À propos of the Apple Intelligence vaporware, I’m actually happy about it and much more worried that Apple has been gradually losing its edge on software for years. Increasingly poor UX, spontaneous setting changes, Apple product promotion throughout the OS, worsening developer relations, bugs that never get fixed. That is the story.

Back in the day when I used to listen to podcasts regularly, I listened to this particular talk about the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester more times than I care to admit. I’m glad I found it on YouTube. A good mix of history and humour.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3SmOsbLays

My tech tinkering nowadays is filled with figuring out things that don’t work because of all the ways we try to make the Internet half decent. A site doesn’t load because of a blocker. A video doesn’t play because of a VPN. A page can’t be read because I block ads. It never ends. Tinkering is no fun anymore.

Something has gotten lost in this escalation. Sure I can view videos on YouTube without ads, but overall the Internet is still a terrible experience.

Today it occurred to me how odd it is that map() functions don’t return a map.

I keep hearing that the Canada-USA game last Saturday at the 4 Nations Face-Off  had the best start ever, all because there were three fights in the first 9 seconds of the game.

I’m Canadian and I love hockey, but I for one would love to see fighting banned forever.

That was not hockey, that was disgusting, and that made me ashamed. Such a skillful and amazing sport, tarnished by acts of violence that would get you in a prison cell were they committed anywhere else than a hockey rink.

On a whim I went looking for a PWHL app because the website is underwhelming and, lo and behold one exists for iOS. It’s called PWHL Fan App and was developed by Nick Barfoot. I’m impressed. This “fan app” has every feature under the sun, schedules, scores, play-by-play, stats, notifications, videos, you name it. And it’s free.

You know, I’ve been writing software for a very long time, and I still find excitement at embarking on a new project and coding something new.

I love imagining the abstract boxes in my head, envisioning how they will interact, and translating those ideas into words that the computer understands.

Coding is crazy fun and we get paid to do it. It really is a privilege.

I took my cat to the vet today for her annual checkup. She clearly wasn’t a fan of the adventure, meowing sadly in the car and while being given a shot.

She would have every right to resent what I did and stay away from me tonight. But she’s right here next to me as usual, showing her belly and purring when I pet her.

Unconditional love.

I’ve always felt that WordPress was overkill to run my blog. Thinking about alternatives, there are a lot of static site generators but they all seem to assume or require the use of the command line.

Way back in the day, I used iBlog for Mac, a desktop app that did whatever it needed under the hood to generate files and upload them to .Mac. Is there no such thing anymore?

It would be cool for MarsEdit to support static site generation.

With the snow that fell the other day, I finally got to go for a snow ride with my Radster Trail today. The 3” tires have great traction and that went really well. This summer I tended to feel they were overkill, but in the winter it’s perfect.

I’ve refused to work at big tech companies like Google and Facebook for a long time, and I hope the number of tech companies that other people aspire to work at has shrunk in recent weeks too. I really do.

Life is too short to donate your time and intellectual powers to companies that cater to the dark side.

I had a bad dream—at what point does it become a nightmare?—the other night where I was very upset with people for not understanding how important the climate emergency is.

I used to post about climate a lot more. It was a conscious decision on my part to cut down on voicing my thoughts on the matter. The number one reason is my personal well-being and emotional health. Reading the news and seeing where the world is heading triggers more anxiety than I can handle.

We finished watching Disclaimer on Apple TV+ tonight. It’s very well told, directed, and acted. I also think it’s an important story. This is probably the most powerful story on the topic of rape and the extent to which women will go to avoid talking about it that I’ve ever heard. The final episode unraveled a great deal of plot questions, including to me why Cate Blanchett accepted to play that role. Challenging and illuminating.

I just saw a video title on CBC, “Can EVs really handle the cold?” There’s also a car company running ads on TV where a salesperson tells a customer how cheap it is to run an EV.

It’s so weird to me that we’re still explaining those things. Makes me wish we had been at this point in the transition 20 years ago.

When I was a kid growing up in French and the United States were known as “les États-Unis”, I asked my mom why they call it “America”. She said it’s because they live “en Amérique”. And I said , in French, ”but so do we”.

Decades later, I’m still puzzled by this.

Interesting observations from Ben Sandofsky covering the history and current state of social networks in this Twitter-decline world.

Personally I still think there is one true social network and it’s called the Internet. Unfortunately its people-centric potential has yet to be realized, but one can hope.

One day I will get an email saying that due to circumstances out of their control, the price of the service is going down.

One day.

It’s so great today to see Dianna aka Physics Girl talking to us and sharing herself how she’s doing via Instagram. What an amazing journey she’s been on, and it’s heartwarming to see she’s making progress.

We got tickets to the PWHL Montreal vs Toronto game in December. I’m so excited! It’s gonna be great. Can’t wait!

Now the only problem is, who to root for?

The city where I live touts itself as bike friendly. You know where this is going.

Last weekend I rode my bike down to the lake. To get there, I have to take the overpass across the highway. The overpass has a bike lane, yay, but it crosses the highway entrance ramp. In that spot, cars are accelerating. One roared by me doing at least 70 km/h the last time.

Every time, I wonder if the mayor would want their kids to be doing this on their bike. I really want them to come and try this out.

I liked reading this article about now obsolete library reference desks, or how to find information before Google and web search existed. I too find that we often speak imprecisely:

“The main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library at Grand Army Plaza is open tonight until eight o’clock.” Just because callers spoke with imprecision, that didn’t mean we could.

After the Figma and AI controversy, it’s nice that Sketch says they will not auto-generate designs.

Meetup is now offering a free plan for group organizers. I used to advocate for this when I worked there, so it’ll be interesting for me to see how it works out.

My daughter remarked that our printer is still printing fine even though we’ve been gleefully ignoring its complaints about the toner being low for almost 7 years now.

That’s not a typo.

Seven. Years.

Don’t believe your printer ever again.

You know when you’ve heard a song a hundred times before, but one time out of the blue you happen to listen, really listen, and it’s this whole little gem you never realized was there before?

I had that moment with Patty Griffin’s song Rain as I was testing my new AirPods today.

That’s all.

Funny how roads cost millions to build and drivers get to use them for free, but suggest for public transport to be used by pedestrians for free and hear the protest about how many millions that’s going to cost.

I twisted my ankle pretty badly this morning walking off the back deck. X-ray shows no fracture but I managed to wreck a couple ligaments. This means I have to wear a brace and take it easy for the next six weeks. “Won’t that be fun??”

I miss when Apple was the underdog. As someone who was a Mac user in the mid-90s, it was a thrill to watch them grow in the 2000s. But now every decision they make affects millions of people. It’s just not possible to make everybody happy, and every little flaw is magnified. At this point it feels like they’re too often just plain wrong and it’s sad.