Posts, notes, and things worth sharing.

TIL what a digital mending circle is.

Jack Cheng:

What, you ask, is a digital mending circle? A virtual co-working session for the kinds of oft-neglected maintenance tasks that accrue around our digital lives. Instead of darning socks and patching jeans, we update personal websites, delete unused accounts, work on side projects, or even just catch up on email.

Oh I need this.

I feel like computer hardware (processing units, graphics/neural processors, memory, storage) has gotten mind bending fast while at the same time the software we run day-to-day has gotten noticeably poorer.

I often think “what if the software engineers of the early days were to develop software today?” You know, the men and women that had to find a way to use every single bit and byte to their advantage. The engineers that created games using systems less powerful than the processor in my AirPods. The designers that made low resolution displays display smooth type. The audio experts that somehow got single speakers to make aliens come alive.

Give those people our modern tools, gigabytes of memory, and processors that handle billions of calculations every nanosecond – I’d bet that they could make modern software sing.

I had no idea Anthony Bourdain had a Reddit account. I’ve only just recently begun to be able to start watching / reading his work again. /via Mia Quagliarello via Rolling Stone.

It turns out The Browser Company is just a company that is going to continue to build new web browsers ad infinitum. I suppose I should have known.

TIL That in macOS Sequoia you can connect to your iPhone wirelessly to use as a camera for Zoom, etc. Perhaps this was always the case? But I have been plugging it into my Mac this whole time!

Switcheroo, the small open source macOS app I use as my default browser to recreate a feature I miss from Little Arc, has reached 1.0.1 and has a new icon! Thanks to Zhenyi Tan for continuing to contribute updates. (See also)

TIL The Apple News app has a setting to only show stories from channels I’m subscribed to. I wish I had known this sooner!

This morning I strolled into the darkroom fully planning to mix a fresh batch of color film chemistry to develop some film tomorrow. I was certain I had at least one fresh pack. I’m all out! And, most places I purchase chemistry is out of stock. I guess I’ll use tomorrow to make more new images. Not a bad problem to have.

The pro move when updating to a new Mac (or, new iPhone, iPad or updating to a new OS version) is to leave the device plugged in for nearly an entire day while all of the indexes are being rebuilt. This may be especially true now with Apple Intelligence.

I’ve spent just a few hours migrating to the M4 Pro MacBook Pro today. This included using Migration Assistant which was fast with a Thunderbolt cable, reinstalling some packages via Homebrew (because I switched from Intel), and logging into a bunch of things. Overall, switching computers is easier than ever.

Wow, is this computer fast. Running Llama locally feels instantaneous. Looking forward to really trying to break this thing.

This morning YouTube suggested Austin Ha’s review of the new ultrawide display option in Apple Vision Pro. His video shows a dream of mine; to have any sized screen with me anywhere I want. I really hope the AVP continues to improve.

At 44 years old I now find myself needing to use reader glasses (1.25x) in the evenings. I have 3 pair of inexpensive readers that I picked up in various pharmacies and discount stores; but I’m wondering if there are any nicer brands out there? Affordable yet quality? Or, should I keep picking up inexpensive pairs because I’m likely to lose and break them?

I have a few images I need to create for an upcoming Hubbub presentation and I used it as an opportunity to trial Pixelmator, which was recently acquired by Apple, for the first time. It is very good. Very Apple-like. Even some of my Photoshop muscle memory translated.

As I predicted in February 2023, I’m upgrading to the M4. I went with a Space Black 14″ MacBook Pro with the M4 Pro (14 CPU cores 20 GPU cores, 16 Neural Engine cores), 48GB memory, 2TB hard drive. The cost of which was a fair bit less than my previous laptop. I’ll explain my choices in an upcoming blog post. Oh, and as far as I can remember, this was likely my first ever preorder. (see also)

As I mentioned in Diversions #5, I bought a pair of Crocs. It wasn’t long after purchasing that first pair that I bought a second pair to wear more casually in the garden, on the beach, or in mud – keeping the first pair nice for special occasions. Now I’m shopping for a third pair to wear around the house with alpaca socks.

I pushed an update to Stupid today that features a theme inspired by Jacques Monneraud‘s ceramic work. Best if viewed on a phone.

I’m experimenting with the ActivityPub plugin a bit. I’ve always wanted separate fediverse accounts for my personal projects such as Stupid, Good Migrations, etc. but the thought of managing those didn’t seem fun. The plugin allows each author to have their own account; so I’ve added one for @stupid@cdevroe.com to play with and customized its author page. Still more to learn.