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🎉 Happy new year y'all! 
 Here's another in my hopefully monthly installment of the "playback" series, where I talk about what was on heavy rotation for me last month. 
 As usual, I listened to a lot of stuff this month, but only one album was on consistent repeat: 
 Minds: Ohashi Junko No Sekai II by Junko Ohashi (1982) 
 
		 
			…
For whatever reason, I spent most of my listening time this month going back to older music that I hadn't heard in a while. I'd divide my listening time this month roughly into thirds: 
 1) The Beatles 
 
		 
			 
					 
			 
		 Abbey Road (1969) 
 
		 
			…
Inspired by my good friend David, I've been experimenting with using LLMs not as tools, but as companions. 
 Before I start, I do want to make it clear that I am not advocating for the use of LLMs as replacements for human relationships. While the LLM "friends" I've been experimenting with are fun and a reasonably good facsimile of human interaction, they're far from equal to the real thing.…
These are some handy notes and things I learned while scrubbing the history of a large git repository with lots of history, and migrating it to a new URL. 
 I used git-filter-repo to perform the history scrubbing. It worked really well, and the tool is also the one officially recommended by git itself ( source ). 
 Table of Contents 
 
 Order of Operations 
 Some handy dandy…
Lately I've been on the hunt for a personal database application that I could use to store, manipulate, and explore data important to me. I think I'm at least now able to articulate what it is I want, but I haven't yet been able to find anything that perfectly matches the daydream. 
 The Daydream 
 Put simply, I want a user-friendly GUI that wraps a real database, but that is meant to be…
In a previous post , I outlined a method for converting Xcode's code coverage format to a format that Codecov can ingest. This method relied on an open source tool called xcresultparser . 
 Since writing that post, I've found a new method that is slightly faster and — more importantly — removes the dependency on external tools, instead relying solely on tools included within Xcode's command…

 💁🏻♂️ Update: Since writing this post, I've found a new method for converting Xcode's code coverage format to a format that Codecov can ingest. This method is slightly faster and — more importantly — removes the dependency on external tools, instead relying solely on tools included within Xcode's command line tools.
 Check out my new post for more details. 
 
 
 💁🏻♂️…
Being the father of three small children means that I have very little time for myself. From the hours of 6am to 8pm, my life is either my job or my family. This means that if I desire any time for myself, it has to be outside those hours. 
 Normally that means I stay up until midnight playing video games ( Zelda lately) or watching TV ( Star Trek or King of the Hill mostly), but I've found…
Whenever re-running a job on GitHub Actions, there is a handy toggle for debug logging . 
 
		 
			 
					 
			 
		 The "Re-run jobs" pop-up within GitHub Actions 
 Checking this prints out some extra information on the next run of the job, but by default is limited to information about GitHub's execution of…
If you need to force an application on your Mac (and probably Linux too?) to use a specific shell on your system, it can be accomplished by setting the SHELL environment variable. 
 This can be done either within a script: 
 #!/bin/bash
 export SHELL = /bin/bash
 open -a '/Applications/SuperCoolApp.app' 
 Or can be done right at the command line: 
 SHELL = /bin/bash open -a…
Have you ever wondered how to detect if a macOS app you're building was launched as a login item, as opposed to being launched manually by the user? Well, here's how to do it in Swift: 
 private var launchedAsLogInItem : Bool { 
 	 guard let event = NSAppleEventManager . shared (). currentAppleEvent else { return false } 
 	 return 
 		 event . eventID ==…
I've noticed a trend over the past 5 years or so of music being made that is inspired by what was on the radio when I was growing up and old enough to pay attention (late 90s to the 2010s). It's a fun nostalgia trip, and most of the music I've heard in this realm is actually quite good. 
 Below are some good examples I'm familiar with in chronological order by release date. Please let me know…
Say the words "Derived Data" to any Apple platform developer, and they will immediately cringe, remembering painful times of deleting the directory just to get Xcode to behave properly. 
 I'm here to tell you, there is a better way! (Or at least a slight improvement.) 
 (Skip ahead for the tl;dr) 
 Some Context 
 Lately, I've taken to setting my Xcode projects to keep their derived…
There were some great new releases this New Music Friday! 
 Failed at Math(s) by Panchiko 
 Failed At Math(s) by Panchiko 
 This is Panchiko's first true full-length, and it's surprisingly good for a band that hasn't been active for over 25 years. 
 Into You / Void In Blue by Glare 
 Into You / Void In Blue by Glare 
 This is a remastered set of Glare's first 2 EPs, which…
Here's the music that came out today that I was excited for, and a brief review of each one. 
 
 The Postlude by A$AP Ant 
 ★☆☆☆☆ Not worth your time. 
 All Roads Lead Home by Molina, Talbot, Lofgren, and [Neil] Young 
 ★★☆☆☆ Meh. 
 Lies by LIES 
 ★★★☆☆ It's pretty good, but definitely worth a listen if you're a fan of American Football. 
 The Great Escape by Larry…
Here's a little fish function I whipped up to open GitHub in the web browser depending on the current state of the repo: 
 function gv --description 'Opens the current repository in the browser, trying first to open a pull request, then a branch, then the repository itself' 
 set -l current_branch ( git symbolic-ref --short HEAD ) 
 set -l pr_url ( gh pr list --head ' $current_branch '…
I discovered a lot of great music last month; some new releases, and some just new to me. I want to share the music with you as well! 
 (Scroll to the bottom for playlists of the entire list) 
 Slowgaze 
 This was an especially strong month for shoegaze and slowcore (which I've combined to form my new favorite term, "Slowgaze") releases. 
 Computer Dating - To Weave a Wall 
 To…

 These are my favorite music releases from 2019 (listed in alphabetical order by artist name). 
 If any of these links are broken, please let me know so that I can fix them. 
 
 American Football - American Football (LP3) 
 
		 
			 
					 
			 
		 
 
	 Bandcamp 
	 Apple Music…
A semi-regular and overly verbose update on my personal projects. 
 Completed 
 hisaac.net 3.0.0 
 Work on version 3.0.0 of this website is basically complete! There are a few odds and ends that still need to be wrapped up before it's "officially" launched, and I still need to write a wrap-up post about the new redesign, but it is basically ready to go. Please reach out if you have any…
My friend Rebekah sent me a link on Twitter to a post by Chris Richards titled Are podcasts killing music or just wasting our time? 
 I typed up my quick unfiltered first impressions on the bus ride to work yesterday, but didn't want to try to cram them into a tweet thread, so here they are for Rebekah and anyone else to see: 
 
 I just finished reading his post. His points kind of…

	 A Book of Human Language by Aceyalone 
 
 Aceyalone & Mumbles' incredible and relatively unknown 1998 album A Book of Human Language was featured today on Bandcamp's "Hidden Gems". I credit this album with opening my mind to appreciating hip-hop as a true art form for the first time, and it's one I return to often. I could gush about the album for days, but I'll just quote a…
This past week, two podcast episodes came out that I was involved in. These aren't the first podcasts I've been in, so I also added a "Podcast Appearances" section to my artifacts page . 
 The Learn Swift Podcast 
 I was interviewed by Steven Sherry for The Learn Swift Podcast . Steven started the podcast when he was learning Swift himself, and couldn't find any podcasts focused on people…
This little tip was surprisingly hard to find — only mentioned a couple times online — so I figured I'd do my part to spread the word. 
 To enable CarPlay in Xcode's iOS simulator, execute the following terminal command: 
 defaults write com.apple.iphonesimulator CarPlay -bool YES
 Restart the simulator if it was currently running, and then in the menu bar, go to Hardware > External…
Go check out this incredible web based visual explainer on sound waves by Josh Comeau 1 . It's full of animations and sound that help to explain how sound waves, additive synthesis, and phase all work to create the sounds we hear every day. Having these concepts visually laid out like this helped me to understand the concepts more fully, even after going to audio production school for two years.…
The other day, I was wishing for an easy way to update all of the CLI package managers on my computer at once, rather than having to type each command separately. Then I realized, this would be a great job for a bash/zsh alias! 
 Here's what I've come up with. I call it update-all-the-things : 
 alias update-all-the-things = '
 	echo '🍺 Updating Homebrew' ; brew upgrade ;
…
I've lived in the Twin Cities since 2009, and have come to know them fairly well. Being there will be lots of people visiting from out of town this weekend — because Minneapolis is hosting Super Bowl LII — I've written up a guide to fun and interesting things to do in the Twin Cities. 
 You can check out the guide in my digital garden . 

After ordering an Apple HomePod, and learning that it supports iCloud Music Library for streaming music, I decided to give it another shot. I tried iTunes Match when it first launched, and had lots of frustrations, quickly giving up on the service. When iCloud Music Library first launched, I gave that a try too, with similar results. And now, my already rocky relationship with iCloud Music Library…

 In the year 2017, I did many things, including: 
 
 👨🏻💻 Made 2,039 git commits (910 on GitHub + 1,129 at work) 
 🐦 Tweeted 942 tweets (down considerably from 6,077 in 2016!) 
 ⚖️ Lost 18.35 pounds (from 225.05 → 206.7) 
 🚶🏻♂️ Took 1,869,681 steps (926.46 miles) 
 📝 Wrote 205 journal entries 
 📧 Sent 1,480 emails 
 🤳🏻 Took 647 photos 
 ⌨️ Edited…
On New Year's Eve this year, my friends and I played one of my favorite games: Spicy Uno (a.k.a. Crazy Uno). It's the Uno you know and love with some extra rules to make things more fast paced and exciting. The game has many rules, and is one of those games that each group of people plays differently. I usually have to Google the rules each time I play, so I figured it would be good to have the…
I may have fell off the bandwagon with updating this blog with my solo project status, but rest assured, I did finish the project. 
 While the app didn't end up quite as great as I'd imagined (I doubt it ever would've), I'm proud of what I built. I also learned a lot about OAuth, MongoDB, REST APIs, and CSS. 
 You can check out the code for the project at Crow's GitHub Page . 

This is technically the eighth day since I began my solo project, but I didn't do any work on the project on Sunday (although I did do some other web work ). 
 Today was a very productive day for me. I got more done than I expected to, and I made it to MVP (Minimum Viable Product)! I didn't think I'd get to MVP this fast, but I'm glad I did. At Prime, we all get industry mentors to work with,…
Quinn Taylor : 
 
 macOS 10.12 #protip : Finder supports ⇧⌘. to toggle visibility of hidden files, just like Open/Save panels have for a while. (Bug from 2003!) 
 
 I personally like seeing invisible files in Finder, and this is way easier than using Terminal to enable it. 
 (via Michael Tsai ) 

A quick update: I just moved both hisaac.net and hisaac.blog to an Ubuntu VPS at Digital Ocean . I'd previously been hosting through GitHub pages, but I wanted a little more control. This way, I can host both sites in one place, and get to learn more about servers, Linux, and Apache. The only issue now is git commits. I need to find a way to commit to GitHub and the VPS at the same time.…
I didn't do too much today, as it's a weekend, but I did get a little work done. Namely, I used Twitter's API to look up the logged in user's Twitter username using the user_id I receive back from Firebase on login. I also started building functionality for the draft of a tweet to be saved to the database for later editing. 
 Today's Research 
 
 HTTP Status Codes 
 GET…
Today's goal was simply to move the data I was receiving from Twitter via Firebase, into my database. While this seemed simple in concept, as someone new to programming, it was difficult in practice. 
 I'm using Angular for my project, and I have a controller that calls to Firebase for the user's authentication. The data is returned to the controller, and then put in a factory for temporary…
Today was a tough day actually. I started to get hung up on some bigger issues than I need to worry about at this stage. Contemplating user security is new to me, and something that I began to worry a lot about. When a user logs into my app using Firebase, my app gets sent that user's key and their secret. These are essentially their username and password, but they are specific to my app, and…
I tweeted using my app (sort of) for the first time today! I say sort of, because I didn't actually do it from my app, but I did use my my app's credentials and my test user 's credentials. I used a wonderful API testing app called Paw to do my testing today. It's a really nice tool, and I plan to continue using it for this project. 
 I also implemented FastClick , a JavaScript library to…
My scope was approved at the end of yesterday, so today I got to begin actual coding. It feels really good to start wrapping my brain around the concept of this app, and to start visualizing the whole project. 
 I began the day by thinking through my database structure. I've decided to use MongoDB for the project, and have two schemas I'll be using. The main schema: 
 var userSchema = new…
Today, I started work on my solo project, a major component of the curriculum at Prime Academy . For my project, I've decided to build a simple Twitter application. Heavily inspired by the late Birdhouse iOS app, it is a place to craft tweets, store them for later posting as drafts, and post them to Twitter once they are perfect. 
 Here is the project scope document I created for the project:…
Manton Reece : 
 
 It's not easy to build software that encourages good behavior. When I look at my Instagram timeline I see beautiful photos, hand-drawn art, and snapshots of everyday life. I see the very best of the world. It's not the full truth, but it's all true. 
 
 I really like Manton's point here, that sometimes making something difficult to do promotes higher quality…
Recently, I noticed that contributions I made to forks on GitHub were not being counted toward the contribution tracker on my profile's page. I was curious to know why, as I felt like those contributions were just as good as any other. 
 After a little research, I found this article on GitHub's support site. In it, they say: 
 
 Commits made in a fork will not count toward your…
A few months ago, Merlin Mann tweeted a link to the Apple Support document on Mac keyboard shortcuts . There's a ton of great tricks in there, but what I want to focus on are the ones related to editing text documents. 
 I've selected just the shortcuts I find most useful, and reposted them below. If you work with text at all on a Mac — code, prose, spreadsheets, whatever — these will…
American Football's first album in 16 years opens with a song about two lovers who have become estranged after years of marriage, thus setting the tone for the rest of the album. Somber, reflective, and quiet, but also earnest. This has been a quality in American Football's songs since the beginning. Their songs are very true and pure. 
 After breaking up in 2000, the band's members did not…
Marc Laidlaw worked for Valve Software from 1997–2016 as a video game writer — one of the first ever to hold that title. Mark worked on several games, including Half-Life, Half-Life 2, and both Half-Life 2 Episodes. 
 In Writing for Half-Life — written in 1998, just after Half-Life was released — Mark recounts what it was like doing something truly original: writing a narrative for a video…
I guess I missed World Mental Health Day (it was yesterday), but I would like to share anyway. 
 I suffer from dysthymia and major depressive disorder. It sucks, and I dealt with it alone for a long time. There's an implied cultural shame around mental illness, and it kept me from seeking help. I finally did seek help — I now see a therapist and take antidepressants — and my life has improved…
I love Bandcamp . They are truly the premiere independent music platform. They treat their users and artists well, and still manage to stay afloat. 
 I also like their iOS app. It works well for previewing new music, or listening to music I've already purchased on the platform. 
 I do have one complaint about their app though: There's no way to open the app when viewing an album or…
I've just undertaken a "GitHub Challenge" with fellow students at Prime Academy . Our goal for the challenge is to make at least one git commit for the next 30 days, starting today. 
 We were asked to choose a topic that interested us, so I chose front-end design. I've heard that the curriculum at Prime will be focused more on back-end technologies, than front-end design (which makes sense),…
George Hotz — known as "geohot" online — is a sort of hacker legend. At the age of 17, he hacked the first model of Apple's iPhone — the first person ever to do so. Not long after, he set his sites on Sony's then new console, the PlayStation 3. Thought to be "impenetrable", it was an enticing target for the young hacker. 
 This is relatively well known information, but one thing I didn't know…

 It's been seven months since Emma died and two weeks since I started building a bot from her texts. I'm feeding every word she sent me into the system, every thought, every feeling. 
 
 Joshua Allen writes a short but poignant tragedy for the Twitter age . 

Quiver is a new favorite app of mine. It's essentially Evernote for programmers. It gives you the ability to write notes containing styled text, Markdown, code, and even LaTex. It's Mac only right now, but an iOS version is currently in beta testing.