āBeing a PenPal with someone in Kyrgyzstanā is not something that I would have had on my Bingo card a couple of years ago. Which is my way of saying that Iāve got a new exchange with Valerie up on our PenPal conversation page.
This time we chatted about studying abroad, Valerieās experience as a teacher in Kyrgyzstan, and some cultural differences between the States and there. Val made an astute observation about how language impacts how a whole group of people can experience the world around them, while I prattled on some more about climbing and recreation in the mountains. I hope Val get the opportunity to look into some adult clubs!
We also talked a bit about what brought each of us to Micro.blog, which is where we met.
A weekly list of interesting things I found on the internet, posted on Sundays. Sometimes themed, often not.
1ļøā£ Apple is moving steadily toward their sustainability goals, this time updating packaging on some charging accessories to no longer use plastic bits and to implore customers to recycle the boxes. (iOSās āTranslate this pageā feature came in handy!) [š macotakara.jp] (Via Michael Steeber)
4ļøā£ Some design trends to look for in 2024. Pretty slick site, too. (Iāll peg highlighting text, karaoke-style as a trend too.) [š designtrends.click] (Via Matt Birchler)
5ļøā£ I donāt think I need this app, but I commend Iconfactory for their creative solution to the āwhatās going on with my iOS deviceā problem. They made device memory/network stats into a movie that can be watched picture-in-picture while you do things in other apps. [š Craig Hockenberry // blog.iconfactory.com]
7ļøā£A friend reminded me of this list of things that Skippy is no longer allowed to do in the US Army. A staple of comedy in my formative years. [š skippyslist.com]
I discovered CHVRCHES through Merlin Mann and John Siracusa. I donāt know why I was surprised that this was the kind of music they liked too (ageism, I guess), but Iām so glad I took them up on the recommendation. Theyāre so up my alley with their clear lyrics, powerful beats, challenging topics, and high energy.
Iāve liked all of their albums, but Screen Violence is something special. Itās a banger from start to finish.
Thanks for reading 7 Things. If you enjoyed these links or have something neat to share, please let me know. And remember that you can get more links to internet nuggets that Iām finding every day by following me @jarrod on the social web.
When I build shortcuts, I like to think through all the usual ways that someone might want to use it. And then I try to think through the unusual ways someone might use it. To account for different preferences, many of my shortcuts now ask setup questions upon installation that propagate variables in my Setup Stuffā¢ area at the top.
But what should happen when a shortcut doesnāt get set up quite right on that first go? Or what if itās designed to run actions on some bit of data passed into the shortcut, but nothing is passed to it?
My latest update to the āPublish to Micro.blogā shortcut addresses some of these anomalies, and I want to share the techniques I use to mitigate them.
Import Questions Gone Wrong
Look, I get it. You donāt know exactly what a shortcut is going to ask you to set up when you tap that āGet Shortcutā button. You might not have the necessary information at hand to answer all the questions in the moment. And while you can go back into the shortcutās info screen ā Setup and choose āCustomize Shortcutā¦ā to go through the import questions again, or just edit the actions in the editor view itself, I donāt know that everyone feels confident in doing those things.
This means that, despite your best effort, a user might not get their info into the variables needed to successfully execute the shortcut. Hereās how I worked around that eventuality this time.
In this case, the user was supposed to add their blog ID number during setup so that the shortcut can post to the right blog if they have multiple ones. Luckily, Micro.blog can still accept a POST web request even without an ID and it will just get posted to whatever blog was last used. But it requires sending the request to a differently-formatted URL.
So, instead of hard-coding the URL into the āGet Contents of URLā action, I put an āIfā conditional block right before it and use it to evaluate if the āblog-idā variable from the Setup Stuff has any value. If it does, that means the blog ID was entered, and we can send it to the URL that includes the ID. If it doesnāt have any value, it uses the default URL without extra appended parameters.
āIfā blocks come in handy to evaluate the contents of variables. ā
This approach provides an additional benefit that if the user has just one blog, they donāt need to worry about finding its ID. The shortcut will just handle sending it to the default one anyway.
Addressing a Lack of Input
Now back to the matter of the shortcutās input. This one was designed to be the final publishing step in other shortcuts, and to accept text from them as input when run as a subroutine. Thatās kind of an advanced technique though, and someone might download this shortcut expecting that they can run it from the Shortcuts app, type into its text box, and have that text get published to Micro.blog.
If someone runs it standalone, we basically have three options:
Fail silently
Check if thereās no input and throw up an error1
Fallback gracefully with a way to get some text to publish
Until today, this shortcut resorted to option 1. It just didnāt work, and there was no notice sent to the user. Not great. But now it accommodates for just such an occasion.
This shortcut can still be useful, even if nothing is passed to it. ā
Another āIfā conditional block checks to see if the special āShortcut Inputā variable has any value. If it does, great, weāll use the input. But if not, an āAsk for Inputā action solves the problem. I added some explainer text to the actionās prompt. And I saved the user from the need to paste in their clipboard, the most likely way theyāll add text, by setting the default answer to the clipboardās contents. Theyāll have the opportunity to edit or delete the text, or can stop the shortcut by tapping āCancelā and trying again.
Now, you might wonder why I didnāt address the lack of input way at the top of the shortcut by using the built-in fallback-to-clipboard option:
Itās because I didnāt want to bypass the opportunity to tell the user whatās going on and allow them to edit the text. Sometimes, I need to use the clipboard in other ways first, and getting its contents right away can complicate things. The āIfā conditional makes it super clear what happens if thereās no input, and it allows me to address the problem in other ways than with just the clipboard. I could have strung together any number of actions in that āOtherā block if necessary.
āIfā Saves the Day
So if you havenāt done much with the āIfā action, hereās your encouragement to play with it some more. It vastly expands what your shortcuts can handle. In this case, itās helped make mine way more user-friendly and accommodating outside of the intended use case.
I wrote the other night, after several hours of keyboard-mashing, mouse-clicking, and DNS-wrangling:
Too tired to write a proper introduction post, but Iām happy to say that oneamonth.club is now a thing that exists! Itās something Iāve wanted to put together since being inspired by @manuelmoreale.com. Please send me more sites to feature! And you can support my site for $1/month at dingus.club. š«¶
Well, Iām not much more mentally awake right now, but I am excited to tell you about the One a Month Club. Itās an idea, inspired by Manu Moreale, that kindness from internet strangers can be enough to support a small web project. And that tiered membership overly complicates things. And that itās hard enough to convince someone to pay anything to support your work, so why would you want to gate any of those fans from seeing what youāve worked so hard on for them?
We all want writers, code wranglers, and other web artists to be able to get the monetary support they deserve while reaching the widest audience they can.
It manifests like this. To join the One a Month Club, the asking price to support your work and gain access to all of it should be as little as $1 per month. Itās low enough that if someone has any budget at all to spend on extras, they can afford $1 per month. They can set it and forget it, as it shouldnāt make a meaningful impact on their budget. And, as they say, weāll make it up in volume. Oh, and folks can choose to pay more if they want to. But thatās optional.
Really, you should go read Manuās blog post about landing on $1+/month as the ideal singular tier for membership. Itās how I got here.
Anyway, ever since reading that post and following suit with my own $1/month supportership at dingus.club, I thought there should be a page that rounds up all the sites and projects that adhere to this framework. A page like nownownow.com or uses.tech. I kind of thought Manu would make one. Instead, it lived in my head and my to-do list rather than on the web for months.
With the introduction of Micro.blogās single-page sites in January, I knew I could make it a reality. The perfect domain name was available and reasonably priced. I snapped it up as the last piece of the puzzle. (Since the initial idea wasnāt really mine and I see myself as more of a caretaker of it, Iād feel a little weird about hosting the project on my heydingus.net domain and site.)
With a few minutes spent setting up that single-page site in Micro.blog, a few more minutes searching around the web for more sites that meet the $1-for-everything criteria, and many more minutes tweaking the design while waiting for DNS to propagate, oneamonth.club was born.
The web travels fast
As far as I can tell, Manu doesnāt use social media, so I couldnāt adequately notify him with a mention in that initial announcement on my microblog. I intended to send him an email as a heads-up about putting the site together and to open the door for any suggestions, but I wanted to make sure I was happy and settled on its presentation first. Much to my surprise, the next day (yesterday) I already received a request to be added to the site. The inductee said they found it through Manuās blog.
Heād already found the site and linked to it. Wow! š Turns out, he had been considering putting a similar page together himself after all. I suppose we can both cross that item off our lists now.
Join the club
The club is open to anyone who wants to join.1 As Manu put it in our brief email exchange about the project:
Honestly, I just want more people to jump on board because Iād love to support a bunch of different blogs. We need more of this to keep the web open and sustainable.
So open your tip jar (Ko-Fi and Buy Me a Coffee are pretty popular and easy to use), and send me links to it and your project. And take a look through the sites already listed there. Maybe youāll find an awesome new site to help prop up. I have! Letās keep working on that open and sustainable web together. š
Iāve not weighed in on Appleās battle with the European Commissionās Digital Markets Act because, frankly, it seems out of my depth, and Iām not a citizen of the EU so I donāt think my opinion about it counts for much. But I feel compelled to share a few that thoughts solidified as I read Chance Millerās summary for 9to5Mac of the latest changes to developerās options over there:
Now, Apple hasĀ announcedĀ a few additional changes in response to feedback itās received from developers so far. Most notably, Apple will launch a new Web Distribution feature later this spring that lets developers offer their apps for download directly from their website.
Thereās a bunch of stuff here that we would have celebrated Apple for introducing had it done them on their own. Instead, the DMA dragged into them it. Web distribution similar to the Mac? Wow! More linking out opportunities? Great! But knowing Apple hates having to do these so much that they didnāt even make it into the first go at compliance leaves it all feeling insincere and hollow.
As a user, Iād wary of all the new ways to download apps if they were available in the USA. Call me basic, but I value the simplicity of one place to download, update, and restore apps.
As someone sympathetic to developers who have been frustrated by Appleās iron hand ruling of the App Store, I understand the desire for more options, and for real competition to push Apple to make a better distribution product.
As an Apple enthusiast, I wonder how differently the cards would have fell had Apple loosened their grip on their own, rather than have the European Commission do it for them. For one, Iām confident everything would have been settled before their announcement. The fits and starts of changes to the agreements and options are mightily confusing. And Iām sure the community would feel far more charitable toward Apple, rather than the tinge (and often much stronger) of resentment knowing they have no desire to build any of this.
Apple missed their opportunity to do a developer-friendlier App Store 2.0 on their own, and Iām disappointed that they seem too prideful and firm in their convictions to see how that would have paid off in the long run.
Although we missed the first week of March, Iām happy to say that Valerie and I got things on track this weekend and kicked off our month of being PenPals. Valerie is living and working in Kyrgyzstan, which Iām eager to learn about (and hope Iāll be able to confidently spell by the end of March)!
Our first exchanges touch on ā what else between strangers? ā the weather, and also our interests in outdoor pursuits.
2ļøā£ Great, now I want a MacPad. It really seems like an ideal computer. Like a SurfaceBook, but with OSes I actually want to use. [š Federico Viticci // macstories.net]
3ļøā£ James gives us (another) 100 things we can do with our blogs. #61 is calling to me. [š James // jamesg.blog]
4ļøā£ Iāve been experimenting with the <details> element and this post has some great ideas for making it look better. [š Ralph Mason // sitepoint.com]
6ļøā£ Arunās hand-drawn line art of cameras that he uses in blog posts is divine. It really boils down the physical object to its key characteristics. [š Arun Venkatesan // arun.is]
7ļøā£ My jaw hung open to the floor throughout this video of Tori Kelly and Jacob Collier recording runs for āBridge Over Troubled Waterā. Their vocal control is out of this world. [ā¶ļø Jacob Collier // youtube.com]
Speaking of Tori Kelly, sheās featured on one of my favorite songs (āWinter Wonderlandā/āDonāt Worry Be Happyā) in this, one of my favorite Christmas albums. Pentatonix is in my heavy rotation of music throughout the year, but they certainly feature heaviest during the winter because I can listen to their many Christmas albums without fear of retorts from bystanders.
I was never really into acapella until Pentatonix broke into the mainstream back in my college years. I dig their arrangements, I did their chemistry, I did their choice of music to cover and write, I dig their music videos, but most of all I dig their voices. Theyāre really an A-tier performing group!
Seeing as we got a little snow today, I donāt feel bad about sharing a Christmas album in March.
Thanks for reading 7 Things. If you enjoyed these links or have something neat to share, please let me know. And remember that you can get more links to internet nuggets that Iām finding every day by following me @jarrod on the social web.
4ļøā£ Some common sense (once you read them) rules for web design. [š anthonyhobday.com]
5ļøā£ Apps like this ARMIDI Widgets creator are exactly what I was hoping would get explored with Vision Pro. Such a clever use of anchoring settings to your wrist. Canāt wait to see more like this in action. [š Geert Bevin // youtube.com]
6ļøā£ Iāve always been frustrated by folks who talk shit about e-bikes and how they āmake you lazyā. Now thereās research that shows people riding e-bikes get more exercise than riding traditional ones. Anything that gets people more likely to get outside and moving is great in my book. [š Micah Toll // electrek.co]
7ļøā£ Are you an uphill person or a downhill person? (Iām uphill leaning, but I sure do love going down on skis too!) [š @outsidemagazine // instagram.com]
So, I have a thing for stylistically stripped back music where lyrics take center stage and ear worm tunes. I canāt remember how I happened across dodieās music, but it fell right in place with those preferences. I like to think of her as a bedroom creator, just noodling around on her songs, crafting them till their just right and recording without many frills. My imagination is probably all wrong from reality, but itās how I like to picture this music coming to be.
Human is just a tight 23 minutes, but itās one of my favorites and provides an excellent intro to dodieās music. If you get to the end of the seven tracks yearning for more, well, youāre in for a treat. She has a number of EPs and singles, as well as another full album, waiting for you.
Thanks for reading 7 Things. If you enjoyed these links or have something neat to share, please let me know. And remember that you can get more links to internet nuggets that Iām finding every day by following me @jarrod on the social web.
Iāve been busy the last few days, so Iām taking advantage of this extra leap day that February has provided us to catch up on my annual birthday post.
The past few years, Iāve used my birthday as a chance to lay out a set of goals that I wanted to complete over the next year. It was aspirational, but ultimately a bit too āNew Year Resolution-yā and ended up being more of a stressor than a motivator. With 28 or so things to do in a year, that means accomplishing — checks math — one of those items every couple of weeks. Yikes. In reality, I hardly looked at the list until the end of December, and then scrambled over the next couple months to try to check a few more off. Yikes. Though I still like the idea, it wasnāt leaving me feeling good.
So Iām not gonna do that this year.
Instead, Iād like to reflect a little on my 30th year here on Earth, and ruminate a bit on where my life is headed. And Iāll probably make another listā¦ but different. Youāll see.
My Thirtieth Year
As far as milestones are concerned, this past year was dominated by going through the process of finding and purchasing our first home, and, of course, moving in and making it our own. If Iām honest, Iām still not particularly thrilled about the whole thing, but it makes my wife very happy which is good enough for me. Someday Iāll tell the whole story of our journey into home ownership — in fact, I typed a large portion of it out just now, but this isnāt the right time for that tale.
I lost a few loved ones. I made new friends. I enjoyed my first full year of mountain guiding — a goal Iād been working toward for over a decade. I achieved climbing, running, and skiing goals that Iād set for myself. It was probably the most active year of my life.
I faced difficult conversations when I wasnāt doing my best in some relationships, but emerged stronger, more self-aware, and gained more humility from them.
But perhaps the best reflection going into my 30th birthday came from a question my wife posed to me on a walk just a few days ahead of her own 30th (just two days before mine): Did I feel good about going into my 30s or did I resent it?
It seems like there are a whole lot of people who resent turning 30. Maybe because itās seen as leaving the last years of your youth behind? Maybe because it can be a wake up call if youāre not traveling along the path you imagined for yourself career or family-wise?
But not me. I have no regrets about my 20s, and feel very fortunate to say that Iām happy where Iāve landed so far. Iāve got a wonderful wife and little family with our fur babies. Iām working in the field that I want, and actually get to use what I studied in school. Iāve learned so much over the last decade about who I am, what Iām good at, and what Iām not. Iām living in a place that allows me to pursue climbing, running, skiing, hiking, and many other outdoor adventures. I have a place of my own to live, and some financial stability. Iām not left needing, only hungry to experience ever more.
I think my 30s will be my best decade yet.
The Next Decade
Alright, I promised you a list. Rather than stuff my calendar with more obligations each month, this year Iāve been thinking about a more measured and manageable approach to goal-setting.
This year, Iād like to lay out a set of 10 goals that Iād like to accomplish over the next decade. At just one per year, and with the option to readjust each birthday, I think Iāll be cause to stay on the bandwagon this time around.
Now, I did just put together my Impossible List just a few months ago, which serves a similarly purpose. But Iām thinking about this post as an opportunity to prioritize some items already present there. Letās dig in.
Start my own small business. The big one, and what Iām most anxious and excited to pursue this year. Iāve come to realize that Iām only truly happy and fulfilled when I get to call the shots. Iāve got ideas that I want to be able to implement without asking anyoneās permission. I want to be able to set my own schedule to allow more time for learning, training, and progressing, in addition to wanting the opportunity travel and spend more quality time with my wife. Iāve got both short-term and long-term plans/dreams that I think could work really well, and Iām eager to give them a shot. Itās my big leap.
Climb in Yosemite National Park.
Complete a thru-hike.
Run a marathon.
Visit a new country.
Develop an app.
Earn my AMGA Rock Guide certification.
Establish annual trips with a few close friends and family.
Reestablish an annual big backpacking trip with my wife.
A weekly list of interesting things I found on the internet, posted on Sundays. Sometimes themed, often not.
1ļøā£ Itās probably the hubās fault that your devices arenāt responding. Try to purchase hubless lights and outlets instead.
2ļøā£ You probably need more remotes/switches than you thought to replace/add physical controllers for the non-nerds in your household. This Wemo one works quite well and offers six different commands in a tiny footprint.
3ļøā£ Setting up automations for when the first person arrives home (turn on lights, raise thermostat), and when the last person leaves (turn off lights, lower thermostat) are some of the most useful things you can set up and that everyone will appreciate.
4ļøā£ Donāt overlook the Home widget. You can turn off the automatic feature where it guesses which devices you want to control in a given moment and instead set the eight-ish accessories/scenes that you want quick access to. Mine is full of the things Iād want to control first thing in the morning or last at night in bed.
5ļøā£ I canāt stress enough how much it helps to ask your partner/housemates what theyād expect to happen when you say a phrase like āHey dingus, good morningā, or when you long press the bottom button on a remote/switch. They should have some say in how the devices react, and youāll get more buy-in if things do what they expect.
6ļøā£ Iāve been using indoor Nanoleaf lights in outdoor sconces throughout the very chilly winter weather here in upstate New York, and itās been totally fine. Worth a shot rather than looking for outdoor-specific devices.
7ļøā£ Itās expensive, but the physically wired HomeKit switches from Lutron have been so worthwhile and rock solid (even with the hub) for us. I wish I had a little more control over what happens when you press a button (maybe let me run a scene?), but having more lights, fans, and things be HomeKit addressable while still using the existing wiring for physical switches has been great.
My inner Disney child is showing, but the Tarzan (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) still rocks. I remember dancing around my room to these songs, pretending I was swinging from trees. In college, āTrashinā the Campā (with *NSYNC?!) was a very common song to be heard being skat from my roommateās and my dorm. āSon of Manā still gets the blood pumping, and āYouāll Be in My Heartā still brings out the tenderness.
Thanks for reading 7 Things. If you enjoyed these links or have something neat to share, please let me know. And remember that you can get more links to internet nuggets that Iām finding every day by following me @jarrod on the social web.