Jun 3, 2025

JINX

Finished Matt Gemmell’s JINX a few weeks ago and forgot to write about it. Thoroughly enjoyed it.

Compared to the first two Kestrel books, Matt seems to have upped his writing to a level where I can really recommend this book to folks as a standout. The dialogue is witty and understated, often based in the contrasts between the the different personalities – when I wasn’t paying full attention, I found myself rereading a few lines to fully appreciate the banter between the characters.

I’m really looking forward to what comes next!

d

May 27, 2025

“Corporate Engineers”

Brent writes a love letter to his team at Audible: My Wildly Incorrect Bias About Corporate Engineers and Gus responds in turn very kindly: Brent on Biases and Retirement

I share Gus’ amusement, but with a few additional angles. As a longtime Microsoft developer, I was exactly the kind of “Corporate Engineer” Brent might have a bias about, and, I hope, exactly the kind of engineer who had some subset of talents that Brent might appreciate and enjoy working with. Hanging out with Brent and Gus and the rest of the Xcoders family has been an enjoyable and fulfilling part of my career, so this discussion really makes me smile.

And Gus’ words make me smile even more so, as he adds “Only crazy people are willing to put up with having to file business taxes, mess with social security, find healthcare, deal with all the stuff you have to handle to be indie.” Now that I am in the position of having to file business taxes, mess with social security, find healthcare, and deal with all the stuff, I feel even better about my decision to quit Microsoft. The indie side of my work now is much more satisfying.

Hope I see you all soon, I’m very sorry to miss your retirement party, Brent!

Nov 2, 2024

**Ehime-Ken mascot Mican spotted in Barcelona! ** (Asian Origins Muntaner)

Top 10 takeaways from #NSSpain2024

Sep 22, 2024

1) Logroño is an excellent place (Luis!)

2) AppleVisionPro accessibility: be prepared to handle “Reduce Motion” and “Avoid head-locked anchors” (Robin Kanatzar)

3) Apple Intelligence leans on AppIntents more than expected (Matthew Cassinelli)

4) SharePlay is not just for Play (Vanessa Furtado)

5) Apple’s Accelerate framework is more competitive with Metal than expected (Francesco Marini)

6) Swift Macros are more involved than expected, but also more powerful (Daniel Steinberg)

7) Vapor is ready for prime time (Adolfo Vera)

8) Avoiding overlapping compositing passes can really improve perf (Tim Oliver)

9) labeled loops allows targeted break statements, ‘case let’ can be useful in more contexts than expected (Nick Lockwood)

10) Seriously, Logroño is an excellent place (So many more great takeaways – Thanks everyone!)

Sep 18, 2024

#nsspain2024 みんなさん、なかまになりましょう！

Aug 1, 2024

For the first time ever, “Facebook Memories” produced something that actually made me laugh. I had forgotten about this post completely (from July 31, 2017):

“Did you know ‘English Breakfast’ means sausage, bacon, fried egg and beans. No wonder English Breakfast Tea is so disgusting – Those flavors don’t belong in tea!”

Jul 7, 2024

Iceland has the best libraries