Tags: ep

Sometimes I look back through my blogging archives and notice what’s changed over time.

For example, I used to write quite enthusiastically about the arrival of a new operating system from Apple. That is no longer the case, to put it mildly. I’m currently holed up on Sequioa, trying to resist all the nudgings to “upgrade” to the tacky design nightmare that is Tahoe. I feel like the protagonist of Pluribus.

I used to write about software I really liked. Sometimes it was software made by Apple. More often it was from some independent developer.

Like, I remember how much I loved a little application called Quicksilver. It just did one thing. You pressed control and space and then started typing the name of any programme installed on your computer. After a few characters Quicksilver would show you the match, you hit enter and the programme launched.

If that process sounds familiar, it’s because Apple ended up incorporating it into their own Spotlight feature. Quicksilver got sherlocked (ask your parents).

Recently though, Spotlight got worse and worse at doing its one job. It’s been laggy and inaccurate, even though I set my Spotlight indexing options to only index the Applications folder.

Then I found TinyStart. It’s like Quicksilver reborn!

A tiny launcher for macOS, fast and focused on the essentials.

Actually, it does double duty. As well as being an application launcher, it’s also an emoji picker. 👍

Best of all, not only is TinyStart a return to the focus and quality of software of yore, it’s also a return to the pricing model. You buy the software—for a measly €5—and that’s it. You own it now. There’s no subscription you have to pay every month.

I love everything about this.

Deep Blue

My social networks are currently awash with Deep Blue:

…the sense of psychological ennui leading into existential dread that many software developers are feeling thanks to the encroachment of generative AI into their field of work.

So Many Websites

But perhaps the death of search is good for the future of the web. Perhaps websites can be free of dumb rankings and junky ads that are designed to make fractions of a penny at a time. Perhaps the web needs to be released from the burden of this business model. Perhaps mass readership isn’t possible for the vast majority of websites and was never really sustainable in the first place.

Reimagine the Date Picker – David Bushell – Web Dev (UK)

This is a superb way to deprecate a little JavaScript library. Now that you can just use HTML instead, the website for Pikaday has been turned into a guide to choosing the right design pattern for your needs. Bravo!

Pikaday is no longer a JavaScript date picker. Pikaday is now a friendly guide for front-end developers. I want to push developers away from the classic date picker entirely. Especially fat JavaScript libraries.

Software can be finished - Ross Wintle

There’s quite a crossover between resilience and longevity:

1. Understand the requirements
2. Keep scope small and fixed
3. Reduce dependencies
4. Produce static output
5. Increase Quality Assurance

Hacker Laws

I’m fascinated by eponymous laws, and here’s a whole bunch of them gathered together, including a few I hadn’t heard of (mostly from the world of software).

The album Hounds Of Love by Kate Bush turned 40 years old this month. It has really stood the test of time. It still sounds like nothing else.

It’s kind of two albums in one.

There’s the A side with all those perfect pop songs—Running Up That Hill, Hounds Of Love, Cloudbusting, The Big Sky—each one brilliant and self-contained.

Then there’s the B side, The Ninth Wave. It’s like its own concept album within an album. It’s weird and challening, but I love it.

At times it’s downright frightening but the whole thing ends on a joyous note with The Morning Fog. There’s something about the clarity of the closing lines that brings me to tears:

I’ll tell my mother
I’ll tell my father
I’ll tell my loved one
I’ll tell my brothers
How much I love them

That’s after the magnificence of The Jig Of Life which happily crosses over with my love of Irish traditional music.

But, as with traditional Irish music, Hounds Of Love was not something I was into when I was growing up. Quite the opposite.

See, my brother was really into Kate Bush. And if my brother was into something, then I didn’t want anything to do with it. We didn’t really get along.

Mostly that worked out fine. I don’t think missed out on much by avoiding the Electric Light Orchestra, the Alan Parsons Project, and other Partridge-esque bands. But I was wrong to avoid Kate Bush.

It was only by the time I got to art college that I was able to listen to Hounds Of Love objectively, encouraged to do so by a girlfriend at the time who was a huge fan.

Now I’m listening to it again.

Ah, those closing lines …there’s just something about them.

Curate your own newspaper with RSS

I’m almost certainly preaching to the choir here because I bet you’re reading these very words in a feed reader, but what Molly White has written here is too good not to share:

RSS offers readers and writers a path away from unreliable, manipulative, and hostile platforms and intermediaries. In a media landscape dominated by algorithmic feeds that aim to manipulate and extract, sometimes the most radical thing you can do is choose to read what you want, when you want, without anyone watching over your shoulder.

How to Make Websites That Will Require Lots of Your Time and Energy - Jim Nielsen’s Blog

1. Install Stuff Indiscriminately From npm
2. Pick a Framework Before You Know You Need One
3. Always, Always Require a Compilation Step

Nuberodesign > Blog > Designing for the Eye

I love the interactive illustrations in this article filled with type and architecture nerdery!

GeoCities Time Machine!

Fun!

But also …never forget, never forgive.

Build It Yourself | Armin Ronacher’s Thoughts and Writings

We’re at a point in the most ecosystems where pulling in libraries is not just the default action, it’s seen positively: “Look how modular and composable my code is!” Actually, it might just be a symptom of never wanting to type out more than a few lines.

It always amazes me when people don’t view dependencies as liabilities. To me it feels like the coding equivalent of going to a loan shark. You are asking for technical debt.

There are entire companies who are making a living of supplying you with the tools needed to deal with your dependency mess. In the name of security, we’re pushed to having dependencies and keeping them up to date, despite most of those dependencies being the primary source of security problems.

But there is a simpler path. You write code yourself. Sure, it’s more work up front, but once it’s written, it’s done.