June 2023 | 3 posts

June 23, 2023 Wait so the word 'brackish' survives in modern english, but its root 'brack' is dead? That's silly. Bring back brack.

June 21, 2023 I'm..... not sure that's true.

June 16, 2023 This cup of coffee is over-steeped, bitter, burnt, and tastes like it was poured out of a jug by a chain-smoking waitress at at a worn out 50s diner. And I love it. Don't get me wrong I do love a light roast pour-over or a high-quality espresso, but there's something about a good...

May 2023 | 8 posts

May 21, 2023 Sunday reading

May 18, 2023 If you ever find yourself relaying messages from one group chat to another then you've implicitly implemented the Broadcaster protocol. #TerribleProgrammingJoke

May 15, 2023 I made a useless Mastodon Client in <80 lines of code!

May 15, 2023 Tonight I built a simple Mastodon client (complete with live refresh) in 64 lines of vanilla Javascript. Very cool.

May 15, 2023 Server Sent Events are so cool.

May 13, 2023 That moment in baking where you realize things are not going to look like you planned and think to yourself: "Well, at least they'll still taste good."

May 13, 2023 The New York Times describing Pythagoras.

May 9, 2023 My life these days: Write 3-10 lines of code Commit and push SSH into server Run deploy script "Does it look ok now?" This is not a complaint, it's just an observation.

April 2023 | 3 posts

April 26, 2023 You should probably be following this btw. No reason (glances side to side)

April 23, 2023 I’ve gotten way too invested in this story. Goodbye Freeway the Sea Lion you will be missed.

April 20, 2023 An important takeaway. Link →

March 2023 | 34 posts

March 28, 2023 I said something like this a few weeks ago, but I think (through all the doom and gloom) the Web truly has gotten better in the past decade. Mastodon gaining real traction as decentralized social media Blogging & RSS still thrive, though more niche (substack, patreon, etc) Signa...

March 28, 2023 Adventurer's Codex is live on Mastodon!

March 28, 2023 A perfect day in San Diego. It’s clear, sunny, 70F, and green.

March 28, 2023 Git is magic.

March 27, 2023 This is a week I will remember the rest of my life. More context later in the week. (Yes it’s a good thing, don’t worry)

March 27, 2023 Just had coffee. Want more coffee. ☕️

March 27, 2023 Life hack: How to quickly list the counts of unique items in a column in excel/numbers: Select column Cmd+C Open terminal pbpaste | sort | uniq -c | sort -n -r

March 24, 2023 Tipped

March 21, 2023 It is 2023 and I'm over here emailing git patch files like an old-schooler.

March 19, 2023 Looks like Disk Utility was able to fix it!

March 19, 2023 Checking the fsroot tree.

March 19, 2023 Not so much worried about the data (it’s backed up in multiple places) it’s more the inconvenience of my primary being out of commission for an indeterminate amount of time.

March 19, 2023 My primary computer has data corruption issues. Lovely.

March 18, 2023 Waterfront

March 18, 2023 Spring weather has arrived in San Diego.

March 17, 2023 It's really happening!

March 17, 2023 Making some custom artwork for our patrons. If you use Adventurer's Codex and want to support it (and get some sweet artwork), then support us on Patreon.

March 15, 2023 'lol' may have lost all of its meaning over time, but for me 'LOL' still means that I literally laughed out loud.

March 13, 2023 New Adventurer's Codex Update just dropped!

March 13, 2023 Imminent news!

March 12, 2023 Green and Blue

March 12, 2023 It is that rare time of year for San Diego is green everywhere you look. 

March 12, 2023 Ever since publishing Going Indie, I’ve gained a serious appreciation for books as physical things. There are so many decisions that go into making a good book: font, spacing, paper, size, etc. A good book must also get these things right.

March 12, 2023 Working through “The Book of Hidden Things” by @fdimitri and it is lovely. Also both it and Never the Wind are some of the best books-as-objects I’ve seen. The cover material is great, the layout is easy-going, and the page counts are ideal. Also the art is 👌

March 12, 2023 A great writer is one who does in ten words what others do in a hundred.

March 10, 2023 RIP Twitter API it was good while it lasted. No one on earth will pay that much.

March 10, 2023 That's unfortunate. Does Mastodon not preview included external image URLs? It seems not. Am I doing something wrong? #MastodonAPI

March 10, 2023 The reality that we have a NetNewsWire that is open source, free, and excellent combined with explosive growth and acceptance of  mastodon and activity-pub is is some thing me from a decade ago dreamed about.

March 10, 2023 Specifically this part.

March 10, 2023 With all the Big Players making forays into #ActivityPub and the #Fediverse, this blog post of mine is starting to seem rather prescient.

March 10, 2023 I’ve watched basically every single one of these videos. PBS SpaceTime is a great way to get your space/astronomy/physics fix. They go pretty deep (for YT) and most videos take a minute to grok, but they’re very interesting and I’ve learned a lot. A previous version of me (coll...

March 10, 2023 Programmed late into the night. Haven’t done that in a long time. Felt good to just hack on something for fun. Unfortunately I forgot to charge my laptop afterwards, and now there’s no outlets at this cafe. 😭

March 10, 2023 Woot! My posts are now live on Mastodon! I’ve had an account forever but now things will cross-post to here as well as Twitter. One day I’ll have a real ActivityPub solution, but this works for now!

March 10, 2023 I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I love scripting.

January 2023 | 3 posts

Jan. 20, 2023 Writing is the process of using words to coax dropplets of rain from a diffuse cloud of ideas. The trouble is, sometimes the rain falls in the wrong place and you're forced to decide whether to try again, or to replant the farm where the rain is.

Jan. 6, 2023 It is told amid the far corners of the earth.

Jan. 5, 2023 I'm sure a younger me would be dissapointed, but I unironically love getting paid by ol-faithful, ol-reliable, simple, easy, dependable: check in the mail. Everyone can do it and I don't have to make/manage accounts in a dozen bad payment sites.

December 2022 | 5 posts

Dec. 29, 2022 Twitter is not doing so hot at the moment.

Dec. 20, 2022 If you can see this, then it worked perfectly.

Dec. 8, 2022 Eternal Wisdom from a Web Developer: The only way to truly know if an email is valid is to send something to it. The only way to know if two links point to the same place is to fetch them.

Dec. 3, 2022 Today’s reading

Dec. 2, 2022 What might the future of social media look like given what we know about the Web, and the current situation with Twitter/Mastodon? My take: If things go right and the stars align the Social Web could become like Email, and that would be great.

November 2022 | 29 posts

Nov. 30, 2022 Servers, servers, servers. All I do is servers. Yes it's only servers. Today! 🎶

Nov. 28, 2022 Anyone know if stupid-easy/fully-featured websocket support is coming to Django anytime soon? I'm looking for something as nice to use as django's caching, but for websockets. A django.contrib.websocket package perhaps? Would also be interested in helping work on it if needed.

Nov. 28, 2022 Wow. TIL that American and European CSV files are not the same. They are actually two different formats.

Nov. 27, 2022 Just searched the App Store for my own app by name and the app appeared nowhere in the results. Thanks Apple.

Nov. 22, 2022 Three weeks ago I bought a new hoodie that turned out to be heavier than I’d expected. I was worried I’d never get to wear it in SD. I was wrong. Great purchase.

Nov. 22, 2022 LETS GO SAN DIEGO! We built nearly half the new housing in the County this year. Let’s keep going!

Nov. 21, 2022 I will never not find it utterly distopian that I have to "Sign In" to scan from my own printer.

Nov. 21, 2022 Not bad.

Nov. 20, 2022 Just finished the amazing book “Never the Wind” by Francisco Dimitri (@fdimitri) A wonderful book. I haven’t read such a powerful book in a long time.

Nov. 20, 2022 Today’s Drawing of the Day sorta looks like Asia and Africa. Very cool.

Nov. 19, 2022 Last night I made a thing! Do you want a new piece of randomly-generated line art every single day? Well do I have something for you! You can even subscribe to the daily feed! It's a little toy project, but toys are what make the Web fun.

Nov. 18, 2022 I am sad to see things at Twitter be so hectic, but it does make me laugh. Sometimes all we can do is laugh at the absurdity of a thing, even if its not actually very funny.

Nov. 18, 2022 I am very glad I asked for my Twitter archive like three weeks ago by happenstance.

Nov. 18, 2022 Twitter going down? Use Pine.blog! (or Micro.blog, or Mastodon, or get a blog)

Nov. 17, 2022 In which Adam describes how I make chili.

Nov. 16, 2022 Been spending a lot of time lately just waiting on long-running tasks. Such is the world of sysadmin and analysis. Run, wait, error, tweak, repeat.

Nov. 16, 2022 It strikes me just how much of my professional life has depended on connections made by or sustained with D&D. It’s really been a core part of my life.

Nov. 13, 2022 I have bought a (small) painting. A first for me.

Nov. 12, 2022 Rolled out a big new feature for Nine9s.cloud last night. Will post about it soon.

Nov. 9, 2022 Midterms? That means stress-cooking.

Nov. 9, 2022 Nothing will ever disgust me like watching people wait in line to vote. I've voted by mail in California for years, but when I did vote in person I never waited more than like 3 minutes to vote. It's such a foreign concept to me.

Nov. 9, 2022 Oh good. The Needle™ is up.

Nov. 9, 2022 “All was still and silent, and Doom hung by a thread” - The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien Also my feeling tonight.

Nov. 8, 2022 Please vote today. It’s important.

Nov. 6, 2022 Over the years I’ve come to a pretty strong belief that the single, most-valuable, & underrated path for a developer is to become a Bash Wizard™. Other langs allow you to build stuff; bash makes the computer work for you. It makes everything else easier.

Nov. 6, 2022 Today I felt like goofing off, so I made a new page on my blog that tracks my reading habits, graphs the data, and provides some info on my book collection. (yes this is why I made that CSV2JSON thing earlier. I got distracted)

Nov. 6, 2022 Theater

Nov. 5, 2022 Today I have made a thing!

Nov. 3, 2022 A cold and blustery day here in San Diego.

October 2022 | 7 posts

Oct. 24, 2022 You know how I know it’s Fall? Butternut Squash Soup.

Oct. 17, 2022 Sitting down with coffee and a cookie after a two hour walk? 10/10 would recommend.

Oct. 17, 2022 🎵 Listening to rough tracks for The Fourth Section’s upcoming album. Surreal.

Oct. 16, 2022 Lets go Padres!

Oct. 9, 2022 Had a great time at #Politifest today. Met a lot of great people and learned a lot about SD Politics. Thanks to @VoiceOfSanDiego for putting the event on!

Oct. 3, 2022 I am just tearing through books this year. Feels really good.

Oct. 1, 2022 Saturday reading at James Coffee Co.

September 2022 | 18 posts

Sept. 19, 2022 One of my favorite features of Music.app on macOS is that pressing play on a paused track resumes it at 200% the previous volume for a second before dipping the volume back to the actual value. Love it. 10/10

Sept. 18, 2022 Yup. It’s a pancakes kind of morning.

Sept. 16, 2022 To everyone saying that this bill would result in a worse internet for everyone, let me remind you: Companies that collect sensitive data they don't need can get around the law with a simple trick: stop doing that. It's not the law, it's companies that refuse to stop that make t...

Sept. 14, 2022 Did I need to wear a light jacket today? No. Did I because it’s the first time in months that I can? Yes.

Sept. 14, 2022 "Well, it doesn't crash anymore" may not seem like a high bar, but sometimes it really is.

Sept. 13, 2022 I’ve never been so aware of how much bowing takes place around the British monarch. It’s kinda quaint, but very off-putting and a strong reminder of the king’s place. I’m proud that we got rid of all that stateside. Americans do not bow.

Sept. 9, 2022 Current Status: trying desperately to summarize The Silmarillion. It is not going well.

Sept. 4, 2022 I get email: We need a Blockchain Developer, could it be you? Nope.

Sept. 4, 2022 Here’s that same picture from before with some color tweaks. Almost looks like a painting. 

Sept. 4, 2022 No Verizon cell service in San Diego (Normal Heights)? Cool. Cool.

Sept. 4, 2022 Cold shower to cool off: 10/10

Sept. 4, 2022 Went stargazing last night and got some pretty great pictures with just my iPhone.

Sept. 4, 2022 It is a "find a place with decent air conditioning and stay there" kind of day.

Sept. 4, 2022 I did not know this.

Sept. 3, 2022 It is too hot in San Diego today. Too hot.

Sept. 1, 2022 This amendent isn't going on this year's ballot, but I am still very excited for this one in 2024.

Sept. 1, 2022 This week's newsletter is going to be BIG! Subscribe soon if you want to know about all the new bills passed by the California Legislature! CA is on the move this year!

Sept. 1, 2022 NYTimes: [California] will now have to cut emissions at least 85 percent by 2045 while offsetting any remaining emissions by planting more trees or using still-unproven technologies like direct air capture... This is good!

August 2022 | 22 posts

Aug. 31, 2022 Yup. It’s fire season in SoCal. Here we go again…

Aug. 31, 2022 If anyone is looking for a run down on the latest bills to come out of the California Legislature, here's a really great resource.

Aug. 31, 2022 Watching a lot of PBS Space Time and I’m consistently amazed by one fact: We knew about some parts of Quantum Mechanics in the 1800s. ~30 years after the Civil War we knew about Electron Spin. Crazy. Reminds me of how the Romans knew about simple steam engines.

Aug. 31, 2022 Got a build for Pine for iOS in the works. After some testing I’ll get it through app review. Feels good to update Pine for the first time this year.

Aug. 30, 2022 Pine.blog just got a pretty significant Timeline UI improvement. Looks much better now. Will look at improving the app too.

Aug. 29, 2022 Today we announced a long-awaited update for Adventurer's Codex that adds the ability for patrons to upload images to the app for use in characters and campaigns. It's a very exciting day! Please consider supporting AC if you can. It helps us keep going!

Aug. 28, 2022 I’m lucky in that I can subscribe to multiple news sites but even paying for a single larger local paper is usually enough to inject some positivity. Good stuff does happen.

Aug. 28, 2022 For (probably business) reason I find that the most positive and interesting news is the stuff behind the paywall. If you’re feeling down about the news, try paying for it.

Aug. 28, 2022 This is good!

Aug. 21, 2022 I don’t mean to brag, but today is an amazing summer day in San Diego.

Aug. 21, 2022 Under the overpass

Aug. 19, 2022 What's funny about having been blogging and writing for almost ten years is that a lot of my ideas, thoughts, and internal-monologues have hyperlinks. It leads to an interesting point in conversation: "Oh, I've thought of this, here's a link to a post I wrote a while back!"

Aug. 19, 2022 One of my favorite California policy talking points is how Prop 13 is exacerbating our housing crisis. The law is undemocratic and paralyzing. It makes voters in 1978 more powerful than voters today.

Aug. 15, 2022 Migration complete! (hopefully nothing broke)

Aug. 14, 2022 Migrating my blog server. Wish me luck!

Aug. 12, 2022 The Persieds were shy tonight but they eventually gave us a good show.

Aug. 8, 2022 Just to remind everyone: this Congress passed the following huge bills: Massive Infrastructure Bill Gun Control bill Postal Reform Act CHIPS Act PACT Act Inflation Reduction Act (pending) Except for the last one, every other was bipartisan.

Aug. 7, 2022 Sunday Live Music feat. Chickenbone Slim and the Biscuits.

Aug. 7, 2022 It may not feel like it but this last two years really has been incredibly legislatively productive. We didn’t get everything we’ve wanted but hell we did good. Let’s be proud of that.

Aug. 7, 2022 Today is a good day.

Aug. 7, 2022 I would unironically like to thank Joe Manchin.

Aug. 5, 2022 If the Inflation Reduction Act passes, this will be the conclusion of a truly monumental legislative session. It may not seem like it but this is absolutely huge.

July 2022 | 11 posts

July 17, 2022 Visiting North Park? There is parking. Please don’t say there isn’t.

July 16, 2022 This is one of the best sentences I’ve ever written: “People like clocks; clocks are good.” Full Piece:

July 15, 2022 “Over time, society changes and its values do, too. This isn’t a bad thing. Our monuments should reflect that change — or they should end up in a museum.” My latest piece for the UT!

July 15, 2022 I keep saying that San Diego is not on track to build enough housing this decade. VOSD gets it.

July 11, 2022 So many spirals. Wow

July 11, 2022 My latest housing piece is out now!

July 10, 2022 Writing at the park again.

July 8, 2022 To paraphrase Archimedes: Give me a bash shell, a server, and a connection to the internet and I can move the Earth.

July 7, 2022 I live in Normal Heights, San Diego a formerly Street-car Suburb. The close-knit, 3rd-way (lots of shops, walkable) feel is exactly why I love living here. It's just a shame the street-cars are now long gone. We do have busses, but most residents commute by car to work.

July 7, 2022 Check out my newest piece on Voice of San Diego! San Diego Needs to Pick Up its Carbon Trash

July 3, 2022 Do you live in California? Then you should subscribe to my weekly California Politics Newsletter. It goes out on (most) Sundays with links to recent developments in CA politics!

June 2022 | 19 posts

June 30, 2022 Bike lanes are good.

June 30, 2022 I would just like to point out that San Diego is headed in the right direction. We’re building more and more housing. We’re increasing density. Our city is becoming increasingly walkable/bikeable. And we have good climate goals. We need more, but this is the right track.

June 30, 2022 I've called my senators today. I really should have a calendar reminder for that.

June 30, 2022 Congress should simply pass legislation.

June 28, 2022 I am still very much processing that hearing... My jaw dropped several times.

June 24, 2022 What a day of news. SCOTUS guts rights and hints at going further while Congress passes the first gun control bill in 30 years.

June 24, 2022 In an effort to put what little positivity I have today into the world: this SCOTUS decision contradicts what over 60% of American's want and will likely hurt, not help, Republicans in the upcoming elections. Though I'm not hopeful enough that it will be enough.

June 24, 2022 Legal question: If the Supreme Court does strike down same-sex marriage (as they are hinting), does that mean that California's technically-still-on-the-books-but-deemed-invalid constitutional ban would resume? Seems like something we should look into. /cc @AsmChrisWard

June 20, 2022 @Yascha_Mounk was talking about democracy as a public park, so I figured I would enjoy the book in the Balboa Park.

June 20, 2022 A day at the park.

June 17, 2022 Sometimes it's not the computer. It's that you can't read.

June 10, 2022 Apparently I am very feisty today.

June 10, 2022 Aww yeah!

June 10, 2022 At the Voice of San Diego podcast taping!

June 9, 2022 It continues to break my brain that Californians (incl San Diegans) can look around them and not see the crisis of the moment. We do not have enough housing and without even more aggressive efforts we will not meet our needs this decade.

June 6, 2022 Mail improvements look great.

June 6, 2022 I am not looking forward to rebooting my iPhone in order to get my speedometer working again... CarPlay is great, but I have regular bugs with it.

June 6, 2022 Is it just me, or is it very concerining to watch basically all major tech companies become pseudo-banks and loan brokers?

June 6, 2022 New lockscreen stuff is cool, but "Mark Messages as Unread" is the best feature of WWDC. Yes I know they event just started, but I don't care.

May 2022 | 7 posts

May 30, 2022 Yes. To all of this San Diego deserves a great city hall.

May 29, 2022 Am I wrong to think that San Diego Community Power is, by far, the biggest single thing San Diego has ever done to address climate change? It sure seems like it. By default everyone enrolled gets 50% renewable power (up 19% from SDGE) & there’s a cheap option for 100%. Huge.

May 29, 2022 I think I would have instead written, “carbon-free and renewable.” My brain first read “renewable and carbon free” which does not mean the same thing.

May 24, 2022 Me: where can I buy a “.book” domain? Internet: you can’t. Me: ok, but why? Internet: because Amazon owns them all. Me: oh. 😔

May 22, 2022 Newspaper: read. New wall art: hung. Beowulf: finished. A good Sunday so far.

May 17, 2022 There is an avocado in the street Ripe, rich, ready For a day not now to come Never guacamole will it be Nor on tacos Instead lonely Once filled with dreams  Of salads, chips, and cheese Unmet Now it lies there in the street Alone

May 16, 2022 Today is a Tycho and Bach day.

April 2022 | 37 posts

April 30, 2022 Just beat today’s (now yesterday’s) Wordle with literally 15 seconds to midnight. Kept the streak!

April 30, 2022 I am lé tired.

April 30, 2022 We meet again Interpol.

April 30, 2022 Two nights in a row of live music.  I have missed this dearly.

April 30, 2022 Tycho & Interpol

April 28, 2022 Just rolled out some small enhancements to Nine9s.

April 27, 2022 Yesterday I wrote a blog post about reaching 100,000 words on my blog the same year that I hit 10 years of blogging. It's still wild to me that I've been blogging for 10 years!

April 27, 2022 🎶 Listening to John Steven Morgan's SOLO PIANO WORKS II. It is excellent. I discovered John's music when I was in San Francisco a few weeks ago. He was playing in Golden Gate Park and I bought on of his albums on the spot.

April 24, 2022 Interesting take from SDUT today. “Why do we print letters about Trump? Because that’s what you all keep sending in.” Perhaps the blame lies with us too.

April 24, 2022 I’m not sure why, but I am currently practicing my handwriting. I’ve wanted it to be better for a long time and I guess I finally hit a point where I’m willing to practice.

April 20, 2022 Released an update for Nine9s today btw. The site got some welcome backend performance enhancements and the app(s) got some lauch UI tweaks.

April 20, 2022 Today was a damn fine day.

April 19, 2022 This is a good release. You should check it out!

April 18, 2022 Afternoon reading from my latest visit to Verbatim Books.

April 18, 2022 Just noticed some scrapes on my iPhone screen. Dang it.

April 18, 2022 Some exciting stuff coming for Adventurer's Codex! @adventurercodex

April 18, 2022 A day at the bookstore followed by a long walk and leftover, homemade Eggplant Parmesan. A good Sunday.

April 17, 2022 Today I did some Good Takes™.

April 17, 2022 This article has a pretty negative spin, but I don’t think we should understate the effect of 700,000 people being enrolled in a 50% renewable energy power plan with a 100% renewables option. It’s probably the biggest climate improvement in SD to date.

April 17, 2022 Great conversation with CA Assembly-member Chris Ward (San Diego) on his new housing bill. Interesting bill and a good idea. Good to see primary owner amendment made it in too.

April 17, 2022 This is a particular interest of mine: San Diego pushed people into homelessness in part by removing the lowest rung (cheapest) housing.

April 17, 2022 An 83% and 72.8% increase in the median home price in two years. We need more housing.

April 15, 2022 The more you think about it the weirder it is that we all just leave incredibly valuable possessions (cars) on public rights of way and expect that to be fine, safe, and free.

April 13, 2022 In the past few months my new (2020) Macbook Pro started to generate transformer whine while plugged in. I am simultanously 1) irriated because I hear it. 2) happy that my hearing is good enough to hear it.

April 13, 2022 To celebrate, I am now sipping a nice Islay Scotch.

April 13, 2022 Today I completed a project that has taken me 6 years: a 6,000 word document that is, in its entirety, a joke.

April 10, 2022 A View from Strawberry Hill

April 10, 2022 Strawberry Hill

April 10, 2022 The Japanese Tea Garden - San Francisco

April 10, 2022 The last four songs that have played in this family-friendly venue were hits when I was in college. RIP

April 10, 2022 Fun Fact: Apple Maps has so many more features than I knew about. They just only work in/near SF.

April 8, 2022 The internet is a weird place where it’s hard to tell if something is a joke or not. It’s also a place where something can blur the line between joke and reality.

April 8, 2022 Do you care about food? Do you want to help food and the food community improve? Join us we are the International Institute of Food-Related Protocols.

April 4, 2022 That. Was. Excellent.

April 4, 2022 Homemade red wine, mushroom sauce is almost ready. Salad dressing is ready. Just waiting to cook the pasta!

April 3, 2022 It’s Sunday cooking time.

April 3, 2022 The title "Solutions Architect" implies the existence of a "Problems Architect".

March 2022 | 11 posts

March 25, 2022 Thanks to everyone who commented and read my blog post today. Your feed back was genuinely great. And my thanks to Hacker News for reposting it on the front page this morning!

March 25, 2022 Doing some work on Adventurer's Codex tonight. First time in a while. Some great new features coming in the next release!

March 24, 2022 More writing today.

March 19, 2022 Getting some writing done.

March 14, 2022 ♻️ Wikidata's Data Reuse Days are starting now! They go from March 14-24th! Check them out! Lightning talks (including one by me) start soon!

March 12, 2022 This error is very unsettling.

March 11, 2022 Crab Captain

March 10, 2022 This is good news.

March 9, 2022 Hey all! I'm going to be giving a lightning talk about my travel app Hewell during Wikidata's Data Reuse Days on Monday! You should tune in! Plus there's tons of other great presenters and topics!

March 2, 2022 When your codebase is 100% tested.

March 2, 2022 So Epic bought Bandcamp?! Seems like a big deal.

February 2022 | 19 posts

Feb. 27, 2022 San Diego actually put its money where it’s mouth is. We funded community crisis response teams to handle non-violent 911 calls. The better news? It works super well. Very proud of San Diego today.

Feb. 27, 2022 Do you want to keep up with what’s going on in California state politics? Sign up for my CA Politics & Policy Newsletter to get a weekly shortlist of links to great articles.

Feb. 26, 2022 Out Back

Feb. 24, 2022 I love getting books in the mail. I almost never remember what book I ordered until I open it, but once I do, I get excited for the book all over again.

Feb. 23, 2022 Blackmarket Bakery

Feb. 23, 2022 A blustery day in the neighborhood. A good time for ☕️ and my coffeehouse playlist.

Feb. 19, 2022 I know they’re my books, but I still can’t bear the thought of writing on them. 

Feb. 18, 2022 Really appreciating Scott's (@vosdscott) frustrated and candid explanation on a recent VOSD Podcast about how San Diego has a long and troubled history of providing adequate housing and its lack of actual, true solutions to the problem. Scott, buddy, I feel you.

Feb. 18, 2022 Great piece from Jesse Marx. Many Americans (inc 55,000) San Diegans do not have access to bank accounts and so cannot access cashless services. Beyond that, cash is a universal system. We’re essentially living with two tiers of currency.

Feb. 17, 2022 Do I get a prize? (characters, words)

Feb. 16, 2022 There is a rainbow outside my front door. What a nice surprise. 

Feb. 12, 2022 Learning so much about Latin Word Order today. Apparently there’s very little constraint on where words go in Latin. Sounds fun to speak and incredibly difficult to decipher.

Feb. 11, 2022 I interviewed Asm. Chris Ward about California's plans for addressing the housing and homelessness crises, and climate change! Check it out.

Feb. 11, 2022 California will need a lot more solar power generation to meet its clean energy goals by 2045, and solar needs a lot of land. (via SDUT)

Feb. 7, 2022 Had a great February day in San Diego.

Feb. 7, 2022 So I went looking for these “historic” Point Loma palm trees and I don’t think the area would miss a few trees. There’s a ton of them.

Feb. 4, 2022 That feeling when you have a really cool idea and you just want to work on it but you need to sleep because it is very late.

Feb. 3, 2022 Rest assured angry commentors: I do read your comments. I also find them largely hilarious. Constructive commentors, I appreciate you greatly.

Feb. 1, 2022 Greetings to all my new followers. Just so you know, it’s not all housing policy here (though there is a lot of it). Lots of programming stuff. You were warned.

January 2022 | 21 posts

Jan. 31, 2022 Check out my latest housing piece, this time on Voice of San Diego!

Jan. 30, 2022 Saturday’s View

Jan. 27, 2022 If I play 10 years of D&D, do I qualify to take the Bar Exam? Rules Lawyer Esq.

Jan. 27, 2022 Sometimes all it takes to succeed is to follow up.

Jan. 26, 2022 A wizard is never late, Frodo Baggins. Nor is he early. On average he arrives precisely within one standard deviation of when he means to.

Jan. 23, 2022 Sunday Morning

Jan. 19, 2022 Time is weird. It simultaneously feels like it’s been days since August, and months since Christmas. 

Jan. 19, 2022 Gmail has started marking messages from my primary email address as spam for no reason. Doesn't seem like there's any fix. It is very frustrating.

Jan. 18, 2022 The free COVID tests website proves that the US government can make good websites. That dreadful Child Tax Credit site was a choice. Also USPS in on the ball.

Jan. 18, 2022 Fun Fact: if each of the 170 named communities in San Diego built just 636 additional housing units, we could solve our housing crisis. Yup, you read that right: just 636 units each.

Jan. 18, 2022 Americans! You can now order free COVID test kits from USPS. Limit 4-per address.

Jan. 18, 2022 Winter in San Diego

Jan. 16, 2022 Tentative good news for San Diegans: it looks like our Omicron wave has peaked and is heading down.

Jan. 14, 2022 Listening to the NPR Politics Podcast (the civil war episode) and I'm left wondering. In the 80s-90s California was in a similar spot to the nation: very polarized and R-leaning with lots of "concerns" about multi-racial democracy. Is the US going through now what CA did then?

Jan. 13, 2022 San Diego County is more populous than 21 states. And we still only get two senators… for the whole state. California is huge.

Jan. 12, 2022 805 North

Jan. 9, 2022 TL;DR Man buys house next door in wealthy neighborhood to prevent more housing from being built.

Jan. 9, 2022 TIL you can buy COVID tests direct from iHealth. Good news since most outlets (Amazon, Target, etc) are out.

Jan. 7, 2022 My latest local housing piece is out! In short, we need a lot more infill housing in existing neighborhoods; especially in wealthy neighborhoods like Hillcrest, North Park, University Heights and Normal Heights.

Jan. 5, 2022 This piece is excellent and stunning. A look into San Diego’s dark history with the midway district.

Jan. 5, 2022 I am really excited about Adventurer’s Codex right now.

December 2021 | 19 posts

Dec. 29, 2021 I love static site generation. There's so much you can do with it. Static sites with little JS are fast, cachable, and seo-friendly.

Dec. 28, 2021 I love these rainy December days.

Dec. 28, 2021 Ordered some more at-home COVID tests. They arrived a week early. Got lucky I guess.

Dec. 27, 2021 As long as I've been doing web-dev I've used Safari to build websites (as well as my main browser). But even on the most recent version of Safari, it's basically unusable when debugging Adventurer's Codex. The dev tools just freeze up and lag. Brave has no issues. Sad.

Dec. 26, 2021 I fear that Apple may engage in some intense rules-lawyering on this change though. Their settlement says reader apps will be able to, "include an in-app link to their website for users to set up or manage an account." Most people think that means one link, but can we add that on...

Dec. 26, 2021 What I'm looking forward to most in 2022 is adding this button to the Nine9s for iOS app: Create Account...on the Web! It's already in the macOS app, I just need to remove one if-statement.

Dec. 22, 2021 Over the years people have really dumped on Siri as a feature and don’t get me wrong, it could be a lot better. But I use Siri every day for exactly three things: timers, reminders, and dictating notes. If it did only that, I’d be happy. Funnily enough I really only ever see pe...

Dec. 21, 2021 I mostly agree with this.

Dec. 18, 2021 Doing some book reading this morning. It feels good. I read a lot of articles, and I feel that takes my attention away from reading books. It feels good to sink into a book again. Even for a bit.

Dec. 18, 2021 Moonrise in North Park

Dec. 17, 2021 Out for an evening walk.

Dec. 16, 2021 Talking about zoning reform and housing policy with the fam. This is my kind of family holiday conversation.

Dec. 12, 2021 Reading opposing views is the “eat your vegetables” of an informed opinion. We should probably all do more of it.

Dec. 12, 2021 I genuinely enjoy reading my local paper in large part because it forces me to come in contact with views I disagree with. That’s not to say I’m not also frustrated by those views, but what’s healthy isn’t always fun.

Dec. 9, 2021 I'm pretty stunned at how negative the coverage has been when discussing SANDAG's plan to make San Diego more transit friendly. I get the public concern, but the news outlets have been really pessimistic.

Dec. 7, 2021 Today, I'm beyond excited to announce that my band: The Fourth Section, has released our first EP! 'Glass & Stone' is available now, where ever music is sold/streamed.

Dec. 6, 2021 As of today, I've also announced my first Mac App! It's the official app for Nine9s! And it's released outside of the App Store!

Dec. 6, 2021 Commercial uptime monitoring is usually pretty limited. It makes an HTTP request to your site to check if it's still up. Nine9s now does A LOT more than that. Track your server's performance, disk usage, memory usage, and more. Also, there's a Mac App now!

Dec. 6, 2021 Today marks the release of a very, very cool upgrade to Nine9s (my uptime monitoring service). Now you can monitor almost anything your software does. Not just HTTP requests! Check it out!

November 2021 | 12 posts

Nov. 30, 2021 The annual Holiday Minecraft tradition is about to commence!

Nov. 29, 2021 That’s cool. My iPhone keeps losing the ability to talk over cellular until the second reboot. Nice.

Nov. 29, 2021 iMessage's lack of keyboard shortcuts is... frustrating.

Nov. 29, 2021 Anybody know how to clear iMessage badges on Monterey? I have no new messages, but the app is badged. I have literally clicked through every conversation and nothing is unread.

Nov. 29, 2021 Plus there's an app I want and it's 11+ only, so that was the final straw.

Nov. 29, 2021 I have held off upgrading for years. I probably should have upgraded years ago, but I never wanted to take the hit and reinstall my stuff (and risk breaking my projects). It is well past time to update.

Nov. 29, 2021 I am finally upgrading my Mac from Catalina to Monterey.

Nov. 26, 2021 It is a beautiful autumn day in San Diego: sunny, clear, and 77F.

Nov. 24, 2021 Just heard on The Weeds by Dara Lind: The Politician's Fallacy: Something must be done! [This] is something. Therefore [this] must be done!

Nov. 15, 2021 The problem is that SQL Alchemy and Django are just that good; as is Postgres.

Nov. 15, 2021 It is incredibly frustrating to see tooling that has existed in one language/toolset for over a decade simply just not exist in others.

Nov. 12, 2021 Today I submitted two app updates to the App Store for two existing apps. The apps have both had multiple updates and have extremely similar websites. One app was accepted, and one was rejected because the website (which hasn’t changed) supposedly doesn’t meet the guidelines.

October 2021 | 8 posts

Oct. 22, 2021 It’s such a small world.

Oct. 19, 2021 Fall in San Diego

Oct. 19, 2021 If my servers are in London, does that mean I can advertise "International Priority Access"?

Oct. 15, 2021 The London Fog is a damn fine drink.

Oct. 11, 2021 Is it possible to be annoyed, happy, and relieved at the same time & because of the same thing? Because that's how I feel.

Oct. 9, 2021 I just spelled anachronistic correctly on the first try. AMA

Oct. 9, 2021 States are the laboratories of democracy in that some of them are experimenting with the idea of actually doing something.

Oct. 5, 2021 What are y’all up to? I’m watching a lightning storm and reading about the Facebook outage.

September 2021 | 26 posts

Sept. 30, 2021 Setting up a new react project on a new mac. Install homebrew > install nodejs > install yarn > install the project It's installers all the way down.

Sept. 30, 2021 I think a lot of people who find themselves plugged into politics on the internet (myself included) get stuck on the "right ideas". A 1.5T$ bill is good. That's 1.5T$ we didn't spend before; it sucks less.

Sept. 30, 2021 I feel like the CTC is pretty popular. Dems can run on the simple truth that they gave parents money and cut child poverty in half.

Sept. 30, 2021 Voting reform should be the single most important issue that Dems tackle, but they don't have the votes right now. They either need 60 votes in the Senate, or they need 51 senators willing to kill the fillibuster. They have neither, so it won't happen.

Sept. 30, 2021 The more that time goes on, the more I think that Dems should pass the Bipartisan infrastructure bill, use Manchin's new 1.5T$ figure to make the Child Tax Credit permanent, and then focus on 2022.

Sept. 30, 2021 A $1.5T bill is much better than a "let's wait until 2022" bill; which is what we had before.

Sept. 30, 2021 At the risk of angering my fellow progressives, I think the fact that Manchin has now publicly stated a total cost figure is actually a good thing. His figure is lower than progressives wanted (and that more liberal members agreed to) but it is at least a number.

Sept. 29, 2021 What’s the over-under on getting a full-page ad on the New York Times demanding the Senate to dump the fillings yet? Should we do a Kickstarter or something?

Sept. 29, 2021 Granted there’s lots of ways out of this looming crisis but I prefer to frame it that way.

Sept. 29, 2021 In the next two weeks we’re going to find out whether the United States Senate would rather have a functioning economy or the Filibuster. I do not feel hopeful about our odds on this one.

Sept. 26, 2021 I covered San Diego’s housing needs in a post a while back for Democracy & Progress. It doesn’t mention SB9 but it’s a good overview of SD’s housing situation.

Sept. 26, 2021 Also that second article disputes it’s own title about 5 paragraphs in. That said it does have some really nice breakdowns of the law and some good stats, but it’s super lopsided.

Sept. 26, 2021 SD-UT is really pushing the NIMBY angle today. Really disappointed that there’s barely a mention of how we desperately need more housing and how SB9 can help this. 3 pieces slamming SB9 and none for it. How is this “neutral”?

Sept. 24, 2021 Summer rains. You can never predict them. Stay safe out there San Diego.

Sept. 24, 2021 To be clear, most of these things aren't illegal, just inconsiderate. They take advantage of their position as employers with options.

Sept. 24, 2021 There are so many small things that employers do these days that a tighter labor market would prevent. Employers are used to being able to repeatedly inconvience workers because they know they won't quit. It's not acceptable.

Sept. 24, 2021 Things are about to get crazy. (via DarkSky)

Sept. 22, 2021 Building software is a very humbling experience. Did you know that if you tell the Sparkle framework to not automatically update that it will not automatically update, even if you really want it to. Good job Sparkle. Bad job me.

Sept. 21, 2021 Mail-in ballots are good. California's recall proves it. The Recall Election Proves Mail Ballots Are Good For Democracy →

Sept. 19, 2021 @aaronpk I’ve got a vegetarian friend visiting Portland and they’re looking for lunch recommendations. Any tips?

Sept. 16, 2021 Hey everyone, real progress towards mitigating climate change is possible right now, but only if Congress includes two key provisions in the upcoming infrastructure bill. Find out more in my latest article for Democracy & Progress, then call your representatives and tell them to.

Sept. 15, 2021 I want to say thank you to my fellow Californians.

Sept. 11, 2021 Aparently, Chromium decided to change how 3d transforms and perspective CSS works. The last release of Chrome/Brave/etc broke Adventurer's Codex.

Sept. 11, 2021 When your site goes kaput But no changes were put That's a browser bug! When you search all around For a clue (and you found!) It's a browser bug!

Sept. 9, 2021 It took 3 days and a lot deeper understanding of dynamic linking than I'd imagined, but I have finally got my new Catalyst app loading an AppKit bundle. Disclaimer: this is my first true dive into macOS, and it's a lot. Learning a lot.

Sept. 9, 2021 A great piece covering this history and quirks of email: "On this journey, I’ve come to realize that saramorrison@gmail.com never truly belonged to me, to one Sara Morrison. It belonged to Google."

August 2021 | 11 posts

Aug. 29, 2021 I love that San Diego (and maybe all of CA, idk) uses Ballottrax. It’s so cool to know my ballot has been mailed, received, accepted, etc. This feedback makes me feel incredibly confident during elections.

Aug. 24, 2021 Have you ever realized that the solution to choking on water is to cough and then drink more water? Big Water, man. They know how to get you.

Aug. 21, 2021 I try to purchase as many books as possible from my local book stores (using Indiebound), but when a price difference is that stark, it's impossible for me to resist the call of the siren Bezos.

Aug. 21, 2021 How is this even possible? My local bookstore sells this at full price when Amazon can under-cut by 88%. I love my local store, but how are they supposed to compete with that? (I know they can't; that's the point)

Aug. 20, 2021 Currently builing an app with web-tech that loads a native view that embeds a webview that renders the app content. Modern toolchains are super weird.

Aug. 11, 2021 Just published: San Diego's Housing Situation is Bad, but Getting Better

Aug. 11, 2021 It says something about our political discourse that when I publish an article with a somewhat positive headline the first reader reactions are doubt and skepticism.

Aug. 10, 2021 Sigh. My kingdom for Postgres.

Aug. 10, 2021 I genuinely didn't believe that the Senate would pass the Bipartisan Infrastructure bill. I stand corrected. I look forward to the upcoming reconciliation bill, but the BI bill is not nothing.

Aug. 10, 2021 So much news today

Aug. 1, 2021 Apple, why does the 2-factor modal on macOS appear directly atop the AppStore Connect login form I'm trying to fill out? Please move one of them. It's a quick fix.

July 2021 | 9 posts

July 26, 2021 The Channel

July 25, 2021 Nugget Falls

July 21, 2021 Walking in Trolley Barn Park

July 14, 2021 I didn’t know this was a thing. Grove got featured on Product Hunt today, but the app launched Monday. Either way, thanks PH!

July 12, 2021 Do you go for daily walks? Do you want to go for daily walks? Check out Grove a new game for iOS that helps keep you motivated on your walks and teaches you about Climate Change!

July 12, 2021 Is hot today.

July 12, 2021 Hey all! Today I'm announcing my first game! Check out Grove for iOS, a virtual tree-planting wellness game! It's been a lot of fun to build Grove and I'm super excited to finally announce it!

July 11, 2021 Big day tomorrow.

July 4, 2021 The newest issue of my California policy newsletter is out! Subscribe for weekly updates!

June 2021 | 24 posts

June 17, 2021 So that’s what Pine.blog looks like on an iPad!? It’s not bad actually. I haven’t been able to test the app on a real iPad in years since my old one only ran iOS 12.

June 17, 2021 iPad achieved!

June 16, 2021 Related: I have ordered a new iPad. 📱

June 16, 2021 I just realized that my iPad Air (which barely works anymore) is from 2013. No wonder it's on its last legs. It's been chugging along for almost a decade. Wow.

June 16, 2021 Knowing the feature was impossible in the first place gives me closure. Welcome to my Ted Talk.

June 16, 2021 I have effectively run up against a hard-coded limit in iOS, so my original idea for a feature is now impossible to implement. In a way that's frustrating because I have to find another way to do what I want, but in another way it's freeing: I don't need to keep searching for hac...

June 16, 2021 I have learned a lot about video encoding, decoding, and playback on iOS in the last two days. Unfortunately I have little to show for it.

June 16, 2021 Ah. It was impossible to begin with.

June 16, 2021 finds example code for "Simple Video Player" Ooh. This sounds like it will help me! "Simple Version" is hundreds of lines long This does not bode well for me.

June 15, 2021 Pulling my hair out here. Anyone know of a good option for downsizing non-standard resolution HEVC video while preserving the alpha channel? Seems like FFmpeg can't do it yet, and Apple's codecs only support standard HD resolutions.

June 14, 2021 Added a new Random Image button (and API endpoint) to d20.photos. Check it out if you need scenery/images for your D&D or Pathfinder games (or novels).

June 14, 2021 75% of the eligible population of San Diego County is partly vaccinated. Studies put the Herd Immunity threshold ~75%. Including those who've already gotten sick, SD's cases should probably start to plummet rapidly within 14 days. (fyi, i'm not a doctor)

June 13, 2021 Are you interested in learning more about California Politics & Policy? Sign up for my new weekly California Policy Newsletter! It's filled with a collection of articles about the latest goings-on in CA, right to your inbox.

June 11, 2021 Either way, I’m done for today.

June 11, 2021 Today I went down a series of rabbit holes and have not yet emerged from them. Video encoding is hard. CloudKit is weird.

June 10, 2021 It also doesn't help that the CloudKit dashboard is kinda broken right now.

June 10, 2021 Anyone know anything about CloudKit Subscriptions? I am running out of ideas for debugging a subscription that simply never triggers push notifications.

June 9, 2021 Today I stopped working a bit early because I fixed a long standing bug that had been confounding me for weeks. Better to quit while I’m ahead.

June 9, 2021 Afternoon walk.

June 3, 2021 That said, Swift (and Obj-C) code really doesn't want to be under 80 characters long. It's a struggle and sometimes I just give up.

June 3, 2021 Pretty sure I'm in the minority here, but my Swift code is formatted with lines under ~80 characters long and my decorators are always one line above the decorated item like this: @IBAction func doThing() {}

June 2, 2021 Back to the wired backup keyboard. This one works great, but the key-feel is no where near as good as my logitech wireless one. I wish I could find a good wired replacement.

June 2, 2021 I'm so over wireless accessories that spend their entire lives on the same desk. Cables solve so many problems.

June 2, 2021 My external keyboard has decided that it's just gonna stop working today... Great.

May 2021 | 25 posts

May 28, 2021 Installed a Pi-Hole on my network recently and added updateLists to it. My browsing experience is amazing now. Things are so much faster. Pretty easy to install too. Highly recommend.

May 24, 2021 I love going for walks whenever I'm stuck on a problem or lacking focus. I almost always get back with fresh ideas, renewed motivation, or new insights.

May 24, 2021 Hiking. First hike since last summer.

May 21, 2021 Huh, one of my worker nodes is stuck. Weird. Support ticket filed. Now off to bed.

May 20, 2021 Just pushed out some new changes to Nine9s including more generous tiers! If you need inexpensive (or even free) uptime monitoring, give Nine9s a try!

May 17, 2021 Some poppies.

May 17, 2021 Slow day. Good day.

May 15, 2021 It’s been 15 months since I’d played music in a practice studio. Feels so good to be back.

May 15, 2021 Fog on the Lake

May 15, 2021 🎙 On the latest episode of IndieDevLife we discuss how the iOS community and developer experience differs from deving on the Web, and we look at how reading NetNewsWire's source code helped me solve a complex bug in my app.

May 12, 2021 There are so many problems/annoyances when developing for iOS that just don't exist on the Web. Most of my issues stem from the fact that when I don't understand something—or when the docs are unclear—I can't just go look at the source code.

May 12, 2021 CloudKit is really cool... until it doesn't do what you expect and you have absolutely no idea why, there's no way to find out, and the relevant documentation is non-existant.

May 11, 2021 Not a great day at Apple I guess.

May 11, 2021 Got a Switch today. Finally.

May 10, 2021 Let's see if Apple will let me upload a build today. Hopefully yesterday's maintenance is done.

May 8, 2021 Made some good progress today. Now, I am done.

May 7, 2021 I have an opinion which no reasonable person can disagree with: The Tom Collins is the perfect summer cocktail. Painkillers are great, no doubt. But a Tom Collins is better. I make mine with this Gin and it is supurb.

May 7, 2021 Industry

May 7, 2021 Today was filled with a few tasks that I thought would take me hours, and instead took seconds. Not bad.

May 4, 2021 TBH I've found the housing market data similarly confounding. Pretty new to housing & homelessness data sources, but it always seems that the published stats are the easy-to-count kind not the useful-for-policy kind.

May 4, 2021 I've repeatedly said that the COVID stats we have aren't ideal. Case counts aren't fair to large states; vaccine counts aren't fair to small ones. And there's little compariative data (until lately). Effective democracy requires feedback loops. Good feedback requires good data.

May 4, 2021 Comparative data is really important because it allows people to more effectively judge their local government's response in comparison to other known units. CA is currently doing very well, so if SD's rates are similar, then I feel confident saying we're doing well here!

May 4, 2021 Really interesting that San Diego County COVID situation has remained essentially a mirror of the state as a whole (numbers normalized to population obv). We're average!

May 2, 2021 I just finished setting up a Pi-Hole on my network. Pretty cool stuff. The ads on my TV are finally gone.

May 1, 2021 California is currently experiencing the lowest per capita case rate of any US state. This is a huge success. Lowest rate, no fourth wave. /cc @ezraklein

April 2021 | 26 posts

April 30, 2021 It's hot.

April 30, 2021 Do you have a blog? You should make sure it's always up. Sign up for Nine9s.cloud and get uptime monitoring for your blog or site for free.

April 26, 2021 TIL about the

tag. You can show/hide information without JS using standard HTML. And it works in feed readers! I will be using this.

April 21, 2021 🎵 Deadlocked (Woo) the main thread. Oh I deadlocked (Yeah yeah) the main thread By redeeming StoreKit purchases (where?) On the main thread (Oh no) Yes I did... on the maaaaiiin threeeeeeead! 🎵

April 20, 2021 Completely missed today's Apple event. Did I miss much?

April 20, 2021 I just made a list of the things I need to do in order to consider my [redacted] app feature compete! It's ~22 items long. Apparently I'm a lot closer than I thought.

April 20, 2021 Took this picture and the lens flare makes it look like there’s a second sun.

April 20, 2021 Yesterday I signed out of Twitter on all my devices. Hopefully I can resist signing back in. I do like to check my mentions, but I think I can forgo that for a while.

April 19, 2021 Sunset over the Highway

April 19, 2021 Lakeside Path

April 18, 2021 For the first time in years, I took a stab at updating the IIFRP.org homepage. I also took @aaronpk's advice and added an RFC about how to create and submit RFCs.

April 16, 2021 "Ya see, Donny here's gonna need another funding round from ya, and if he don't get it, I guess you'll have to pivot to your exit strategy friend, or you're gonna be swimmin' with the fishes."

April 16, 2021 I want a movie where classic NY mobsters threaten local businesses with Silicon Valley business lingo. "You keep your nose clean, and I'll follow up with Donny B. And if he don't like what he sees, then uh, I'll circle back and touch base in Q4; if'n you catch my drift."

April 13, 2021 In the HomeEc classes of the future (if we ever remake them), students need to learn real-world, 21st century skills like how to manage email: using folders and writing filters. It's a skill that takes 30 minutes to learn and will change their lifes forever.

April 7, 2021 Did I mention that the Kindle version of my book finally available? Because it is and you should get it.

April 7, 2021 Quality software is the result of all the code you didn’t write, not the code you did.

April 7, 2021 Some devs during a refactor: I’m gonna clean up this mess and make it elegant! Me during a refactor: I’m gonna delete so much code!

April 7, 2021 It still boggles my mind that the oldest piece of software I’ve built that’s still in use is my blog engine. I’ve rewritten, upgraded, migrated, and mutated that poor thing for nearly a decade.

April 7, 2021 Switching over my blog engine to finally use Jinja templates instead of the limited and convoluted pseudo-template system I created 8 years ago.

April 7, 2021 Upgrades done!

April 7, 2021 Currently administering upgrades using tmux on 5 remote machines through ssh all inside of tmux on another remote machine through ssh from my laptop. Come at me!

April 6, 2021 FFmpeg is pure, indescribable magic. Every time I need it to solve a problem, it can.

April 4, 2021 Just turned off Siri suggestions for Safari. I don’t have a Twitter client installed, but I find myself browsing Twitter more than I’d like because Siri keeps recommending the site to me when I’m bored.

April 4, 2021 Ahh. Inbox Zero.

April 3, 2021 It's amazing what a 50 line bash script can do.

April 3, 2021 Two Negronis and I'm writing bash scripts.

March 2021 | 40 posts

March 29, 2021 Today is a business day full of business things whereby I do a lot of business-y business.

March 26, 2021 Thanks to everyone who read my latest blog post and then bought my book! You’re awesome!

March 25, 2021 Interesting note. Here's what my blog server's CPU load is like depending on how high my post is ranked on HN.

March 25, 2021 This is now the most viewed blog post I've ever written.

March 25, 2021 The feedback on my latest post has been awesome. Glad to see lots of people finding this tip useful. Also good to learn about how to improve it!

March 25, 2021 Static blogs are great. HN is currently pouring traffic to my site and it's like nothing's happening.

March 25, 2021 3 on HN is my highest ever. Glad people find my cheap hacks useful.

March 25, 2021 Woo! Made it to the front page of HN!

March 25, 2021 Just noticed that one of Pine.blog's worker nodes just decided to take a vacation and stopped processing requests a few days ago. Luckily it had basically no impact on the service. Get back to work!

March 24, 2021 I just lost 3 hours to this setting.

March 24, 2021 Not too shabby.

March 22, 2021 [Scene: The U.S. Senate] Dems: We have a new bill. You in? Reps: Nah, you gotta pay for it. D: Oh ok. What if we raise taxes to pay for it? R: Nah, no tax increases. D: Wut? So you won't support anything? R: Yes. D: Fine, we'll do it w/o you. R: What about UNITY?!

March 14, 2021 Not sure who needs to hear this, but things are getting better. This comparison shows the NYT's projected vaccination rates over time. Look at the difference in the time to 90% that just one month has made.

March 14, 2021 Comparisons between the states are complicated. For example, California has a pretty high case count right now, but it also has the 3rd lowest 7-day per capita case rate of any state. That's awesome.

March 14, 2021 With jelly.

March 14, 2021 Making peanut butter cookies.

March 12, 2021 Thank you git reflog. You saved me once again.

March 12, 2021 Sunset on the town

March 11, 2021 Flight through broken clouds

March 10, 2021 Got a new iPhone today. Got the mini. It feels so good to have a small-ish phone again.

March 8, 2021 Fellow San Diegans, check out my latest article!

March 8, 2021 It's Time to End Supermajority Rules In California It also means that in order for Proposition 22 to be amended today, the amendment would need to be significantly more popular in the legislature than apple pie. Let that sink in.

March 8, 2021 The Two Towers and a Boulevardier

March 8, 2021 It’s LotR: The Two Towers movie night.

March 7, 2021 It feels good to get some long-awaited maintenance out of the way.

March 7, 2021 I'm finally going to start a migration for my blog's webserver that's been pending for over 3 years.

March 7, 2021 You might notice seemingly old things appearing in your timelines. That's because they were skipped over before. This should resolve itself in the next 30 mins and everything will be up to date.

March 7, 2021 Rolling out the new changes to Pine.blog.

March 7, 2021 My monitor just crashed.

March 7, 2021 One of the enormous upsides to being good at a language like Python is that after 6 months of barely touching it, I can easily remember the API without looking at the docs or using auto-complete. IMO Swift is impossible without Xcode.

March 7, 2021 I just fixed a bug with Pine.blog and was about to deploy it when I remembered that you should never deploy late-night fixes. I'm proud to say it's only taken me 323,000 seemingly-simple-but-something-goes-wrong-late-at-night-deploys to learn this lesson.

March 7, 2021 Software development is basically just spending an inappropriate amount of time chasing down problems you caused for yourself because you either can't add or forgot to check if something was null.

March 7, 2021 The Senate actually did something! Woo! Now do more.

March 5, 2021 That's ok Safari, use 220% of my CPU with no windows open. I totally wasn't using that CPU myself.

March 4, 2021 My problem statement for today: determine a number 1-12 to return in a way that is: Deterministic (the same for all clients) Decentralized (no central server) Somewhat random/shuffled Roughly evenly distributed What would you do?

March 4, 2021 Sometimes you need things to appear random to a user, but not actually be random.

March 3, 2021 Lightning, Thunder, and Death Cab for Cutie.

March 3, 2021 The thunder helps me focus. #WeatherThoughts

March 1, 2021 The single most important change Apple has made to App Store Connect in recent years is making it mobile-friendly. So freaking useful.

March 1, 2021 Let's Reform Our Elections with Democracy Vouchers tl;dr Democracy vouchers are good. We should do them.

February 2021 | 11 posts

Feb. 26, 2021 What’s this? A podcast episode about the Senate and its arcane, procedural rules that normal people would find blisteringly dull including a discussion with the actual Senate parliamentarian? Why yes, I will drop everything and listen to that.

Feb. 25, 2021 Everything is a dependency.

Feb. 25, 2021 Pro Tip: Blindly copying code from Stack Overflow can cause difficult-to-diagnose memory leaks.

Feb. 23, 2021 I got this pen in Japan for less than a dollar. Today after years of use, I’ve finally killed it. It’s served me well. I also just ordered more.

Feb. 22, 2021 Hey everyone, I've been working on a new California-focused Policy Blog called Democracy & Progress (@dem_and_prog on Twitter) and I'm publishing there pretty frequently. Give it a follow if that's your cup of tea, and let's discuss how we can improve California!

Feb. 21, 2021 Working from the park today.

Feb. 2, 2021 Small hiccup with Pine.blog timelines today. Fixed now. You might see some posts from earlier today that were missed by the parser.

Feb. 2, 2021 🎵The queues run deep🎵

Feb. 2, 2021 Did I ever mention that I do consulting? Well I do! If you're looking for custom web/iOS software, drop me a line: brian "at" skyrocket "dot" software.

Feb. 2, 2021 Everything on the Web is either a blog or a newsletter. Discuss.

Feb. 1, 2021 Oh web scraping. You are so ugly and yet so incredibly useful.

January 2021 | 59 posts

Jan. 30, 2021 Pine.blog is back and raring to go!

Jan. 29, 2021 This will be a good one! From Pine.blog Official Support Maintinence will begin ~4PM Pacific! Expect a few hours of downtime. I promise it will be worth it.

Jan. 29, 2021 Relevant ProZD

Jan. 29, 2021 We have thunder! ⛈

Jan. 29, 2021 (There isn't actually a big red button)

Jan. 29, 2021 Final preparations for tonights downtime are underway. The new iOS app has been approved and is waiting for me to push the big red button.

Jan. 28, 2021 Just an FYI, there will be some Pine.blog downtime tomorrow. I know I said last time that there wouldn't be, but there's some important upgrades to do. It won't be long, and afterwards you'll see that it was worth it.

Jan. 25, 2021 Thrilled that Janet Yellen has been confirmed. This is good news.

Jan. 20, 2021 Seeing Biden in the Oval Office is genuinely making me want to cry tears of joy.

Jan. 18, 2021 He's back!

Jan. 18, 2021 I can't find this listed anywhere on the NYTimes website, but I was able to guess the URL. You can follow @ezraklein and his new opinion column using this RSS Feed.

Jan. 13, 2021 I'll give him one thing. He is really, really good at getting his name in the news.

Jan. 13, 2021 Good.

Jan. 13, 2021 Yeah, I would say so.

Jan. 13, 2021 I feel that today will be a "get almost nothing done" kind of day.

Jan. 12, 2021 NYTimes: Senator Mitch McConnell is said to believe that the impeachment effort will make it easier to purge President Trump from the party. If McConnell sees that can rid himself of Trump we might get somewhere. He might not care about abuse of power, but he cares about himse...

Jan. 12, 2021 Am I the only one experiencing a growing sense of dread because every day that comes is one day closer to this weekend which is going to be terrible?

Jan. 12, 2021 Today I unplugged my laptop from it's dock for the first time in months.

Jan. 10, 2021 Unions protect workers. Albertsons is laying off employees and replacing them with gig workers, as app platforms rise: “Unionized delivery workers will not be laid off in the shift, Albertsons said.”

Jan. 10, 2021 I have not had COVID.

Jan. 10, 2021 Waiting for my antibody test results.

Jan. 10, 2021 I have never been happier that I directly subscribe to news sites. Quality news is worth your money (I even get a Sunday paper). Here’s my list: The San Diego Union-Tribune The Sacramento Bee The NY Times Vox

Jan. 9, 2021 Nothing is preventing the President from hosting his own microblog. He just can't use Twitter's version (or mine). Mr. President, I know you can't see this, but if you create an account on Pine.blog, I will promptly delete it.

Jan. 9, 2021 All these improvements may obviate the need for one of my feed parsing nodes.

Jan. 9, 2021 In other news, my latest editorial is out! The way forward: Jobs for all → To right our wrongs, we need to be bold, we need to be swift, and we need to be ready to make history.

Jan. 9, 2021 And there is still more to come in the next few weeks. No more backend stuff, now it's time for the fun stuff.

Jan. 9, 2021 You can clearly see the effect of my recent upgrades/optimizations in these charts. Lots of database query optimizations and other performance tweaks. The responsiveness of the site should be much better now.

Jan. 9, 2021 I never have to hear the phrase "the president just tweeted" ever again. Today is a damn fine day.

Jan. 9, 2021 Pine.blog is back! And what a day has happened while it was gone.

Jan. 8, 2021 Pine.blog is going to be down a bit today for mantinence and upgrades. Apologies.

Jan. 8, 2021 She said that impeachment was the "the overwhelming sentiment of my caucus.". Pelosi and Biden are similar in this respect: they're party leaders. If the majority of their caucus wants something, they will get it.

Jan. 8, 2021 Pelosi's current threats to impeach feel more like a courtesy call to give the President time to resign rather than idle threats.

Jan. 8, 2021 I have often questioned Nancy Pelosi's decisions, but I do not question her resolve. She gets what she wants. She knows how to count votes. If she says she will impeach, its because she already has the votes to do so.

Jan. 8, 2021 First a walk, then more upgrades.

Jan. 8, 2021 For anyone who is confused by the terms fiscal or monetary policy let me explain in an oversimplified way: Fiscal Policy is when Congress buys stuff (roads, tanks, healthcare) and taxes you Monetary Policy is when the Fed adjusts the money supply (interest rates, QE, etc)

Jan. 8, 2021 Got some more upgrades to do tomorrow, then I'm done with server upgrades for the forseable future. After this it's all UI and iOS work for me.

Jan. 8, 2021 But caching is magical.

Jan. 8, 2021 I hate touching the feed parser. It's always so finicky. tl;dr Reliably parsing arbitrary content (of varying quality) from the Web is hard.

Jan. 8, 2021 That was a slightly bumpier rollout than I was expecting... But it looks like everything is flowing again.

Jan. 7, 2021 What Joe Manchin's Senate can deliver - Matt Yglesias (Slow Boring): ...all of this should be eligible for [budget reconciliation] to quadruple federal spending on low-income housing assistance triple federal spending on low-income K-12 schools make community college free

Jan. 6, 2021 Congress should Impeach the President from their hidden bunker.

Jan. 6, 2021 A hole has opened in my heart. I have no words.

Jan. 6, 2021 My todo list for today is not getting done.

Jan. 6, 2021 Now will you impeach him?

Jan. 6, 2021 Senators tweeting that violence isnt the answer while their chamber is occupied kind of misses the point.

Jan. 6, 2021 I have no wit for such an occasion. This is bad.

Jan. 6, 2021 Democrats have "this one chance to destroy evil forever". They have vanquished Sauron, now they must destroy the One Ring. Gerrymandering and voter suppression are it's powers. They give Republicans power. It's a census year. We must not fail, we must destroy it.

Jan. 6, 2021 Not with a bang, but with a whimper indeed.

Jan. 6, 2021 I'm struggling to find words to express how happy I am right now. These next two years will be a hard-fought battle in the Senate, but at least for now things are possible again. It's finally over. Now we just have to deal with a pandemic and crippled economy... yay.

Jan. 6, 2021 Blue waves cannot sustain the Democratic party. They need to fix gerrymandering, they need to ensure that people's votes count, and they need to undo decades of work to perpetually disadvantage them in elections. We have two years to save democracy, or we'll never be able to save...

Jan. 6, 2021 We have two years. Two years to level the playing field of our democracy, stamp out the pandemic, rebuild our economy, and combat climate change.

Jan. 6, 2021 I can't wait for our new Democratic Senate to pass that one budget reconciliation bill at the end of the year!

Jan. 6, 2021 Thank you Georgia. Thank you.

Jan. 6, 2021 Fried Eggplant over a Homemade Italian Red Sauce

Jan. 5, 2021 This is a first. I started and finished a book in the same day. Granted it was a fairly small book, but still.

Jan. 4, 2021 Very excitable today. I guess a higher coffee to food ratio will do that. ☕️

Jan. 4, 2021 My ping times (to 1.1.1.1) are currently anywhere from 16-3000ms. Sometimes >1000ms for almost a minute at a time. Destination doesn't seem to matter. What is going on?

Jan. 3, 2021 I miss my country, and I want it back.

Jan. 3, 2021 It's like he's trying to complete an America's Greatest Hits album for corruption.

December 2020 | 53 posts

Dec. 31, 2020 Found this really weird Twitter scrolling bug in Safari. Pay attention to the sidebar images and text as I scroll the timeline. They move slightly when scrolling the document. It even continues if I scroll down and "reset" the scroll position at the top.

Dec. 30, 2020 Time Machine users, does this happen to you a lot? I get this error about every 6 months.

Dec. 29, 2020 The more I become immersed in the public policy sections of the Web, the more I'm pleasantly surprised that it's almost entirely built on blogging.

Dec. 29, 2020 Catching up on a lot of reading today. So far I've worked my way through ~15 articles from last week. Many more were no longer relevant, so I just skipped them.

Dec. 28, 2020 Ben Adler (American Prospect): Based on recent trends and technological developments, however, EIA’s most recent projections estimate that power sector carbon pollution would be at 34% below 2005 levels by 2030—surpassing Clean Power Plan targets—even without federal climate reg...

Dec. 26, 2020 Symmetrical internet connections should be the standard.

Dec. 24, 2020 Good articles about the stimulus and possible veto: One way Trump could block the stimulus bill: A pocket veto (Vox) Trump’s demand for $2,000 stimulus checks is blocked by his own party (Vox)

Dec. 24, 2020 There's a huge difference between negotiating a compromise that can actually pass the Senate and demanding more ambitious bills that never pass. 600 real dollars is better than 2000 imaginary ones.

Dec. 24, 2020 That or he could sign the current bill, or the Senate could pass AOC's $2000 amendment. The former seems much more likely.

Dec. 24, 2020 If Republicans won't sign on to expanded stimulus and the President won't sign the current bill we would get nothing. He appears magnanimous but nothing actually changes.

Dec. 24, 2020 It is entirely possible that (1) the President is a bad negotiator, (2) he wants $2000 stimulus checks but Reps won't go for it, or (3) that he uses the lack of R support for more stimulus to kill the whole bill.

Dec. 23, 2020 It's really telling how many people simply do not understand how the U.S. Government works. Granted, it's complicated, but still.

Dec. 22, 2020 I say each of those things to remind myself also.

Dec. 22, 2020 In college I thought that communications classes were silly and that the major was unnecessary. Now, I firmly believe that a sizable percentage of our problems are due purely to miscommunication, and that we're all pretty bad at communicating effectively.

Dec. 22, 2020 This is your yearly reminder: People are complex. We are allowed to have complex and nuanced opinions. People are also fallable and they can misspeak or make their point unclearly. It is also possible you misunderstood their point. That is all.

Dec. 21, 2020 I just deleted over 1,200 lines of code from the Pine.blog iOS app. All due to improvements in iOS that mean I don't need to do so much myself. This new version is going to be so much easier to work with.

Dec. 21, 2020 Just released a 1.1 update for Hewell!

Dec. 21, 2020 Dear Siri, I trust you to write down what I'm dictating, but almost every single time I extend that trust you decide to stop transcribing at some point with no warning, no beep, and no vibration. I've lost dozens of ideas because of this.

Dec. 21, 2020 It's so strange how the Internet has turned everything so far upside-down that it's almost rightside-up again. We now have TV, but on the Internet, and the only thing that's changed is that anyone can become a studio and studios have less power.

Dec. 21, 2020 YouTube wanted to be like TV, and I'd say they succeeded. Everything is either ~20 or ~40 minutes long with pre, mid, and post roll ads that seem to make videos feel ~30-60 minutes long. All they need is their own nighly news channel and they've done it.

Dec. 17, 2020 Today I did some writing, now for some research. And lots of coffee ☕️

Dec. 17, 2020 Bored Baking

Dec. 16, 2020 NYTimes: McConnell tells Republicans that Georgia’s senators were ‘getting hammered’ for Congress’s failure to act. Yeah... that'll happen when you don't do anything.

Dec. 16, 2020 Apparently The Sacramento Bee attaches videos to a ton of their articles. I only know that since now Pine.blog supports video podcasts. Technically, articles with attached videos (in the enclosure element of RSS) are video podcasts!

Dec. 16, 2020 It's cold.

Dec. 15, 2020 I did not know you could launch books on Product Hunt. I know what I'm doing today then.

Dec. 14, 2020 My new app Hewell is out!

Dec. 13, 2020 Can someone please explain to me why cities and counties choose to rent land/buildings? I'm genuinely curious. It can't be cheaper, right. If they own the land they don't have to pay their own taxes.

Dec. 13, 2020 Just installed FuzzyTime for my mac. Gonna give it a try for a while.

Dec. 13, 2020 I've used Safari as my main browser for years, but I keep a Chromium browser handy for testing. I've used Brave before, but I'm gonna give Vivaldi a spin for a while.

Dec. 13, 2020 Deleted Chrome and installed Vivaldi as my backup browser. Short story: Google Chrome installs something called Keystone on your computer, which nefariously hides itself from Activity Monitor and makes your whole computer slow even when Chrome isn't running.

Dec. 10, 2020 Am I supposed to pity big companies for being "distracted" and not being able to get even bigger? ...if Microsoft had not been “distracted” by government antitrust lawsuits... [Windows] could have been the world’s most popular smartphone system. The Facebook Lawsuits Explained

Dec. 10, 2020 The 10th episode of Indie Dev Life is out! 🎙 In a convenient coincidence, I released the 10th episode on the 10th of December!

Dec. 10, 2020 Pine.blog does a lot of stuff.

Dec. 10, 2020 Granted, I excluded a few harder-to-count parts so I'm certainly well over 50k LoC. No wonder Pine.blog feels so big. It is.

Dec. 10, 2020 Just ran the numbers. Pine.blog, including the backend, website, iOS app, and deployment scripts, is powered by almost 50,000 lines of code. I'm 217 lines short. That's a lot of code.

Dec. 10, 2020 Also images on the site should load much faster. Techie details: I've added an image proxy, funneled images through it, and stood up Cloudflare in front of that. Should speed things up nicely without breaking my servers.

Dec. 10, 2020 Some great new features for Pine.blog launched today (plus lots of enhancements)! Check out the full blog post for more on the specifics, but here's the summary: Podcast support Reading enhancements Video podcasts

Dec. 10, 2020 It appears the hammer has come down on Facebook.

Dec. 9, 2020 Technically speaking, a podcast is just a blog with an audio file attachment. It’s like if we had a different name for text-only emails versus when you attached images to them.

Dec. 9, 2020 The convolution of podcast as a genre with podcast as a distribution format has made this conversation difficult. IMO, if it don’t have an RSS feed, it’s not a podcast.

Dec. 9, 2020 I would happily run one a ODoH proxy for public use.

Dec. 8, 2020 Quick poll: Do you think video podcasts could come back?

Dec. 7, 2020 I will never understand big companies. If you call yourselves "enterprise", I do not understand you.

Dec. 6, 2020 This is a new one. Two weeks ago I submitted a piece to Jacobin. I felt it furthered the national political conversation. The article didn't go anywhere, but today the New York Times published an Op-Ed with the same argument. I feel validated yet slightly disappointed.

Dec. 6, 2020 "Nationwide, the turnout of eligible voters [in 2020] hit 66 percent, the highest since the 1900 election." San Diego Union-Tribune

Dec. 6, 2020 Stay at home ordered for San Diego County.

Dec. 5, 2020 Check out the latest episode of Indie Dev Life! 🎙 Episode 9: I've Reached Bug Parity

Dec. 4, 2020 I'm writing a series of essays about how we can get out of this pandemic recession and build a better America together! The first essay was just published! The way forward: Conquering the pandemic

Dec. 4, 2020 I have finally removed Core Data from Pine.blog. Today is a great day. I originally (~2017) designed the iOS app to use Core Data as its backing store, but it's given me nothing but problems (I was not using Core Data for its intended purpose). Now that legacy cruft is finally go...

Dec. 3, 2020 My project for tonight was to add post tags to my blog's sidebar. Done!

Dec. 2, 2020 Just rolled out per-site status pages for Nine9s users! Enjoy!

Dec. 1, 2020 Ok, Catalyst is pretty awesome.

November 2020 | 49 posts

Nov. 30, 2020 1 Codebase, 2 Apps

Nov. 30, 2020 The app crashed after posting that, but it's a start!

Nov. 30, 2020 Behold! Pine.blog is (barely) running on macOS and this post was made from it!

Nov. 27, 2020 Reminder, you can beta test my new app, Hewell: Your Guide to the World for free using TestFlight!

Nov. 25, 2020 I just watched one 15 minute YouTube video with 2 pre-roll ads, 3 mid-roll ads, and one post-roll ad, plus the sponsor segment by the creator in the middle of the video. That is entirely too much. Creators deserve higher revenues and YouTube can shove it.

Nov. 23, 2020 Going Indie is currently the #1 new release in Presentation Software Books! Not sure why, but I'll take it!

Nov. 23, 2020 It's always permissions...

Nov. 20, 2020 A coup doesn't have to be smart; it just has to work. We're in a dangerous place. (Granted it seems like this one won't work, but still)

Nov. 19, 2020 I don't care what anyone says, email is great.

Nov. 19, 2020 Made sweet potato fries. Didn't take pictures. Ate them all. 😋

Nov. 19, 2020 Dappled Sky

Nov. 18, 2020 The latest episode of the Indie Dev Life Podcast is out! 🎙

Nov. 18, 2020 Today is the day! My book, Going Indie: A Complete Guide to becoming an Independent Software Developer, is out! Order yours today!

Nov. 18, 2020 This article seems to concur with my theory that Prop 22 passed because of incredibly misleading ads and marketting that promised drivers healthcare and a minimum wage.

Nov. 17, 2020 I did learn quite a few things about my state in the process.

Nov. 17, 2020 Late last night I attempted to read the entire California Constitution. I didn't get all the way through (it's long), but I did get through most of it. It can be tough to do (and you can skip sections), but I recommend reading your own state's Constitution. It will tell you a lot...

Nov. 17, 2020 I've been thinking a lot about this article recently: Joe Biden needs to avoid a return to “eat your peas” budgeting → Under the circumstances, the opportunity is clearly available for a win-win deal in which everyone gets to do something big that they are excited about.

Nov. 17, 2020 Jets, Far Away

Nov. 16, 2020 Made this last night. Having some now.

Nov. 16, 2020 Thanks to everyone who has pre-ordered my book Going Indie: A Complete Guide to becoming and Independent Software Developer! If you're interested in the book, please consider pre-ordering now! There's less than one week left before the book comes out!

Nov. 14, 2020 Making good progress on the next update to Pine.blog for iOS. No idea when this stuff will ship tho.

Nov. 14, 2020 Nighttime Studio

Nov. 13, 2020 Almost always when I'm compiling or running my apps in the simulator.

Nov. 13, 2020 It happens with other apps too, not just iTunes. Any audio playback really: YouTube, local videos, Music, etc.

Nov. 13, 2020 Anyone else notice that macOS audio playback gets super distored and intermittent whenever CPU load spikes? I have used Macs for decades and I've never, ever heard distorted audio from iTunes. Now it's a weekly thing.

Nov. 12, 2020 Seems fixed now.

Nov. 12, 2020 So as of last night, HEAD requests to YouTube RSS feeds now hang forever. Nice.

Nov. 11, 2020 It’s 2020 and FTP is still not a solved problem.

Nov. 11, 2020 I just kernel-panicked macOS by disconnecting from an FTP site in Finder. wtf?

Nov. 11, 2020 The latest episode of Indie Dev Life is out! 🎙

Nov. 10, 2020 Also, you should buy my book 📚 Going Indie: A Complete Guide to becoming an Independent Software Developer Now on Amazon, B&N, and IndieBound!

Nov. 10, 2020 Announcing Hewell: Your Virtual Tour Guide to the World Public Beta! Now available on iOS via Testflight! Try it out and let me know what you think! Announcement Blog Post →

Nov. 9, 2020 That took far too long, but Pine.blog is back up! Apologies for the extended downtime. That maintinence took longer than I thought it would.

Nov. 8, 2020 Tonight is for celebration. Tomorrow the work begins. There is so much to do.

Nov. 8, 2020 I have missed presidential speeches so much.

Nov. 7, 2020 Is it just me or has Xcode's achiving process for Swift apps gotten a lot faster?

Nov. 7, 2020 Now we need the Senate.

Nov. 7, 2020 We did it. One step along a long journey.

Nov. 7, 2020 I'm watching Biden's speech and I'm in shock. This is what a president sounds like.

Nov. 6, 2020 Tom Petty was right. The waiting is the hardest part

Nov. 5, 2020 What are the odds we see Fox and Reps turn on Trump? Not because they're suddenly moral, they're def not, but because he lost and they don't need to tolerate him if he can't win elections.

Nov. 5, 2020 The U.S. has become captured by perhaps one of the oldest and most powerful polarizing forces: urban vs. rural. This is not a new road for societies, but it is not a good one.

Nov. 5, 2020 What this election has taught me, more than anything else, is not how polarized we are — there's a great book about that you should read. It's that the polarization and the urban/rural divide are absolutely dominent in American politics.

Nov. 5, 2020 I'm saying all of this as much for me as for you.

Nov. 5, 2020 I know this might be weird to say, but if Biden wins, then this election went pretty much as expected. If he takes AZ, NV, and GA, then it's a big win; add in PA or NC and it's huge.

Nov. 5, 2020 Locally, things went well in San Diego and California was a mixed bag of mostly good things from my perspective. It's disheartening though that most state legislatures didn't see much change so the current forms of gerrymandering will most likely continue for another decade.

Nov. 5, 2020 If Democrats don't flip the Senate (which is likely) I will be really upset, but change and progress doesn't manifest in neat, bright lines. It is hard fought and hard won. More votes than any president and massive turnout by expanded voting opportunities is huge.

Nov. 5, 2020 If Democrats do take the Senate in runoffs, we should all take a deep look at how much we've let our anxiety and our own punditry run our lives over the past week. If they don't, but Biden still wins, then we still won. That was the most likely scenario. 🇺🇸

Nov. 5, 2020 A great episode about our current times. Ezra Klein and Chris Hayes work through the election, their own interpretations of who we are, and how polling does (or doesn't) work.

October 2020 | 67 posts

Oct. 31, 2020 It is also available from Barnes and Noble and Indie Bound!

Oct. 31, 2020 You can now pre-order my book, Going Indie, on Amazon!

Oct. 29, 2020 So many states.

Oct. 27, 2020 The latest episode of my podcast Indie Dev Life is out! 🎙 In this episode we dive into the nuances and complexities of distributed computing on the Web! Give it a listen if you want to hear a few war stories.

Oct. 27, 2020 Early voting works.🇺🇸🗳

Oct. 27, 2020 According to San Diego County's recent post: 725,000 people have voted. That's in a county of 3.2 million people and 1.9 million registered voters. Said another way, over 38% of the electorate has already voted. 🇺🇸🗳

Oct. 26, 2020 and before you ask, yes the iPad is upside-down.

Oct. 26, 2020 How I read (for research). Reading for fun doesn't usually involve taking notes.

Oct. 26, 2020 I tend to read a bunch of things that aren't technically books, and I'm not sure how to keep a record of them. I'd really like a unified reading/read list that could contain anything: books, articles, scientific papers, blog posts, etc.

Oct. 24, 2020 Vote. Vote damn it. Vote. 🇺🇸🗳

Oct. 23, 2020 iOS Devs: What are the downsides of storing non-critical user data in a plist(s) and syncing it with iCloud documents? (Assume that file conflicts are easily resolved by using the latest revision).

Oct. 23, 2020 I'm out of my regular brand of coffee and I'm running on backup coffee.

Oct. 22, 2020 I like Swift, but whenever I use it for long periods I consistently find myself missing simple Python features. I miss in, any(), all(), and comprehensions.

Oct. 22, 2020 (hey... you should use Nine9s)

Oct. 21, 2020 Mail voting works.

Oct. 21, 2020 The newest episode of my podcast Indie Dev Life is out! In this episode we discuss doing UI and graphic design as an Indie Dev.

Oct. 19, 2020 I voted.

Oct. 18, 2020 Minor Pine.blog update submitted to App Review.

Oct. 18, 2020 So, CloudKit is pretty easy to use. Good job Apple.

Oct. 15, 2020 I'm now a verified author on GoodReads!

Oct. 15, 2020 This one is better balanced and has updated lyrics.

Oct. 15, 2020 Just re-recorded and re-uploaded I Thought We Were Better than This. It's a song for 2020. Give it a listen!

Oct. 15, 2020 Just saw this from Kottke about how a collection of treaties between the U.S. and the Indian Tribes are now digitized and available. I just want to point out that at least one official U.S. treaty is written on college-ruled paper.

Oct. 15, 2020 I created this calendar event in July as a goal for myself. I can't believe I actually hit my deadline.

Oct. 15, 2020 The button has been pressed.

Oct. 15, 2020 Got the revised print copy of Going Indie! This one looks great. I think that's everything I need to do. Might press the button tonight!

Oct. 13, 2020 If you're interested in getting the news about my book: Going Indie delivered straight to your inbox, sign up for the Going Indie Newsletter! News is posted there first!

Oct. 13, 2020 Going Indie is now available to pre-order on Apple Books! If you're interested in the book, please consider pre-ordering. It helps more than you'd think. Going Indie (print/ebook) will be coming to Amazon and other retailers soon.

Oct. 13, 2020 Didn't follow the Apple event. Just saw the new iPhone on Apple's site. The iPhone 5 design is back and I think that's great. Also great to see Apple making a smaller device. The 12 mini is certainly appealing. I need a new phone anyway.

Oct. 10, 2020 Just opened my ballot. I am unreasonably excited to vote. 🇺🇸

Oct. 9, 2020 All of my projects are at the point now where upgrading them is one command. I don't have to remember anything. That command runs a bash script that does everything, and if there are any extra steps, it reminds me to do them.

Oct. 9, 2020 You'd be amazed at what ~100 lines of bash can do to make your life easier.

Oct. 9, 2020 Rolled out some changes to Nine9s today. The dashboard should be a lot more glancable now.

Oct. 9, 2020 I also learned a new word! Displicency: dissatisfaction, aversion, or discontent.

Oct. 9, 2020 Wrote a song today 🎵 Really proud of the lyrics on this one.

Oct. 8, 2020 Colin Meloy, "Slint, Spiderland" I was watching a movie about Slint Spiderland While the parasite outside belied the calls from high command... Another morning rises, another baton-down As the government equivocates, to flounder or to drown...

Oct. 8, 2020 The revised proof of Going Indie has been approved, and I've ordered what should be the final pre-print copy!

Oct. 7, 2020 Just submitted the new revision of Going Indie after I discovered some issues with the first print copy! This should be it. 🤞

Oct. 7, 2020 Coffin's version of the Seaman's Hymn reminds me of this song version of the WWI poem Flander's FIelds.

Oct. 7, 2020 Here's him leading a rendition of Roll the Old Chariot. He literally goes around teaching and sharing old sea shanties. That's his job. So cool.

Oct. 7, 2020 Been listening to a lot of sea shanties lately and discovered David Coffin. He's great. I have been utterly captivated by his performance of The Seaman's Hymn for days.

Oct. 7, 2020 The latest episode of the Indie Dev Life podcast is out. This episode is soley about the print copy of Going Indie that I recieved today. Yes, I am excited.

Oct. 7, 2020 There are some issues with this print, so I will be making some changes, but this is still a very exciting moment.

Oct. 7, 2020 The first copy of my book: Going Indie. So excited.

Oct. 7, 2020 I have the first print copy of Going Indie in my hands. It's still being unboxed.

Oct. 7, 2020 It is wild to see Apple bloggers cited in a Congressional report.

Oct. 7, 2020 H. Judiciary Committee: Recommendations (2/2): Safe harbor for news publishers... prohibiting dominant platforms from engaging in self- preferencing... ...strengthening the law on vertical mergers... ...strengthen overall enforcement...

Oct. 7, 2020 H. Judiciary Committee: Recommendations (1/2): Structural separations and prohibitions of certain dominant platforms from operating in adjacent lines of business... Interoperability and data portability...

Oct. 6, 2020 Getting to the recommendations section!

Oct. 6, 2020 H. Judiciary Committee: Subcommittee staff encountered a prevalence of fear among market participants that depend on the dominant platforms, [who's businesses have] unaccountable and arbitrary power [over their economic livelihoods].

Oct. 6, 2020 H. Judiciary Committee: Google and Facebook have an outsized influence over the distribution and monetization of trustworthy sources of news online, undermining the quality and availability of high-quality sources of journalism.

Oct. 6, 2020 H. Judiciary Committee: Google increasingly functions as an ecosystem of interlocking monopolies.

Oct. 6, 2020 A lot of this is obvious to us in the tech world, but it's important that Congress sees these things too. They have the ability to actually solve these problems.

Oct. 6, 2020 H. Judiciary Committee: Google has a monopoly in the markets for general online search and search advertising... [and as] a result... Google appears to be siphoning off traffic from the rest of the web, while entities seeking to reach users must pay Google steadily increasing s...

Oct. 6, 2020 H. Judiciary Committee: The open internet has delivered significant benefits to Americans and [the economy]... [and COVID-19] has underscored the importance of internet access that is affordable, competitive, and widely available... (p10-12)

Oct. 6, 2020 Currently reading through the House Judiciary Committee Report: ‘Investigation of Competition in Digital Markets’. There's a lot of scathing words in here. I'll post a few and probably write a full post shortly.

Oct. 6, 2020 Reminder: Vote early if you can!

Oct. 6, 2020 Got my ballot! Let's do some democracy!

Oct. 6, 2020 Virtual City Council meetings are just very orderly conference calls.

Oct. 4, 2020 Here's one of my personal favorites from the newly submitted entries on d20.photos.

Oct. 4, 2020 I just dropped an egg on the floor, but didn't crack the yolk. Do I win a prize?

Oct. 4, 2020 Lots of great photos are going to come out of d20.photos today. Check them out!

Oct. 4, 2020 The thing that amazes me about old video from the early 1900s is just how much public transit there is. We could do it again.

Oct. 2, 2020 My latest editorial is out! Give it a read and a share! Not planning on voting? Read this

Oct. 2, 2020 2020 is one hell of an endurance test.

Oct. 2, 2020 There's your October surprise, and it's a doozy.

Oct. 2, 2020 Interesting times indeed.

September 2020 | 52 posts

Sept. 30, 2020 No turning back now. The book is submitted.

Sept. 30, 2020 I went back and watched it after the fact. That was a complete and utter disgrace.

Sept. 30, 2020 I really tried, but I can't watch anymore.

Sept. 28, 2020 Preparing the final versions of a book cover is nerve-racking.

Sept. 28, 2020 There are many examples throughout history of people seeking the aegis of public office to shield themselves from private creditors and doing anything to get it.

Sept. 28, 2020 Hey everyone! I've started a podcast about Indie Software Development called Indie Dev Life! Episode 1 is out today. New episodes (hopefully) every Monday. Check it out: indiedevlife.fm

Sept. 27, 2020 Pine.blog doesn't have a macOS app (yet) but I've been using the Helium app to fill that gap lately.

Sept. 27, 2020 Got my air filter yesterday. There's no smoke anymore, but hopefully it will still come in handy. It's a good thing to have regardless.

Sept. 23, 2020 Update coming this week for my book: Going Indie! Be sure to sign up for the newsletter if you want to staty up to date on everything that's going on! brianschrader.com/archive/going-indie/

Sept. 18, 2020 Apparently Xcode just updates itself while you're using it. This process can apparently destroy Xcode's ability to read the core frameworks. Quitting and relaunching Xcode fixes the issue but now I have to reinstall "Additional Components"...

Sept. 17, 2020 My word of the day is bucolic. It's a good word, just learned it.

Sept. 17, 2020 Fill out the Census! Time is running out and it's important. Do it! It's a 10 minute survey. Just do it.

Sept. 17, 2020 I finally reached a breaking point. The smoke in San Diego is nowhere near Portland-level, but it's still bad. I'm now wearing a mask indoors to filter the air. I've had headaches and eye strain for days from the smoke and haze. Air purifier is on order too.

Sept. 16, 2020 Did really good not looking at twitter today. Just opened it and now I’m stressed again. Bye Twitter!

Sept. 16, 2020 My Apple update for today: I shattered the screen on my iPhone X like a month ago, haven’t gotten it fixed because reasons, and I just put the SIM into my old 6.

Sept. 16, 2020 I guess I missed an Apple event today. Huh.

Sept. 15, 2020 After Xcode "installs additional components" of course.

Sept. 15, 2020 Diving into iOS work for the first time in months.

Sept. 15, 2020 I couldn’t decide what show or YouTube video to watch, so I turned off the TV and now I’m just sitting on my couch, with a snack, listening to an audiobook. Who needs video?

Sept. 15, 2020 I need proofreaders for my book, Going Indie: A complete guide to becoming an independent software developer. If you're a techie or an indie-dev and you want to help out, get in touch! DM, Webmention, or my email at brianschrader.com/about

Sept. 13, 2020 Fixed!

Sept. 13, 2020 Fixing the issue now.

Sept. 13, 2020 Just noticed a small bug with Pine.blog. I’ll fix it the moment my computer finished upgrading...

Sept. 12, 2020 The Meme Retraction Cycle: See a meme on twitter about a show I like that relates to 2020 Share meme Further investigation reveals that the meme is doctored Retract like and tell everyone

Sept. 11, 2020 I have a special place in my heart for Colin Meloy's KEXP performance of Crane Wife 1, 2, & 3. It's probably my favorite rendition of the song.

Sept. 11, 2020 I have recorded a pilot episode for a podcast.

Sept. 9, 2020 Editing DNS records is like Ritual Casting as a D&D Wizard. Both take 10 minutes to resolve and no one wants to wait that long.

Sept. 9, 2020 Setting up a Synology to backup to B2 is surprisingly easy.

Sept. 8, 2020 Knowing what you don't know is arguably just as important as knowing what you know. The scary times are when you don't know what you don't know. You know?

Sept. 8, 2020 Language is a leaky abstraction.

Sept. 8, 2020 There's a big difference between what a piece of writing actually says and what you think it says. This is true even when you're reading your own writing.

Sept. 7, 2020 Smoke and ash

Sept. 6, 2020 One funny thing about a physical paper: it feels more worth the cost. Online news is ephemeral but a paper is something you can hold in your hands. For some reason that feels like a better deal even though it’s more expensive.

Sept. 6, 2020 Well, like 3 cups of cold brew. Don’t judge me.

Sept. 6, 2020 I have spent nearly 3 hours reading the Sunday paper and drinking a cold brew. I regret nothing.

Sept. 6, 2020 Pine.blog now integrates with Pinboard to automatically bookmark your likes! Check it out.

Sept. 6, 2020 San Diego update: it is literally raining ash.

Sept. 5, 2020 Peter Thiel really saved us all a bunch of time by naming his corrupting, secretive surveillance company after a corrupting, secretive, surveillance magic item from the Lord of the Rings. I will never not be amazed at just how on the nose that name really is.

Sept. 5, 2020 I think Siri is a transplant from New York. She pronounces "Costs" as "k-haw-sts" and "Congress" as "k-hawn-gress".

Sept. 4, 2020 Eventually I need to do actual work today...

Sept. 4, 2020 I’m in print!

Sept. 4, 2020 It always is.

Sept. 4, 2020 I genuinely and unironically love email. It is, in almost every way, the Internet as it was promised.

Sept. 4, 2020 Did something change about the video player page on YouTube? It looks great now. Not sure if it's just me or if something actually changed.

Sept. 4, 2020 My Op-Ed got published! Californians deserve better data protection sduptownnews.com/californians-deserve-better-data-protection/

Sept. 4, 2020 Pushed out some late night UI changes.

Sept. 4, 2020 I just accidentally quit Safari and now it's trying to reopen the 327 tabs I had open. 😩

Sept. 3, 2020 Hey everyone! It's time for the cover reveal of my book: Going Indie! Get more information and sign up for the newsletter @ brianschrader.com

Sept. 3, 2020 If you haven't already, you might want to sign up for the Going Indie book newsletter. There's some exciting news that's about to be pre-announced there!

Sept. 3, 2020 Pine.blog now supports emoji-based profile pictures 😎

Sept. 3, 2020 Check out the newest version of Pine.blog! blog.pine.blog/2020/09/profiles-pinboard-and-more/

Sept. 3, 2020 Pine.blog announcement is coming soon!

August 2020 | 57 posts

Aug. 28, 2020 Some exciting things are happening in the next few days. More details to come.

Aug. 26, 2020 I think I'm losing it. The phrase "advice oatmeal" has made it into my book.

Aug. 25, 2020 Now to start a new book.

Aug. 25, 2020 Done and done! I was able to finish nearly 1,500 words. More than twice my goal. 76,530 words in total!

Aug. 25, 2020 I have to write 700 more words today to meet my daily goal... but I can't seem to summon them.

Aug. 25, 2020 More quick Pine.blog fixes rolling out now.

Aug. 25, 2020 Made some pickled red onions yesterday. Can’t wait to try them today!

Aug. 25, 2020 Rolled out a much nicer timeline and mentions UI for Pine.blog

Aug. 25, 2020 Aaron I have put more thought that I probably should into building your custom emoji functionality into Pine.blog.

Aug. 25, 2020 Making my own chili paste was the best thing I did today. It's so good 😋

Aug. 25, 2020 Making Chili

Aug. 23, 2020 Just learned that one of my favorite bars is closing permanently. 😫

Aug. 22, 2020 Iced green tea ☺️

Aug. 21, 2020 Can't focus on writing today, so I'm writing code for the first time in almost two months.

Aug. 21, 2020 Gavin Newsom's speech tonight was great!

Aug. 20, 2020 Milestone achieved: 70,000 words written!

Aug. 20, 2020 One day I'll break and start ranting about Modern Monetary Theory and how the deficit actually doesn't matter anyway, but that's a story for another time. In the mean time, read The Deficit Myth by Stephanie Kelton. It's really good.

Aug. 20, 2020 I'm seeing a few people talking about how Biden might enact austerity measures. I just want to remind everyone that the President doesn't control the budget, Congress does. If you want more expansive programs or services, vote for progressive Senators and Representatives.

Aug. 20, 2020 I wrote a thing: On Uber, Lyft, and Labor Law A storm has been brewing in California... What we're witnessing now may become either a cautionary tale or a key example of just how these battles can be waged in the future... brianschrader.com/archive/on-uber-lyft-and-labor-law/

Aug. 20, 2020 I'll just say this: if your company can only exist if it violates civil rights law or violates labor law, then I don't think you should exist.

Aug. 20, 2020 Uber, Lyft, and others are pouting, taking their ball and going home. They've had years to anticipate the changes required by California's AB 5 and months of leeway to come into compliance.

Aug. 20, 2020 I long for a world without a retweet/repost/share button.

Aug. 19, 2020 Woot! getting closer to finishing the writing phase! brianschrader.com/archive/going-indie/

Aug. 18, 2020 The Administration: "We're taking away [thing] you like." *dismantles [thing] and ruins it* Everyone: "No, we like that! Put it back!" A: "We have stopped ruining [thing], but we're not fixing what we broke." E: "We did it! We won!" It's so sad that we settle for this.

Aug. 18, 2020 By the way, I'm writing a book. Cover reveal is coming soon! Subscribe to the newsletter to stay updated! brianschrader.com/archive/going-indie/

Aug. 18, 2020 Also, while the Postal Service is technically a government service, it has long been charged with funding itself and be profitable. IMO this is terrible, but it is the way it currently works.

Aug. 18, 2020 Remember: you can’t download medication, packages, or live chickens from the internet. You can get all of those through the Postal Service.

Aug. 18, 2020 That law has forced austerity on the Post Office for 15 years. It laid the groundwork for the current Postmaster General’s justifications. The Post Office has been neglected for years, but it can be repaired.

Aug. 18, 2020 I keep seeing this critique so let me address it. The internet did not bankrupt the Post Office. Most experts believe that if it weren’t for a 2006 law, the Post Office would still be fairly profitable.

Aug. 18, 2020 Is there ever going to be a time in human history when politicians and pop culture don’t reference Rome, the republic, or the empire? It’s hard to understate the impact this ancient society has on our lives day to day.

Aug. 18, 2020 What would he do if we all just decided to never say his damn name ever again?

Aug. 17, 2020 The Bancroft 🥃

Aug. 16, 2020 I am unreasonably excited about this.

Aug. 16, 2020 It's 2020 and I've just received my first ever Sunday paper (yes, in print). I'm hoping a print paper will force me to learn more about my community and prevent me from doomscrolling. You can't doomscroll print.

Aug. 14, 2020 Organizing my bookmarks.

Aug. 12, 2020 Whenever you read polls that say 85-90% of Americans support X, remember that according to HuffPost/YouGov only 81% of Americans like apple pie. If your idea is more popular than apple pie, you’ve won.

Aug. 12, 2020 Speaking of the Post Office (which is awesome and we should fund it better + allow postal banking) Here's a visualization of the number of new Post Offices in the US by year since 1709. source: guides.library.illinois.edu/c.php?g=347656&p=2348310 vimeo.com/27376376

Aug. 12, 2020 Fun fact: If Biden wins the election then the VP and Speaker of the House will be from California. Add in our two senators and CA will have an almost appropriately sized role in our government.

Aug. 12, 2020 To all those on the left feeling betrayed, remember this: The Biden/Harris administration will sign whatever a Democratic House and Senate sends them. Congress will decide the agenda. The real battle is there. We must flip the Senate.

Aug. 12, 2020 Neither Kamala Harris nor Joe Biden were my preferred picks for the ticket (I preferred and still prefer Warren), but I will enthusiastically support them. We need real, competent leadership and Biden/Harris would deliver that. Plus CA gets another voice in the Senate. I'll take...

Aug. 11, 2020 Is it weird that it's 2020 and I want a physical paper delivered to my house?

Aug. 10, 2020 Hey Everyone! I'm writing a book! Going Indie: A complete guide to becoming an independent software developer Check it out and sign up for the newsletter to get updates when news is announced! brianschrader.com/archive/going-indie/

Aug. 9, 2020 Even if Joe Biden wins in a landslide, this will be an incredibly tense and nasty election.

Aug. 9, 2020 The Postal Service is a national treasure, an essential service, an example of what democratic institutions should be. USPS built this nation and we need it to thrive. As always, call your Reps and Senators. Let them know we need USPS.

Aug. 9, 2020 I see a lot of people raving about the Post Office now that it’s in huge trouble and the President is undermining it. Welcome to the fight!

Aug. 9, 2020 Anyway Goodreads is pretty cool.

Aug. 9, 2020 This week, I just discovered what Goodreads actually is. Good thing the site was only recently started in... *checks Wikipedia* 2006... huh.

Aug. 9, 2020 If I posted: “This has been a productive morning,” you would be well within your rights to flag that post as misinformation.

Aug. 9, 2020 Lately, I have become a human Lending Library. Perhaps the greatest thing about physical books is that they can be easily shared.

Aug. 8, 2020 Sing it with me: 🎵 It’s not a Podcast if it’s proprietary. If I can’t subscribe how I want then it’s not for me. Podcasts are open, like by definition. To publish a Podcast you don’t need permission. 🎵

Aug. 8, 2020 And we're back!

Aug. 8, 2020 Pine.blog is going to go down for a few minutes. This is all a part of scheduled maintenance on the host servers.

Aug. 7, 2020 Pine.blog was down for a minute for some migrations to the host server. Everything should be back up now.

Aug. 3, 2020 I wish I had a banjo.

Aug. 3, 2020 I keep writing these songs. I can't stop. Here's a new one about how to be a pirate. sonicrocketman.bandcamp.com/track/the-buccaneers-oath

Aug. 2, 2020 I’m so ready for our post-catastrophe progressive resurgence. I want my FDR.

Aug. 2, 2020 Remember: we’re still not in the aftertimes yet. This is still the meantimes.

July 2020 | 74 posts

July 31, 2020 I’ll go first. I’m reading a ton more than I used to. Since May I’ve read 4 books start-to-finish, finished 3 in-progress books on my shelf, and I’m halfway through another now.

July 31, 2020 Poll: Do you find yourself reading more (books, long articles, etc) during the past few months? Yes or No? Why?

July 29, 2020 Got a little distracted today, but even with that I hit 50,000 words! I'm halfway done!

July 29, 2020 If the House Tech hearing isn't as effective as you were expecting, and you have a better idea or approach, volunteer to help your state and local legislators better understand technology.

July 29, 2020 Yesterday I wrote a tavern song for one of my D&D games. Here's the Bandcamp version for it, check it out! sonicrocketman.bandcamp.com

July 27, 2020 Also, that’s all leftovers. Don’t hate on leftovers.

July 27, 2020 Homemade Potato-eggplant Tikka Masala over Brown Basmati Rice

July 27, 2020 Today's Assignment: Check that you're registered to vote Fill out the Census Homework due in November: Vote There will be a pop quiz.

July 22, 2020 Today combined a late start with a distraction-filled morning, but somehow I was able to power through to 39,602 words! I'm 398 words short of a novel... if I was writing a novel.

July 21, 2020 Learning that the word "definitely" is derived from the word "finite" and not "define" has changed my life. I learned this over a year ago and haven't misspelled "definitely" since.

July 21, 2020 Looks like my IFTTT integration was appending a blank link to my cross-posts on Twitter. Should be fixed now.

July 21, 2020 Yesterday I set out to rearrange and reorganize my bookshelfs. After 4 hours I had successfully reorganized the furnature in my entire apartment. The books were still on the floor.

July 20, 2020 It feels like so much and yet so little.

July 20, 2020 I have written 1/3 of the first draft of my book! 33,000 words!

July 20, 2020 San Diegans! Our City Council is voting tomorrow to move forward with a proposal to use Ranked Choice Voting in our elections! Please urge the council to approve this measure using the instructions below. We need fairer and more diverse elections. us7.campaign-archive.com/?u=8453...

July 17, 2020 Seems like things are back up. Going back to work now.

July 17, 2020 Cloudflare: This afternoon we saw an outage across some parts of our network. It was not as a result of an attack. It appears a router on our global backbone announced bad routes... www.cloudflarestatus.com

July 17, 2020 This is kinda like that time when S3 went down taking parts of Reddit, Twitter, imgr, and even the AWS status page down with it.

July 17, 2020 The fact that so many people jump onto Cloudflare isn't surprising. Cloudflare does a lot more than just DNS. It's scary that we've ended up this way though.

July 17, 2020 I usually prefer to use Linode for my DNS, but anything dealing with photos: d20.photos and Pine.blog use Cloudflare because of their partnership with B2, my storage provider.

July 17, 2020 My condolences to the devops team at Cloudflare. Their friday evening is ruined.

July 17, 2020 Some stuff appears back up. Will continue to monitor this. Correction: Nine9s never went down. It doesn't use Cloudflare and in fact detected this issue like a champ.

July 17, 2020 It appears that Cloudflare is down. This is affecting Adventurer's Codex, Pine.blog, Nine9s, and d20.photos. More information here: nine9s.cloud/s/5289350c-fbc8-4143-9f1e-3843eb44032d

July 17, 2020 I see a lot of Trump ads on YouTube asking me to take a survey of whether I approve of Trump and his administration (I said no obv). I assume Trump treasures his own site's polls. It would be a shame if it showed him he was super unpopular... just saying.

July 17, 2020 Made hummus. Twas good. Much better than store-bought hummus.

July 15, 2020 I feel like @siracusa would be proud. I have 33 Safari windows currently open with ~3-4 tabs in each one, plus an additional ~10 BBEdit windows, and ~20 Preview windows along with a smattering of other apps. Granted, mine are spread across 9 virtual desktops.

July 15, 2020 San Diegans, The City Council is considering adding a Ranked Choice Voting initiative to the ballot in November. RCV would drastically improve our democracy and ensure more representative elections! Please urge your councilmember to approve the measure! morechoicesd.org

July 14, 2020 I'm not sure I am. Hopefully Preview can handle this many PDFs.

July 14, 2020 Email is a fantastic thing. The fact that you can just email people all over the world at all levels is so incredibly powerful and I think we've lost sight of just how awesome it really is.

July 13, 2020 Sometimes you do things just to motivate yourself to do things.

July 13, 2020 Added some progress bars on my blog for projects I'm currently working on.

July 13, 2020 I haven't had a haircut since January. I've been too concerned with the pandemic to get one even when shops re-opened in CA. Now it looks like I might need to wait many more months. It's not a big deal, but it still sucks.

July 13, 2020 California is closing down again. I applaud the Governor for his actions, I'm dissapointed in the delay and in our failure as Californians for not keeping the pandemic under control with our behavior, and I hope that the Federal Gov will provide more stimulus.

July 13, 2020 It's been probably 5 years since this has happened. I just shattered my iPhone screen.

July 13, 2020 Marc Tracy (NYTimes): Hedge funds and private equity firms have had a growing presence in the news industry, to the chagrin of press advocates who argue that financial firms do not make civic-minded stewards of a business built largely on holding the powerful to account.

July 13, 2020 I know it's pricy, and I know that money is tight, but buy a subscription to your local, or state paper if you can. They're really good and their work keeps our democracy running.

July 13, 2020 This is tragic news. The Sacremento Bee is one of the most useful newspapers in California. Support local journalism! It's dying. The family-owned publisher of The Sacramento Be [will be sold off to] the owner of The National Enquirer.

July 13, 2020 It makes me so sad to see Puerto Rico pushed aside. They just held their democratic presidential primary, but they can't vote in the general election. Puerto Rico should be a state!

July 13, 2020 So now it's super hot, but we can't open windows to get air. Lots of San Diegans don't have AC. We depend on the breeze. Luckily, I have a 1 room AC unit for my office. I try not to use it, but I will be this week it seems.

July 13, 2020 Also there's a Navy ship on fire in the San Diego Bay. Everyone's homes smell like burning rubber and electrical fire. Smoke is pungent over 10 miles away.

July 13, 2020 California depends on voluntary, inmate Firefighters to battle wildfires in the summer and fall. Right now those inmates are suffering in prisons overwhelmed by COVID-19. www.sacbee.com/news/california/fires/article243977827.html

July 13, 2020 I give Google a lot of crap, but Scholar is one of the greatest things it does.

July 12, 2020 It’s too hot to do much. I guess it’s reading time. 📚

July 12, 2020 This was a super productive week for me. I finished 2 books, wrote 10,000 words for a book I’m writing, learned some SwiftUI, and updated my blog!

July 12, 2020 I wrote a thing. Here’s What Democrats Should Do First If They Retake the Senate and the White House These are unprecedented times in American history... though, there are a few, albeit small, silver linings.

July 11, 2020 The NY Times gets a lot of flack and most is rightly deserved. But they do good work and this headline is wow.

July 11, 2020 I don't mean that as a dig. If it works, then I'm all for it.

July 11, 2020 Perhaps Joe Biden's single most electable quality is the fact that he's extremely unoffensive to most people. "Biden? Eh sure."

July 11, 2020 Also my blog has a new sidebar and I just added some Book Recommendations. If that’s your thing, check it out!

July 11, 2020 Also I finished The Deficit Myth. It’s really good. You should read it. Full review coming soon.

July 11, 2020 A book and a beautiful evening.

July 11, 2020 Safari really doesn't like having ~50 windows open.

July 10, 2020 SwiftUI is pretty cool.

July 10, 2020 Woo! 20,215 words!

July 10, 2020 Ok. Today's goal is to write just 900 words, and then to finish The Deficit Myth. That's it. Small goals today.

July 9, 2020 Jacky I noticed that your Atom feed had an issue parsing. I've fixed the issue and re-imported your feed. That said, I notice that the feed has no title and links to Superfeedr rather than to your own site. This would impede anyone trying to mention you.

July 9, 2020 Been pretty distracted today. I need to finish 2,400 words to hit 20,000.

July 9, 2020 If Biden wins the election, and if he even tries to enact some of these recent ideas from his campaign and the Sanders Task Force, then to quote myself: the left would really need to re-evaluate if they “lost” this cycle.

July 9, 2020 Scott Detrow (NPR): "When I talked to Joe a while back, he said that he wants to be the most progressive president since FDR," Sanders said.

July 8, 2020 Nothing illustrates how toxic social media really is like stepping away, and visiting occasionally to find yourself surrounded by firestorms of over-inflated, nuance-less, echo-chamber controversy.

July 8, 2020 Lakefront

July 4, 2020 I just reduced my daily Twitter limit from 30 to 20 minutes per day.

July 4, 2020 We are not there yet.

July 4, 2020 As Americans we must remember that our founding creed to fight for Justice, Liberty, Equality, and Prosperity is not a description of what existed at the founding. It’s what we strive to build, what we aim for. It’s the dream we aim to achieve.

July 3, 2020 Some good stuff on the California November ballot.

July 3, 2020 PROPOSITION 24: CONSUMER PRIVACY ...the measure would create a new state agency, the California Privacy Protection Agency, “to enforce and implement consumer privacy laws, and impose administrative fines,”

July 3, 2020 PROPOSITION 25: BAIL REFORM REFERENDUM California is poised to eliminate cash bail requirements for pre-trial inmates.

July 3, 2020 There has to be a word for this.

July 3, 2020 First Painkiller of the Summer.

July 3, 2020 Literally as in the literal meaning of the word “literally”.

July 3, 2020 Just FYI, taking off your mask to cough is literally the opposite of what you’re supposed to do.

July 1, 2020 It wasn't close enough. 9,239 words achieved.

July 1, 2020 If you set a goal to reach 9,000 words (from 6,200) and you've finished the section you planned on writing at 8,970 words: Do you write another section, or is that close enough? Asking for a friend.

July 1, 2020 It’s funny that Facebook would start taking immediate and decisive steps to remove misinformation from its site when advertisers started pulling out. They are the customers. Their boycott matters.

June 2020 | 113 posts

June 30, 2020 I'm finding that I'm able to write in 45-minute stints, then I need a short break (~15-30 mins).

June 30, 2020 I studied rocket science. This is not it. Wear a mask. Think of everyone not just yourself. This isn’t hard.

June 30, 2020 Don’t go to bars people. Wear a mask. Stay 6ft apart. Don’t be stupid. This isn’t rocket science.

June 30, 2020 That same article claims that cases could soon reach 100,000 per day. Per. Damn. Day. What are we doing?!

June 30, 2020 NYTimes: Seven in 10 Americans have said they would get vaccines against the virus if immunizations were free and available to everyone... Only 7 in 10?!

June 29, 2020 Just pay the rent for people in need. The UK did something similar for jobs and they did fine.

June 29, 2020 But sometimes the easiest solution is also the most effective. Halting all evictions/rent payments is hard because the Fed Gov doesn’t control landlords who’s mortgages aren’t federally backed.

June 29, 2020 Obviously any of those solutions is better than doing nothing.

June 29, 2020 Instead of cancelling rent (which hurts landlords) or pausing rent/evictions (which helps renters until the order expires), the Federal Government could just pay rent for people who can’t.

June 28, 2020 I make no promises when these will be mailed but it should be soon.

June 28, 2020 If anyone would like Pine.blog or Adventurer’s Codex stickers please email me (brian at brianschrader dot com) and include your mailing address and which stickers you want. There’s limited supply, so act fast.

June 28, 2020 Stickers applied!

June 27, 2020 Self-plug here: If you need fast, inexpensive, environmentally-friendly Uptime Monitoring for your site, check out Nine9s.cloud and start monitoring for free.

June 27, 2020 David Roberts: Nothing would do more to increase consumer confidence in EV charging infrastructure than having an EV charger publicly available at every post office.

June 27, 2020 Also apparently the Postal Service is the most popular US agency. Why don't we fund it better? Source: news.gallup.com/poll/257510/postal-service-americans-favorite-federal-agency.aspx

June 27, 2020 I 100% support this. Improve the Postal Service and make their cars electric! David Roberts: Democrats’ infrastructure bill has a special delivery: Electric mail trucks vox.com/energy-and-environment/2020/6/26/21302742/electric-vehicles-usps-postal-trucks-democrats-infrastructu...

June 27, 2020 D.C. should be a state. Puerto Rico should be a state. Guam should be a state. American Samoa should be a state. We should not have territories in the 21st century.

June 27, 2020 Holy Crap! Politico: House passes bill to provide D.C. statehood

June 26, 2020 I called my Rep about DC statehood last week and the aide on the phone told me that she really appreciated the attention to this issue and that they rarely get calls about it. Calls matter! Do it!

June 26, 2020 DC should be a state. Pass it on. But call your Representative first.

June 26, 2020 Just discovered turbolinks by Basecamp. It's stupid awesome. It makes your server-rendered HTML site (i.e. Django/Rails) feel like a SPA w/ no effort.

June 25, 2020 I did bring lots of coffee and water though. Priorities.

June 25, 2020 For the second time, I went to work in the park and didn't bring food. This will soon be an issue.

June 25, 2020 Rolling out a fix to d20.photos which should drastically speed up submission uploads.

June 25, 2020 The response to d20.photos yesterday was really great to see. Sometimes launches are a bust, but the D&D community really took to this one.

June 25, 2020 Park work again. 🌲

June 25, 2020 Abolish the bail system.

June 24, 2020 Never forget this: it doesn't have to continue like this. We can turn this around. There is always a better path forward. Seeing these things as inevitable only further intrenches us.

June 24, 2020 The single most prophetic phrase I keep thinking about was uttered at the very start of this in March. This virus is more patient than we are.

June 24, 2020 Blocking more aid, letting states and local govts go bankrupt, opening up while cases are rising, not wearing a mask. These are all things we, as a nation, are doing to ourselves.

June 24, 2020 I don't like to put a too much stock in human agency during huge crises, but this crisis was and is utterly solvable. We, as a society, choose to let 120k+ die, to let even more to get sick, and to let the economy crash.

June 24, 2020 Every day that COVID cases rise, or new outbreaks occur, or the economic hardship worses in the U.S. remember: It didn't have to be this way, and it doesn't have to continue like this. We are choosing this path.

June 24, 2020 We've made a huge deal about near 100% uptime, but going down for a few minutes really isn't that big of a deal.

June 24, 2020 I obviously don't want to see websites going down, but whenever a big site has an issue it reminds me that they too are run by humans and that their servers have occasional problems.

June 24, 2020 That's not a thing you wanna see.

June 24, 2020 I've never been a person who puts stickers on their laptop, but... now I have all these...

June 24, 2020 I'm so happy with this feature. My Pine.blog account now recieves webmentions on behalf of all my sites.

June 23, 2020 I would have used their Object Storage, but it wasn't out when I needed it and B2 is also quite good (which is what I use).

June 23, 2020 Linode is really good. I have to use Cloudflare for some of my DNS and while it is also really good, I'm always a bit bummed that I can't just use Linode for everything.

June 23, 2020 Working from the park today.

June 23, 2020 Apple's idea for Privacy Disclosures today was so good, I made a Web version! Mine includes a site's environmental impacts too. privacylabel.tech

June 22, 2020 I have an idea for a new service.

June 22, 2020 Whelp. That was a thing. Back to work.

June 22, 2020 I prefer this keynote’s pace over the in-person version.

June 22, 2020 This WWDC keynote had lots of great stuff, exciting Mac transition, great privacy enhancements, proper social distancing, and a good feel to it. This new macOS UI though...

June 22, 2020 Does this mean I have to run Docker in a VM again? I hope not. I love running Docker natively.

June 22, 2020 Big Sur is a great name.

June 22, 2020 I really like that the idea for privacy disclosures came from nutrition labels. The FDA has already solved these problems and it’s good to see Apple just adapt their solution for tech.

June 22, 2020 Some good stuff from Apple today. Privacy disclosures ✅ Cycling support in Maps ✅ Multi-language text in-line ✅

June 22, 2020 Modern YouTube

June 22, 2020 Thinking about adding podcast support to Pine.blog. Possibly including video podcast support. Are there still video podcasts?

June 20, 2020 Technology is not magic and it won’t magically solve our problems. Sometimes it helps us, and other times it just makes our problem happen faster and on a centralized, ad-ridden platform.

June 20, 2020 Or, you know, not build them

June 20, 2020 Technology is as biased as its creators. As an industry it’s our job to be aware of this and to design systems with that in mind. twitter.com/lazerwalker/status/1274359505283883008

June 19, 2020 Everyone: Hey Apple, this controversy with Hey is really hurting you and your Anti-Trust case. You might want to lay off or change the rules because this ridiculous. Apple: *keeps digging down*

June 18, 2020 My reaction to GitHub's new visual design: it's fine. It checks the "modern" boxes, but I'm just not a fan of the current trend of "modern" design in general.

June 18, 2020 Making coffee. Making making coffee. ☕️

June 17, 2020 Sigh... and Node is broken now too.

June 17, 2020 Correction: Python 3.6 was uninstalled and importing the SSL package no longer works. This is gonna be fun.

June 17, 2020 Homebrew updated my Python version from 3.6 to 3.7... and now my virtualenvs are broken... I guess I'm upgrading to Python3.7 now?

June 17, 2020 Tbh I’d never looked into Hey before. Just did and it looks great. The sleepy giant of email is the last titan of the free Internet left and Hey looks like a welcome refresh to the paradigm. I blogged about this years ago.

June 17, 2020 This. We need this. Call your representatives now! House to vote on historic D.C. statehood bill next week www.politico.com/news/2020/06/16/house-to-vote-on-dc-statehood-322516

June 17, 2020 I’ve wanted a macOS version of Pine.blog for years and maybe I’ll get to it one day, but I really don’t think it’ll ever be in the App Store. I love the idea of distributing the app myself.

June 17, 2020 For starters, start a blog and enable Webmentions. Blogging can be a social experience: likes, comments, replies, reposts. We can do it all and without the platforms.

June 17, 2020 I, for one, dream of a better Internet and a better World than this.

June 17, 2020 In this new era of digital feudalism we are all at the whims of fickle, capricious gods both algorithmic and mortal. Their will is unknowable, so we are left reading tea leaves and casting knuckle bones.

June 17, 2020 YouTubers and iOS Developers are not so different. CGP Grey made a great video about all of this a while back. youtube.com/watch?v=DIssymQvrbU

June 17, 2020 I have long believed that App Review is more an exercise in performing sacrificial offerings and pleading for mercy from an uncaring feudal lord than anything else.

June 17, 2020 Adding limits to my Twitter and YouTube consumption was one of the best things I’ve done lately.

June 15, 2020 I'm not actually writing any Go code, but I am building and running an Open Source Go project directly.

June 15, 2020 This will be my first time using Go in a project.

June 15, 2020 SCOTUS Report: Civil Rights Law Protects L.G.B.T. Workers, SC Rules 👍 🏳️‍🌈 SC declines to hear cases over legal doctrine qualified immunity, which shields police from lawsuits 👎 (sigh)

June 15, 2020 I just occurred to me that you could literally drink Americanos all day. The coffee ☕️ in the morning, and the cocktail 🍹 in the evening... or the reverse. I'm not gonna judge you.

June 15, 2020 The Americano is a great cocktail, and so easy to make.

June 13, 2020 Update, restarting my phone worked. Apparently Smart Playlists sync now too! This is a pleasant surprise.

June 13, 2020 Does iTunes Match and iCloud Library just not work anymore with non-purchased music? I've used it to sync my band's recordings to my phone for years, but now it just doesn't work. New items just don't appear.

June 13, 2020 Why is San Diego great? Exhibit 2,321:

June 13, 2020 “Ive just received an official pdf from the Whitehouse. This pdf indicates...”

June 13, 2020 All official sounding documents should be referred to as “an official PDF”.

June 13, 2020 Read. Local. News. It’s actually really helpful.

June 13, 2020 Parts of my neighborhood are closing the streets so that stores and shops can spread out into them for social distancing. I 100% support this. Take back our streets! Cars begone!

June 12, 2020 I’m glad to know this actually works. I was never actually able to 100% test it on real certs.

June 11, 2020 B2 is pretty great. Just saying.

June 11, 2020 Reminder: you can include emoji in Python source code.

June 11, 2020 “Purgatory is a Cave in Ireland” is something I’m going to work into every conversation somehow.

June 11, 2020 Apparently Catholic doctrine originally taught that Purgatory was not just real, but it was a physical place... in Ireland. Listen to the episode.

June 11, 2020 If you’re in the depths of the moment and need a break, let me recommend this episode of the Ezra Klein Show about UFO culture from the perspective of a Catholic Historian. It’s fascinating. overcast.fm/+QLhWtU4rE

June 10, 2020 Just learned about IndieBound.org a site that helps you find and buy from local bookstores!

June 10, 2020 Nine9s also cares about the environment! Nine9s runs in datacenters powered by 92% clean and renewable energy. Learn more: nine9s.cloud/kb/infrastructure

June 10, 2020 Today, I'm super happy to announce the release of Nine9s: No-fuss uptime monitoring for developers. If you need inexpensive, but powerful monitoring for your site, give Nine9s a try. nine9s.cloud

June 10, 2020 The most expensive domain name I've ever found on Hover's website: $119,999.99 for studio.blog

June 9, 2020 The People of this nation are its rulers. We should all be able to oversee the institutions that govern us. While we remake our societies, let’s not repeat our mistakes. Let’s double down on Democracy.

June 9, 2020 Citizens should sit on committees that oversee the police (or whatever we rebuild them to be). Let us be the judge of their behavior. They should be filled by Sortition (randomly from those interested) so that everyone can participate.

June 9, 2020 Since there seems to be a surge in recently vacated plinths, may I suggest these options (in order) Historic POCs. Historic Non-POCs that aren’t terrible people. Old-timey analog clocks cause they’re actually great. Famous horses cause why not.

June 8, 2020 I don't remember taking this photo, but I just found it on my camera.

June 6, 2020 Reminder: Guam, DC, and Puerto Rico should be states.

June 5, 2020 I love this phase of a project. I'm just putting the finishing touches on the code and getting the server ready.

June 5, 2020 Standing up a server for a new project! More details coming next week.

June 3, 2020 The federal government should spend more money, in general, on most things it does. So often: you get what you pay for.

June 3, 2020 Matt Yglesias (Vox): ...the interest rate paid on federal debt is currently less than the overall rate of price inflation — meaning Congress can essentially borrow money for less than nothing. The ground is laid for all kinds of expansive policy. We have the money!

June 3, 2020 Author: “First, I’ll write an Introduction, where I introduce the topic. Then there will be a chapter going in to detail.” Editor: “What’s the topic?” A: “The thing discussed in the Intro” E: ... “sold” 💸

June 3, 2020 This table of contents is totally phoning it in. I mean, yes, typically a book has an intro, some stuff, and then a conclusion. But what are those parts about?

June 3, 2020 I have finished it. Everyone should go and pick up a copy of Democracy May Not Exist, But We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone by Astra Taylor. It’s great.

June 3, 2020 Keep your eyes peeled. I should be announcing something pretty soon. (days).

June 3, 2020 A productive day. Now to actually finish that book I said I would finish yesterday but didn’t finish.

June 2, 2020 I did not finish this book tonight. A wave of yawn ensued. The idea was flawed from the start. Will attempt tomorrow.

June 2, 2020 I am gonna finish this book tonight

June 1, 2020 Contributions welcome. Please get in touch and we can discuss.

June 1, 2020 I may have started another project... liberalistagenda.com

June 1, 2020 Also: Use email folders. They are a godsend. They work everywhere and they've been around forever. Inbox Zero is glorious when you can attain it.

June 1, 2020 I do this with Pine.blog and my email (and previously w/ Twitter lists). I always know what I'm getting into when I click on a timeline. This greatly minimizes surprise outage. #MentalHealthTip

June 1, 2020 One of the biggest issues with timelines, on sites like FB and Twitter (and email), is that a bunch of wildly-different concerns get shoved into the same place and you never know what to expect. Organizing what you follow into timelines (or Twitter lists) helps a lot.

June 1, 2020 This website has brought me much joy tonight. www.thiswebsitewillselfdestruct.com

May 2020 | 115 posts

May 30, 2020 Releasing software is such a dopamine hit for me. It makes my day no matter how small the feature is.

May 30, 2020 I didn't realize that when GitHub said they'd be shutting off HTTP Basic Authentication that they also meant App Keys. That really sucks.

May 30, 2020 Pine.blog can now help you add Webmention support to your personal blog! Let's move the Open, Indie Web forward. No matter where you host your blog, you can have mentions and even replies powered by Pine.blog! Check out the announcement blog post to learn more

May 30, 2020 I've had my static blog for so many years. It amazes me that I'm still happily using the code I wrote all that time ago. It still works, and it's still powerful enough to do nearly everything I've asked of it.

May 30, 2020 I. Love. Pirate. CGP Grey. youtu.be/3YFeE1eDlD0

May 29, 2020 How many of you out there would be interested in a book about building quick but powerful SaaS products in Python/Django from start to launch?

May 29, 2020 Thanks to the Sacramento Bee and their Capital Alert column. If you live in CA and can spare some money right now, support this great paper and get the news that impacts you and your state.

May 29, 2020 I spent way too long browsing Twitter today and it was not good for me. iOS’s Screen Time feature helped me realize I was wasting my time (I limit my Twitter time). Poured myself a drink and switched it off.

May 29, 2020 Fact checking is not censoring.

May 29, 2020 I hold these two opinions: Social Media platforms hold immense power in our society and are (probably) too big. The President is a fool who’s been allowed to skirt harassment violations on Twitter for years.

May 28, 2020 I am back to my old keyboard...

May 27, 2020 The streets were once public spaces, let’s do that again. San Francisco plans to offer sidewalks, streets, public spaces for business activity

May 24, 2020 If you lack context for my reasoning: it has to do with the fact that 100,000 people have died and that number is still climbing (fast). We’re making progress, don’t screw it up.

May 24, 2020 Eating outside I can (maybe) understand, but inside? Hell no. I personally won’t be eating at a restaurant (inside or outside) for some time yet.

May 24, 2020 I genuinely do not understand how people are comfortable eating in a restaurant.

May 24, 2020 And yes, that means that my entire programming career has been on one of two keyboards, both at work and home (I have multiple K750s). I have had it very good. It's amazing how good you can be when your keyboard is always the same.

May 24, 2020 I have used the same model of keyboard for 6 years (either the keyboard on my Macbook Pro, or the Logitech K750). The Logitech adapter no longer works reliably on new Macs, so I'm having to move to a new keyboard. I am not enjoying the transition.

May 23, 2020 OH: "Boromir is the Condor of Gondor." Seconded

May 22, 2020 Interesting times indeed.

May 22, 2020 I can't believe that Migration Assistant managed to bring over even my janky blog engine and Python 2. Well done Apple.

May 22, 2020 I'm live from my new Mac!

May 21, 2020 I've only ever used Migration Assistant to move between my Macs. It's always been a seamless experience. Anyone out there ever had problems with it?

May 21, 2020 Migrating...

May 21, 2020 My new Macbook is here!

May 21, 2020 Life as a web dev is full of constantly encountering errors on other people’s sites and diving into the dev tools to figure out why. How do normal people use computers?

May 20, 2020 If you need an acutally uplifting story about an employee-owned company doing great work amid a pandemic, look no further: kottke.org/20/05/inside-the-epicenter-of-the-pandemic-baking-boom-at-king-arthur-flour

May 20, 2020 Also if Warren was chosen as VP, the left would really need to re-evaluate if they “lost” this cycle. I’d call that a pretty damn-fine job.

May 20, 2020 Plus it seems like Warren writes the policies and the articles. This really wasn’t really a Joe themed article. miamiherald.com/article242350451.html

May 20, 2020 It may make me unpopular with those further left, but a Biden/Warren ticket wouldn’t be terrible. It sure wasn’t my first choice, but I’d surely take it. Warren would be a huge asset.

May 20, 2020 I may write a blog post about this.

May 20, 2020 I’ve been trying some things: Limit potential distractions Read more long form news, articles, and books Try to not just watch TV/YouTube Limit podcasts Follow the news but not constantly In other words, be mindful of my own attention.

May 20, 2020 Obviously at home it makes no difference since I have a WiFi connection, but disabling cellular data and a couple other recent habit changes have helped keep my mood up lately.

May 20, 2020 I have turned off cellular data on my phone for the past week. It means that when I leave my house for walks, I can’t be disrupted. I highly recommend this.

May 20, 2020 MacBook, MacBook, MacBook

May 19, 2020 There's lots of people pronouncing the death of blogging. It's nice to see more counter-arguments. But, there is hope for those looking to read and be read... using the old rss We also have webmentions... Blogging's death is highly exaggerated.

May 18, 2020 I have done more reading this weekend than I have since October. Feels great.

May 18, 2020 I really need to stop buying domains.

May 18, 2020 My next quarantine goal: Finish Democracy May Not Exist, But We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone by Astra Taylor. I got like 1/3 of the way through it before stopping. I get distracted easily.

May 18, 2020 Just had to hard power down my Mac. That can’t be good.

May 17, 2020 Today I tried for an hour to develop a ~10 line Safari Extension. I just gave up after having no idea how to predictably run it. Safari and Safari Tech Preview would almost always reject it.

May 17, 2020 I upgraded my blog! Spring Cleaning and Microformats

May 17, 2020 We should build more clock towers. Hear me out: They’re useful, decorative, you can style them in a number of ways, and they don’t inflame social or political tensions like statues might. Plus they tell time I guess.

May 17, 2020 Afternoon coffee and reading time. ☕️📚

May 17, 2020 Analog clocks are better than digital clocks. Discuss.

May 16, 2020 “Netflix CEO Reed Hastings famously said his biggest competitor is sleep.” - Why We’re Polarized, Ezra Klein (p140)

May 16, 2020 Over the years, I’ve been increasingly grateful for my engineering education. I don’t build or design planes, but I do have an understanding of math and complex systems. That knowledge has proven invaluable to me.

May 16, 2020 Like the other day when our President claimed that if we didn’t test people for COVID, we would have less cases, or that no one gets how exponential growth works.

May 16, 2020 So many popular conceptions and misunderstandings in recent history partly come down to the simple fact that people do not intuitively understand how Statistics works.

May 16, 2020 It’s worth it to you and your well being to spend time seeking out good, intelligent, well-rounded voices. Follow their work, actually read it, but know that they’re human too.

May 16, 2020 To be on the Internet is to be constantly barraged by sampling bias and lack of context.

May 16, 2020 As you go about your life on the internet, it’s important to remember than you’re constantly seeing a distorted version of the world crafted by the loudest voices, 280 characters, and sarcasm.

May 16, 2020 Also, why can I type better on a smaller screen? I feel like iPods are still using the old predictive spell checker. It got worse years ago. Is this what it used to be?

May 16, 2020 This thing is stupid fast.

May 16, 2020 I never realized how wasted some of the space on the iPhone screen is. To use this tiny screen is to appreciate the acres of space we have on larger devices.

May 16, 2020 Using this iPod is wild. A total blast from the past.

May 16, 2020 Posted from my new testing iPod. Is this what iPhones used to feel like?

May 16, 2020 Holy crap. iPods are super thin and light.

May 14, 2020 Time to see if this works.

May 14, 2020 I have stacks of UI mockups for Pine.blog; mostly the iOS app.

May 14, 2020 I struggled through Aerospace Engineering in college and all I have to show for it these days is a few war stories, a nuanced understanding of complex systems, and the incredibly strong need to sketch and plan on a specific type of colored graph paper.

May 14, 2020 I still do UI mockups in pencil on engineering paper.

May 13, 2020 You’re right BitBucket, I should go for a walk. You come back up when you’re ready.

May 13, 2020 Mindy Isser (Jacobin): The Post Office is a national treasure, providing service everywhere from the smallest town to the biggest city and offering a rare example in US society of democratic values prevailing over private profits...[and it's] in trouble.

May 12, 2020 Love to see Apple adding features to Logic Pro. It’s been a while since a big update but as a person who uses Logic for music production (even as a hobby) this is great to see.

May 12, 2020 For those who don't know brid.gy is a service that would allow you to see your likes, replies, and reposts from other networks (Twitter, etc) on Pine.blog, or any Webmention capable site.

May 12, 2020 Apparently Pine.blog works with brid.gy (not super well, but still). I did not build this feature and I believe I enabled it for testing and then forgot to finish. This is awesome! I'll see what I can do to improve support.

May 12, 2020 A lot of people signing up for Pine.blog these last few weeks (and especially today for some reason). Welcome! Let’s forge a new Web together!

May 12, 2020 Nothing launches 15 months early without cuts.

May 12, 2020 When Disney announces that they’re releasing Hamilton recording 15 months early I have two thoughts: That’s awesome! What got cut to make that deadline?

May 12, 2020 Question: If you mention yourself (i.e. an older post, etc) should that show up as a mention in your notifications? I'd expect no, but I'm conflicted.

May 11, 2020 I laughed way too hard at this: Why we at $FAMOUS_COMPANY Switched to $HYPED_TECHNOLOGY Initially, we tried messing with some garbage collector parameters we didn’t really understand, but to our surprise that didn’t magically solve our problems so instead we disabled garbage col...

May 11, 2020 It made my night that tonight’s episode of Last Week Tonight was about the Postal Service. Save USPS!

May 11, 2020 The White House’s response has been worse than we could have imagined. The House is trying to help Americans but both the WH and the Senate are in the way. We can fix this.

May 11, 2020 The biggest change we can make is getting Trump out of the White House and flipping the Senate. 2021 is a redistricting year. We have the chance to shape this nation for a decade.

May 11, 2020 I know that symmetric upload/download speeds are never expected on home internet connections, but I would expect a ratio better than 18:1. My upload speed doesn't even crack double digits.

May 11, 2020 Praise Gilgamesh!

May 11, 2020 The newest version of Pine.blog for iOS is out! There’s tons of improvements and fixes in this version. I’ll write a blog post tomorrow detailing it all!

May 11, 2020 Can it be? Is it true?

May 10, 2020 Basically, how can I most easily mitigate this classic traffic problem? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_bunching

May 10, 2020 Completely unrelated: does anyone have any suggestions for managing loads on workers in a queue? It has a lot of idle time but tasks tend to bunch up causing minor delays periodically.

May 10, 2020 Choosing which bugs to ship is an important skill to develop as a programmer. Learning to live with those bugs every day because you don’t have time to fix them is a whole other thing.

May 10, 2020 I’ve noticed myself opening twitter more and I really need to stop. That terrible site does nothing but stress me.

May 9, 2020 Pay attention to Gavin Newsom’s leadership. Even if you’re not in California. Look to CA, reach out. We can help you. @GavinNewsom I know CA is struggling too, but we can and should lead this nation.

May 9, 2020 Reopening without a plan: This is the most consequential and profound failure of presidential leadership in the modern era. Full stop. Like @ezraklein, I too wish Gavin Newsom was president right now.

May 9, 2020 I love this state: California becomes first state to switch November election to all-mail balloting politico.com/states/california/story/2020/05/08/california-becomes-first-state-to-switch-november-election-to-all-mail-balloting-1283238

May 9, 2020 Today did not go as I had planned. It seems like lots of days this week have been like that.

May 8, 2020 Does anyone else have the issue where the macOS Music.app (formerly iTunes) just refuses to play anything anymore and requires a reboot? I've had this issue occasionally for years.

May 6, 2020 I can’t even right now.

May 6, 2020 If you’re in San Diego, there’s a whole ton of great outlets you should read/follow. Here’s just two: Voice of San Diego (local news) Sacramento Bee (state news)

May 6, 2020 Speaking of problems: if you’re tired of Twitter constantly making you feel hopeless, try out Pine.blog and follow some local news sources.

May 6, 2020 The problem with problems is that they might have solutions. That means that either you have a solution or you need to find a solution to the problem of not knowing the solution to the problem.

May 5, 2020 Reminder: the people who arguably need Federal stimulus checks the most are still waiting for their paper check because they don’t have a bank account. Postal banking would fix this.

May 5, 2020 I have purchased new  hardware. I am excited.

May 4, 2020 Today has taken a turn I was not expecting.

May 4, 2020 On San Diego’s new community-run electric company: ...former Gov. Jerry Brown set California on a path toward running 100 percent renewable by 2045. San Diego’s goal is more ambitious, aiming to reach 100 percent renewable energy a whole decade earlier.

May 4, 2020 They finally did it. I might be buying a new Mac now.

May 3, 2020 I don’t even have intelli-sense functionality enabled. BBEdit will autocomplete words already in the same text file but that’s it. I’ve worked with Python and Django for so long I just kinda know the API. For everything else, I have the docs up.

May 3, 2020 That’s one thing I love about Python for web development: all I need is a text editor and a terminal. No fancy compiler toolchain. No IDE. No cruft.

May 3, 2020 I’ve used BBEdit as my primary editor for years and only recently (~a year ago) started using Projects.

May 3, 2020 I am unreasonably excited that I discovered (and remapped) the shortcut for cycling through open documents (not windows) in BBEdit.

May 2, 2020 HTTP/2 is live for Pine.blog. No idea why I didn’t enable it sooner.

May 2, 2020 Just finished drafting the feature list for the next major Pine.blog release. Some great stuff in the works.

May 2, 2020 One of my favorite easter eggs on the internet: traceroute bad.horse.

May 1, 2020 “Democrats are currently governing from the minority.” https://overcast.fm/+FOOR5U-Rk

May 1, 2020 🎵 The Lonesome Crowded West - Modest Mouse

May 1, 2020 I never realized that the language parser was the reason why Python doesn't support multiple items in a context manager. In Python 3.9 alpha 6 the new parser will be opt-in; it will become the default... The proposal met no opposition. I look forward to the new parser.

May 1, 2020 🎵 Little Lover's So Polite youtube.com/watch?v=QbOCR-7Ju-E So. Good.

May 1, 2020 Me: Found a really weird bug with the in-dev version of Pine.blog. No idea why it's happening. Found it... typo. Of course.

May 1, 2020 If you want to forever transform how you listen to music, get a pair of Studio Monitors (like these amazon.com/gp/product/B00KVEIY4E). I got a pair of these two years ago and I have never been the same. The music you love has so much more to offer than you think.

May 1, 2020 Found a really weird bug with the in-dev version of Pine.blog. No idea why it's happening.

May 1, 2020 Does macOS uninstall Xcode's "Additional Components" when doing an upgrade? It seems like every time I update my Mac, I have to reinstall them. Is there some jealous love triangle between macOS, Xcode, and "Additional Components" I'm not aware of?

May 1, 2020 2 minutes remaining!

May 1, 2020 Macs and PC updates were encouraging people to go outside long before gaming platforms added those “Remember to walk” screens.

May 1, 2020 What I thought would be a short point release update for my Mac is apparently an “About 37 minutes remaining...” kind of update. I was going to work, but I guess I’ll just go for a walk.

May 1, 2020 Just pushed an update for Pine.blog to add support for per post author images. Now @aaronpk's emoji-based avatar photos show up!

April 2020 | 68 posts

April 30, 2020 I know people made fun of the fact that Jira was a headlining Catalyst app at WWDC, but I'm really liking it... Having a native app is almost always nicer than a web app (he said while being a web developer).

April 30, 2020 Upgrading my work Mac to Catalina!

April 27, 2020 Machine Learning often discovers what we already knew. It just doesn't know that the outcome would be racist. Companies often choose to ignore this and instead call it "efficient".

April 27, 2020 Matt Yglesias (The Weeds): The upshots of efforts in Algorithmic Lending is that banks want to find a way to violate Civil Rights law in a way that's legal. Tons of companies code their ethically dubious use of Machine Learning or AI in business-efficiency terms.

April 27, 2020 I will sing the merits of this bill from the rooftops.

April 27, 2020 Everything in that article is a yes.

April 27, 2020 Senator Kirsten Gillibrand with the right ideas: The Postal Service should be allowed to deliver low-cost financial services to poor and rural communities. And vote-by-mail should be universal. 100% Yes. www.nytimes.com/2020/04/26/opinion/kirsten-gillibrand-usps-coronavirus.ht...

April 27, 2020 Stopped Traffic

April 26, 2020 The condition of any backup is unknown until a restore is attempted. “Schrödinger’s Backup,” Redditor intelx88 Wise words

April 26, 2020 I anticipate that I will not be able to play tomorrow as my fingertips will be very displeased with me.

April 26, 2020 My favorite kind of tired is post band-practice tired. It feels so good to create something and exert physical effort doing so. It feels like I did something. Most days, building software doesn’t scratch that itch.

April 26, 2020 Today I played music for nearly 7 hours. Got a ton of new stuff written for some songs we’re working on and tuned my at-home recording setup. My hands hurt now.

April 25, 2020 Another great thing about mail voting: It’s an entirely paper process. Easily recounted and tracked. No computer voting required. Democracy wins all the way around.

April 25, 2020 Our Founders knew how important the Post Office can be. We should heed that advice.

April 25, 2020 Also, while we’re at it, we should: Allow the Post Office to provide free or stamp-priced banking for accounts

April 25, 2020 One of the greatest successes in this nation’s history is just how universal and commonplace the Post Office is. They’re everywhere and they send anywhere. I know today it feels like a relic but the PO built this nation, and it still binds is together. We should use it.

April 25, 2020 Voting by mail is great: The Post Office universal in this country Voting by mail is super easy and simple It increases people’s ability to exercise their right to vote The Post Office is a damn good national institution that is criminally under-appreciated.

April 25, 2020 It is a beautiful evening.

April 24, 2020 Just gonna say it: Webmentions are so damn cool.

April 24, 2020 🎵 Listening to Honey Bones by DOPE LEMON.

April 24, 2020 Me: I think I may have gotten zero-downtime deploys working for Pine.blog. I did. 🎉

April 24, 2020 I think I may have gotten zero-downtime deploys working for Pine.blog.

April 23, 2020 Found a weird bug just now and I want to fix it but I must sleep.

April 23, 2020 I know it’s in our constitution that there shall be no deficit, but we could change that. We do it all the time here. Constitutions are just documents written by people.

April 23, 2020 We (Californians) have been really good about our budget and doing long-term saving til now. We could go back to that once things get pseudo-normal again.

April 23, 2020 What would happen if California could suddenly run a budget deficit? I know we had ~$20bn in the bank, but even that might not be enough if the Federal Gov doesn’t step up more. Could we just run a deficit?

April 23, 2020 Brain: sleep Me: but there are bugs in my code Brain: you need sleep

April 23, 2020 I am, once again, up too late having just finished working. I need to stop earlier. It takes too long for me to unwind and get to sleep.

April 23, 2020 Fixed an error with Pine.blog and Webmentions.

April 21, 2020 Music.app on macOS Catalina has this nasty habit of going blank and forgetting all my album art for a second or two. It worries me what it must be doing to cause that. Does it constantly re-check my library w/ iCloud?

April 21, 2020 This iced-coffee is 👌 Did your ☕️ get cold? Pro-tip: add more cold.

April 21, 2020 @garybernhardt I may own the company, the domain, and the intellectual property, but I still serve at Google's whim and it can destroy me at any time. This but s/Google/Google & Apple/g

April 19, 2020 It baffles me how much of your odds on passing App Review depends on the specific person that happens to be reviewing it.

April 19, 2020 Oh, App Review. What form of sacrifice dost thou require of me this season?

April 19, 2020 Are there no apps going through app review these days? My review times have been almost instant lately.

April 19, 2020 I was baking bread before it was cool. #YesThisIsMyHighHorse

April 19, 2020 Everyone in 2019: Bread? Ew, no thanks. Bread is unhealthy. Everyone in 2020: Baking more 🍞! My store had yeast in stock again!

April 19, 2020 🎵 Making Sourdough 🎵

April 19, 2020 Our thanks to Dave Mote for all of his work redesigning Adventurer's Codex. This redesign has been in the works for a long time. It's great to see it finally launched. adventurerscodex.com/update/2020/04/18/v2-ui-beta.html

April 19, 2020 If I can stop myself from making improvements, the new version of Pine.blog for iOS should be released this coming week.

April 19, 2020 Spent the whole day working on either Adventurer’s Codex or Pine.blog. I’m exhausted but I will say that there’s a lot coming for both of them.

April 17, 2020 Tonight is gonna be fun.

April 16, 2020 This timeline is weird. blog.cloudflare.com: Cloudflare Workers now supports COBOL

April 15, 2020 Today is a slow day.

April 15, 2020 Archiving a new Pine.blog build! Got a good feeling about this one.

April 15, 2020 I have a confession to make: I actually do try to keep lines of code in both Swift and Obj-C to an ~80 character limit. I fear I am in the minority here.

April 15, 2020 And lo, a dark cloud descended upon all the nations of the world, bringing with it: pestilence, turmoil, fear, doubt, anxiety, and the inability to remember where my keys are, I swear they were right here.

April 14, 2020 What do you call “starting the process of making sourdough starter”? Anyway, I’m doing that.

April 14, 2020 The sheer weight of the collective cognative burden that this virus has put on us is incalculable.

April 14, 2020 There's so much I wanna do with Pine.blog, but with everything going on lately I just don't have much focus left to work on it. I pushed out a few small changes and a new iOS beta, but that's all I've got for tonight.

April 13, 2020 No-Knead Quarantine Bread

April 13, 2020 Just fantastic. Colornames.org: A collaborative effort to name all 16.7M colors Some of my favorites so far: Not Salmon but Getting There Torvalds Soul Lightly Used Firetruck Blueberries with Milk

April 13, 2020 Me: Furiously plugging and unplugging HDMI cables into my Mac.

April 13, 2020 Every time I plug something directly into my 2014 MBP, I feel like I’m simultaneously living in the past, and that the past was better.

April 13, 2020 There's something incredibly comforting about the macOS startup chime. It's an elegant chime, for a more civilized age. Renable it in Terminal: sudo nvram StartupMute=%00

April 11, 2020 Apparently there’s a lot of people visiting adventurerscodex.com today. To all those people: welcome. We hope you like it. Enjoy your D&D game.

April 11, 2020 Django's Admin Panel is literally life-saving.

April 9, 2020 Quarantined, but still want to help democracy? Follow these simple steps: Put on a mask. Go outside and get your mail. Find the Census form with your code. Go to 2020census.gov, and fill out your info. Democracy thanks you. #NotSponsored

April 9, 2020 We’re doing it San Diego! The Doubling Rate (the number of days it takes for the number of cases to double) just jumped a ton! Distancing is working! Keep it up! (numbers from outbreak.info)

April 9, 2020 Elizabeth Warren has a plan for this too. We should listen. nytimes.com/2020/04/08/opinion/coronavirus-congress-warren.html

April 8, 2020 I do not apologize for being a very proud Californian.

April 8, 2020 Gov. Gavin Newsom We decided enough is enough: let's use the power of the purchasing power of the state of California as a nation-state... California has arrived y’all!

April 5, 2020 I needed this today You Look Nice Today is back ad it's called California King

April 3, 2020 @Aaronpk, do you know why my webmention replies aren't reaching you? Likes work fine, and normal mentions seem to work.

April 3, 2020 This is great news from Apple: All Mac portables with the Apple T2 Security Chip feature a hardware disconnect... [which] prevents any software — even with root... and even the software on the T2 chip—from engaging the microphone when the lid is closed.

April 1, 2020 Gavin Newsom should run for president.

April 1, 2020 Reminder: Twitter... is kinda awful.

April 1, 2020 Reorganizing my timelines. I’ve let too much noise into my life and it’s crowding out the useful, helpful, and fun stuff.

March 2020 | 64 posts

March 30, 2020 Fin

March 30, 2020 Babish’s Browned Butter Cookies

March 29, 2020 Sandwich time

March 29, 2020 I cannot even imagine just how many horrible hacks make Catalyst work, and I don't want to know.

March 29, 2020 I technically have a mac app now, in that the iPad version of Pine.blog boots up on my mac. It is awful to use, but it does work.

March 29, 2020 Once this build is uploaded, I think I'm going to spend the rest of the day playing with Catalyst.

March 29, 2020 That all said, I've wanted a macOS app for years but never had the time to get into Mac development seriously.

March 28, 2020 Truthfully, the iOS app tends to lag behind the web version because: I'm one person working in my spare time. I'm much more comfortable on the web than in iOS.

March 28, 2020 Pushing up a new beta for Pine.blog (iOS). Lots of fixes + enhancements.

March 28, 2020 Just thought up a really cool feature for Pine.blog. Too bad I'm working on something else at the moment.

March 28, 2020 I'll be using this to track San Diego County

March 28, 2020 A few of my friends at SRTI hav just launched outbreak.info: [It] shows growth of #COVID19 cases and deaths over time, stratified by country and/or state. Automatically refreshed from @JHUSystems daily. Congrats to everyone who worked to get this launched!

March 28, 2020 Attention: I now have coffee and therefore can now start working on Pine.blog. That is all. ☕️

March 28, 2020 Today is a Pine.blog day.

March 25, 2020 Really appreciating Gov. Gavin Newsom’s updates. They’re clear, to the point, and frank. My only feedback is that he could take a breath once and a while. It feels like he’s racing to the end.

March 24, 2020 So. Tired.

March 22, 2020 In other news: this week I got a SodaStream 👍

March 22, 2020

Better Photo Posting

March 21, 2020 Umm... how exactly are we supposed to deal with this? by Vox

March 21, 2020 NPR: “...states like Japan, California, and others” Did we secede?

March 20, 2020 Anyway, I have to work.

March 20, 2020 Also, Google’s docs for this assume you’re guilty and you want to create new ads. What happened to presumptions of innocence? All bow to the all-knowing algorithm!

March 20, 2020 In unrelated news some of my ads on Google we’re suspended and I have no idea why. Apparently, Google considers Pine.blog to be malware?? I do not have time to fix this now.

March 20, 2020 If you build systems that make decisions about people’s livelihoods: Please include the reasons why the system made the decisions it did, or at lease a clue.

March 20, 2020 You don't often see them but you can find some of them on your local news. They're struggling to cope, but they are trying. Look to your local leaders. They'll have more effect on you than the Federal Government will.

March 20, 2020 Since I'm a consultant for San Diego County, I've been pulled into working on the emergency response to COVID-19. In this time of crisis, look to your local goverments: city and county. There are thousands of people working hard and looking out for you and for your community.

March 18, 2020 A few of us are cataloging photos of our neighborhood as a photo challenge. Check it out! We're on FB and Twitter too. @picsaboutadams pine.blog/u/photosaboutadams

March 17, 2020 Whoo boy. https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2020/3/17/21181694/coronavirus-covid-19-lockdowns-end-how-long-months-years

March 17, 2020 And show mad respect for that band name.

March 17, 2020 Since we're all stuck inside and working from home, take this time to listen to some local San Diego music: takenbycanadians.com/music

March 17, 2020 It's spooky that the last epidemic of this scale was almost exactly 100 years ago.

March 17, 2020 I guess I never noticed, but YouTube has a Local News section and it’s actually for local news in it. Well done.

March 17, 2020 Fellow San Diegans, The County has put together an action fund for helping people who aren’t able to pay rent, services etc. The fund needs donations. If you can give, please consider it. https://www.sdfoundation.org/programs/programs-and-funds/san-diego-covid-19-community-respo...

March 16, 2020 Andrew Yang [Then]: Send everyone $1000/month to guarentee basic resources and resilience to every American. ... months pass and COVID-19 crisis escalates in the US. Congress [Now]: So... that $1000 thing.

March 15, 2020 The Census site is pretty great: simple, clean, and clear. Did you know there's a Federal Agency that standardizes the design of official websites? Well, there is and it's great.

March 14, 2020 Since we’re all quarantined and home, make sure you spend 10 minutes and fill out the Census form!

March 14, 2020 Pushed out some small improvements with uploading images.

March 14, 2020 What if he’d been fiddling the whole time, and only then, under the ongoing threat of fire, did everyone finally notice?

March 14, 2020 What if Nero was already fiddling when Rome started to burn?

March 14, 2020 Immediately after I get an email from Cox about how they could handle the surge in traffic due to Coronavirus, my internet drops.

March 14, 2020 Pushed a quick fix this morning. Some Feed Directory pages weren't responding.

March 14, 2020 It's late but I wrote a thing: Don't let anyone tell you that you can't accomplish your dreams: you can. It might take a lot longer than you thought, but it can be done. brianschrader.com →

March 14, 2020 Just rolled out a new home page for Pine.blog showing off the new features (and because it needed a refresh). The old one looks so empty in comparison.

March 14, 2020 Water Tower in the Rain

March 14, 2020 Pine.blog and The Social Web Today, Pine.blog joins the Social Web as a full-fledged member! ...When you reply to a post, Pine.blog uses Webmentions to let the recipient know you’ve responded to them, and if they respond back, you’ll see their response in your Mentions There's.

March 14, 2020 There went nothing (read: everything)!

March 13, 2020 Do any of you solo-devs out there also do code-reviews of your own code?

March 13, 2020 Sunset Bridge

March 13, 2020 If all goes according to plan, there’s a lot in store for Pine.blog tonight.

March 13, 2020 Rock got nothin’ on Jazz

March 13, 2020 Cloudy

March 11, 2020 My hobby: finding and singing harmony backing vocals to my favorite songs. I will not apologize.

March 9, 2020 lol. Apparently I never reenabled the cross-posting from my blog to Twitter. Fixed now.

March 9, 2020 You can still listen to Internet Radio, but the experience is cripped without a directory. Not that I have ever really listened Internet Radio, but lots of people do. Another hit to the Open Web.

March 9, 2020 Finally pulled the trigger and upgraded to Catalina yesterday. Music.app feels a lot cleaner, but it's missing a lot of features and some long-lived iTunes features were just removed with no substitute. This also marks the death of the Internet Radio catalog; RIP.

March 8, 2020 Bridge

March 7, 2020 Sleepy today

March 6, 2020 It's 2pm and I'm finally starting on the thing I wanted to do today.

March 6, 2020 One of the most concerning discoveries I’ve ever seen:

March 3, 2020 Behold, the deed is done.

March 3, 2020 Today is Super Tuesday. Remember to Vote. Vote. .... Vote!

March 2, 2020 Jump

March 1, 2020 💀 ded

March 1, 2020 Update: The weather made up its mind. It decided to be awesome.

February 2020 | 57 posts

Feb. 29, 2020 My Dearest Weather, I hope this letter finds you well. I am enjoying my excursion in your midst. If I could ask but a humble favor: make up your damn mind.

Feb. 29, 2020 Why hello there.

Feb. 28, 2020 Ezra Klein: It sometimes seems, to me, that the people with power in society are engaged in a very desperate effort to stave off the recognition of, on some level, their own uselessness.

Feb. 25, 2020 Took this the other day while listening to a local band play.

Feb. 25, 2020 Hey Chris thanks for taking a look at Pine.blog (and for finding those bugs, they're fixed now). As for your questions, Pine.blog doesn't ask for your Wordpress password until you try to publish a post (which is why you weren't seeing it). Also, posting comments requires a premiu...

Feb. 24, 2020 And now: A Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think About. Not the album. I actually need to drive.

Feb. 24, 2020 🛫

Feb. 24, 2020 Speaking of being onboard...

Feb. 24, 2020 It was so surreal this weekend to be with people who use and power the #IndieWeb. We need more people on board!

Feb. 24, 2020 This may be the first time I've been in an airport with decent cell coverage. It's not great, but 100% usable.

Feb. 24, 2020 Hey Joe it looks like your apple-touch-icon returns 404.

Feb. 23, 2020 Had a great time at #IndieWebCamp Austin. Everyone was great. Together we further the future of the Web.

Feb. 23, 2020 Great demo of Masilotti.com! Let's see if the demo works! It did!

Feb. 23, 2020 #IndieWebCamp Day 2!

Feb. 23, 2020 Pushed some feed parsing fixes. Turns out I'd been accounting for so many incorrect feeds and neglected the well-behaved ones...

Feb. 23, 2020 Kudos, Sir

Feb. 22, 2020 #IndieWebCamp Day 1

Feb. 22, 2020 There are a lot of bands playing tonight. #Fact

Feb. 22, 2020 Got to see the Texas Capital. Pretty cool.

Feb. 22, 2020 Excited for IndieWebCamp tomorrow.

Feb. 22, 2020 @aaron are you all still hanging out at Easy Tiger?

Feb. 22, 2020 Is it just me or does the automatic timezone detection in iOS just not work anymore? Last three trips I’ve taken I’ve had to set it myself.

Feb. 21, 2020 ✈️

Feb. 18, 2020 It’d be nice if sites could provide this info. Local-based sites could tell search engines where their constituency is likely to be and search engines could promote those results above others.

Feb. 18, 2020 Is there any way for a website to specify (preferably in its markup) that the document’s contents are relevant to a given geographic area? It doesn’t seem like there is.

Feb. 17, 2020 TIL there’s a pager emoji. 📟 Also the Apple TV emoji is solidly stuck in the past. I know it’s more distinctive than just a black rectangle but there has to be something better than 📺

Feb. 17, 2020 Anyone have thoughts on React Native for Android development? I know basically nothing about either. Used React extensively but not natively.

Feb. 17, 2020 Also, on Pine.blog there’s no ads. Just sayin’.

Feb. 17, 2020 Admittedly it wasn’t really my intention to incentivize more in depth reading, but I’ve notified it in myself and I want to figure out how to incentivize it further.

Feb. 17, 2020 If you’re tired of the news being presented in overly simplistic formats on platforms that discourage reading the whole story check out Pine.blog. I’ve found that I read a lot more articles and understand the news better than I really ever have.

Feb. 17, 2020 And with that, I'm finally done with what I'd planned to finish at 10 AM. \o/

Feb. 17, 2020 Pine.blog Downtime Post-Mortem: A Story of Finite Resources http://bit.ly/2SxJppJ → Pine.blog was down for a while today; here's why. tl;dr Turns out parsing and storing entire portions of the web is hard.

Feb. 17, 2020 I'll probably post a full post-mortem in the next few hours. The Quick Version: The web is pretty large; my servers aren't.

Feb. 17, 2020 Well that was fun. Pine.blog was out of commission for the last few hours, but it should be back up at 100% now. Apologies for the downtime.

Feb. 15, 2020 Underappreciated Apple Support Article of the Week: What's the difference between a "disc" and a "disk?" They're pronounced the same, but, technically speaking, there is a distinct difference between a disc and a disk.

Feb. 14, 2020 I applaud Senator Gillibrand for her Data Protection Agency proposal.

Feb. 11, 2020 Gotta ship some Pine.blog updates before then. Time’s passing fast.

Feb. 11, 2020 I never explicitly said this so here it goes: I’m going to IndieWebCamp Austin! See y’all there!

Feb. 10, 2020 Lots of candidates have called for something like this and Seattle tried it! one aspect of his political vision has been less examined: the overhaul of our dysfunctional campaign finance system. ... Sanders wants to radically expand who is a political contributor by giving all A...

Feb. 9, 2020 Unrelated: Development on the next major step for Pine.blog is wrapping up and should be released soon!

Feb. 9, 2020 Reading @ezraklein’s Why We’re Polarized and this explanation really stood out. Great clarification. Sorting ≠ Polarization But the two are related.

Feb. 8, 2020 One of the worst things that can happen to a system of government is that its rules become biased towards one party. When the system is against you, it looks illegitimate. Illegitimate systems die. When we start to see the system as biased, its time to do some tweaking.

Feb. 8, 2020 Regardless of political preference, the systems we use to enact policy (progressive or conservative) shouldn't be biased towards one outcome. The system should strive to be neutral and self-preserving. A system that incentivises bypassing its own rules will not endure.

Feb. 8, 2020 Of the three branches, the Supreme Court and the President have the power to negate acts of Congress. The bicameral Congress also exherts a negating check on ambition. Institutions already exist to preserve the status quo; something must exist to push us forward.

Feb. 8, 2020 Congress' job is to consider options and take votes on matters, but simply ignoring the problem is a valid political move in our republic. This turns Congress into a branch that prefers inaction.

Feb. 8, 2020 IMO the biggest flaw in our Madisonian System, which I think has a lot of benefits, is that the cost of doing something is nowhere near the cost of doing nothing. Our system incentivises inaction.

Feb. 8, 2020 Thought Experiment: A Constitutional Amendment that any bill passed by one chamber of Congress, but not taken to a vote in the other chamber by the end of the session is deemed "tacitly approved" and sent to the President.

Feb. 7, 2020 At Communal Coffee

Feb. 7, 2020 Team Four Star (Patreon): We currently have no plans on continuing [DBZ Abridged]... I've loved DBZA for over a decade. It brought new life to a show I loved, but when the magic of making a thing is gone, it's time to move on. I wish the TFS team all the best.

Feb. 7, 2020 Apple, don't feel like you have to wait for me to say something. I'll take a new 13" MacBook Pro with that improved keyboard any day.

Feb. 5, 2020 That was incredibly frustrating.

Feb. 5, 2020 FACT CHECK “We will always protect patients with pre-existing conditions.” This is false. https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/fact-check-state-of-the-union-02-04

Feb. 4, 2020 Please, everyone: Electronic Voting is not good. It sounds like it should be, but it isn’t. Glaring security issues aside, how much do you think you should trust election results to apps that can’t go hours without crashing?

Feb. 1, 2020 I’ve never had what I do so blatantly compared to magic as this. #ImAWizardApparently

Feb. 1, 2020 I just... they can’t... but what about... doesn’t it matter if... but how could... even if... just... why?

Feb. 1, 2020 @ezraklein’s last episode of Impeachment Explained really expresses the same frustration, concern, grief, and anxiety that I’ve felt during the whole of the impeachment trial. This episode was a cathartic release for both him and the audience.

Feb. 1, 2020 Today concludes the hunt for a bug that has been plaguing the in-dev version of Adventurer’s Codex for over 6 months. The fix was 6 characters long.

January 2020 | 42 posts

Jan. 30, 2020 Fix applied! Should be all good now.

Jan. 29, 2020 Seems like there's a bug in the Pine.blog Timeline API. The Pine.blog web timeline works fine, but the iOS app is having some issues because of this bug. Fix is incomming later tonight. Apologies on any confusion.

Jan. 19, 2020 I started reading the Federalist Papers after the podcast came out. They’re also really good. What it would be to have podcast by Alexander Hamilton?

Jan. 19, 2020 Every week on Impeachment Explained, Ezra Klein delves into the nuts, bolts, and intricacies of the Impeachment news. His insights are always interesting and thoughtful. Well worth your time if you have space for another podcast.

Jan. 19, 2020 Pine.blog had a rough day today. I think everything is settled now. Sorry for any delays or downtime.

Jan. 18, 2020 This will not end well. We need real federal privacy protections by the end of 2005. 2006 at the latest. What’s that? It’s 2020? Shit. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/18/technology/clearview-privacy-facial-recognition.html

Jan. 15, 2020 Pine.blog aims to make writing on the Web easier. Part of that mission involves letting writers make a living from their work... https://blog.pine.blog/2020/01/patronage/

Jan. 15, 2020 TIL Mercurial can mean Volatile.

Jan. 15, 2020 Even if veto’ed this is huge: Senate Has Votes to Pass Limits on Trump’s Iran War Power, Likely Drawing a Veto https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/14/us/politics/iran-war.html

Jan. 15, 2020 Amy Klobuchar deserves more.

Jan. 15, 2020 Apparently, Amazon is selling their Ring Surveillance Cameras as a device that brings you and your neighbors together. Just wow.

Jan. 15, 2020 The Joe Biden Strategy: Have a three point plan Forget number two or three but power through it Say “look” and transition quickly to ObamaCare.

Jan. 10, 2020 Exhibit #456,765,088 on why California is pretty great. Our budget includes mitigating Climate Change, Drug Dricing, Homelessness, and Criminal Justice Reform. All things that barely get a mention in the Senate. http://bit.ly/2uy9oUs →

Jan. 10, 2020 Aside from the fires, which continue to increase in intensity and number as the climate crisis worsens and that arguably we can only mitigate anyway. But now I'm off topic.

Jan. 10, 2020 To be fair, California has many problems. But all told, it's really quite lovely here.

Jan. 10, 2020 When people say they don't want the U.S. to be like California, I hear them saying that they don't want an effective legislature and a government with a $7 billion annual budget surplus. To each his own, I guess.

Jan. 10, 2020 Doing some reading at the park today. Winter in San Diego can be pretty great.

Jan. 10, 2020 The iPad Air, when it launched, was pretty great. It’s biggest flaw was and still is it’s paltry 1GB of RAM.

Jan. 10, 2020 I bumped Pine.blog to require iOS 13 a while back and because of that it doesn’t run on my iPad Air anymore. Guess I need to get another iPad. That or go back to supporting iOS 12. 🙅‍♀️

Jan. 10, 2020 Fix applied!

Jan. 10, 2020 Huh. Found a weird one. Will be fixed shortly.

Jan. 10, 2020 Thankfully Celery, Django, and DRF have stable and dependable releases. Mature software is pretty great.

Jan. 10, 2020 Upgrading is never an easy task. Most of the packages I’m using are pretty dependable and stable but you never know what’s going to just break silently.

Jan. 10, 2020 Rolled out some Pine.blog updates last night. Major upgrades on the backend and a significant feed directory redesign. Let me know if you have any issues. I think I got everything sorted.

Jan. 8, 2020 Dr Sarah Taber (Twitter): Hey if you're in the US and still on twitter right now, please take a small break and call your reps & senators about how we need a full trial with witnesses in front of the Senate and NOT a war with Iran. Done and done. Link: http://bit.ly/2QvRKcx

Jan. 8, 2020 With my Oxo Good Grips Cheese Knife, I stab at thee. - Leela

Jan. 8, 2020 Representative Duncan Hunter is resigning effective Jan. 13. I grew up in his district and the community deserves much more than what he’s given them.

Jan. 8, 2020 Avoiding the news today. I still have a few things to get done before I fall into that pit.

Jan. 6, 2020 He’s got a beard!

Jan. 5, 2020 Apparently I missed Maciej Cegłowski's (i.e. @pinboard) testimony before the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee about data privacy and internet surveillance! As always, he's full of great insights about how we can ensure our rights to Privacy on the Web.

Jan. 5, 2020 Admittedly, I haven't written my Representative in over two years and my Senator in much longer. We all need to do better. Democracy is hard. Complaining on the Internet doesn't really count.

Jan. 5, 2020 The House voted last year on repealing the law that gives the President the power to do what he's done in the past few days. It didn't pass the Senate.

Jan. 5, 2020 If you believe, like I do, that: (1) Echo chambers shape our perspectives, (2) War is bad and if we are going to war we should all have a say in it, Then you should make it a habit to regularly write your representatives and tell them. They live in echo chambers like we do.

Jan. 4, 2020 I'm totally not playing KoTOR right now. Thanks for asking.

Jan. 4, 2020 You know what that means? It’s Hello Internet Christmas Special time!

Jan. 4, 2020 I have now seen a Star War.

Jan. 3, 2020 Mike Duncan: Medicare for all is a much more moderate proposal than any war.

Jan. 3, 2020 Day 3: The President of the United States, who has been impeached for high Crimes and Misdemeanors, is provoking war with a hostile nation, during a contentious election year, without Congressional knowledge or approval.

Jan. 3, 2020 It’s only day 3 everyone.

Jan. 2, 2020 Neglecting scientific results has never ended well and it won’t this time either. We need to be using research more often in legislation, not less.

Jan. 1, 2020 That should be the last of the updates! Happy New Year everyone!

Jan. 1, 2020 Doing some quick Pine.blog maintenance. Apologies for any downtime.

December 2019 | 23 posts

Dec. 31, 2019 This is great to hear. Corporate lobbyists have too much power already. Most other nations have let their citizens file taxes for free for years. IRS Reforms Free File Program, Drops Agreement Not to Compete With TurboTax

Dec. 31, 2019 @manton Hello from Pine.blog! I know this is kind of a shameless plug, but Pine.blog now supports Webmentions! One step further to a better Web!

Dec. 31, 2019 Looks like B2 might be having some issues. Images on Pine.blog might not appear right now. I've let them know.

Dec. 31, 2019 Sometimes I really love iOS's error messages. They're so foreboding. warning: object does not implement methodSignatureForSelector: -- trouble ahead Got that right before a crash. Trouble was indeed ahead.

Dec. 30, 2019 Southern-style cornbread (Technically it’s not traditional since I used butter instead of lard. But at least this way it’s vegetarian)

Dec. 29, 2019 If you want to start a blog for free and try out Pine.blog’s premium features, then sign up and use the code HACKER_19 to get a month for free! No card required. Find and follow great blogs from all over the web and start your own blog with one-click!

Dec. 29, 2019 If you haven't seen Jen's blog posts, you should. She's been re-writing clues from the Tomb of Annihilation, as they should have been: rhyming and in Iambic Pentameter http://bit.ly/2QrCyMh →

Dec. 29, 2019 @manton looks like your cert is expired.

Dec. 27, 2019 Congratulations to the @MyGeneRank team on a great update! The app looks great and the easy access to Genetic Counselors is a great feature to see. Keep up the awesome work! https://twitter.com/ATorkamani/status/1208892037254107136?s=20

Dec. 23, 2019 Certbot, you are too good.

Dec. 19, 2019 Interesting times indeed.

Dec. 19, 2019 Today is a somber day for our country. Impeaching a president is not an action taken lightly; it’s one of the highest acts our government can undertake and a crucial move to protect our republic. We should all deeply reflect on how we got here. And why we didn’t get here sooner.

Dec. 15, 2019 It's not that I don't like the other two. iOS particularly is a lot of fun, but I'm just so much faster and more comforatable in the backend.

Dec. 15, 2019 It's telling that whenever I have the choice of working on the Web UI (JS), iOS UI (Swift), or API backend (Python) for Pine.blog, I basically always choose the backend first.

Dec. 15, 2019 AWS is a really powerful set of tools that enable great things. And also it controls way too much of the web. Prime Leverage: How Amazon Wields Power in the Technology World

Dec. 13, 2019 @aaron I recently added likes to my indieblog platform Pine.blog. It looks like the likes don't show the profile pics right on your site. Is there something amiss with my pages? Everything looks right to me when I parse my own site with mf2py.

Dec. 10, 2019 Long but good day. Now if I could just get into rest mode that would be great.

Dec. 7, 2019 My heart aches that we, in this time, refuse a use of language as would honorably and faithfully befit its occasion. Why such a thing as this has not endured in these times that would, in this author’s humble opinion, so require them, I do not know.

Dec. 7, 2019 The 10th Article of Impeachment against Andrew Johnson: [He did] make and deliver with a loud voice certain intemperate, inflammatory and scandalous harangues, and did therein utter loud threats and bitter menaces as well against Congress as the laws of the United States duly en...

Dec. 6, 2019 Article 1 > Article 2

Dec. 6, 2019 Even if you believe that the President did no wrong in asking a foreign nation to investigate a political rival, his obstruction of Congress’ investigations into his behavior is arguably more dangerous and impeachable in its own right; as it has been twice before.

Dec. 1, 2019 I post something like this almost every year: It’s December here in San Diego.

Dec. 1, 2019 Aboard the San Salvador

November 2019 | 77 posts

Nov. 30, 2019 Submitted to App Review!

Nov. 30, 2019 In short: concurrency is hard.

Nov. 30, 2019 This bug has existed in some form for months, but didn't manifest very often due to a different bug that I recently fixed. My recent code cleanup refactor and fixes made this issue worse.

Nov. 30, 2019 Tonight has been a heck of a ride. I've been trying to track down a persistent bug with Pine.blog's iOS app (it causes the app to log you out), and I finally think I've squashed it. Doing some final testing now.

Nov. 28, 2019 Because we're all adults now: Here's a screenshot of a bunch of us picking out flooring for the house with swatches, because apparently that's what we do now.

Nov. 28, 2019 Pretty much every winter I start playing Minecraft again. Most years I use Linode to host my server. This year I tried to use Realms, but in 2 days we lost hours of progress when their backups stopped working, so we switched back to Linode.

Nov. 28, 2019 It’s a blustery day.

Nov. 28, 2019 In the Aeroplane Over the Sea is perfect. Everyone just needs to accept this as fact.

Nov. 27, 2019 I am unreasonably excited about this.

Nov. 27, 2019 Policy podcast and burrito time.

Nov. 25, 2019 The newest version of Pine.blog for iOS is out! Get it while it’s hot.

Nov. 25, 2019 It’s that Minecraft time of year.

Nov. 24, 2019 The algorithms are fickle gods. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIssymQvrbU

Nov. 24, 2019 Just watched the Intro Video for CGP Grey’s new series on the history of the American Indian Tribes. I can’t wait to see where he goes with this series.

Nov. 23, 2019 Listening to Single Payer Federalism. “States Rights” can give and take away. If California, Massachusetts, or New York want Medicare For All, why can’t we do it? If we free up the federal limits on state spending, we make it possible for states to try MFA on their own.

Nov. 23, 2019 TIL you can fat wash rum for hot buttered rum. Now I really want to try it.

Nov. 21, 2019 What am I doing? Oh nothing, just watching a 45 minute video of CGP Gray editing a spreadsheet.

Nov. 21, 2019 Listening to Modest Mouse and the rain.

Nov. 20, 2019 Unrelated: I’m getting closer to enabling Webmentions on Pine.blog. Once it’s done, bloggers on Pine.blog will be able to mention, reply to, and converse with each other and the wider web.

Nov. 20, 2019 Moonlighting projects is hard work. You work on it during odd hours and for little to no immediate benefit. It’s a labor of love.

Nov. 20, 2019 If I have seen further it is only because I stand on the shoulders of giants. Software is always built on top of someone else’s work.

Nov. 17, 2019 For example: I can both admire and respect Bill Gates’ work fighting disease and helping eliminate global poverty AND think that a class of people with that much wealth maybe shouldn’t exist at all.

Nov. 17, 2019 Reminder: You are allowed to have complex opinions. You can love one aspect of a thing and hate the other and that’s ok. Humans are complex.

Nov. 17, 2019 I sleep now!

Nov. 17, 2019 The fact that iOS, by default when making requests, includes the app name and build number in the User-Agent is super useful.

Nov. 16, 2019 How is 30GB of disk space not enough for you Xcode? Your primary purpose seems to be to fill my disk with simulators, derived data, and documentation then complain I don't have enough space for your updates.

Nov. 16, 2019 I just wanted to upload a beta build to TestFlight. Apparently, I need to update my Mac to update Xcode to upload my build.

Nov. 16, 2019 Rabbit holes full of unshaven yaks.

Nov. 16, 2019 The rest of the photos will be at photos.brianschrader.com.

Nov. 16, 2019 To start off the series, here's a couple random funny shots from the trip.

Free Wi-Fi - Montjuic, Barcelona
Marie Antoinette - Conciergerie, Paris

Nov. 16, 2019 They're in no particular order btw.

Nov. 16, 2019 Over the next few weeks, I'll be posting photos from my trip to Barcelona and Paris. You can follow them by following by photoblog in any RSS reader (including Pine.blog) or watch out for them on Twitter.

Nov. 16, 2019 Long week. Good week.

Nov. 14, 2019 It’s done! Looking good.

Nov. 14, 2019 Pumpkin Bread!

Nov. 13, 2019 I can’t wait until the new changes percolate down to the 13”. A 16” is not for me.

Nov. 13, 2019 People seem to be pretty angry with the 16” MBP's still-mandatory TouchBar. I don’t see it. I think a TouchBar with a physical Esc key is a solid compromise.

Nov. 13, 2019 It’s good to be home.

Nov. 12, 2019 Redash is great. When in doubt, use it for your BI.

Nov. 10, 2019 Pushed some backend changes that fixes an issue hopefully no one saw.

Nov. 9, 2019 Careful out there kids. There's a vicious Linode phishing scam going around.

Nov. 9, 2019 The blogrolls are back! Read more at blog.pine.blog

Nov. 8, 2019 There’s lots of great tools out there to help you get started. I should probably put a list together.

Nov. 8, 2019 The good news is that there’s things that people, politicians, and technologists can do to fix this! Start a blog, read and share blogs, reject big social media, and promote a better web by building open tech and funding it. This is how we fix what’s broken.

Nov. 8, 2019 The democratic web where individuals could speak their mind and people, not bots, would determine if and how their voice was heard; that web is gone. What we have now is arguably worse than what we had before the web.

Nov. 8, 2019 Day to day we don’t really notice it, but the web has changed so much since it’s inception and although lots of great stuff exists today on the web, it’s important to realize and revive what we lost.

Nov. 8, 2019 Still listening, but the latest Weeds episode on “The Internet we lost” with Anil Dash is really good. Lots of good insight, and it’s great to hear this stuff being discussed with a wide audience.

Nov. 7, 2019 Uh... wut? Apparently this is something that can happen.

Nov. 7, 2019 Related: I’ve been blogging for 7 years! Feels like it was just yester.... actually 7 years ago feels right.

Nov. 7, 2019 Congrats to Brent on 20 years of blogging! Here’s to 20 more.

Nov. 7, 2019 The Times has a nice article summarizing the costs and scope of Elizabeth Warren’s policy agenda. It’s amazing how helpful a good visualization can be. www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/06/us/politics/elizabeth-warren-policies-taxes.html

Nov. 6, 2019 Just pushed a fix for following feeds from the web. Apologies about that.

Nov. 6, 2019 “It’s like trying to play chess with a badger” The Weeds: Paying for Single-Payer

Nov. 6, 2019 Large refactors are large

Nov. 6, 2019 Is it just me, or is the Simulator just really broken in Mojave?

Nov. 6, 2019 That’s enough for tonight. I need sleep.

Nov. 6, 2019 I do not know when to stop adding features...

Nov. 6, 2019 Took this a while back.

Nov. 6, 2019 Oh wow. I just checked, and apparently I have the Late-2013 MacBook Pro... This computer is 6 years old.

Nov. 6, 2019 I love my 2014 MacBook Pro. It's a little long in the tooth these days, but it's the best computer I've ever owned. That said, my biggest regret is getting the 256GB drive; it's always full.

Nov. 6, 2019 Oh Xcode. Updating you is always an adventure.

Nov. 6, 2019 Pine.blog is quickly becoming the easiest way to follow almost anything on the web and post to your own site. If you're looking for an alternative to Twitter, Facebook or Instagram check out Pine.blog.

Nov. 6, 2019 New features also include uploading photos to your media library!

Nov. 6, 2019 Doing lots of clean up and bug fixes on Pine.blog for iOS. Hoping to ship this version soon. It's a lot of changes, but they should make the app much more stable.

Nov. 5, 2019 This.

Nov. 4, 2019 Finished a bunch of admin things that I've been putting off for months. Feeds good to finally check them off my todo list.

Nov. 4, 2019 Paperwork!

Nov. 4, 2019 Pushed out some web updates earlier. One important fix: media uploads should be more reliable.

Nov. 2, 2019 Ah. Inbox Zero

Nov. 2, 2019 I know it gets a lot of guff (some of it deservedly so), but I really like Mail.app on macOS. It does what it says and does it well.

Nov. 2, 2019 Doing some email reorganizing.

Nov. 2, 2019 Landed!

Nov. 1, 2019 CDG➡️LAX✈️

Nov. 1, 2019 Made it!

Nov. 1, 2019 Never been on a bus with so many nervous people afraid they’ll miss their flight. You could cut the tension with a knife.

Nov. 1, 2019 Late getting to the airport. The train was down for maintenance so they bussed us in. Made it, but not with much time to spare.

Nov. 1, 2019 Breakfast!

October 2019 | 65 posts

Oct. 31, 2019 By Twitter, I mean Tweetbot. I know no other way to use Twitter.

Oct. 31, 2019 Had twitter on my phone again for the last couple days. First time in over a year. I kept checking it and not really reading anything, so I just removed it again.

Oct. 31, 2019 Spent most of the day in the Louvre and barely finished 1 wing of the museum. Overwhelming in the best possible way.

Oct. 30, 2019 I hate to turn up out of the blue, uninvited, but I couldn’t stay away; I couldn’t fight it.

Oct. 29, 2019 Lunch time!

Oct. 29, 2019 La Conciergere was... intense. So much of The Revolution took place there and it was surreal to be in there.

Oct. 29, 2019 Why is the Louvre entrance arch not centered with the building? The whole rest of the area is symmetrical. Why not the arch?

Oct. 29, 2019 I see a sliver of sun like 10 miles from me. I guess that’s what it’s talking about.

Oct. 29, 2019 Are weather forecasts in France a joke? Forecasts say it’s sunny here but there’s no break in these clouds.

Oct. 29, 2019 Drizzley day in Paris

Oct. 28, 2019 Been walking for 10 hrs. Time to stop

Oct. 28, 2019 Dose Eiffel Tower Lights doe

Oct. 28, 2019 The pantheon is 👌

Oct. 28, 2019 An interesting choice to flank Julius Caesar with Hannibal at the Tuileries Gardens. Not sure what the Romans would’ve thought of that.

Oct. 28, 2019 Not a bad view

Oct. 28, 2019 The weather just keeps getting better!

Oct. 28, 2019 Will probably need a scarf soon.

Oct. 28, 2019 Is still cold. So glad I brought a heavy jacket.

Oct. 28, 2019

Oct. 28, 2019 Bagel time!

Oct. 27, 2019 Dinner complete. Now to chill for the evening.

Oct. 27, 2019 Is cold

Oct. 27, 2019 BCN➡️CDG✈️

Oct. 26, 2019 The train is packed today.

Oct. 26, 2019 Not a bad view at all!

Oct. 26, 2019 To Montserrat!

Oct. 25, 2019 I am Lé Tired

Oct. 25, 2019 If you look really carefully you can see the original city walls.

Oct. 25, 2019 Upward!

Oct. 25, 2019 Looks like some of my posts aren’t getting propagated correctly. Check out my microblog for all my posts! pine.blog/u/sonicrocketman

Oct. 25, 2019 The metro here is pretty great.

Oct. 25, 2019 Seeing the outside of the Sagrada Familia did not adequately prepare me for the inside. One is grand; the other is absolutely incredible.

Oct. 25, 2019 The song playing in this café is a cover/remix of Every Step You Take but with the ending replaced with “I’ll be missing you”. Decidedly less creepy than the original.

Oct. 25, 2019 I’ve said it before. I love this camera. I wish I had a different lens but that’s a small thing.

Oct. 25, 2019 Yesterday was a long day. Walked 13 miles (~23km) in all. Saw some great parts of the city, and got some great photos. What I learned: Barcelona is not a flat city.

Oct. 25, 2019 Late start, but on to day 3.

Oct. 24, 2019 I did not bring the right lens for this. Granted I only have the one.

Oct. 23, 2019 All the steps!

Oct. 22, 2019 Aaaaand I’m crashing, finally.

Oct. 21, 2019 Sorry about that. Looks like Pine.blog was down for a bit due to some server maintinence.

Oct. 17, 2019 Got ☕️ Let the work commence

Oct. 17, 2019 Not for the caffeine. It’s just nice to have a hot beverage while I work.

Oct. 17, 2019 Need ☕️

Oct. 17, 2019 I mean it won an award, so I guess... worth?

Oct. 17, 2019 3 years of putting meat on a tree for one picture. That’s dedication. https://kottke.org/19/10/the-winners-of-the-2019-wildlife-photographer-of-the-year

Oct. 14, 2019 Last night’s episode of LWT covers the importance of Open Data in predicting the Weather. Hint: Open Data is also extremely useful in most everything. So many industries are dependent on free access to data from all sorts of volunteer groups and government agencies.

Oct. 14, 2019 Is there some business reason that the PS4 has a built in DLNA player? It’s one of my favorite features, but I can’t think of a reason why Sony would want to support it.

Oct. 14, 2019 Pushed out some new updates. Let's see if anyone notices what they are. 🤫

Oct. 14, 2019 Took this one a while ago. I love it and I’m not sure why.

Oct. 14, 2019 I made this really cool roadmap for myself, and then proceeded to completely ignore it.

Oct. 14, 2019 Spent most of today finalizing a bunch of new features for Pine.blog. I'm essentially just waiting for DNS to migrate, and I'll be g2g for release.

Oct. 8, 2019 Not that anyone doubts this, but it needs to be said: Built To Spill's early stuff is 👍

Oct. 8, 2019 Plus the Bandwidth alliance with Cloudflare is pretty 👌

Oct. 8, 2019 Image hosting for Pine.blog will be done entirely through B2 for the foreseeable future. If I can, I’m not adding yet my apps/service to AWS; they control enough of the web already.

Oct. 8, 2019 Played a lot with B2 yesterday. It’s pretty good and easy to use. Got up and running with a new feature for Pine.blog in just a couple hours.

Oct. 8, 2019 Long day. Productive, but long.

Oct. 8, 2019 Been trying to figure out the source of this weird outgoing traffic from my servers today... just realized that it's my SSH session...

Oct. 8, 2019 To be fair, before that it said "Replace Soon"

Oct. 8, 2019 And now there's this...

Oct. 8, 2019 My Mac's fan seems to spin up a lot these days...

Oct. 8, 2019 ALL THE MICRO-FIXES!

Oct. 7, 2019 Now for a quick post-release walk.

Oct. 7, 2019 It feels so amazing to finally release this version. I've been working on it since February and it's chock full of so many cool features (plus lots of optimizations and fixes too).

Oct. 7, 2019 The newest version of Pine.blog is out! Start a blog and get to posting! http://bit.ly/35oytzk

Oct. 7, 2019 Hello World!