John’s Blog

Encouraging news on early voting here in Texas. Shawn Mulcahy, reporting for The Texas Tribune:

The first day of early voting in Texas saw long lines, a record number of voters in the state’s most populous county and relatively few hitches as voters surged to polling places despite the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Voters in Harris County shattered the record for in-person ballots cast on the first day of early voting, with more than 128,000 people voting, according to the county elections office. The previous record was set in 2016, when about 68,000 people cast votes there.

Dallas County, also has had record numbers on the first day according to The Dallas Morning News. A link you should not click on because of the dumpster fire that is the DMN site, but alas:

As of 9:30 p.m. Tuesday, Dallas County, Texas’ second-largest county, reported more than 59,734 votes, eclipsing its previous record of 59,389 votes in 2018. However, a county official said that number could change as data is reconciled.

Great news all around. Let’s keep this up!

Another year, another iPhone announcement from Apple. Time marches on and the product continuously and incrementally improves. Yesterday Apple announced this year’s new iPhone lineup in a nicely choreographed video presentation, much like the one last month, and WWDC this June.

A few quick thoughts on the iPhone announcement for this year:

• I really like the introduction of the iPhone 12 Mini. I wish there was a “Pro” mini that could contain the latest and greatest camera and technology but maintain the smaller form factor. There’s probably not enough room in that small case to fit everything in the Pro line, but a boy can dream.
• 5G seems like a nice upgrade in ideal conditions. Who knows whether reality will match up to this pitch. I’m lucky enough to be in a large city with good coverage so I’m optimistic. But I bet many new phone buyers won’t even notice a difference — which makes it a strange point to focus on so much during the presentation.
• Speaking of focusing on 5G: why was Verizon involved in this presentation at all? Apple gave major stage time to a single US carrier and made it seem like these features are only available on Verizon (they’re not) and that Verizon is the only Apple-approved vendor that matters (they’re not). The whole thing was weird. How much money did Apple receive from Verizon to co-opt its event? I’m not sure it was worth it. (Nothing against Verizon here, but it just seemed out of place.)
• I welcome the return of flat sides on the phones. The past few years’ phones have been so slippery and smooth I’m hoping this is a return to some sort of grip-ability without needing to install a case from day one. We shall see.
• The MagSafe charging and accessories look pretty cool. I like the effort put into this, and it seems like a clear improvement over the basic charging pads that work today. It’s no fun when you wake up in the morning to find your phone uncharged because it was a centimeter off center on the charging pad.
• Like the Apple Watch of last month, Apple is not including the charger or headphones in the box with new iPhones. They claim this is for environmental purposes, which is valid. But if it’s for environmental purposes, then why not knock $30 off the price? It seems very disingenuous to claim an environmental benefit when it appears to be a profit margin incentive.
• The Pro Max bigger phone has a nicer camera sensor and a few other camera features not present in the normal-human-hand-sized Pro. This is disappointing. I really dislike the giant phone, but one of the primary reasons to upgrade is to get the latest camera tech. I’m torn here, but probably will need to stick with something reasonably-sized.

Preorders are spread out throughout the next month starting this Friday. At this point I’m leaning towards the 12 Pro in the new blue colored finish. Looks pretty sharp to me.

Presentation-wise, I think that Apple is doing a fantastic job here. The video production teams at Apple are so great and sometimes it seems like they are just flexing while the rest of industry is playing catch-up. It’s hard to tell what’s real and what’s great CG work by the production teams. And I say that in a good way.

Also announced yesterday was a new HomePod: The HomePod mini. This is a smaller version of the HomePod from a few years ago with some nice new features like an in-home intercom system, proximity sensors devices, and Siri enhancements. It’s $99 for the HomePod mini, which is much more competitive than the original model. This is the device Apple should have launched years ago to compete with the Alexa and Google Home products.

Overall I thought this event was a solid move in forward direction. Nothing terribly different or astounding, but great incremental progress around the board.

Eddie Van Halen himself, writing about his guitars, patents, and tinkering mindset for Popular Mechanics back in 2015:

My playing style really grew from the fact that I couldn’t afford a distortion pedal. I had to try to squeeze those sounds out of my guitar. The first real work I did was in my bedroom. I added pickups, because I didn’t like the sound of the originals.

I couldn’t afford a router—I didn’t even know what a router was—so I started hammering away with a screwdriver. That didn’t work at all. Chunks of wood flew off and there was sawdust flying all over the place. But I was on a mission. I knew what I wanted and I just kept at it until I finally got there.

I also had no idea until this week that he owns several patents for his innovations. Including this one with, quite possibly, the best patent image ever.

Craig Jenkins, with a wonderfully written obituary and remembrance of Eddie Van Halen:

Eddie Van Halen’s impact on the guitar is more than a matter of perfect solos, influential techniques, and enterprising mixing of genres. His experimentation with synths was an endeavor he’d have to drag the band and their producer into; he’d record enticing song fragments in his home studio before fighting tooth and nail to get the rest of the band to bite. (The keyboard part that ended up on “Jump” was created during sessions for an earlier album and rejected. Resurrected for 1984, the song became the band’s first and only No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart.) Frankenstrat — his signature red, white, and black guitar — took its name from the shifting rotation of Fender Stratocaster and Gibson parts he’d assembled it out of. In the ’80s, he created a patent for a contraption that propped up a guitar, freeing a musician from holding the instrument upright, an idea no doubt inspired by the tapping technique he popularized earlier in his career that allowed him to zip between notes by hitting the frets without having to strum. He continued tinkering in his later years as he did in his youth, drafting innovative solutions to the limitations of his instrument he’d encounter as he played it.

Happy Friday. It’s been another wild week of debate, drama, and life in a pandemic. Here’s a few less important things for this week.

Instagram brings back classic icons to celebrate its tenth birthday – The classic Instagram icon and branding is just so much better than the new modern style. I’ve switched back to the 2011-era icon. I also miss the era of ‘Easter eggs’ like this within software.

New Microsoft Surface Laptops – These look very nice. I wish Apple would up its game a bit and think outside of its current model we’ve been stuck in for what feels like forever. The tiny, light ARM-based Surface Pro X looks super cool and has LTE connectivity and a long battery life. If it ran macOS it would be the perfect travel computer!

Toonie Newsletter – A new newsletter from Josh Ginter about personal finance for people who are looking to build wealth over the long term and make smart financial decisions. I would have liked this sort of thing to exist 20 years ago for myself, hopefully others find it helpful. Why don’t they teach this sort of thing in public schools?

All Consuming – New podcast by Noah Kalina and Adam Lisagor reviewing all of those direct-to-consumer products that appear on your Instagram timeline.

25 days to go

The Dent, on blogging and what to blog:

Despite barely posting to my blog for months, I’m still weirdly precious about what I post there. I always feel like I should only post longer form posts or something that I’ve over thought.

My little blog isn’t going to get popular, and frankly I wouldn’t want the pressure of it being so. Because of this, it’s completely unnecessary for me to be so protective of the kind of content I share here. I’m pretty sure I’ve said this in the past, but I’m once again going to make a concerted effort to just post.

Nitin Khanna introduced me to the term of “moleskinning” your blog here, which makes perfect sense:

[…] stop moleskinning your blog. It’s not a perfect, pristine place which must always reflect the best work you’ve ever done. It’s alive. It’s a creative space where your ideas should stare you in the face so you can always work on them, and when they’re presentable, you can show them to the world. If you don’t ever want to, that’s fine too.

I’m still not quite sure how to approach what I post here on this blog. Looking back over time, I’d like to to be a loose record of the things that I was into and what was important in the world at that time. So far that’s the case. I’m guilty of over-thinking that a lot, though, and I’d like to get better. It doesn’t need to be perfect. Just publishing something is the goal.

via Matt Birchler

I was crushed to hear the news today that Eddie Van Halen had passed away after a long battle with cancer. Absolutely awful news, even for this year.

Van Halen was my favorite band as young and impressionable middle and high school kid. I spent countless hours listening to them. I saved all of my pennies to get used copies of their records. I can picture walking into a tiny record shop in my hometown and buying a used copy of Women and Children First for nine bucks. I still have it today, with the price tag attached. For years I was completely enthralled by Eddie’s guitar, Alex’s drums, and David’s vocals. (And nothing against Michael Anthony who was also a brilliant bass player, despite the surface-level simplicity of his tracks.) My senior yearbook quote was a Van Halen line! My goodness.

Van Halen’s first record was (and is still) one of my favorite records of all time. If I close my eyes I can see myself walking to the bus stop in the mornings before school listening to it on my Walkman. Eruption remains the single greatest display of guitar prowess ever recorded and I still don’t have any idea how he made the guitar sound like that. I owe much of my love of music to Van Halen, and Eddie in particular.

Eddie, you’ll be missed. Rest in peace. ❤️🙏

Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman, writing for The New York Times:

President Trump revealed early Friday morning that he and the first lady, Melania Trump, had tested positive for the coronavirus, throwing the nation’s leadership into uncertainty and escalating the crisis posed by a pandemic that has already killed more than 207,000 Americans and devastated the economy.

Wow. What a week this has been. All politics and disagreements aside, of which there are so many, I’m hoping that President Trump and the First Lady have a quick and full recovery without incident. No one should wish this virus on anyone else.

Summer is over. It’s officially October and here in Texas things are just a bit less hot than usual. (Temperature-wise, that is. The world continues to burn in so many ways.)

For the fall I’m trying something a bit new, for me. Every so often I’ll post a few links and thoughts that are on my mind or in my browser this week. Nothing too fancy. Just a place to get things down. I have a feeling the next 6 weeks are going to be quite interesting.

Blacklight – A real-time website privacy inspector by Surya Mattu and The Markup. This is a brilliant idea, and I’m glad someone took it on. Zero trackers on this site, of course.

Umami Analytics – Self-hosted, open source, and completely private analytics alternative for the basics. It’s not going to replace all of Google Analytics, but are you even using all of that stuff? I’ll be giving this a solid look soon.

The Calm Inbox Course – New course from Shawn Blanc and the crew at The Sweet Setup. Shawn’s work is always so well done. I’m not sure this one is for me–I’m already a crazy person about organizing email–but I’m glad this exists.

Jason Isbell and Amanda Shires: Tiny Desk (Home) Concert – Jason is my favorite artist these days. His new album is fantastic, and so is this performance.

Good Music to Avert the Collapse of American Democracy –  Available on Bandcamp tomorrow featuring Sturgill Simpson, John Prine, Pearl Jam, Margo Price, and more of Jason Isbell too.

32 days until the election.

I'm working on a few new project ideas for the first time in a few years. When you work on the same thing for a long time you can become comfortable with just what you have. Well, I do at least. Comfort is good and it allows me to move fast. But every time I start a new project I try and play with something a bit new to get outside my comfort zone.

One of the tools I've been playing with has lately been Tailwind CSS. This one is quite a bit different than anything I've used for CSS before.

Traditionally, I don't like CSS frameworks. I find them overbearing, overly-opinionated, and bloated with tons of components and utilities that I never end up using. I've worked on countless projects with Bootstrap, Foundation and the like. They are great frameworks and they certainly have their benefits. But it's just too much for me.

A few years ago, when I started working on Air Mail, I just started from a basic CSS reset and added my own components as I went along. The front-end of the public site is very simple but the back-end content manager is much more complicated. There's a ton of CSS. All of it is custom, and all of it was tailor-made for the specific use cases I had. It works great, but it all seems a bit heavy. I've been trying to figure out a better way forward.

Tailwind takes a completely different approach. I've heard it described as an "API for your design system." That's clever. Instead of building custom CSS (or using a normal framework) Tailwind allows you to use utility classes to change the look of the markup. It's almost like old-school inline stylesbut with more more power and control. Controlling variants and breakpoints from just class names is pretty handy.

The Tailwind docs give a nice example of why the utility-first approach can be productive.

I like that it provides a basic design system in a box. There are sensible defaults, all that can be customized, but then the framework just provides a ton of utilities to get you what you need. It's refreshingly simple.

One of the things I always have disliked about other frameworks is that they force you to use their outdated, clunky, and one-size-fits-all JavaScript components. I don't want to be forced into including some old version of jQuery (or any version at all nowadays) just to use your basic CSS framework. Tailwind doesn't care what JavaScript you even use. It's just a simple CSS utility framework. The interactions are up to you.

Last but not least: to fix the bloating problem Tailwind is designed to be used with PurgeCSS to remove any code on build that your site doesn't need. This is really nice.

It's not all roses, there are going to be some hiccups. That’s a heck of a lot of classes floating around in my markup and it’s going to take me some time to get used to that. This approach is new to me, but I'm excited to give it a spin.

Jason Kottke, not mincing his words:

We’ve long passed the point at which everyone should understand in no uncertain terms that Trump is an authoritarian, racist, white supremacist (among other things). Hell, this is what many of his supporters like about him. But it should also be clear to his supporters, allof this supporters (especially the ones who hold their nose and support him because of Christian values or fiscal policy or abortion), that by voting for this man knowing what we all clearly know about him, you are a white supremacist. Period. I understand the perfect candidate doesn’t exist and that our system of voting requires us to compromise some of our values in order to support progress towards bigger goals, but good luck explaining that you voted for an actual white supremacist to your grandchildren someday (if you can stomach telling them the truth). Some values cannot be compromised.

Josh Marshall, for Talking Points Memo, on last night’s presidential debate:

Having had a night to sleep on it – and sleep very soundly – I’m much closer to what I said was the downside possibility for the President: not just a missed opportunity but a self-immolation. This was truly the worst of Trump: racist, belligerent, angry, unstable. I’ll give the man his due. Trump can be if not funny then jocular, entertaining in a predatory, roguish way. Last night had none of that. It was pure id and an id under threat.

Beyond all the individual offenses one of the underrated sub-themes of anti-Trumpism is exhaustion. One of the deepest traumas of living in the home of an abuser stems not from the outbursts of physical violence, verbal abuse or manipulation but the accumulated stress of ambient tension, uncertainty, the reflexive, unshakeable hyper-vigilance. It is exhausting in a profound way. Trump is exhausting – I suspect even for some who share his dark values. This was 90 minutes jam-packed with everything that makes Trump exhausting. Living with an abuser means being trapped in close quarters with the abuse, being unable to run. In a month voters get the chance to walk away.

Leaving aside the tax information itself, the data visualizations in this NY Times article are absolutely fantastic. The entire organization seems to be at the top of its game. I can think of very few media outlets that would fund not only the extensive reporting to find this information and organize it, but also to design and create such excellent visuals to publish.

Here’s something you don’t see every day: a brand new completely native Mac code editor. Panic’s new editor, Nova, is out of beta and ready for use. I’ll certainly be kicking the tires on this one.

Shape is a pretty nice looking little library of icons and illustrations, complete with its own app for customizing the details. Cool idea.