-
Loved this clip from Sharp Tech. Really shows the price of going all-in with pre-recorded demos. The sacrifice to the Demo Gods (i.e. making things that are actually demoable) is great, but if they accept it, and your live demo goes well, it says a lot on what you can actually deliver.
podcast-clips -
Was about to lament that there was no way to charge an iPad when it was plugged into an external monitor, until it occurred to me that I never actually tried plugging a charger into this USB-C splitter. And you know what? It worked! Found myself quite delighted with this development.
Those with eagle eyes would notice the draft post I had open, suggesting that it would be nice for iPadOS to disable the built-in screen when plugged into a monitor. It still would be nice, but not as necessary given that charging works.
-
It’s hard finding places in the Belconnen area that are opened early, at least during the weekend. Settled on coming here which is more geared towards takeaways. So that does mean sitting outside in the cold air, but the coffee is warm, and the barista just turned on the outdoor heaters.
photos -
Ricco showing off his preening skills, which have not really improved since my last visit.
photos -
Flight to Canberra was a little delayed, but otherwise quite pleasant. Was fun flying in a turboprop again.
photos -
There was a charity football game held last Monday, the Big Freeze, that was also a memorial game for the AFL player Neale Daniher. Tens of thousands of fans attended wearing cyan beanies. Not a day has gone by this week where I haven’t seen someone out in public wearing one.
-
Hot take: I’m not in love with the name “Golden Gate” for the next version of MacOS. I don’t know much about the geography of San Francisco but I don’t believe Golden Gate is a locale, right? It’s just a name of a bridge. It’s like if they called it “MacOS Harbour”.
Follow up
I’ve since come to understand that Golden Gate is actually the name of the strait that leads into San Fransisco Bay. So it actually is a locale, and thus, a suitable name for Apple’s MacOS. I’d argue that it’s not a great name, since those outside California are more likely to associate it with the bridge. But choosing bad names has not stopped Apple in the past.
Thank you to @rscottjones for the correction.
-
On Group DMs In Slack
Group DMs in Slack can lead to disorganized conversations that would be better suited for temporary channels that allow users to engage more selectively. Continue reading →
-
Kind of wish Zed didn’t bind “switch Git branch” to Cmd ~ by default. I use that alot to cycle backwards through the window stack, usually after overshooting the window I want. Fortunately, it was easy enough to restore by removing the binding for
git: branch. -
The river is calm this morning, which is a little unusual. There’s no boat traffic or rowers which could explain it.
photos -
I was curious to see if Fable 5 had any knowledge of this blog in its training date (modern day equivalent of Googling yourself, I guess 😏). The answer seems to be maybe. It is aware of it, apparently, but isn’t quite ready to associate it with the author making the request.
screenshots -
Tried out Fable 5 to get a feature built. It’s fine. Maybe even decent. But I’m not sure it’s significantly better than Opus for what I’m using it for. To me, the improvements feel marginal, at least for now.
-
Enjoyed this article in The Atlantic about heraldry: the design of crests and coat of arms. While framed mainly around those requesting such designs, the article goes a bit into the craft as well. For instance, the naming of colours. Apparently “azure” refers to blue (does Microsoft know?)
-
Also, no sass slider for Siri? I mean, wow! That’s just… forget it. In fact, just forget everything! 😛
-
Only managed to get through half the WWDC keynote before I had work to do. So the best snarky comment I have, made during the design section, is thus:
I just heard a bunch of sliders slam into the right stop.
What this comment lacks in impact or timeliness I make up in sleep.
-
Does deprecated mean “stop using immediately”? It seems like Go’s linter think it should, as it’s throwing lint errors when deprecated symbols are used (which are usually “resolved” by suppressing the error). But I tend to think of deprecated as “stop using for new things.” Keep using and supporting it, as we want to replace it eventually. But if you’re writing new code, consider using something else.
Maybe there should be something more severe than “deprecated” that the linters can throw warnings on, such as “discouraged” or “decommissioned.” But that’s probably unnecessary if one can simply delete the code.
-
I’m guessing I’m increasingly in the minority, but I think that if you release a YouTube video where you’re just talking to someone and the visuals are incidental, you should release it as a podcast too. Not everyone wants to spend the bandwidth streaming video they’re not going to watch.
-
At the laundromat, where about five dryers are in use, including my own. I guess we all imagined the same thing: sunny day, slight wind, temperatures in the high teens. Surely our laundry will dry, right? Lol, no! 😄
-
Why does everyone in #F1 love #Monaco? It's by far the most BORING race on the calendar.
I am to understand that it’s difficult to overtake on the Monaco track. If so, it sounds like a case for strategic parking. 😛
-
It’s also good seeing one of the cafe workers spending time at the cafe as a customer, even if it is just before their shift. It’s like seeing PTV staff taking public transport to work. A real vote of confidence in the establishment.
-
I used to be put off by cafés treating me as a regular, but I’ve grown to like it somewhat. They start my “usual” order before I pay, and prepare the table I tend to frequent before I sit down. It’s nice.
-
It would be nice if someone could work on the failure mode of modern LED lighting. The flashing just won’t do. There’s a LED light in my peripheral vision that’s doing this, and it’s quite distracting.
-
It’s kinda nice having an audience whenever I walk out my front door, even if it is just my neighbor’s cats.
photos -
Word of the day: verisimilitude
(n) The quality of appearing to be true or real
Appearing true, or resembling reality. Saw it used in the context of narrative development, where “messing with the verisimilitude” would cause one to come out of suspended disbelief.
-
📘 Devlog
Godot Game - Meta Elements
Work has begun on the game’s meta elements, focusing on essential mechanics like menu screens, despite the unexciting and obligatory nature of the tasks involved. Also some details on how to define custom classes in GDScript. Continue reading →
-
Noisy miners have discovered the cafe. Yesterday they were chasing away the pigeons that occasionally congregate. Today, one of them was creeping towards my empty plate. It got as far as one of the other seats on my table, only to fly away when I moved my arm. I guess they’re new at this. 😏
-
I don’t think “generic AI” — as in AI not designed for a single purpose that can be invoked by a button or something — will ever go beyond the chat interaction model. The modes may change: you may speak to it rather than type. But I can’t see anything come up with something other than a user-initiated interaction model, in which the user asks the model to do something, and the model responds. It’s just such a natural fit to how people interact in real life. And it’s clear the models are good enough to handle such an open-ended option scope. Models can still do things for people in the background, but only after they’ve been told to do it. A world where the model just does stuff unbidden is not one I’d like to live in.
-
Seeing all these non-programmers vibe-code their own apps reminds me of my music teacher telling us of what was required of him when he went to the Victorian College of the Arts. You were expected to learn piano along with the instrument you were proficient in during your studies. Be he already knew piano, so he had to take up something else. He chose the trumpet.
I guess the question before me is: what’s my trumpet going to be?
-
I love all the browser support for making a link to a selected block of text. I use it all the time. It would be nice, though, if they also made it easier to link to a header with an
idattribute, so I’m not left guessing what the URL hash fragment should be. -
And the number of phones dropped during this train trip now sits at 3. Congratulations, everyone! Personal best for this carriage. 🤪
-
Touché, Metro. I can understand why you kept us outside of Clifton Hill for 15 minutes. That was some legitimate flooding.
Although I would add that 10-15 mm hardly constitues a torrential downpour.
-
Not sure why Numbers needs access to my Contacts. I granted it access anyway, as I had work to do and I needed to get the modal out of my face. Yes, this is a comment about how rubbish these permission modals actually are. (Also, I don’t have any contacts on my work laptop).
-
It’s sometimes hard knowing that people you know are aware that you blog. Harder still knowing that they could read it (as they have in the past). I’m grateful, but that does mean there are certain topics I can’t really talk about.
-
Spent the evening upgrading my Forgejo instance to the latest LTS release (I know, riveting). It’s good of Forgejo to prepare a Debian repository for their packages now. Going from APKs that were downloaded and installed manually to ones managed by the repository worked seamlessly.
-
Found this gem of a remark in the documentation of Go’s time formatting string:
It is a regrettable historic error that the date uses the American convention of putting the numerical month before the day.
Yeah, kind of wish we learnt from history on this one. 😼
golang -
Quick update on my attempt at reading saved posts on my commute home, in place of scrolling social media. So far, it’s a failure. After work, I’m just too tired to focus on anything substantial, and just need something mindless to experience. I’ll have to have a think about what to do here.
