English
- Theyāre cheap, and the money goes to small developers who needs the support.
- Many have short gameplay loops, that make them easy to fit into my schedule.
- And many of the ones I like have non-realtime gameplay,
- and that, coupled with low hardware demands, makes them well suited for playing on my laptop.
- quarters,
- halves,
- and wholes (not fullscreen mode).
- To protect the cards (kinda says so on the tin)
- To increase the sense of quality, much like component upgrades
- I’m 1.75 m tall, and my legs and arms aren’t especially long - so clothes are usually too long.
- Related, I like watches, bracelets, shoes and socks - and cuffing shows them off.
- I often think it makes the clothes themselves look better.
š± AI Is Just Different
The discussion around the ethics and legality surrounding AI has been a constant the last year ā and itās culminating in some important trials thatās coming up.
I wonāt go into the entire thing here ā I just want to focus on a specific argument that I often hear when it comes to the way these large models are trained. It oftes goes something like: Ā«But how is this different from how humans have always been learning and iterating on previous knowledge?Ā» or Ā«The information was available on the open web, so it can be used for anything!Ā».
I think these are terrible arguments.
Humans are allowed into shopping malls.
However, thatās simply not an argument for that cars should be allowed there as well ā whether they’re driven by a human or autonomous.
A Couple of Chill, Mostly New, Indie Games
I love small, chill indie games.
My MacBook isnāt a slouch - but itās no gaming rig. So I love that I donāt have to worry about performance with these games - and those who donāt have native Mac ports, run perfectly fine through Parallells.
Realtime, but still chilltime
š± An Idea For Better Music Streaming
I sadly donāt have the abilities to live out this idea ā at least not alone. So everyone who finds this, is welcome to steal it or riff with me!
Iām currently trying to transfer from Spotify to Tidal. The main reason is that I want to use a service that pays artists better ā and itās a nice bonus that the sound quality is better. However, I prefer Spotifyās app and features. 1 And this inspired me to write out an idea Iāve been thinking about for a while.
Inspired by Mastodon, Appleās MusicKit API, Podcasts and PeerTube
Third-party first
š± Apple Is Not the Reason Iām Buying Apple Products - These People Are
In the court cases against Epic, this round of regulatory scrutiny from the EU, and other more, Apple has made their sense of entitlement abundantly clear. Every piece of business that happens on their platforms, is to their credit. And developers are lucky to be able to pay them almost a third of their revenue for the privilege of being on their platforms. If Apple understands that their relationship with developers is reciprocal, theyāre hiding it well.
I like all my Apple hardware. Heck, I even love some of it! I also like the operating systems, the general focus on privacy, and the way the different parts of the ecosystem work together. But I think I could enjoy a Framework laptop, Asus phone and some Sony earbuds as well! The things Apple makes and does isnāt the main reason I keep buying Apple products. Itās all the fantastic third-party developers, mostly indie, who make great software for the Apple platforms.
Why I Think Appleās Fine is Fine
Today, Apple got hit with a ā¬1.84 billion fine ā for anticompetitive behaviour in the music streaming market.
Iāve seen people saying this doesnāt make sense, as Spotify has a larger market share than Apple Music ā but thatās not what the complaint is about. The thing is, that Apple has used their size, ecosystem and general market position to give Apple Music a larger market share than they wouldāve gotten if they had to compete fairly. Apple is about 80 times the size of Spotify. To put that into perspective, thatās about the same ratio as a rhino compared to a golden retriever. 1
Here are some of the smaller things Apple are doing:
š± A Good Way to Get Home Row Mods on a Mac
As part of my ergonomics voyage, Iāve been working on getting home row mods on my keyboard. This excellent guide provides tons of info on this, but the short version is this:
To contort your hands less when using modifiers (like shift and control), the letter keys on your home row serves double duty: Theyāre the letters if you tap them, but modifiers if you hold them.
Tapping vs holding
But whatās constitutes a tap and what constitutes a hold? Thatās the central question hereā¦
š± Why do so many apps have weird margins?
There are tons of services, apps and clients for text based social media. But why are almost all of them wrong about timeline margins?
To show what Iām talking about, hereās Threads as an example:
I get that you want to start the text quite close to the username, and that avatars are taller than usernames on some services. But I still think that left-margin is a sin! It wastes space, and makes the entire screen lopsided.
I went through many apps checking - and many of the apps are good and well-designed in general! Many of them are Mastodon clients, because that service has a fantastic 3rd party ecosystem. Also, theyāre all iOS apps, because thatās what I have. Would be interested to hear about the situation on Android!
OK, here are some more offenders:
Todayās Keyboard Maintenance
Today, I finished the first step of my Ergonomics Voyage: Making some modifications to my keyboard.
Key layout
The most important change, was activating home row mods. So Iāve made it so tapping
a s d f works as normal ā but if I hold them, they act as
Ctrl Opt Shift Cmd .
And then Iāve mirrored it on the other side, to j k l Ćø .
Failed at software
š± How I Manage Windows
Rafael Conde, posted on Mastodon today:
We’re sharing how we use the Desktop and how we size/position windows on our Macs on our work Slack and it’s absolute madness.
And, then followed it up with a poll:
Time to fess up, how do you primarily use windows “on your” Mac? Bonus points if you reply with a screenshot šø
ā Wherever the appear, I donāt know
ā Centered (think Apple marketing shot)
ā Fullscreen (as big as you can make them)
ā Tiled (in a grid, like taking up half the screen)
I, as many others, have strong feelings about this. And Iād love for this to become the next Ā«Default appsĀ»! So Iāll start.
Iām a big tiler.
I switch between my MacBooks 14 inch screen, and my Studio Displayās 27-inch screen. But no matter which Iām on, I move my apps around quite a lot, and almost always in
Here are some examples:
š± My Tech Setup
Iāll make separate posts for my software and bass guitar setups, but hereās my current tech hardware setup.
š± The Ethics and Principles Behind My Blog
My Ergonomics Voyage: Part 1
Prologue, and the first steps
Iāve been a nerd my entire 34-year-long life. So naturally, much of it has been spent in front of computers using keyboards, and Iāve never experienced any discomfort related to this.1
I donāt know if itās due to my age, or just the fact that Iāve worked even more than usual on keyboards, but lately, Iāve started to notice discomfort. Especially in my left hand, but a bit in my right as well. Luckily, thereās nothing anywhere else, and itās not that bad. But I want to take action to try to stay ahead of it.
A bit about my current situation
The last couple of years, Iāve been working mostly in my small home office, which was OK, but not great. Just a couple of weeks ago, I finally got my own (external) office, so the situation has improved. However, Iāve been stupid, and also worked quite a bit on my laptop on our kitchen table lately.
Hereās my current office setup:
Good things about my setup
Pedal tuners and product design
Firstly, sorry about caring a bit too much about guitar tuners. You see, as a side gig, I help people with their pedalboards (especially people using multiple guitars on stage), and I often recommend that they get a new tuner. But no tuners are exactly like I want!
While this post is mostly hard core nerd out on pedal tuners, there are also some comments on product design in general. Letās go!
A new product series gives (false) hope
I prefer always-on tuners that you mute elsewhere (volume pedal or otherwise), and this makes foot-switches redundant. That’s why I like the idea behind Boss TU3-S.
So, when I saw the new(ish) Korg X tuners, I was stoked ā especially for the XS. The pedal to display size ratio is great, the switch design is cool, and I like that it’s more squared off than your typical mini pedal. This allows it to fit into odd slots on pedalboards.
š± Guide to card sleeves
Ā«Why?Ā»
Card protectors, or sleeves, are perhaps the most common accessory for games. There are two main reasons for sleeving your games:
The protection part is especially important if the cards are of high value and/or gets shuffled a lot. Both are true with most collectable card games (CCGs), like Magic The Gathering ā and this is why the sizes used for these games has the best selection. Shuffling with sleeved cards feels a lot better than unsleeved, so that affects both point 1 and 2. You can also get them with matte finish, to reduce glare.
Hereās a guide to how you should proceed if you want to sleeve:
What makes a good cuff?
Ok, so this is by far the most niche thing I’ve ever written. But after getting a great jacket (that I’ll write about some other time!) that only had one problem, I wanted to gather my thoughts on this tiny subject. The “problem” was: It doesn’t cuff perfectly.
What’s the deal with cuffing anyway??
Cuffing is when you fold the sleeves of a shirt, jacket, sweater etc. It’s also commonly used when you do the same to leg opening of pants or shorts. And I’m an avid cuffer! The three reasons are:
Here’s some examples of what I mean by nr. 2 and 3:
š± Wallpapers for Home.app
Here’s a remake of backgrounds from this thread that I made since the links were dead. These were inspired by u/rzalexander and made with free illustrations from illustrations.co. I’ve tried to adapt the illustrations to iOS 16’s new home app, so that the text and icons are visible.
I’ve also made companion backgrounds for use with iPad and Mac. Since those windows resize all the time, using two tone and illustrations was a no-go. So they are just one colour backgrounds (I have one using the dark colour and one using the light one. I’ve used the latter).
The Worldās Best Sneakers?
Adidas has made their Stan Smiths since the 70s, and you can see them everywhere all summer. They are good-looking shoes, but where the earlier versions were made in France and had high quality, you canāt quite say the same about the newer ones made in India. They canāt be fixed, uses synthetic materials and someone would prefer a bit more modern design.
Common Projects
In later years, Common Projects, with their golden lettering, has taken the sneaker world by storm. With a more modern, minimalistic design, Italian leather and good Margom rubber soles, they arenāt cheap.
But when you pay well over Ā£300 for a pair of Italian designer shoes, you can expect excellent quality, right? Well, itās superior to the Stan Smiths, but for the price you could do so much better. The YouTube channel Rose Anvil goes into detail in this video, but the short version is that, while the shoes have some premium features, both the material and construction is pretty mediocre. In this article, Iād like to point at a brand that gives you a more premium sneaker, at a (slightly) lower price.
But in the end I will also share why I still understand why someone would opt for the Common Projects!
Great Baseball Cap From Poten
This is my favourite cap (and headgear in general) of all time. And this is also a good example of something I love in general: Simple products, made extremely well.
These caps are made at the same factroy that does caps for the Japanese baseball league. Several brands have tried to get the factory to produce caps from them, but without success. According to Self Edge, Hiro (the man behind Poten, who also has a huge baseball card collection) had to visit the factory several times, over three years, to show them that he cares enough about baseball to have them produce caps for him. Lucky for those of us who don’t play in the NPB! But what’s so good about these caps then?
Machines, AI, and the Most Important Question in the World
Message from 2024: I wrote this post in the spring of 2023, as AI tools were pretty new. Iāve since landed on the principle of not using AI generated images on my blog. This post has two images like this, but as itās critical of the models (and explains a bit of why I currently donāt want to use them), Iāve let them be.
First, a very simplified history lesson:
For a large portion of the human existence, technology (often in the shape of machines or tools) has replaced manual labour, and led to increased productivity. The printing press replaced monks writing books by hand, looms evolved to include less and less manual laber per unit of fabric, the telegraph reduced the need for mail carriers, and photography really hurt Big Portrait Painting. Usually, the technology doesnāt completely replace the professions it affects. For instance, you can still get a tailored suit ā but itās a minor part of the clothing industry, and mostly reserved for the wealthy. The old turns into niches, hobbies, crafts and/or art.
Here are some of the positives from this:
The problem with teachers being tired of change
Iām going to try something that I know is impossible ā talking about a profession as one entity. In Norway, there are 77,000 teachers, and of course, all of us are individuals. Still, there are some things Iām pretty sure many teachers agree on: We are tired of people with little expertise telling us how to do our jobs. The pendulum swings from one side to another, so what was in vogue 30 years ago is now considered the newest hotness. Be it politicians, parents, or others ā many teachers want to be left alone, and be free to do a job theyāve many years of education and experience in.
But many have written about this before.
I would like to point at a problem this has led to. It has, in my view, created a sort of hardness in the profession thatās made us impervious to change.