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Really enjoyed the latest Dithering where Ben Thompson and John Gruber discuss the new ChatGPT app. So many clippable moments, but this is probably the best one and covers my feelings exactly. The app really feels unfinished and rushed out the door without thinking the product through holistically.
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I frickin’ hate browsing the App Store for an app, so any disinterested parties posting their recommendations is always welcome. So consider this paying that forward: anyone looking for a remote desktop client for the iPad, I can recommend RealVNC. I’ve been using it all morning to remotely connect to my Mac Mini and it’s been working quite well. The UX is decent, and I like how they map the iPad interaction model to mouse and keyboard. Don’t skip the tutorial, thought: it’s takes a bit of understanding how to use it, and their guide helps a lot.
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I downloaded the ChatGPT desktop app, wondering if it could potentially be useful for replacing Pulse. In theory, ChatGPT Work (ugh! of all the names) could produce an RSS digest based on my history… provided I give it an export. Yes, ChatGPT Work does not have access to my ChatGPT vanilla chat history. And as far as I can tell, there’s no way to have the two products talk to each other. This seems like a very obvious thing to have. I can look pass the use of Electron (just look at what I code up) but to not have your history available to you when you open the app seems like a pretty large oversight. Especially when you consider how many people would come to this app already using ChatGPT.
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More Kvetching About Stripe's Documentation
Stripe’s documentation lacks clarity on the basic concepts and calculations related to invoicing, leaving users confused about how key fields like
amount_dueandending_balanceare determined. Continue reading → -
Small thing about the new modem and fibre terminal box that I like: you can turn off the indicator LEDs. The equipment’s setup in my living room, so their presence won’t keep anyone awake. But it’s nice to be able to turn them off, and it does mean they could be set it up in a bedroom. Nice.
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Still discovering things I don’t like about Liquid Glass. I just noticed that the tab-bar in iPadOS Safari has a slight padding, but there’s no obvious border between it and the page. If the site’s background’s a similar colour, it looks like it the margins are not styled correctly. Just awful.
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I’m now have a fibre NBN connection, and while it may just be the placebo effect, it certainly feels a lot faster. I regret not doing a speed test with the old connection, but here they are for this hookup:
Via LAN (Tully): 534 Mbps down, 46.6 Mbps up
Via Wifi (Stark): 454 Mbps down, 46.6 Mbps upThis is using Kagi’s Internet speed test, running it 3 times for each transmission medium, and taking the highest result. The average down was about 480 Mbps, with a variance of about 50 Mbps either side of the average. The up was pretty consistent at around 46 Mbps, suggesting that’s pretty close to the plan speed. It seems like the down speeds could be faster on Stark — my main desktop — it wasn’t for the Wifi, but I can live with that.
So yes, quite a noticeable improvement.
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Speaking about games, I was watching a couple of episodes of The Games last night. Even after all these years it’s still a fantastic show. John Clark was a national treasure, of two nations. He is still sorely missed.
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Why does LinkedIn want me to play their puzzle games? What do they get from it? DAUs, perhaps? Nothing against the games, but it’s just strange seeing them send emails about them.
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Amusing seeing all these companies fire their engineers only to rehire them when they realise the AI meant to replace them is not up to scratch. Demonstrates which companies are worth avoiding, lest you be unappreciated despite the value you bring. Hope all the rehires asked for higher pay.
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There’s always a tinge of anxiety whenever I upgrade something in my life. I’m getting fiber tomorrow, and all I’m thinking of is the installation, the shuffling of everything around, how much more it will cost. You’d think I’d also be feeling excited about getting a faster Internet connection. 🤷♂️
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Just discovered the 2D particle system that Godot has. What comes out of the box is quite impressive. I was afraid I would’ve had to hand code how particles moved or how they were rendered. But no: all of that was configuration, and the only code I needed to write was to trigger an emission.
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Word of the day: chiaroscuro: (n) use of strong contrasts between light and dark as a way to affect a composition. A technique used in visual arts, videography, and game design.
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Pam the Bird has been caged, and I don’t know how I feel about that. #melbourne
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Slack needs to do better with their linking. I make note of messages by copying a link to in my Obsidian vault, but following the message requires going through the browser. And if the browser session times-out, because I use a client, there’s no way to follow them. The clients’ don’t support them.
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TIL that Go’s formatter will be fine formatting a file with a composite literal for a slice, yet the Golang CI linter will complain about it and simply say the file is not fomatted:
// gofmt will be fine with this, but not golangci-lint myValues := []myType{ myType{ Foo: 1, Bar: 2 }, myType{ Foo: 3, Bar: 5 }, }So when you find you find yourself seeing a linter complain that a file that’s not formatted when it seems to be (maybe via an auto-format on save feature), try removing the redundant type name:
myValues := []myType{ { Foo: 1, Bar: 2 }, { Foo: 3, Bar: 5 }, }Maybe this is what the
-sswitch ofgofmtdoes (I haven’t checked). If so, I’m not sure why this switch is not set/available ingo fmt. -
📺 The Lost Displine of the Alarm: What Notification Design Forgot
Watched this last night, and immediately saw its relevance while perusing the logs of a weekend sync job, and saw “errors” that didn’t need to be actioned. No! Log errors only if the operator needs to do something.
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Since my kitchen clock has decided on tempus immotum, I’ve been casually looking for a new clock. Found one today at the Kyneton Collective (an antique store) that’s in working order and a style that I like. Good price too: only $9, which made it an instant buy.
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Suggested topic for an @atpfm@mastodon.social member special: a tier-list of Apple’s apps ranked based on how much they are a Mac-arsed Mac App.
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This ChatGPT Pulse replacement/improvement is not looking good. The email for the scheduled task came through, but it doesn’t contain the entire message. It’s just a click-through to see it in ChatGPT. This is not useful to me. I’ll have to think of something else.
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Vibelog: Weatherpatch - UI Improvement
A few weeks ago, I vibe-coded a web-app called Weatherpatch. This is an app that is designed to receive email newsletters and produce them as an RSS feeds: basically what Feedbin does, but without needing to use Feedbin. The app was vibe-coded with Opus, and while functional, it is hardly an example of good design (unless you’re a fan of Cubism). To wit:
Yeah, Opus just threw the feed management controls all over the place. And I tolerated it for a time. I was more interested in having something functional, rather than pretty. But the thing about a bad UI is that it makes using the app feel bad. Sure I’m not in there managing feeds, but I would like to go in there are copy-paste the email address when setting a new one up.
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TIL that Fastmail added the ability to annotate an email with a private memo, similar to Hey. It also shows up in the email list. This is good. I hope I remember to use it.
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It’s 2026 and bagpipes remain an underrated instrument.
