![Wikipedia](\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berthold_Woltze#/media/File:Berthold_Woltze_-_Der_l%C3%A4stige_Kavalier.jpg\"){kind=link}
![Wikipedia](\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berthold_Woltze#/media/File:Berthold_Woltze_-_Der_Brief.jpg\"){kind=link}
![\"Image\"](\"https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:3l5hymrc5zprrbcvywvcrgsw/bafkreibcywreqiegpyk4gxyjxgx56nsjcp7qwm3pfmlsacvydhvn6p6dvy@jpeg\")
I see Netflix fixed their awful Apple TV scrubbing behaviour. Great job, everyone. We did it.
", "url": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1775712400.html", "author": { "name": "Michael Camilleri", "url": "https://inqk.net", "avatar": "/assets/images/avatar.jpg" }, "date_published": "2026-04-09T14:26:40+09:00", "date_modified": "2026-04-09T14:26:40+09:00" }, { "id": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1775619012.html", "title": "", "content_text": "Easter has no doubt impacted things but the iOS version of Listless has been ready to publish for days and I’m still waiting for the macOS version to even go into review.", "content_html": "Easter has no doubt impacted things but the iOS version of Listless has been ready to publish for days and I’m still waiting for the macOS version to even go into review.
", "url": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1775619012.html", "author": { "name": "Michael Camilleri", "url": "https://inqk.net", "avatar": "/assets/images/avatar.jpg" }, "date_published": "2026-04-08T12:30:12+09:00", "date_modified": "2026-04-08T12:30:12+09:00" }, { "id": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1775267360.html", "title": "", "content_text": "Inbox zero!", "content_html": "Inbox zero!
", "url": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1775267360.html", "author": { "name": "Michael Camilleri", "url": "https://inqk.net", "avatar": "/assets/images/avatar.jpg" }, "date_published": "2026-04-04T10:49:20+09:00", "date_modified": "2026-04-04T10:49:20+09:00" }, { "id": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1775227020.html", "title": "Weeknotes #324", "content_text": "The Iran War continued. I feel helpless to do more than pray an ever-increasing number of Americans recognise the stupidity of this latest instance of military adventurism and fix their ire on the maniac they foisted upon the rest of us.In more positive news, the Artemis II mission lifted off successfully on Thursday Tokyo time (ABC News). That said, after reading Maciej Cegłowski’s post about the safety of the heat shield I hope this doesn’t become a more tragic story.On Sunday, Emma and I went to see Hoppers. I somehow made the mistake of thinking that the screening began at 3.30 pm when it in fact started at 3.10. Even with all the advertisements they play these days, the movie had begun by the time we got inside. Alas. The film itself was… fine. Nothing about it was awful but I thought the humour was forced in a few places and the simplicity of its politics wore on me as the film went on. I realise that a nuanced exploration of the complexity of balancing development and conservation isn’t what you expect in a film for children, but if any animation studio was going to pull that off, I’d have bet on Pixar.I had more fun watching Enola Holmes with John and Rowan over a few nights this week. Letterboxd tells me I watched it in November 2021 which sounds about right (although I am surprised that I didn’t write it about it at all in the weeknotes from that period). Back then, I remember being disappointed with it but this time I was content to enjoy the time the film spends with its characters, especially Millie Bobby Brown’s Enola. Letterboxd also tells me that I saw Enola Holmes 2 almost exactly a year later in November 2022 but I have no memory of seeing it at all (and once again didn’t write about it). I plan to have an update about it in next week’s update.I had hoped to be able to say that Listless was available in the App Store. Alas, that’s not the case. I submitted it for App Review and am now waiting with my fingers crossed.In a decision I fully expect to regret, I purchased a treadmill from Amazon that Eri and I can fold up and stash under our bed. The idea was that I can use it to go running in the evening, regardless of the weather conditions outside (which in summer get especially hideous). I’m keen to try it out but decided to wait until the doctor gives me the all clear given my fractured toe. So far, he’s been happy with how it’s healed and suggested that if it continues as it has for the past few weeks, next Tuesday will be the last time I need to see him.The Public Domain Review has a post about the caricatures that Claude Monet drew in his teenage years that I found fascinating.Jenny Nicholson put out a video essay on the worst (best?) Twilight knock-off. It’s 1 hour and 40 minutes so probably not something I can recommend to a general audience. It’s not on quite the same level as her Evermore video or her Vampire Diaries video but those set an extremely high bar.I can’t remember exactly how I came across Olivia Dean’s ‘So Easy (To Fall in Love)’ (Apple Music) but I guarantee it’ll have you shimmying around the house in no time.", "content_html": "The Iran War continued. I feel helpless to do more than pray an ever-increasing number of Americans recognise the stupidity of this latest instance of military adventurism and fix their ire on the maniac they foisted upon the rest of us.
In more positive news, the Artemis II mission lifted off successfully on Thursday Tokyo time (ABC News). That said, after reading Maciej Cegłowski’s post about the safety of the heat shield I hope this doesn’t become a more tragic story.
On Sunday, Emma and I went to see Hoppers. I somehow made the mistake of thinking that the screening began at 3.30 pm when it in fact started at 3.10. Even with all the advertisements they play these days, the movie had begun by the time we got inside. Alas. The film itself was… fine. Nothing about it was awful but I thought the humour was forced in a few places and the simplicity of its politics wore on me as the film went on. I realise that a nuanced exploration of the complexity of balancing development and conservation isn’t what you expect in a film for children, but if any animation studio was going to pull that off, I’d have bet on Pixar.
I had more fun watching Enola Holmes with John and Rowan over a few nights this week. Letterboxd tells me I watched it in November 2021 which sounds about right (although I am surprised that I didn’t write it about it at all in the weeknotes from that period). Back then, I remember being disappointed with it but this time I was content to enjoy the time the film spends with its characters, especially Millie Bobby Brown’s Enola. Letterboxd also tells me that I saw Enola Holmes 2 almost exactly a year later in November 2022 but I have no memory of seeing it at all (and once again didn’t write about it). I plan to have an update about it in next week’s update.
I had hoped to be able to say that Listless was available in the App Store. Alas, that’s not the case. I submitted it for App Review and am now waiting with my fingers crossed.
In a decision I fully expect to regret, I purchased a treadmill from Amazon that Eri and I can fold up and stash under our bed. The idea was that I can use it to go running in the evening, regardless of the weather conditions outside (which in summer get especially hideous). I’m keen to try it out but decided to wait until the doctor gives me the all clear given my fractured toe. So far, he’s been happy with how it’s healed and suggested that if it continues as it has for the past few weeks, next Tuesday will be the last time I need to see him.
The Public Domain Review has a post about the caricatures that Claude Monet drew in his teenage years that I found fascinating.
Jenny Nicholson put out a video essay on the worst (best?) Twilight knock-off. It’s 1 hour and 40 minutes so probably not something I can recommend to a general audience. It’s not on quite the same level as her Evermore video or her Vampire Diaries video but those set an extremely high bar.
I can’t remember exactly how I came across Olivia Dean’s ‘So Easy (To Fall in Love)’ (Apple Music) but I guarantee it’ll have you shimmying around the house in no time.
The v1.0 of Listless has been submitted to the App Store for review.
", "url": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1775175628.html", "author": { "name": "Michael Camilleri", "url": "https://inqk.net", "avatar": "/assets/images/avatar.jpg" }, "date_published": "2026-04-03T09:20:28+09:00", "date_modified": "2026-04-03T09:20:28+09:00" }, { "id": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1775173407.html", "title": "", "content_text": "Either almost nobody writes in to the Wall Street Journal’s China newsletter or Eugene P. Grace must have been a career diplomat at the State Department.", "content_html": "Either almost nobody writes in to the Wall Street Journal’s China newsletter or Eugene P. Grace must have been a career diplomat at the State Department.
", "url": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1775173407.html", "author": { "name": "Michael Camilleri", "url": "https://inqk.net", "avatar": "/assets/images/avatar.jpg" }, "date_published": "2026-04-03T08:43:27+09:00", "date_modified": "2026-04-03T08:43:27+09:00" }, { "id": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1775022780.html", "title": "", "content_text": "Does the term ‘simple majority’ imply the existence of a ‘complicated majority’? Wrong answers only, please.", "content_html": "Does the term ‘simple majority’ imply the existence of a ‘complicated majority’? Wrong answers only, please.
", "url": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1775022780.html", "author": { "name": "Michael Camilleri", "url": "https://inqk.net", "avatar": "/assets/images/avatar.jpg" }, "date_published": "2026-04-01T14:53:00+09:00", "date_modified": "2026-04-01T14:53:00+09:00" }, { "id": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1774744517.html", "title": "", "content_text": "I’m glad to see @gruber.foo is as aghast at how bad Netflix’s tvOS video player is as I am. How did this ship?", "content_html": "I’m glad to see @gruber.foo is as aghast at how bad Netflix’s tvOS video player is as I am. How did this ship?
", "url": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1774744517.html", "author": { "name": "Michael Camilleri", "url": "https://inqk.net", "avatar": "/assets/images/avatar.jpg" }, "date_published": "2026-03-29T09:35:17+09:00", "date_modified": "2026-03-29T09:35:17+09:00" }, { "id": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1774620300.html", "title": "Weeknotes #323", "content_text": "Australia played Japan in the AFC Women’s Asian Cup Final on Saturday. It unfortunately wasn’t being broadcast on any free-to-air channels (I think it was possible to watch on the streaming service DAZN) but I was able to get the Apple TV app for the Australian broadcaster, Ten, to work and we watched it that way. It was a little bittersweet that Australia lost (ABC News) but the Japanese goal was so good and their defence at the end of the game so impressive that it was impossible not to recognise the better team won. I hope the disappointment doesn’t dent the enthusiasm girls in Australia have for soccer (and the broader viewing public for watching it).I updated my iOS devices to iOS 26 under protest. My friend sogaiu drew my attention to the DarkSword exploit (Google Cloud Blog) and I was frustrated to discover that my phone cannot be protected by upgrading to iOS 18.7.4 or higher. This is because Apple has gated iOS 18 releases after 18.7.3 so that they can only be installed on devices that cannot run iOS 26. In other words, if I were rocking an iPhone XS, I could install 18.7.7 but since I’m on an iPhone 14 Pro Max, I can’t. With extreme reluctance, I put iOS 26 on the iPhone and the iPad and my personal customer satisfaction with Apple decreased further. I live in hope that JD Power reaches out to me so that this information can be aggregated into a metric to which Tim Cook might pay attention.Speaking of frustration with Apple, I ran into one of those iOS 26 bugs that developers have been complaining about since last June. After Eugenia expressed frustration that there wasn’t a way to delete all the items in Listless, I replaced the Settings button with an ‘overflow’ button that opens a pop-over menu. So what’s the problem? In iOS 26, buttons that open pop-over menus contain a morphing animation between the button and the menu. This works fine if you have the button located in a navigation toolbar. If you don’t do this (I don’t do this) then the morphing animation is broken. As the pop-over menu morphs back into the button, certain effects that have been applied to the button (e.g. a drop shadow) do not appear until a few frames after the morph has finished. After some searching around, I did discover a way to mitigate things but it was still surprising to discover that extremely noticeable visual glitches like this are still part of iOS 26. Fingers crossed for iOS 27, I guess.I mentioned sogaiu above and he also told me about a documentary from the studio Noclip about Rocket League that’s distributed freely on YouTube (part 1, part 2). I liked them but actually preferred the extended interview with Dave Hagewood, the founder and, at the time, CEO of Psyonix. It is a little disappointing that the documentary was made relatively recently after Rocket League’s release; I’d be curious for an update, particularly one that covers the acquisition of Psyonix by Epic Games.Did you realise that the 20th anniversary release of the soundtrack to the Bourne Identity is called the ‘Tumescent Edition’ (Apple Music)? Did you know that ‘tumescent’ means swollen or expanded? I assume this is the kind of stuff you all read this to learn.", "content_html": "Australia played Japan in the AFC Women’s Asian Cup Final on Saturday. It unfortunately wasn’t being broadcast on any free-to-air channels (I think it was possible to watch on the streaming service DAZN) but I was able to get the Apple TV app for the Australian broadcaster, Ten, to work and we watched it that way. It was a little bittersweet that Australia lost (ABC News) but the Japanese goal was so good and their defence at the end of the game so impressive that it was impossible not to recognise the better team won. I hope the disappointment doesn’t dent the enthusiasm girls in Australia have for soccer (and the broader viewing public for watching it).
I updated my iOS devices to iOS 26 under protest. My friend sogaiu drew my attention to the DarkSword exploit (Google Cloud Blog) and I was frustrated to discover that my phone cannot be protected by upgrading to iOS 18.7.4 or higher. This is because Apple has gated iOS 18 releases after 18.7.3 so that they can only be installed on devices that cannot run iOS 26. In other words, if I were rocking an iPhone XS, I could install 18.7.7 but since I’m on an iPhone 14 Pro Max, I can’t. With extreme reluctance, I put iOS 26 on the iPhone and the iPad and my personal customer satisfaction with Apple decreased further. I live in hope that JD Power reaches out to me so that this information can be aggregated into a metric to which Tim Cook might pay attention.
Speaking of frustration with Apple, I ran into one of those iOS 26 bugs that developers have been complaining about since last June. After Eugenia expressed frustration that there wasn’t a way to delete all the items in Listless, I replaced the Settings button with an ‘overflow’ button that opens a pop-over menu. So what’s the problem? In iOS 26, buttons that open pop-over menus contain a morphing animation between the button and the menu. This works fine if you have the button located in a navigation toolbar. If you don’t do this (I don’t do this) then the morphing animation is broken. As the pop-over menu morphs back into the button, certain effects that have been applied to the button (e.g. a drop shadow) do not appear until a few frames after the morph has finished. After some searching around, I did discover a way to mitigate things but it was still surprising to discover that extremely noticeable visual glitches like this are still part of iOS 26. Fingers crossed for iOS 27, I guess.
I mentioned sogaiu above and he also told me about a documentary from the studio Noclip about Rocket League that’s distributed freely on YouTube (part 1, part 2). I liked them but actually preferred the extended interview with Dave Hagewood, the founder and, at the time, CEO of Psyonix. It is a little disappointing that the documentary was made relatively recently after Rocket League’s release; I’d be curious for an update, particularly one that covers the acquisition of Psyonix by Epic Games.
Did you realise that the 20th anniversary release of the soundtrack to the Bourne Identity is called the ‘Tumescent Edition’ (Apple Music)? Did you know that ‘tumescent’ means swollen or expanded? I assume this is the kind of stuff you all read this to learn.
Being ‘forced’ by Apple to upgrade to iOS 26 because they artificially gate security fixes on iOS 18.7.3 and up is leaving a pretty sour taste in my mouth.
", "url": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1774143192.html", "author": { "name": "Michael Camilleri", "url": "https://inqk.net", "avatar": "/assets/images/avatar.jpg" }, "date_published": "2026-03-22T10:33:12+09:00", "date_modified": "2026-03-22T10:33:12+09:00" }, { "id": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1774015740.html", "title": "Weeknotes #322", "content_text": "The war between the United States and Iran continues to drag on. In a shocking twist, it seems victory might not be the fait accompli it was initially presented as being. President Trump attempted to bully several countries into providing maritime forces to reopen the Strait of Hormuz before then saying the U.S. didn’t need their help (ABC News). He remains a deep embarrassment to all Americans.It’s coming around to that time of year where I start trying to work out how to get the kids some Easter eggs. After confirming that Amazon once again has a paltry selection, I asked ChatGPT. It responded by asking whether I meant British-style hollow chocolate eggs. It hadn’t occurred to me that the large, hollow chocolate Easter eggs that seem universal to me are, in fact, culturally specific. Apparently, these kinds of eggs are the default form of Easter egg in Britain (and culturally similar countries like Australia) but not necessarily elsewhere (including in the U.S.). I asked ChatGPT for its sources and the webpages it referenced didn’t seem to me to say that quite so plainly but it would explain why large, hollow Easter eggs are virtually impossible to find in Japan (smaller eggs, hollow or solid, can be purchased relatively easily).For that reason, on Saturday, I went with John and Rowan to Azabu (which has a high concentration of western ex-pats) looking for decent Easter eggs. Alas, I didn’t find any. Mum did bring some over when she visited and I have purchased the trusty old Lindt bunnies so that’ll probably be enough chocolate anyway.Today (i.e. Friday 20 March) is Vernal Equinox Day public holiday in Japan (Wikipedia). Happy equinoxing to all who celebrate.Eugenia graciously agreed to beta test Listless. She immediately alerted me to the fact that scrolling (somewhat of an important activity in a list app) didn’t work on iOS 26. I had been testing solely on iOS 18 on development in the—as it turns out naïve belief—that if I had things (you know, like scrolling) working in iOS 18, they wouldn’t break in iOS 26. Joke was on me. I eventually got it fixed but it took a long amount of time and honestly had me questioning whether I shouldn’t just can the entire thing. In gratitude, I added a blue-to-green colour scheme for Eugenia who is a crazy person who doesn’t like purple.I watched Nerdwriter’s video on the use of jazz music in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (the HBO spin-off series from Game of Thrones) and that got me interested in the show. Which, when it comes to Game of Thrones, means it’s time to watch Alt Shift X’s channel. His videos on the series are great.I think I have a pretty good handle on who actually reads these updates and so for some of you, this will be the first time anyone links you to Sam Henri Gold’s post about the MacBook Neo and for others it will be the umpteenth.The English Language & Usage StackExchange has you covered on the etymology of ‘umpteen’, by the way.Depeche Mode’s ‘Just Can’t Get Enough’ is pretty tops (Apple Music).", "content_html": "The war between the United States and Iran continues to drag on. In a shocking twist, it seems victory might not be the fait accompli it was initially presented as being. President Trump attempted to bully several countries into providing maritime forces to reopen the Strait of Hormuz before then saying the U.S. didn’t need their help (ABC News). He remains a deep embarrassment to all Americans.
It’s coming around to that time of year where I start trying to work out how to get the kids some Easter eggs. After confirming that Amazon once again has a paltry selection, I asked ChatGPT. It responded by asking whether I meant British-style hollow chocolate eggs. It hadn’t occurred to me that the large, hollow chocolate Easter eggs that seem universal to me are, in fact, culturally specific. Apparently, these kinds of eggs are the default form of Easter egg in Britain (and culturally similar countries like Australia) but not necessarily elsewhere (including in the U.S.). I asked ChatGPT for its sources and the webpages it referenced didn’t seem to me to say that quite so plainly but it would explain why large, hollow Easter eggs are virtually impossible to find in Japan (smaller eggs, hollow or solid, can be purchased relatively easily).
For that reason, on Saturday, I went with John and Rowan to Azabu (which has a high concentration of western ex-pats) looking for decent Easter eggs. Alas, I didn’t find any. Mum did bring some over when she visited and I have purchased the trusty old Lindt bunnies so that’ll probably be enough chocolate anyway.
Today (i.e. Friday 20 March) is Vernal Equinox Day public holiday in Japan (Wikipedia). Happy equinoxing to all who celebrate.
Eugenia graciously agreed to beta test Listless. She immediately alerted me to the fact that scrolling (somewhat of an important activity in a list app) didn’t work on iOS 26. I had been testing solely on iOS 18 on development in the—as it turns out naïve belief—that if I had things (you know, like scrolling) working in iOS 18, they wouldn’t break in iOS 26. Joke was on me. I eventually got it fixed but it took a long amount of time and honestly had me questioning whether I shouldn’t just can the entire thing. In gratitude, I added a blue-to-green colour scheme for Eugenia who is a crazy person who doesn’t like purple.
I watched Nerdwriter’s video on the use of jazz music in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (the HBO spin-off series from Game of Thrones) and that got me interested in the show. Which, when it comes to Game of Thrones, means it’s time to watch Alt Shift X’s channel. His videos on the series are great.
I think I have a pretty good handle on who actually reads these updates and so for some of you, this will be the first time anyone links you to Sam Henri Gold’s post about the MacBook Neo and for others it will be the umpteenth.
The English Language & Usage StackExchange has you covered on the etymology of ‘umpteen’, by the way.
Depeche Mode’s ‘Just Can’t Get Enough’ is pretty tops (Apple Music).
I subscribe to two daily news summary e-mails but I’ve let them both back up. I’m going through them now and am up to mid-February. Am half-wondering if I should always read these messages with a monthlong delay.
", "url": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1773724704.html", "author": { "name": "Michael Camilleri", "url": "https://inqk.net", "avatar": "/assets/images/avatar.jpg" }, "date_published": "2026-03-17T14:18:24+09:00", "date_modified": "2026-03-17T14:18:24+09:00" }, { "id": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1773704078.html", "title": "", "content_text": "It’s quite possible this is a me problem but the amount of hackery I’ve had to do to get my (ostensibly) SwiftUI-based to-do list app to work the way I want on macOS has honestly surprised me. In a bad way.", "content_html": "It’s quite possible this is a me problem but the amount of hackery I’ve had to do to get my (ostensibly) SwiftUI-based to-do list app to work the way I want on macOS has honestly surprised me. In a bad way.
", "url": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1773704078.html", "author": { "name": "Michael Camilleri", "url": "https://inqk.net", "avatar": "/assets/images/avatar.jpg" }, "date_published": "2026-03-17T08:34:38+09:00", "date_modified": "2026-03-17T08:34:38+09:00" }, { "id": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1773409620.html", "title": "Weeknotes #321", "content_text": "I filed my tax return. That wouldn’t be that noteworthy except that this was the first year we did it after purchasing the house. The Japanese Government provides a mortgage deduction for the first 13 years or so of a mortgage and for all but the first year, it’s automatically calculated and deducted. But this was the first year so I had to lodge an income tax return together with the paperwork they need. I was a little disappointed to discover that our house wasn’t built to be at the highest levels of energy efficiency and so isn’t eligible for a larger deduction.Eri’s still recovering from a nasty case of the flu so I took Rowan to his preschool at the beginning of the week. I suspect my doctor would be a little concerned to hear that given the fracture in my little toe but hopefully the bicycle is relatively safe for fractured little toes. It doesn’t involve you repeatedly slamming your foot into the ground like walking or running do and surely that counts for something.I continued to make progress on Listless, albeit slowly. This week I learnt the hard way that one of the perils of reimplementing a standard list of items is that you don’t get the behaviour of a standard list of items that you might otherwise expect. This was extremely apparent one day when I tried to select multiple to-do list items and found that holding Shift as I pressed the Up key did nothing. It now does what you would expect but it’s made me concerned that there are no doubt dozens of these little UI behaviours that Listless’s custom list is not going to have. Well, maybe not dozens but at least a dozen.It’s been a while since I found the time to read one of Matt Lakeman’s travelogues. I read his recent one about Afghanistan and it was excellent.Speaking of reading, I didn’t finish Journey to the Centre of the Earth before we had to take it back to the library but I worried that it might have been a bit too dense for John and Rowan’s bedtime so I replaced it on my last library visit with Michael Bond’s original A Bear Called Paddington. I’m a big fan of the CG animated series The Adventures of Paddington that began in 2019 and it’s interesting to see how that retelling differs from the original.I finally watched the third Benoit Blanc mystery, Wake Up Dead Man. I enjoyed it more than Glass Onion and I appreciate that Rian Johnson is not content to just remake Knives Out. If anything, my main problem with the movie was that I thought Josh O’Connor’s Father Jud was too good. I realise others might be familiar with O’Connor from things like the Crown but this is the first I’d seen him in anything and I thought he easily stole the film. No small feat when you’re sharing the screen with Daniel Craig, Josh Brolin, Glenn Close, Mila Kunis and more.If you’ve seen the movie—and there are spoilers so don’t watch it if you haven’t—I would recommend Rian Johnson’s Notes on a Scene for Vanity Fair’s YouTube channel. It’s somewhat akin to a director’s commentary but rather than being the entire film just involves Johnson explaining a scene. Well worth the 23 minutes or so.I mentioned last week that I was delighted when Apple Music informed me that Gnarls Barkley had a new album out (called Atlanta). I’m sorry to say that I haven’t developed much of a taste for it over the past week. I’ve instead spent a lot of time in my Heavy Rotation playlist. One of the songs in it is ‘She Said (Big Jet Plane)’ a cover by the French electronica producers known as Trinix of ‘Big Jet Plane’ by Angus & Julia Stone (Apple Music). I’m not sure why it has a tweaked title. They’re French, I guess?", "content_html": "I filed my tax return. That wouldn’t be that noteworthy except that this was the first year we did it after purchasing the house. The Japanese Government provides a mortgage deduction for the first 13 years or so of a mortgage and for all but the first year, it’s automatically calculated and deducted. But this was the first year so I had to lodge an income tax return together with the paperwork they need. I was a little disappointed to discover that our house wasn’t built to be at the highest levels of energy efficiency and so isn’t eligible for a larger deduction.
Eri’s still recovering from a nasty case of the flu so I took Rowan to his preschool at the beginning of the week. I suspect my doctor would be a little concerned to hear that given the fracture in my little toe but hopefully the bicycle is relatively safe for fractured little toes. It doesn’t involve you repeatedly slamming your foot into the ground like walking or running do and surely that counts for something.
I continued to make progress on Listless, albeit slowly. This week I learnt the hard way that one of the perils of reimplementing a standard list of items is that you don’t get the behaviour of a standard list of items that you might otherwise expect. This was extremely apparent one day when I tried to select multiple to-do list items and found that holding Shift as I pressed the Up key did nothing. It now does what you would expect but it’s made me concerned that there are no doubt dozens of these little UI behaviours that Listless’s custom list is not going to have. Well, maybe not dozens but at least a dozen.
It’s been a while since I found the time to read one of Matt Lakeman’s travelogues. I read his recent one about Afghanistan and it was excellent.
Speaking of reading, I didn’t finish Journey to the Centre of the Earth before we had to take it back to the library but I worried that it might have been a bit too dense for John and Rowan’s bedtime so I replaced it on my last library visit with Michael Bond’s original A Bear Called Paddington. I’m a big fan of the CG animated series The Adventures of Paddington that began in 2019 and it’s interesting to see how that retelling differs from the original.
I finally watched the third Benoit Blanc mystery, Wake Up Dead Man. I enjoyed it more than Glass Onion and I appreciate that Rian Johnson is not content to just remake Knives Out. If anything, my main problem with the movie was that I thought Josh O’Connor’s Father Jud was too good. I realise others might be familiar with O’Connor from things like the Crown but this is the first I’d seen him in anything and I thought he easily stole the film. No small feat when you’re sharing the screen with Daniel Craig, Josh Brolin, Glenn Close, Mila Kunis and more.
If you’ve seen the movie—and there are spoilers so don’t watch it if you haven’t—I would recommend Rian Johnson’s Notes on a Scene for Vanity Fair’s YouTube channel. It’s somewhat akin to a director’s commentary but rather than being the entire film just involves Johnson explaining a scene. Well worth the 23 minutes or so.
I mentioned last week that I was delighted when Apple Music informed me that Gnarls Barkley had a new album out (called Atlanta). I’m sorry to say that I haven’t developed much of a taste for it over the past week. I’ve instead spent a lot of time in my Heavy Rotation playlist. One of the songs in it is ‘She Said (Big Jet Plane)’ a cover by the French electronica producers known as Trinix of ‘Big Jet Plane’ by Angus & Julia Stone (Apple Music). I’m not sure why it has a tweaked title. They’re French, I guess?
‘Decile’ is a word.
", "url": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1773319851.html", "author": { "name": "Michael Camilleri", "url": "https://inqk.net", "avatar": "/assets/images/avatar.jpg" }, "date_published": "2026-03-12T21:50:51+09:00", "date_modified": "2026-03-12T21:50:51+09:00" }, { "id": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1773203510.html", "title": "", "content_text": "I don’t have a modern enough iPhone that can run this but how is Analogue 585MB in size?", "content_html": "I don’t have a modern enough iPhone that can run this but how is Analogue 585MB in size?
", "url": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1773203510.html", "author": { "name": "Michael Camilleri", "url": "https://inqk.net", "avatar": "/assets/images/avatar.jpg" }, "date_published": "2026-03-11T13:31:50+09:00", "date_modified": "2026-03-11T13:31:50+09:00" }, { "id": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1772808660.html", "title": "Weeknotes #320", "content_text": "On Saturday the United States and Israel attacked Iran in flagrant violation of international law (ABC News). Some people point to this as evidence that international law is not real. This is childish. National laws are broken all the time. This does not mean they cease to exist. The slightly more sophisticated version of this argument points out that without a global government with a monopoly on violence, we shouldn’t expect international law to be anything more than a fig leaf. I think this argument is wrong, too. All stable regimes, no matter how brutal, govern through submission. We can refuse to provide the submission that Donald Trump wants. The refusal does not need to be explicit; it can be demonstrated by public commitments that are antithetical to the thoughts of Trump. In this case, the principle of rule of law. I hope Australia and Japan maintain such a commitment and I hope one day that the United States joins us.On Tuesday, I went back to the doctor for another X-ray. The good news is that it’s unlikely that I will need surgery. However, the doctor recommended that I continue to be cautious and avoid physical activity that puts unnecessary weight on the foot. He’s still expecting it to take around two months to heal completely.While I continue to toil away on Listless, Brandon vibe-coded two projects! The first is Collagen. This is a cool little web app for creating collages of album covers. The second is Urban Jungle. I’m honestly a little embarrassed at what Brandon put together in such a short amount of time. I’m not sure why my progress with Listless has been comparatively slower. I am trying to do something relatively custom but if you look at what Brandon’s done, it’s hardly the case that these are clones of each other.I don’t have an app available in the App Store but that didn’t stop me putting together a marketing page. As anyone who looks at the marketing page for my previous app, Flext, will immediately recognise, I leaned pretty heavily on that. I am happy with how it turned out and I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was extremely proud of the tagline ‘Do more with less’.The app itself is mostly working. I’ve cleaned up most of the bugs affecting ordinary interactions. In my testing, it works reliably to create and record tasks to do.I remembered once again that 30-minute television shows are awesome and started watching Yes Minister again. It remains fantastic. Less fantastic was the brief glimpse I caught of the 2013 revival of Yes, Prime Minister on YouTube. Were you aware there had been a 2013 revival (Wikipedia)? I wish I wasn’t.A much more pleasant YouTube video is this video essay by the channel Scores Unstitched. In the video, Cait Frizzell (the creator of Scores Unstitched) entertainingly explains the use of vibrato in opera singing. Frizzell is charming and delightful and at 18 minutes, it never feels like homeworkApple Music finally told me about some new music that I care about! Gnarls Barkley, legendary duo from the 2000s, is back with a new (and apparently final) album (Apple Music)! I’ve only listened to it once and as much as I wanted to like it, nothing grabbed me on first listen. I’ll give it a bit of a go and see if my attitude changes.", "content_html": "On Saturday the United States and Israel attacked Iran in flagrant violation of international law (ABC News). Some people point to this as evidence that international law is not real. This is childish. National laws are broken all the time. This does not mean they cease to exist. The slightly more sophisticated version of this argument points out that without a global government with a monopoly on violence, we shouldn’t expect international law to be anything more than a fig leaf. I think this argument is wrong, too. All stable regimes, no matter how brutal, govern through submission. We can refuse to provide the submission that Donald Trump wants. The refusal does not need to be explicit; it can be demonstrated by public commitments that are antithetical to the thoughts of Trump. In this case, the principle of rule of law. I hope Australia and Japan maintain such a commitment and I hope one day that the United States joins us.
On Tuesday, I went back to the doctor for another X-ray. The good news is that it’s unlikely that I will need surgery. However, the doctor recommended that I continue to be cautious and avoid physical activity that puts unnecessary weight on the foot. He’s still expecting it to take around two months to heal completely.
While I continue to toil away on Listless, Brandon vibe-coded two projects! The first is Collagen. This is a cool little web app for creating collages of album covers. The second is Urban Jungle. I’m honestly a little embarrassed at what Brandon put together in such a short amount of time. I’m not sure why my progress with Listless has been comparatively slower. I am trying to do something relatively custom but if you look at what Brandon’s done, it’s hardly the case that these are clones of each other.
I don’t have an app available in the App Store but that didn’t stop me putting together a marketing page. As anyone who looks at the marketing page for my previous app, Flext, will immediately recognise, I leaned pretty heavily on that. I am happy with how it turned out and I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was extremely proud of the tagline ‘Do more with less’.
The app itself is mostly working. I’ve cleaned up most of the bugs affecting ordinary interactions. In my testing, it works reliably to create and record tasks to do.
I remembered once again that 30-minute television shows are awesome and started watching Yes Minister again. It remains fantastic. Less fantastic was the brief glimpse I caught of the 2013 revival of Yes, Prime Minister on YouTube. Were you aware there had been a 2013 revival (Wikipedia)? I wish I wasn’t.
A much more pleasant YouTube video is this video essay by the channel Scores Unstitched. In the video, Cait Frizzell (the creator of Scores Unstitched) entertainingly explains the use of vibrato in opera singing. Frizzell is charming and delightful and at 18 minutes, it never feels like homework
Apple Music finally told me about some new music that I care about! Gnarls Barkley, legendary duo from the 2000s, is back with a new (and apparently final) album (Apple Music)! I’ve only listened to it once and as much as I wanted to like it, nothing grabbed me on first listen. I’ll give it a bit of a go and see if my attitude changes.
Anecdata but over the past day, the amount of time Apple is taking to process internal TestFlight builds of my app (these don’t have any human review) has increased from near-zero to 5-10 minutes.
", "url": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1772670198.html", "author": { "name": "Michael Camilleri", "url": "https://inqk.net", "avatar": "/assets/images/avatar.jpg" }, "date_published": "2026-03-05T09:23:18+09:00", "date_modified": "2026-03-05T09:23:18+09:00" }, { "id": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1772657061.html", "title": "", "content_text": "I’ve just learnt the term ‘undo toast’ and I think it is delightful.", "content_html": "I’ve just learnt the term ‘undo toast’ and I think it is delightful.
", "url": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1772657061.html", "author": { "name": "Michael Camilleri", "url": "https://inqk.net", "avatar": "/assets/images/avatar.jpg" }, "date_published": "2026-03-05T05:44:21+09:00", "date_modified": "2026-03-05T05:44:21+09:00" }, { "id": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1772496928.html", "title": "", "content_text": "Looking at the newly released M4 iPad Air, I’m feeling really happy about my purchase of a refurbished M2 iPad Air last year. The devices are identical in all the ways I care about.", "content_html": "Looking at the newly released M4 iPad Air, I’m feeling really happy about my purchase of a refurbished M2 iPad Air last year. The devices are identical in all the ways I care about.
", "url": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1772496928.html", "author": { "name": "Michael Camilleri", "url": "https://inqk.net", "avatar": "/assets/images/avatar.jpg" }, "date_published": "2026-03-03T09:15:28+09:00", "date_modified": "2026-03-03T09:15:28+09:00" }, { "id": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1772201880.html", "title": "Weeknotes #319", "content_text": "Last Saturday I kicked the sofa in our living room as I was walking past and, as it turns out, fractured the middle phalanx of the little toe on my right foot. It hurt of course immediately after impact but the pain subsided pretty quickly. I did notice that the toe was at a slightly odd angle and that a large amount of blood appeared to have pooled under the skin of some of the other toes. I might have put off going to the doctor altogether except that I remember reading in someone’s weeknotes (apologies because I have forgotten) about a similar situation and so I trundled over on Tuesday and, after an X-ray, learnt the bad news. I’ll go back to the same doctor for another consultation next week and hopefully it’s something that will be able to heal on its own.If it does require more treatment than that, I’ll always wonder how much was due to the decision to visit Chichibu on Monday. That was the Emperor’s Birthday holiday (Wikipedia) and with some slightly warmer weather, it seemed like a nice little day trip to go on with Mum, Dad and the kids. John had come with the flu and so was out of action but it meant an opportunity for Rowan to finally take the Seibu Laview train (Wikipedia) to the end of the line.Speaking of trains, I had reason to learn that the oil painting of the annoying guy talking to the young woman on the train that’s become something of a meme is Berthold Woltze’s Der lästige Kavalier (The Annoying Gentleman) (Wikipedia). Woltze is also the artist who painted Der Brief (The Letter) (Wikipedia), another oil painting that’s become something of a meme. Once is luck but twice surely means he’s a time traveller, right?My to-do list app has a name: Listless. I still haven’t put the source up somewhere but that is on the cards. In the meantime, I was very happy to be able to get it onto my iPhone. It turns out that TestFlight can be used to distribute apps to members of a development team without requiring you to go through App Review. After a misstep with the initial app record I created, I have versions now on my iPhone and on my Mac that both support the interaction model I want and are (sort of) able to sync data via iCloud. The syncing wasn’t completely rock-solid in my initial testing (which isn’t a great sign) but hopefully it’s something I can get sorted out without too much fuss.I was finally able to get Dad to watch Knives Out and, with relatively little prompting, Glass Onion. As I thought might be the case, he had a hard time getting past Daniel Craig’s Louisiana accent. Still, he watched both. He took them in spurts which was nice as it meant we had an opportunity to discuss what he was thinking as he watched. I was very impressed by what he noticed that I’d missed on my first watch.I quite liked Secret Galaxy’s History of Darkwing Duck. I remember wondering as a kid how it was meant to integrate with Ducktales but it turns out that it wasn’t ever intended to be the same continuity.This song is from last summer but I’ve been belatedly enjoying sombr’s ‘12 to 12’ over the past week or so (Apple Music).", "content_html": "Last Saturday I kicked the sofa in our living room as I was walking past and, as it turns out, fractured the middle phalanx of the little toe on my right foot. It hurt of course immediately after impact but the pain subsided pretty quickly. I did notice that the toe was at a slightly odd angle and that a large amount of blood appeared to have pooled under the skin of some of the other toes. I might have put off going to the doctor altogether except that I remember reading in someone’s weeknotes (apologies because I have forgotten) about a similar situation and so I trundled over on Tuesday and, after an X-ray, learnt the bad news. I’ll go back to the same doctor for another consultation next week and hopefully it’s something that will be able to heal on its own.
If it does require more treatment than that, I’ll always wonder how much was due to the decision to visit Chichibu on Monday. That was the Emperor’s Birthday holiday (Wikipedia) and with some slightly warmer weather, it seemed like a nice little day trip to go on with Mum, Dad and the kids. John had come with the flu and so was out of action but it meant an opportunity for Rowan to finally take the Seibu Laview train (Wikipedia) to the end of the line.
Speaking of trains, I had reason to learn that the oil painting of the annoying guy talking to the young woman on the train that’s become something of a meme is Berthold Woltze’s Der lästige Kavalier (The Annoying Gentleman) (Wikipedia). Woltze is also the artist who painted Der Brief (The Letter) (Wikipedia), another oil painting that’s become something of a meme. Once is luck but twice surely means he’s a time traveller, right?
My to-do list app has a name: Listless. I still haven’t put the source up somewhere but that is on the cards. In the meantime, I was very happy to be able to get it onto my iPhone. It turns out that TestFlight can be used to distribute apps to members of a development team without requiring you to go through App Review. After a misstep with the initial app record I created, I have versions now on my iPhone and on my Mac that both support the interaction model I want and are (sort of) able to sync data via iCloud. The syncing wasn’t completely rock-solid in my initial testing (which isn’t a great sign) but hopefully it’s something I can get sorted out without too much fuss.
I was finally able to get Dad to watch Knives Out and, with relatively little prompting, Glass Onion. As I thought might be the case, he had a hard time getting past Daniel Craig’s Louisiana accent. Still, he watched both. He took them in spurts which was nice as it meant we had an opportunity to discuss what he was thinking as he watched. I was very impressed by what he noticed that I’d missed on my first watch.
I quite liked Secret Galaxy’s History of Darkwing Duck. I remember wondering as a kid how it was meant to integrate with Ducktales but it turns out that it wasn’t ever intended to be the same continuity.
This song is from last summer but I’ve been belatedly enjoying sombr’s ‘12 to 12’ over the past week or so (Apple Music).
I did indeed fracture my little toe. Boo.
", "url": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1771974680.html", "author": { "name": "Michael Camilleri", "url": "https://inqk.net", "avatar": "/assets/images/avatar.jpg" }, "date_published": "2026-02-25T08:11:20+09:00", "date_modified": "2026-02-25T08:11:20+09:00" }, { "id": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1771597920.html", "title": "Weeknotes #318", "content_text": "Mum and Dad arrived in Japan. Their plane landed at Haneda 30 minutes ahead of schedule (!) so we were a little late meeting them but fortunately it wasn’t by too much. And in indeed, traffic was looking grim in the other direction so we chose to wait that out, have dinner and take John and Rowan up to the observation deck to watch the aeroplanes. I do feel a little embarassed by how familiar I am with Terminal 3 at this point.In what might be the most quotidian paragraph I’ve ever written in these updates, I finally noticed that I’d been putting the bath lid on upside down for the past year or so.I meant to write last week about the brief power outage we had one weeknight. I’m not sure what caused it and it came back on relatively quickly but it did mean that the Raspberry Pis and the Synology NAS were shut down improperly. It’s always a bit of a pain to get those back up and running after that happens so I finally bit the bullet and bought an uninterruptible power supply. Now if the power does go out, the router, the Raspberry Pis and the NAS will switch over to the battery. The Mac Mini—which is a bit further away—isn’t connected and that’s got me wondering if I should buy a very small UPS for it, too.I’m back to playing Wordle. I’m not sure what this portends.I made progress with the iOS version of my to-do list app. I can now create, complete, clear and delete tasks with gestures reminiscent of Clear. It doesn’t work quite the same as Clear does but I think that’s for the best. I still haven’t got a development build put onto Eri’s old phone but I think I’ll do that in the next week. Right now I’m wrestling with just getting the menu bar items in the macOS version to display properly and wow, is SwiftUI seemingly completely broken in this respect.Freddie deBoer wrote about his disgust at basketball analysts who encourage NBA teams to make themselves worse (i.e. to ‘tank’) so as to increase their chances of getting the top pick in the annual draft. DeBoer jokingly proposed in response the ‘Luol Deng law’ that it’s better to win than to lose and it’s better to have good players than bad players. I’m a bit torn because while I agree with deBoer, I feel a bit hypocritical given my team, the San Antonio Spurs, benefited twice from the tank-to-draft approach: landing one of the greatest power forwards of all time in Tim Duncan in 1997 and then lucking into freak-of-nature Victor Wembanyama in 2023.French house producer, Tristan Casara (who performs under the stage name The Avener), first came to my attention for his remix of the Black Keys’s 2011 hit, ‘Lonely Boy’. I linked to this way back in 2020 in Weeknotes #5 (!!). This has been one of my most-played songs over the past six years according to Apple Music so it’s perhaps not surprising that I would find myself listening to another of his songs on quasi-repeat. This time it’s ‘Supernova’, a collaboration between Casara and fellow Frenchman, Axel Brethes (who performs as Axelino), that was released this month (Apple Music). I don’t think it’s as good as ‘Lonely Boy’ but if French electronica tickles your fancy, give it a spin.", "content_html": "Mum and Dad arrived in Japan. Their plane landed at Haneda 30 minutes ahead of schedule (!) so we were a little late meeting them but fortunately it wasn’t by too much. And in indeed, traffic was looking grim in the other direction so we chose to wait that out, have dinner and take John and Rowan up to the observation deck to watch the aeroplanes. I do feel a little embarassed by how familiar I am with Terminal 3 at this point.
In what might be the most quotidian paragraph I’ve ever written in these updates, I finally noticed that I’d been putting the bath lid on upside down for the past year or so.
I meant to write last week about the brief power outage we had one weeknight. I’m not sure what caused it and it came back on relatively quickly but it did mean that the Raspberry Pis and the Synology NAS were shut down improperly. It’s always a bit of a pain to get those back up and running after that happens so I finally bit the bullet and bought an uninterruptible power supply. Now if the power does go out, the router, the Raspberry Pis and the NAS will switch over to the battery. The Mac Mini—which is a bit further away—isn’t connected and that’s got me wondering if I should buy a very small UPS for it, too.
I’m back to playing Wordle. I’m not sure what this portends.
I made progress with the iOS version of my to-do list app. I can now create, complete, clear and delete tasks with gestures reminiscent of Clear. It doesn’t work quite the same as Clear does but I think that’s for the best. I still haven’t got a development build put onto Eri’s old phone but I think I’ll do that in the next week. Right now I’m wrestling with just getting the menu bar items in the macOS version to display properly and wow, is SwiftUI seemingly completely broken in this respect.
Freddie deBoer wrote about his disgust at basketball analysts who encourage NBA teams to make themselves worse (i.e. to ‘tank’) so as to increase their chances of getting the top pick in the annual draft. DeBoer jokingly proposed in response the ‘Luol Deng law’ that it’s better to win than to lose and it’s better to have good players than bad players. I’m a bit torn because while I agree with deBoer, I feel a bit hypocritical given my team, the San Antonio Spurs, benefited twice from the tank-to-draft approach: landing one of the greatest power forwards of all time in Tim Duncan in 1997 and then lucking into freak-of-nature Victor Wembanyama in 2023.
French house producer, Tristan Casara (who performs under the stage name The Avener), first came to my attention for his remix of the Black Keys’s 2011 hit, ‘Lonely Boy’. I linked to this way back in 2020 in Weeknotes #5 (!!). This has been one of my most-played songs over the past six years according to Apple Music so it’s perhaps not surprising that I would find myself listening to another of his songs on quasi-repeat. This time it’s ‘Supernova’, a collaboration between Casara and fellow Frenchman, Axel Brethes (who performs as Axelino), that was released this month (Apple Music). I don’t think it’s as good as ‘Lonely Boy’ but if French electronica tickles your fancy, give it a spin.
I am somebody.
", "url": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1771355104.html", "author": { "name": "Michael Camilleri", "url": "https://inqk.net", "avatar": "/assets/images/avatar.jpg" }, "date_published": "2026-02-18T04:05:04+09:00", "date_modified": "2026-02-18T04:05:04+09:00" }, { "id": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1771250266.html", "title": "", "content_text": "I’m not having much luck identifying the lyrics for ‘Supernova’ by the Avener and Axelino.", "content_html": "I’m not having much luck identifying the lyrics for ‘Supernova’ by the Avener and Axelino.
", "url": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1771250266.html", "author": { "name": "Michael Camilleri", "url": "https://inqk.net", "avatar": "/assets/images/avatar.jpg" }, "date_published": "2026-02-16T22:57:46+09:00", "date_modified": "2026-02-16T22:57:46+09:00" }, { "id": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1770994260.html", "title": "Weeknotes #317", "content_text": "Snow fell late Saturday night and we awoke to a layer a few centimetres thick covering the neighbourhood. Emma and John went out and had a snowball fight and Rowan and I made his first snowman. The eyes were mostly left to the imagination but I did procure an actual carrot for the nose which made it feel worthy of some kind of merit badge.The last time it snowed like this was when we were living in Mukodaichō. Adrien was staying with us and I viscerally remember he and I standing in the street trying (mostly unsuccessfully) to use a shovel to crack the ice into which the melted snow had frozen. As a result, I was determined this time to shovel it while it was still fresh. The problem was that we no longer had the shovel we’d had back then, so that meant I had to race off to the local gardening shop. Snow was lightly falling but I felt vindicated in going when I did once I saw they’d already sold out of their plastic shovels and only had a couple of metal ones left in stock. Shovelling fresh snow was indeed pretty straightforward and by the afternoon, we had a neatly shovelled section of the street outside our house.One of the disadvantages of living in Japan is that no television channels (over the air or cable) show cricket. One of the advantages of living in Japan is that this apparently means I can watch the T20 World Cup via the ICC’s website. That’s how I found myself at 1.20 in the morning watching the end of the India vs U.S. match. They don’t have replays and I keep falling asleep before the matches I care about are on but it’s at least something. I wonder if the Ashes were watchable this way.Last week, I wrote about trying to listen the Romeo & Juliet soundtrack from Baz Luhrmann. This made me wonder about the name ‘Baz’. In Australia, that would make you expect his actual name is Barry but it turns out it’s… Bazmark (?). According to Wikipedia, he was born Mark Anthony Luhrmann but got the nickname ‘Baz’ at school. While still in school, he changed his first name by deed poll to ‘Bazmark’.I got a Mac version of my to-do list app running and switched over to making the iOS version. I’ve found it rougher going so far. That might seem counterintuitive but I think it’s because I’m using gestures as the primary mode of interaction on the phone whereas I was satisfied with the Mac version relying on more traditional affordances like checkboxes and context menus. I’m also at something of a disadvantage in that I can’t pair my iPhone with the Mac so that I can send development builds to it. The reason is because the Lightning port on my ancient iPhone 14 Pro Max is broken and to ‘pair’ an iPhone and a Mac you need to make the initial connection via a cable.That problem might soon be solved, though, as Apple finally started selling refurbished iPhones 16. This is relevant because Eri has wanted to upgrade her even more ancient iPhone 13 Mini and so as soon as they were in stock, I pounced and bought her one of the iPhone 16 models. I’ve kept her old phone running for the last couple of days while we make sure everything has copied across but once it has, I plan to repurpose it as a development unit.I’m a few months late to this but Raye’s ‘Where is My Husband!’ is very groovy (Apple Music).", "content_html": "Snow fell late Saturday night and we awoke to a layer a few centimetres thick covering the neighbourhood. Emma and John went out and had a snowball fight and Rowan and I made his first snowman. The eyes were mostly left to the imagination but I did procure an actual carrot for the nose which made it feel worthy of some kind of merit badge.
The last time it snowed like this was when we were living in Mukodaichō. Adrien was staying with us and I viscerally remember he and I standing in the street trying (mostly unsuccessfully) to use a shovel to crack the ice into which the melted snow had frozen. As a result, I was determined this time to shovel it while it was still fresh. The problem was that we no longer had the shovel we’d had back then, so that meant I had to race off to the local gardening shop. Snow was lightly falling but I felt vindicated in going when I did once I saw they’d already sold out of their plastic shovels and only had a couple of metal ones left in stock. Shovelling fresh snow was indeed pretty straightforward and by the afternoon, we had a neatly shovelled section of the street outside our house.
One of the disadvantages of living in Japan is that no television channels (over the air or cable) show cricket. One of the advantages of living in Japan is that this apparently means I can watch the T20 World Cup via the ICC’s website. That’s how I found myself at 1.20 in the morning watching the end of the India vs U.S. match. They don’t have replays and I keep falling asleep before the matches I care about are on but it’s at least something. I wonder if the Ashes were watchable this way.
Last week, I wrote about trying to listen the Romeo & Juliet soundtrack from Baz Luhrmann. This made me wonder about the name ‘Baz’. In Australia, that would make you expect his actual name is Barry but it turns out it’s… Bazmark (?). According to Wikipedia, he was born Mark Anthony Luhrmann but got the nickname ‘Baz’ at school. While still in school, he changed his first name by deed poll to ‘Bazmark’.
I got a Mac version of my to-do list app running and switched over to making the iOS version. I’ve found it rougher going so far. That might seem counterintuitive but I think it’s because I’m using gestures as the primary mode of interaction on the phone whereas I was satisfied with the Mac version relying on more traditional affordances like checkboxes and context menus. I’m also at something of a disadvantage in that I can’t pair my iPhone with the Mac so that I can send development builds to it. The reason is because the Lightning port on my ancient iPhone 14 Pro Max is broken and to ‘pair’ an iPhone and a Mac you need to make the initial connection via a cable.
That problem might soon be solved, though, as Apple finally started selling refurbished iPhones 16. This is relevant because Eri has wanted to upgrade her even more ancient iPhone 13 Mini and so as soon as they were in stock, I pounced and bought her one of the iPhone 16 models. I’ve kept her old phone running for the last couple of days while we make sure everything has copied across but once it has, I plan to repurpose it as a development unit.
I’m a few months late to this but Raye’s ‘Where is My Husband!’ is very groovy (Apple Music).
I have become an uninterruptible power supply person.
", "url": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1770875856.html", "author": { "name": "Michael Camilleri", "url": "https://inqk.net", "avatar": "/assets/images/avatar.jpg" }, "date_published": "2026-02-12T14:57:36+09:00", "date_modified": "2026-02-12T14:57:36+09:00" }, { "id": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1770814287.html", "title": "", "content_text": "Is there a reason why the @nytimes.com’s Crossplay app is not available in the Japan App Store?", "content_html": "Is there a reason why the @nytimes.com’s Crossplay app is not available in the Japan App Store?
", "url": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1770814287.html", "author": { "name": "Michael Camilleri", "url": "https://inqk.net", "avatar": "/assets/images/avatar.jpg" }, "date_published": "2026-02-11T21:51:27+09:00", "date_modified": "2026-02-11T21:51:27+09:00" }, { "id": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1770481653.html", "title": "", "content_text": "This is getting closer to something I can use.", "content_html": "This is getting closer to something I can use.
We’ve somehow fallen into the habit of getting McDonald’s for lunch once a weekend. I feel somewhat guilty about this and so when Emma asked a week or so ago if we could go to our local Jonathan’s instead (Jonathan’s being a chain of ‘family restaurants’), I said that was a great idea. It would be overly dramatic to say those were famous last words but, as the saying goes, we regret the error. When I wrote about Jonathan’s back in 2023, I said I was disappointed at the quality of the food. This remains my position.
My weight was back up to 72kg on Saturday so I’m trying once again to get back in the swing of intermittent fasting. I’ve already been more successful this time around so that’s a plus. The real trick will be stringing together a few decent weeks.
I’ve long loved the to-do list app, Clear. It was originally created by Phill Ryu (who doesn’t have a web presence any more outside of… LinkedIn?) (product manager), David Lanham (design) and Milen Dzhumerov (programming). I don’t think it’s really fair to attribute everything in group projects to any one person but I’m going to attribute everything in this group project to one person: Dzhumerov. Once he’d left (in 2014), the app stagnated. A couple of years ago, development restarted (but without Dzhumerov) and… well, it’s just not the same. Notably for me, the Mac app and iCloud sync were removed. The iOS app is fine but I’ve been missing the old version for years now. This week, I decided to give OpenAI’s Codex a go at it. That lasted all of about 30 minutes before I ran back to Claude Code. I don’t have much to show for all the time but it has been a refreshing change of pace from all the Janet coding I’ve been doing. The most surprising thing so far has been the far slower speed of token usage. My best guess is that the language server protocol plugin that Claude Code can use to connect to Swift’s language server makes certain tasks a lot more efficient than in a language like Janet.
Speaking of programming, I’m not the biggest Casey Muratori fan in the world but I thought his talk, the ‘Only Unbreakable Law’, was pretty good.
I saw a number of people linking to Mike Swanson’s long essay on ‘backseat software’ and with good reason. For me, it was painfully well-timed for an upset series of messages I sent AgileBits, the developers of 1Password. I was railing against a nagging notification the Mac app recently ‘gained’ that will not go away until you install the 1Password browser extension. I’ve been assured it will eventually disappear once I’ve been using this version of the app for six months (not a typo).
Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo & Juliet soundtrack is sort of on streaming platforms but sort of not (here’s the 10th Anniversary version on Apple Music). Maybe it’s accessible where you are. I feel like this happened repeatedly for ‘soundtrack albums’ that were all the rage during the 90s. To be clear, these are albums that aren’t the score but instead are pop music that is either featured in or somehow related to the film. I can imagine that in many cases, the rights that were secured were narrow and phrased in such a way that a streaming release doesn’t ‘count’. It’s a real shame.
The release candidate for Xcode 26.3 is the first time since its release that I’ve been tempted to install macOS 26.
", "url": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1770353771.html", "author": { "name": "Michael Camilleri", "url": "https://inqk.net", "avatar": "/assets/images/avatar.jpg" }, "date_published": "2026-02-06T13:56:11+09:00", "date_modified": "2026-02-06T13:56:11+09:00" }, { "id": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1770256395.html", "title": "", "content_text": "Apple just being like ‘lol’ with respect to XCUITest working with SwiftUI-based Mac apps is extremely frustrating.", "content_html": "Apple just being like ‘lol’ with respect to XCUITest working with SwiftUI-based Mac apps is extremely frustrating.
", "url": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1770256395.html", "author": { "name": "Michael Camilleri", "url": "https://inqk.net", "avatar": "/assets/images/avatar.jpg" }, "date_published": "2026-02-05T10:53:15+09:00", "date_modified": "2026-02-05T10:53:15+09:00" }, { "id": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1770173011.html", "title": "", "content_text": "I was talking to a friend about my use of LLMs and we hit upon the metaphor of tailoring. I want to be a software tailor.", "content_html": "I was talking to a friend about my use of LLMs and we hit upon the metaphor of tailoring. I want to be a software tailor.
", "url": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1770173011.html", "author": { "name": "Michael Camilleri", "url": "https://inqk.net", "avatar": "/assets/images/avatar.jpg" }, "date_published": "2026-02-04T11:43:31+09:00", "date_modified": "2026-02-04T11:43:31+09:00" }, { "id": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1770002084.html", "title": "", "content_text": "I’m listening to this interview (paywalled) with Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour and I don’t see the reason we should want prediction markets. Markets transmit information but the information transmission isn’t an end in itself. The end is resource allocation. What’s being allocated here?", "content_html": "I’m listening to this interview (paywalled) with Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour and I don’t see the reason we should want prediction markets. Markets transmit information but the information transmission isn’t an end in itself. The end is resource allocation. What’s being allocated here?
", "url": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1770002084.html", "author": { "name": "Michael Camilleri", "url": "https://inqk.net", "avatar": "/assets/images/avatar.jpg" }, "date_published": "2026-02-02T12:14:44+09:00", "date_modified": "2026-02-02T12:14:44+09:00" }, { "id": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1769780100.html", "title": "Weeknotes #315", "content_text": "I feel like I earned some kind of boy scout badge after receiving a letter from the bank saying that the interest rate of our home loan has been increased. It’s not very much—and certainly by Australian standards laughably low—but it was still a feeling I’m hoping I don’t need to experience too frequently.I loved John Gruber’s ‘The Names They Call Themselves’:Our goal should not be to make fascist or Nazi apply to Trump’s movement, no matter how well those rhetorical gloves fit his short-fingered disgustingly bruised hands. Don’t call Trump ‘Hitler’. Instead, work until ‘Trump’ becomes a new end state of Godwin’s Law.A week or so ago, OpenAI made their version of ChatGPT for tight-arses, AKA ChatGPT Go, available worldwide. I switched over to it but won’t see any changes until my current billing period ends. I’ll keep you all apprised.For some reason, Are Media, the publishers of the Australian Women’s Weekly started geoblocking certain users who try to access certain Australian Women’s Weekly websites (like their food site). I’m not sure why that is. Is it a rights issue? Does it substantially reduce the volume of attacks? Was it even intentional? I wrote to Are Media but haven’t heard back. We’ll add that to the apprising list.You might be wondering why I am even aware that Are Media is doing this. The answer is that a couple of weeks ago, somebody linked to the Australian Women’s Weekly Children’s Birthday Cake Book. This is one of those moments that you can’t really have any more. I read and re-read that book an embarrassing number of times as a child. I have no interest in baking—or cooking at all really—but I loved looking at the birthday cakes and imagining which was the one I would ask Mum to make. I had no idea that anyone was doing it but me. On the one hand, it’s lovely to discover that it wasn’t just me. On the other… have we lost something by being so aware of the relative popularity of everything?I first started watching video essays on YouTube before I had moved from my using my Google Apps account to using my Google Account. As a result, YouTube occasionally suggests videos that I have seen but which it doesn’t realise I’ve seen. This week, it was Big Joel and his video about Moana. I agree 100%. Moana remains a film I always want to like more than I do and I think Big Joel gets at the reason why it leaves (some people) a bit cold.Speaking of Big Joel, in previous entries, I’ve identified him as ‘Henry Jackson’. I think that may very well have been incorrect. His first name does seem to be ‘Henry’ but I can’t find any reliable evidence that his surname is ‘Jackson’. My apologies.I finished Tomb Raider. The logical thing would be to now move to Rise of the Tomb Raider (especially since that’s the game I interrupted playing so that I could go back and replay TR). I’ve of course now gone back to Rocket League.Remember Macklemore? I spent quite a bit of time this week listening to ‘Can’t Hold Us’ (Apple Music).", "content_html": "I feel like I earned some kind of boy scout badge after receiving a letter from the bank saying that the interest rate of our home loan has been increased. It’s not very much—and certainly by Australian standards laughably low—but it was still a feeling I’m hoping I don’t need to experience too frequently.
I loved John Gruber’s ‘The Names They Call Themselves’:
Our goal should not be to make fascist or Nazi apply to Trump’s movement, no matter how well those rhetorical gloves fit his short-fingered disgustingly bruised hands. Don’t call Trump ‘Hitler’. Instead, work until ‘Trump’ becomes a new end state of Godwin’s Law.
A week or so ago, OpenAI made their version of ChatGPT for tight-arses, AKA ChatGPT Go, available worldwide. I switched over to it but won’t see any changes until my current billing period ends. I’ll keep you all apprised.
For some reason, Are Media, the publishers of the Australian Women’s Weekly started geoblocking certain users who try to access certain Australian Women’s Weekly websites (like their food site). I’m not sure why that is. Is it a rights issue? Does it substantially reduce the volume of attacks? Was it even intentional? I wrote to Are Media but haven’t heard back. We’ll add that to the apprising list.
You might be wondering why I am even aware that Are Media is doing this. The answer is that a couple of weeks ago, somebody linked to the Australian Women’s Weekly Children’s Birthday Cake Book. This is one of those moments that you can’t really have any more. I read and re-read that book an embarrassing number of times as a child. I have no interest in baking—or cooking at all really—but I loved looking at the birthday cakes and imagining which was the one I would ask Mum to make. I had no idea that anyone was doing it but me. On the one hand, it’s lovely to discover that it wasn’t just me. On the other… have we lost something by being so aware of the relative popularity of everything?
I first started watching video essays on YouTube before I had moved from my using my Google Apps account to using my Google Account. As a result, YouTube occasionally suggests videos that I have seen but which it doesn’t realise I’ve seen. This week, it was Big Joel and his video about Moana. I agree 100%. Moana remains a film I always want to like more than I do and I think Big Joel gets at the reason why it leaves (some people) a bit cold.
Speaking of Big Joel, in previous entries, I’ve identified him as ‘Henry Jackson’. I think that may very well have been incorrect. His first name does seem to be ‘Henry’ but I can’t find any reliable evidence that his surname is ‘Jackson’. My apologies.
I finished Tomb Raider. The logical thing would be to now move to Rise of the Tomb Raider (especially since that’s the game I interrupted playing so that I could go back and replay TR). I’ve of course now gone back to Rocket League.
Remember Macklemore? I spent quite a bit of time this week listening to ‘Can’t Hold Us’ (Apple Music).
I have spent too much of my life thinking about how Disney’s studio ident reveals that the castle is rotated 90 degrees relative to the main gate.
", "url": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1769673051.html", "author": { "name": "Michael Camilleri", "url": "https://inqk.net", "avatar": "/assets/images/avatar.jpg" }, "date_published": "2026-01-29T16:50:51+09:00", "date_modified": "2026-01-29T16:50:51+09:00" }] }