David Smith just released a really cool update for Sleep++:

There are a number of dedicated fitness trackers that seek to provide you with an indication of how “rested” or “recovered” you are each night’s sleep. My goal is to bring this to automatic sleep tracking on the Apple Watch.

After laying out the three measurements that factor into it — Heart Rate Variability, Resting Heart Rate, and Restful Sleep Duration — David explains the scale for the daily Readiness Score:

These three values are then combined into a single numerical score from 0 to 100. With 100 indicating that all three measures are pointing you towards a highly restorative night. And 0 indicating that your body appears to have been really struggling during the night. Additionally, each composite value, and its comparison to baseline, is shown for reference.

His short explainer blog post is worth reading in full to better understand how and why the score makes sense.

Sleep++ has been my sleep tracker of choice for years because of its no-hassle approach. I beta-tested this new version and have already found value in checking my Readiness Score. And it’s accurate — when I wake up feeling tired, I’ll check the score, and it is always indeed on the low side. Sleep++ is free, so there’s no reason not to give it a try!

Go to the linked site →

Linked Apps

A weekly list of things I found interesting, posted on Sundays. Sometimes themed, often not.

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1️⃣ Introducing Quick Reviews, a Website for Making Beautiful Micro-Reviews for Books, Movies, or Whatever | Birchtree

Matt Birchler:

Quick Reviews is a very basic website that replicates the look of my reviews but does it entirely in HTML, CSS, and a hit of JavaScript. This is aggressively simple, and it’s far from a premium site at this point, but I wanted to get something out there and see if people are interested.

I’ve enjoyed and coveted Matt’s micro-reviews for a while. It’s super cool that he’s put this together for anyone to use. If I had one piece of advice, it would be to put a Carbon ad on the page to augment his side hustle income. I think it will be a popular little tool, and I’ve started using it for my TV series reviews.

2️⃣ Close Your Rings Differently | Nahumck.me

Tim Nahumck:

The better way to handle this would be to create a new type of streak for weekly goals and provide associated badges which are separate from the daily goals. This preserves everything from users who are currently happy with how everything is implemented, while creating a new paradigm for those who aren’t as emphatic about fitness but want to remain healthy. For example, I could see where a user might set weekly goals — say 10,000 kCals active calories burned, 180 exercise minutes, and 45 standing hours — which sets up their week with more flexibility to adjust their routines based on how they are feeling.

I hadn’t considered a weekly goal before, but I like this idea!

3️⃣ Making Sense of New TV Features in 2022 | The Verge

Chris Welch:

So with all the latest TVs from Samsung, LG, Sony, TCL, Hisense, and others now announced and due to ship over the next few months, it seems an opportune moment to review the features you should be looking for when TV shopping.

A helpful roundup if you haven’t been staying on top of the latest in TV tech.

4️⃣ A Vision of the Future With 1Password | 1Password

1Password:

Say hello to Universal Sign On. 1Password will remember how you log in to each account so you can get where you’re going with a single click

The only thing of any real interest to me on this forward-looking site from 1Password is for it to save what sign-in service I used for each site. I typically use only email or ‘Sign in With Apple’ but there are a few exceptions. The rest of this mini-site is too corporate to get excited about. This makes sense when looking at their funding model lately.

Honestly, I’m starting to consider an exit from 1Password back to iCloud Keychain. Better family sharing features would make the exit cleaner, but waiting for that isn’t absolutely necessary. iCloud Keychain’s substantive improvements over the last couple of years have been impressive, and there’s no sign of that team slowing down.

5️⃣ Google is wrong. Apple’s iMessage is actually a failure | Macworld

Jason Snell (emphasis mine):

The problem isn’t the failure of users to embrace buying pizza inside iMessage chats and turning sticker apps into the next big thing. The problem is that when it flopped, Apple seemed to react with what I’ll charitably call indifference, though it might be more accurate to call it denial combined with inflexibility. Instead of diagnosing the failure and seeing what was next, Apple did what it often does with its failures, which is to leave them to rust away and then make them quietly disappear.

Snell lays out how iMessage had had significant misses over the past decade, rather than being the resounding success that locks people to the iPhone. His point here cuts deeply because we see it happen far too often with Apple products. If a feature doesn’t take off, nary a word is spoken about them, no improvements come, and then they just disappear.

Without even digging too deeply, here’s a brief list of example:

• iTunes Ping
• Apple Music Connect
• Music Memos
• Mail features
• Third-Party Keyboards
• iMessage Apps

6️⃣ This Call is About… | Dan Mall — Twitter

Dan Mall:

I would love it if phone calls came with a subject line. Sure, there’d be kinks to work out, like if someone called from a landline or other unsupported phone. And it would bifurcate smartphone operating systems even further if it wasn’t a standard across multiple ecosystems. But just imagine if it were!

7️⃣ Hangman is a weird game | jan Misali — YouTube

Jan Misali:

an analysis of the two player asymmetric adversarial pencil and paper word guessing game hangman

Fell down a rabbit hole and learned more about hangman than I ever needed to know. But be wary if I ever challenge you to this weird game. I have a strong strategy now!

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Thanks for reading 7 Things! If you enjoyed these links, or have something else neat to share, please hit me up on Twitter or send me an email!

7 Things

Sometimes getting the perfect thing on-screen to capture can be tricky. Trying to hit the hardware button combination at just the right time leads to frustration and a photo library full of erroneous screenshots. Getting the right moment would be way easier if all you needed to do were simply lift your finger. Luckily, Apple has built just such a method into iPadOS.

You may not know that you can take a screenshot on an iPad using a gesture as an alternative to pressing the standard hardware buttons. Using a finger or Apple Pencil, just drag inward from the bottom left-hand corner to take a full-screen screenshot. I like to think of it as the opposite of Hot Corners in macOS, where you fling your mouse into a corner to activate an action.

Playing around with this gesture led me to discover today’s quick tip. If you don’t lift from the screen after swiping in, you’ll see that the screenshot UI appears, and the preview stays active. It isn’t until you release the gesture that the screenshot is saved and the markup controls pop in.

A cool byproduct of this method is that when you’re trying to capture a frame from a video, it keeps playing while the screenshot gesture has been started. Just set it up, wait for the perfect moment, and then lift. It’s way better than trying to scrub to the right frame or pause at the right moment with software controls that fade out.

See the gesture in action below and let me know if you find other neat uses for this.

(Video: Christopher Lawley)

Bonus: If you have a hardware keyboard connected to your iPad, the standard Mac keyboard shortcuts for screenshots work too. Give Command-Shift-3 (full-screen capture) and Command-Shift-4 (capture straight into crop mode) a try.

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If the gesture isn’t working with your finger, check the Settings app to ensure it’s enabled and not just for the Apple Pencil. Go to Settings → General → Gestures → ‘Allow Finger to Swipe from Corner’. I had to disable and re-enable it to get it to recognize my finger.

Tips

Parker Ortolani, at 9to5Mac, commenting on how Apple could and should take the obvious route for their entry consumer display:

The iMac starts at just $1,299. That base model comes with a Magic Keyboard ($99) and a Magic Mouse ($79). Right off the bat, you can remove $180 off the price. Apple’s displays don’t need to come bundled with other accessories. Then remove the actual computer. I can’t really say what the computer inside of the iMac would cost, but it’s likely that the display itself is a more expensive component than anything on the motherboard. Apple could probably charge less, but to maintain a healthy margin they could sell their display for just $999. In fact, that’s the price of the last consumer display that was retired in 2016.

Yes! Use 👏 the 👏 same 👏 parts! By all accounts, the 24-inch iMac has a great display. Keep the speakers, the ports, the webcam — hell, even the same enclosure would be fine — and call it a day. They’ve already done the hard part.

Then Apple can shift focus to high-end monitors with fancy features like Mini LED, HDR, and high refresh rate.

Go to the linked site →

Linked

Chance Miller reports at 9to5Mac on the latest Apple exec switch up. If the shoe doesn’t fit…

This shakeup is particularly interesting for a number of reasons. For context, Steve Dowling was named vice president of communications for Apple in April 2015, taking the reigns from Katie Cotton. Dowling, however, then abruptly left the company in October 2020. From there, Apple fellow Phil Schiller was in charge of Apple’s public relations until Low was hired in May of 2021. 

[…]

Low’s seven months on the job were tumultuous in a number of ways. Apple is currently embroiled in a number of high-profile legal battles with the likes of Epic Games and Spotify, and also facing antitrust pressure around the world. Apple also announced a handful of new Child Safety features last summer. These announcements were widely criticized — with many suggesting Apple botched the announcement and press around the features more than anything.

Apple’s tone-deafness in its announcements over the last couple of years has been notable. They’ve got to find the right person to overhaul their public communication strategy. I don’t know if Huguet will be the one — she’s been at Apple for 15 years, so she’s been part of both the ups and the downs — but I hope so.

Go to the linked site →

Linked

A weekly list of things I found interesting, posted on Sundays. Sometimes themed, often not.

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1️⃣ Hiring movers is the best.

We’ve used Two Men and a Truck twice now and have been very happy with them both times. It was expensive to have them drive a couple of states over with us, but we had our stuff the same day we arrived. Plus, they know how to move things around corners and upstairs that I’ll never understand.

2️⃣ A fresh coat of paint makes all the difference.

Our previous two apartments had each been painted between tenants. This rental home was not, leaving it feeling distinctly…lived in. It was a pain to fill all the drywall holes and paint ourselves, but it has made it feel like our home rather than someone else’s.

3️⃣ Related: Get paint chips before sample paint.

Those paint chips are free for a reason; use them! This may seem obvious, but after priming your wall, go ahead and tape a few colors up there and see what it looks like in different lighting throughout the day. It’ll save you from buying too many sample paints.

4️⃣ Also Related: Let a small area of sample paint dry on the wall before buying a larger amount.

This also seems obvious, but you learn a little more each time: Paint a small area and let it dry before covering the wall. Again, it’ll look different as it dries and in various lighting throughout the day. Make sure you actually like that color there before committing.

5️⃣ Don’t worry too much about all the boxes. You’ll find space for your stuff. Or you won’t, and that’s okay, too.

When we got into the house (with the moving truck only minutes behind us), I was pretty concerned that we wouldn’t be able to fit in all of our stuff. I grew more concerned as the boxes kept piling in, one after the other. Our living room was full. Our kitchen was full. Our bedroom was full. I was stressed. How would we even move around it all to unpack?

But humans are excellent puzzle solvers, and a new home provides all kinds of opportunities to play three-dimensional Tetris.

In the end, the only thing we ended up having to send back with the moving guys was a large couch that we had inherited from my wife’s grandparents. And we knew going in that it would be a stretch to find a place for that.

Plus, packing and unpacking have been good chances to review if we actually need to keep a lot of our stuff. Many donation trips have been made and will continue to be made over the new few weeks.

6️⃣ Prioritizing internet and TV/entertainment hook up pays off.

As the Chief Technology Officer of our home, it fell to me to make sure we would have internet at our new house. There’s only one provider option in our area, but luckily Spectrum makes self-installation super easy these days. I picked up their modem from a store in Ohio and kept it with me in my car on our long drive.

Though it may seem frivolous, one of the first things I did (once we could move things around a little) was hook up the internet, our Apple TV, and the PlayStation. It brought a semblance of normalcy at the end of a long day, being able to relax with our usual shows and games. And it made for a happy wife. 😉

7️⃣ Get out and explore your neighborhood for things to be excited about.

Besides the job opening for my wife, the big draw for us to move to the Adirondacks was the chance to do more of our favorite outdoor activities. Right behind our home is a rails-to-trails system, so we took the dog for a walk down it on our first night. We found an athletic center within walking distance.

Driving back and forth to the hardware store gave us plenty of time to scope out a few restaurants and bars that we want to check out. And we ogled at the many “mom and pop” corner stores that just didn’t exist in our last neighborhood.

It is very easy to lose yourself in unpacking, decorating, and general nesting in a new home. But you’ll lose out on the chance to form new habits if you never venture out the front door. Our next adventure will be to try out the ski resort a few minutes down the road!

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Thanks for reading 7 Things! If you enjoyed these links, or have something else neat to share, please hit me up on Twitter or send me an email!

7 Things

A weekly list of things I found interesting, posted on Sundays. Sometimes themed, often not.

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The Consumer Electronics Show is a breeding ground for wacky tech ideas. Some of which actually make it to market. This is a collection of neat ones that made it across my radar.

1️⃣ TP-Link is finally making some HomeKit-enabled products | The Verge

I’m all for more HomeKit devices that don’t require a hub. I hope their thinking about supporting Matter, though.

2️⃣ Schlage unveils smart lock with support for HomeKit and home keys in the Wallet app | 9to5Mac

I’m so looking forward to the future with my home and car keys being stored in Apple Wallet and enabled through Ultra-wide Band.

3️⃣ CES 2022: Chipolo Launches Find My-Compatible Wallet Tracker | MacRumors

This is the Find My device that I’ve been waiting for. I lose my wallet more than any other item, and it’s one of the few that the classic AirTag form factor doesn’t really work for. It was an insta-order for me. (I actually just got an AirTag-compatible wallet for Christmas — it has a holder for an AirTag built-in — but being able to use my favorite wallet is better by far.)

4️⃣ Anker showcases new 100W GaN charger, first laser projector, much more at CES 2022 | 9to5Toys

Anker’s chargers are best-in-class, and I get overly excited by how much power they can pack into such a small space. The projector looks pretty sweet, too.

5️⃣ Sony pivots into cars with Sony Mobility and a Vision-S SUV prototype at CES 2022 | The Verge

I never heard about Sony’s previous Vision-S concept car. But creating a new company around the initiative seems like a big move — especially for someone as brand-conscious as Sony. I’m interested to see where this goes, especially in the context of the rumored Apple car.

6️⃣ Belkin Wemo going all in on Thread and Matter for 2022 with new Switch, Dimmer, and Smart Plug | 9to5Mac

Wemo hasn’t always been the most reliable for me, but hopefully this pivot to support Matter and Thread makes a noticeable difference. More competition in the Smart Home space is a win, if you ask me.

7️⃣ BMW debuts its new color-changing paint technology at CES: E Ink | The Verge

You probably saw this announcement already, but it doesn’t make it any less cool! While it’s not something you’d want to do while on the road, this technology looks way fun to tinker with. And it’s built on the tech used in e-readers, for goodness sake! Just wow.

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Thanks for reading 7 Things! If you enjoyed these links, or have something else neat to share, please hit me up on Twitter or send me an email!

7 Things

Tyler Hall wrote about finding a way to customize notifications the Mac, Growl-style, with his new app, Roar:

I eventually stumbled upon the SQLite database that holds app notifications. To my surprise, all the contents of your notifications are open and readable. And that’s when Growl came to mind. Could I build my own poor-mans Notification Center with different skins and themes?

It turns out, yes.

It’s no secret that Notification Center took a big step back in usability with Big Sur. Way further back, before Apple had an integrated solution, Growl was the go-to app for getting pop-up alerts from websites and apps. I’d completely forgotten that you could adjust their design to your liking. It’d be good to see some of that come back across Apple’s OSes. And it does seem like they’re trending in that direction.

But maybe a first step could be to let apps design their own notifications like they can with widgets. It would bring a lot of character back to the operating systems, and maybe even provide some inspiration for Apple to improve Notification Center.

There are limitations, but Roar lets us peek at that potential future.

Go to the linked site →

Linked

A weekly list of things I found interesting, posted on Sundays. Sometimes themed, often not.

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It’s the first issue of 2022 (🥳), and this week I have a mixture of new and very old links.

1️⃣ 3 features that prove Apple’s headset is hiding right in front of our eyes | Macworld

Dan Moren:

But setting aside all the information garnered from the likes of supply chains and analysts, it’s always worth taking a step back and looking at what Apple is doing right now that might provide clues as to where it’s headed. The company is meticulous about laying groundwork for new products in its existing line-up, and if it’s rolling out something as major as a brand new platform sometime in the next six to nine months, you can bet that today’s Apple devices hold some indications.

I think Apple is going to have very full experience ready when they ship their AR product. We often talk about the breadcrumbs Apple leaves before making a big announcement (size classes before the bigger iPhones were introduced, for example), but the AR technology has been in development for a long time. Dan’s article highlights a few features — Memoji, SharePlay, and Spatial Audio — that will make a ton of sense on a glasses platform. I’m getting more excited about it by the month.

2️⃣ Does it make you enjoy? | Jason Fried

Jason Fried:

This morning he told me he was worried that it wouldn’t make him happy.

Of course it won’t, I said. But that’s the wrong question.

The better question is “Will I enjoy it?”

Making you happy is too high a bar for anything. It’s unfair to ask that of anyone or anything — it’s something you can really only ask yourself, or bring yourself.

But enjoying something? That’s possible! It’s very much within reach.

I read stuff from the guys at Basecamp with a large grain of salt ready to down these days, but this post by Jason Fried spoke to me. I’ll be trying to do more enjoying this year and attempting to fret less about making decisions.

3️⃣ Comment: 3D Touch was one of the best technologies Apple ever created, and I still miss it | 9to5Mac

Filipe Espósito of the magic of 3D Touch:

3D Touch on iPhone was mainly used to access quick actions on app icons when the user pressed them hard. Apple also created an API for a gesture called “Peek & Pop,” which allowed pressing your finger on a link or conversation to see a quick preview of that content. With an even harder press, the content was fully opened.

But then it suffered a slow death over a couple of years:

In 2018, when Apple introduced three new iPhone models, only the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max had 3D Touch, while the cheaper iPhone XR model was equipped with Haptic Touch — which is a fancy way of saying “long press with vibrations.” The following year, all three iPhone 11 models were released without 3D Touch.

These days, we all use the slower, cut-off-at-the-knees version, Haptic Touch:

Sure, a long press might do the same thing as 3D Touch to access quick actions in iOS, but that will never be as fast and precise as accessing them instantly just by pressing harder on the screen. And things like Peek & Pop and the actions to select text using pressure on the iPhone keyboard were extremely convenient.

I was a heavy user of 3D Touch and miss it often. Poping into messages and different app views was probably my primary way of getting around my phone at the time. Long presses get me by, but the precision from 3D Touch was so unique, fun, and fast to use.

4️⃣ Cores, colors, and lucky 13: How 2022 could be the Mac’s best year ever | Macworld

Jason Snell:

After such a momentous 2020 for the Mac, it was hard for 2021 to measure up. But with the Apple silicon transition well underway, the question remains: What does the Mac’s 2022 have in store? Good news, friend. You’re reading a column about where the Mac is going in 2022. Let’s get to predicting the future.

Predictions done right. Jason sums up my basic expectations for the next year for Macs. A few tidbits that I found interesting from his forecast:

• A single M1 Max chip would satisfy most pro customers, but Jason predicts that dual-chip iMac Pro would be an option. With all the extra room inside a desktop computer, I say go for it!
• Jason thinks that an imminent external display won’t cost anything near the Pro Display XDR, but with ProMotion and mini-LED becoming the new standard for Apple displays, it’s hard to imagine that it won’t cost an arm and a leg, too.
• He’s the first I’ve seen to expect an intel Mac Pro to stick around for specific industries. Makes sense.

5️⃣ iPadOS 15 Walkthrough: EVERYTHING You Need To Know! | Christopher Lawley on YouTube

Chris Lawley:

Even after six months(!) of using iPadOS 15, I still learned a few tricks from Chris’s video. It’s like the MacStories iOS Review of videos, and I can give it no higher praise than that. I found myself practicing the keyboard shortcuts while watching the video and am excited to recreate the ‘Quick Note for Drafts’ shortcut.

6️⃣ Frank Abagnale | Catch Me If You Can | Talks at Google on YouTube

[Frank’s] transformation from one of the world’s most notorious con men to an international cybersecurity expert trusted by the FBI has been mythologized in film and literature — but the takeaways he shares are the real deal.

Frank’s contributions to the world of security are immeasurable. He has become a hero to hundreds of public and private sector organizations for his indispensable counsel and strategic insight on safeguarding information systems and combating cyber-fraud.

With an eye on the latest techniques developed by high-tech criminals to deceive and defraud, Frank leaves audiences with a deep understanding of today’s evolving security landscape, and more importantly, a vision of how to make the world a safer place.

I thought I could just put this video on in the background and listen, but that was impossible. Frank’s story about how and why he successfully impersonated so many roles as a young man is fascinating, and his candor while telling it is intriguing. Even though I know the story well — Catch Me If You Can, now 20(!) years old, is probably my all-time favorite movie — he drew me in. Frank talking about his father’s influence and how he’s tried to take those lessons to be a good father to his kids had me tearing up.

I do not doubt that the FBI has significantly benefited from his contributions over the past 30+ years. Now, his prediction that passwords would soon be eliminated would speed up a little…

It’s a long video but very much worth putting on your watchlist.

7️⃣ And finally, the New Years’ tradition I’m looking forward to doing next year!

A Happy New Year! pic.twitter.com/lpbyxaA4TZ

— Everything Out Of Context (@EverythingOutOC) December 31, 2021

This video sealed the deal after Marvel rounded out 2021 by giving us the gift of Spider-Man: No Way Home. I’ve seen plenty of other midnight-timed movies, but this made one me laugh the hardest.

Happy New Year, everyone! 🥂

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Thanks for reading 7 Things! If you enjoyed these links, or have something else neat to share, please hit me up on Twitter or send me an email!

7 Things

Along with celebrating a brand-new year, today I’m also excited to mark off the first 365 days of writing here at HeyDingus. It was December 31st of 2020 that I finally revealed to my wife what I’d been sinking weeks of late nights into. I had her pull up the password-protected site while on our way to a small New Years’ Eve gathering and explained how I had wanted my own plot of land on the internet with which to contribute. I’d been an observer for long enough. I had things to say, and I had to say them.

When the clock struck midnight, I made the site public and hit ‘publish’ the first posts. It was thrilling. And it was perhaps the thing that I most looked forward to doing in 2021.

Here we are, 12 months later, and I am so happy with that decision to start a blog. It’s given me an outlet to share my tech opinions — one that I don’t have in the physical world. It’s been my place to tinker with web technologies and dip my toes into writing code. It’s stretched my creativity with Shortcuts to create tools that optimize my writing workflow.

Even if no one read this site, I’d still be content with getting my thoughts out onto the internet. But people do read it. You are reading it now! And my correspondence with readers is something that I value tremendously. I’ve written a few things that have helped people or resonated with them. And writing this site has helped me get a smattering of attention from writers I’ve long respected. It’s been fulfilling to feel that connection with the broader community.

But before I get too sappy, I’d love to share some stats and ‘best of’ posts from this year!

Stats

In 12 months, I published…

• 158 different posts
• With a total count of over 116,000(!) words
  • (Which is like writing a little more than the length of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban)

Including…

• 36 installments of my 7 Things series (you could call it a newsletter if you want)
• 32 standalone link posts not part of 7 Things
• and 7 Shortcuts explainers as part of my Shortcuts Tips series

I’ve been inspired to create…

• 15 different shirt designs
• 3 wallpaper sets

Which was viewed…

• By over 11,000 unique visitors
• With over 19,000 pageviews

The Greatest Hits

I don’t look too often at statistics, but I was impressed at how consistently popular these posts were throughout the year:

‘Shortcuts Tips: Stand Goal Cheater’ — July 1st

This was an early Shortcuts Tips post that probably took the least amount of time to put together. It occurred to me that I couldn’t be the only one frustrated with inaccurate stand goal logging with the Apple Watch. I’d figured out a simple solution years ago but hadn’t seen anyone else write about it. So I took a few screenshots, wrote an explanation of why it works, and put it up on the blog.

It hasn’t stopped getting attention since then, which taught me that more people are out there looking for solutions to their problems than opinion pieces. And it turns out that I enjoy writing both! I’ve tried to be specific in posts since then about how and why a method works for me and how others could adapt it to work for them, too.

Click here to read the explainer and download the shortcut.

‘How I Make Drafts Work For Me’ — July 24th

This post started its life as an email to a reader seeking more information about how I used Drafts day-to-day. After sending him a lengthy reply, I realized I still had more to say. So I wrote up how Drafts is like my outboard brain and the tool that connects many of my workflows. It took a while, but I also linked to all the actions and themes that make Drafts an excellent idea capture and refinement environment. And I explained how a small handful of Workspaces serve as temporary buckets for all those fleeting ideas.

I was fortunate enough to have the post be noticed and linked by Greg Pierce, the developer of Drafts, which sent a ton of new traffic to my site. It, too, has continued to be discovered throughout the year, drawing new readers in.

Click here to read more about how I use Drafts and install the actions.

‘Ted Lasso Wallpapers and Shirts’ — July 23rd

It’s a bit weird that all three of my most popular posts were written in July, but there you go. Since the first episode, I’ve been a massive fan of the Ted Lasso show and was positively vibrating with excitement leading up to the second season. In celebration of the show’s return, I created a themed set of wallpapers that also worked great as shirt designs. This post’s popularity is undoubtedly riding the coattails of the Ted Lasso team’s success, but I’m glad to have made something that brings a little joy to others. Those Ted Lasso shirts have also been the most bought from my storefront on Cotton Bureau.

Click here to check out the designs and read about why I’m so crazy about Ted Lasso.

A Few of My Favorites

I mentioned above that I write this site first and foremost for me. So while it’s fun to look at what has gotten the most page views, I’ll leave you with some of the posts that were most meaningful to me to write.

‘Thoughts on the Rumored Apple Car’ — For as long as Apple’s been hinting at their car project as being rooting in a keen interest in “autonomous technology,” I’ve thought that meant it was destined to be a car service, not a car product. So as soon as I had a place to publish, I put my stake in the ground.

‘The Apple Gift Card’s Secret’ — I was so surprised when peeling off the Apple logo from their new gift card to discover it was a fully functional sticker! Since I’d not seen that knowledge posted anywhere else, it was fun to ‘break’ that news.

‘27’ — I turned 27 in February (28 is coming up quick, now that I think about it!), and took the day to reflect on what I was doing on previous birthdays. It was fun searching back through photos to jog my memory.

‘WWDC 2021: Grading My Wish List’ — I read a bunch of WWDC prediction posts every year, but very few that are revisited after the event to see what they got right and wrong. So, I did one myself. I got a bunch of wishcasts wrong but still ended up happy.

Building a Better Blogging Workflow for Squarespace — Squarespace and I have had a tenuous relationship throughout the entirety of our time together. It’s a great platform, but I’m particular about how I want to write. Squarespace would prefer you to use their tools in the way they intended. So, I’ve molded my Markdown-heavy writing workflow to work with Spacespace the best I can, and this is the write-up for others who are in the same boat.

Desk Setup, Summer 2021 — Checking out desk setups, gear logs, and everyday carry posts scratches an itch for me. Before starting HeyDingus, I knew I wanted to write one to catalog my setup. This is an ongoing series as my tools and toys change over time.

Baffling App Ages — This post showed me the power of the internet. Most of my posts get no comments, but when you’re wrong, boy, do folks like to let you know fast! I wrote this post about how I couldn’t figure out why new apps were getting listed as 4+ years old, only to learn that it was actually the age-appropriate rating. This might have been the first post I made an official update to. (I jest about being told I was wrong. I was appreciative to have my question answered and update the post so that I didn’t look like a dufus.)

7 Things (Which Are My Unanswered Questions) This Week, 2021-11-21 — Rounding up links to articles and videos on Sundays is something that I look forward to each week. And I’m proud of the consistency I’ve tried to maintain. It’s when I’m scrambling for seven things, though, that my creativity is unlocked. Some of these questions are ones that I’ve had swirling around my head for years, and it was fun to share them.

What’s Next?

As of today, I’m out of a job — again. Don’t worry, it was planned as part of our upcoming move. I’m truly sad to leave this last position because I enjoyed my job a lot. But my exit means I’m no longer working in the industry I write about on HeyDingus. So I’m excited about feeling more comfortable commenting freely on the tech industry again.

With 154 articles under my best in one year, I technically hit my goal of posting every 2-3 days. But some months were very dry on this site, followed by months of prosperous posting. I’m aiming for more consistency in when I post and what I post about this year. My shortcuts explainers and challenge series are two categories where I want to do more. I’ll continue to dabble in design and coding and write about my progress for other beginners, but I don’t foresee them being the main focus.

And I’ll be open to following where my fingers take me. I find that it strikes when I least expect, but also when I’m most in need. Our new home in the mountains will provide plenty of opportunities to try new activities and revisit old hobbies — both of which I’m looking forward to chronicling here. 2022 is looking up, and I hope you’ll follow along.

Thanks, dear reader, for a fantastic first year, and here’s to many more to come.

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