This is what a snow day looks like if you’re a developer.

GitHub Status page saying "We are currently experiencing an outage of GitHub products and are investigating."

This is a cool dotfiles repo for Mac. I keep dotfiles for unix-y stuff, but hadn’t considered it for macOS settings and even a homebrew install list. Via Syntax.fm

github.com/DSchau/do…

My new Mac Studio arrived! This is my first desktop computer since the 2008-era Mac Pro I had in grad school. It’ll also be my second M-series device, alongside my beloved iPad.

Now, what to name it?

A messy desktop with a brand new Mac Studio box beside a 2009 Mac Book Pro and a 32 inch display showing code in the background.

Hacking push notifications for deliveries on the iPhone

My Mac Studio is arriving soon 🎉 and I need to sign for it. The problem is I’m usually working in the basement with headphones. My house didn’t have a door bell either. The result is I never hear when a delivery person knocks. So I solved it:

  1. I got a cheap (CA$25) bluetooth doorbell chime and plugged the receiver in at my office.
  2. Turned on Settings → Accessibility → Sound Recognition → Sounds → Doorbell on my iPhone.

Now when the door bell rings I get a time-sensitive push notification on my phone.

As the saying goes, accessibility technology is for everyone.

tree.nathanfriend.io is a little website/app that generates an ASCII file tree from indented text (like a mock of the tree CLI). I make these diagrams all the time for docs, and this tool will speed that up a bunch. Via Chris Coyier.

I ordered a shed today from a website. It’ll be built to my specifications and installed by skilled humans in a few weeks. We truly live in an age of wonder!

The rainbow pride waffles from Planted in Hamilton Ontario are pretty awesome 🌈

Two big waffles in take our containers that are coloured in a rainbow of red, yellow, green, and purple like a pride flag. Drizzled with delicious maple syrup.

A consistent problem I have with my development workflow is knowing that I did something before, but not exactly where. What repo did I do that in? What GitHub org even? Perhaps the answer is “Zettelkasten” but where do I find the time for that?

Here’s what I’m going with: Mac Studio M2 Max (12 core, 38 core GPU) with 2TB storage and 96GB RAM. I hate closing windows and quitting apps for anything remotely in-flight, so 96GB it is. Overkill? Maybe? Will it last four more years? Hopefully. 🤞

Between going 100% indie with my software company, my MacBook Pro 2019’s fan’s screaming incessantly, and Apple dropping the M2 Mac Studio, it looks like I’m in the computer market again. Oh, and Chris Lawley says they fixed the fan noise. The question is, what spec?

I have visions of coding and taking Zoom calls from the lakeside. Sign me up!

Did anyone else get the Ulysses app newsletter on May 31st? I hope it’s a prank because yuck! gross! In the meantime, I’ve pulled my App Store renewal for it. If you care, maybe let your friends know about this too. [Update: apparently it was a “joke,” but I’m still moving away from Ulysses]

<img src=“https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/907/2023/dd75de23d5.png" width=“600” height=“467” alt=“Email screenshot from Marcus, Ulysses app co-founder saying “I love Elon Musk. [..] He’s a great innovator, probably a fantastic lover and an overall nice guy."">

I’m writing a technical note with GitHub Copilot enabled for the first time and it’ll suggest a fact about something and I’m like “wait, is that true?” It’s a fascinating interaction. Like pair coding with a teammate that seems confident but you don’t 100% trust yet.

Thank goodness for Fernando Alonso who might just distract the Formula 1 2023 season from the monotony of another Verstappen / Red Bull sweep.

GitHub is killing it with the new new code view and search. The confluence of GitHub and VS Code is amazing. Colour me surprised, but Microsoft buying GitHub was such a good thing.

https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/working-with-files/managing-files/navigating-files-with-the-new-code-view

I finally used Python’s Walrus := operator to clean up a hacky situation. Maybe I could be more proactively finding uses, but it was fun to have an obvious one appear finally!

Last eggnog of the season 😢

Finished reading: Crucible of Gold by Naomi Novik 📚It’s kind of an old-school adventure novel. But with dragons that have the temperament of cats.

We finished watching Orphan Black 📺 last week and I just gotta proclaim: wow. Tatiana Maslany played 14 different characters, sometimes in the same scene (!), and I never felt out of it. Even the way she acted as one character acting as an another character — chef’s kiss.

Apparently storm chips are a Newfie thing but they work great for Ontario snow storms too.