-
The Iran War continues to drag on.
-
I neglected to mention last week that Tim Cook announced he will step down as Apple’s CEO at the end of August. He will remain at Apple but instead take the position of executive chairman. Given that position and the fact that Cook’s replacement, John Ternus, is currently the Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering, I’m not sure much is going to change. I would like to see an option for a user to be able to get root access to their iPhones and iPads but I don’t honestly think there’s any likelihood of that any time soon.
-
And yet… here I am continuing to work on apps for Apple’s platforms. Specifically, I got my collaborative crossword app to the point where I was able to collaboratively play a crossword with Eugenia. It was pretty fun but we absolutely tore through the puzzle and it’s got me a little concerned that the reason there aren’t a lot of collaborative crossword puzzle apps is that they make solving a crossword far too easy. In any event, if Listless is anything to go by, polishing this is going to take quite a bit of time.
-
Not coincidentally, I switched my ChatGPT subscription back to the US$20/month plan so that I could get more access to OpenAI’s Codex.
-
I took Emma and John to see the Super Mario Galaxy Movie on Saturday morning. I understand that critics are tearing the film to shreds but I chose to see its almost complete disdain for a plot as a mark of honesty. This is a movie that is about showing you a bunch of well-animated action cut scenes and that’s all. This feels like the appropriate amount of depth to expect in a movie about the Mario video game character.
-
After getting out of the movie, I dragged the kids to meet for lunch with Tom (who just happens to be visiting on holiday). In an unplanned bit of serendipity, after lunch finished we were able to meet with Eri and Rowan in Kōrakuen. I swapped out Emma and John for Rowan and we took Rowan for a trip down to Gotanda (near where Tom was staying).
-
Then on Monday, I caught up for lunch with Brandon (who also just happens to be visiting on holiday). We went to get curry and I made a complete mess of my shirt. It was so bad I had to keep strategically folding my arms when I got back to the office lest everyone see how bad it was.
-
The NBA post-season began about two weeks ago and I paid to watch it and then… didn’t. Part of the issue is that I don’t especially like the way that Amazon is handling full game replays. In previous years, a couple of hours after the game had finished, a full game replay would become available that cut out all the stoppages so that you saw everything that happened but without any of the frequent breaks that occur in a live broadcast so you can be shown more ads. This year, there’s either the full game replay but it’s not an edited version. It’s just the full game. There is an ‘all possessions’ edit which cuts out everything except the few seconds before a basket is made or the ball is turned over but I find this an incredibly jarring experience and not one that gives you a proper flavour of the game.
-
I’m not sure why I took so long to watch 12tone’s breakdown of Gotye’s ‘Somebody That I Used to Know’ but it’s characteristically very good.
-
I did not wait long to watch Folding Ideas’ video essay on being invited to Beast Games. It’s not one of his best but still has its moments.
-
I must have listened to Massive Attack’s 2009 album Heligoland (Apple Music) sometime before this week but if I did, I have no memory of it. It came across my radar thanks via Apple Music’s Friends playlist (thanks Brandon!).
