if I suggest how much difference the new amp appears to make, a bunch of angry objectivists will link me to 38 separate reddit threads “proving” that no change in any part of any audio system ever makes any difference, but: holy cats.

    → 9:12 PM, Aug 4
  • Bonus: the hi-fi store I am picking my receiver up at is just down the block from Bitters + Bottles, so I can pick up the liquor I will need after trying to hook this thing up.

    → 4:05 PM, Aug 4
  • Ok, the touring ELO is an entirely new group except for Jeff Lynne. And they’re really tight. It was a terrific show.

    → 2:44 AM, Aug 3
  • I see you, person over there with the “Resist Corporate Coffee” sticker on their laptop, as we both sit here working at this Starbucks

    → 4:02 PM, Aug 2
  • I have fled my apartment on my WFH day due to fire alarm testing, and have ended up at one of the last remaining Chevy’s Tex-Mex locations in the area, probably out of misplaced nostalgia.

    → 2:34 PM, Aug 2
  • So apparently Magic Leap looked at the universally-derided “honeycomb” UI for the Apple Watch and said, “Yes! That’s what AR needs!” 😑 venturebeat.com/2018/07/2…

    → 4:42 PM, Aug 1
  • I’ve had the vague plans to write my own general-purpose blogging engine for months, but I’m wondering whether I should (a) give up and try Hugo, or (b) do something hacky that’s very much “scratch your own itch.”

    → 11:00 PM, Jul 31
  • Not unrelated to the last post: I will soon have a Marantz SR4002 A/V receiver available. It was great for its time, although since it’s neither modern nor vintage, it may fall into “free to good home” territory today.

    → 8:10 PM, Jul 28
  • Finally pulling the switch on ordering a new A/V receiver. Now I can worry about whether it was a good idea for a week!

    → 4:53 PM, Jul 28
  • Eater described a new National Geographic show as “Gordon Ramsay Hopes to Teach Locals How to Cook Their Own Food,” but the original article doesn’t really come across that way to me.

    → 3:39 PM, Jul 27
  • An interesting IndieWeb-ish article: ActivityPub could be the future. I continue to be mildly concerned that two separate indie ecosystems seem to be developing around this, though.

    → 1:10 PM, Jul 27
  • BBEdit has removed Kite support. It is truly the end of an era. (Narrator: it is not.)

    → 12:19 PM, Jul 26
  • I love living in a progressive state, but I confess when I go out to eat a stubborn part of me thinks “you can have my plastic straws when you pry them from my cold, dead hands”

    → 11:18 PM, Jul 25
  • I’ve been using FeedHQ for RSS feeds and I’m happy with it, but it doesn’t have a lot of app support. Thinking about moving back to Feed Wrangler so I can move back to Unread on iOS.

    → 4:06 PM, Jul 25
  • While I’d love to assume Twitter’s “New developer requirements to protect our platform” aren’t the final nail in the coffin for third-party clients, I can’t.

    → 4:37 PM, Jul 24
  • Bucket list goal: live to see one of my stories adapted for television by Bryan Fuller, and take bets on how soon before the premiere he exits the project

    → 4:25 PM, Jul 22
  • I’m not really a huge superhero movie/comics fan, but it’s nonetheless refreshing that the DC “cinematic universe” seems to be shaking off the Snyder.

    → 6:10 PM, Jul 21
  • Now that I’ve cancelled a trip I’d been waffling about for financial reasons, I can take the money it would have cost and spend it on something trivial to make me feel better about not going! Wait, that’s not how it’s supposed to work, is it?

    → 1:47 AM, Jul 20
  • As much as I like mechanical keyboards, it’s time for me to get rid of many of the ones I’ve collected—if for no other reason than I need to start clearing out some space so I’ll feel less guilty if I upgrade my AV system later this year. (It doesn’t make sense. I know.)

    → 10:54 PM, Jul 18
  • My science fiction novel Kismet got a (positive!) micro-review from Cat Rambo. 📚

    → 2:32 PM, Jul 18
  • I…kind of think I can hear the difference between a multibit DAC and a delta-sigma DAC. I’m not sure if it’s good or bad that I have no practical way to do a blind comparison.

    → 10:49 PM, Jul 17
  • …although I’ll make a counter-argument to myself: it’s not impossible Apple will update the MacBook soon just to put in the new keyboard, and that might come with either minor spec updates or price drops. So…hmm.

    → 8:22 PM, Jul 16
  • Hmm. It doesn’t look like Intel actually has any processors that could replace the ones in the current 12" MacBook; there are no 8th gen 4.5-watt Cores. So any 2018 updates will have to be, well, other bits, which Apple historically rarely bothers with.

    → 8:03 PM, Jul 16
  • I’ve been using an iPad Pro as my “secondary” computer. But I’m considering the 12" MacBook if it gets an update I can live with. I love the iPad’s portability, but—despite the popular narrative—I don’t think it’s as good as a Mac for writers.

    → 1:25 PM, Jul 16
  • Waiting for a seat at a restaurant called “The Waffle Experience.” I feel like that name promises too much, but we’ll see.

    → 3:13 PM, Jul 15
  • Why is the “folding outline” view for files and nested documents basically absent on iOS? The way you have to navigate between, say, documents in different subfolders in Scrivener or Ulysses, or in the Files app, is notably more cumbersome on the iPad than on the Mac.

    → 2:57 PM, Jul 14
  • I’m not sure if the free breakfast buffet at this hotel is worth the price.

    → 12:05 PM, Jul 14
  • For some reason, making any decisions about the trip to Portland for XOXO is like pulling teeth. I investigate this hotel, that hotel, this Airbnb, over and over. I waffle about the day to fly in and the day to fly out.

    Maybe this is my subconscious trying to tell me that this is really not what I want to do, that I don’t need to try to test out whether I connect well with that group, with a new tribe, less than a month after I’ll be with a tribe I already belong to at the San Jose WorldCon. That’s going to suck up a lot of energy and attention. Another intense event that quickly afterward may honestly be asking too much of myself.

    (…which, of course, makes me rather wish I hadn’t cancelled my hotel for the Worldcon today on the grounds that, hey, I’m local, and I’ll probably need the money for Portland.)

    → 1:28 AM, Jul 12
  • I’m finding myself juggling “leisure finances” to justify going to XOXO. Portland hotels are as expensive as Silicon Valley; I’m tempted to stay up by the airport and ride light rail in. (I wonder if this is some kind of guilt over having a high income this year…)

    → 10:47 PM, Jul 11
  • I’m starting to tell how much I need the staycation “brain recharge” this weekend. I’m spending an inordinate amount of time waffling over relatively small decisions relating to upcoming travel.

    → 12:27 PM, Jul 11
  • So Spark for iOS mixes and matches my subject lines, and Airmail is apparently incapable of deleting attachments in replies. Awesome. Either I wait for one or the other to get its act together, or—hey, you know what works? Apple Mail.

    → 3:57 PM, Jul 10
  • Okay, I’m being weak and going to McCormick & Schmick’s happy hour for dinner. If you’re in town for a convention in San Jose, this is a good cheat to know about.

    → 8:42 PM, Jul 9
  • The AirPods case scratches very easily. Mine looks like more like I’ve had it a year, not two weeks—I’ll have to be more careful if I carry this in my pocket!

    → 4:22 PM, Jul 9
  • Hmm. This is the first year I have been selected for buying an XOXO Festival pass, and I’m finsing myself going, “…okay, but should I?”

    → 12:50 PM, Jul 9
  • I’m not an “inbox zero” kind of person, but it’s definitely nice to get down to a dozen or so messages instead of several hundred.

    → 2:11 PM, Jul 7
  • A lot of folks have an, ah, less than high opinion of Gawker, but several of their sites used to be terrific, and it’s depressing how badly they’ve been managed since they were bought by Univision. Who’d have thought I’d have missed Nick Denton?

    → 10:29 PM, Jul 6
  • The Kon-Tiki in Oakland is steadily climbing in my estimation as a terrific tiki bar.

    → 9:17 PM, Jul 5
  • Switching back to Airmail from Spark for a bit. I have been seeing very weird behavior from Spark with subject line handling, which is worrisome. Spark also doesn’t play well with Keyboard Maestro on the Mac. (We’ll see if Airmail does better; I haven’t tested yet!)

    → 6:42 PM, Jul 4
  • Minor followup musing: it’s odd to find myself mildly defending and even dabbling with “modern” PHP again, given that maintaining PHP helped drive me into technical writing.

    → 6:53 PM, Jul 3
  • As the years go by, “look at crazy things PHP does when you run code explicitly designed to show off crazy things PHP does!” feels ever more wearying than useful.

    → 6:36 PM, Jul 3
  • I want an Instant Pot, but I need to get way better about grocery shopping. I kind of like cooking—I kind of hate taking the time to go to the market. (And I’m loathe to pull the trigger on Blue Apron, as many fans as I know it has.)

    → 12:30 AM, Jul 3
  • Running Visual Studio Code in Vim emulation mode: weird, but kind of neat. Code is far and away my best example of “Electron app that doesn’t suck.” Anyone know any others? (Atom is “close but no cigar” for me.)

    → 1:05 PM, Jul 1
  • Followup: the tiki bar is playing all Yacht Rock tonight. I think if I ever open my post-retirement tiki beach bar in Florida somewhere, it will have this soundtrack.

    → 10:28 PM, Jun 29
  • Nilsson’s “Coconut” is not period authentic for tiki but I think we have to allow it on a technicality.

    → 9:11 PM, Jun 29
  • I’ve considered removing my main Twitter account from my phone before, but I’ve finally pulled the plug. In the current news cycle, it’s starting to feel like self-harm. I may take this as an opportunity to shuffle around “pride of place” for social media apps across all my devices (i.e., dock position, enabled accounts, even which apps I’m using). We’ll see. For now, I’ll be trying to hang out more here on Micro.blog (if you’re reading this on Twitter, it’s being cross-posted from there).

    → 6:23 PM, Jun 29
  • Contemplating another random “staycation” weekend sometime in July. (I don’t know if driving the ~2 hours to Sacramento makes it too far for a staycation, technically, but hotels are so much cheaper there!)

    → 1:38 PM, Jun 29
  • Discovered yesterday that I accidentally ordered a “front print” keyboard, i.e., letters on the front side rather than tops of keycaps. I might keep it rather than send it back, though, as I’m realizing it doesn’t appreciably slow me down.

    → 2:00 PM, Jun 28
  • Ordered a second KBParadise Matias Quiet Click keyboard, so I can have one at the office and one at home. My favorite key switches in the layout I like, without the rather clunky styling of Matias’s own keyboards.

    → 11:35 AM, Jun 25
  • Tempting fate by eating Goldfish crackers while working on a MacBook Pro with a butterfly keyboard.

    → 7:21 PM, Jun 23
  • To my mild surprise, the AirPods sound quite decent if you put little foam rings around them to help seal the air gap (and keep them in your ears, if you have, purely hypothetically, a narow right ear canal that Apple’s *Pods design doesn’t play well with).

    → 8:46 PM, Jun 21
  • I’m sure BBEdit isn’t the only editor that can do “find all text files in this folder that do not contain ‘foo’ and do a separate multifile search-and-replace within the first search’s result set” in just two operations, but I’d be surprised if any others can do it as easily.

    → 7:48 PM, Jun 19
  • It’s kind of weird to have a lot of opinions about the direction for Siri that WWDC reveals that I can’t share due to being under NDA with a competitor. 🤐

    → 11:13 PM, Jun 14
  • My previous company has a new CEO who describes himself as a “general athlete and change agent.” Hard not to read this as “guy you hire to sell what’s left for parts.”

    → 4:07 PM, Jun 12
  • Every HN post that mentions engineering salaries in SV mentions ever-higher numbers. I’m not sure if my bemused and vaguely bitter reactions are more “why have I never made that much” or more “why is anyone making that much.”

    → 6:34 PM, Jun 11
  • I’ll probably be dropping by Haberdasher shortly after they open.

    → 7:34 PM, Jun 5
  • San Jose electric scooter tip: ride in the bike lane when one is available. Your ride will be faster and you won’t annoy pedestrians.

    → 4:32 PM, Jun 5
  • So the same day Microsoft announces they’re buying GitHub, Xcode 10 is released with GitLab integration. #hmm

    → 12:58 AM, Jun 5
  • In line for the Accidental Tech Podcast live show. Kind of wish I’d brought a Galaxy Note 8 just to casually have it out in line and attract incredulous stares.

    → 7:54 PM, Jun 4
  • Maybe this was a suboptimal time to go to Social Policy for a quick coffee break

    → 3:54 PM, Jun 4
  • Wondering if this keynote is going to end with “we’re out of time, but macOS remains a product in our lineup.” #WWDC

    → 2:27 PM, Jun 4
  • WWDC sure made traffic to my office in downtown San Jose fun this morning!

    → 12:47 PM, Jun 4
  • FYI for impending WWDC attendees: shared electric scooters are all over San Jose. Personally I’ve found they’re usually parked responsibly, but—particularly in the evenings, when it gets crowded around San Pedro Square—not always driven responsibly.

    → 3:45 PM, Jun 1
  • And my credit card is entirely paid off! (…except for the hotel bill that I ran up this month shut up okay)

    → 2:32 PM, Jun 1
  • The last SF Bay Area location of Gordon Biersch, an early craft brewpub chain that started in Palo Alto, is closing this weekend, right before WWDC. They’ve been a shell of their former self for years, but it’s still kinda sad. 🍻

    → 6:39 PM, May 30
  • The move to 1Password 7 seems like a good time to break down and switch to a subscription, but I have to seriously start reviewing my app/streaming/etc. subscription costs soon. (I remain unconvinced this is really a better model than new version upgrade pricing.)

    → 6:15 PM, May 30
  • I was going to get grumpy that daily writing goals weren’t syncing properly between Ulysses on iOS and macOS, then realized my iPad hadn’t been updated to the new Ulysses version. 😑

    → 1:48 PM, May 30
  • The banners are already starting to go up.

    → 7:24 PM, May 29
  • Would I start a brawl in Portland if I asserted that Blue Star is better than Voodoo? 🍩

    → 7:46 PM, May 27
  • Heading to Portland tomorrow for a convention, but the secret reason is to go to Hale Pele tomorrow evening.

    → 11:38 AM, May 23
  • I just walked past the security desk on the way out of my office building and it was unmanned, but the computer there has its web browser open to a page that read “search results for: unconditional love,” and I may have stepped into a sad postmodern comic novel

    → 5:34 PM, May 18
  • So is Beacon going to be a thing again for this upcoming WWDC?

    → 2:37 PM, May 18
  • Since I’ve moved my favorite mechanical keyboard to work, I want to buy another one for home. Starting to think I should just set out most of the rest of my mechanical keyboards on the sidewalk with a “free to good home” sign.

    → 1:09 PM, May 18
  • My “working remote Thursday” office is pretty nice today.

    → 6:00 PM, May 17
  • Off to work unduly remotely, I think.

    → 2:06 PM, May 17
  • TIL that country singer Eddie Rabbitt’s backing band was named “Hare Trigger.”

    → 4:33 PM, May 14
  • TIL Klout still existed.

    → 5:30 PM, May 11
  • Celebrating Cinco de Mayo at a cidery in Sacramento, as one does.

    → 6:16 PM, May 5
  • WWDC attendees: Il Fornaio in the Westin St. Claire is pretty darn good. (Although my Italian pronunciation is not.)

    → 11:49 PM, May 4
  • I would probably appreciate “dog-friendly” breweries more if I had a dog. To be fair, though, this brewery is unusually barky today.

    → 8:30 PM, May 3
  • Since my office is now three blocks from the San Jose convention center, I have no excuse not to ghost WWDC in the evenings.

    → 10:16 PM, May 2
  • Designing an SQLite schema WITH TRIGGERS like a madman.

    → 11:09 AM, May 2
  • It still feels like Working Copy, the iOS git client, just requires more steps to do things than macOS git clients do, but maybe I should just be pleased I can do it at all.

    → 6:27 PM, Apr 28
  • I keep debating whether my next iPad should finally be a cellular model. If it was only a $50–70 premium, it’d be a no-brainer, but $130 just feels like an awfully steep ask for the privilege of paying another $10 a month to add it to my cellular plan.

    → 12:58 PM, Apr 25
  • Holy cats, SmugMug bought Flickr.

    → 7:14 PM, Apr 20
  • It’s funny, but I’m just saying as a writer I take this as a challenge.

    → 9:29 PM, Apr 19
  • My allergy to dongles may drive me to buy a USB-B 3 to USB-C cable for work.

    → 7:27 PM, Apr 13
  • It’s strange how difficult it is to go back to any Cherry MX switch keyboard for me after getting used to the Matias switches. But I’ll try to give the CODE Green a fair shake again; I wrote most of a novel on this thing…

    → 2:07 AM, Apr 12
  • Every time I try running any Linux desktop distribution under VirtualBox, the performance is shockingly abysmal. Is it just VirtualBox?

    → 11:17 AM, Apr 11
  • Considering writing a “make a modern PHP web app without a framework” tutorial.

    → 3:33 PM, Apr 8
  • Now that I’m out on a day trip, ostensibly to sit down with the iPad and do some writing, my muse is like, “screw fiction, why don’t you write some code?” For which the iPad is…still suboptimal. (Yes, something something VPS with Vim or Emacs.)

    → 6:57 PM, Apr 7
  • First Tesla Model 3 I’ve seen in the wild. It is a pretty car.

    → 4:31 PM, Apr 7
  • This bar makes mai tais with Sailor Jerry spiced rum and they’re better than they really should be.

    → 9:12 PM, Apr 6
  • Wondering if maybe that idea I had for a turnkey “indieweb” microblogging app wasn’t so crazy after all.

    → 6:16 PM, Apr 6
  • A conversation yesterday left me with a question: how many of you who are using Amazon Alexa are using third-party skills regularly? And are they ones that you have to address by name (e.g., “Alexa, ask Foobar to…")?

    → 3:27 PM, Apr 4
  • Setting up @bbedit for work even though everyone else is using VS Code. Code is a great editor, but BBEdit is really hard to beat for huge Markdown-based doc sites.

    → 12:37 PM, Apr 3
  • Paying for a purchase on a web site using Apple Pay and Touch ID still feels just a little like magic.

    → 8:32 PM, Apr 1
  • Something I missed from earlier this month: Ghostery has gone open source. I’ve always liked them more than other ad blockers, and this may allay some concerns people have had about them—assuming they keep being developed, of course.

    → 7:25 PM, Mar 31
  • Now that I’m working for an AI-focused company, I have even less excuse not to get going on the sequel to Kismet…

    → 9:55 PM, Mar 28
  • I can’t say my first day back at an office in months was hard, since it’s all initiation so far, but it’s still time for a martini. 🍸

    → 9:22 PM, Mar 26
  • It is both good and very bad when the bartender keeps giving you free shots of interesting stuff.

    → 10:18 PM, Mar 22
  • I bought my 9.7" iPad Pro almost exactly two years ago, and was questioning the decision right out of the Apple Store. Now, I’m almost certain to replace it with the next 10.5" iPad Pro model—and I’m questioning why I’m keeping the MacBook Pro.

    → 4:11 PM, Mar 22
  • This is a great guide to rum types. Categorizing them as British, French and Spanish styles isn’t something I’d thought of before. www.babliquor.com/blogs/bot…

    → 3:23 PM, Mar 21
  • I keep forgetting that iOS has drag and drop now. When I remember, it reduces my frustration with tasks that involve more than one application at once (e.g., receiving a PDF form in email, filling it out, and sending it back) by at least 50%.

    → 3:08 PM, Mar 21
  • Off on another minor day trip, as I don’t expect to be able to do these during the week shortly. (For what should be good reasons.)

    → 12:37 PM, Mar 21
  • I have set Soulver’s display to Computer Modern Sans (of TeX fame), and it just makes everything feel more sciency.

    → 7:40 PM, Mar 19
  • The 2016 MBP is the only machine I’ve ever owned that I’ve kept a membrane skin over the keyboard on. It’s not pretty, but it actually feels a little better. And it’s a little quieter. And it might not die from dust. Do you SEE what you made me DO, Jony!?

    → 5:33 PM, Mar 16
  • Okay, time to admit defeat and archive articles that have been hanging around my Instapaper queue for over a year.

    → 12:22 PM, Mar 16
  • Torn between sensibly staying in, given the weather, and going out for the day anyway. Next week is likely to be my last week of unemployment—good, yet slightly bittersweet.

    → 12:10 PM, Mar 16
  • I’m rediscovering the joy of writing with the iPad and a Laptop Pro keyboard. I wish Matias would streamline it a little (there’s a lot of bezel it could lose), but it’s an absurdly comfortable setup, and the “Quiet Click” switches don’t attract glares.

    → 4:47 PM, Mar 14
  • “I won’t need to bring my umbrella with me,” I said. “What’s the chance of a heavy rain starting in the 20 minutes I’ll be in this restaurant,” I said.

    → 3:16 PM, Mar 14
  • There appears to be no place to get a Martinez cocktail in Martinez, California. What’s up with that?

    → 7:41 PM, Mar 11
  • Spotted in Lodi

    → 6:41 PM, Mar 9
  • For someone who only knows of Lodi, California from the CCR song, visiting the actual town is a little bit of a shock. You could be stuck in much worse places.

    → 6:21 PM, Mar 9
  • Trader Vic’s is going to be opening a new US location in 2020 in…the San Jose International Airport. Didn’t see that coming.🍹

    → 12:28 PM, Mar 9
  • Waze took an unnecessarily harrowing and convoluted route here, but at least it took me to a more expensive garage with a hidden pedestrian exit full of urine!

    → 9:48 PM, Mar 8
  • Noticing several folks at the company I was laid off from in September now show leaving the company in December on their LinkedIn profiles.

    → 2:15 PM, Mar 7
  • Whiskey. (And a little bit of other stuff.)

    → 9:32 PM, Mar 6
  • Remembering that Twitter lists are a useful way to mediate the firehose.

    → 10:29 PM, Mar 5
  • I don’t break out Dramatica Story Expert very often, but when I do, I always lament how such great—if eclectic—concepts are shackled to such a weird, klunky, outdated Mac app.

    → 1:44 AM, Mar 4
  • While I haven’t broken out the soud level meter, I have a suspicion that the “butterfly” switches in the MacBook Pro are at least as loud at the same distance as Matias Quiet Click mechanical keyboard switches.

    → 2:29 AM, Mar 3
  • I’m in a brewery in Berkeley with a metal roof, and it’s raining very hard outside. It’s a pleasant sound—natural white noise—if not precisely a relaxing one. (I wish I was a little closer to the heater, though…)

    → 8:34 PM, Mar 2
  • GasBuddy has accounted for 28% of my battery usage in the last 24 hours, which is interesting given that I haven’t opened it in days.

    → 3:41 PM, Mar 2
  • With the storms coming in, I wouldn’t think this would be a great day for golfing, but there are some diehards out here. (I am at the brewery overlooking the course. Yes, really.)

    → 7:39 PM, Feb 28
  • Mobius strip bench?

    → 4:27 PM, Feb 28
  • My novel Kismet was nominated for an Ursa Major Award! If you haven’t read it/heard of it, here’s more info. 📚

    → 2:05 PM, Feb 28
  • Given the oncoming storm, this afternoon is probably my last chance to head out anywhere for a few days.

    → 12:49 PM, Feb 28
  • I’m not sure I’m down with the way Elm’s style guide wants comma-delimited lists to be formatted…

    → 11:48 PM, Feb 27
  • Just confirmed that even the iMac has gotten rid of the digital optical out. That’s a little sad. (I’m actually using it with my speakers!)

    → 2:11 PM, Feb 27
  • Learning a bit of Elm for as yet undefined reasons. Apparently part of me wants to get back into programming…

    → 9:47 PM, Feb 25
  • Keyboard Maestro would be so much more useful if it wasn’t crashing daily. Hrm.

    → 3:21 PM, Feb 24
  • Sonoma County feels like it has nearly everything I love about the San Francisco Bay Area with very little of the “tech bro” stereotype that everyone (outside of the Bay Area) complains about.

    → 9:09 PM, Feb 23
  • While I’m still searching for work (and waiting on one callback), I can’t shake the feeling that I should be preparing for a move, that my time in California—over 15 years—is ending soon. I may be doing so many day trips because I don’t think I’ll get the chance much longer.

    → 1:32 PM, Feb 23
  • I’m updating the Elixir package for BBEdit for Elixir 1.6, and am going to try to make a concerted effort to use BBEdit for programming in it for a bit, so I can figure out what holes need to (and can be) filled.

    → 5:43 PM, Feb 21
  • The “emacs-plus” Homebrew tap is installing an OpenType text engine and the Rust language as dependencies. Um, what?

    → 7:58 PM, Feb 20
  • It feels like Ulysses has very bad performance if you’re entering text in the middle of even a fairly small document. I’ve noticed this on both Mac and iPad.

    → 7:33 PM, Feb 19
  • Okay, I’m impressed that Forbidden Island now has both the 1934 and 1950 Zombie recipes on their menu. (And they brought back the Lei Lani Volcano. 🥥❤️)

    → 9:41 PM, Feb 18
  • And the lens cover (or is it the actual lens?) on my iPad came off when I took it out of my keyboard case. Neat.

    → 4:39 AM, Feb 18
  • Back to tea from coffee, for which I can extremely indirectly blame @blankbaby and the New Mexico Tea Company. It’s a strangely fascinating shift. (I am not giving up coffee, mind you, just mellowing out for a while.)

    → 12:50 AM, Feb 18
  • I’ve had a lot of coffee stouts, but I’m pretty sure Fieldwork’s “Coffee & Milk” is the first coffee IPA I’ve ever seen. Interestingly, they went to Sacramento’s Chocolate Fish to get the coffee, rather than any of the SF area ones. (Fieldwork is based in Berkeley.)

    → 6:36 PM, Feb 17
  • Reminded that Monterey is a really fun town to hang out in.

    → 10:41 PM, Feb 16
  • Having a stout called “A Bay of Our Own,” brewed in Soquel, California, using caramel, salt from Monterey Bay, and malt from Alameda. Damn good.

    → 9:29 PM, Feb 16
  • I am at a brewpub in Monterey, and am surrounded by lawyers attending a “Capital Case Defense Seminar” here. Resisting the temptation to ask, “So, suppose I’d murdered someone, and claimed a unicorn told me to do it. How would you defend me?”

    → 9:11 PM, Feb 16
  • Medium continues to be a baffling publishing platform to me. Some posts of mine get thousands of reads, some get…dozens.

    → 3:08 PM, Feb 16
  • Having an Eight Bridges Brewing “Drenched in Hops,” which is surprisingly low in bitterness. 🍺

    → 10:08 PM, Feb 14
  • Eventually I am going to write a rant about why I find “if you’re not the customer, you’re the product” really annoying.

    → 3:27 AM, Feb 14
  • At an indie coffee bar hidden in a business park conference center, which all looks vaguely retrofuture, but from a good timeline, with comfortable chairs. The soundtrack seems to be exclusively acoustic, and mostly unplugged 1980s rock hits.

    → 5:26 PM, Feb 13
  • Apple said they’ve been working on the HomePod for 6 years. Tom Holman, the inventor of THX, went to work for Apple in 2011. 🤔

    → 5:38 PM, Feb 12
  • Ordering tea from the New Mexico Tea Company, in part because they’re still running a Star Trek Discovery discount for Incomparable listeners.🖖

    → 1:06 PM, Feb 12
  • I am very late to discover that Peet’s no longer sells their own teas, and instead carries Mighty Leaf now, although ML apparently has some of the old Peet’s blends.

    → 6:47 PM, Feb 11
  • I’ve ignored AnyList until now because I don’t need to share my shopping list with others, but I have to say even going solo, it’s a pretty slick app.

    → 3:38 PM, Feb 11
  • Note to self: the proper amount of beer for good writing is roughly two pints. It is definitely “more than one pint, but less than three pints”

    → 10:31 PM, Feb 9
  • I may be here a while.

    → 8:12 PM, Feb 9
  • I don’t have the resources for a one- or two-night staycation right now, but I can still pull off a day trip. Although I should leave a half-hour ago.

    → 1:24 PM, Feb 9
  • I know a Bitcoin ATM isn’t really an “only in Silicon Valley” thing, but it sure feels like it should be

    → 12:33 AM, Feb 8
  • So how much of a difference in practice is there between the 9.7" iPad Pro and the 10.5" one? Considering switching when the latter one gets its next update. (Assuming I’m employed, have money, so on, so forth.)

    → 8:31 PM, Feb 7
  • The unbearable glibness of tweeting

    The unbearable glibness of tweeting

    We love Twitter, but maybe we need some quiet time apart

    I still love Twitter. A lot of us still love Twitter. But it’s past time to admit it’s an abusive relationship. (“Yes, he hits me sometimes, but it’s only for the retweets.”)

    The common wisdom is that the Big Blue Bird’s problem is their lack of moderation, that the service is Exhibit A in the case against Silicon Valley’s belief that you can solve everything with algorithms. I think that’s some of it, but I don’t think it’s all of it. When your software becomes global community infrastructure, the choices reflected in your design have profound effects on behavior. It’s a choice, for instance, to offer no privacy controls other than “protecting” your account. That one choice alone is a large part of why Twitter is so hospitable to harassers: your only option for controlling who engages with you is flipping your entire feed between open and locked down, and — given that anyone you follow can inject anything into your timeline via retweet — aggressively curating not just who you follow, but who you allow retweets from.

    Here are some other choices Twitter’s made. “Favorites” are public accolades, not private bookmarks. Mechanisms for retweets and quote tweets are baked in. Official clients stream notifications about not just who favorited and retweeted you, but who favorited and retweeted your retweets. And let’s not even get into who gets verified and what verification offers. None of these choices are necessarily wrong in either a technical or moral sense. But they’ve created a culture that rewards painting everything in the starkest, loudest terms possible.

    There’s a metric crapton of political tweets across the partisan spectrum that I could point to, but as I was writing this piece, a bag of “Lady Doritos” dropped into my lap.

    PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi gave an interview to the Freakonomics podcast in which she observed that women ate Doritos differently than men did (“they don’t like to crunch too loudly in public”) and said the company was getting ready to launch “snacks for women that can be designed and packaged differently.” The Sun, a UK tabloid, reported this as “Doritos to launch crisps for WOMEN because they don’t like crunching loudly or licking their fingers, boss reveals.” This led to a veritable tortillanado of hot take tweets about snack food sexism.

    But wait! Then came the New York Times reporting “Not a Real Thing, Company New Says,” which quoted PepsiCo’s gently acerbic retort, “We already have Doritos for women. They’re called Doritos.” Snap! Fake news! Well, yes and no. The quotes from Ms. Nooyi in the last paragraph are true; Frito-Lay is working on “snacks for women,” whatever the hell that may mean. The fake news part — in the sense that the Sun came up with it, not Nooyi — was the existence of “Lady Doritos.” Gosh, what an outrage-inducing, easily hashtaggable name they invented! Surely that couldn’t have been their intent. Ha. Ha ha. As of this writing, we’re 48 hours into Chipghazi, and the Twitter trends are just starting to ebb.

    And this is a problem inherent in Twitter’s design that may not be solvable. Even if Twitter engineers could just go into the database and type DELETE FROM users WHERE is_nazi = 1, the software’s literally designed to reward superficial hot takes. It’s optimized for tweets that make you go “yeah, get those fuckers!” rather than tweets that make you go “hmm.”

    When was the last time you scrolled through your Twitter timeline and felt smarter, happier, and generally more at peace with the world?

    Mastodon and Micro.blog both propose that the solution to Twitter’s ills is decentralization. Mastodon has multiple “instances,” like Twitter servers, that each have their own rules and community guidelines. Because all the instances can interact with one another, you can follow any Mastodon user, not just the ones on your instance. Micro.blog is, if anything, more radical: a set of open standards that let good old fashioned weblogs interact with one another in Twitter-esque fashion. You can use it just like Twitter, but under the hood it’s using an RSS-like system to build your timeline. They can host your own (paid) micro.blog, which is a full-featured Jekyll install under the hood, but you could host your own blog wherever and on whatever software you want.

    So far, these solutions are working, but I’m worried that — particularly in Mastodon’s case — it’s not because they’ve chosen a more resilient design, it’s simply because the community is so much smaller. There’s less social reward for turning the volume on everything up to 11 when the audience is tiny. But Mastodon makes many of the same choices Twitter has, including favorites, quotes (“embeds”), and retweets (“boosts”), then stirs in the questionable belief that moderation issues are effectively moot under their federated server model.

    Micro.blog deliberately has no retweet mechanism. Favorites are just private bookmarks. As far as I can tell you can’t even get a list of followers. Unlike Mastodon, Micro.blog shows replies people make to people you aren’t following, the way Twitter did in its first couple of years. All this adds up to a surprisingly friendly, conversational timeline. (Also, Micro.blog’s first hire has been a community manager, which says a lot about their philosophy here.) But as I alluded above, if you want to use it just like Twitter — i.e., no work on your part — you need to pay them to host your blog. They’re looking at it as a turnkey blog hosting service, but if it’s perceived as “like Twitter but with less features for $5 a month,” that’s a problem.

    Yet both Micro.blog and Mastodon are just…nicer. I think Micro.blog is the better of the two, in no small part for the UX choices they’ve made that are explicitly the opposite of both Twitter and Mastodon, but Mastodon’s free nature gives it the potential to grow further. Either way, though, both of them have one huge advantage: they’ve seen the shitshow that’s turned Twitter into a Dead Bird Walking, and they can say, “You know what? Let’s not do that.”

    → 4:50 PM, Feb 7
  • Hot take: micro.blog is refreshingly free of hot takes.

    → 9:36 PM, Feb 6
  • It occurs to me that I cannot name a single song by Justin Timberlake. 🏈

    → 9:25 PM, Feb 4
  • Wearing my Upgrade All-Stars Brainball tee for the Superb Owl today.

    → 5:18 PM, Feb 4
  • Huh. Steak N' Shake closed both of their SF Bay Area locations after less than a year (only four months for one). Where will I go for okay lots of other places, seriously.

    → 4:24 PM, Feb 3
  • Considering going more old-school for a personal carry device

    → 2:43 PM, Feb 3
  • Okay, I’m apparently actually kvetching about the “new editor” that is not Gutenberg on WordPress.com. Carry on.

    → 8:32 PM, Feb 1
  • Am I missing something, or is WordPress’s new “Gutenberg” editor incapable of switching to a pure HTML view?

    → 8:28 PM, Feb 1
  • I’m quite aware it’s bad to drink in order to be happier, which makes it all the more annoying that it works so well

    → 10:56 PM, Jan 31
  • Okay: if I ever get to take South Bay friends to a taproom that they’re going to say is irrationally far away, The Rake is going to be an excellent choice. (With Alameda’s other cafes/restaurants lurking nearby, to boot.)

    → 9:28 PM, Jan 31
  • At “The Rake,” a new taproom at Admiral Maltings, a new craft malt maker in Alameda—all the beers are craft brews made with their malt. I can’t say if it’s the malt that’s doing it, but so far these have been really good beers.

    → 8:17 PM, Jan 31
  • I occasionally poke back at PHP, and it feels like the rise of its package ecosystem makes “kitchen sink” web frameworks superfluous. Put a router, templates, and (if you must) an ORM in composer.json, and…you’re pretty much 90% of the way there.

    → 3:55 PM, Jan 31
  • I kind of like “smooth jazz radio” as background music, but either Apple Music only knows five tracks, or there are only five smooth jazz songs and they’re just re-released under hundreds of names. Both seem equally plausible, really.

    → 1:34 PM, Jan 30
  • I’m feeling more like I should strike out on my own, but that’s a scary prospect. Little cushion to fall back on and, honestly, little in the way of burning ideas (at least ones that are likely to bring in much income). But. Hmm.

    → 1:19 PM, Jan 30
  • Starting to seriously wonder if I can make it out here anymore.

    → 11:05 PM, Jan 29
  • People say that the iPad is better for writing because it’s “distraction-free,” but I’m proud to report that I’m just as easily distracted by crap using the iPad as I am when using a Mac.

    → 7:58 PM, Jan 29
  • Off to Acre Coffee in East Petaluma because, uh, coffee? (At times I really think I should have tried to get a job as a food or travel writer…)

    → 6:34 PM, Jan 29
  • I like the food at HopMonk Tavern here in Novato, but I don’t think they need to keep the dining area at cellar temperature. Yow.

    → 5:56 PM, Jan 29
  • I am sad that I can’t buy a bottle of Elkhorn Slough Brewing’s “Pirate Moon,” a roasted walnut honey wheat wine aged in a rum barrel. All of you need to just come down here and try it. Seriously.

    → 8:29 PM, Jan 27
  • For my second drink at Pagan Idol, a Jet Pilot! Also my last drink. They’re—not light.

    → 8:54 PM, Jan 26
  • Okay, it’s “catch up on email day.” Well, at least morning.

    → 1:10 PM, Jan 26
  • I should be working on “homework” for a prospective job, but between car woes and fiction editing angst, I’m completely discombobulated tonight. Maybe reading and thinking on the homework is enough for tonight…

    → 12:03 AM, Jan 22
  • Outside a coffee shop in Walnut Creek.

    → 7:59 PM, Jan 19
  • Starting—well, five chapters into—BORDERLINE by Mishell Baker. I haven’t dug into a great (award-nominated, even) urban fantasy book in years. 📚

    → 2:18 PM, Jan 19
  • Hmm. I think my dilemma is that it’s so privileged to be able to say “I, a currently unemployed person, am going to pass on this opportunity because I don’t want to work for your company specifically” that it feels uncomfortable to even imply it.

    → 3:23 PM, Jan 18
  • While I alluded to this the other day, I’m finding myself struggling with whether to pursue a nice position at a company that I’m not a big fan of. I think I’m slowly talking myself into giving it a pass, but it’s honestly a scary thought.

    → 2:09 PM, Jan 18
  • I need to dissuade myself of the notion that a modest amount of grocery shopping counts as a day’s work.

    → 8:58 PM, Jan 17
  • It’s strange to have a company tentatively more interested in me than the reverse. (I have never been that good about being selective.)

    → 3:27 PM, Jan 16
  • It may be time to go off and be rechargingly antisocial for a bit.

    → 3:17 PM, Jan 16
  • As part of a desire to simplify in 2018, I’m going back to iTunes and my Mac’s speakers. And…iTunes isn’t that bad? It’s not great, it’s arguably gotten worse over the years, but it’s just not the shitshow I was kinda expecting.

    → 4:24 PM, Jan 6
  • Let’s see how much my productivity goes up when I quit the Twitter app!

    → 6:56 PM, Jan 5
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