Farpoint II

Took the boys to Farpoint Collectibles II today, which is housed in a []local antiques market](https://www.facebook.com/ShorelineVintage/). One of the owners, Frank, originally ran It’s a Toy Store! in Richland, and he was there. It was good to see him and chat, as well as the owners of Farpoint. I showed a picture of the boys from 2011 at the original store, and he loved it. I realized how long we’ve been making these quick little jaunts to the local shop and how soon, Joey will be able to drive himself there.

They were featured on an episode of “A Toy Store Near You.”

wee nerds at It's a Toy Store! in 2011
Wee nerds at It’s a Toy Store! in 2011

Twitter Blue

Juli Clover, writing for MacRumors:

Twitter Blue will include an “Undo Tweet” option that holds a tweet for a set period of time before sending it out so you can choose to undo it, and a “Reader Mode” that makes it easier to read long threads.

I might go for something like this if it was a way to support a premium AI that could be used in apps like TweetBot and Twitterific. I use the official app (alongside both of the much better paid third party apps) only because Twitter denuded their (decidedly better) third-party clients. Still hurts though.

Twitter Confirms Plans for ‘Twitter Blue’ $2.99 Monthly Subscription Service

Happy 18th Birthday to WordPress

Matt Mullenweg:

Today marks eighteen years since the very first release of WordPress. I consider myself so lucky to have co-founded the project alongside Mike Little. Who could have imagined that our nights and weekends hacking on blogging software, a fork of b2/cafelog, could turn into something powering over 40% of the web? Or that nearly twenty years in, it would be getting better faster than it ever has been?

WordPress 18

“It’s Just Not Good Enough”

John Gruber, reviewing the M1 iPads Pro:

The elephant in the room is iPadOS. It’s just not good enough. In the same way that Intel’s chips were holding back Macs, iPadOS has been holding back iPad Pros. With Intel chips, the hardware was holding back the Mac platform. With iPads, it’s the software holding the platform back. This hardware is indisputably amazing, and iPadOS is fine for casual use. But it still feels like I’m trying to do fine detail work while wearing oven mitts for my day-to-day work.

As a person who went whole hog on doing (almost) everything on the iPad before COVID-19 scooted me into the house and rejiggered my life such that I spent my days before a screen, camera, and a mic, this observation resonates. I grew to love the Mac and the desktop experience all over again, and realized that the deep bench of macOS software was not only productivity enhancing, but just plain fun for a hobbyist.

The 2021 M1 iPad Pros

Paninis

Wawa headquarters, in a boardroom, with brains larger than mine, where a conversation was held:

Executive 2: “Panini? That word is already plural.”

Executive 1: “What do you mean?”

Executive 2: “It’s an Italian word. ‘Panini’ is plural aready. You don’t have two ‘paninis.’ You have two panini.”

Executive 1: “Are you telling me we didn’t sell toasted raviolis under the heat lamps by the counter?”

wawa-paninis

Executive 2: “That’s correct. We did not, in fact, sell toasted raviolis. The bag said ‘ravioli.”

Executive 1: “Because it was already plural.”

Executive 2: “That’s correct.”

Executive 1: “My life is one big lie.”

Executive 2: “It’s not a big deal. People call them raviolis all the time.”

wawa-ravioli

Executive 1: “So back to the paninis.”

Executive 2: “Panini.”

Executive 1: “Right, panini. So what is one called?”

Executive 2: “A panino.”

Executive 1: “Seriously? You’re fucking kidding me.”

Executive 2:”No shit. One is a panino.”

Executive 1: “What’s one ravioli?”

Executive 2: “Don’t make me say it.”

Executive 1: “Fucking say it.”

Executive 2: “A raviolo.”

Executive 1:”Goddam it.”

Executive 3: “So were going to put up signs that say ‘Panini?'”

Executive 2: “We put up signs that said ‘ravioli.'”

Executive 1: “Because that’s what they’re called.”

Executive 2: “No one orders one raviolo. It’s a dish.”

Executive 3: “But you would very likely order one panini.”

Executive 2: “Panino, if we’re shooting for accuracy here.”

Executive 3: “Fuck.”

Executive 1: “No one says anything. They tap screens to order.”

Executive 3: “That’s a great point.”

Executive 2: “Very true. But the signs. They say ‘paninis.'”

Executive 3: “But people will say, ‘let’s get paninis from Wawa for lunch!'”

Executive 1: “God willing.”

Executive 2: “I know… it sounds one way. But it looks really bad in print.”

Executive 3, eyeballing Executive 1 nervously: “What do you think?”

Executive 1: “The signs read ‘paninis.’ And you can have #’2’s office.”

Android 12’s Material You

Google:

Starting with Android 12 on Pixel devices, you’ll be able to completely personalize your phone with a custom color palette and redesigned widgets. Using what we call color extraction, you choose your wallpaper, and the system automatically determines which colors are dominant, which ones are complementary and which ones just look great. It then applies those colors across the entire OS: the notification shade, the lock screen, the volume controls, new widgets and much more.

I found this because Matt Birchler is nice enough to make great wallpapers (what we old-school Mac users call desktop images) for the Mac and iPhone, and he made some inspired by Material You (thanks, Matt!). But this sounds like a great design touch, one that is present, for example, in Google Forms: when you select a banner image, the form adapts its color scheme to match the colors that predominate in the header image. It’s pretty cool.

Android 12 Beta: Designed for you

Dickhead

Boing Boing:

Daniel Warmus from New York was busted after bragging to someone at his dentist’s office about breaking into the Capitol on January 6th – and even pulling out his phone to show off the video he took from his “Capitol tour.” A third person overheard his boastful recount and tipped off the FBI, who then found security footage of him, sporting a “CNN is fake news” sweatshirt and “Trump 2020” cap and toting a “Fuck Antifa” flag, while romping around inside the Capitol. The gentleman was arrested on Tuesday.

I love how they call him a gentleman.

Gentleman arrested after bragging at his dentist’s office that he broke into the Capitol on January 6th

Microsoft Arc Mouse

This is not by far the best feeling mouse to use, but it is, first, naturally ambidextrous, a design touch I favor. Secondly, despite using batteries, it powers off in the collapsed mode, only to fire back up in arched mode for duty. Pretty clever. It flexes beneath the rubberized skin.

arc-mouse-flat

Powered Down

arc-mouse-powered

Powered Up and Ready to Use

Talking Politics at Work

Dave Winer on talking politics at work:

If you can’t tell, as a former founder of two companies, I think people should keep political discussions at work to an absolute minimum. It should be possible for people with different political views to work together. This, to me, is one of the central features of freedom. You are free to believe what you believe and so am I. But we can and must still respect each other, and the highest form of respect in my opinion is to create something with each other. Personal blogs are good places to express political opinions, so is Twitter. But not work.

I’m loathe to bring things up at work but I can’t keep my mouth shut once someone breaks the seal. This is sage advice.

Two controversial questions