It has been a busy year, but I’m still around. We finished construction of our house last November and are pretty much settled in. There is still some work to do in the basement - and we’ll probably be spending the summer wrapping that up.
In other news, I’ve been learning SwiftUI and have been working on my first app for Apple Vision Pro! It has been a fun, challenging, experience and I can’t wait to release it soon.
I guess Twitter is my main topic here, or X I mean, since that’s definitely what it is maybe called now? Honestly I should probably just stop giving Elon and his antics any attention.
2024 Ferrari Purosangue Review: A Worthy Supercar, Now in Family Size
🎶 “If I had a million dollars” 🎶
Some people might hate this thing. But…. I just love it. It looks great, it’s practical, and it’s fast.
GM’s Ultium Plant Workers Refused to Work Over Battery Safety Fears - Bloomberg
If this equipment is anything like the stuff I worked on while I was at a battery plant I definitely understand the concerns. Operators would need to run equipment with doors open and safety locks removed in order to keep things running as fast as the company needed. The machines were also built overseas and never really met the safety requirements of OSHA. Now I’m grateful to work for an automation builder and would never ship anything like what I saw at my previous job.
Porsche expands Apple CarPlay connectivity that includes climate controls - The Verge
While I'm waiting for the "future" of CarPlay that Apple teased ages ago (ok, I guess it was late year), Porsche is adding some really cool shortcuts to their CarPlay app to control the car without leaving CarPlay. Great to see some automakers embrace CarPlay while GM is abandoning it...
A South Park meme may have inspired Hello Kitty Island Adventure - Polygon
It’s not clear why the developers would decide to call back the old joke now, nor has the team confirmed the connection between the new game and South Park
Incredible
With the recent launch of Threads I thought this would be a good time to go over the social apps that I’m currently using along with what my current Home Screen looks like.
I use two messaging apps, iMessage for most chats (of course) and Telegram for a few group messages between friends without iPhones (of course…).
Similarly, I use two photo apps. Instagram is where I post iPhone and “real” camera photos for friends and family and anyone else who feels like following me. Those posts also forward to Facebook which I don’t really use for anything else. I’m also on Glass where I look for inspiration from other photographers and share a smaller selection of my favorite shots.
Next up is Discord. I initially joined a weird variety of discord servers as part of a few Patreon perks but I primarily spend time on a private server of people that met elsewhere before forming their own community. It’s a great space and everyone is very comfortable discussing pretty much any topic - and it’s where I’ve developed some of my closest friendships online.
Finally, the one that started this train of thought… Threads. Before Threads I was on Twitter for 16 years. From high school to post-college. Twitter Jack was definitely the weirdest Jack most likely due to the time periods that I was there for. Once that started falling apart I jumped ship for Mastodon in late 2022. Mastodon is a cool concept with a lot of great intentions but I struggled to find people to follow and missed a lot of groups and individuals that I had followed on Twitter. Threads definitely solved that problem with the sheer quantity of users that immediately flocked there and it was almost too easy to follow people since it imports directly from Instagram and immediately started suggesting a lot of the same people that I had on Mastodon and Twitter. It’s definitely the popular place now, we’ll just see if it lasts.
So what’s on my Home Screen? I’ve got two widget locations. A stack with Weather and Box Box (a Formula 1 app) on top and Fantastical off to the side. From there I have a lot of the standard apps and all of the ones I mentioned above. Safari, Photos, Maps, Telegram, Discord, Drafts (where I’m typing this), Instagram, Glass, Reeder, and Matter. My dock currently consists of Music, Messages, Mail, and Threads.
Meta unspools Threads - by Casey Newton - Platformer
An excellent interview going over the purpose and status of Threads. I’ll be keeping a close eye on how this evolves.
A month later and I’m still left in awe and with many questions about Apple Vision Pro. It feels like a new type of computing and it could be the next big thing, but it could also be a total flop. The technology looks incredible, but it also seems like it’ll be isolating and not something I’d want to use around other poeple. The EyeSight display looks creepy, but it could feel natural in real use. The price is absolutely ridiculous, but they’ll make it more affordable eventually. I’m skeptical, but I am very very excited to try it out. This might be the future.
Today I’ve been playing around with Threads a lot. I have a lot of concerns about it - primarily the fact that it’s run by Meta and uses an algorithmic timeline, but I’m enjoying it quite a bit. I had many thoughts when Twitter started to fall apart and I’ve been exclusively using Mastodon (Ivory) this year but Mastodon still lacked a lot of the journalists, “influencers”, and other people that I liked to follow. Threads has gotten these people to join instantly and it makes it a much more interesting place to visit. This feels much more like a true Twitter replacement and I’m curious to see how it evolves over the next few months. I’m hopeful that they’ll add a chronological view or at least a followers-only view (I keep getting #brands shoved in my face on the algorithmic timeline) and I’m curious to see if they actually integrate with ActivityPub and let me follow people that might stick to Mastodon (or let me follow people on Threads if I abandon in for Mastodon). We’ll just have to wait and see.
We stop by the lot two times a day and it’s easy to forget to appreciate how much progress has been made in the last two months.
I’m still here, but sometimes life gets in the way. We’re settling into our new life in Massachusetts and our house construction is coming along nicely (targeting moving in ~August or September). Lots of stuff has happened that I wish I spent some more time blogging about. We’ve been exploring New England, I’m still playing plenty of video games, I bought a new camera, and there’s been lots of exciting tech news (Vision Pro!). I’ll be setting a new personal goals once we’re moved in including continuing to learn Swift in order to write my first app and actually posting here in a more reliable manner.
I can't believe that Amazon is shutting down (and deleting) DPReview. It's the best website for anything related to digital photography and I don't even know where else I would go whenever anyone asks for a camera recommendation. I've been considering getting a new camera and even today I've been reading their reviews.
At least some good news, Chris and Jordan are heading to PetaPixel to run their [YouTube channel](https://youtu.be/f6T3qWI2c-Y)
Miniot Wheel 2 review: a unique vertical turntable worth waiting for - The Verge
This is an interesting story about a Kickstarter for a very cool looking record player. I'm not sure I would call it a success yet, but it's definitely a good reminder that Kickstarters are for helping fund creators to build something they're passionate about and not a place to buy finished products.
We’re officially (well, pending a trip to the RMV) Massachusetts residents. Temporarily moved in and now paying close attention to our house progress. 😃
Panic launched their new catalog for Playdate this week. It's great to see this little handheld system grow. I bought a couple of games and so far my favorite is Grand Tour Legends - a simple cycling game with some excellent visual design. The Catalog works on Playdate and web and the interfaces of both are wonderful (you even "crank to buy" on Playdate!). Looking forward to the Stereo Dock next.
I haven’t posted a house update in a bit. Right now the basement walkout is framed and the floor deck is on. Hoping to see the upstairs framed up in the next month!
This looks very good and I had no idea Tetris had such a backstory. I love it when things like this come up as a surprise and get released fairly immediately (March 31!).
SteamWorld Build is a new city-builder with Anno and Dungeon Keeper DNA - Polygon
There's a demo on Steam that I played through last night. The underground aspect is really cool, and the city building has a nice amount of complexity to it without being as complicated as something like Cities. Looking forward to the release.
I'm very excited to have such a solid Mastodon app on iOS. I haven't been on Twitter in months and I'm not missing it.
I started using Twitter in 2007 because I heard of a cool new Mac app called Twitterrific. One of my favorite aspects of Twitter has been the third party app scene and they've made a huge impact for Twitter (like the invention of the "Tweet" in Twitterrific and pull to refresh in Tweetie). Yesterday it sure looks like Twitter has killed the API and has broken apps without even saying anything to the developers that have supported them for the past decade. I hope I'm wrong and this was just a mistake caused by the lack of employees running the company, but that is feeling less likely every hour.
Freeform
We’ve been using the new Apple app Freeform to organize our different choices of details for the new house and it’s been a great place to throw links, photos, and notes. Much easier to sort out thoughts and compare paint colors than using one big note.
Just a few weeks later and we already have the walls of our foundation. We also got loan (something that we finalized after starting construction, which I wouldn’t recommend but it worked out fine in the end). Full speed ahead!
Clive Thompson (Medium) - Why Cyclists Love The “Idaho Stop”
I'm a cyclist and I have always felt like other riders who roll through lights give "good" cyclists a bad rep. Turns out that it's safer that way. In hindsight it makes perfect sense since often when lights turn green cars just want to go and might not notice a bike alongside them. Consider me a convert and make this legal everywhere.
Electrek - Tesla launches $300 wireless charger inspired by Cybertruck
I had Nomad's charger which used the same technology but the magnets in MagSafe phones interfered and caused some issues. I wonder if FreePower (the company behind the tech) has fixed that, but either way why is Tesla making this? Do they think it'll help their stock price? 😂