Vivaldi can learn a thing or two from Safari about being able to copy and paste a HTML table into a spreadsheet. Safari does quite well here:
Vivaldi, not so much:
Self-Driving Bicycle for The Mind
While listening to the Stratchery interview with Hugo Berra, a thought occurred to me. Berra mentioned that Xaomi was building an EV. Not a self-driving one, mind you: this one has a steering wheel and peddles. He made the comment that were Apple to actually go through with releasing a car, it would look a lot like what Xaomi has built. I haven’t seen either car project myself so I’ll take his word for it.
This led to the thought that it was well within Apple’s existing capability to release a car. They would’ve had to skill up in automotive engineering, but they can hire people to do that. What they couldn’t do was all the self-driving stuff. No-one can do that yet, and it seems to me that being unable to deliver on this non-negotiable requirement was one of the things that doomed the project. Sure there were others — seems like they were lacking focus in a number of other areas — but this seems like a big one.
This led to the next thought, which is why Apple thought it was ever a good idea to actually have the car self-driving. What’s wrong with having one driven by the user? Seems like this was a very un-Apple-like product decision. Has Apple ever been good a releasing tech that would replace, rather than augment, the user’s interaction with the device? Do they have phones that would browse the web for you? Have they replaced ZSH with ChatGPT in MacOS (heaven forbid). Probably the only product that comes close is Siri, and we all know what a roaring success that is.
Apple’s strength is in releasing products that keep human interaction a central pillar of it’s design. They should just stick with that, and avoid any of the self-driving traps that come up. It’s a “bicycle for a mind” after all: the human is still the one doing the peddling.
Day 4: foliage
Spot the visitors. #mbapr
From @jarrod:
You’re likely familiar with the Navy SEAL mantra of “Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.” I propose one more line: “And fast is fun.”
We’re going through a crunch at the moment, taking out a fair bit of tech debt in what we’re building. And it occurred to me that going slow might be slow now, but it’ll allow you to go fast later. On the other hand, you can go fast now, but it’ll slow you down in the long run. That tech debt will come due eventually.
So I guess the choice is, when do you want to go slow? Now or later?
I should stop trying to multitask. What happens is that I kick off something that takes some time, and instead of just wait for it, I start work on something else only to forget the original task I started first. I should just wait the few minutes it takes for that task to finish.
📺 Andor: Series 1 (2022)
Release version 1.1.1 of Sidebar for Tiny Theme. You’ll need to upgrade Tiny Theme to version 2.7.4 or later to use it, but the good news is that it’s no longer replacing any templates of Tiny Theme itself. It’s all now working with hooks, which is a much nicer way of doing things (thanks, @mtt).
Day 3: card #mbapr
Day 2: flowers #mbapr
There’s a lot of low-hanging fruit still to be picked in Numbers in MacOS. The basic stuff, like opening two worksheets of the same file side-by-side, or in different windows. Might be that code editors with tabs spoiled me with capability, but I can see this generally being helpful for others.
Enjoying the latest ShopTalk about home cooked apps. What an amazing term for it: perfect. Also good to know that I’m not alone in doing this. 🎙️
Day 1: toy #mbapr
Canberra Railway Museum
Went to the Canberra Railway Museum this morning. Quite a wide variety of locomotives and carriages being restored, with many of them quite accessible to guests, including the cabin. Here’s a selection of the more interesting sites.
🔗 Insanity in the Air: The crash of Pakistan International Airlines flight 8303
A facinating post. One of those posts where you know the writer knows what they’re talking about, and has clearly done a lot of research for the piece. Will definitely take a look at their other posts.
Picnic train, now boarding. 🚂
A few shots around South-East Canberra with the deciduous trees starting to turn.
Caught up with these two today.
Currently in Ron Finemore territory (namely the Hume Fwy near Gundagai). 🚛
On Post Headers
My answer to @mandaris question:
How many of you are using headers in your blogging? Are you using anything that denotes different sections?
I generally don’t use headers, unless the post is so long it needs them to break it up a little. When I do, I tend to start with H2, then step down to H3, H4, etc.
I’d love to start with H1, but most themes I encounter, including those from software like Confluence, style H1 to be almost the same size as the page title. This kills me as the page title should be separate from any H1s in the body, and styled differently enough that there’s no mistaking what level the header’s on.
But, c’est la vie.
Was running into issues trying to buy a hamper from an online store in the UK. Turns out it was because one of the hamper items was alcoholic. I guess they’re not interested in dealing with the customs, and the associated headaches, in getting that over here.