I installed WordPress 5.0 and I’m posting this using the new (dreaded, from everything I’ve read?) Gutenberg editor. We shall see whether words will fall into place properly and whether the cross-posting to Mastodon and Micro.blog will still work.

I still marvel every time I’m driving around in my electric car that what powers it used to last only an hour or two if we were lucky after Christmas playing with our new battery-sucking toys.

I received the Pela phone cases this week. For packaging they came in a brown envelope, no wrapping, no plastic. The bio-plastic has a nice grippable texture without being sticky or a lint-magnet like silicone. They fit my phone snuggly without being too tight, which I appreciate. Very happy.

In Scotland they generated 98% of their electricity from wind turbines last month. Meanwhile, here in Canada our government bought a pipeline and is trying to bring more oil to market. How do you even keep a straight face?

And as I posted this, Buffy Sainte-Marie’s Universal Soldier song came up on shuffle. So perfect.

I’m glad the Bells of Peace are ringing everywhere. I’m against all wars if we can help it, but knowing that others went through it against their will and came out on top is important for the younger generations. We have to remember never to do this again.

My daughter found this Canadian company, Pela Case, that makes phone cases from plant-based plastics. They also ship in plastic free packaging. They’re more affordable than the Apple ones and the second one is half price right now so I ordered two. I’ll let you know how they feel when I get ’em.

The MacBook Air and the Mac mini are back on the list of machines we would recommend to family and friends. I can’t help but wonder what the updates Air means for the qualifier-less MacBook.

Forget the BP spill disaster. This one has been leaking oil into the Gulf for 14 fucking years and it keeps on leaking. We don’t deserve this planet.

Saw The Hate U Give tonight. I don’t remember the last time I cried so much at a movie. For the impossibility of the choices black people face and the unfairness of it all. Also, I hate the police and their fixation on not allowing people to walk down the street to say they disagree with something.

I still use TextMate as my go-to text editor. I like that it’s truly Mac-like with Mac shortcuts and behaviors (hello Command-E), but I’ve been wanting more from it like a nicer UI, better documentation integration and better code execution. Today I found CodeRunner and it’s pretty sweet, with a built-in debugger and a true Mac UX.

Tim Winton on a whale encounter:

Ordinary citizens want to believe there are some places too precious to surrender to corporate interests, unspoilt places that shouldn’t be industrialised. We need to know there’s a line we’ll draw and will not cross. Because a world given over entirely to the engine of industry becomes a world no longer fit for creatures, human or otherwise; it becomes a world without hope.

Wonderful words from Dr. Genevieve Guenther:
”To think of climate change as something that we are doing, instead of something we are being prevented from undoing, perpetuates the very ideology of the fossil-fuel economy we’re trying to transform.”

It’s kind of rude but at the same time I can’t help but nod my head reading this piece about climate change and the growingly irrelevant viewpoint of the older generation.

The latest report from the IPCC unequivocally says climate change is a matter of life and death. The lack of progress since the Paris Agreement is alarming and mind boggling. All major and minor news outlets reported it but here’s The Guardian and CBC.

This article from 2013 in The Atlantic comparing Scandinavian and American prisons is very interesting. The takeaway for me is that to have better prisons requires society to look at criminals as regular people.

Mazda finally decided to make cleaner cars and said, with a straight face, that by 2030, EVs will make up 5 percent of their lineup. 2030. 5%. Are they fucking insane?

Responding to my own post looking for an alternative to xScope the other day, I found QuickLens which does the crosshair feature and other goodies at a bargain 10 bucks. Looks good so far.

Sorry for not posting much lately, but this Catherine McKenna tweet is the kind of bullshit that keeps me away from engaging on social media recently. I just don’t know if I can emotionally deal with it on a daily basis anymore.

Working with CoreText today, I was reminded that its coordinate system is inverted from the one in iOS CoreGraphics, so you get text drawn upside down and have to mirror it to rectify. Really can’t wrap my head around why Apple hasn’t added a flag we can set to deal with this. Make it opt-in if they’re worried about compatibility.

I need to upgrade xScope 3 to version 4 but I only really use the crosshair feature and have a hard time justifying $70 CAD for that. Anyone knows of alternatives, maybe that only do the crosshair?

It seems like John Gruber’s output on Daring Fireball has slowed down significantly in the last year or two. Oddly, I can’t help but notice it seems to have coincided with the last presidential election, and he does write about politics now whereas he almost never did before. Does anyone have stats on this?

Lots of new users today on Mastodon and Micro.blog, and lots of discussion about Twitter alternatives like Tumblr and RSS. Good to see. I quit Twitter months ago and it’s been nice to follow some of the same accounts via RSS instead.

This reader’s plea to stop climate change instead of talking about adapting to it speaks to me.

Part of my comment yesterday came after my wife and I had spent an hour talking with a surgeon about a tricky procedure. I walked away amazed at her command of the subject matter and the amount of planning and precautions that are put into place for the team to perform the operation successfully. I have very rarely felt that way interviewing or talking with other software developers.

I agree with xkcd. Software development as a field is not that good at what it does and part of the problem is that we call it a science and its practitioners “engineers”. In some cases it is and sometimes they are, but a lot of the time writing code is an art, not that different from writing stories or sculpting clay.

The Pro Controller for the Switch has a great feel and is really good, especially if like me you find that the regular controller feels like a child-sized device. A bit pricey but it definitely improves my experience with the Switch.

The New York Times has a big piece on climate change today, particularly the history of what happened back in the 80’s. Goodness, what’s wrong with humanity.

This title really underscores the current state of politics and climate action. It’s not left versus right, liberal versus conservative. It’s urban versus rural. Two sets of people with different education and differing priorities. I’ve been feeling down lately wondering whether the gap can be bridged.