For a few hours today, Overcast’s podcast recommendation engine thought I could speak fluent Spanish. Sadly, I cannot.

I will be very surprised if iOS 13 does not contain a system dark mode, and all the new system colors and colors API that debuted on the Mac last year. I think it may have a huge impact on iOS design, though, which may be a reason why the default system design is going to get an overhaul, too.

Does OneDrive work very poorly with iOS Files integration, or is it just my experience?

I hope that iOS 13 brings a Files app update that will add direct access to file shares. Until then, I will use a utility that I found today: FE File Explorer. It is a clean and polished file explorer that connects to Apple and Windows file shares, as well as some cloud services. It is a good image player, audio player, and video player as well. The Pro version integrates with the Files app as a data provider, too. I am impressed.

🎵 It’s an “Automatic for the People” day for me. That amazing R.E.M. album has been the soundtrack to deep work for me since 1992. The 25th anniversary edition (man, I’m old!) has live tracks for most of the tracks, which makes it a fun listen.

Sometimes, as a developer, I get stuck. This week, I have been stuck by some kind of endless loop or retain cycle that rears its head when I try to access a lazy-loaded class property within a subclass of NSDocument by two child view controllers. Everything worked flawlessly until I added that second view controller. I am at my wits end, and it’s all my fault.

I have tried to access that property only synchronously via a dispatch queue. I have tried making the property not load lazily. I have tried a bunch of other workarounds over the past half-week, but the one that is working is to delay one of the view controller’s accesses of that property by zero seconds (which moves the call to the next run loop). That is a hack, but necessary right now for me to continue developing the app.

I think I’m going to stick with my workaround until the new view controller is completed. After that, I probably have to rip up a bunch of clever code and find a simpler, more straightforward way to set everything up in my NSDocument subclass and its window controller.

I both downloaded Night Owl and created an Automator application to toggle Dark Mode on my Mac. I think I prefer the Automator application, because I can call it with Spotlight Search, which is how I open all my apps.

I love WNYC’s American Standards. I put it on every evening when I put my son to bed, and he has started asking for each night.

Spotify’s reported offer to buy Gimlet Media for an estimated $200 milliion makes me think that the podcasting market is really a lot bigger than I had previously thought.

Podcasting is a small industry, with an ad model that generated an estimated $315 million in 2017. Digital video ads, by comparison, generated $11.9 billion in the same year. But it is growing quickly, which makes it attractive to some platforms and publishers (including Vox Media) who are interested in tapping new revenue streams.

I think the $315 million annual podcasting revenue estimate is low. I bet that advertisers are at the point where they all agree that podcasting’s mix of old school, host-read ad reads, and new school analytics and targeting, are making it a really good deal for advertisers. I expect a lot more podcast network deals in the next year or two.

I want to link blog, it all my thoughts lately about articles I have read have been: “this is so stupid”. Obviously, I have to read less of the news and pick up something else.

I am neck-deep in Access and VBA coding at work, now that I am back from our annual training conference in Chicago.

By some miracle, I was able to fly home from Chicago yesterday, in the middle of the polar vortex. My flight was on time, and half empty, even though most of the other flights on the board were canceled, and half my company got stranded by lack of flights.

I’m looking forward to this (-24°F) soon. 🙄

I am happy to learn that I am not the only person who has to charge their AirPods all the time now. Bring on version two, because I will buy them.

Marc Marin’s interview with Aaron Sorkin was really good.

While packing for my business trip tonight, I spent far more time looking for the pill pack I always bring everywhere than on packing everything else.

I have been working very hard on the next version of SwiftoDo Desktop for the past week or so. And when I’m not, I’m playing Breath of the Wild, or, you know, doing my day job or taking care of my family like I’m supposed to. I’m heading to Chicago on Sunday for my company’s Annual Training event, and I have been really anxious about it, due to the government shutdown and the snow and frigid temperatures in Chicago’s weather forecast.

I think I enjoy music because I can listen to it while doing creative endeavors, such as writing or coding, and during most of my workday as well. I’m not sure I like listening to music without doing something else, though, which is a little weird.

The most intensely focused music listening sessions of my life involved trying to learn to sing and/or play a part, which I no longer do, unfortunately. Now, most of my music listening happens during work, and a small, but usually more satisfying, amount happens while I am writing and coding on my own time late in the evening.

I think that listening to music while I am doing something else occupies that part of my mind that wants to wander and do something else, so that I can focus more closely on the task at hand.

🎵 One of the joys of an “all you can eat” music subscription is that I never miss new albums by my old favorites. Case in point: Guster, who just dropped a new album,”Look Alive”. I’m giving it a listen now with my best setup.

Who picks the colors for municipal gymnasiums? (It looks more drab and greener in real life.)

I have noticed that, since December, Amazon has pretty much completely stopped shipping to my house via UPS or FedEx. Everything goes through their private service now.

I am happy that the Exponent podcast is back now. Fortunately for me, its hiatus was short and not a permanent one.

The bad Brexit news continues. The whole situation is baffling, like so much else that has happened since 2016. I knew the moment that Brexit passed that Donald Trump would be the next U.S. president, and the pace of insanity in world events has only accelerated.

I spent half the morning researching how to evaluate the results of attribute sample testing—once again. It’s hard to remember the parts of statistics that I don’t use very often.

I’m happy that Dialog is out of beta today. It’s great to have a real, out-of-beta Android app for Micro.blog. I don’t know when I’m going to fire up my Essential Phone again to try it out, though. It has been in a drawer for over a month.