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.

Not sure if I’m late to this party but I was talking recently with a client about how it felt limiting that Balsamiq Mockups runs on Adobe AIR. Well I just found out that they are working on native macOS and Windows versions of the app. That is excellent news!

When I see other developers working or I read about their preference in browsers, I’d say 90% of the time it’s Chrome. On Windows I’d understand why, but a majority of the time these are people running macOS. I use Safari, which to me is a fine browser. Why is Chrome so much more popular among developers?

The 3.1 update of the Tower git client for Mac now supports image diffing. A nice addition to a great Mac app.

I kind of like this quote: “Climate change is a manmade problem that requires a feminist solution.”

BoingBoing did an interview with Eugen Rochko, the lead developer of Mastodon. It’s good to see decentralized systems coming back into fashion. When you think about it, it’s a contradiction in terms for a social platform to be privately owned. Let’s hope decentralized systems are here to stay, as opposed to Twitter, Facebook et al.

Right on queue, here’s a good explanation of stranded assets, which I mentioned yesterday. It also hints at why oil companies still look for more oil even though we can’t burn most of the reserves they already have.

I love this headline: “An entire country just divested from fossil fuels”. Jeremy Leggett, who was chairing Carbon Tracker when they first rang the alarm bell regarding stranded assets, also rejoices about it. Guess where the wind is blowing?

This is not something I would normally post about but I believe strongly in freedom, feminism, and honesty. And making sex workers less safe in the name of addressing human trafficking is dishonest, cruel, and puts lives in danger. Erika Lust is an artist whose voice I respect to call it the way it is.

It’s from a year ago but I watched tonight this excellent video about the noise level in the oceans and it highlights the great disrespect that we have for wildlife, treating every bit of Earth as ours and ignoring the needs of other species. How can you not think of the “humans are a disease” quote from The Matrix.

When I requested my Model 3 deposit back from Tesla, I cited the everything-touch screen as one of the main reasons for my decision to pass. As a designer, I’m not convinced it’s safe to remove tactile feedback from all controls in a moving vehicle.

I’ve been completely uninterested by so-called smart TVs, partly because I don’t trust them and partly because I don’t have cable so no need for a TV tuner. I had little luck finding “dumb TVs” until I realized I needed to search for “large monitors” instead. A large screen with a few HDMI ports is really all I need.

I agree, many restaurants are way too loud. Last week my wife and I reconsidered as we were being seated and I made a point of letting the hostess know we were leaving because of the noise. Who wants to eat and shout?

Since I moved off of Twitter and started micro-blogging on my own site, I’ve felt more accountable for what I write. I generally put a little more thought into it instead of just reacting, and all I can say is I’ve been really enjoying it.

Web search engines are biased. They don’t show the most accurate links first; instead they tend to favor the most popular or what fits their algorithm’s definition of “relevant”. I worry that people are not aware enough of this and about the negative impacts these “relevant links”—instead of accurate—will have on our collective intelligence.

I’m with Jason on this one, “Confidence feels like knowledge” appears to explain at least some of why people believe things that fly in the face of evidence.

John Tavares has signed with the Maple Leafs and all I can think of is this incredible keep-away from last season. Good to see one of our Canadian stars coming to play for a Canadian team.

I had forgotten how recent it is that newspapers switched to color photos:

[T]he New York Times delivered its news exclusively in B&W until the 90s, running the first color photograph on the front page in 1997.

Eugen, developer of Mastodon, wrote an excellent blog post about ActivityPub and why it matters. I’ve always said that the ideal social network will be like email: decentralized and not corporate-owned. Nobody should own your posts other than you.

A major update of the Tower git client was released today. I haven’t tried it yet but support for pull requests alone makes it seem like a no-brainer upgrade. And apps that we use day in, day out deserve our money.