Erlend's Overdelivery Service
- Very simple → In your head
- Simple → A calculator (app)
- Medium to complex → A spreadsheet app
- Why do you use the one you use now?
- What are your favourite (large or small) features? Please be very specific!
- I don’t love that Arc is built on Chromium — as I think Google has more than enough power over the web as it is.
- I’m not against supporting any VC funded company — but in combination with an unclear business model, I become more skeptical and worried if our incentives align. 2
- 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.
Why Smart Bulbs > Smart Switches
Some Quick Mastodon Client Reviews
The Case for Soulver, and an App Between a Calculator and a Spreadsheet
The iOS counterpart of Soulver 3 just released — and is being discussed a bit over at the (excellent) Mac Power Users forum.
This post is (mostly) an answer to the following post there:
Soulver is a fun app to do simple math, but it is no substitute for a spreadsheet. Can it do any of this Numbers - Function list - Apple (AU)?
Can it graph data?
So I would buy it again if it was cheaper, but $35 for the Mac app plus another $34 for the iOS apps is definitely not worth it to me. I’ll keep using my free, constantly improving Numbers app.
Plus it took 5 years to finally recreate the iOS apps? Seriously? Why would I trust this developer after borking a perfectly good iOS app and taking so long to finally add it back to the App Store.
I think you’re misunderstanding
… what Soulver is trying to be,
even though you mention “a fun app to do simple math”.
When discussing solving math problems, different complexity levels make us turn to different tools. I’d say it usually looks something like this:
Input wanted!
In principle, I think I should use Firefox… So I’m digging deep to see if I can make it not-bad! 🙊
So, my question to those of you who use a (desktop) browser:
A Way To Get a Fancy Link Hover Effect
Jarrod, of (the great blog) HeyDingus.net, wanted to do something about the way his links appear on his website. He asked:
Since the first design of my site, I’ve stuck with blue text for my hyperlinks because that always seemed canonical with the web. Links = blue text, blue underline. But I’ve grown less certain with its readability with all that blue text interspersed. I’m considering a change. What do y’all think?
One thing he didn’t mention there, is that he also has a nice hover effect, that changes the underline to a gradient (that matches his logo and more) on hover.
My first idea for how to solve it sacrificed the gradient — but that just wouldn’t do. But I think I found a pretty good solution in the end!
The solution and how to implement it
Chromium and Nested Backdrop-Filters
If you’re like me, you sometimes get these small (often technical) problems, that you work on for so long — and you refuse to surrender.
I had this with CSS a couple of months ago:
I had a menu, that had transparency and blur, and then I also had a submenu that I wanted to have the same. But the submenu just. wouldn’t. blur!
It works perfectly in Gecko and WebKit — but after countless hours, I found the problem: If an element has a backdrop-filter, Chromium won’t let its children have it as well. 1
I had to design around it, and moved on with my life.
A few moments later…
I recently moved to Micro.blog. And one day I was scrolling down my timeline…
Then I opened the submenu:
There it was — the same bug! I’m not alone!
The fix
✉️ To SigmaOS’ CEO: This Is What I Don’t Like About Arc’s Direction
I really, really like the Arc browser. But as I alluded to in this post, I have some reservations regarding it, and don’t feel like it’s going in a direction that I like. In the post, I said that I might try SigmaOS again — and I am. 1
I mentioned this in their community Slack, and their CEO, Mahyad, asked me what about Arc’s direction I don’t like. I must say, the dev team seems very active, nice, and open to input! So this post is my reply to his question.
(And here’s a link straight to the TL;DR at the bottom.)
Hi, Mahyad — and thanks for asking! I wrote a blog post called «I Just Want A Nice Browser!», which might give you a hint, heh.
And let me also say that I’m a bit worried about your direction as well — but I’ll come back to that. 😉
Two fundamentals I don’t love, but that I don’t need to go too much into
My main issue, though, is regarding AI
Apple Is Not the Reason I’m 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, they’re 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 isn’t the main reason I keep buying Apple products. It’s all the fantastic third-party developers, mostly indie, who make great software for the Apple platforms.
A Good Way to Get Home Row Mods on a Mac
(If you already know about Home Row Mods, click here to go straight to my quick method for getting it on your Mac - even on the .internal laptop keyboard)
As part of my ergonomics voyage, I’ve 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: They’re the letters if you tap them, but modifiers if you hold them.
Tapping vs holding
But what’s constitutes a tap and what constitutes a hold? That’s the central question here…
🌱 My Tech Setup
I’ll make separate posts for my software and bass guitar setups, but here’s my current tech hardware 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. Let’s go!
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: