Snapped this photo while we were making a u-turn in Dallas the other day. Took my daughters here 14 years ago for lunch with their dolls. 🥲
New blog post editor for Micro.blog from @amit: Scribe. Clean, full-screen editor with styled text.
Pixelfed cross-posting in Micro.blog
Today we added Pixelfed cross-posting to Micro.blog. This joins our existing set of cross-posting services like Mastodon, Tumblr, Flickr, Bluesky, Nostr, and others.
Now you can post photos to your own blog, at your own domain name where you control your identity, and have Micro.blog send a copy elsewhere automatically. When posting, you can optionally select which services you want to include:
Because Micro.blog has built-in support for ActivityPub, your friends on Mastodon can also follow your blog directly without you needing to copy anything, or without you needing an account on any other platforms. There's a lot of flexibility in how you want to configure this and which services you want to use. Some people even like to create a separate microblog just for photos.
As with all Micro.blog features, we're looking forward to hearing how people use this. Photos are special, and there's always more we want to do with them. We'll continue to tweak the Pixelfed cross-posting based on feedback. Enjoy!
Fixing bugs and submitting apps to App Review this morning. As a long-time Apple developer going back to the 1990s, I now spend most of my time on web and cross-platform technologies. I'll always love the Mac, but what a trap the Apple-only development rabbit hole is. Apple is too big and dominant.
I've gotten out of the habit of posting to Threads. I like the foundation Meta has built with Threads and expect it to be successful, but I'm going to scale back my use until ActivityPub is ready. Most of what I write (including this!) needs to start on my blog.
Interesting news on GitHub for Mastodon search, noticed via @darnell@one.darnell.one. Full-text post search is coming, will be opt-in. Discoverability and search is a frequent topic on Micro.blog so I'll be following this closely.
Great article by Christina Warren on the history of the App Store and why we're due for some kind of change, likely helped along by the EU's Digital Markers Act. Apple taking a cut of all developer revenue is not sustainable forever.
Congrats to Casey Liss on shipping Callsheet. I've been using the beta. Great app for quickly looking up someone from a movie or TV show while on the couch. This will replace IMDb for most people... It's just a better experience.
Spent the afternoon polishing up the next Android release of Epilogue and submitting it to Google. Because I don't use Android often, I don't have a great sense of what UI feels right. Things like swipe-to-delete are very inconsistent across apps. New version is definitely better, though.
Did some testing this morning with Goodreads and it's slow and clunky. Timeouts. Really happy with how much we've streamlined Micro.blog's bookshelves so they are fast. Paraphrasing a Jason Fried quote: we can't predict the future of technology, except that no one is going to want apps to be slower.
Back to cool air after our upstairs A/C went out for a day. Something usually breaks every summer, and the heat has been especially ridiculous in Texas this year. Very thankful for a quick repair, less than 24 hours. ☀️
Just posted this week's episode of Core Intuition: Homemade Granola. Not actually about food. We talk through my frustration with Apple-only development, Apple's power over distribution, and where the Vision Pro sits on the spectrum of open to closed Apple platforms.
Whenever I create a new file in Xcode and choose Objective-C as the language, I laugh a little. Am I creating more technical debt or am I saving countless hours of time not dealing with the sharp edges of half-baked new tech? Zig when they zag.
Austin this morning from the train station. Unfortunately just a drop-off, not going anywhere myself.
Favorite text editors update
I enjoyed the conversation on the latest ATP about text editors. Lots of deservedly good praise for BBEdit. I'm sure the hosts have gotten feedback about this already from listeners, but surprised there was no mention of Panic's Nova.
Feels like a good time to give an update on what text editors I'm using these days.
Xcode: This is obviously still the only reasonable way to go for Mac development. In the last few weeks I've shipped some updates to Micro.blog for macOS. Always fun to fire up Xcode, hammer out a feature, and ship it without much fuss. A couple things seem slower than they used to be, like debugging and auto-complete, but otherwise no complaints.
Nova: This is my go-to text editor for web projects now. Ruby for the Micro.blog web platform, JavaScript for the React Native app. Nova is arguably the most modern, native Mac text editor, and regularly updated. Lots of depth and I haven't even scratched the surface with extensions.
Ulysses: This is essentially my note-taking app. I sync to a Dropbox folder with thousands of little text files. I prefer Dropbox instead of iCloud so I can edit more easily in any app, with backups and restoring old versions. I put draft blog posts here, notes about projects, upcoming trips, and anything that isn't code-related.
BBEdit: This is for everything else. Looking at JSON and XML. Processing large text files, find-and-replace, grep. As a quick scratchpad for code or notes that I'm going to throw away. I haven't totally customized it like John Siracusa, but I do have a couple shortcuts and scripts that I depend on. Rock-solid app that has withstood the test of time.
I added a tags window in the latest Mac app for Micro.blog. Makes it easy to filter your bookmarks to a tag from the keyboard. Hit command-shift-T, type part of the tag, then the return key to focus the list, and return again to navigate to the tag. (Tags are for Micro.blog Premium.)
Octopus tagging along with us during IKEA shopping this weekend.
Packing up some old books. I'm trying not to look at everything, but every once in a while there is something priceless tucked away in a book that I had forgotten about, sometimes decades old. An old letter, postcard, or sketch.
Oppenheimer was great. We drove down to San Antonio to see it in 70mm IMAX. 🍿
Summer movies 🍿
It has been a great summer for movies. We've wrapped up seeing most of the "big" movies, so here's a mini review of each.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. I love the art style in these movies. When the big animation studios moved from 2D to 3D, we lost some of what made hand-drawn animation so beautiful. Getting a little bit of that back now.
Mission: Impossible 7. So much fun. The driving off the cliff scene might've been a little over-hyped leading up to the movie. Super dangerous but I think scaling the skyscraper (in 4) and hanging on to the side of a cargo plane (in 5) were both more stunning. Still, some great action.
Barbie. Really enjoyed this. It's the kind of movie that you wouldn't think would work. In the hands of a less-capable director, could've walked the line poorly between bad and brilliant. Still listening to What Was I Made For? by Billie Eilish.
TMNT: Mutant Mayhem. Pushing the boundaries of 3D animation again like the Spider-Verse movies. I remember reading my friend's original black and white TMNT comics back in the day, but the new movie doesn't require any previous knowledge to enjoy it.
Oppenheimer. Possibly a masterpiece. I was expecting great visuals, which is why we waited to see it on 70mm IMAX, but the pacing and acting and everything else also blew me away. Lots to think about afterwards. The best movie I've seen in years.
