My Micro Monday is @johnjohnston. Thoughtful, teacher, Scotland — what’s not to like?
Some things on my shelf.
Why I’m (Still) using Micro.blog
There have been some posts recently from a few respected micro.blog users about leaving the service. The concerns they’ve expressed are certainly valid and I’ve previously raised nearly all of them to Manton myself. I too gave serious consideration to leaving a few months ago so I thought I’d summarize for my own future reference some of the factors that influenced my decision to remain. To be clear this is not a post meant to disagree with anyone. We can see the same issues and come to different conclusions.
- The number one reason is the excellent ratio of interesting people and posts to noise and hostility [footnote title=...]For this stage in its growth I feel micro.blog has reasonable tools for managing noise and hostility in my timeline and is working to maintain community[/footnote]
- Early on I switched from using micro.blog hosting to self-hosting Wordpress on my droplet so I solidly own my content [footnote title=...]Partly because I do want to truly own my own content and don't see Github pages as viable and partly because early on the apps lacked sufficient features[/footnote]
- I am an iOS user so supported apps do actually exist [footnote title=...]I can fall back on Wordpress on the rare occasion that's necessary. I don’t trust the 3rd party apps, so far, because I prefer a settled workflow.[/footnote]
- The backend service and apps are evolving in a direction that generally feels right to me
- I hope in some way my presence can help micro.blog evolve and become a useful service for a significant number of people. I’m getting more out of it than I’m putting in. [footnote title=...]I don’t think the service should try to be for everyone or every need. There’s nothing wrong with serving a useful niche at scale.[/footnote]
In case you missed this: as of September 21st by Federal law you can now request freezes to your credit at all 3 national credit bureaus in the US. Freezing and unfreezing is free. Link is to the FTC and includes some Q&A on the details.
Got great news today. I ordered my ⌚️:35 after the store opened with an earliest delivery of Oct 2 (Tuesday of next week). Today I got a notice from UPS the ⌚️ is in Kentucky and will be delivered tomorrow. Nicely under promised by Apple. Pretty excited to upgrade from series 0.
Keeping up with the games. Texas is doing better than I expected. 🏈 📺
Nearly 11” of rain with more expected today. A good excuse to plant myself on the sofa and watch college football 🏈 🌧
We have rain. Lots of it. 5.5” in a couple hours in fact. Can’t even blame it on a hurricane. It’s a bad situation for a lot of people especially since it is supposed to rain for the next two days (hopefully not as much!). Our forecast said “up to an inch of rain”. Over achievers
ICYMI: The Japanese Hayabusa 2 probe has just deployed a pair of landers to the surface of the asteroid Ryuugu. Soon it will touch down itself and bring a sample of Ryugu back to Earth. It’s an awesome accomplishment! 💫 🌚 ☄️ 🚀
Winning 🥇: Looking out the window at the coffee shop and the clerk at the FedEx store next door came out front. She started doing stair step exercises using the curb and these concrete parking lot stops. Making the most of her day.
I ordered my Series 4 watch 35 minutes after the store opened. It has now shipped and is said to arrive next Thursday. So I’ll spend the next few days being envious and seeking to learn from those that receive theirs today. ⌚️
Cappuccino, VPN and a Signature Field Notes at my local coffee shop. Great start to a rainy day. 📷 ☔️
My small Field Notes are consumable. I’m using the larger Signature books for longer term notes. Not wanting to deface the lovely thing I put colored dots to indicate content.
Ten years ago today
Sep 1, 2008
Apple Watch folk: I’m a week or so from getting my new Apple Watch and one of the upgrades for me is the ability to track sleep. If you’re using an app for that which one do you like?
If you want Shortcuts involving weather the Carrot app is hard to beat. It’s already had 2 updates adding more Shortcuts integration (as well as watch complications). The developer said today that weather data will be available in a dictionary soon as well. 🌧
I keep seeing articles digging into the iOS beta for signs of a new iPad. To me the fact the time was moved from top center of the screen to top left is all the sign I need there is a new one with Face ID coming. There is now this big empty space in the middle longing for purpose
Noticed a bit of a Shortcuts Easter 🥚: When you drop a Number action into a Shortcut the default answer is 42. A reference presumably to the the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’s “Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything”.
Yesterday I went through Apple’s Shortcuts user guide. Lots of good info in there. Paying things forward by answering a ton of questions on r/shortcuts this morning.
N.B. The guide is in the app as well. P.S. We need an automation emoji.
I have a pretty strong distaste for Starbucks coffee. But this location is really nice inside and their black tea is quite good. Oh, yeah, that chocolate croissant isn’t hurting any either.
Sadly for my diet, comfort food is a very real thing for me.
@Becky re: screen time for young ones, we experienced the same with both of ours. We’ve always been liberal with screen time. The result is our 9 year old is gifted in aptitude and achievement and the 14 year old is doing well and learned her passion for animation from screens.
I was just thinking I needed a Shortcut to set things up for a nap and while browsing Reddit found exactly that. Again, don’t judge me 🤓
There are some fantastic tidbits in this Twitter stream on useful iOS 12 features.
I’m the one guy who’s always excited when Numbers is enhanced. Happy to see the addition for support for Siri Shortcuts. However I have yet to track down exactly what is possible. Time to dig deeper.
Well this is a first: I’m sitting at a Starbucks this morning. With a hot croissant and a cup of hot tea. In a real mug. The tea is definitely a better choice here than their coffee.