On Augmenting Experts: 

I’m the slowest of my bike-riding friends – I’m a swimmer; I can deal with waves, currents, and even too much chlorine – but there’s something about a 45-degree incline wall of dirt where you have to fight for both forward motion and balance that makes it less fun for me.

Now, give …

FileOctopus — Finder Alternative & File Manager for Mac There’s been a bunch of these recently. But this FileOctopus looks pretty polished. Will give it a test this week.

One-on-Ones Are More Than Meetings: 

I’ve long had a 1-on-1 weekly meeting practice with all my direct reports, or anyone working directly with me on a project. These meetings were set on the calendar, at the same time/day each week – and were seldom canceled. While some leaders¹ consider this a sub-optimal use of time, …

Mind the Silence: 

After 8 years, I’m no longer at PriceSmart. More significantly, after 3 years, I’m no longer involved in SRE, DevOps, Service Desk, CABs, or daily IT operations of a regional retailer. And the absence of alarms, alerts, beeps, boops, pings, and/or rings has been… deafening.

A while back, …

Funny that after 16 years I still recognize most of the places in this Visit Osla winter ad youtu.be/P6sGqYclx…

Only fake thing is the idea of taking a cab to the airport. You’d never do that over the train. Really.

Oh wow. The new AppleTV 4K pricing now falls into the Studio Display territory for justifying it. www.apple.com/uk/newsro…

It used to be a great bang/buck if you valued performance. At $300, it does make consider looking at options. Not happy about it thought.

Currently reading: A gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles 📚

Read the first few pages of multiple fiction books I had in the backlog, and this one is what I want to continue reading tonight. So let’s make it official.

Finished reading: The Devils by Joe Abercrombie 📚

Good book. But at certain times I pushed on just because I’d wanted to see were the story ended, and it didn’t conclude as much as I wanted.

So happy that Ana pushed us to go on a hike today. It was great family time and helped clear my mind a bit – something that I really need more of.

Meet Libron Great font, and even better video. Libron didn’t replace my favorite reader font – Bitstream Iowan Old Style – but did let me to Cartisse (also in his ebook collection), which looks amazing on the X4 and its my default on that device.

Curious about Bose Noise Cancelling Wired Earbuds reviews once they are released. Hoping for a good microphone sound quality.

W00t Release v1.7.0 · TypeWhisper/typewhisper-mac · GitHub is out. Been waiting for this version to try Muse Transcribe in a less yucky way (vs the desktop app).

Amazon is launching colorful new Kindles

Strangely happy that since I’ve left the Amazon Kindle ecosystem, there’s no hardware pulling back. These new ones are nice, but for the price of a Kindle with buttons case, there’s better alternatives hardware-wise.

Testing out Outpost Micropub client for micro.blog on the Mac. It’s very nice.

Watched: Coyote vs. Acme 🍿 with the kids over the weekend. They LOLs made it worth it by itself. I also enjoyed quite a bit. My wife wasn’t bothered by it.

Wow, kiwidesk.kiwicanopy.com is the best Window Tiling Manager for macOS I’ve tried recently. Powerful enough to be a full-time system, but simple enough to not overwhelm the user. Also, FLOSS and homebrew.

Designing a laptop stand separator with nurb is the most magic I’ve felt with AI the last few months. Specially since I had designed the same thing with Tinkercad, and it took me 10x of the time, 1/10th of the a nice design. nurb.dev

This free meeting recording from an Ex-Apple looks very nice biscottiapp.com

Very interesting App’s layer for Kobo e-ink devices bandarlabs.github.io/Cobalt/

Let the AeroPress inspired (since patent expired) devices arrive. The Wacaco Prestina looks interesting.

www.wacaco.com/products/…

Finished reading: DELIO. Phase One. by Rr Haywood 📚

Good beach reading. A bit too dark for my taste. But a different kind of read.

Finished reading: Children of Strife by Adrian Tchaikovsky 📚

A good book on its own, but far from epic level of the previous 3. The pace is also very uneven. Still, if you love the series, you won’t regret it.

Confirmation that Apple will be raising prices has me thinking of upgrading my wife’s iPhone 15 Pro to the 17 Pro this summer. However, her main issue right now is space, so the 512gb option would be my preference. Which got me thinking if maybe they’ll raise prices by removing the 256gb …

A Father a Day: 

I’ve been a dad for ten years. On average I think I’d been a good one. That means I’ve not been a great one more than a few times.

Here’s the thing: your kid(s) should not make you mad. Period. They should make you worry, smile, cry, think, pause. Is there something wrong …

I’m now considering using Org-mode in Obsidian to track work tasks. My procrastination by system creation knows no end.

Has there been any public comment from Jon Ive on Tim Cook stepping down as Apple CEO?

Unfinished read’s: The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein 📚

Started great. But halfway through it and I’m struggling with the pace. Might return to it later. But want something I’m more engaged with for a couple of upcoming work trips.

I actually love the new way of Vibe Code assisted apps for Mac. However, one way I measure that commitment of the developer is if they offer a brew download option. Going through the steps of setting up and maintaining a cask is a good proxy of the commitment to their app long term.

Hadn’t visited the Venezuelan Andes since I was a kid (30+ years). Back to Caracas today and off to Costa Rica tomorrow. It was a great Spring Break.

Finished reading: Slow Gods by Claire North 📚

Way slower build-up than I expected. One of those books you feel the author discovering where characters are going alongside you. If you have the patience for not being told what to think, but rather witnessing the story from a complex main character’s …

Spring break beach portion ends today. Back to the city tonight, and then off the mountains for week two.

Project Hail Mary was great 👎. Specially enjoyable going with my 10yo who also loved the book.

Epics and Projects Might Break My Goals: 

I am struggling to connect my halfway-up-the-mountain projects to the actual work my team is doing and documenting on Jira via user stories, tasks, and some epics.

For some time, I’ve been pushing my managers to create epics that tie into my worldview, but I come to realize that I’m …

Procrastinating by contemplating moving to Taskpaper from Noteplan. Why? because I’m an idiot.

All set up in Tahoe. What they did to the Finder is unbearable. Might revisit Bloom. If Aqua was lickable, Liquid Glass on the Mac is gooey – in a very oily and slimy way.

I moved from Things to Reminders back in December so that I could be ready when the new Apple Intelligence arrived. The latest “delay” is really making me reconsider. Reminders is fine, but I really miss Things elegance.

Will wait for reviews on AeroPress Steel before judging it too hard. But it’s clear that the post Alan Adler Aeropress, is an upsell brand exercise.

Currently reading: Slow Gods by Claire North 📚

Finished reading: For We Are Many by Dennis E. Taylor 📚

Didn’t get hooked until the last third. Still a fun light read. Taking a break and will return. Wanting a bit harder sci-fi about AI, uploading and such.

Lucky front porch view.

Habits 26.02 Checkmate

I went too specific with my habit attempts. I’m pivoting a bit to rescue the effort. I’m going more high-level with: exercise, health, social, writing, reading, and freedom. I will note down details under each with just enough information to remember. I’m …

Habits 26.01 Check: New year habits include drinking only water with meals, a weekly fitness challenge, reading past discomfort, writing 100 words daily, and free writing for 10-15 minutes.

Good Coffee: 

Funny thing happened on a recent work trip: my Starbucks default tall cappuccino with whole milk was particularly delicious twice, 6 days apart in the Panama airport – the San Diego ones in-between? Not so good.

Something similar happened last year in Dominican Republic, there was something about …

A(I) Time for Month to Month: 

One of the biggest changes in my computing workflow over the last two years has been the inclusion of dictation/transcription software. I’ve tried a few apps over that time: Superwhisper, Whisper Memos, WhisperType, Spokenly, VoiceInk, Raycast and Wispr Flow – and these are just the ones …

NotePlan Finally Clicked: 

I declared task bankruptcy on my Obsidian and Things setup a few months back. In anticipation of the upcoming Apple Intelligence update, I moved to Reminders for repeating tasks and, well, reminders. However, for work organization I took a long way to NotePlan – in a journey the went through Tana …

Heaven on Mars: 

According to Day One, 11 years ago, I went to the movie theater with my 8-month-pregnant wife to watch The Martian. The same journal entry notes that I stupidly chose center seats, making her frequent bathroom breaks unnecessarily difficult.

Well, today I watched the same movie again with my 10 year …

Worked around Arc’s lack of profile support using the Velja’s Transform URL functionality to append a ?arcprofile=personal to URLs from Reeder, and Arc’s Air Traffic Control to open URLs with that parameter in personal Space. Not ideal, but kudos to Velja for the flexibility.

Back to Arc with MarkMarks (Ack, Ack): 

Switched back to Arc from Helium. In part because my simplification of window management plays better with Arc’s tab management versus Helium’s classic browser use.

But even more importantly, I found the Raycast bookmark manager for work of my dreams: MarkMarks. Its storage is a simple …

Window Mismanagement: 

I came back from the holidays committed to exercise and eating healthier. But I didn’t expect to blow up my windowing system to shreds this early in the year. It was mere months ago that I went classic OSX and resettled into Spaces using the Spencer app. Everything was good.

But it …

Finished reading: We Are Legion (We Are Bob) by Dennis E. Taylor 📚

Just getting started with the Bobiverse, but will continue straight to Book 2. Fun start, although I got a bit lost sometimes as the most of characters grew.

Some days I want to remind myself of its uneventful amazingness, by tagging them as GroundhogDay on my Day One journal.

Taking a personal day after mostly being on-call during the holidays. The temptation to check Teams/email is almost as bad as checking the phone. Need to work on it.

Finished reading: Replay by Ken Grimwood 📚

This book was a bit freakish to read. The character’s age and many geographic locations were relevant to me. If you’re into time-loops and +40 years old, it gets a recommendation from me.

Pushing the Bleeping Cursor Forward: 

Have about a dozen drafts staring at me. They all don’t export my thoughts quite right yet. I get frustrated. It takes me a while – months sometimes, but then I remember: is not about saying something. It’s about writing. Sounding it out through keyboard presses. Pushing the blinking …

I really want to love #Obsidian Bases. But the documentation is extremely dry. help.obsidian.md/bases/fun…

Brute Force Dilemma: 

I’m struggling a bit right now. I know one of my teams is underperforming and the main reason is because we have processes with a lot of friction. The team’s productivity is mostly based on brute force and effort, and that’s wrong.

However, we’re going into our high season, …

This one we all felt at home M 5.9 - 7 km SSW of Quepos, Costa Rica #TemblorCR.

After 17 years, considering replacing 1Password with Apple Password for personal stuff. Mostly prompted after I couldn’t justify to CISO keeping 1Password vs his preference. But also, it hasn’t “just worked” in some time for me.

Kegcask Principle: given two Mac apps of roughly the same feature set, the one with brew support will be the better option.

Node75 low-profile is going to be my first NuPhy keyboard. Absolutely love the modernist design – looks like 80’s frog design concept. Not sure about the touch zone, could be amazing or something I never use, still innovative. Have a few days still to pick the switches, which is a fun problem …

Matt Langford New Mythos Theme: 

Matt Langford, on mattlangford.com:

After years (wow, that happened fast) of crafting themes for Micro.blog, I’m excited to introduce Mythos Theme — my latest project that represents the direction of my theme development work. Before diving into what makes Mythos special, I want to share some …

Twenty Seven Words Are Enough: 

Don’t share only your decisions. Don’t always tell people something. Share your questions, your itches. What is bothering me right now? What do I want to figure out?

Here, on this paragraph, this exact sentence – is where this post would forever be damned as a draft note. What’s …

I love #obsidian, but sometimes its search/omnisearch drives nuts. I know my naming was dumb, and that’s why I don’t find the file – but help me out here!

Of course, as soon as I have a stable workflow with #VoiceInk, I start testing Wispr Flow

Organic Sentences With Natural Typos: 

AI autocorrect becomes more pervasive across tools, writing an unassisted message is gonna be the equivalent of writing a handwritten letter. You’ll appreciate the authenticity and the effort to make it imperfectly real, and not perfectly artificial.

Don't Look Back in Wonder: 

I never truly believed it, but I produce a lot of content. If you check my 5typos.net blog, there are hundreds of posts commenting on news and products since 2009. This blog also archives my Twitter posts and some personal entries. If anyone had access to my Day One journal, they’d see I’ve been …

Separating the Art From the Artist: 

Separating the art from the artists is getting difficult, especially with Apple bending to U.S. government pressure and a favorite developer writing like a crazy uncle.

Where do you draw the line? When do you stop using and appreciating the art if the creator isn’t on the same page?

Does it affect …

Fun Computing: 

Remember when computers were fun? When you would change Adium alert sounds to sound like the Paris airport or the Tokyo train? I miss that. I think that’s some of what Omarchy brings to the table. Permission to have a bit of a messy setup.

The current macOS customization landscape, reminds me …

MacBook Cool: 

Please let the rumored low-end Macbook be an iPhone Air type of Mac. A MacBook in which the compromises make no sense to pundits. But when you pick it up and you use it, you’re in love with the device. Love from your guts, not rational love from the brain.

The kind of belly excitement the …

Todoist Dictate to add tasks with Ramble looks amazing. I have a baby version of this using Things and AI Actions with shortcuts. But this is another level. Might be time for my 500 day Todo App migration.

Wow ‎VoiceInk for iOS I now available. Amazing about how this software category (dictation/transcription) became a critical part of my stack, and my apps of choice have been so dynamic.

Uhhh the Disk Pro might become Kickstarter impulse buy of the season.

Really wish Apple would figure out a way to use vanilla eSIMs for Apple Watches in countries without partner support.

Lost Apple Pencil Pro on flight today. What a klutz. Might have heard a thud when I shoved iPad mini into bag, but case has the wrap around tab, so didn’t pay attention. I blame myself… and Spirit’s ungodly millimeter knee space.

My signing-off message to my IT Ops team: “Happy weekend, and may the server gods have mercy on our logs.”

Probably many roll their eyes, but I expect a few smiles.

Finally got WiFi to work on a 2015 13 MBP with Omarchy, and spent the afternoon testing it. It does scratch an itch. A few hours in, the tiling window manager just clicked in my brain, and I started to enjoy it. I think this is the beginning of something.

New The Hives album out. My have a great long weekend emails for those in the US might have an extra dose of passive-aggressiveness.

Whoa. Pebble Time 2 redesign details announced. I’ll be changing my Pebble 2 Duo pre-order to this for sure.

Finished Skeleton Crew with my two kids by my side shouting excitedly at the TV. The rest of the season could just had been static, and it would still be my favorite show of the year.

Happy to be in a time where there’s all kinds of new Star Wars, rather than just the “good” kind …

Going all-in to Bookfusion for reading on iPhone, iPad mini, Boox Leaf 2 and (soon) Viwoods AiPaper Mini.

Migrating from a combination of Google Play Books, Apple Books and Readwise Reader (which is great but too slow on Leaf 2).

I’m very excited about the potential Return of the MacBook?. And I enjoyed this take on it.

Yep. I’m all-in on the Project Hail Mary movie based in the first trailer. www.youtube.com/watch

I’m 43. Decided that “me resbala”/“it slides off” is my mantra for the next decade.

Core 2 Duo - Beta Test Signup!

I’m more excited my new Core 2 Duo and reusing my old Pebble Time, than updating to WatchOS26 on my S09.

First WWDC I regret missing a meeting for.

I finished reading: Pushing Ice by Alastair Reynolds 📚

Good read. However, the ending was a little underwhelming after al, the buildup.

Daring Fireball: Bill Atkinson Dies From Cancer at 74

We sit in the shoulders of giants.

Letter to Arc members 2025

Well, that’s a bummer.

What I took from The AeroPress Premium Review, was that the XL tasted similarly to the classic AeroPress. I really have not interest in a glass and expensive version.

Quiche Reader

Make a dent in your ever-growing list of articles to read later. Save these pages to an app where you will finally act on them.

If you rather don’t go further down the Rabbit Hole with Readwise Reader, this is a great option.

Has anyone figured out a way to use iPhone Standby mode to show you’re in a meeting? I use my iPhone as a camera at work, and it would be great it could tell those approaching my desk that I’m in a call.

Really curious about these Nothing is making over-ears.

I need to believe… that in most cases, simply ignoring an obnoxious email is the best way to win an argument.

We visited a farm yesterday.

Entertain Experiments: 

Give me an efficient routine, and I’ll make a ritual out of it. I love me some routine.

My swimming bag is a fine-tuned jigsaw of items, from the pocket the underwear goes (learned the hard way), to my flat hair comb and shaving kit. And this modus operandi tends to repeat throughout the 1000 …

Dammit. Not only do I love keyboards, but I make myself believe I need side keyboards like the Creator Micro v1. Never mind that I already have a Megalodon Triple Knob Macro Pad, which I hardly use.

Mind the Joy: 

This little mantra has served me well over the years. It’s a reminder of being mindful of the moment. Present and aware of any little detail to appreciate.

Looking to the past and the future makes worries cast shadows across time. But in most of each of those moments in time, you’re safe …

The Force is Better Together: 

I have an unpublished draft post titled: Am I a Star Wars fan anymore?. It was supposed to be an exploration of my love for Star Wars, when I wasn’t excited about any of the upcoming movies or shows at the time. Since I was the designated Star Wars geek in multiple circles.

Never published it …

uBlock disabled on Arc at some point this week. Still not seeing the new native ad-blocker settings in my version. Going with Ghostery for now.

Smart at Scale Thoughts: As organizations grow, they must transition from a “startup mode” of aligned chaos to a structured yet flexible approach that enables independent teams to collaborate effectively.

I’m a man of simple pleasures.

My stargazer.

📺 Paradise was not at all what I expected. In the best of ways. Watched all season 1 in less than a week with Ana. Won’t spoil anything, just give it 2 episodes.

Something, something, separate process discussions with content ones. Need to catch my breath and think/write more about this.

TIL: I can play Castro podcast to my AirPods while iPhone plays Spotify in CarPlay. Don’t judge me, but world of possibilities in Costa Rica traffic with 7yo music selection

So glad I saved my old iPad mini 6 Moshi iVisor AG Anti-glare Screen Protector. The glass protector I bought with the mini 7 was totally transparent and antiglare, but way too slippery. Great for gaming I’d imagine, but it made writing difficult.

Crappity crap. Dropped by remarkable2 pen and now it “writes” even when tip not touching screen. Luckily have a cheap backup, but without magnets it will last as long as a fart in a hammock.

Pre-ordered Black Pebble Core 2 Duo. Couldn’t help myself. Luckily not convinced with the Core Time 2 looks, if it had looked closer to the Pebble Time 2, I’d had gone with that one.

4 hour incident on website IDP. There goes our 99.99 SLA.

📺 Really enjoyed S01 of The Agency with Ana. Also have the soundtrack in repeat. Didn’t know Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch, lots of Hans Zimmer vibes, but different enough.

Ok let’s go.

iMessage is about to loose probably the only 2 users in Costa Rica. For some reason, my messages to my wife intermittently are not delivery from the iPhone. But works perfectly from Mac/iPad. Guessing is something related to email/phone# order, but for the life of me, can’t figure it out.

Ok, now I just have to give Leader Key a try. Geeky video? mentions Quicksilver? Continuous updates?

Blot now supports iCloud as a sync folder. There’s no more friction to posting from Obsidian on iPhone/iPad. Which means that if don’t become a prolific blogger starting today… maybe the tools wasn’t my problem?

Dear me. Selective text on iOS is frustrating. I manage to select a word in one line, but the exact same gesture on the next one selects the whole sentence. Can replicate ad infinitum.

The Opencore experiment worked, but didn’t produce an usable computer. Let’s see if a Linux injection helps.

Very excited about blot.im iCloud client. If it works, i’ll be able to stop using Maestral. But then… if I get a Framework 12in… jeez, being a geek can be exhausting.

Finished reading: The Salvage Crew by Yudhanjaya Wijeratne 📚

Glad I stuck with it at the end. But almost quit a few times. Not sure if the plot holes was from my lack of attention or “suspension of disbelief” requieres to enjoy the ride.

The importance of mind maps and concept maps will increase in the AI/LLM age. It’s getting easier to fill the space between concepts, but the value of spotting insightful connections remains.

Screegle has become an essential tool in my productivity stack. It enables clean, distraction-free sharing of specific application windows during presentations. Previously, it had compatibility issues with Microsoft Teams, but I’m pleased to report that its “off-screen window” …

Chorus has become my new default AI tool on the Mac. The way in allows to combine multiple models is great.

Breaking through the clouds after takeoff on today’s SJO-FLL flight.

Finished reading: Liminal Thinking by Dave Gray 📚

Kept hearing references to this on the Bookworms podcast. It was really good. Feels strange to say that I’m still digesting it, since it’s such a straightforward read. But it did challenge my beliefs. Recommended.

The Anthropic Economic Index is the start of something. The currently sampling is too small imho, but they need to start somewhere. I see this report becoming an important indicator in a few years.

Curious if Raycat’s Hyper Key can replace my Karabiner setup. Still, great feature to add.

I really appreciate Superhuman. Of course, it just makes a productive cog that is increases shareholder value. But it makes selling my soul an almost enjoyable activity.

Apple Invites is interesting. Will show to my wife to understand if real people™ see value.

Here we go. Testing posting from Obsidian via Shortcuts.

Realized that on the Mac, I don’t want to go somewhere special to post updated. I rather have select some text from my current work setting and post from there. Block some procrastination time in the afternoon to work with Humboldt and Obsidian Shortcut Launcher.

Finished reading: Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang 📚

Read Exhalation a while back, and reread it over the Xmas break. I liked both collections, and probably enjoyed Exhalation a bit more. But Stories and more moments that left staring into the distance in thought. Absolutely …

My goodness. Gemini 2.0 Flash just created an Obsidian Templater in one try that replaced 45min of (failed) attempts from me – and a 20min fluly Shortcuts workaround. We’re so f… but the’ll be a golden age before we are assimilated.

I consider myself an Obsidian super user 🙄, but this readme allowed to get my main vault overview page to a stage I’m really happy with – and with minimal plugins. Emailed the owner a quick thanks.

Lucky in Love: 

Even when flying alone for work, I arrive way too early at airports. I even check the weight of my carry-on. Why? rules always seem to apply to me. Some would say I’m unlucky, and I don’t mind. Because I’m lucky in love.

I don’t play the lottery or gamble. Yes, in the back of …

Up Next - Things I want to Blog About: 

Here’s three things I want to blog about over at 5typos.net during January:

1. Paid subscriptions for 2025
2. My iOS Home Screen
3. Best Tech Purchases of 2024

Let’s see if sharing this publicly shames me into actually writing the posts.

Home Sweet Home: 

I once flew just over our Miami apartment when coming back of a work trip, and instagrammed a photo with the caption:

Home is where Ana is.

I was particularly proud of that one. Flash forward a decade, and the caption should now read:

Home is where Ana, Robie and Bettina are.

While true, …

Good Presentation: 

Had a presentation go (really?) well today. Followed a mashup of recommendations:

• Practiced my start and ending
• After start, I told them the 3 things that were important about the presentation.
• Went into each of them in a conversational tone. They’re things I know well enough.
• Reminded of the 3 …

Writing or Posting Every Day?: 

Since I don’t consider myself capable of accumulating writing so that I can post multiple days out of a single writing session, the causality is clear: I need to write every day to post daily or weekly.

However, the dopamine hit of posting something is enough that I feel confident I can …

Happy to be Back: 

Enjoying the micro.one new car smell. It has enough customization to arrange things how I like them — but not an infinite canvas that throws me into a procrastinating rabbit hole.

I have some thoughts on the tone between this blog and 5typos.net. But my priority is to fail forward: just write. …

Back on micro.blog after two years. Micro.one is too good a value to pass up. I understand why the full service needed to be developed before this version existed. But this is closer to what I pledged in kickstarter 8 years ago.

Resetting my iPhone homescreen for new year. Almost there. This Readwise Reeder Url Scheme to link directly to books has been useful.

Decided I’ll stick with daily notes instead of One Big Daily Log file – or whatever you’d like to call it. However. Still thinking of what to do with links.

Seems to be working now. Will be testing this going forward.

My previous assumption that I had the wrong the template for snippets was wrong. For whatever reason, all the comment tags were changes from <!-- to <! --. The great thing about text based systems, the fix was a quick find/replace in Sublime Text

Had messed-up the comments part of my Obsidian Web Clipper Markdown comments section, it was missing the third - dash. As it stands it looks like this:

Only using AI to get a second opinion of website author for when it’s missed, or not included by tags.

Spend afternoon playing with …

Discovered COBI building blocks today thanks to my buddy Gus. Now I getting COBI A-10 Thunderbolt II Warthog for Xmas from Ana. Sweet.

Went back to Moom after Swift Shift [[../[tidbits]/2024/2024w52 fixed|↯]] seems be causing my Mac to slowdown a lot.

Now back on Things. Procrastinating my through all my way through all my task managers instead of dealing with the actual tasks.

Geeky procrastination day. Added vertical tabs to obsidian (again). Reinstalled SearchLink Services – can’t understand how I lived without it.

Having second thoughts with my NotePlan experiment[[2024-12-04|↯]].

Great Costa Rican Coffee Brewing methods video.

Moved the Obsidian Vault theme tied to this blog them back to Minimal with the following changes:

• Settings - Appearance - Show Inline Title
• Style Settings
  • Hide properties heading
  • Hide “Add property” button
  • Tab title visibility: visible

Trying to remember how I added a black bar to the top of the site. Can’t find the code. This is why you should use GitHub for code rather than simple Dropbox.

Managed to setup the top black bar. I’ll explain soon. Just needs to get my bearings still.

Seems like Tana mobile is out. My …

Nice. This is a test

Testing out Obsidian Quick Capture iOS app. Does it append?

It does! Omg. Love how it also has a live activity if you leave a note without sending.

Image test.

Oh man. Was planning to order some Wimp Decaf coffee for my next trip to the US – but they’re taking a break after Hurricane Helene.

LIMINAL Spaces Wallpaper is going to be my new set of wallpapers across devices. For sure tied to one of my focus areas.

Back to the routine. Managed to move Ana’s SIM to eSIM, but since my local CR line is corporate, need to go through a different process.

Like what I see with Gibberish. Maybe a replacement to [[2023-05-17|Montaigne]]? Regardless, it’s all an excuse.

Hard drives, battery packs and now… AirTags

Things I’ve had to control impulse buys when on sale.

Finally played some pickleball with mom. I see the fun.

Finding it hard to not engage with work as everyone arrives from vacation and I start mine.

Thinking about what affects tides more, earth’s rotation or the moon’s orbit.

Good friend is going through rough day with youngest child. What to do? How to help?

I’ll take it. Listening to my dad talk about my swimming days with such pride was a very nice moment.

Trying out Cometeer coffee and wow! it’s really good.

Been playing with Remarkable2 keyboard thingy. Hardware is very nice, but software feels limiting. Not even talking about OS functionality, but basic stuff as better Apple-style keys mapping. Would like alt + n to create a page for example, or option + ; to produce ellipses …

In a post-apocalyptic event, do we as a society revert linearly, say, 500 years? Or do we manage to keep some sprinkles of modernity? I lean toward the second, but there’s a huge amount of sci-fi literature that says otherwise.

Playing with mastofeed.org/. Plan is to have my Obsidian Daily Notes – which are my blog’s OpenJournal section – autopost.

Should use a tag for these… maybe?

Nope, makes no sense. MastoFeed – which great and is now setup for the main blog feed – only looks at titles, not comments. Hmmmm, wait …

I’m sure somewhere within Apple, the Shortcuts team has an alpha with a LLM prompt way to create the workflows.

Sadly, even more sure something like it isn’t coming this year.

Thinking on [[../_scrapyard/2022-02-20 Return to Micro.blog|what to do]] with roberto.mateu.me . Playing with Montaigne and I like what I see.

Said it before and I’ll say it again: it was a mistake for DayOne to not pursue Publish – their personal blogging add on.

Wondering if I could only subscribe to just one, if I’d choose Arc Browser or Raycast Pro.

Leaning towards Arc, but haven’t tried Raycast AI.

Jezzz. Spotify’s new Desktop UI is painful to me. If the card thing is not working for you, suggest you do a (couple?) of View/Zoom Out. Might check Tidal a bit. Writing regex with ChatGPT blows my mind, every…single…time.

Rollercoaster of a day with new (used) car android head unit and CarPlay. What started as an app update to try get up next/prev steering keys working, eventually got to a point with no CarPlay app launching. Happily by sunset, CarPlay was working again. However now none of the buttons (including …

Big fan of the Wool books series. Very surprised how much I enjoyed the first 2 episodes of Silo TV show.

Lance Hedrick great mega review Timemore Sculptor 064, 064s, 078, 078s.

Still happy to go with the 064 – features, looks and price are what I wanted. Just not crazy about the high pitch motor noise it shows on videos.

Thinking again about folder naming. Maybe how to incorporate special symbols like ellipsis to denote status:

Something along the lines of:

• 23⋮04 Project Name: Paused
• 23⋰04 Project Name: In Progress

And such.

But as I write it, don’t convince myself.

Being an app junky, surprised how little interest I have in Blue Sky and others. I’m happy and comfy in Mastodon and Ivory.

Morning with my forever crush, Afternoon with compatriots. Children had fun on their own, We arrived safely home.

Food was good and plenty, Drinks enough and true. There was a campfire and a ballgame, What else can it be asked of you?

A family together, 5 names and 8 legs. Happy under 1 roof, What …

Sir Sean Connery on his AFI Life Achievement Award:

Memories of working with people who are fun and industrious, talented and enthusiastic. These are all the qualities that I find admirable.

Reminded me a bit of this post of by Reinhard Engels, of which I think a lot

Think Positive. Fake it till …

Abandoned Thin Air. I just couldn’t get into it.

When I miss a few day on my journal and then do backdating, have to remember that how I felt is something I will forget. The day’s activities are easy to recreate, but end of day mood is not. A mini journal note is important.

I got my Boox Leaf 2, and I’ve been playing with it all week. It does have some rough edges. The Amazon Kindle app on Android page flip makes it unusable for me.

Settled on the Google Books app, in which you can disable the 3D page flip effect. That works perfectly. Uploading epubs also works …

Vacation at end of day. Going all in.

Decided in the TIMEMORE 064 Kickstarter.

This view by The Real Sprometheus pushed me over:

www.youtube.com/watch

This comment on the video also helped:

Q: timemore sculptor or fellow opus

Sculptor no question. Metal body, rpm control, 64mm flats, quieter, stepless grind adjustments. It’s on a …

Fifth day of meditation/contemplation. Recommendation by Christian to start with 20min really helped last two days. I would have failed beyond 10min. Christian also sent me an invite for Balance, which he recommends. Will give it a try this week.

Been using Center which has a great minimal iPhone …

Attempting to start “meditation” practice yet again. 20min, focus on breathing. After the mind calms down, awareness of where it pulls towards, but not following. Return to breathing. Like a push-up, the exercise is in coming back to the starting position.

While the benefits are clear …

The leaked announcement of Github switching to Teams gets me on the same nostalgic mindset as [[../2023/2023-02-10 Look Back and Laugh|Friday’s post]]. Corporations maximize value. At least in the current day and age – that’s their prime objective. At leadership level, it makes perfect …

Went all in today, can’t believe I posted about damp towels.

Open journal is going to be the digital garden. Atomic notes that can grow. None of this social status updates. That goes on mastodon. Small notes like this one that can be updated and brought back on top. That’s why it doesn’t have a RSS feed. But, their atomicity also means it can be …

This page is becoming a microblog of sorts. Not the intent. The idea was longish form post (500 chars) without much filter. Thinking of today’s either the collaboration question expanded or the the glyph one should have gone long, or continually updated throughout the day.

Why note a …

Giving some thought to the idea of Intermediate Packets on the personal areas. Thinking in terms of: monthly personal review should generate an update to the /now page on website. Weekly review also some sort of post.

Classic “architecture” questions: what’s the source of truth for the daily posting files? Until Obsidian is not the main application on both desktop and mobile, file needs to be dumb. Which is a good practice as I’ve learned over the years from Gerardo.

What does this mean? …

Ok, start of a new experiment. From the clear fail of February’s write everyday comes the OJ, aka the open journal. What the hell is it? Some of the ingredients:

• Daily log.
• not hidden, but unlisted.
• Unrefined.
• Free-flow.
• No title.
• Append as I go.

The practice is to write. The hypothesis is …

Ok, start of a new experiment. From the clear fail of February’s write everyday comes the OJ, aka the open journal. What the hell is it? Some of the ingredients:

• Daily log.
• not hidden, but unlisted.
• Unrefined.
• Free-flow.
• No title.
• Append as I go.

The practice is to write. The hypothesis is …

rcmd and Stage Manager. Adding keyboard shortcuts to Stage Manager seems very useful.

The VARIA VS3 is a nice looking grinder without a crazy price.

🎥 enjoyed the Raymond and Ray movie.

Up until now, all my YAML had been short and sweet. Today I had to play around with a long and… painful one. Jezzzz YAML is very OCD with spaces.

Went ahead and signed up for omg.lol – deciding if I should keep micro.blog the activitypub main account, or just the source that pushes to mastodon/twitter.

Was doing all sorts of javascript jujitsu to count characters of documents in Obsidian using Dataview, and turns out file.size is a perfect proxy.

I like how following Mastodon accounts from micro.blog improves the feed. But reconsidering just using micro.blog once Mastodon.technology goes away. The mastodon app is so much better than micro.blog for one, and I want to follow much more noise. Keeping eye on omg.lol.

As I see some of the dreamy nighmarish things AI/ML image generation software comes up with, can’t help feel sorry for those who had to endure the first few iterations of The Matrix.

Testing post via Obsidian and new micro.blog mastodon integration.

Tana seems to want to be way more than a PKM, rather an everything knowledge manager with collaboration. Signed up for invite, let’s see. My love for Obsidian still continues.

Wondering if Amazon today announces a Kindle with pen support. Feels like the market has grown enough.

Oh crap. The Freewrite Alpha is one of those need generating products. I can hear myself think “if I had this I could write more”.

Finished reading: The Way I Heard It by Mike Rowe 📚Amazing audiobook. I learned, was entertained and it made me think. What else can you ask of a good book? Also, one of my new favorite audiobooks, because the narration by the author really comes through.

I find the Obsidian Influx plugin very intriguing. Haven’t had time to play with it, but will do soon.

Happy to be perusing How to make the best coffee at home by James Hoffmann 📚

iOS Kindle app 6.65 adds Share to Kindle ePub support. But it looks like just a wrapper of their send to Kindle via email functionality. Which has terrible ePub conversion.

Waiting to see what’s going to be the best ePub to Kindle solution going forward.

It’s a slow motion heartbreak to continue to see SLS struggle. Seems everyone knows the project should just be scrapped and remaining resources allocated to private space companies. Yet, the same everyone are hoping for a comeback story.

After 4½ years we moved out across the street. Many memories, but excited about now facing north — yet still have all the same neighbors.

If you have an Anti-Fog Shower Mirror, give it a clean with toothpaste to remove spots.

Movie about BlackBerry?() Count me in. The book it’s based on was good, although not “movie like”.

Still waiting for the Palm TV Show.

Currently listening: The Way I Heard It by Mike Rowe 📚

Great audiobook. Almost done. Highly recommended.

The M2 MacBook Air is so thin, that my cheap(ish) Omoton vertical stand doesn’t hold it - even on the smallest setting.

Yep, the Arc Browser hype is real.

Enjoying Eyes of the Void by Adrian Tchaikovsky 📚. About 100 pages in, finally remembered most of the characters and looking forward to evening reading.

Trying to return: 

Trying to return to weekly post. Managed to do a few daily make sentences writing session in May/June, but didn’t convert any to blog post.

Hot damn, I love Obsidian + Dataview

Sweet dreams.

A few months ago my 4yo jokingly coined Papa Jefe (Dad Boss) as her reply to one of my respect my authority rants. My wife immortalized it for my Father’s Day gift.

Finished reading: Salvation by Peter F. Hamilton 📚

Took its time to get going, but once it did the multiple stories started making sense. Will likely continue then series.

Starting: Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte 📚

Happy this is out!

Praise the compiler gods, Mac App Store OneDrive version 22.111.0522 is finally Universal. Let us sync.

Was about to celebrate Raycast’s new dynamic with placeholders snippets, but just noticed it doesn’t have date formatting – surely coming, but still no Alfred. Also looking forward what Alfred 5 will have in stock for us.

1st place popular vote and 2nd judges selection for best chocolate bar!!! So proud.

Super proud of my better half in Costa Rica’s Feria del Chocolate 2022.

Best chocolates you’ve ever tested imho.

Back to Brave after a week with Vivaldi. The customization options Vivaldi is everything and more I ask for – but when I a crunch, I just can’t stop to think about it and the Tab Stack system starts to get in the way.

Modern CSV 2 Beta is out. M1 versions and a few more goodies. This is my favorite app for dealing with CSVs – which I rarely do UNTIL it’s non-stop.

Thought that whatever utility gave a background to my Menu Bar had stopped working, but was reminded this is now an option: System Preferences → Accessibility → Display

At some point last week it reseted itself.

First screenshot of the Arc Browser I’ve seen. Like it.

Side tabs are a great option multi tab workflows. Arc’s implementation seems to take it to another level. Hope I get my invite soon.

Paste Keyboard looks very useful. Still hoping for a return of Pastebot to iOS though.

Dear fellow geeks trapped in a corporate job… Mac App Store OneDrive Version 22.099.0508 is still Intel only.

Not sure I’d pick the Logitech MX Mechanical Mini Wireless Keyboard over my Keychron K3, but seems like a good option to have.

Currently reading: Salvation by Peter F. Hamilton 📚

Took me longer than expected to get into. But now in for the ride.

Life and work got in the way today, but hoping for a quiet corner over the weekend to enjoy The Smile - A Light For Attracting Attention album.

Currently reading: Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making by Tony Fadell 📚

Coudn’t wait to get started on this one.

If you are migrating old(ish) github actions into new repos – remember to check for main vs master names in the branches conditions. I’m never getting the last 45 minutes back.

Sailing Sunday. Almost no wind, but good for practicing.

Beyond this point, make your own path.

Snapchat’s pixy drone looks cool. Hope there’s a no-snapchat use case.

Reeder we already great. Now it’s brilliant.

Loving my Apple Studio Display, even the camera is more than fine (when coming from a cheap logitech). But can’t help but wish there was a Touch ID spot somewhere on the side. If it could be done on a $149 Keyboard…

Also think this would have helped with comparisons.

My favorite barista ☕️

My unboxing and setup partner

Finished reading: The Dragon Waiting by John M. Ford 📚

Good read, but my ignorance of the historical era fictionalized took a bit of fun out of it.

A combination of a dataset with empty string vs null issue and poorly written case-when-else query just made me spend 4 hours debugging an ETL. Not sure if proud of my brilliance, or aware I’m a monkey that randomly wrote a Shakespearean SQL query.

Really enjoying my new Keychron K7 with brown switches. Only used it with iPad, but size feels as (more?) natural as the K3v1. For sure the K1 at the office will go on sale soon – what got me started this rabbit hole, but too classically large.

Apple Studio Display arrived on time, woohoo!!! Box of VESA version is smaller than the regular stand box, woohoo!! Smaller box still doesn’t fit on my biggest suitcase, crap!

Currently reading: The Dragon Waiting by John M. Ford 📚

Overall enjoying it, but taking longer than expected with it.

MIA weekend.

Happy April 1st. Friendly reminder that all the 2022Q1 projects delivery dates you put in an email last year – are now officially late.

This The Verge article about Wyze Cams vulnerability made me remove two v3 cams from my cart. I was planning to rotate a couple of old ones we have, but being opaque about a known issue is not worth savings of their cameras.

Sometimes I wish Apple would name its apps with more personality. It imposible to parse search results for Mac Shortcuts Symlinks, from thousands of aliases and shortcuts results. When I want to know how to save a file to a Symlink in Apple Shortcuts app folder structure.

We’ve come full circle. There’s now support for Markdown in Google Docs.

Love the idea of apps like FT Edit and The Economist Espresso. Will be trying the Financial Times one for sure.

Back on eesel Chrome plugin with their new Folders feature.

Great forum thread on Obsidian Hotkeys. Good place to get ideas from.

Looking Back at Desktop Monitors

The AfterShokz OpenComm had become unusable because they kept muting themselves in calls. This Apple Forum suggestion seems to alleviate the problem. However, it does seem to be a Monterey bug.

A great concert is one where you leave liking the band even more #ColdplaySanJose

Hope tomorrow is Mac Studio and Studio Display review day.

With Pipe Commands extension RayCast approaches Alfred’s Universal Actions. However, RayCast Github Issues extension is so good, it’s my main interface to issues and notifications now.

Debating if I should setup Python3 on Mac or just do a VM Linux for it. I use the scripts occasionally, but usually it’s a quick and dirty hack with little regard for security. And always end having to update a bunch of packages when I revisit.

Universal Control is pretty amazing.

Apple Studio Display buying remorse not applying for now, specially seeing how shipping dates have slipped

Looks like my weekly macOS restart is due… iCloud Drive freaking out over 75 .md files.

Ordered Studio Display with standard glass and VESA mount adapter. Very excited.

I was happy for an Apple Event, but didn’t think a new display was going to be on the cards. Planets may even align for a trip to US in April.

flowchart.fun now lets you export to markdown. Brilliant. The FF syntax is simpler for quick ideas imho.

Finished reading: Termination Shock: A Novel by Neal Stephenson 📚.

Far from my favorite, but I never considered abandoning it — which sometimes happens to me with NS’s books.

Feel like crap. 4th member of household to likely fall for omicron (?). Luckily vaccinated with booster. Holding on for a light fever.

Sadly Hyperkey app (recommended) had an issue with my plugging/unplugging USB-C keyboard and loosing control. Replicated the functionality with Karabiner, here’s my rule CommandR Key to Hyper Key (CommandR if held).

🎥 Finished watching Maixabel last night. Powerful and extremely well acted Spanish movie about a recent — more that I remembered — chapter in Spain’s history. Recommended.

☕️ No press french press: 20gr medium coarse (3 rotations 1Zpresso JX) decaf + 380 ml water. Wait 4 min, stir top crust, remove foam and fines. Let it rest at least 5min. Pour in one motion, so back/forward flow doesn’t agitate the grounds again.

Lots of good folder-naming-system nuggets here. Love this posts with examples.

I really really miss Superhuman mail app on my Friday inbox sweep. Hopefully the O365 version will be available soonish.

Coined a new term for my software dev CapEx reports: Zorp: Zero Outcome Reporting Project. Basically groups all tasks that are not part of a project, which automatically makes them OpEx. The added benefit being that it shows last when sorting projects.

My AeroPress barista.

Anything that pipes more stuff to RSS sounds good to me. But can’t get my mind around Twitter-to-RSS instead of just having a blog. But never forget that in the long run, Dave Winer is always right.

It’s a showdown.

📺 Weekend binge watching Inventing Anna on Netflix with my Ana. Liking it more than expected. Let’s see about the last 3 tomorrow.

Yikes. Hi everyone! Forgot posts on micro.blog go the common feed. Working on importing from blot – trying not to bring in the titles.

I don’t think the slack replacement with Mastodon experiment is working out. Now I’ll play with the idea of returning to micro.blog and connecting with Mastodon account.

Of course now I have a mishmash of posts between this microblog and the mastodon Pueblo.dedosdefrente.com experiment.

The ZWILLING Enfinigy Drip coffee maker looks a solid cheaper alternative to the Ratio Six. Looking forward to some comparisons.

Really hoping I can get into the Superhuman O365 beta list soon. The slowness of Outlook makes my sorting pomodoros unnecessary painful.

Watched The Expanse season 6 during the weekend. Held off the final episode today so I can enjoy it next weekend… or maybe I don’t want to let go.

Moving posting scripts from drafts to obsidian + shortcuts.

Figuring out my microblogging sorting now that I have a mastodon instance.

A lo que vinimos  — what we came for. An expression I always enjoy hearing in real life™.

🎥 Curious of how accurate, but King Richard was really good.

Great club day. Trying out new tennis rackets, lunch and pool. Now enjoying a nice Escazú sunset.

Old quick faithful today: 24gr fine to 240ml. Prismo with paper filter. After a minute ~ 8 back/forward stirs and wait 30s to slowly press. Complete with hot water to 300ml and split in two cups. Then 150ml of foamed milk in each.

Similar recipe as yesterday but on the Clever Dripper — as control.

Reaching the point of my handwriting improvement project in which I see all that I’m doing wrong. In theory getting better… in practice, the worst combination between my previous style and the new one.

Testing out the Slow System’s metal dripper. With 22gr Costa Rican dark (medium coarse) and 525ml water. Turned out really soft and sweet.

Doing some numerology for new habits:

• 9:41am end morning browsing block
• 1:23pm take fish oil reminder
• 5:43pm start of 18:6(ish) fasting
• 9:02pm start of evening browsing block

One of those days parenthood has proven challenging.

Adding Three Jerks Jerky to my wishlist.

I’ve cut my hand twice over the last week not handling my safety razor carefully enough. That’s probably up 200% over the last 10 years average.

There’s a lesson here somewhere.

Grateful to arrive back in Costa Rica safe and sound. Airport was full, which makes me happy for the economy.

You cannot give what you don’t have.

Heard it at mass. Stayed with me.

Just opened an Airtag 4 pack from Target and 2 were missing. Box looked intact, but in hindsight seemed extra hard to open. Probably someone did a fraud return. Not cool.

My Dad surprised me with a reMarkable 2 tablet for Xmas. I’m flipping.

Just like budget food, budget airlines are less bad internationally.

📖 Enjoying Mel Brooks All About Me! audiobook so very much.

Don’t know how I expect to level up my work documentation and processes checklists — if I still can’t sit down on the toilet without first checking if there’s a paper roll.

The LAGOM mini is yet another very nice looking grinder.

There’s something about Apple Books on iOS that feels slow. The UX is either laggy or the effects are too long.

Really into Neal Stephenson’s latest novel, Termination Shock. Can’t wait to get back to it every evening.

“Kids” got a piano keyboard for Xmas. Going over the options of teaching apps. Currently Simply Piano is ahead.

Can’t believe I didn’t buy the Noir Safari Extension sooner.

I’m hoping that my preference of writing on the 2018 11in iPad Pro over the 2021 iPad mini is because of the lack of Moshi iVisor screen cover. All the use cases where the smaller iPad was going to fix everything have not happened — and I struggle to pick it over the larger iPad almost every day.

The original Matrix blew my mind and rewired my brain. Which makes The Matrix Resurrection imposible to be great, but it wasn’t bad.

House now emptying out. I’m starting to realize that every year I enjoy the chaos of a full home more. Crossover happened probably 3 years back, and I have reached a point where I’m looking forward to it next year.

Minimal viable tasks as a way to reduce perceived costs of starting something and making it more likely to inch forward the project. Very similar to intermittent packet from Second Brain.

Stopping work when you’re tired and not when everything is done is a luxury in my world view. An earned luxury for sure, but not something I counted on for most of my adult life.

With AWS East down, might as well set Teams to auto-respond: working on it and contemplate a life of owning a seaside coffee house that also consults wifi networks.

Tonight I’m sleeping with a device that will measure my blood pressure every 20 minutes. I feel every one of my 40 years of age.

A Catalyst WhatsApp version will be an interesting experiment. The current electron version works very well

If you need ideas for your gratitude journal, be thankful that 8-10cm scorpions are not coming to your home seeking shelter from storms.

Like that Keychron is making the M1 Ultra-Light Optical Mouse. This one is not for me, but looking forward to the wireless version.

Gave up on buying Spanish ebooks for before stories on El Corte Ingles / Tagus books - the experience is so bad they don’t even deserve a shame link. Luckily found ArgentinaBooks, which seems to have a similar library.

Even better, LibrosPatagonia in Chile has ebooks from the Ekaré editorial, so …

Curious about Sarah Jean Anderson winning recipe on the 2015 World Brewers Cup. Kinda like a deconstructed no-press French press recipe. This polished immersion brewing recipe is close to what I’m going to play with.

Waiting for the iVisor AG Anti-glare Screen Protector for the iPad mini 6. Luckily it seems to be coming soon.

Went down a Stainless Steel Carafe rabbit hole with the Ratio Six Thermal Carafe. However, I might end up with the Zojirushi SH-HC10BM. Or with neither — and just serve the coffee faster.

Seems like December will be a good time to get my iPad mini 6. It’s when my screen cover of choice will be available.

I need to staple Nicholas Bate’s Writing Primer 14 to my forehead.

Subscribed for a year of Simplify Gmail by Michael Leggett — absolutely worth it just for allowing me to use ESC to drill out of messages. The clean and consisted UX for Gmail is just icing on the cake.

On a similar note, Ted Lasso’s S02 Christmas episode could be prescription medicine whenever you’re feeling shitty. I can just imagine Jason Sudeikis and Bill Lawrence deciding they were going to create a feel-good episode, never mind the critics.

Really liked CODA. Recommended.

You can temporarily highlight the current row (without changing the selection) by pressing Shift+Space. Current column with Ctrl+Space.

Highlight active row/column in Excel without using VBA? Stackoverflow.com

Extremely useful tip if you’re working with large spreadsheets.

Views of Coronado, Costa Rica.

Replaced SelfControl with Freedom to help me with better deep work sessions. It’s working great. Absolute surprise is nudge towards reading by blocking social and news sites on iPad in the evening.

The worst part of my job involves dealing with Excel as the last mile of data manipulation — instead of the many (comparatively) elegant sources for the data.

Great rainforest weekend.

You could argue “it’s not the right time” given the pandemic and extreme weather of almost any activity: making a movie that inspires, going to the olympics to break a world record or fighting a dictatorship.

I applaud any team that manages to propel humans to space the same way others celebrate a team hitting a ball into a net. Both are equally driven by passion and capitalist gains.

Almost ordered a new iMac after playing with it on a store. The screen is beautiful and the design has grown on me. Glad this US trip is almost over, will make it easier to wait for whatever iMac Pro(ish) is coming.

Family pit stop at Mistral Coffee. It was great.

Pledged for The Slow System by Craighton Berman. Love the design, but specially like the no press french press top.

James Hoffmann’s book World Atlas Of Coffee is now on Audible. Insta-buy.

Saving two great shots here of last week’s launch for posterity.

Liftoff of Falcon 9 with GPS III SV-05 pic.twitter.com/ixjYpm4s7s

— Ben Cooper (@LaunchPhoto) June 17, 2021

The KEY Coffee Grinder is beautiful. But before you start to wonder if the “home” model of Weber Workshops grinders is for you… the pre-order price is $1,499 USD.

Foo Fighters invites Dave Chappelle to sing Radiohead’s Creep on the reopening of Madison Square Garden yesterday. Hell yes 2021.

Absolutely loved Pixar’s Luca movie.

Amazing day. We visited KSC for the Falcon 9 GPS III Space Vehicle 05 launch. Long drive, but totally worth it.

The Dataview plugin snippet showcase in the Obsidian Forums is a great place to get ideas and level up your queries.

The new(est) Firefox looks very nice. Not sure if it’s the baseline M1 speed, but it also feels snappy.

Oh boy, the KEY Grinder is beautiful, and crazy expensive.

It was a great day.

Arcadia was my hard landing back into comics this weekend. And I’m so happy with the mind bruises it caused.

Excellent philosophical video on What is Obsidian.

Dialed in my dark coffee grind this weekend. Went coarser and saw an improvement: more body and oily — in a good way.

Funny story: I knew nothing about the book until Robie — our mini space fanatic — picked it in a bookstore based on the cover.

Really enjoying Liftoff by Eric Berger about SpaceX early days. Amazing how it doesn’t tell a story about how they made it, but rather: in how many ways they almost didn’t.

Do you wish to die wise or intelligent?

I’m “just looking”, VR edition.

They new iMac can also come as a VESA Mount. Please hide my wallet until the iMac Pro appears.

The LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS VOLUME 2 Trailer is worth seeing. I loved the first season. Animatrix flashbacks all around.

I wish something like stackline was native on macOS.

My daily driver on the right, and something completely different for the afternoon on the left.

Playing with Cloudflare Pages. Interesting. Script is installing Hugo for some reason — it’s a Jekyll site, but nice workflow all around.

Instant subscribe to the Atlas Obscura Podcast.

Really looking to playing Townscaper this summer.

In flights

Go science!

Doing some thinking around Gary Vaynerchuk’s Document, Don’t Create. Probably need less thinking and more doing.

First shave with the Twig Razor was amazingly smooth. Same Persona blades I usually use. Will give it a few more passes before calling it — but this could be my first razor change in 8 years.

Nasa’s official Perseverance Rover’s Descent and Touchdown on Mars landing video is just too amazing.

Rewatched The Emperor’s New Groove with Ana and kids. Initial groans were paused when I stated it was one of my favorite movies… which it is.

Movie holds amazingly well compared to other animated ones from the era. Enjoyed it even more this time reading Vulture’s article on it.

This engadget article on Finder filename sorting is useful to keep around when I’m getting creative with my project naming.

Watching LEGO Star Wars: The Yoda Chronicles with Robie. Fun, but it’s messing with my canon.

Absolutely love Amazon’s new app icon. Let App icons be app icons. I hope this is the start of a trend reversals.

This is going to confuse a whole generation. Still, so good.

The Speed Cubers is excellent. As a dad and a geek, enjoyed a lot — even teared up at some point.

This Kettlebell Christmas Commercial really hits the spot — specially since I’ve started doing T-Handle Kettlebell again this year.

Nice summary video of 10 Aeropress recipes.

Really enjoyed Palm Springs take on Groundhog Day. Even Ana liked it.

This AeroPress recipe will increase steep time to 90s as a result of the experiment

Sometimes the scientific method just means:

I have no idea of what I’m doing… let me take notes.

Started using macOS dictation, and it felt good. Can see how it would work in certain workflows.

I revisit Kenji López-Alt onion slide and dice video once a week it seems.

Very happy how this recipe turned out.

Cutting back on Dr. Pepper this year. Club Soda and Seltzer with a shot of lemon are the lifehack test for the next week.

Soul’s soundtrack is lock and loaded for the work week. The movie is excellent: enjoyable on the surface but with many layers that make me look forward to multiple viewings.

Rewatched Thor Ragnarok last night, and it’s still my favorite MCU movie.

Wonder Woman 1984 really fell flat the last 1/3 for me.

Almost lost drone flying into a myst/cloud — ground sensor went crazy. Red wine also didn’t help my piloting skills.

If you’re ever around, Café Monteverde has delicious coffee.

Watched Scott Pilgrim yet again, it really is one of my favorite movies.

I’m back to playing with Reporter for logging/nudging myself to 2021 resolutions.

Really enjoying the California Coast Obsidian Theme.

I’m happy no appreciating Hi Fi audio. Like wines, it can be a very expensive rabbit hole.

In other words, not getting the AirPods Max. But they look amazing.

This unofficial Sublime Text 4 changelog gist is useful to keep an eye out for what’s happening on SB4 beta land.

Couldn’t unlock my Mac with the Apple Watch since WatchOS 7, this Apple Support suggestion fixed it.

Big Sur update went smoothly — other than kernelmanagerd process going crazy and staying at 80% of processor use. Turns out it was our corporate Antivirus. Had to disable it with the help of IT infrastructure until we figure out a fix.

This story about AI camera getting confused with the side ref’s bald head is too funny.

Hurricane Eta is hitting up north in Honduras/Nicaragua. Very vulnerable infrastructure.

📚 Prediction Machines added to library. Hal Varian recommends it, so past history shows I’m going to enjoy reading it, but just barely pass the exam in it. Thanks for the reco Frans.

I’m very excited about Obsidian.md plugins

To the adventurous souls who have access to 0.9.7 (currently in insider build phase): people have already started making Obsidian plugins!

Check out the new ones: https://t.co/2YJMOCyBoj

— Obsidian (@obsdmd) October 28, 2020

I’ve always wanted to love Clips, but somehow its cute features always gets in the way. Maybe I’m just too old school.

I’m even more excited about Apple Silicon‌ Mac’s, and they seem to be coming.

Had to reinstall Zoom on work Mac. The browser version was making me arrive late to meetings because it would send me to close to 10 (not kidding) rounds of Google’s reCAPTCHA.

The Cometeer coffee capsules look like an interesting mix of ideas.

I’m going down the eGPU rabbit hole… again.

I’ve said it before, but it’s worth repeating: one of the toughest challenges every parent faces is cleaning a toddler car seat.

After 225 days, we’re back home in Costa Rica.

Boarding the Costa Rica flight has been as stressful as anticipated — it paid to be extra careful with the required documents.

Everyone is horrified. But I can totally see the use-case for Amazon’s home camera drone.

Vitamin D Day

Happy birthday to my forever princess.

Enjoying a lower temperature (185°F) variation of this recipe from /r/AeroPress/

Inverted, boiling water.

1. ⁠1 heaped scoop coffee medium-fine/fine grind.
2. ⁠Pour 35ml boiling water, stir aggressively.
3. ⁠Bloom and steep for 30s
4. ⁠Pour remaining boiling water to 250ml
5. ⁠Stir a few times
6. ⁠Place cap and …

🎥 Dune Official Trailer. I really wish this is delayed so I can watch it on a movie theater.

💾 Happy that Mimestream is getting some love in HN, it’s amazingly fast. If it had snooze support (Gmail API limitation, not theirs) it would likely be my default email client.

The lack of any mention of today’s Apple rumors from the usual suspects tells me there’s some sort of embargo going on. We’ll know in 15min!

💾 Is It Snappy? is the App equivalent of getting a magnifier as a kid. I’m now measuring the response latency of everything.

🎙My Dad reminded me of this great Moth’s story A.E. Hotchner: The Day I Became A Matador

📚 Really enjoyed How Innovation Works: Serendipity, Energy and the Saving of Time by Matt Ridley. Will revisit my notes in a few day, but I nodded almost all the way until it connected some thoughts with Brexit. Which was uncomfortable in a great way.

attribute: Sand and waves Saturday

Sand and waves Saturday

Today’s AeroPress Coffee recipe for 3 strong black cups:

• Upright method
• 3 dark roast scoops (~42gr)
• Pour ~200ml water at 180°F slowly
• stir 10s and wait for 30s
• Quick stir and flip.
• Press slowly.
• Add 300ml water and serve.

This makes 3 strong cups of 1/12 ratio.

Phew, feels good to be compliant again. Back to Zoom browser version whenever needed.

May reconsider based on what happens with videoconferences App with Apple Silicone Macs — hoping most allow us to run the iOS versions.

Learned today that my End of Month Developers/PMs report by projects — based on Github issues so they don’t have to fill daily hours worksheets — is only used as guidance internally.

Something inside broke.

This Superorganizer interview with Head of Growth at Superhuman was great. Was expecting product talking points, but it had me highlighting everything.

Of course LaunchBar 6.13 was released today. My app FOMO knows no boundaries.

After almost exactly a year, switching back from Launchbar to Alfred. Sometimes LB feels slow. Still, undecided if Paste or is staying on my stack — I don’t use it as much, but every couple of hours it saves me a lot of time.

First supermarket visit in 6 months 😷

Morning Sunday. Glad you could make it.

Supported Obsidian development. Switching my work notes to it has been enjoyable and noticeably productive.

Vacation begins.

🎥 Enjoyed Greyhound. Doesn’t rely on suspense tricks to keep you interested and keeps the story tight at 90 minutes.

On Wednesday, a 10 year journey reached its destination. I’m happy, sad, relieved, grateful, and committed with the implications. But mostly, I’m excited about the next 10 years and the new challenges we’ll face together as a family. 🇺🇸

These two…

Between Star Wars Squadrons and Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020, I may need to buy an Xbox. You know, for Robie™.

A few seconds of us on a Saturday

First non-supermarket coffee of the isolation. Not sure about the grind size yet, need to dial it in a bit. But first taste was good enough.

In preparation for Wednesday, we watched the whole Apollo 11 Documentary. My heart melted with Robie’s excitement and interest.

Community Table Read I enjoy this show so much.

Preparing for the new normal.

Comedy is a distortion of what is happening, and there will always be something happening.

📖 Steve Martin, Born Standing Up

It’s ok to laugh.

📺 Enjoyed the first episode of Trying. Excellent combination of heart a humor.

GitHub Codespaces looks amazing. Will need to try it, but at least for the shameful JS and Python hacks I do, more than enough.

Switching to YY.MM.MICRO Calendar Versioning (CalVer) for a bunch of personal scripts. Craziness must end.

I don’t know why the ThinkPad TrackPoint Keyboard II intrigues me so much.

Radiohead - Live in Buenos Aires (March 2009) is the best one posted up till now.

Nespresso capsules were giving me a headache. Going back to basics.

Corona has affected my artesanal coffee vibe and reduced me to a push button caffeine pragmatist.

End to a very long week. No complaints though.

macOS Password Generator in BASH has saved me a few seconds a day the past few days.

Nine Inch Nails new album will probably become my WFH soundtrack.

Carfection Land Rover Defender review Saved for later today.

🎥 Loved the Knives Out movie. Smart dialogue, unpredictable plot and overall fun ride.

Coldplay Tiny Desk Concert is just too good.

Went to fill up tank and buy some pharmacy stuff next to the old office. Wanted some geographical familiarity even among standardized stores. It was comforting.

The Natalia Lafourcade Tiny Desk Concert is Robie’s new soundtrack on our school commute:

I think he has a small crush, but he also really likes the songs. Enjoying discovering music with him.

The idea of a mini Mac mini (Mac nano) excites me to no end.

Flatbread/Arepa was added to Emoji 13.0 in 2020. I really thought that we would celebrate this alongside a free Venezuela when this got started last year. Sigh. Still, I’ll take it!

🎙 Enjoyed Guy Kawasaki’s interview of Stephen Wolfram on his podcast. Recommended.

Robie’s officially started his Skywalker saga movie canon with Star Wars Episode I — The Phantom Menace.

Hard to believe the movie is 20 years old.

📺 Started Schitt’s Creek with Ana. I can see it getting great.

Happy new year. So much to be grateful for. Last week of December arrived too quickly with lots of family around, so didn’t get a chance to look back at 2019 or ahead at 2020. Giving myself a few days extension to think about this things.

🚲 We went from “Abu don’t let go!” to “get out of the way!!!”. Great day.

Speaking of gifts, here’s what Ana and Santa got me for Xmas:

• 2 x PS4 Controllers to play Apple Arcade with Robie
• Sunski Headlands Sunglasses -i
• Grey Fellow Carter Mug
• Palmpress brewer
• Millenium Falcon bottle opener
• R2D2 Socks

Back to work and trying out my new Palmpress Brewer. Still need to …

Brent DiCrescenzo’s original Kid A review on pitchfork.com:

This is an emotional, psychological experience. Kid A sounds like a clouded brain trying to recall an alien abduction. It’s the sound of a band, and its leader, losing faith in themselves, destroying themselves, and subsequently rebuilding …

🎬 Loved Rise of SkyWalker.

One small step for Bettina taking a pic, one giant leap for my camera app.

I’m speaking on marvelous accent without the slightest english.

Viktor Frankl

🎥 Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was not what I expected it, but I enjoyed it a lot.

My girls ❤️.

Thought I’d have to save for a year go get a Niche Zero grinder, but seems I’d only need half one to get Fellow’s upcoming Ode Brew. Nice design, and the features look great.

Family arrives to Costa Rica on Friday. We show them waterfalls and rainforest on Saturday. And on Sunday… Episode IX. Tickets for The Rise of Skywalker are ready.

Yet another reason to visit Disney again and again.

When you’re a fake handyman, just use longer screws to fix things� Let the wall deal with your ineptitude.

We might need to go back to Disney World sooner than expected.

When they call you out for being a fake barista…

📺 Started Watchmen. Yikes.

🎧 Really enjoying my wired SteelSeries Arctis 1 for work. Super confortable, good enough sound, and the mic is excellent for calls on a noisy office environment.

Kenji’s exercise and portion control result are a good reminder to reinvent your lifehacks.

Yes, Shakira’s latest concert is my playlist today. My hips don’t lie.

No trailer for me, but this is a great movie poster.

Palmpress looks interesting — and I just found out Jessica Do Tully was on the same Babson accelerator group with my wife.

Palmpress

Practicing foam for when we have full house over the holidays.

Loved The Mandalorian Chapter One. It feels even more part of the original trilogy universe than the latest episodes.

Dammit Land Rover, why must I love you so?.

Looks like SteepShot finally got a production sample. That took longer than expected, but great news!

Disney+ doesn’t seem to work internationally… oh no, does this mean I won’t be able to watch The Mandalorian. Yeah right.

And it works!!!. Already have encountered a number of bugs, but it’s beta, so no complaining.

Drafts for Mac beta with Actions is out. Hopefully this is my first post with it.

• Aeropress Go First Look coffeegeek.com

Gillette is making a Heritage-Inspired Double Edge Safety Razor just for selling on Amazon. A bit more info on this Sharpologist’s review.

goddammit Catalina.

Robie representing Venezuela at his school’s UN Day.

Good Context on Chile’s Riots

Patricio Navia, on americasquarterly.org:

The bad news is that people are upset, disappointed and angry. The good news is that Chile is in a good position to adopt inclusive reforms that promote social justice, defend markets (rather than business or special interests) …

Not gonna watch the final trailer again this year. But liking the poster.

Venezuela’s Water System is Collapsing

Anatoly Kurmanaev and Isayen Herrera, on nytimes.com:

So The New York Times commissioned researchers from the Universidad Central de Venezuela to recreate the water quality study they had conducted regularly for the water utility in Caracas from 1992 until …

A History of Pizza

Alexander Lee in History Today:

While on a visit to Naples in 1889, King Umberto I and Queen Margherita grew tired of the complicated French dishes they were served for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Hastily summoned to prepare some local specialities for the queen, the pizzaiolo …

Caracas Country Club — Where the 0.01% Await Socialism’s Collapse. bloomberg.com

This Google Books video reminded me of the good old don’t be evil days of Google.

Google Books: 15 years of preserving knowledge from around the world ➲

Really fun Espresso Drinks Basics with Babish. It includes a few …

First Freddo Cappuccino wasn’t a total disaster. Actually the flavor is quite good. Need to use less ice.

Also, the coffee foam is very unstable, so the pouring of the milk foam has to be quick and even, otherwise the layers colapses.

Didn’t know about the Freddo Espresso or Freddo Cappuccino. Will try to replicate with my AeroPress.

Really had a laugh with this. Via r/aviation ➲

Christian had the great idea to write our tech stack in the Slack profile. Here’s my current one:

• iPhone XS 256GB, Apple Watch S3, AirPods 2, 🏢[iPad Mini 5, MBP 13in 2015], 🏠[iPad Pro 10.5, MacBook 2016 12″].

The latest For All Mankind trailer is really good. For sure I’m doing a month of Apple TV+.

This video of a (possibly) dreaming octopus, would have been fun to watch before reading Children of Ruin. No spoilers, just tangentially relevant. /Via Jason Kottke.

Although I haven’t read it all yet, same …

AeroPress Go is out. Probably getting one just to play with it. Although I’ve been making my AeroPress coffee at home in the morning and taking the concentrate to the office to add how water — with pretty good results. ➲

Probably coming soon, but I really miss the Find my Friends widget in iOS 13.

The Descript Podcast Studio & Overdub video is all kinds of amazing. ➲

Casper has created CBD gummies. Hmmm, ok. ➲

Seems the AeroPress Go has been pushed to October. ➲

A new online era of The Far Side is coming! Oh joy. ➲

Did not know Wi-Fi had a competing technology in the late 90’s. ➲

MIA → SJO.

You can have all the content in the world at your fingertips… but you’ll always steal a glance at your neighbor’s screen.

At $199.99, even the new LEGO Land Rover Defender is outside my budget. ➲

On Friday’s mind sweep is when I miss Google Inbox the most.

Seriously considering going with the 40mm small Series 5 to replace my big 42mm Series 3.

Yes… I have flamingo legs for wrists.

Well that’s convenient… Apple Card arrived in the middle of the keynote.

Richard Hammond reveals the new Land Rover Defender.

They kept the spirit, and the crazy price. So that’s good.

Today was a happy day.

Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure is by far the best roller coaster I’ve ridden.

The force is with us.

SJO → MCO

Dorian or not… here we go.

When your desktop is a constant reminder of your impending vacation doom #DisneyStarwarsDorian

I’m reverse engineering our business units chart based on people’s email signatures. The truth is out there.

My procrastinating works in weird ways. Basically 30min aways from finishing a month long project… and I wrote a script to export my Tweets (those without links or @’s) to this blog.

2007 and 2008 done.

Switching my weekly tidbits posts to a Scripting News linkblog format for a while. Of course wasted all lunch updating my Bookmarklets and iOS Shortcuts. 🙄

Guess who’s having a new subscription — at least for the month of November?

This guy.

JUST ANNOUNCED: Hello there! Ewan McGregor will reprise his role as Obi-Wan Kenobi in an untitled series for #DisneyPlus! #D23Expo

— Disney D23 (@DisneyD23) August 24, 2019

Well this is pure commercial …

This is a good one to close the tests with.

My princess.

Brent Simmons, on micro.inessential.com:

Theory: the people you pay attention to have blogs and/or podcasts. Rarely are they Twitter-only people.

Self serving, but I like this theory.

Listen Up: Why We Can’t Enough of Audiobooks

Let us first retain some historical perspective by noting that Homer’s Iliad was essentially an audiobook before it was ever written down.

​

So listening to an audiobook while driving, or gardening, might be a very enjoyable experience, but we won’t …

Well, first Apple Card attempt didn’t go as planned →

We are unable to verify your identification information

I might have messed up my last names vs my IDs. Will try again.

The Ad Astra IMAX trailer is my favorite yet.

How do you fit two adults and two kids, all with a minor cold, in a queen bed? Very uncomfortably.

Robie’s first day in big boy school. He’s not crazy about big changes like these, and remembering my school days… I know where he gets it from.

Switched from Alfred to LaunchBar + PasteBot on the Mac — no reason, just needed to mix up things this week.

Testing YAWN (yet another workflow nugget).

Ok, funny new workflow from Desktop:

1. Comment on Github Issue in Markdown
2. Triggers Webhook to Zapier (⚡️Instant)
3. Appends to micro_today.txt in Dropbox
4. Nightly a Zapier job renames to YYYY-MM-DD.txt

On mobile:

1. Drafts 5 appends directly to micro_today.txt …

Now testing the grouped posts script.

📺 S01 of The Boys done, can’t wait for S02.

First post using a github issue comment webhook as source.

Looks good.

I waste time… installing recommended VPNs and testing their speed.

Just realized my 5typos.net RSS feed has been broken since May. Likely explains my diminishing fame.

Nice media weekend ↷

🎥 We watched the new Aladdin movie and enjoyed it — especially Bettina.
📺 The Boys from Amazon is so good, almost done with S01.

Reached a new weight high (79.1kg!). Getting serious again about fasting and some physical activity..

Having some problems with new lines on the new workflow.

I don’t get Garmin sport watches.

Moved all my publishing workflows from Draft 5 to Bear/Shortcuts. Fun exercise.

✈️ 4 hour delay, but on our way. SJO-FLL.

📻 Sting And Shaggy is probably the best NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert of them all.

Note to self, A and CNAME records don’t include the domain name.

This learning is worth 2 hours of my life.

13-Year-Old Scientist’s Research Shows Hand Dryers Can Hurt Kids’ Ears

Nora Keegan from Calgary, Canada, tells NPR:

Hand dryers are actually really, really loud, and especially at children’s heights since they’re close to where the air comes out

Shit, I’ve joked about Robie hating hand dryers and …

This New York-style pizza recipe might get me to start using my baking steel again.

📺 Not crazy about Star Trek Discovery season 2. The first one didn’t require much knowledge to have fun, but the second got way too Trekkie and sentimental towards the end.

👽: how was it?
👾: fascinating, especially “the lightning”.
👽: ?
👾: They have these “clouds” made of particles suspended in the atmosphere, and they discharge electricity to the ground.
👽: but, they go underground or something?
👾: nah, just guess the distance by counting.

I’m going to deep dive into mind mapping next.

🎥 DC movies are more enjoyable when they don’t take themselves so seriously. Shazam! being a prime example.

Arrived to the office blasting Eight Days a Week and remembering all my Oslo friends. Thinking about doing a friendships playlist for the morning.

Strong earthquake in Panama/Costa Rica border, but felt it very clearly in San Jose.

📺 On Good Omens, a TV show that makes me want to read the book. Which is not common praise from me.

ANIMA with Radiohead’s Thom Yorke sounds like fun.

If you can’t define the task, maybe you aren’t ready to start it. Doesn’t mean the initial definition must be set in stone, just a clear direction. Don’t let task surface be too wide.

Funny that Google confirmed the Pixel 4 leak.

The Microsoft Edge weekly Dev channel is out, and it ain’t bad at all.

My current solution for not being able to parse urls from rich text in iOS? I won’t post links for a while… drops🎙

Back to using Launch Center Pro. The Shortcuts app in itself is a …

📺 Just started Chernobyl and it’s hitting me hard. The narrative of the communist bureaucracy being a dead weight at every attempt of efficiency is much too relatable after watching chavismo destroy Venezuela.

I really need to learn to write regular expressions, not just hack ones I find online. …

Two coffee’s too many today. Thought I was getting sick, but of course the ringing in the ears has a more logical explanation.

Back on LaunchBar for a while — its clipboard issues appear to have been fixed. The UX just feels more natural than Alfred, but it’s slower. When 4.0 ships I’ll come back to Alfred.

🎥 The Apollo 11 documentary is the first time in 5 years I’d wanted to upgrade my 720p TV. Same story I’ve seen countless times but with mind blowing detail.

Ass, meet chair

Thord D. Hedengren on tdh.se:

Remember kids, being a writer sucks. It’s like having homework all the time!

If this is how I feel about my blogs, can’t say I envy what real writers feel.

Just wasted some fun minutes on the Honest Coffee Guide website. Cool tools, and the Aeropress recipe is the one I sue.

A cup of Joe and you’re good to go (Under 6 a day and you’re A-OK)

Professor Elina Hyppönen of the University of South Australia:

First cold brew batch of the (rainy) season.

A brilliantly funny Apple privacy ad.

90% of the workday covered and on track to finish 40% of the tasks I had planned for the day. And it feels like a pretty good day. Oh my.

As if on cue, all my wyze cameras on the newest firmware won’t connect anymore. Factory reset not working either, so thinking it could be a network issue. Only thing left is changing password of WiFi, but hoping to avoid that. Really wanted to play with the new sensors.

🍿 The Wandering Earth is a …

Further down the Wyze ecosystem rabbit hole.

Explaining to Robie the connection Palpatine has with the Skywalkers, I realize how much of a Mexican novela Star Wars is when told poorly.

Land Serwis builds new Land Rover Series I

Seeking to make a truck better than the original, Land Serwis uses laser-cut frame members that are from one to six millimeters thicker than the steel Land Rover originally used.

These Series 1 Land Serwis are part of my daydreams now. The naming is off …

I’m going to miss the dry season.

This Device Free Dinner video by Sesame Street is good advise for everyone.

Seems Drafts latest update fixes the prepend bug in the Dropbox workflow I’m using to post here. W00t.

Had to switch to Brave for work browser, since Opera appears to be using a new window UI setup which doesn’t work with my snapping windows app.

Back to work after DC vacation. Fresh brain does not want to deal with pre-vacation crap.

Co-Working Spacing on Dying Malls

From fastcompany.com:

Putting offices inside shopping centers leverages conventional wisdom that workers want to be near amenities like coffee, food, or a quick trip to the gym. As commercial renters are increasingly clamoring for built up amenities, malls have …

Another delicious Blue Bottle Macchiato. It was too cold for my father in law, but perfect temp for me.

Tried a Dunkin cappuccino this morning and it was not… terrible. It should actually worry Starbucks a bit — because if it can be consistently done the same not terrible way, it may beat Starbucks’s sometimes good for the price.

Watched Star Wars Episode IX Teaser. Excited. Still undecided if I’ll watch any of the trailers — my rule is teasers only, and it has served me well.

Tired after a long walking day, but I so enjoy Washington DC.

This was a damn good macchiato.

SJO → ATL → DCA.

There’s no one thing

DHH at signalvnoise.com:

As long as you’re stuck on a quest for that one super-power practice or North Star principle, you’re not going to make space in your brain for the fact that no individual secret is going to make the difference. Only compound wisdom will.

Saved to my …

Worked from home and this hipster borrowed my glasses. Of course he rocks them much more than me.

🍿 How to Talk to Girls at Parties is clearly from the Neil Gaiman universe, but at times it doesn’t click. The love letter to punk rock in the 80s did work for me though.

Another not quite Aeropress coffee thingy, the Twist Press.

Moving my microblog to r.mateu.me, which is hosted on blot.im. I’ve been a micro.blog supporter since the kickstart campaign, and think the product is on a great path. However, as a blog service, the monthly price is a bit beyond what I want to pay — because I already have a blog service I’m …

[The Heart of a Swimmer vs. the Heart of a Runner](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/03/well/move/heart-health-swimming-running-exercise.html "The Heart of a Swimmer vs. the Heart of a Runner - The New York Times"): 

From nytimes.com:

In theory, those differences should allow blood to move from and back to the runners’ hearts more rapidly than would happen inside the swimmers’.

Main takeaway is that you should always mix it up.

Leaning to not upgrading my AirPods yet. I use them a lot, but for short times, so the terrible battery life is not something I suffer that much — not counting calls, where I’ve just stopped using them.

Happily surprised by LEGO Movie 2. Entertaining but also good easily-digested moral learning in the end.

Netflix’s Love, Death & Robots reminded me so much of The Animatrix in the best posible way.

Aeropress short with a touch of milk foam.

Recommending a podcast between different player apps is an unnecessary frustrating experience nowadays.

Friday morning swim. 1300mts today, halfway there.

American Airlines suspends service to Venezuela. This worries me terribly. There’s still Copa, but the isolation goes from philosophical to real.

Broke 1000mts in swim. That’s the minimal viable training distance for me to consider time in a pool training.

Again worried for family and friends after another major blackout in Venezuela since yesterday.

A fun video on the basics of coffee.

Will test this aeropress recipe soon.

Ikea’s Sonos-powered Symfonisk speakers look really nice. If they manage to keep the price under $90, it could be a nice addition to my old Sonos Play 1.

The selection of the iPad mini case is currently a microcosm my center …

Highlight of the day, two smiling faces when being picked up from the kinder.

The Into the Spider-Verse Animator Commentary is something I plan to have a romantic date to in 2019. I hope.

I’m going to take CheapAir’s recommendation of buying plane tickets 76 days before the flight to heart.

Gave up stringing together a bunch of hacks with IFTTT and Zapier and went back to Drafts Pro. Sometimes the power lies at the edge of the network.

Microsoft’s Chromium-powered Edge browser has …

Vampire Weekends cover of Spiderman’s Sunflower is so good.

Seriously considering getting the Logitech Crayon.

Edit: Or not. It doesn’t work with the 10.5 Pro.

Managed to swim twice this week. Deliciously tired. Hope to keep it up the rest of the year.

Fun video into the world of high-end coffee.

The new AirPods are an unremarkable update from the description. Still getting them.

First reaction to new iPads is to follow through with my iPad mini threat and get one ASAP (64Gb with cellular). However, going to use my iPad Pro 10.5 at work for a few weeks first to see if my iPad Pencil use holds.

Do not disturb the Robertos.

And just like that, I know I’m probably getting a new coffee toy next month from the looks of the upcoming Aeropress Go.

Edit: Duh, it probably comes out in August. Well, I’m going to have on my InstaBuy wishlist alongside the AirPod 2 then.

The Delter Coffee looks a more complicated AeroPress. Intrigued, but far from convinced.

Sad that Waffle.io is closing. It’s a great tool with better features than the default Github ones.

Such a good ad.

I got the monkey invite. Really think it’s going to be a big year and kinda sad I again decided not to try to go.

As a dad, David Nanian’s eulogy to his, is something to strive for:

And so we’re here today to celebrate him. To celebrate his achievements, certainly, because he was a great doctor. But also to celebrate his … his goodness. He was, truly, a good man.

Spotify’s complaint against Apple in the EU does sound a lot like Apple. Just like with the battery life issue, there’s probably a good reason for many of the complaints — but the lack of transparency is going to bite them in the butt.

Migrating microblog from micro.blog to blot.im. Will write more about it, but main reason is cost. Blot’s bang for the buck is perfect for how much I blog.

Family and friends in Venezuela without power for close to 50 hours. Most hospitals without backup generators and airports closed. It’s a nightmare of our own making, but please know (and share) that the dictatorship lies when it says the situation is under control.

I was also surprised by Shawn Blanc’s switch to an unhipster drip machine. But have to agree with this post. I probably can’t tell the taste difference either, but the ritual is what makes it fun.

Visited my favorite Costa Rican coffee toaster today. Hacienda Real peaberry has been the daily bean on the AeroPress since I tried it and was curious of their operation. It’s literally a micro toaster (3 room house). They ship to the US/Canada if anyone wants to try.

Everyone’s a critic, but I think the never released Pebble Time 2 still looks better than the new Versa Lite.

Watching The Umbrella Academy yesterday and a David Gray song came up. The flashbacks to his White Ladder album actually gave me pause. Must never forget/understimate the power of music.

Can’t wait to add The Wandering Earth to my Netflix list.

I always develop an interest in projectile physics and spatial awareness when the kids get the stomach flu.

Since December I’ve been working very hard on measuring developer output, software CapEx, and organization level indicators. All with as little overheard to devs that doesn’t improve PMO flows. This comment on HN is an amazingly distilled version of many of my learnings.

Domain names are like battery packs, make it cheap enough and I can always self-justify one. Luckily rmateu.dev or 5typos.dev doesn’t sound that interesting.

Ordering coffee at 130 degrees in Starbucks is the hipster idiom that I’m least ashamed to say out lout. Thank you André Hess for all the hipster-millennial wisdom.

Ran across Jacoby Young’s Less, More, and None life priority list again. His whole site is such an information dense fun ride. Lots of stuff to copy.

I’m back on my quarterly install of Google’s Gboard keyboard.

I have welcomed emojis into my heart and keyboard. I held out long enough ;) but we lost the war, and it’s time to accept it. Long live the 🤓.

In 2003 I visited my first Apple Store, in Cambridge, MA. I was beyond excited. Little did I know that 4 years later I’d buy the first iPhone on the same store.

A few seconds before this photo, Bettina grabbed my face, turned it on the side, and planted a big kiss on my cheek. This is what happiness filled with a melted heart looks like.

Yesterday we celebrated Ana’s birthday. My better half has given me two better wholes — each as beautiful and intense as their mom. Which makes the amount of love and effort she gives all of us quite literally infinite. We love you.

This week Robie decided we had to wear (clean) masks for the bedtime story… and last night Bettina joined our book club.

Dave Winer:

If it doesn’t have a feed it isn’t a podcast.

I subscribe to Marco Arment’s theorem:

On a long enough timescale, Dave Winer is usually proven right.

For 2019 we’re trying to have better controls of our expenses at home. After trying a few Apps, we settled on Next on the iPhone. It does an amazing job at expense input, and a adequate one at reporting.

After 1 month even Ana is enjoying the habit — or at least tolerating it. But the next step is …

Just getting started, but Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke has me glued to the first chapter. A few more insights like the difference before decision & result — and it may be my favorite non fiction of the year.

Mario Kart for iPhone delay could also be related to the rumored game subscription service Apple is working on.

From an IT perspective ChromeOS devices are a dream come true. But going as far as offering Pixelbooks as MacBook alternatives for designers feels pretty aggressive. If they do become a solid dev machine with Linux stuff, then Win/macOS are going to feel the hurt.

What a week. Amazing how interests trumped ideology on my dislike towards those that are helping Venezuela.

At the same time awed over the will of people to not give up, and the bravery of leaders that don’t let them. I dare not dream, but will never criticize those who do.

After 11 years of use (10 of them paid), I’m taking a break from Dropbox. It’s still the best cloud drive software, but not sure anymore if worth the expense alongside iCloud. We shall see.

Learning about habit stacking has been a surprisingly powerful tool. It’s not a super power — because it’s not painless to use. But it’s impressive to see a mind hack that does consistently show results. Highly recommend Atomic Habits by James Clear

If the rumored iPad mini is the insides of a 2018 iPad 9.7 in a mini frame with Pencil support, sign me up for one.

Enjoyed First Man 📺. The claustrophobic scenes from inside the ships were enlightening. Any movie based on a book that makes me want to read the book gets extra points from me.

Hmmm, our next generation anti-virus at work might be getting a bit overzealous. Either that, or this Mac is about to blowup.

I don’t remember any of my Norwegian friends so militant about the matpakke lunch, but it was a fascinating cultural thing.

Absolutely best way to finish the year. Amazingly we saw the whole movie — and of course I loved it.

The fact there’s no XR leather case from Apple leaves little doubt that the iPhone XR is the cheap version of the XS — which was the opposite of why I told my Dad to get the XR as we entered the store.

Get your shit together Apple.

A very special Aruba Christmas

Vacation mode dock enabled.

The new Men In Black trailer looks very fun. Sadly the new Hellboy trailer felt off. Wish it was the other way around.

Must remember that a tall Starbuck’s flat white has two shots of espresso (ristretto actually). Speaking at 380 wpm — blank faces all around me.

When becoming a sofa is the highlight of a fun weekend.

Robie turned 3 today, and of course Ana organized an amazing birthday party. His whole afternoon smile made it totally worth it.

With T-Mobile, seems all major US carriers will support eSIM by years end. Gather around kids, let me tell you about the string of hacks I had to do 8 years ago to use my unlocked norwegian iPhone 3GS with a prepaid AT&T line.

Of course Mozilla has to say that giving up on EdgeHTML is bad, but they are still right. I currently use Safari for personal browsing and Opera (Chromium based) for work, but will try to give Firefox another try.

Microsoft confirms Edge is moving to Chromium sometime next year. I understand the reasoning and business case, but the consolidation of browser engines is not great for the web.

The Verge’s Better Worlds: a science fiction project about hope sounds — and looks — like a breath of fresh air. Looking forward to it.

Land Rover Defender Spied Flaunting Its New Body In The U.K.

I’ll be the grumpy old man… what in the name of rover is all this rounded shite?.

A tip for all Uber drivers: play your local jazz radio station at a reasonable low volume, and the whole experience is instantly upgraded.

I’d rather buy the digital download version of Firefly (again) than watch it free on Facebook.

Zcash (ZEC) is launching on Coinbase Pro. I have a special appreciation for Zcash as a project — it seems to have the sanest mind in the popular crypto world.

Had lunch with my yellow princess.

On Sundays we go out. Otherwise these two (plus mom) get encierro — aka cabin fever.

Having some technical issues. A cache somewhere needs to be cleared.

After lunch cappuccino with the Prismo AeroPress thingy. It was made out of need — not play — and I surprised myself how well it turned out.

We made a killer entrecôte today.

Robie and Ana painted a plane, and Bettina tried to paint everything.

Another gift coffee. Very chocolatey. Trying to see if I can tell the difference between the grounded coffee bag or beans.

Forgot to post this in the morning: trying a new Salvadorian medium roast I got as a gift. It’s lighter than what I usually get, but enjoying the flavor.

Sugar and Star Wars. My wife so gets me.

El más feliz de los 37 cumpleaños. Muy agradecido por los mensajes.

Cleaning up my 4 year old account on Ana’s MacBook Pro. Still takes all of my willpower to click delete on OmniDiskSweeper for stuff that should be either backed up twice over, or better forgotten.

Not the first time Seth Godin inspires me, but looking as his short posts, I’m going to challenge myself to publish at least 50 words daily for the rest of the year.

How things change, I had completely forgotten macOS Mojave come out tomorrow. I remember loosing sleep over Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger release.

My iPhone XS arrived!!! to Miami. Now I just need to patiently wait a few weeks to visit and pick up.

Really excited to start listening to Creative Selection by Ken Kocienda.

For the Love of Spock is a solid documentary. A cultural icon played by a good person with normal good person problems. The father/son aspect was unexpected, but worth noting in my parenthood’s scrapbook of emotional concerns.

For the Love of Spock is a solid documentary. A cultural icon played by a good person with normal good person problems. The father/son aspect was unexpected, but worth noting in my parenthood’s scrapbook of emotional concerns.

Don’t really care who Twitter blocks or not — but want to vote with my clicks my frustration over 3rd party apps APIs. I’m leaving twitter for a few weeks tomorrow. #DeactiDay.

Sous vide cold brew experiment this morning with my favorite barista helper.

Done with The Expanse S01 — great book and equally good show. Now onto Westworld S02.

Picked up some freshly roasted coffee to try later today.

Enjoyed Avengers: Infinity Stone a lot more than expected. Really surprised how well they balanced a huge set of characters and kept a consistent story moving. Loved that Thanos isn’t a flat super villain. Might even go the movie theater for the next day one.

Saw Molly’s Game over the weekend with Ana and liked it. It’s the least Sorkin Sorkin movie I remember.

HBO’s Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind is an incredibly moving documentary. It’s also so well put together that it feels effortless how it takes you through his life. Very recommended.

Love Notes to Newton is another tangential documentary/film that will be fun to see for a different viewpoint of the same time frame. But also because it talks about Newton… and I’ll watch anything that mentions the green marvel.

Really looking forward to this General Magic documentary. Always thought it was more of an Apple-centric story — didn’t know it was a prequel to so much other companies.

Over the past 2 weeks I’ve been using my personal MacBook (Retina, 12-inch, Early 2016) as my daily driver — while my job’s MacBook Pro 2015 is in the shop for a keyboard/trackpad issue. Very surprised of how well it performs, and how used I’ve gotten to the keyboard.

Me maneja.

Trying to get back into comics. Starting with Vinland Saga, which I abandoned last year because of life™. Comic Zeal still works but hasn’t been updated in while, so giving Chunky a try (so far liking it).

Saw Isle of Dogs with Robie and The Post with Ana today. Enjoyed both. Wes Anderson’s formula works with me, so no complaints — still love the Fantastic Mr. Fox above all.

Fathers day was really great for my coffee hobby.

Todos los días pienso en lo bueno que es el antiguo “Roberto padre” para tratar de hacer el nuevo “Roberto hijo” tan feliz como yo.

Happiest Father’s Day with this troupe of cousins.

In its current state, iOS 12 Siri Shortcuts are a modern version of the one button mouse. Forcing developers and users to use voice commands UI — instead of to touch UI like share extensions.

After the birth of my children — and tied with my wedding — this is the happiest day of my life. Shared my first pizza with Robie completely out of his request.

Great article by Ernie Smith on the history of MacOS X interface skins for Windows. I wasted so much time with WindowBlinds, LiteStep and other software customizing Windows XP.

Not crazy about the new icon, but Tweetbot for Mac could put an 8-bit clown as an icon and I’d still update. Love surprise Mac app releases.

We heart you @anitamarcela.

Giving 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Jordan B. Peterson a try. Was recommended by my uncle — with whom I usually have philosophical sparring matches. Hope I can keep an open mind.

Running SublimeText on ChromeOS sounds very interesting to me. And the cost of hardware to develop apps on Android is going to be a fraction than iOS with Chromebooks.

When you had a shitty day, the iOS keyboard sucks at journaling. I don’t mean ducking you piece of PG-13 muerda (for both Spanish and English).

Arrested Development can do no wrong, but the style of Season 4 required a bit of extra effort. The remix will be fun to watch.

On the next… Arrested Development pic.twitter.com/NjP26k9KE7

— Arrested Development (@arresteddev) May 1, 2018

Trying new SousVide burgers recipe: still main rule is to manage meat as little as possible.

I’m a sucker for launch events, and Opera holds a special place in my heart. Excited about tonight’s Opera’s R2 reveal.

Star Wars Resistance will be anime inspired, with WWII aircraft and fighter pilots influences. Can’t wait to watch this with Robie this fall.

Saw HBO´s Andre the Giant documentary. You could infer his smarts from his actions — same with his goodness. But the world have benefited from a journal to appreciate his philosophy more clearly.

Got a mini-barista to help me with my cold brew today — although he kept calling it cake.

No to sex on roundabouts, Norway tells high school graduates.

Said it before… I so miss Oslo sometimes.

This is a great summary post on Gitflow by Luka Kerr.

It’s that time of the week when macOS decides it’s not going to display any of my Subtile Text windows because I connected to an external monitor.

Fine-tuning microblog posting from the blog. Seems I alienated the one reader of the blog with the jumping around to micro.blog and back.

Giving up on Artemis by Andy Weir. After 100 pages I’m still not enjoying it. Feels a bit too sitcomy.

Cal Newport writes:

When you run your own site, reality is harsher. If people don’t truly care about what you have to say, or don’t truly care about you, they’re not going to stick around. You have to earn their attention. Which can be really, really hard.

The whole post is really worth a read. …

I’m struggling deciding how and where to microblog. Which is kind of stupid since I’d already setup everything on blot last year. But micro.blog makes everything so simple and easy to post (specially photos), that it’s difficult to switch back.

Naming also has me confused. Having the microblog at …

My dad’s steak adobo recipe:

• Soy sauce - Worcester sauce - Mesquite - Salt - Pepper - Garlic flakes - Rosemary leaves

Leave on ziplock bag overnight on fridge. And tomorrow… sous vide time!

Two Roberto’s, one map. Hilarity ensues.

La Paz Waterfall Gardens: About 90 min from our house in Escazú. As with most Costa Rica touristy locations, tickets are expensive but it’s very well setup. Fun day trip with the kids, although I wouldn’t recommend eating there — not sure if it was because of a holiday, but the food was not good. …

I’m still bullish on Soylent because of its minimalist concept: if you’re not going to have a great meal, just drink 400kcal of something cheap (and not unhealthy) and move on. Many don’t agree, so it’ll be interesting to see how it does at Walmart.

Current cold brew coffee recipe:

• 1.5 cups of coarse dark roast - Slowly pour regular water until you fill French press (32oz) and wait 10 min. - Give it a good whirl and cover. - Wait 24 hours (not on fridge).

Then press and pass through a wet coffee filter.

Thought I was ser for life with my Goruck GR1 backpack and my Waterfield Bolt Briefcase… but they had to come up with a Bolt Backpack. Looks great.

Fun end of weekend con Aba.

Surprised I didn’t know about the Marta File Manager for macOS before. Extremely fast and clean. Love the terminal integration and the dual pane look. Leaving open for a few days.

Saw Annihilation tonight. Good movie, but not as mind blown as I expected to be — as Arrival did. Still, great to have sci-fi which doesn’t require turning off your brain’s higher functions.

1Password 7 Beta for Macis out. I’m traveling, so I can’t mess with my production setup. But they had me at markdown in notes.

Browsery, Barnes & Noble’s answer to Goodreads seems very interesting. Giving a few weeks try. (I currently track my reading on a Trello board).

No smart connector on new base iPad. The keyboard is Tim Cook’s two button mouse.

Costa Rica has pushed me to be an accidental coffee snob. Even an average bean gives a delicious crisp flavor.

Suddenly feel less bad about taking 3 months to finish Oathbringer 📚.

Multi-media.

Owner of at least two Roberto Mateu’s hearts. (Co-owner with Amelia @anamateu actually)

First time in the big boy seat

Would love a comparison between Studio Neat’s upcoming Mark One and Baron Fig’s Squire.

I have to agree out of principle… and justifying my eternal ToDo throughout my life 🔗 Why Rotating Task Managers Regularly Can Make You More Productive

No le pongamos el chupón para que no se duerma….

Going to give Jellies a try. YouTube Kid’s ad-supported model is starting to show more and more when I check on Robie’s videos. And recent news about their filtering algorithm worries me.

Sad that digg reader is shutting down. I’m a happy Feed Wrangler user, but the demise of RSS services feels ominous in the current environment of walled gardens online.

Jason Fried makes the case (unknowingly?) for micro.blog no follower info model by-design.

However, from the HNews thread on digg reader, Winds 2.0 app looks interesting (although electron… sigh).

For DRM-free audiobooks, Bound is my favorite iOS app. As other apps have become more sticky, I’ve removed DRM from audiobooks to use its clean UI.

A good bad day at work. Encountered ( found gives me too much credit) a blocker bug, and had to delay a feature. But the debugging and fixing went well. Really appreciate colleagues patience when you’re so boxed-in a problem you loose perspective for the workaround.

We saw Wonder today. It’s a feel good movie that touches all the buttons. But it does makes you acknowledge an imperfect world, which I think it navigates pretty well. Enjoyed it.

Saturday trip stop.

Wish TunnelBear team the best in joining McAfee. But would feel uncomfortable if it were 1Password.

The parent company wants us to keep being awesome! narrative works until the awesome growth numbers aren’t met.

Been enjoying the Scribd service, and will probably finish Sapiens before it’s not available anymore — but it kinda puts a dent in the whole point of unlimited.

YouTube TV doesn’t let me cancel from Safari… which would be fine, if it hadn’t let me subscribe from Safari. Tst, tst, walled garden with free entry gate.

I present both the most complex engineering project I’ve embarked upon and the longest instructions deciphering my brain has ever attempted.

Let it be known that a chair was assembled, despite the manufacturer’s wishes.

After planning to go to Playa Mantas we ended up in Playa Herradura. Fun day with less fun traffic on the way back.

Wesley Moore: A Year Away From Mac OS

I spent less than a week on a Chromebox as an experiment and failed miserably. But super detailed articles like this keeps are extremely entertaining.

The Angle is a nice looking straight razor. However, not sure I’d move away from my safety razor.

Josh Comeau’s webpage, Let’s Learn About Waveforms, deserves many awards.

If I didn’t check the site already a few times a day, the new Techmeme Ride Home podcast would be a must-hear. Still giving it a few days.

Had to rollback a release in production. Bummed after a weekend of testing. You can have your development environments all figured out… until you don’t.

Excited about Legion Season 2. The first season was probably my favorite show of 2017.

The Death of Stalin wasn’t sitcom funny, it was actually painfully entertaining.

Beach day.

This iPad appears broken.

RAMS, about legendary German designer Dieter Rams — by Gary Hustwit (Helvetica, Objectified, Urbanized), with original music by Brian Eno.

Will watch the film, and probably buy the poster.

Enjoyed MacSparky’s Blogging Workflow:

Move the Cursor from Left to Right

At times I forget that this needs happen before I criticize a writing idea/intent to death.

Today’s morning pomodoros soundtrack 🎵 is Stillness by Heron.

Google and HTTP:

The web is a social agreement not to break things. It’s served us for 25 years. I don’t want to give it up because a bunch of nerds at Google think they know best.

With a few hundred words, Winer has completely changed my mind.

I don’t regret pushing my company to Slack last year. But in many cases, it creates as many problems as it solves. I was naive in thinking that a tool by itself would fix processes issues.

Great Vox video on app addictiveness. I do remember pull to refresh in Tweetie more fondly and less conspiratorially.

[…] Assistant will be able to understand you in multiple languages fluently.

Wow. Will work first on English, French and German, but this is amazing.

Well, movie night got off to a fun start. Stuck in a loop with Apple TV and recovery mode.

Apple TV hard reset was mostly painless. Sadly FetchTV crashes on launch (long live Fetch!). Moving my put.io based entertaiment to Squire — which is looking pretty good.

Why It’s so Hard to Actually Work in Shared Offices

A member of the cleaning staff— a young Spanish-speaking woman with a tight ponytail— was one of the few people actually working. She moved quietly, picking up the dirty mugs that people had left lying about and stacking them into the dishwasher. …

Finally a lower priced Nest Aware plan ($5 a month, 3$ additional camera). My Nest wishlist from two years ago is almost done — just need better notifications.

Still happy with my WyzeCams, not likely to buy additional Nest’s.

Here’s hoping that changing the iBooks name to Books, is mostly related to an upcoming laptopesque iOS device with a keyboard.

Enjoyed this scientifically anecdotal comparison of Apple Maps vs. Google Maps vs. Waze. Costa Rica is total Waze country, but I just can’t get use the UI/UX.

Con mi otra consentida.

This Community mini reunion was very enjoyable..

En la aventura actual no tenemos selfies sin enanos sonrientes, juguetes desordenados y ojeras sin fiestas. Pero todo eso son aún más capas (no tan fotogénicas) de felicidad. Feliz cumpleaños mi @anitamarcela.

The idea of text to speech is always compelling, but I haven’t been able to use it consistently. Curious to give Polly a try again.

Scribd’s new unlimited* books and audiobooks subscription is very compelling.

Going to check it out. I cancelled my Audible subscriptions last year because the credits model gave me anxiety when I fell behind.

Every time I read a company is rejoining its parent, I hear the same sharpening of the knife used when Newton Inc was brought back to Apple. Good luck Nest.

By the by, I’m loving my 4 WyzeCam’s. Probably being streamed live in a bunch of Chinese websites (which is why kid’s rooms still on Nest), but for common areas they work great and give a lot of bang for the buck.

Simple Print is an web article cleanup and PDF that almost makes wanna print all articles. This could be useful for sharing articles with a class or meeting.

Blade Runner 2049. WOW, just wow. Love it when regardless of if it’s the story I wanted to see, you get the best version of a story someone wanted to tell.

Walmart and Rakuten take on Amazon with Kobo e-reader alliance

Happy about this. Kobo makes great devices and the e-ink devices market could benefit from increased competition.

PencilSnap for Apple Pencil

Added to wishlist.

🔗 20 Things I Learned From Becoming Warren Buffett

Gotta see that documentary.

If you’d ever cleaned a car seat or stroller, you could never support space travel for children. We could decimate any alien ecosystem with germ contamination.

Saw Atomic Blonde last night. Enjoyed it. Wasn’t familiar with the comic, but the influence in style is clear.

Microsoft says security fixes will noticeably slow older PCs

If aliens wanted to affect our global computing power just a tiny bit and keep us distracted… this is exactly how’d write it.

Giving Alfred a try again. Spotlight works, but I miss a bit more power. Even suffering relearning my LaunchBar tricks, the speed difference in very noticeable.

Macdrifter carefully explains how blogs are dead or dying, and he’s also not into newsletters.

Intel’s KPTI flaw is really bad, but be ready to extreme simplifications. No 30% slowdown for most users it seems.

Brent Simmons is going to post more on micro.blog, and so am I.

“wake up early” is an eternal failed resolution my life. Trying an alternative this year:

Realize that anything after 5am is sleeping late.

Interesting HN comments on Wired’s Kindle piece. Many only use Kindle for fiction and print books for non-fiction. I do all fiction on Kindle and non-fiction on iPhone — for convenience of reading snippets throughout the day.

Finally saw The Last Jedi. Spoiler free thoughts: 1. Glad I only watched the first trailer. 2. Rogue One still my favorite Disney era movie. 3. Don’t need to digest much, it’s a first reaction kinda movie.

Found my AirPods.

Excellent point:

These new apps may feel less like Mac apps, but I’d bet good money they’ll run better than something using web views or Electron. More on Universal Apps — 512 Pixels

Not doing so great on the non-fiction reading these past few months. About to finish Shoe Dog, by way behind what I wanted to have done in 2017.

Grit is next.

Giving the default macOS Spotlight a try for a few days. LaunchBar has felt slow in the last few versions and since it my main interface for most things — everything feels slow.

Without a doubt cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are the future. But I don’t see the corresponding demand of usage behind the current frenzy — just pure speculation. Can’t help but expect black day for BTC value between now and Chinese New Year.

Also, when“reputable” futures markets appear, the speculation will work both ways. Contributing to a parabolic behavior on the BTC price.

Gemini PDA: 20 Years On, Meet The All New Psion Series 5

I want this… so much.

Head to head testing between Nest and Wyze cam starts now. Curious if the 10x price difference is reflected in features. One thing I still trust Nest more is security — Wyze will go on common areas for a while.

RememBear looks like a solid password manager from the TunnelBear people. Not moving away from 1Password anytime soon, but good to have around to recommend.

The best laptop ever made

Apple has made many great laptops, but the 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro (2012–2015) is the epitome of usefulness, elegance, practicality, and power for an overall package that still hasn’t been (and may never be) surpassed.

Wish I’d written this. An open love letter to a …

Winter is coming. However, if you do order an ark of the covenant, we are able to find it.

Saw Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. Amazing effects but overall editing gave me a prequels vibe: forced and far from the delight of Fifth Element.

Polyfact > The best way to browse Reddit’s /r/todayilearned/

Just wasted a good 10 min on this app.

I’ve switched my writing (as if) to Ulysses, but IA Writter 5 is a very clean update. Looking forward to the Mac version.

Exile’s Kiss You All Over is one my favorite new discoveries of the Red Oaks soundtrack.

This open letter to Apple regarding foreign taxes is the perfect example of why Scott Galloway says that Europe is going to be the downfall of the four tech giants.

CrossOver for ChromeOS (via android) is a very intriguing idea.

Today while playing Robie told me Papi, cell aquí and pointed to the floor so I’d put the iPhone down. Multiple emotions, including amazement and a pinch of shame.

Taking a break from Sci-Fi, started The Nix by Nathan Hill last night.

Excited for Firefox 57 on the desktop and Firefox 10.0 on iOS coming next week.

Been trying to send money to Costa Rica for almost a week… so I welcome our upcoming Apple Pay for iMessage overlords.

Some app updates make me hungry.

The building blocks of Saturday.

Giving up on New York 2140 by Kim Stanley Robinson. Usually love his books, but this is a mess of a novel. Story is all over the place and characters are two-dimensional. Really doesn’t read like him.

No iPhone X for me. Rational reason is cost saving, but there’s something else. I struggle with staring at my screen when life is happening around me, and an iPhone that’s all screen is a metaphor too clear to ignore. So checking out of the upgrade race this year.

Embracing Friday.

Reddit’s favorite learning books, from 3.5B comments redditfavorites.com

From a quick glance, useful page.

Read-It-Never: Instapaper and therapeutic self-delusion carefultech.net/2017/11/r…

Ouch — the it hurts because it’s true kind

In iOS 11, you can customize how the Notes app works when it’s triggered from Control Center

News to me and very useful.

Finished Red Oaks last night. Probable the best summer tv show I’ve seen. Enjoyed it a lot, and it even made think a few times. Hight recomended (it’s on Amazon).

3 episodes in, and Red Oaks may be my favorite TV Show this year.

Derretido.

We’re ok. No power right now. Cell phone signal intermittent. Building dancing like the Macarena but shutters and impact windows on site.

First day of class.

Palm #eclipse2017 Shadows

Flying from SJO to Miami. Empty seat next to me, but not looking good. At least there’s not carry-on space drama.

Finally playing with the micro.blog app. Deciding on subdomain for mateu.me.

There must be a German word for being lucky in love but my bag always leaving the airplane last #schadencarryun?

Facial ID that requires you to mouth a password — using micro expressions — sounds like iPhone 8 stuff.

Baby Driver is a fun and exciting ride with a soundtrack that has so much character, it’s borderline a musical.

Highly recommended.

The new Hulu AppleTV app is so bad, it finally pushed us to cancel subscription (and we do watch a few shows).

OS Developer Beta’s are the marshmallow test for grownup geeks.

After watching a couple of times, I still tear-up with this ad:

Cook by numbers with Father’s Day gifts.

Didn’t know that Github could render CSVs, this could be useful. Link

Finally saw Logan last night. Still digesting, but pretty sure it’s the best superhero movie I’ve seen.

Mañana de monos, mapaches y pisotes.

This is Ground Control to Roberto Andrés…

Posted my quick notes for the books I read over winter. Moved from a 5 starts rating scale to a recommended or skip it one.

My first tweet had a misspelling, so my first mic should maybe do too? write?

En el poco tiempo libre que no tienen, el Foro Penal Vzlano puede ir escogiendo las plazas en todo el país que vamos a ponerle su nombre.

Things 3 beta is super clean. The one missing feature that made me stop using it is included (won’t spoil it). Just hope it gets a lot more keyboard shortcuts before launch — my second issue in the past.

The Verily Smartwatch (from Alphabet) looks like a Pebble, [battery] lasts like a Pebble, and quacks like a Pebble. Still sad that Pebble as a company didn’t survive.

Waiting for a calm and peaceful moment tonight to watch The Last Jedi teaser trailer. Excited.

Hadn’t noticed until reading reviews about Grand Amiral Thrawn new novel that it become obvious how humanocentric/racist/xenophobic the Empire was versus the Rebels.

The Star Wars Battlefront II Teaser looks amazing. Video was pulled down.

Guys night-in.

Wow, the first two episodes of Legion are fantastic. Hooked.

Never too late to learn the value of sleeping on it.

Up till 3am fighting with iptables in CentOS and Docker because “it was forcing port :8080”. Today realized it was a WP setting… #idiot

The end of the rainbow is… a parking in Brickell.

Strange suspicion that some of my devs call me RO not because of my name, but because of my Read Only access to the repository.

Finally saw Arrival. As great as everyone said it was.

What’s up, doc?

Sometimes when he’s really bored, I get a charity kiss.

Finally saw Rogue One. My current favorite Star Wars movie of the XXI century.

I’m ready to stop complaining about the new MacBook Pro, and pay for the next iCloud Drive with encryption.

Mi timeline es un espejo traducido de las elecciones presidenciales de Venezuela en el 2012 y 2013. Siento los anticuerpos protegiéndome.

My dear American friends: the next few years would be painful, but you’ll come out better on the other side. Introspection is a long game.

Hora que los Cubs se sienten a dialogar.

In a highly ironic twist of fate, Mac users now in the same position as Apple // users… realizing that Apple doesn’t get the platform.

I haven’t looked down at my keyboard in years… and the Touch Bar hasn’t yet provided a reason. This is not a Pro feature.

I know multitasking is bad, but the Touch Bar doesn’t seem compatible with my multitask habit.

People outside the US watching the #AppleEvent on their Hackintoshes are pointing and laughing right now.

If Mr Robot had come out in 2006, you’d see a lot more Mac’s. Can’t recall the last one I saw… Mac not the cool(est) anymore.

A quienes le encanta criticar a la MUD por “lentos” nunca han estado en una reunión de condominio.

Una “cucharadita” de #Toddy en el café frío señala el próximo inicio del fin de semana.

“Individual deals, with individual countries”. #Trumpxit

Still. The democratic route is the only one that offers the middle ground a path. But the temptation of shortcuts is always there.

#Turkey same conflicted feelings as Venezuela’s coup: it’s hard to defend the institution, when the one undermining it calls for its defense

I have never seen an A.I. accidentally put the ice cream in the fridge instead of the freezer.

I welcome our neural network overlords. L

A while back I decided to only allow myself to feel anxiety from politics in Venezuela. #Brexit has been hard… and Trump still ahead.

The Nice Guys is the spiritual successor to Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.

Both among my favorite movies now.

Quick! _____ :

1. Perform open heart surgery
2. Shoot the bad guy behind her
3. Peel that hard boiled egg

In all 3, I murder an innocent.

Happy May 17th to my Norwegian friends! 🇳🇴

#skål

Reliable: • Software: Hard • Demos: Harder • Debugging: Hardest • Backups: Hardly

I know I’m tired when: I have to say the word in spanglish to myself so I can spell it correctly.

Venezuelan food truck (I’m basically doing a cheat year).

Release days are like greek weddings… lots of drama lead up to it, and there’s one movie too many.

On the multifaceted characteristics of cold showers: 

Cold showers are terrible. Scratch that, cold showers are an abomination. Why did we leave our comfortable urban environment for these infra-human conditions? Experiencing nature my freezing behind.

I may be losing the feeling of my arms, because it’s suddenly not so bad. More like the second drill …

Batido Naranja Cambur / Orange Banana Smoothie 2 Frozen Bananas 1 cup of Orange Juice 1/4 Cup of water 1 tbsp of sugar

Blend baby, blend.

La adversidad obligó a la MUD a crear una plataforma tecnológica para comunicarse. Y comenzaron en una curva S donde ya hay masa crítica.

“I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.” - Blaise Pascal

Saw an iPad Pro today… if the Apps come, this will be great.

Really wanted a Will McAvoy from The Newsroom character: a flawed but deep-down lovable Steve — at least by end of the movie .

Was expecting Sorkin to play with my feelings more. This Jobs you may admire, but almost certainly dislike. Goes from asshole to jerk.

Steve Jobs movie is to biographical Jobs, what the West Wing was to the Clinton Administration.

Oh, and The Martian is great. ~80% Book Great — which is really pretty good.

Apple Watch really needs a Movie Mode, or a DND that won’t light up screen unless touched. Hate bothering everyone around in dark theater.

I would totally get wireless audio speakers in my eardrums. #takemymoneymadscientist

Evidence that liquid water flows in Mars AND videos showing iPhone 6s may be water resistant on the same week? not coincidence I tell you.

The world is filled with haters… luckily most are buyers first.

Don’t feel left out. Even if you don’t own any stocks open your default stocks app and join the funnest blood bath since the #redwedding.

The UX for Apple Siri is framed as talking with a servant, while Google Now comes across more like a peer.

Have a few high volume items that’s easy for people to print (cases, toys, …), and maybe a catalog designers can contribute and take a fee.

There seems to be an American Rugby game on TV.

But on UI/UX, MacOS is lagging: Window Mgmt, App Launching and Mgmt (the Dock), File Mgmt.

No “this changes everything” since 10.4

The old technological superiority Mac users used to have over Windows is gone. That’s ok, all cars and airliners are similarly safe.

Loved Interstellar, but don’t know if IMAX is a must. Space scenes are amazing, but got dizzy with rest of movie.

Still, ★★★★★

I admire those that treat their body as a temple.

I wonder if any of them admire my high-end food court bod’?

I just wrote my full ALL CAPS sentence in a work email.

#theshame

Just nailed an emergency status update and then…

CFO: “You guys are on top of all issues, which means it has been too long”.

Stings.

A year ago eCommerce End-to-End testing was an abstract concept.

Today, it’s my abstract reality.

Crunch time: when color coded status updates fly out the window and every red/yellow item becomes an email/call/meeting.