Asahi Linux

January 6, 2021

Hector Martin “marcan“ is building Linux for Apple Silicon Macs. To me, the most impressive part is reverse-engineering Apple's hardware with zero documentation or help from Apple.

Driveway

January 3, 2021

Yup, just a photo of the driveway at golden hour. Living back home in Wisconsin has been a silver lining of the remote-work-pandemic world.

Shoveling Snow and Testing iPhone’s Night Mode

January 2, 2021

I’m always surprised by how much I’m able to suppress. The mind needs space to breath, let things rise to the surface, and be creative. Sometimes it needs freedom from podcasts, work, and endlessly scrolling feeds.

A few hours of shoveling a Wisconsin driveway does the trick! This was also an opportunity to test my iPhone mini’s “Night Mode” photography. This is the road just outside our home:

AWS Announces Mac Instances

December 1, 2020

I’ve long been a fan of MacStadium — a company that provides a cloud service based on macOS.

They’re about to get a run for their money — AWS just announced EC2 Mac Instances. Is there any other cloud provider doing this? Or is AWS the first aside from MacStadium? Either way, it’s neat. It’s also kind of funny to think about a rack of Mac Minis hanging out in us-east-1.

Here’s another article with more info.

One More Thing

November 7, 2020

Recently, Apple announced their final event for the year, titled “One more thing”.

“One more thing”, the famous line, hearkens to a generational (as opposed to incremental) moment in a product’s life. And if you’re a fan of the Mac, you know exactly how exciting this moment is.

It feels like Apple is catapulting the Mac into a new era with Apple Silicon. While I’m sure power and performance gains will steal the show, this is also about executing Apple’s belief in building fully integrated machines: hardware and software tightly bound, from squircles to silicon.

Who knows what possibilities this will open?

It’s also about harmonizing Apple’s platforms. As announced at WWDC, these Macs will be capable of running all iOS apps by default. The Mac essentially becomes a superset of iOS!

How freaking exciting.

Glacier Goat

November 1, 2020

I’m working my way through trip photos from Glacier National Park. Here’s a goat that paid us a visit with his wisdom and mountain mystique. I was hoping he would share a haiku or proverb, but instead, he just stared at us before continuing on his journey.

Nova by Panic

September 24, 2020

From the homepage of Nova, a new code editor for macOS created by Panic:

If we're being honest, Mac apps are a bit of a lost art. There are great reasons to make cross-platform apps — to start, they're cross-platform — but it's just not who we are. Founded as a Mac software company in 1997, our joy at Panic comes from building things that feel truly, well, Mac-like. Long ago, we created Coda, an all-in-one Mac web editor that broke new ground. But when we started work on Nova, we looked at where the web was today, and where we needed to be. It was time for a fresh start.

Playing With Pixel Sorting

September 21, 2020

A few years back I wrote a small program to “pixel sort”, or rearrange the pixels of an image to create surreal distortions. This is a photo of a dancer, taken when I was in college:

ARM Mac Predictions

June 15, 2020

We are weeks from WWDC, where we will presumably see a long-awaited tectonic-shift for the Mac.

State Street, Madison

June 15, 2020

Dozens of murals grace the lengths of State Street today in Madison Wisconsin (a place very close to my heart). Here are two photos from my walk – my only regret is not taking more:

(Artist: @blckslimshady)

Loops

April 5, 2020

I’m up late, and I’m making scrambled eggs because that’s what I have left in the fridge.

Here’s a foggy sunset in my neighborhood; this was on my way to the grocery store a few days back. I’ll need to go back in the morning.

It’s not as apocalyptic as it looks of course – just apt timing for the photo. The following afternoon was sunny, with plenty of folk playing/walking/running in the park (with a safe distance between them).

Lake Michigan This Evening

March 4, 2020

Just a nice photo of Lake Michigan this evening. Nothing special – hope you enjoy.

Lyft Conversations: John McAfee

February 1, 2020

My Lyft driver, a few weeks ago, paraphrased:

“In order for society to work, people have to act a certain way. There’s a norm, there’s behavior we consider normal, you know? There are expectations.

“You are young, so I expect something different from you than someone who is older. But you are educated, yes? Then I expect you to speak as an educated person in society.

“Someone who is older, well, we expect wisdom from them.

A Small Handful of Mac Apps

July 5, 2019

I freaking love macOS. I joined the club when cat names were cool. My first Mac was a Mac mini rocking Mountain Lion.

Apple’s WWDC19 revealed a glimpse into the future of building software for macOS. No longer will it be siloed with its own UI framework. Instead, apps can be composed with UIKit and SwiftUI, neither of which is Mac-only.

As someone that loves a good native Mac app, the future of the platform looks bright.

Before Apple opens the floodgates with the release of Catalina, I wanted to share my list of beloved Mac apps that are here and now.

Push Your Shoes Down the Stairs

November 10, 2015

I was sitting in a large open stairwell, with gaps beneath each stair that led to the lobby area below. I work as a leader at a children’s summer camp, and right now we’re in what we call “small group time”. I’m sitting in this stairwell with several other kids (think 8 to 11 years old) discussing what we learned today.

Clearly bored with the discussion, one kid decides to push objects through the opening in the stairs, sending them plummeting into the lobby below.

The first object he chooses is his own shoe.