A weekly list of interesting things I found on the internet, posted on Sundays. Sometimes themed, often not.
1️⃣ Steve Ledlow makes the case for the Intentional Web with this manifesto. [🔗 tangiblelife.net]
2️⃣ Matt Birchler reviewed his year-ago review of the iPhone 15 Pro. Great idea! [🔗 birchtree.me]
3️⃣ I was always excited to see Becca Farsace feature at The Verge, so I’m doubly excited now that she’s doing her own YouTube channel. In her first solo video, she explains why she stayed at and why she left The Verge (sounds like some unfortunate corporate-ness has crept in, among other things), and why she’s jazzed to be doing her own thing now. [▶️ youtube.com]
4️⃣ I mentioned this Under The Radar episode in my post earlier this week, but I wanted to highlight it again here. Marco Arment and David Smith have a thoughtful conversation about the aftermath of Overcast’s 10th anniversary launch, dealing with the feedback from users, and fixing some mistakes. [🎙️ overcast.fm]
5️⃣ I also starred this episode of The Vergecast in which David Pierce talks to many of his colleagues about their productivity systems. Lots of great ideas and wonderful reminder about how differently we all tackle some of our common challenges. Some of my takeaways: write more things down, digital calendars are great, an ever-lengthening task list isn’t all that helpful, having just 2-3 must-do things per day is smart, and lots of people use TickTick. I think it’s well-worth adding to your podcast queue. [🎙️ overcast.fm]
7️⃣Don’t forget, you can get a custom shortcut made for you by yours truly by donating to my campaign for the cancer-beating work of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital this month! [🎗️ heydingus.net/stjude]
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 I’m finding every day by following me @jarrod on the social web.
I wanted to offer a quick follow-up to my post congratulating Marco Arment on the rewrite of Overcast, his podcast app. It’s hard to imagine you being in this corner of the blog-and-podcast-osphere and not hearing about Overcast’s 10th anniversary relaunch and how the removal and changing of specific features rubbed a lot of users the wrong way. It certainly tarnished (but I’d argue didn’t obviate) Overcast’s sterling reputation.
Being Overcast’s sole developer, Marco faced a lot of criticism for the way things went down. I was disappointed to hear that he received a bunch of personal attacks online. Stating what you don’t like about the update and choosing a different app is one thing, but we can do better than tearing people down.
All that said, one bit of criticism that stuck with me was when someone pointed out that Marco is often quick to point out the flaws in Apple’s software and to call for radical change in its direction, but then was not fond of being on the receiving end of similar criticism when it came to his own app. Having listened to Marco’s complaints about those complaints on ATP, I thought that was a fair bit of feedback.
Fast-forward to just a few days ago when I was listening to the latest episode of Marco’s other podcast, Under The Radar. It sounded like Marco had done some soul-searching, and realized that he is in a similar position where his many, many users have taken on a kind of co-ownership of the app alongside him. And that co-ownership meant it wasn’t super fair of him to make drastic changes to their workflows without notice or ready-made solutions:
(This is just a short clip, but if you’re an Overcast user, I recommend listening to the whole episode. It’s only 30 minutes long, and in it, Marco and David Smith have a really thoughtful conversation about dealing with the negative feedback and resolving the mistakes.)
It’s a realization that I wish Marco had made prior to the heartache, consternation, and damage to his business and reputation, but I’m glad that he got there in the end. Marco showed humility here, which takes courage and character. I think his app and his relationship with his users will be better off for it.
With the restoration and rethinking of several key features (streaming, easy sleep timer access, sorting options, downloads management…), it sounds like Overcast is back to being in most users’ good graces (mine included). If you stepped away from it during this bumpy landing, maybe give it another shot. Marco is listening and responding to feedback.
My barging in (and not so subtle attempt to someday be a guest) on “the tech podcast once again hosted by Dan Moren.”
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Mikah Sargent: What is your go-to external storage option?
This is an easy one. I really only have one external storage thing in use, and it’s a Samsung T-something SSD that’s always hanging off my Mac mini for Time Machine backups. I used to partition it off to have some “cold storage” for large media files, but I realized that I never went looking for them. So one day I simplified and now just have everything I want to keep on my Mac mini’s internal SSD, and therefore backed up to the external SSD with Time Machine.
That said, I am a heavy user of iCloud Drive for almost all my files. Plus a smattering of other cloud storage for random projects and archives I’ve picked up over the years.
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Bryan Guffey: What’s your favorite collaboration tool?
If we’re talking realtime collaboration, I’ve never used anything as solid as the Google Docs and Co suite of web apps. They just seem to work with as many people editing live as you could want. Shared Apple Notes and Reminders come in at a close second, but I’m rarely dong live collaboration there. My wife and I just share a lot of stuff that way.
I recently had the opportunity to use Canva for putting together a legal document and, boy, it was like driving a F150 down an old English cobblestone street. Sure, it could be done, but it was way too much tool for the job at hand.
For asynchronous collaboration, I still have fond memories of using Basecamp. Its slower and more opinionated approach really worked for me. (Even if the opinions of the Basecamp founders really don’t work for me these days.)
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Dan Moren: What drives your smartphone upgrade cycle these years?
I used to be on the iPhone Upgrade Program and got a brand-new phone every years for three or four years in a row. Then I got my beloved iPhone 13 mini and said “No” to every upgrade since 2021, holding out hope that the mini size would make a return.
I’ve since given up that hope, and now the allure of Apple Intelligence, better battery life, satellite messaging, a fresh design (Dynamic Island!) and camera upgrades are all calling my name.
So, yeah, I’ll probably pick up a new phone this year. But I sure as hell won’t be trading in my 13 mini. That little guy is going into my Hall of Fame.
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Owen JJ Stone: Do you think, in our lifetime, we’re going to have a Skynet scenario, and if we do, who do you think is going to do it?
Confession: I’ve never seen The Terminator and only have a vague sense of what Skynet really is. But no, I don’t think I’ll see an AI super-intelligence that “takes over” or threatens humanity in my lifetime. Possible eventually? Maybe, on an infinite timescale, but I’m not too worried about that eventuality, to be honest.
If I were to peg a company that would create a Skynet-like AI threat, I guess I would point to OpenAI’s weird behavior surrounding their Safety Team as a potential red flag. I wouldn’t put it past Google to go too far, too fast and have one of their Moonshot experiments get out of hand. They’ve got access to the most data, so Google is probably the biggest threat.
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Bonus Topic: What is the oldest piece of clothing that you still wear?
I have a pretty substantial collection of clothes from high school that still fit and are in the rotation. But to point out one article in particular, it’s probably a BSA Tiger Cub T-Shirt that I picked up secondhand to wear on Tiger Cub Tee Tuesdays while working at summer camp for many years. It’s in rough shape, but I love that shirt.
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Overtime Topic: What sort of tech support do you think you might need as you get older?
I’m not so confident that I’ll never need tech support, although Mikah does make the solid point that we (the tech nerds) have developed the skill to look up answers on our own. So maybe I’ll continue to be stubborn and just figure things out myself. But I’m sure there will come a time where I just don’t have the interest or energy to figure out yet another new tech product, service, or computing paradigm and I’ll start to get left behind.
I’m already not super in-tune with the short-form video creation for TikTok and Instagram Reels that’s all the rage these days. I’ve not had to ask for help yet, but that does eventually comes for us all.
Until next time, watch what you say, and keep watching the clock. Bye everybody!
Hey y’all! Our little corner of the internet, led by the fine folks at the Relay podcast network, is back at it again, raising funds for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. There is so much to be said for the amazing work that St. Jude does to treat kids with cancer — at no cost to their families! — but suffice to say that their mission is for no child to die from cancer. No child. None. That’s a huge goal, and we can get there together.
Stephen Hackett has a very good blog post that kicked off this year’s campaign, and it explains why we rally behind Relay and St. Jude every year. Basically, St. Jude saved his kid’s life and countless more all over the world.
Yet again this year, I’m throwing my hat in the ring, trying to raise a few extra dollars. Our family will be making our own donation here, but I’d be touched and grateful if you were able to toss a dollar or two into the bucket. Literally, every single dollar helps.
This time, I’m doing a good old-fashioned pledge drive to earn your support for St. Jude. Here’s the deal: You get blog posts, and the kids get money. I invite/encourage/challenge you to pledge $5 for every blog post that I fill your feed with this month. Even though I just came off Blaugust, writing 31 posts in 31 days, I’ll continue to blog my heart out in September — for the kids (and for you).
Or if you like getting stuff for your donation, for $15+, I’ll build you a custom shortcut. You can also get some awesome screensavers and wallpapers ($60) or stickers + a digital bundle ($100) from the team at Relay. And if you want to absolve yourself of consumerism guilt during New iPhone Season, a donation using The Marco Offset (as explained on ATP) can ease your soul from spending a boatload of money on a phone that you probably don’t really need.
If you want to make a pledge based on the number of blog posts I deliver this month, first, THANKYOU — you fill my heart, and second, send me an email and I’ll add your name to the list below. 😁
Getting back into reading the Make Something Wonderful book this morning, I was struck by the very first story I saw as I turned the page. It’s the “Email Exchange Between Steve, Intel CEO, and an Intel Engineer” in the 1985-1996 section. (In case that link doesn’t work, you’ll find this story right after some pictures of Steve Jobs at Disneyland in the book.)
In it, Steve Jobs was approached by an Intel engineer about setting up a meeting to discuss help on their graphics architecture that Steve had apparently offered from Pixar. Steve asked what Intel would offer them in exchange for those “secrets”. This request for compensation apparently took Intel by surprise and Andy Grove told Steve so (firmly, but not unkindly), citing examples where Andy had offered friendly help to NeXT without any such financial exchange. Steve took a few days to consider, and then flipped his position, offering their help again, but this time with no strings attached.
Andy,
I have many faults, but one of them is not ingratitude. And, I do agree with you that “In the long run, these things balance out.”
Therefore, I have changed my position 180 degrees - - we will freely help [Engineer 1] make his processors much better for 3D graphics. Please ask [Engineer 1] to call me, and we will arrange for a meeting as soon as the appropriate Pixar technical folks can be freed up from the film.
Thanks for the clearer perspective.
Steve
Now there’s some behavior that I wish we saw more of from Apple these days. Certainly, sticking to your beliefs when you’re challenged on them is admirable (and valuable), but so is maintaining an open mind and being willing to “change your position 180 degrees.” That willingness to admit when you were wrong change course decisively, and to do so with humility, is a kind of leadership that needs to be on display from the top.
You could say that one of Apple’s faults these days is that of ingratitude, particularly toward its developer partners, and especially around their pushing to get more money for the tools Apple provides to them. Apple seems to be now, Iike Steve Jobs was then, choosing not to see the imbalance of what they’re demanding. They don’t act like a company that recognizes the enormous value that Apple already gets in return from the apps that developers make for its platforms. I appreciate and applaud that Jobs made that 180 degree turn and chose a different way.
Holy smokes, I’ve done it! This is post #31/31 for Blaugust 2024. While it’s not my first time writing at least one post for every day of the month, this kind of volume/consistency is pretty rare for my blog.
As I wrote in my halfway point check-in post, the first few weeks went pretty smoothly. I found the time and motivation to sit down and write out a full blog post every evening. Ideas came easily and the words flowed out of my fingertips. And then, having properly jinxed myself by saying it was going well, the second half of the month kind of fell apart for my daily posting habit. Anyone following me on social media will have noticed that the last final 9 or 10 posts were published over the last two days. 😳
I feel justified in blaming some of that intermittence on a crazy work schedule the last two weeks. I’ve been out guiding nearly every day with many long hiking days and climbing trips. It’s been great working full-time (overtime?) as a guide, but it also left me exhausted. Coupled with an illness that I didn’t have the recovery time to shake, I came home most evenings with only enough energy to eat dinner, repack my bag for the next day, and then drag myself up to bed. I tried to keep up with my 7 Things and “Crashing Clockwise” series at least, but other creative writing took a backseat.
Finally, the last few days I had some time in the evenings to dedicate back to blogging. It meant sacrificing other fun activities (I haven’t been to our local Thursday night live concert series in weeks!), but I was committed to finishing this blogging challenge. 31 posts in 31 days (not necessary one per day 😉).
While Blaugust didn’t have the same fervor or participation that I saw from WeblogPoMo2024 back in May of this year, it was just the motivation I needed to get back from my “summer break” off of blogging. As they say, the best way to start writing is to just start writing. One word follows another, and soon enough you’ve filled a sentence, a paragraph, a blog post.
Publishing every day has also helped me to get more comfortable with not agonizing over every detail of the post. I didn’t add as many screenshots of photos as I typically do. I intentionally wrote with more of my speaking voice, rather than the more perfect grammar that I tend towards. Sometimes posts didn’t even get a pass through Grammarly before publishing. [gasp!] And all of that was okay — good even. While I don’t necessarily subscribe to the idea that quantity beats quality, I do think that posting more often is better for me than hardly at all, which is what May through July was like here on HeyDingus.
One regret I have about this month is that I didn’t find the time to flip over the new design I’ve been working on for the site. I thought it would be nice to introduce it for Blaugust where presumably more people would stop by to see it. But that’s okay, that’s time that went toward writing instead.
To finish things off, here’s a short list of my favorite things I wrote this month. Check ’em out if you haven’t already, and if you like what you read you’re welcome to check out the whole Blaugust archive. Thanks for reading.
As I write these words, I’m sitting in the passenger seat of my wife’s car as she drives us down I-90W out of New York State and toward Pennsylvania and Ohio. Although we’ve driven through this way before on our way back to see family in Michigan, this will be the first time we’re staying in Ohio since moving from the Cleveland area nearly three years ago.
We’re headed back to our old stomping grounds for a wedding between two dear friends. One I met when he volunteered and then worked for me at the Boy Scout camp I used to direct there. We became fast friends through sarcasm, late nights, and dedication to a job well-done. I met his boyfriend a few years later. He’s equally delightful and they make a perfect couple.
Better yet, the wedding is being held at the scout camp where we used to work. It’ll be a homecoming both of people and places and for me.
There are a lot of emotions wrapped up in this event:
First and foremost, excitement to celebrate my friends’ marriage. I love weddings and how it’s an opportunity for us all to celebrate two people’s love for one another.
Second, pride in the fact that the organization that had such a profound impact on my life has progressed so far in recent memory. When I joined the Boy Scouts of America, it was a boys-only club, and was not accepting of gay scouts or leaders. And while the organization is certainly not perfect today, I at least feel good about them opening their doors to every youth and adult, LGBTQ and all. To be hosting a same-sex wedding on Boy Scout property would have been unthinkable not that many years ago. 🏳️🌈
Third, a wee bit of nerves. While I left the camp and the area on good terms, it’s always a bit weird going back to places where you used to have authority and no longer do. I’m sure to see and talk with old scouts and scouters I used to serve, and they like to gossip about “how things are going with Council these days.” The thing is, many of my close friends still work for the scout council and it’s uncomfortable to hear complaints about people who I know are giving their all day in and day out. But this weekend isn’t about that stuff. It’s about the wedding, and I’m sure it’s going to be a blast reconnecting.
It’ll be awesome to roam around camp again and see what’s changed and what hasn’t. And my mouth is watering just thinking about hitting up The Feve for some late-night tots, just like old times.
Most of all, I can’t wait to get down on the dance floor. 🕺
Writing about my work shift scheduling shortcut reminded me that I used to use another shortcut on a weekly basis in the workplace.
Since I get paper paychecks with no digital paper trail, I wanted to be able to easily scan a copy the paystub into my Finances folder. Doing so was surprisingly tricky seeing as Apple’s own ‘Scan Document’ action in Shortcuts doesn’t allow you to do much with that scanned item as a variable. Instead, I used an action provided by the (aptly named) Actions app that fills the gap by sending the scan to the clipboard to be used elsewhere in the shortcut. Instead the end, I got the shortcut to open to the system file scanner to scan my paystub, automatically rename the file to my preferred naming scheme with current date, and save it to my Finances → Paystubs folder in iCloud Drive.
It worked well enough, save for the fact that you had to download that Actions app and sometimes the scanning action would flake out and demand another go. In fact, the shortcut was helpful enough that I was getting ready to add it to the HeyDingus Libary.
Then came along Simple Scan. This app by Greg Pierce (maker of Drafts, in which I’m writing this very blog post) was designed to fill this exactly use case: quickly scan something with the system scanner and send it elsewhere. Sure, you could do all of this within the Files app, but it’s cumbersome there and not nearly as versatile.
Long story short, I tried out Simple Scan during its TestFlight beta period, and its pretty much immediately replaced my custom shortcut. The scanner is fast and reliable, and Greg built in a bunch of power automation options including defining a naming scheme and specific destination. You can even set up a whole host of those custom automations — along with the built in ones for Messages, Files, Email, Photos and Share Sheet — to use at will. I’ve got one for my paystubs of course, and another to send random scans to my generic Scans folder.
Simple Scan has everything you need on one screen, with a giant button to start the scan. ⌘
One of my favorite features is that those automations show up as quick actions when you search the app’s name in Spotlight or when doing a long-press on the app’s icon. With one tap I can start the scan and know it’s going to end up in the right place. You can also choose to get either a JPEG image, or just recognized text out of a scan, rather than a PDF. It’s so handy.
I’d love for every app to offer these kind of quick actions. ⌘
Simple Scan fills a specific need and does it so well that I don’t even mind paying for it, despite the fact that I had already built my own free solution. I’m pretty sure you can use it for free under some limitations, but an annual subscription of $5 gets you full access. You can also do a lifetime purchase of $20 and get everything without a subscription (that’s what I did). If you want to try out my old shortcut, here’s a link to its unmaintained version.
You know me, I’m always up for spending an hour to make a shortcut that’ll save a few minutes each week. In this case, I grew tired of duplicating and dragging around my work calendar events each time the schedule came out. Now, with just a couple of taps, my whole week’s work of shifts get added to my calendar.
My workplace is a little behind the times. We write out our time cards by hands. We receive paper paychecks in lieu of any direct deposit. And our work schedule is simply a paper grid with our names and which days we’re supposed to come in written on it, and then a picture of it is emailed to us the weekend before. What can I say? My boss has been doing it this way for 40 years and I don’t expect him to give up his paper and pencil anytime soon. But it means for me to get my shifts onto my calendar, I used to have to flip-flop between my email app with the picture of the schedule open and Fantastical where I’d duplicate an older event (with the right title, location, and time frame set) and change its date for each of the new ones. Not totally onerous, but also not super easy.
Shortcuts makes this process super easy.
My goal was to be able to just select which days of the week I was scheduled to work and have the events appear on the correct calendar with all the right details. And by using a bit of date math, I got it working perfectly.
The whole shortcut (just barely) fits on one screen. It’s the simple ones that are sometimes the most helpful. ⌘
It starts by asking which day the work schedule starts on. Our calendar runs Monday to Sunday (as all good calendars should), so I select the upcoming Monday. Or, if by some miracle we get our schedule more than a week out, I’ll select whatever Monday starts the week of shifts.
Next, I select from a list of each day of the week which days I’m scheduled to work. The list comes from a ‘Dictionary’ action in which I’ve defined how many days after Monday each it. For example, Tuesday is one day past Monday, and Friday is four days after.
Finally, using a ‘Repeat With Each’ block, I add the number of days past Monday to the start date I initially chose and add each shift with a ‘Add New Event’ action that’s pre-defined with the location, start and end times, and title. All those events get added to my Work calendar that’s shared with my wife.
Here’s what it looks like:
If you need to schedule events that are mostly constant, but just their days of the week change, I encourage you to download and customize the shortcut to fit your needs. It certainly saves me hassle and time, makes me less error prone, and keeps our family on the same page.
A weekly list of interesting things I found on the internet, posted on Sundays. Sometimes themed, often not.
I’m off to Ohio for a wedding this weekend, so (perhaps for the first time ever) you’re getting an issue of 7 Things early!
1️⃣ MereCivilian turned a 13-year-old iPad 2 into $1000 toward a brand-new Pixel 9 Pro Fold. Wow! [🔗 merecivilian.com]
2️⃣ Nick Heer makes the case that iOS has gotten a bit harder to use with a handful of examples related to the Dynamic Island, Lock Screen, and gestures. [🔗 pxlnv.com]
3️⃣ I wholeheartedly agree with this short post from Manu Moreale. Having links to your social profiles on your website is great, but you really really should have an email address there. It’s the most universal way of sending a message to someone. [🔗 manuelmoreale.com]
4️⃣ Can you believe that it’s been 15 whole years since the greatest software update of all time was released? 😏 I kid, but it really has been that long since Mac OS X Snow Leopard came out, and BasicAppleGuy has a short retrospective and fantastic up-res’ed versions of its iconic desktop wallpapers. [🔗 basicappleguy.com]
5️⃣ Remember that One Million Checkboxes website that was up for a couple of weeks? Its author just wrote up this wild story about how teens worked out how to coordinate to send secret messages, draw, and even make animations with it. So cool! [🔗 eieio.games]
6️⃣ This OP3 thing that helps you track downloads on your podcast even if the host doesn’t have it built in (like Micro.blog) seems pretty neat! If I ever start a show, I’ll have to remember it. [🔗 chrisenns.com]
7️⃣ Jonathan Ruiz took an idea shared by Federico Viticci on Connected and ran with it to develop a fully-fledged app that he just released on the App Store. It’s, fittingly, called Ticci Tabs and is a way to easily browse your favorite 6 or 7 websites. I’m planning on using it for the publications I subscribe to, and a few other sites that I just really like their designs. 🔗 thermalcorner.net
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 I’m finding every day by following me @jarrod on the social web.
