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(A post about terminal commands on that modify the Mac's interface. Use at your own risk!) Heck. These commands shared on Reddit (I think this is the first time I've ever linked to Reddit) will have made the next three months much more pleasant. Using these values in particular effectively reverts the inset sidebar to a full pane, and reduces the window corner radius to match Sequoia. It seems to…
Perhaps you guessed I also mark strides of ten days. I'm better satisfied by their greater substance than those of societal seven-day weeks. There's more time for an adventure or arc in each one; more of a chance to lose sight of the start from the end. With over three times the length, that effect is much further magnified by considering thousand-day stretches more primary than years. And with…
Me, two days ago : My main wish for WWDC is to reach September, the day I have the option to install macOS 27, and observe no trace of trepidation; to be excited again to upgrade in the correct direction. The keynote's main themes were "Platform Improvements," "Trust And Safety," and "Apple Intelligence And Siri." The latter was arguably the flagship, but the presentation's meat began – no…
It's an odd feeling to approach a WWDC keynote, one of the most inspiring mornings of the year, when some of the greatest teams in software used every day around the world introduces its most cutting-edge decisions and creations, with even mild resentment. WWDC is nominally for developers, and lately, when developers for Apple platforms are concerned, they voice it. I've developed for Apple…
Jack Dorsey, March 2006: just setting up my twttr Eugen Rochko , March 2016: Hello world It barely occurred to me that Facebook, Twitter, and friends had been around for two decades. But the slowly evolving feeling of their effects, initially one of enthusiasm, amazement and wit, with room since made room for some graveness and foreboding, is there for the recalling. What surprised me even more,…
( Science Week , day 7!) Wikipedia : Horizontal cross sections cut through the trunk of a tree can reveal growth rings, also referred to as tree rings or annual rings. Growth rings result from new growth in the vascular cambium, a layer of cells near the bark that botanists classify as a lateral meristem; this growth in diameter is known as secondary growth. Not always precisely, but certainly…
( Science Week , day 6!) Justin Rowlatt for the BBC : Renewable energy overtook coal as the world's leading source of electricity in the first half of this year - a historic first, according to new data from the global energy think tank Ember. This must be a difficult thing to study, but the BBC felt comfortable making the claim in the article's headline, so let's suppose it's true. We know a few…
( Science Week , day 5!) Captured over two hours and 35 minutes, 53 Navigation Camera (Navcam) image pairs were combined with rover data on orientation, wheel speed, and steering angle, as well as data from Perseverance's Inertial Measurement Unit, and placed into a 3D virtual environment. No big deal, every previous generation of humans that's ever lived: direct imagery from the surface of Mars…
( Science Week , day 4!) A question that can entice both children and adults: what would it feel like to be something else – a bat, a mouse, a bird, even a tree or a primitive multi-cellular organism? Perhaps in early grade school, a teacher's answer might consist entirely of an invitation to "imagine," and such imagining is a wonderful thing to try. But even more profoundly wonderful: the…
( Science Week , day 3!) The basic idea for a liquid mirror telescope is to use a thin layer of mercury, then spin it slowly. The rotation of the frame causes the liquid to form a parabolic surface. Combined with secondary mirrors or lenses, you then have a working telescope. This comes from the beautiful site of Brian Koberlein , along with an image of one that actually operated from 2003 to…