Jon Porter from The Verge:

When we tried the HBO Max app for ourselves, we found it doesn’t seem to support the new remote’s D-pad. Instead, we could only use the remote’s touchpad circle, which is technically an element of the remote you’re supposed to be able to disable. Scrubbing using the touchpad works, just very badly. The cause of these problems appears to be a recent app update, which replaced the standard tvOS playback UI with HBO’s own (and apparently far less capable) version.

I have been complaining about the Apple TV (the remote of course, but also tvOS itself) for a long time now. If there’s anything to like about Apple, it’s that they usually try to enforce some type of good design sense throughout their hardware and software. Yes, there are a lot of shitty apps on macOS and iOS, but when it comes to the stuff that goes through their App Store, they at least pretend that they would like all of it to look, work, and generally be designed well.

With that said, why are most¹ of the major tvOS apps on the platform able to be approved on the App Store without having even the basics in place? What’s the point of Apple releasing a platform like this if they aren’t going to enforce the very thing that makes people buy Apple products? If some of the most important apps on the platform reduce the video watching experience to just being able to play and pause videos, why bother buying the Apple TV (the most expensive product in this category right now) at all?

I think the answer to the first question is that Apple really doesn’t have any leverage to push companies like HBO to actually make good apps. They can’t really just kick HBO Max off the Apple TV App Store without it being a major issue for them, so why would HBO actually do the hard work of making a good tvOS app² if they can just make one however they want instead? Can you really call tvOS a good platform if nobody making the major apps has any reason to make them good?

We just ordered one of these new remotes a few days ago. Partially because the old one really is trash, but also because we were suspecting we’re having hardware issues with the original (although the problems we’re seeing might just be because of shitty software 🤷🏾‍♂️) so we figured it made sense. But based on what I’m reading, watching HBO will still be a terrible experience even with the new remote anyway, so I’m already frustrated with it before I even have it.

I’m really into The Expanse.

I’ve heard of the book series since before the show was announced, but I didn’t actually get around to reading it until after I’ve seen a few seasons of the show. I used to read on my commute a lot right before COVID hit, but my pace really slowed down a lot since I don’t regularly sit on trains for long periods of time anymore.

Anyway, one of the many things I really like about the show is their vision of all the tech we’ll be using in the future. As a tech guy who’s into sci-fi, I end up seeing a lot of devices/interfaces/tech in shows that either don’t make sense or don’t look good or realistic in any way. The Expanse manages to do such a good job with the technical details.

I just came across the website HUDS+GUIS, which talks about different interfaces from films, games, concepts, etc. They just did an article on UI design in The Expanse. It’s definitely worth a look if you’re into future tech and design. And The Expanse is definitely worth a watch if you like sci-fi.

This is my second weekly thoughts post. I actually made some notes during the week, but I saved the actual post to do over the weekend. But then I suddenly felt wild busy/stressed towards the end and it messed up the plan.

There’s the CraftCMS/React client work that I’ve been falling slightly behind on (which btw, has been involving a lot more server administration¹ than I thought it would), the self-hosted live streaming stuff I suddenly got into Friday and wrote a lot of custom code for, and also the blog post about the live streaming stuff that I was hoping to get done soon.

So now it’s 2 AM and I’m trying to get this post done so I can turn off my brain and go to sleep. So with that said, here’s the stuff I’ve been thinking about this week:

Elite Dangerous: Odyssey

I’ve played 295 hours of Elite Dangerous on Steam so far. I clearly like the game.

The developers announced a pretty ambitious expansion a few months back that would finally allow you to leave your spaceship and do shit on foot. I was skeptical but very interested. Then back in March they started a closed alpha for people who pre-ordered the game. I broke my “no preorder” rule and did it.

I played through the alpha and “skeptical but interested” sums up the whole experience. It was definitely buggy, but I could see the potential. But there were also some real concerns as the alpha went on and certain things weren’t getting improved.

The expansion finally released last Wednesday and the reception was… not very good. It looks like the developers have a lot of bug fixing ahead of them.

I’m still pretty into the game though, even with the issues.

Owncast

I’m writing a separate post about this, but since it took up so many hours of my weekend I figured I would mention it here.

Owncast is software you can install on your server to let you do live video streaming (like Twitch) with your own setup. It seems like it’s been around for a while, but I haven’t heard of it until now.

I used to stream PC games on Twitch, but I haven’t gone back to it in a while. I think I just got tired of Twitch’s scene. But I still like the idea of streaming in general for either gaming/entertainment/chat or sharing the web development process. I came across Owncast Friday and was immediately interested in trying to get it set up so I can stream without dealing with Twitch (which is obviously the theme of all the tech decisions I’ve been making).

I got the basic version of it setup, which results in a page here on the server that looks exactly like a Twitch stream page. But the literal instant I saw how the chat system worked, I knew I was gonna have to disable it and do something very custom and involved to replace it. Which is exactly what I did and will continue to think about and work on next week.

And then maybe make some time to actually stream things with the system I’m spending so much time on².

Comment Spam

For some reason I started getting a lot more comment spam than normal here. I approve all comments before they’re visible (unless you’re registered) so they were all piling up in my “Pending Comments” list in my admin section. Every one contained a link for a specific website that I never heard of that clearly looked like either spam or malware.

It eventually got annoying enough for me to extend the junk/spam filtering stuff I wrote for messages (the contact form) to work for comments too. I added the link that I saw in all the spam to the filter and it’s been (very) quiet again.

Freenode, the IRC network that’s been around since 1998, is dealing with a hostile takeover situation that led to most of the staff members leaving the organization (and the IRC servers of course) over the past day or two.

At some point, freenode users saw this message pop up in their chat clients:

[Global Notice] Hi all. It feels like my moral responsibility to inform all users that administrative control of freenode and its user data will soon change hands, and I will be resigning from freenode staff effective immediately. It’s been an honour to help you all.

Some of the operators who left the org started up a new chat network called Libera.Chat. A few of them also posted messages (kline, Md, Fuchs) about the situation.

According to the messages, it sounds like Andrew Lee, the guy who took over the organization, doesn’t have the best intentions (I don’t really know what that means for an IRC network) for it, so if you’re on the network you might want to consider leaving. If anything just because it seems like a decent amount of people did actually switch over to the new thing (or just decided to finally use Discord or Slack instead of IRC) so I’m guessing freenode will just start dying off at this point.

I’ve seen some people on Twitter talking about being on the network (or at least having it configured in an unused IRC client) for most of their online lives so it’s just kind of a weirdly sad day for them. I’ve heard about it for a long time (back when I was messing around with Win 98 registry keys to get rid of the mIRC registration prompts) but I never really used IRC all that much to feel too bad about it.

I’ve used it a lot in the past year or two though after I decided to run my own IRC server, mostly just because I thought it would be fun to make the bot I’ve been working on live there. Feel free to join if any of this article made any sense to you.

It’s been a slow week for me when it comes to writing. Mostly because I’ve been focusing on some client work, but also I think I’m just slightly overwhelmed trying to get all my shit together lately.

At some point when I was adding to the website homepage, I decided to put some pressure on myself to write regularly by putting how long it’s been since my last post right at the top of the list of articles. It’s been a constant reminder this week that I have not been getting my shit together.

So partially to make sure that text never says anything more than 1 week (and mostly just because I think it’s a good idea), I decided I’ll try doing weekly posts where I write about some of my thoughts during the week.

Taxes

I keep seeing people talking about finishing their taxes by next week. I usually wait until the last possible moment to do mine every year (sometimes literally the day before it’s due), but I actually got it done it last month.

Normally taxes are due on April 15th, but it was extended this year. But I think I heard at some point that the extension doesn’t apply to companies or people with LLCs, so I made sure to do it by April 15th just to be safe. So for once I get to see people talking about getting their taxes done in time and not feel the anxiety of another big thing on the todo list.

Speaking of taxes, this is the first time I’ve done taxes while being self employed and while owning an LLC. I was nervous enough about it that I figured I would go to an actual accountant instead of using TurboTax like I do every year. But then I figured I would start it in TurboTax and see what the process looks like and then I just ended up finishing it. It really wasn’t that bad.

Shout out to my Mom for talking through some of it with me. ❤️ She retired from the IRS a while back and told me about some memories of having to work with people with LLCs.

Client Work

I’m doing some work for an agency that designs and builds websites for clients. Their usual stack is CraftCMS running headless, using GraphQL and a React frontend. I’ve been using it for one of their clients and it’s actually really nice to build with.

Israel - Palestine

With all the (still ongoing) news of the Israel-Gaza conflict this week, I felt like I really should read up on the history of the region. It’s amazing how much we can passively take in about a thing (over decades) and still not really know enough about it.

It feels like I’ve been on Wikipedia the whole week, reading most of each of these:

• Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
• Gaza Strip
• West Bank
• Hamas
• Palestinian National Authority
• Ottoman Empire
• Mandatory Palestine
• Mandate for Palestine
• League of Nations mandate
• Homeland for the Jewish people
• Zionism
• Israel-United States relations

It felt like there was a point on every single one of these articles where I went “wait a minute, what? why?” and opened another link in a new tab.

It feels like you end up hearing and reading about world events but these things don’t really stick until you’re truly trying to figure out why something happened the way it did or why people were motivated to do a certain thing. And once you’re really trying to get to the why, it’s easy ending up with 27 tabs open and the feeling that things are still even more complicated than you know.

All that being said, none of the searching for why should leave you without the ability make a moral judgement on what’s happening and the resolve to fight in solidarity with what’s right. The violence against Palestinian people by the IDF is horrifying. I’ve been encouraged by reading some of the thoughts of both Palestinian and Jewish people (both inside and outside of Israel) who agree that the IDF’s actions are inexcusable.

Digital Gardening

I got a message from someone about the website this week. They mentioned liking what I’ve done so far and wanting to do more digital gardening, saying:

For me, a digital garden has a dual purpose, to be an expansion of ones mind, but also to be a personal statement of ones skill and aptitude.

I really like the way that sounds. I heard the term digital gardening before, but I never really thought about it enough to look into it. After the message, I spent some time reading what people were saying about it (Maggie Appleton, Joel Hooks, Amy Hoy). My quick summary:

Blogging, but with an emphasis on non-chronological and unfinished thoughts/posts that are linked (and back-linked) together into more of a map than a basic stream or feed. Digital gardening is about displaying and tending to your thoughts instead of just publishing finished articles or writing tweets in a timeline.

When it comes to personal notes, I really liked what Obsidian was trying to do. It’s less about digital gardening specifically, and more about the idea of keeping notes that you link between and map together like a knowledge base instead of just flat files. I think there’s a plugin that lets you export any of your Obsidian vaults to a static website that you can deploy somewhere.

For web based digital gardening tools/services, there are a couple of popular apps, one called TiddlyWiki (I will always laugh when I see that name), which I’ve seen a few sites using already.

This stuff really got me thinking about my notes and writing. I don’t write down a lot of my random ass thoughts, and I’m constantly thinking about writing more of them as blog posts, but writing all your incomplete thoughts as articles is really not sustainable at all.

I’ve been thinking about maybe doing 1 of 2 things around the concept:

• A digital garden section of this website, focusing on the presentation and more interesting custom things I could do with it in this platform. I already have a Notes system I built here, and I could definitely redesign it to act a little more like Obsidian, but also be (mostly) public.
• A public app/service that focuses more on the social, shared knowledge mapping/gardening part of this. Considering how much I already dislike the uniform attention-optimized feed most social networks have settled on, the chance to work on a service/network that focuses on people growing interesting thoughts together over time sounds very interesting to me right now.

COVID-19 Vaccination

As of Thurs next week, I’ll be fully (including the two week wait after the second shot) vaccinated! And Summer just arrived here in NYC. Lots of people around here are talking about going out a lot and doing the whole wild sexy summer thing.

I’m happy a lot of people are feeling ready to celebrate things getting better (and yes, I am definitely ready to enjoy this city and actually be able to grab a drink with people again), but I’m not feeling all that optimistic about things right now. I just know this story isn’t over yet.

Resident Evil Village

My partner Monique bought it last week and just beat it. She was into it! Maybe not as much as the Resident Evil 2 remake, but more than the others she’s played. I watched some of her playthrough, and we’ve watched a few Youtubers play here and there, so I feel like it was a part of my life this week.

It looks like a game I would really like (although I think I like Resident Evil more in third person than first person), but I’ve seen enough now that I probably won’t end up playing it myself. But speaking of Resident Evil games I like, I’ll rank my favorites and where this probably would end up:

1. Resident Evil 2 (2019)
2. Resident Evil (2015/1996)
3. Resident Evil Village
4. Resident Evil 3: Nemesis (1999)
5. Resident Evil - Code: Veronica
6. Resident Evil 2 (1998)
7. Resident Evil 4
8. Resident Evil Zero
9. Resident Evil 5
10. Resident Evil 6

Resident Evil (1996) was the first game I ever played on the Playstation and I think the first 3D game I ever played. It’s always gonna be high on my list of favorite games.

I think Code: Veronica is ranked above the original RE 2 mostly because of Dreamcast nostalgia. I remember just being really happy about gaming during pretty much the entire Dreamcast era.

Resident Evil 7 isn’t on the list because I just really do not like first person jump scares. I just never got into the game. I think I would have liked it if I got past all that so I don’t know how to rank it.