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It was a little late but we put up the Christmas tree. I also bought a new Christmas wreath after accepting the reality that the old one had given up the ghost back in January.
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I mentioned last week that I don’t have plans to update to macOS 26. I should have said that was a broader objection to the UI design of new operating systems generally. Unfortunately, while I knew that my iPhone and iPad wouldn’t update automatically, I forgot that wasn’t true for Eri’s (quite old) iPhone 13 Mini and so she’s now running iOS 26.1. It runs with noticeably less smooth animations than iOS 18 and that’s made me fear what would happen if I did try to install it on my (also quite old) iPhone 14 Pro Max. So now I have another reason to hold out.
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I finally summoned the courage to ‘announce’ Sled to a broader audience and posted about it to the programming-oriented link aggregation website, Lobsters. It eventually got 5 votes which was not the resounding response for which I was hoping. I did of course knee-cap myself by waiting until after the annual enthusiasm for Advent of Code had dried up. There’s always next year of course.
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Speaking of ‘finally’, I signed up for a paid subscription to Nebula, the streaming service for independent creators. Ostensibly this was so that I could watch Patrick Willems’ The Dinner Plan (which I haven’t actually watched yet) but I’ve been thinking about doing it for ages and this was simply the nudge I needed. The majority of the video essayists I regularly watch post their videos there and I’ve wondered if I’d prefer watching the videos on Nebula given the versions of the essays I watch don’t include the paid sponsorship segments and can include content that is cut from the YouTube version to avoid (erroneous) copyright infringement detection.
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That all sounds great so why is there any hesitation? Two reasons. First, I worry that the YouTube algorithm will lose signal about the types of videos I like watching and my algorithmic suggestions will get worse. Second, and perhaps more importantly, their video player is worse. I think the excellence of YouTube’s video player in the iOS app isn’t remarked upon enough. It’s rock-solid, correctly handles rotation for full size playback (regardless of whether you have orientation lock on or not) and is just extremely responsive. Nebula’s isn’t awful but it feels noticeably less responsive and occasionally loses track of where I am when switching between devices.
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One of those video essayists is Henry Jackson (AKA Big Joel). Jackson’s latest is about the book The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas called ‘The Most Hated Children’s Book’. I haven’t read the book and don’t always agree with Jackson’s perspective on media but I always love following him into his argument. It is 43 minutes so consider yourself warned.
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The algorithm behind the personalised Heavy Rotation playlist that Apple makes for each user remains as inscrutable as ever. I’ve had the 2015 remix of Major Lazer’s ‘Light It Up’ (Apple Music) on (wait for it) heavy rotation for the past few days and Apple steadfastly refuses to add it to the playlist. Not a fan of dancehall, I guess.
