I’m using ChatGPT more and more for coding help. Sometimes I don’t fully trust the answer and double check with Google or Stack Overflow. Today the AI produced some code that I thought it must have completely hallucinated… Does this even work technically? But it ran perfectly.

Love developing for the web and learning how to do something new for the first time. Processing a ZIP file fully within JavaScript in the browser instead of server-side? Never really considered doing it but it works great.

Sometimes the choices we don’t mean to make end up perfect. When I was traveling this year my shoes fell apart and I stopped at a random shoe store in Boulder. They had one pair of shoes in my size, a brand I’d never heard of, bought them, and they are now some of my favorites. Wear them everyday.

Threads launching in the EU next week. My earlier theory was they were waiting for ActivityPub (and so better account portability) before going live. Guess I was wrong.

Noticed load averages briefly jumping up to 10.0 so it’s going to be that kind of day. There’s always something to optimize! Looking okay now, though.

It’s been a couple weeks since we got our first Roomba, so here’s my review: it’s great. Took a day for us to settle into how best to use it, what to pick up from the floor or block, and when to run it… Now it just does its thing every day. Surprisingly good with dog hair too.

Testing new in-progress features and everything is kind of working. Maybe at this point in my career I shouldn’t be surprised when my code actually works, but it’s still a nice feeling.

Interesting juxtaposition of releases today… The new Ivory with Mastodon hashtags support and the Threads update with hashtags for the first time, limited to one tag per post. Also major Mammoth release, with open source on the way.

Watching a few clips from last night’s GOP debate. Chris Christie still fighting the good fight against Trump when no one else will. From Christie’s closing statement:

…picture in your mind election day. You’ll all be heading to the polls to vote. And that is something Donald Trump will not be able to do. Because he will be convicted of felonies before then and his right to vote will be taken away.

🇺🇸

I love these robots. We’ve seen more of them but it’s not clear if they are actually going anywhere or just practicing for deliveries.

Congrats to @cheesemaker and the Silverpine team for announcing the beta of Evergreen.ink, an interactive fiction authoring tool. Think: “choose your own adventure” stories. I’ve been helping with this behind the scenes too, and the upcoming iOS app… Really cool to see it come together.

Beeper Mini looks like an impressive feat of reverse-engineering. Apple will surely try to break this in the future, but if doing so requires an iOS update for iMessage API tweaks, it may take years before they can realistically cut off Beeper along with very old iPhones.

Made a little architecture diagram for Micro.blog that reflects the recent server upgrades. A couple simplifications but it’s pretty close to how things work.

I’ve been putting off an infrastructure upgrade because 💰, going to bring online another new server today. This would be a great time for everyone to upgrade to Micro.blog Premium. 🙂 Seriously though, you’ll get a major new feature launching next month.

Matt Haughey in a blog post about renting a Tesla:

I wish other EVs could be this good. I will never own a Tesla, but I can see the appeal now. It was easy to drive, even easier to recharge, and was quite comfortable and made every other car I’ve driven feel like a relic from a past era of personal travel.

As a side note, seems a trend where execs are becoming more public characters — with their random dumb thoughts posted online — at the same time that everything is becoming political. So now we buy products based on our values instead of quality. Sometimes good, sometimes taken too far.

Finished reading: The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman. Absolutely wonderful. 📚

Can’t believe I’m still working on the book. Just a few final end-of-year updates. New excerpt:

Even the name itself and the bird branding are gone. The letter X feels like an appropriate placeholder for the platform’s grave. Here lies a dying platform. X marks the spot where it used to be.

Tweet Marker’s whole purpose was for cross-platform, cross-app timeline sync. There was never anything like it because it’s not actually a profitable idea on its own. But there are many apps that could benefit from something like this. Imagine note sync across Ulysses, iA Writer, Bear, and Obsidian.

The future of Nostr might not actually be for microblogging but instead as a cross-platform generic sync API for any type of small data. I know this was baked into the original idea, but the more I think about it, the more it feels like a unique solution to several things.

Apple Pay has made me lazy about credit cards and it finally came back to bite me. Drove to Dallas yesterday and forgot my wallet in Austin. Generally hasn’t been a problem… restaurants, gas, movie, coffee, all fine. Until the hotel where they assume you’re a criminal if you don’t have an ID.

Went to the early IMAX screening for Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron tonight. Managed to avoid seeing any trailer, plot summary, or review, so everything was a surprise. Still thinking about it so won’t say more for now. Subtitled, and I’d like to see the dubbed version later. 🍿

Starting to see “included in Premium” free audiobooks in Spotify. This is going to be great.

La La Land Kind Cafe. ☕️

I’m excited that Texas is in the playoffs, but only picking four teams is always going to leave someone out who should have a shot at it. College rankings have always felt subjective to me so I don’t give it much thought. The Longhorns barely lost that game anyway. 🏈

Quiet night camping at Ray Roberts Lake State Park.