I hadn't really thought to comment on Skype's retirement until I read this piece by John Gruber.
If I remember correctly, I used Skype at my first proper web development job back in 2006. Almost 20 years ago. I also used it for nearly all communication in my last role (2012-2020) as it rolled conversations and calling all into one.
We tried replacing the chat element with Slack in the mid-2010s but it didn't work when only our team used it in the organisation. We also had an internal chat tool, but Skype always won because of it's VOIP capability.
it never seemed Microsoft had any sort of plan for what to do with Skype
Gruber is totally right with this take, it's a shame because there was potential. Would it have been more prosperous without the acquisition? I doubt it, but there might have been a bit more strategy with regards to where it was headed.
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They nailed it. If you're not up to speed (and not already wondering where the fuck America is heading), then The Wall Street Journal have a primer on Trump and Zelenskyy's relationship.
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Way back at the tail-end of the first lockdown, I began a journey to create more art. I started with brush pens and have continued to dabble with them and other types of water colours since then.
I had forgotten it had started as a creative hobby during that period, but it was certainly a good thing to get into have endured a lot of time indoors, working away remotely.
Since then, I've purchased the odd bit of acrylic paint and have been sketching on and off.
My iPad mini and Apple Pencil gave me a never ending canvas with which to work. After an initial daily push I haven't kept up enough to really have fallen into a style but I drift in and out of Procreate often and it's probably the best sketch book or canvas that I've ever had.
At the end of 2024, I was gifted some linoleum pieces and tools with which to create prints. I've started a small lino project but I'm still figuring out how to apply the prints neatly.
So I think I've settled on paper + pencil as my most comfortable medium. I have largely given up on water colours (and painting in general) for now. Without training that is going to be tough to get to a stage where I'm really comfortable working with it and able to achieve the visions I have. Lino printing moves up to second on the list, I just need to figure out a good project to get started with.
Read the post from week 384
Came across this on Daring Fireball, what a great demo of an expressive robot. Seriously, go watch the video!
So much personality in each of the tasks it takes on.
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Not a sponsored post at all, but there are affiliate links below.
Anker always seemed to be the brand when it came to cables, chargers and power banks on Amazon. Their offerings extend to the Eufy brand and they have an enormous range but they just don't live up to their early promise as a brand.
A few times I've had to return stuff because it has't lived up to the promise or quality I have come to expect from them. Don't get me wrong, we have plenty of Anker branded cables, chargers, plugs, headphones and dongles that all serve us well but only two stick out as premium products in their line up.
First is their USB car charger which is weighty, robust and just works. Second is the PowerWave 2-in-1 MagSafe charger. It's a great device but after 2 and a half years the adjustable mechanism isn't quite as stiff as it once was... I should probably see if I can fix that.
And so on to UGREEN who are now the brand I look for on Amazon when I need something that is low-case but high-quality. So much so that I've shared a couple of UGREEN things on Good Gear Club.
Above all, the Nexode 200W charger has simplified my desk charging setup so much more. It tucks in nicely under my Ikea desk and powers my work MacBook Pro and charges any combination of my iPhone, Apple Watch, iPad and personal MacBook Pro at the same time without any fuss.
In my bedroom, the Nexode 65W charger is tiny and charges my Apple Watch, iPhone and iPad with a port to spare.
The design and build quality are excellent on both and the multiple cables I've bought are all braided which makes them more durable.
So this is me, just showing some love to a brand that is building well designed essentials for the modern world that don't break the bank.
Read the post from week 383
Nick Heer:
A law, please, with debilitating penalties for violations.
A thousand times this.
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Over the past few months, I've slowly made a more permanent move over to Bluesky from Twitter.
I really signalled intent with my daily photo dumps, but that's come to an end as I ran out of snaps to share.
I made a conscious effort to diversify my following on Bluesky and have a healthy mix of webdev, design, Swift, tech, news, art and Liverpool FC sprinkled through.
From the point of view of following matches, it's not there yet. I should probably look into some feeds to rectify that but at the same time I'm less focused on the online chatter and more interested in the actual game being played. I also haven't gone back to Twitter for the company. Maybe that's coincided with my son getting into it all a bit more and the fact I'll ride an exercise bike throughout the first half too, but a large part of it is the Nazification of Twitter.
So who would I like to shout at this time on Bluesky? I'll link to a few accounts I don't follow on other socials that I've discovered here.
- David Shields, UK stadium photographer
- Jessica Elena
, digital artist
- Dominique Ramsey, illustrator
- Joss Fong, video journalist for Howtown on YouTube
- Enid, iOS development teacher
Enid in particular has been a great follower with daily SwiftUI tips that have made my think a lot about how I approach interfaces and interactions in my apps.
So if you're looking for people to follow, there are 5 that are definitely worth a look.
Read the post from week 382
As I move onto the development of my second SwiftUI app, I find that prototyping layouts is a dream but battling against errors it can through when plugging in data sources has been a nightmare.
I'm at the point we're I've actually restarted development of my new app twice to take different approaches and now I am sitting on a more harmonious codebase so it was probably worth the effort. Create with Swift had a great article on designing for app states and just half an hour mapping the app on graph paper has given me a far more solid foundation so I highly recommend reading the article if only for the section on designing for different stats.
Maybe I just lack experience, but errors in SwiftUI are only useful half the time for me. It sometimes seems inconsistent too, but I'm getting there and battling through it. When Google's results haven't thrown up a definitive, or well explained, answer, ChatGPT has been a good companion but I am trying to reign in my trust and reliance on it.
Watch this space, I am hopefully not too far away from launching app number 2 the app store and then I'll be moving on to number 3!
Read the post from week 381
Go read the commentary, some kickers for what Meta's principles really are.
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I finally finished a third roll of film, taking my camera out into London to capture some fisheye photos from London Bridge. I wrote about shooting on film last year and this follow up comes of the back of getting those 3 rolls developed.
Turns out the age, or something, meant they were basically all blank. There were a handful that came through on each roll and even fewer worth sharing.
The ones worth uploading are over on Flickr in my Captured on Film album.
I think the way forward is to shoot a roll and get it developed fairly promptly. If that gets the same result then I'll stop but I will try with the Canon AE-1 again. I'm in London every now and then so getting a photo of buildings around London Bridge and the Thames will be an interesting adventure to go on.
Read the post from week 380
It’s one of the things that I really like about the Jawbone devices. Wear it and forget it, it was always measuring. It was no more advanced than motion but I could add a workout later, or log my sleep if I had forgotten to put it in sleep mode.
I get that the Apple Watch is chock full of sensors and they are used to capture more accurately depending on what you’re up to, but just let me make up for something I forgot to log!
Read the post from week 379
Hard to say, if I'm honest.
I only have Apple Intelligence on my M4 MacBook Pro so my experience is limited and I'm pretty sceptical on AI anyway. It would be more helpful on my iPad mini but it's not compatible.
My very brief thoughts on it's capabilties:
- Image Playgrounds is pretty fun, but the novelty wore of quickly.
- I can't use Image Wand on macOS in the Notes app yet, but I can drag sketches into Image Playground and it does a decent job of interpreting them.
- The ability to compose text is interesting, but having to proof read it every time doesn't save much time if any at all.
- Siri is no better or worse for me, but at this point it's barely worth trying to get Siri to do much at all
- Xcode's autocompletion has been a game changer for me, especially as it's context aware
So of the 4 features outlined above, 1 is actually useful to me. There are more on iOS and iPadOS which may come to macOS in the next update so I'll follow up with how it evolves for my use cases.
Read the post from week 378
Very excited for this, my Apple Wallet is packed full of stuff and the only thing I'd keep in an actual wallet that hasn't made it in yet is a form of ID.
This feature was announced about 4 years ago, so it's taken a bit of time but good to see it is on it's way. 4 years actually feels like quite a long time given how quickly UK banks rolled out Apple Pay compatibility.
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My first Nintendo was the NES, followed by the GameBoy, the Nintendo 3DS and then the Wii.
It's been close to 20 years since my last purchase of a Nintendo console but I've been thinking about a Switch for a bit... With the Switch 2 on the way, maybe this is the year?
The bigger screen is not important to me at all, but the larger Joy-Con controllers looks great and would be more comfortable to hold when playing on the go.
I'd add it all to Good Gear Club but there's no pricing information available just yet.
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I have long been planning an iOS app since I picked up Swift development on my iPad mini. At the end of 2024, I decided to switch tact from my original app idea and onto another, simpler, one that I managed to build out fairly quickly. It took a few more days and weeks of refinement but it got to the point where it was usable and now it's in the App Store.
It's called Kop Quiz and there's a supporting website for it too.
Read the post from week 377
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Generative AI is impressive, and I use ChatGPT every now and then, but I much prefer finding web results where there is more context and discussion. I can't trust the output of an LLM as fact. If I ask a coding question, then I have to try the code to see if it works and ask follow up questions or provide additional context if it doesn't. That context is usually there if I am looking at an article or answer on the web.
For any topic, I will still verify that the AI results are correct. Let's say I ask what the best foods are to eat for a specific condition or desired outcome, I will get an answer, but I'll still pop the answer into Google to find articles to verify. Often the NHS has an article that will verify it, but given AI does not actually have the answer, it's just generating an answer it thinks is right I will continue to do so.
Why I'm an AI sceptic
The environmental impact also looks like it could be enormous.
Someone needs to come up with a sensible, and achievable, rate card for AI that limits how much energy can be used to generate the output. I am not qualified to speculate what that might look like, but if OpenAI is basically asking for unlimited money to continue operating then that doesn't sit well with me.
There has also been an insane amount of theft that has enabled OpenAI to achieve what it has so far. If anything, the money they raise should be used to compensate every author and artist that they have stolen from.
Are search engines any different to AI?
I've been thinking about search engines place in this argument and I think it comes down to the simple fact that a search engine is designed to connect you with the content where as an LLM/generative tool is effectively plagiarising content.
Google's shift to providing snippets so that you don't need to click through was always at odds with the function of a search engine but makes sense in some contexts. Opening hours for example, as a user the experience is great... but for the website it is taken from, how do I know it was useful for that user?
Enhancing products is all well and good, but Google have been prioritising money for years now and it shows. The experience is nowhere near what it was a decade ago and it's no wonder we're starting to see plenty of disruption around how people are 'searching' for answers. A recent episode of The Talk Show has an interview with Vlad Prelovac, found of Kagi, which is well worth a listen on the topic of web search.
Read the post from week 376
I wasn't sure how else to title this, but Howtown has a good video on the truth about Hot Ones sauces. When we watch episodes at home, especially recently, our biggest critique is that no-one seems to suffer much anymore. Hot Ones is at its best when the guest is really struggling!
Pepper X, the key ingredient in The Last Dab, is itself an extremely hot pepper but there's more to the sauce which surely brings the heat down.
I'm pretty sure I've had Da Bomb before, which currently sits at number 8 in the line up. The smallest amount caused plenty of pain and I'd still love to try The Last Dab at some point... but I don't think it will live up to the expectation.
Read the post from week 375
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I remember doing this, back in the 90s. More likely for TV shows we tapped rather than movies.
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