It’s Thanksgiving, once again, here in the U.S. and I just wanted to take a moment to say “thanks” to HeyDingus readers out there, and all those who inspire me. I was mostly offline for a few months there, but I’m really appreciative of everyone reading the site. I do it mostly for me, but knowing that anyone is enjoying my work is a big motivator. I get a huge thrill anytime someone reaches out on Twitter or email with a comment or suggestion. So if you’re one of those folks, you get an extra thanks! 😉
Moving to a new home and starting over with a new community is always a bit scary. It was really nice to have the familiarity of this corner of the internet, which has always been warm and welcoming, to return to this year. I hope that you’re also surrounded by friends and family — online or in-person — this season.
Over the last week, 9to5Mac has noticed that Apple Support articles have begun being updated to refer to “laptops” or “Mac laptops,” instead of notebooks.
At the risk of also sounding cranky, I always liked the term “notebooks”, too. “Laptop” might be the industry term, but Apple so often marches to the beat of its own drum that I’m surprised that they relented on this. And laptops don’t always go on laps, so it’s not a particularly more descriptive word. Notebooks always sounded just a little cooler than laptops — it’s a notably analog term for a high-tech computer — but with a non-pretentious, Mac vs. PC ad sort of vibe.
The gift-giving season is upon us. And if your family is like mine, that means everyone is scrambling to add things to their wish lists before big shopping sales events.1 A few years back, I got everyone to switch from sending Word documents and emails to using shared Reminders lists, and for the most part, it’s been a huge success. Everyone has the same up-to-date list, fewer duplicate gifts are given, and it removes a lot of friction from the whole thing.2
However, something unexpected happened after the iOS/iPadOS 16 and macOS 13 updates this year. I started seeing notifications for every item added to these lists. In fact, I was getting notifications for items added to any shared list.
Knowing that something was added to the list might be helpful, but not all of these. ⌘
It turns out that these notifications are a new feature enabled by the updates. You can choose to get a notification when items are added, completed, or both. The problem is, I didn’t decide to get them. It was turned on for adding items by default.
So, here’s the tip. If you’re getting annoyed by a deluge of Reminders notifications you didn’t ask to receive, you need to head to the Reminders app and delve into the Collaboration menu inside each list to change the setting. First, tap the Collaborate icon in the upper right of the list, then tap ‘Manage Shared List’, and there you’ll find the new switches for ‘Notify When’.
You must enable/disable these options for each shared list. You certainly wouldn’t want the completed reminders to ruin any surprises! ⌘
I actually appreciate these new options and plan to keep them enabled for several specific lists. For example, it’ll be helpful to know when my wife adds something to our family task list rather than having to remember to check it regularly. But I wish the new defaults, and, importantly, where to change them, were communicated better. It’s possible there was a blurb about the notifications on the Reminders splash screen after updating, but there are so many of those screens after major updates that I tend to blaze past them. It’s not a huge deal but defaults matter, and perhaps having the notifications turned on for just new lists would have been better than changing all the existing ones.
Bonus Tip #1: Add items throughout the year! I save all kinds of cool products that I find to a bucket in Raindrop.io and then periodically move the most pertinent ones to my actual wish list.)↩︎
Bonus Tip #2: If you’re an Amazon Wish List user, you can still play along. Just add a task with the URL to that Amazon list to the top of your Reminders wish list. Having it saved to one place — the Reminders app — alongside everyone else’s lists is really nice. And then you can also mix in items that aren’t available on Amazon to the main lists.↩︎
With over 50% of Twitter’s workforce gone from the company, I — like many others — worried that it could literally fall apart without key engineers keeping the service going. I’m less worried about that outcome now, but am more concerned about the potential for more hate speech returning to the platform as Elon Musk reinstates previously banned accounts. So, I’d like to be ready to depart from Twitter if it comes to that.
I’d known at one point that you could save an archive of all your tweets, but I had forgotten until Matt Birchler tweeted about an awesome tool which takes that archive file and makes it more useful and accessible:
The Twitter Archive Parser, developed by Tim Hutton, uses Python, which I had to install on my Mac (I used this site). But after that, the step-by-step instructions made running the script simple. If you install Python 3, know that you’ll need to adapt the Terminal command to python3 parser.py for it to run. Then, follow the rest of the prompts in Terminal.
Now I’ve got all 11 years’ worth of my tweets downloaded locally as text files and high-res images for if Twitter does come crashing down or I want to leave it behind. If you want the same portability of your tweets, Tim’s GitHub project page is a great place to get started.
A weekly list of things I found interesting, posted on Sundays. Sometimes themed, often not.
1️⃣ The Ted Lasso team has really gone the extra mile by putting up billboards in the hometowns of the U.S. Men’s National Team with motivational messages for each player. This put a huge smile on my face. [Link - @TedLasso // twitter.com]
3️⃣ Micheal Steeber is at it again with Facades, another Apple Retail-focused app. This time, it’s a database of all the stores worldwide with their location, opening date, and more. And tags for which stores have which certain designs and features, like Apple Pickup. I don’t know how Michael learns so fast. He’s literally taught himself 3D rendering and now Swift/SwiftUI coding all this year. I’m so impressed. (Oh, and it’s free! But you should totally throw something into the tip jar.). [Link - @MichaelSteeber // twitter.com]
5️⃣ And because I can’t stop linking to Twitter things this week, here’s this resurrected Fail Whale comic that got a chuckle out of me. [Link - The Oatmeal Comic // theoatmeal.com]
6️⃣ The Beths’ newest album, Expert in a Dying Field has been on heavy rotation for me lately. Easy listening with deep messages. Bonus points for the creative album title. [Link — The Beths // album.link]
And yet this page seems to get no love. I see articles about escaping the YouTube algorithm or sneaky ways to find the RSS feeds for channels. I get the urge to follow along in your RSS app, and I would love if YouTube made it easier to find those feeds, but I think more people should use the subscriptions page since I so often feel like the complaints I see about YouTube are basically completely solved if people would just bookmark YouTube’s subscriptions page rather than the home page.
Matt makes a good case for using YouTube’s subscriptions page so as not to miss any videos from your favorite creators. But I’m one of those weirdos who wants fewer apps to check every day, so, yes, I also subscribe via RSS. As Matt mentioned, it can be a huge hassle to find a channel’s RSS feed, and I used to use a shortcut to make it less painful. But these days, my RSS app of choice, Reeder, does all the heavy lifting. A while back, it gained the ability to grab the RSS feed for any channel just by pasting in the URL to its channel or any of its videos.
As a bonus, since all my videos show up alongside articles, I can use my favorite shortcut to send the video URL to the right place for watching later. This ‘Save for Later’ shortcut accepts any URL and routes it based on the domain. I’ve got youtube.com and vimeo.com links going to Play, music.apple.com links going to MusicBox, and everything else is saved to Pocket.
That experimentation could work well on a blog though. I could run down this path or that path and let people know what’s great and what sucks.
Letting people know what’s great and what sucks is the basis for so many of my favorite blogs. Sure, they all have a topic that they gravitate towards, but none are carved from stone that way. And it’s the direction I’ve wanted to take HeyDingus in with its reboot. More well-rounded in what’s on my mind, and less strictly tech-focused.
Josh is a gifted writer, and you should read the rest of his piece.
So, hey, I’m kind of a newbie when it comes to behind-the-scenes internet stuff. Apparently, when you move your domain from one host to another (like from Squarespace to Blot), you should also make sure to change the DNS records that are associated with any email addresses using that domain.
🤦♂️
I didn’t do that. So if you’ve tried to send me an email addressed to either jarrod@heydingus.net or contact@heydingus.net in the past 3 weeks and 6 days, I didn’t get it. So sorry about that!
But I’ve solved the issue, and am receiving messages at those addresses once again. I just had to delete the domain from iCloud Custom Domains1, re-add it, and then update the DNS records on Hover. Easy peasy, but something I overlooked in the big move.
If you’d like to resend, I’ll be sure to read and respond (unless you’re spam 😝).
iCloud Custom Domains for Mail has been awesome and rock-solid for me, besides this one issue which was totally on me. I highly recommend it if you use iCloud for email, but want to receive emails from multiple domains without paying extra to the domain registrar.↩︎
Today would have been my Grandpa’s 87th birthday. Or Papa, as we called him. But he passed away a little over a month ago now. Below is the journal entry I wrote back in late January when I learned that he’d been given a “time remaining” estimate with the units in months.
I’ve thought a lot about putting this out on the internet, or just keeping it for myself. But Papa was a gregarious man, and I think his memory deserves company. So here goes.
Tonight I found out that my Grandpa has around six months to live. He’s been struggling with heart issues and back issues for years and years at this point. He’s had ups and downs, but this particular heart issue has kind of come out of the blue for me. I thought after his heart surgery a few years ago that the problem was mostly taken care of. And he’s had another recent operation that was getting his back pain more under control.
So to find out that, despite all that, he’s likely to be gone before the end of 2022 is a shock.
I’ve known my grandparents — both sets — are getting up in age, and I’ve come to terms that they could die any year now. But there’s something about knowing that it’s probably going to be this year that we lose one of them that hurts bad.
I only found out from my parents a few hours ago, so I still need time to accept the news. My dad (Papa’s son) — well, both my mom and dad — seemed strong on the phone. Stronger and more positive than I would have expected. But they’ve had more time with the knowledge, and practice telling the news to my sisters. I’m sure my dad was a wreck yesterday.
I was pretty upset myself after I got off the phone. My wife and dog cuddled me while I cried.
Thinking back to my favorite times with Papa, tobogganing immediately comes to mind. Maybe because I was out in Lake Placid today, and saw the toboggan run in action, but also because he always had so much fun pulling us around on the tractor. And we had so much fun holding on for dear life, and trying to pelt him with snowballs from behind.
I’ll remember Papa as a strong man. One who provided for his family. Who started a small business that continues to provide for my family today. Who took care of a big plot of land full of woods and trails, and who was formative in teaching me that we have a responsibility to take care of nature. I’ll remember him as a kind man — I literally can’t recall a time that he was truly angry. And as a positive guy — he’s remained optimistic throughout his many years of pain and waning mobility.
But most of all I’ll think of him as the generous, loving, hard-working, goofy, joke-loving grandpa that any kid would be lucky to have.
My Nena and Papa, surrounded by my Dad (left) and Aunt and Uncle (right), in the cabin that he built and cherished. ⌘
Papa loved his garage workshop. Here, he’s cutting wood for birdhouses as part of my Eagle Scout project. ⌘
Today, as I look at the title ‘Papa’, it still fills my heart with sadness knowing that he’s gone. I know it won’t always feel that way, and soon enough I’ll be able to look back at these memories with all the joy and laughter that he brought into the world. But right now it still hurts.
My media life has taken an odd turn lately. You see, I’m behind by about three weeks on the podcasts I listen to. And by a full month of articles that I’ve saved. So, while I skim headlines every day and try to keep up with what’s going on, anything in-depth is getting to me on a multiple-week delay.
I don’t really have much valuable insight here, but it has made me realize that so much stuff I consume is so inconsequential to my day-to-day life. And yet, I can’t bring myself to delete large swaths of my backlog. Because I do enjoy consuming (ugh…that word) it, and would weirdly feel like I was letting both the creators and myself down by “giving up” on it. That’s probably not healthy, now that I think about it.
