Someone needs to inform The New York Times that black text on a white background, even in dark mode, is not a “brand identity”—it’s just rude at this point.

John Gruber’s Return and Enter Are Two Different Keys has got me thinking about all sorts of uses in my computing life for Fn+Return (aka Enter) key commands.

Work this week and next are shaping up to be an absolutely epic grind for me. After today I expect to be working overtime late at night. Hopefully I will find a groove each day and settle into it.

I decided to retire my pi-hole install yesterday, in large part to reduce the pain points I was having administering it. (It is no fun when you don’t have network connectivity, sometimes, because the pi-hole server isn’t accepting connections for no reason in particular.) I signed up for NextDNS instead, and so far I’m really happy with it. It blocks malware; it blocks adult content; it blocks ads. Unlike the pi-hole, it can be used away from my home network, too. I have set up different profiles for everyone in my family, and switched everyone’s devices to use it today. The funny thing is, my wife hasn’t noticed yet that ads are being blocked on her phone or computer. I think that’s a good thing—it means that content filtering hasn’t broken anything for her yet.

I finally got my work laptop connected to a Thunderbolt dock that charges it, drives my peripherals, and drives my 4K monitor. It was not as easy as it should have been to set up, though. It does not help that my laptop has a USB-C + charging port, and a Thunderbolt 3 report (that also charges, though that wasn’t clear at first). I was not sure why I could not charge my laptop through the dock, until I noticed the distinction between USB-C and Thunderbolt, and I was not sure why my Thunderbolt-to-DisplayPort cable would not work from a USB-C port in the dock. Having the same ports/connectors does not make USB and Thunderbolt easier to deal with: it makes it harder.

🎵 I am really enjoying the new album by “The Chicks”. That band wasn’t on my radar for a long, long time until the recent news that they changed their name.

Cable management in my office is kind of a nightmare. I am now having crazy thoughts of buying really long cables, so that I can put my computers far away from my desktop peripherals, or, maybe, putting my work computer underneath my desk somehow. I probably need different office furniture, but it would take a wrecking crew to get rid of what I have now.

Myke Hurley’s Podcast Mentorship program is a really good idea:

TL;DR: I want to mentor people who are under-represented in the tech-focussed podcast world. If you are starting out and need some help, please read on.

The mentees that Myke selected appear to be promising new voices who can enrich the tech podcasting space.

I hope that other seasoned podcasters will join Myke as mentors in the future.

📺 I rewatched the first episode of “Avatar: The Last Airbender” last night to gauge how approve would be for me to watch with my 8-year-old daughter. Considering she doesn’t know what “war” is (lucky her), it might be a bit hard for her to get into. I think it is worthwhile, though, because the series is rich and complex while still being fun enough for kids.

🎵 I’m trying something different tonight: a K-Pop playlist of BLACKPINK. I think I like it. At times, my brain certainly is getting scrambled. 😅

We are getting a ton of tall, wobbly pine trees taken down in our backyard today, because they are at risk of falling, and tend to lose boughs whenever there is a windstorm. It is a bit traumatic—the noise, especially—but it will be nice to not have to worry about falling boughs and trees. I guess we’re going to see a lot more of the sky and of our neighbors than we are used to. 😀

I am still struggling to get my app rewrite done in UIKit. Next year, for real this time, I’m going to learn Swift UI.

Oh, nice! It’s iPadOS 14 beta 2 time.

I tried Apple News again to see if the experience is any better on the iPadOS 14 beta. Sadly, for me, it is not. Apple News feels like a junk drawer full of some news content plus a bunch of headlines that are really ads, because they lead to listicles full of affiliate links. Ironically, Google News—from a company that makes most of its money selling ads—seems less ad-filled and spammy to me.

📚 I finished reading another novel to my daughter tonight, the fourth Emily Windsnap book. My daughter loves reading time, and I do too. It is the best thing I do all day.

📺 I bought Axiom Verge for the Nintendo Switch tonight and really like it so far. It is giving me Super Metroid vibes!

I have been listening to thunderous fireworks for about an hour now from my home. I thought all the fireworks celebrations had been cancelled. Surely my neighbors can’t be responsible for all these booms.

I have been using Xcode for so long and I just now realized that Control+Command+Left/Right Arrow goes back and forward in the editor’s navigation stack. Is there a head-smack emoji? 😅

I am back to tracking my food intake—because, well, reasons (haha)—with the Keto app. I am not on a keto diet, though. I don’t know how that would be possible for me with only going to the grocery store once per week now. Salad greens don’t last that long.

My buy-and-hold strategy with flip-flops finally paid off tonight, in that I threw out my worn-out pair from last year and swapped them for the identical copy of them I bought at a tremendous discount off-season last year. I still have one more pair for next year.

⌨️ Oh, cool, my new Anne Pro 2 keyboard supports Bluetooth, and here I am, clicking away, wirelessly, on my Mac. 😀

Does Xcode 12 beta 1 crash less than Xcode 11.5?

📚 Based on the prologue I read last night, which was a lot of fun, I think the next novel I’m going to read is Dan Moren’s The Caledonian Gambit. I hope I can stick with it. Lately, I have been starting books and dropping them well before finishing them.

My day one experience with iPadOS 14 beta 1 is astounding. It is fast and stable. All my third party apps work. The UI updates to the Music app, which I use all the time, are most welcome. The Scribble feature with Apple Pencil exceeds all expectations; it isn’t perfect, but it is really well thought out, and it reads my printing and cursive writing. The new three-column layout for Apple apps looks great, too.

Well, my Schiit Magni Heresy just got fried. 😢 While listening to it over headphones, it made a popping sound, then started humming and crackling loudly. I hope Schiit honors their warranty, because I loved that thing. I use it as a headphone amp and a preamp for my desktop speakers, the latter of which have just been rendered useless.