One of my internet pals did an edit of an old Superman comic (or a parody of the same) and made it more modern and better and everything. He is right-handed and did this with a mouse, which makes me jealous because I can’t draw with a mouse due to being caught in a weird limbo between being left and right-handed (when it comes to mice):
Original:
Edited, probably more accurate:
With Nic self-described as “cough a lot and possibly contagious” We agreed it might be best to not go birding together. I took advantage of the sunny weather by going for a run, which I missed yesterday.
Despite the sun, it was a bit chilly due to the wind (11C but felt like 8C). I was fine for the running part, but was glad for the long-sleeved shirt for the walking bits.
I had thought of going counter-clockwise but by the time I got to the lake, it seemed better, somehow, to go clockwise. There were a lot of people on the trails, including a kid riding an adorable little pony on the Avalon Trail, but there were no issues. At one point there were four of us all jogging in close proximity, in different directions.
I even saw the spitfire again–though she was walking and was not dressed for running. I wonder if she’s injured. If so, this wrecks my theory that she has a body constructed of steel and is essentially indestructible.
Speaking of indestructible, I had something happen that was rather unexpected. Despite a decent overall pace of 5:47/km, I am still very much off from peak condition, so I’m never exactly blazing down the trail at high speed. And yet, about 1.5 km in, I had two people jogging ahead of me and I seemed to be closing the distance. I certainly didn’t feel like I was gaining speed, so they must have been slowing. I decided to pick up the pace to pass…and did! As it turned out, my glory was short-lived, because I was near the 2K mark and that’s where I was planning to turn around and head back, anyway.
Which I also did.
No issues during the run, so that’s also a plus. In all, I’m glad I went out. The next run should be a slower one, but will also be a regular 5K.
Stats:
Run 914
Average pace: 5:47/km
Training status: Productive
Location: Burnaby Lake (CW, short loop)
Start: 1:42 p.m.
Distance: 2.50 km
Time: 14:31
Weather: Sunny
Temp: 11°C
Humidity: 57%
Wind: moderate
BPM: 150
Weight: 168.8
Total distance to date: 6,410 km
Devices: Garmin Forerunner 255 Music, iPhone 12, AirPods (3rd generation)
Shoes: Saucony Switchback (these are old shoes and will be replaced soon™)
Apple may be starting to see the consequences of its own actions. Every new platform it has launched in the last decade — the iPad, Apple Watch, Apple TV, and now Vision Pro — has struggled to gain meaningful developer support. Why? Because developers are tired of being in an abusive relationship.
If I were starting fresh today, I wouldn’t build my business on Apple’s ecosystem.
Instead, I’d consider web development, where you can control your own distribution, pay no platform commissions and not deal with a mercurial gatekeeper. Or perhaps focus more on cross-platform development, so you’re not locked into a single company’s walled garden.
Finally even becoming a content creator, on a platform like YouTube, seems like a more stable way to make a living these days.
The reality is that Apple’s development ecosystem has become a high-risk, high-maintenance environment. New developers looking for a sustainable career path would do well to consider alternatives that offer more control and fewer headaches.
I think the iPad has done better overall with support than stated here, as there are some notable iPad exclusives (such as Procreate1Yes, there is Procreate Pocket for the iPhone. No, I don’t count it., which is quite literally the only reason I keep my iPad), but if you go by the last five years or so, it hits closer to the mark. As Apple continuously fiddles with the iPad’s UI and how much (or little) the iPad is meant to do, devs have started to shy away from making exclusive apps for it.
I happen to also agree that the yearly update cycle is bonkers and serves no one but Apple. So Apple will continue to go with them, introducing new bugs that never get fixed, releasing new software that never gets fleshed out or is forgotten, all while keeping the eye on the main prize: services, which Apple makes a ton of money on, while offering poor value and uneven reliability (iCloud, iCloud Drive) to its customers.
Basically, Apple is too big to need to worry about developers–or customers. If iPhone sales dropped by 50%, they’d still be selling hundreds of millions of them. Captive market. Their focus now is on an insatiable drive to make even more money, because that’s what giant publicly traded tech companies do. And with a corrupt regime in power in the U.S. Apple will be happy to play them to get what they want, regulations, environment or customer needs be damned.
If Apple had leadership with a moral compass aligned to what they claim to believe, things would be fine. But instead we have its CEO donate $1 million to Trump’s inauguration, as close to a straight-up bribe as you can get. And it will make no difference unless they keep offering fealty to the king. Maybe they will. Probably they will, and they’ll become ever-more corrupt and uninterested in doing what is right or best, and simply in doing what will extract the most money from the most people.
What I’m saying here is this: Don’t buy Apple products. Don’t support them, don’t believe them. Yes, every tech company is pretty much evil these days, so you have to sometimes choose the lesser evil. Apple is no longer one of the lesser evils.
This concludes my 2025 Apple Rant. Unlike Apple, I do not intend to roll out a new rant every year. But hey, you never know.
I have had ultrasounds done before, so today’s experience was not new. But the preparation led to some unintended drama, which is almost always worse than intended drama.
My preparation for the ultrasound1 was to drink four cups (100 ml) of water two hours before, then hold it until I was on the table, as it were.
I drank the requisite amount (more, actually, as I had been sipping from breakfast onward) and felt appropriately bloated by the time I began the 30-minute walk to the lab. The predictable happened: my bladder, which has always seemed to hold a completely inadequate amount of liquid, began to say PEE NOW OR YOU WILL REGRET EVERYTHING.
I was on a sidewalk, so this was not an option. Picking up the pace only made the sensation more urgent, so I just kept walking, occasionally doing the flexing fingers thing when I really have to go. I tried avoiding thinking about things like waterfalls or warm cups of water.
Finally, I got to the mall where the lab is located. I had already done the calculus where even if I peed a bit, I’d have more than enough water in me to not alter the results. As I strode to the public washrooms, I thought about how the worse you had to go, the more likely the washrooms would be closed.
I turned the corner to the washrooms and the double doors leading to them were shut, with a sign on one:
CLOSED FOR MAINTENANCE.
Of course.
I knew there were washrooms upstairs, so I gingerly climbed the staircase and made my way down another hallway, to a set of three washrooms: hers, his and accessible. Each door had a keypad on it. I tried the men’s and yep, it was locked. My bladder was not amused. I noticed the accessible washroom was OCCUPIED so I casually hung out nearby as my bladder got ready to explode. An older woman exited and I caught the door before it could lock, but no so soon that I came across as some creepy weirdo hanging around washrooms. Or so I hoped.
Having done the deed and restored some semblance of calm, I went to the lab and they got me in early. Nice!
The process was the same as before: lay on your back, then the left side, then the right side. Take deep breaths, exhale, repeat. Also, really cold gel will be applied to your skin and a cold wand will be pressed into the gel to remind you again how very cold it is.
Partway through, I was instructed to go take care of Mr. Bladder, then return. When I returned, the person attending asked, “Is that better?” and while it may seem an obvious question to ask someone who has been holding in a large amount of water for hours, I still said SWEET DEAR GOD YES. In my mind. Out loud, I just said, “yes.”
It all wrapped up shortly after, and I “rewarded” myself with a filet-o-fish at a nearby McDonald’s. It was fine. I was not overly thirsty. My doctor will know in 2-3 days if I’m pregnant, hosting an alien or maybe, just maybe, healthy!
Because now you can, and for only $4.99!
Detail:
Mmm, mini pucks.
I have not been keeping up with my runs, plus I’ve been sleeping poorly and stressing out and stuff, so this morning I checked the forecast and it looked like it would stay dry until at least 2 p.m. so I changed into my jogging clothes and set out to just do a brisk walk to the lake and back.
Which I did!
On the way back, I ran probably about half the distance (around 2 km) and got some good burns a few times by running up the stairs at Hume Park and the one block uphill stretch of Kelly Street. The stats below reflect the difference in pace between the two walks quite nicely.
The water fountain has finally been re-opened at Burnaby Lake. I took advantage.
I went from Detraining to Maintaining on my watch, too, which was a nice bonus.
The weather was mild and though I wore long sleeves in case of rain, I would have been fine in a t-shirt.
Overall, it was nice to finally get back out, touch trees, and sweat a little. If all goes well, I’ll do a short 2.5K run tomorrow.
Stats:
Walk 130 and 131
Average pace: 9:10/km and 7:49/km
Location: Brunette River trail
Distance: 4.02 km
Time: 36:51 and 31:29
Weather: Cloudy, some sun
Temp: 15°C
Humidity: 66%
Wind: light
BPM: 110 and 134
Weight: 168.9 pounds
Devices: Garmin Forerunner 255
Total distance to date: 934.98 km
My iPhone 12 apparently couldn’t handle these flowers, so I had to adjust the vibrancy down to get it closer to what a human eye would see:
And then the phone, with no horizon line for reference, rotated this photo from its landscape orientation to portrait, so I had to set it back, then tamp down the ultrabright white of the petals. At least doing these things makes me feel I’m contributing to the photography process, beyond just aiming the camera lens at something.
On Mastodon, someone linked to a full set of icons used in BeOS, an OS that tried to make a splash late in the 20th and early 21st century, failed, but still lives on as Haiku.
You can see the icons here: BeOS icon pack
I really like them. Warm, slightly cartoony, psuedo-3D. It’s the latter that one of my interweb gaming pals described as “the Zaxxon angle”, which is a great way of describing it. Today’s icons in Windows, macOS, and most Linux distros are generally flat, with maybe some slight bevelling or something to hint at 3D, but nothing is close to what BeOS did. And that’s kind of a shame to me. It’s not just nostalgia, either. The icons are distinctive and have style, they feel of a piece, not just random whatever.
Plus, giant eyeball!
And books:
I know, I am typing this on a blog, which means I have the vast collected knowledge of the web available to me and even with Google flailing and AI slop overrunning everything, it’s still pretty easy to search and find out that SMH is short for Shake My Head (expressing mild disgust, disbelief).
But for whatever reason, my brain refuses to remember this, and I don’t want to search every time the term pops into my head, because it reminds me my brain can’t remember this specific abbreviation. I can remember LOL and IANAL (lol anal) and IDK and lots of others, but this is one that just never sticks.
But instead of wondering what it might mean, my brain always offers up the incorrect, unhelpful, and weird: Smell My Hand.
I want to say it still kind of works, but it really doesn’t. It’s just weird.
I am weird.
I think it’s supposed to be a crow or something. I did it with no reference, so I’m just pleased it doesn’t look like a turkey.
Clem Burke, one of the original members of Blondie, a favourite band of my youth (and still today), has died at age 70 after battling cancer.
Burke was always fun to watch in concert footage or music videos, because of his maniac style. I will be listening to Blondie tonight and checking out some of his spastic moves in various videos.
Vintage Burke in the clip below.
Looking at the specs for one of Samsung’s Odyssey S9 ultrawide monitors, I noticed this particular feature:
This seems to imply that if you have Eye Saver Mode OFF, your eyes will not be saved. They will be lost. Why would you not want to save your eyes? Apparently, real gamers do not need to concern themselves with such things. Their eyes are like eagles or something. Until they hit 40, after which they retire and switch to Eye Saver Mode ON1Eye Saver Mode reduces blue light and brightness, so I guess if you’re playing a very blue-lit game, you best be prepared to sacrifice yourself for maximum deets, or whatever the kids are saying now that we’re a quarter of the way through the 21st century..
Also, the G9 is a 49″ ultrawide monitor, which seems absurd until I realize it would take up less total desk space than my two 27″ monitors. The curved screen still weirds me out, though.
