I felt really good about the data analysis work I performed this morning, until I discovered that the data looked good, but was wrong, wrong, wrong. A large part of my job involves testing and then rejecting data. I wonder if it is like that for everybody in my line of work.

I just bought my first app in a long, long time: iA Writer. I hope it will be useful at work, especially, because it seems better suited for plaintext editing and for Files integration.

The more news stories and gadget blog entries about foldable phones trickles in, the more I think that it will be a passing fad, like 3-D television sets were a few years ago. I think thinness and durability will matter more to people than flexibility when it comes to displays.

Yesterday was a rough day. I was ejected from an exclusive online club for no reason, and had a shock while working on my tax filing. Let’s hope today is better.

I have been spending so much time in the past couple weeks working on my new macOS app that I have done little else with my free time. I did take a couple nights off to play “Breath in the Wild” and came back to coding the next days with mental blocks removed and with new ideas.

I moved my work computer and all its peripherals yesterday, and have not been able to put them back in quite the same way. Everything feels just a little bit off today.

Suggested answers for progressive presidential candidates to the question “but how can we pay for it?” (when “it” is a proposed social program related to healthcare, child care, elder care, education, energy, the environment, etc.):

1. We are already paying for it.
2. Hahahahahahahahahahaha!

I think writing the preferences UI for my new Mac App is taking ten times the amount of time that writing the functional part of the app did.

I enjoy listening to Tim Goodman’s TV Talk Machine a lot more than I enjoy actually watching TV.

I am wondering today if anybody else has as many problems as I do getting Microsoft One Drive to work—properly, consistently, or at all—through the Files App, to open files in third party apps on iOS. Using it that way has become increasingly frustrating for me.

I’m pretty sure I’ll buy Hollow Knight: Silksong as soon as it comes out.

Hollow Knight developer Team Cherry surprised fans this morning by announcing a full sequel to 2017’s bug-filled metroidvania game, called Hollow Knight: Silksong.

Hollow Knight is a cool, atmospheric, and thoughtfully crafted game. I’m only a couple hours into it, and have just developed my skills enough to feel that it isn’t too hard anymore. (I just beat a huge boss that I failed to default a half dozen times already.) It is amazing to think that it was created by only two people. Hopefully the sequel will succeed and Team Cherry will continue making great games.

Per the New York Times:

In a televised announcement in the Rose Garden, Mr. Trump said he was signing the declaration to protect the country from the flow of drugs, criminals and illegal immigrants coming across the southwestern border from Mexico, which he characterized as a profound threat to national security.

Does this mean I can stop work for the day?

Seriously, though, this is the ultimate abuse of office—the sort of thing that turns a republic into an empire.

Yesterday was my son’s second birthday. The family had a great time celebrating him last night. He hates the “Happy Birthday” song, though, and cried right through it. For his birthday party on the weekend, we might need to play his favorite song, “Uptown Funk”, instead.

“Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.” There is actually a Wikipedia page about this phrase!

School was canceled due to snow, so it is a full house today. It didn’t actually snow until about 11:00 here, so canceling school looked like a mistake to me when I woke up this morning.

In 2001 I paid $14.99 for a lifetime account at VFEmail. I used it as my primary email host for a short time, as it was a pretty inexpensive IMAP email host back in the days when getting IMAP support outside of college or corporate email systems was quite rare. I stopped using it because it would go down from time to time, which is frustrating. I now use it only to get status emails sent by my home server (FreeNAS), which are relatively unimportant and anonymous. I keep thinking about using it more, because I love pure IMAP email, but now I am glad I did not.

I saw today that mail could not be fetched, and I found out that VFEmail was hacked, and everything for its US customers (including me, of course) has been destroyed. This is the message on the home page right now:

!!!ALERT!!!! Update Feb 11 2019 www.vfemail.net and mail.vfemail.net are currently unavailable. We have suffered catastrophic destruction at the hands of a hacker, last seen as aktv@94.155.49.9 This person has destroyed all data in the US, both primary and backup systems. We are working to recover what data we can.

That is just devastating. Fortunately for me, I am not very much affected by the data loss, but I wonder how the other customers must feel.

VFEmail is a very small company. Originally it was just one guy. I feel really bad for him (or them, or whoever is running it now). I hope it can recover.

Per TechCrunch:

As is typical, much of that increase can be attributed to mobile gaming, which accounted for more than half of this per-device average. However, more substantial growth took place in the categories outside of gaming — including those categories where subscription-based apps tend to rule the top charts, the firm found.

I bet app spending is going to go up each year for the next few years, partly because people will spend less on hardware upgrades, and partly because software is becoming way more important than hardware in mobile now that the market has matured.

John Gruber’s take is dead on. For privacy reasons, there is no way I’ll buy an Eero now.

I keep thinking that I should use my iCloud email address for “personal” email, and my Gmail address for “junk” email, but I keep realizing that I have almost zero “personal” email to handle these days.

My daughter was moved to a higher math class on Monday and is doing well so far. I am so proud of her!

🎵 While I’ve been working this morning, I have been listening to Apple Music’s “Vibes” playlist on my big Marshall Bluetooth speaker (no headphones for a change). It’s good working music: laid back, but not too slow, varied, and modern.

I miss Katie Floyd’s presence on the “Mac Power Users” podcast, but I really enjoy the interaction between (new co-host) Steven Hackett and David Sparks. They meld very well together.

At every meal now, my almost-two-year-old son cries out “Hey Siri! Play ‘Uptown Funk’” several times before giving up. I am so glad I never bought a HomePod for the kitchen.

Parenting tip: I wholeheartedly recommend putting your baby to sleep at their bedtime, rather than an hour afterwards. Trust me. 😀

I had to look up Apple’s documentation on the Responder Chain once again tonight. SplitViewControllers and overall view containment are great features, but are requiring me to move my methods around a little bit. I am feeling good about my SwiftoDo Desktop rewrite, though. I am almost done coding the core functionality. Just a few more big features left to code before I put more work into user preferences and, basically, making everything super nice and customizable.