Author: rosswintle

OK. I’ve used Arc Browser for a little bit today and I’m almost totally sold.

I still care and am annoyed that they want my email address to use the thing. But this is an excellent product.

So the Pinboard guy is properly AWOL is he?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34062802

Just checked https://raindrop.io/ and it looks amazing? Anyone using it?

This @chriscoyier@front-end.social note on Karl Sutt’s post about writing is great (as is the original, of course).

https://chriscoyier.net/2022/12/28/watch-out-for-low-resolution-writing/

But I’ve been criticised for being too verbose. So now I try to offer both the low + high resolution writing, and make the high res optional for the reader.

In Slack this can be like:

“I fixed the issue with the API – details in the thread if you need them”

Because some folks just need to know it’s fixed!

One thought is to do some “silent” video as I tried to do once like:

https://vimeo.com/455954647

If I added some chill music, is this something people would watch and maybe learn from?

Would be super short!

Somewhat inspired by @aurooba today to try and do a quick 5-minute creative thing each day.

I really want to get back to making short video, but outside of work I’m not really set up for it and have kids around a lot of the time.

I could write, but, meh. That actually takes LONGER.

Ideas? Thoughts?

A quick update on new productivity apps I’m reviewing right now.

Readwise Reader: Just too complicated. Too much UI. Needs to get out of the way and let me read. Doesn’t seem to refresh feeds very often. Probably won’t be replacing Feedbin any time soon.

Obsidian: VERY intriguing. Seems to be what Bear Notes should have evolved into. Nice that it’s data storage is plain MD files. Good hacker community around it. Will keep trying

So I gave up on tracking weight and food because when winter came I gave in to my body’s carb cravings. But I’m getting back on the wagon. Was 80.3kg at the start. Got as low as 75.7kg and am now back up at 78.2. Slow and steady is the goal. Let’s get back below 76 for springtime and see if we can hold there!

What do shouty YouTubers do with their sound mixing? Is there a special filter that cranks up the obnoxiousness or something?

It’s impossible to hear them without it being incredibly loud.

I hate it.

I’ve not questioned my productivity tech for a while. Bear plus Feedbin have been just great. But heard so many good things about Obsidian I thought I’d give it a try. And Readwise Reader got a good mention too so have been trying that as well.

I don’t think either will take over. Readwise seems too complex. Obsidian’s mobile app isn’t so hot. But good to try new things.

Oh wow!! Matt Parker’s book, Humble Pi, has page numbers that count DOWN! And now I want this in every freaking book because it’s absolute genius!!!

Ooh. My first Mastodon spam. I guess it was inevitable!! 🙄

No spoilers. Just feelings.

A day late we just finished watching The Traitors.

At first I thought it was a great concept. But the missions were tedious. And it got personal in ways that I didn’t expect.

Seems I don’t like people being pitted against each other like that. 😕

Perhaps it needs more per-task focus instead of trying to do everything, everywhere, all at once (Pop-culture reference! Get me!! 😉)

It doesn’t seem to use existing design/interface patterns too. Is that because it’s doing new things? I don’t think so. But maybe.

These have been issues for me since the start. I don’t think I’ll ever get over them. I’m not expecting Gutenberg go back to basics & change these things. So I struggle along.

Don’t get me wrong. This is a good path. Complex UI is so hard. It’s just not working for ME!

I tried to take part in the Gutenberg FSE Testing call. But every time I try and do advanced block editor stuff I get frustrated by the UI. Huge kudos to all those building this (in public!) because it’s flippin hard. But I can’t get to grips with it. I want to love it but…

For specifics:

My core annoyances with Gutenberg haven’t changed. There’s just too much UI & too much of it is both unfamiliar and unintuitive for me. I’m not sure why.

I suspect it’s trying to do too much all at once.

This has been sat as a draft for about 5 years. So good to finally publish it somewhere.

Software developers: you are awesome and you have super powers!!!

https://24daysindecember.net/2022/12/22/three-developer-super-powers-you-may-not-realise-that-you-have/

#24DaysInDecember

LastPass related: making me pay for premium to use a YubiKey or biometric auth is just crap. Who thought that was a good idea?

(Also: Pay for your password manager! I don’t pay for LastPass because I don’t really use it. I only have an account because people have shared secrets with me.)

Re: the LastPass breach. Isn’t design fascinating? LastPass is just so full of crappy visual and UX design that it makes me not trust it. I’ve never liked it. Feels like if they don’t put the effort into the visuals and the experience then they probably aren’t putting the effort into the security either. But that could be completely wrong. Just because something looks slick doesn’t mean it’s actually any good. Who should we trust?

Yay! Hints and cheats make this a bit more enjoyable and less frustrating.

Hooray! I solved today’s #WordlePress in 14 guesses! 🎉🎉🎉

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ x 12
🟩⬜️⬜️🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩

Test your #WordPress dev knowledge at https://wordlepress.com/

So, I’ve used oAuth2 before, but never really dug into it.

Seems odd that Mastodon lets you programmatically create apps without auth:

https://docs.joinmastodon.org/methods/apps/#create

On the one hand, this seems like it should be a very spammable endpoint. On the other hand it can’t be worse than any other public endpoint, can it? I mean you could end up with a database full of spammy apps, but that’s not really a lot of data. I assume it’s pretty hard rate limited?