Nice touch by JSM to include RSS links in BTW № 5.
Notes
Short posts, links, photos, and working notes.
Quick updates, links, reposts, photos, and small things I learn while working.
Highly recommend Fat Gold co-owned by Robin Sloan. Delicious. And the wee guide that comes along with some products is 👌
Last week was a big week for agents. I wrote about the agentweb on Tuesday. To compete with Anthropic’s managed agents service (which I’ve used a fair amount at this point and it is quite good) OpenAI released Workspace agents to a few customer segments, Google released enterprise agent platform, and Microsoft scrambled to release a preview of hosted agents and says Copilot is now in “agent mode”. There will now be an explosion in the number of agents.
I don’t like to speak in absolutes. But all business software must be agent-ready as soon as possible.
Hubbub Pro 2.29.1 (bug fixes) out the door.
Small detail in Signboard… as you drag a card it begins to slightly tilt in the direction that you’re dragging. Makes me happy.
Signboard 1.1.0 is coming tomorrow and it will include curated color themes (so aesthetic) and importing from both Trello and Obsidian. And a few other nice new things.
Signboard has had a hidden secret from the beginning, you can import data from Trello. Starting in 1.1.0, which will ship this Friday, that feature will no longer be hidden. Oh, and you’ll also be able to import from Obsidian and its leading community kanban plugins also.
Signboard running on Ubuntu and Windows 11.
Bug fix release coming Friday.
We released Hubbub Pro 2.29.0 today. We acquired this WordPress plugin just over 2 years ago and we’ve added tons of features and improvements that are helping publishers grow their websites, their mailing lists, and ultimately their revenue. Still so much more to do.
Back in February I bought a four-wheeler and I’ve been having a lot of fun putting in some miles, adding accessories, and being outdoors. It is a 2026 Polaris Sportsman. A great way to end winter. It affords me to get to locations to do some photography that I wouldn’t be able to reach otherwise. And, I’m planning a few overnight trips with some camps and morning breakfasts over a fire.
Signboard 1.0.0 is available now. Free for personal use. One-time payment if you use it commercially. I hope people like it. I’ll write more about it soon.
If you are excited about and enjoy using LLMs, please take time to read contrarian views. Seek out those that have solid reasons for avoiding their use and listen to them. Read the data about the privacy, rights, energy, and natural resource issues that these tools have created or exacerbated. Be open minded about these topics and not singularly focused on the mind-blowing results you’re seeing, your own excitement, or the profit you may be able to extract from them. Try to always have a balanced and principled view.
I wrote this for me.
Apple should acquire Bitrig before someone else does. Still more work to be done there to make creating apps approachable for “anyone”… but Bitrig is remarkably fast at creating apps for Apple OSes. The more complex parts of the process are still on the Apple-side of things and could/should be streamlined dramatically.
TIL The Bandcamp iOS app runs fairly OK on macOS.
TIL You can set Finder to auto-size columns. I turned this on immediately. /via DF.
Nearly a dozen of the NerdPress team recently enjoyed a beautiful week in downtown Los Angeles sponsoring Tastemaker Conference. We met with old and new customers, enjoyed good food, pet some puppies, gazed upon the cosmos at Griffith Observatory, took a tour of LA’s black history, vibe coded and were driven around in Waymos. We’ve got a great team.
All photos shot on iPhone 17 Pro Max using Snapseed’s new camera feature in Kodak Portra 400 emulation mode.
I’m happy to see the younger generation of programmers joining us older folks in experiencing imposter syndrome and constantly feeling of being behind. It persists. It never goes away. You’re likely doing fine, and likely not behind. If you don’t feel these feelings you likely think too much of yourself. Work on being OK with these feelings while at the same time trying to do your best at your job without burning out.
Clear your calendar, pour a favorite beverage, and immerse yourself into the year in music with reports from Simon Collison and Jon Hicks. Fantastic every year.
Comments from Mozilla’s new CEO have brought up the topic of ad blocking. With some going so far as to switch their browser. In 2023 I wrote about why I do not block ads but I do block ad tracking as best as I can.
Every now and then YouTube will suggest a film photography related video from years and years ago. I’ll watch it and think, hey, YouTube, why didn’t you suggest this sooner?
I don’t know if I can directly tie this to uninstalling social network apps from my phone… but I can say that I had a thoroughly enjoyable and productive offline weekend.
I’ve uninstalled all social network apps from my phone; including Ivory for Mastodon. I’m really trying to force myself into boredom. To allow my mind to wander. And force-feeding myself information (even good, high quality information) is stifling my mind’s ability to wander.
A quick business trip to Boston with the NerdPress team. We shared some excellent meals (particularly at Sarma). I had very little free time but I did manage to saunter over to the Leica store (just before the gallery exhibition of the work of Maria Guțu) and to stop into the Cheers gift shop.
This was also the last trip I took with the iPhone 12 Pro Max. It served me well (these images, were _very_ quick snaps while on the run, but I did manage to take some very nice images with the iPhone 12 over the years).
If you’re reading this in RSS or on my website, it means that it is being statically delivered yet again. I’m so happy about this.
Spending time, slow time, meaningful time… looking through Paris Photo-Aperature 2025 PhotoBook Awards Shortlist. Added to Unmark (of course) so that I can spend several comfy chair, cross legged sessions doing so.
Giving Obsidian a try again for two reasons; file over app (or database) and I want my notes to be more cross platform to use on Linux machines. Based on what I’m seeing from Apple, I’m starting to see a future (albeit distant) where I’m on Linux full-time.
Just released Signboard 0.4.0 that adds due dates to cards and lays the foundation for labels and other card metadata. I’m so happy to have due dates since Signboard is now my daily driver. The next build will be a code refactor and bug fixes from this release.
Recently purchased a few tracks from A Unicorn Masquerade on Bandcamp (who also goes by Bread on Penguins on YouTube).
Recently finished reading Into The Storm by Skylar Holt – the pseudonym of my niece. Fun to read a full fiction book by someone I know so well.
If you’re like me; you like files, you like web technologies like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, you like markdown, you like kanban, you like pomodoro, and you like apps. If this sounds like you reach out. I’ll be open sourcing something in the coming weeks and I’d like some early testers.