Duck Rowing

Writing Rust Code with Separate Test Files

I really like Rust. Know what I don’t like? Putting tests in the same file as source code and having fewer, larger source files.

Hacking my Keyboard to do Less

Using Karabiner to correct bad typing habits.

Better Off Zed

I prefer navitve Mac apps for my work – they’re better crafted, more expressive, and they just fit in with the operating system. My primary code editor has been for years has been TextMate. These days, TextMate is effectively abandoned, which is a shame. It’s still my go‑to editor, even in its neglected state.

Computer Science Ethics

This might sound strange to someone who didn’t study computer science in college, given the largely amoral, libertarian bent of tech giants, but to graduate with a comp‑sci degree we were required to take an ethics class. We examined real‑world incidents like the Therac‑25 radiation‑therapy machine, which famously had a software bug that gave patients massive overdoses of radiation. Most software…

Ice in Portland

I usually keep politics out of my blog, but not saying anything about ICE at this point is inherently political. We’re living under a federal government that has adopted a fascist [dual state model—one in which immigrants, transgender people, and other marginalized groups are denied the protection of the law, while other citizens enjoy the full weight of it. That dual state is quickly changing…

Ditching Wordpress

This is the obligatory post that every blog has to write when migrating from WordPress to a static site generator. Today I spent a few hours porting my site to Hugo.

I Don't Like AirPods

I don’t like AirPods. There. I said it. I realize I’m an outlier, sort of like how I don’t really care about sports and I don’t eat pizza. But I don’t like them. I don’t hate them - that would imply that I have really strong feelings about them. I don’t. I just don’t like ’em.

Blusher in Concert

I discovered Blusher in a way that feels oddly retro for 2025. I didn’t stumble on them in via the YouTube algorithm, a Spotify playlist, or as a 15‑second TikTok background track. I read about them in a magazine . Okay, not technically a magazine, but a music review website, which is basically a magazine by today’s standards. Blusher share details of forthcoming EP, RACER Aussie pop trio…

The Best Programmer Joke

An interviewer sits down with a mathematician and a computer scientist for a discussion on problem-solving and critical thinking. Eager to probe their unique perspectives, the interviewer turns to the mathematician and poses a question: “How would you go about making a cup of tea?” Wanting to be clever, the interviewer adds the stipulation, “Assume you start in your basement, not…

I Made the Web a Little Worse

I made the the World Wide Web just a little worse last month. Back in October I installed Anubis in front of most of the websites I host. Anubis is an open source firewall utility that sends a challenge to a visiting browser to do some calculations before allowing it to proceed. Why? Because the web is currently inundated by scrapers run by unscrupulous tech companies who are strip mining the open…

The Little Mac That Could

I’ve been unhappy with Apple’s desktop Macs for a very long time. The last desktop Mac that I actually both wanted to buy and loved owning was a PowerMac G4 , which I bought almost 24 years ago. The PowerMac G4 was a tower with an easy to open side panel that made upgrading painless. Yes, Apple shipped a Mac they intended you to open. Over the years I added cards to add faster USB…

Getting in Deeper with ActivityPub

I’ve always avoided social media. It’s extremely toxic and it’s usually governed by the worst companies which are very deeply creepy . I also have philosophical objections to putting all one’s writing into someone else’s closed proprietary system. My position is that for something to be an “ internet application ” it has to operate with an open protocol and allow for a multitude…

Disposable Earbuds

And now for another post where I fail to fix something . I have a lot of headphones and earbuds, and I use them for various purposes. My primary music listening device is a pair of Oppo PM-2 headphones on my desk and I have a pair of Oppo PM-3 headphones for out and about. My earbuds for every day use are a pair of Bose SoundSport wired earbuds . I like this design so much that I purchased a bunch…

We Shouldn't Need a Shield Law

We can’t afford to be intimidated by attorneys general who believe their authority extends to lawmaking in the state of Maine.

Thunderbolt Dock Lifestyle

Back in 2016, Apple released the dreaded butterfly keyboard MacBook Pros. They also pitched pro users on a new setup - forget about desktop computers. Get one of these laptops and plug everything into it with a single thunderbolt cable. It turned out that Apple was writing checks that the 2016 laptops couldn’t cash. The laptops were thermally constrained and constantly ran hot. That was only…

Antitrust Christmas

I’ve often thought that modern Apple is so large that they’re effectively immune to certain signals from the market and specifically from their own customers. When Apple released their dreaded butterfly-keyboard MacBook Pros in 2016, I lamented the new keyboard design and the lack of ports, but also that Apple’s customer base was effectively captured so it didn’t really have a way to force…

Social Media Monopolies are not the Public Square

News of Matt Taibbi’s reporting on the “ Twitter Files ” broke while I was writing my post on my recent experiments supporting ActivityPub on my microblog . I wanted to comment about it in the previous post, but the scope of that post was my ActivityPub experiment and my interest in where it might go. Wading into the political morass of the Twitter story felt like a distraction, but I…

Apple Reverses its SpyPhone Plans

It took over a year, but it appears that Apple has reversed its plans to for on-device CSAM scanning. Apple drops controversial plans for child sexual abuse imagery scanning {{ double-space-with-newline }}The Verge{{ double-space-with-newline }}December 7th, 2022 Apple has ended the development of technology intended to detect possible child sexual abuse material (CSAM) while it’s stored on user…

Experimenting with ActivityPub

I’ve never been on social media, but I do like to follow friends and people of interest online. The way I’ve always accomplished that is via RSS feeds . Even today in 2022 I start my morning by firing up NetNewsWire and stepping through the day’s news. This is how I consume most web based content; I rarely fire up a browser and go directly to a website to see if there’s anything new posted. The…

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Upgrading a 2006 iPod Video for Lossless Audio

As I’ve written before , I lost my last iPod when I left it in the back of a cab in Manhattan. The next day I purchased the first iPhone ( after the price drop ). It was an amazing phone, but it was a lousy music player, largely because the transition meant going from a 60 gb spinning disk to 8 gb of flash memory. Sure, the phone was faster, but I could barely fit any music on it and I’d grown…

Hacking OmniFocus with TaskPaper

OmniFocus has been my task manager of choice since 2008. It’s pricey compared to other solutions, but it’s worth every penny and it has features that I haven’t been able to find anywhere else. I can’t recommend it highly enough. That said, I do occasionally run into limitations with the software. One problem in particular is scheduling recurring tasks according to complex schedules. One of these…

Expanding Kobo Clara HD Storage

As I mentioned back in October , I’ve been using a Kobo Clara HD for reading fiction. I’ve tried Kindles in the past, but none of them ever clicked with me. The Clara is not exactly open source, but it is possible to hack it out to not require an account to use and it works pretty well with Calibre to manage books. It turns out that the Clara uses an 8 GB microSD card for internal storage. That’s…

My COVID Christmas (2021 Edition)

I had intended on traveling to visit family, but when we heard that COVID cases were increasing at an alarming rate, travel got cancelled. In Maine, the end of December is cold, dark, and usually icy. When you throw in COVID on top of that, there’s not a lot to do. I’m generally bad at Christmas vacation. I don’t feel at ease doing nothing; I always need a project to work on. For whatever reason,…

The MacBook Pro Notch is the Latest in a String of Bad Product Decisions

By any fair appraisal, Apple’s new MacBook Pros are pretty great. Some of that greatness is the result of Apple caving to customer pressure rather than innovation, namely restoring ports that were removed in 2016 and shipping a design that prioritizes cooling over shipping the thinest laptop possible. The biggest win is the shift to ARM chips that are more performant while using less power…

Replacing iPad with E Ink

My thinking on the utility and importance of the iPad has evolved a lot over the years. Early on I was pretty bullish on iPad; I saw it as a work in progress pointing the way towards the future of personal computing.

My Pandemic Vacation

Not to complain, but I haven’t been on what could be construed as a real vacation since COVID shut everything the US down (around March 2020). I know this is not a unique situation, but I was having a particularly hard time figuring out where to go and what to do that would keep me generally far away from other people. Which is not exactly what I want out of a vacation - after over a year of…

How to Fix Bluetooth Problems on MacBook Pro

TLDR: I don’t know. My laptop is getting very long in the tooth. I have a 2015 MacBook Pro which is just shy of seven years old. I usually keep computers for two to five years, so this is the longest run I’ve had with the same machine. Worse, this machine is under spec’d. In 2015 I needed both a new desktop and laptop, so I ended up spending most of my budget on a high end iMac and a modest 13…

Regarding Tech Ennui

Aaron Harpole had an interesting post a while back that expressed a feeling about where the personal computing landscape is going. It really struck a chord with me because a lot of the time I feel like tech history branched into multiple timelines around 2006 and we’re in the darkest timeline . When I thought about the future, I assumed in ten years we’d all have enough storage on our…

The View from the Custom House Parking Garage

Earlier in the month I posted a video of my usual peninsula cycling route in Portland, ME. One of the first landmarks I passed was the US Custom House in the Old Port . I don’t know if most visitors know this, but the best view of the Custom House is from the Custom House Square Parking Garage right across the street on the corner of Pearl Street and Fore Street . I biked up to the top of the…

The Pall Hanging Over the iPhone 13 Launch

On the same day that Apple announced new iPhones, the Electronic Frontier Foundation was pulling a stunt - they flew a plane over Apple HQ towing a banner reading, “Apple: Don’t Scan Our Phones!” Apple cried uncle after the overwhelmingly negative response from customers, privacy advocates, and security researchers. If Apple caved, why is the EFF flying banners over their heads?…

Cycling the Peninsula

One of the few things that’s kept me sane during the pandemic is cycling through Portland, ME. I live in the West End and at the end of the day I usually do a quick trip around town. This is a video of a trip around Portland’s peninsula around 5:30 PM on Tuesday September 7th, 2021.

Electron isn't Cancer but it is a Symptom of a Disease

1Password recently announced that they rewrote their longstanding Mac application as an Electron application , and as one might expect, Mac users rightfully lost their shit . A lot of digital ink has been spilled on Electron apps, but to summarize, Electron applications are slow, use a ton of resources, and perhaps worse of all, they don’t look like native applications or follow native…

Why Cheap Battery Replacements Are Not Enough

Apple recently got caught slowing down older iPhones . The response to this has been to offer very cheap battery replacements for a year , even in cases where it appears the battery is perfectly healthy . Apple punditry was quick to rush to the company’s defense pointing out, correctly, that slowing down phones was a good engineering solution to extend the life of phones, even with a dying…

Why I Returned Apple Watch Series 3

I’ve been a FitBit user for years, and I’ve owned several models. Lately I’ve been wearing the Charge 2 , which is one of the best trackers FitBit has ever shipped. It’s a good balance between size (and therefore intrusiveness) and function. In addition to the tracker, I’ve got a number of applications and devices rounding out the fitness picture: a FitBit Aria Scale to capture weight and BMI,…

The Best Case for Nintendo Switch

I preordered a Nintendo Switch console the day it went on sale. I also preordered a case because why buy a Switch and not leave the house? While the console arrived on time, the case was delayed, and based on the shipping status on Amazon, it wasn’t clear if or when it would ship. I ended up ordering other options to see what could actually be purchased so close after launch, and in the…

The Best Stand for Nintendo Switch

Did I mention I’m a fan of Nintendo Switch? The Switch ships with a much maligned plastic kickstand stand on the back of the console: The kickstand does feel extremely insecure and it make clicky noises like something is breaking when deployed. Also, when the kickstand is open, your microSD card slot is exposed. The kickstand is detachable by design , I assume because children will wedge a…

Making Sense of Nintendo Switch Controllers

I’m not going to do a review of Nintendo Switch because there are about five-hundred other articles you can read. My take is pretty simple- this is simply the best console Nintendo has ever released. What I would like to ponder is just which controllers Nintendo expects you to buy for this thing? It comes with a pair of joycons (yes I know that joycon is both the singular and plural form, I…

I'm Not Going to Eat Cows Anymore

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The Best Bluetooth Mouse for the Mac Part III

I’ve posted my reviews of the Microsoft Sculpt Comfort Mouse and Logitech’s MX Master and MX Anywhere 2 mice . My take at the time was that the Microsoft Sculpt was the best bluetooth mouse for the Mac with the caveat that it required a lot of hacks to get it to work correctly. The MX Anywhere was garbage, and the MX Master was a bit over designed and over priced. My specific…

Macworld's 13" MacBook Pro 2016 Review

Here’s what Macworld had to say about the new MacBook Pro: 13-inch MacBook Pro review: Too many tradeoffs Macworld Susie Ochs The MacBook Pro is thinner and lighter than previous generations—this one weighs just a hair over 3 pounds. While weight savings are always welcome, I would rather have a thicker laptop with a better keyboard than a computer this thin with keys that barely travel.…

Why Apple's Latest Laptops are a Disappointment

A lot of people have been weighing in on the new line of MacBook Pros. I think a lot of the anger in the community has more to do with the lack of Mac hardware in general than these specific laptops, but there are some real problems.

Upgrading to the iPhone SE

I bought an iPhone 6 on launch day. It was too large to operate in one hand, felt weird in my pocket, and was extremely slippery. I believe I had dropped that phone more than the sum times of every other iPhone and iPod I’ve ever owned. I kept it for four months, mostly because I didn’t want to go through the hassle of acquiring a replacement, and I really liked the fingerprint sensor and having…

Rethinking Golang

A lot of programming languages are “general purpose” languages, but most of them have a sweet spot if not a specific problem domain. If you program for long enough and you’re willing to try new things, your favorite tool for specific jobs will likely get replaced. I used to do all my scripting and web work with Perl. Eventually PHP displaced the web duties, then when I learned…

The Best Bluetooth Mouse for the Mac Part II

A while back, I compared the Apple Magic Mouse and the Microsoft Sculpt Comfort mouse and declared that the Microsoft mouse was currently the best bluetooth mouse available for the Mac. This was a qualified statement. While the mouse was large enough, it was smaller than I would have liked. Also, the Windows touch side button / swipe surface, while functional, is a bit gimmicky. Finally, the…

John Oliver Interviews Edward Snowden

Government Surveillance: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

Apple Pay Failures

From Ars Technica : A recent study published by market research company Phoenix Marketing International found that 47 percent of all Apple Pay users shopping in a participating store were not able to use Apple Pay to complete a transaction at least once … 27 percent said that the terminal didn’t work during the transaction, and 48 percent said that at least once it took too long to…

Maybe I Spoke Too Soon

In my last post I declared the Microsoft Sculpt Comfort Mouse the best bluetooth mouse available for the Mac. And then today, Logitech announced this : In my previous post, I’d lamented the fact that Logitech didn’t seem interested in bluetooth mice. I guess they were working on it .

The Best Bluetooth Mouse for the Mac

Apple has put us all on notice with the announcement of the new MacBook . The MacBook has a single USB-C port , and the clear message is don’t bother plugging anything into your Mac anymore except a power cable. It’s not even clear why the new MacBook only has one port vs. two other than perhaps Apple is telling us we now live in a post-port world. While the MacBook is a sort of…

How I Feel About Languages

Drowning in feels.