I have spent many hours over the past week trying to do something that can’t really be done: replace the default iOS software keyboard with a custom picker view that also can become the first responder and respond to hardware keyboard shortcuts. I thought, earlier this evening, that I had given up my fancy implementation and was returning to something simple that I got working very quickly. Somehow, though, I went down another rabbit hole tonight and wasted the last hour.

Programming is fun, but so much of my time is wasted this way. Some of my best code get cut out of my app because, as elegant as it is, it just doesn’t work with the frameworks I’m building on.

I have been self-editing an awful, awful lot lately. I think it’s due to the mixed up combination of stress and existential dread this global pandemic has brought to me and my family. I want to share more online again. Hopefully I will get back into the habit.

All work weeks should begin on Tuesday. 😎

I finished reading all the Kenzie-Gennaro books by Dennis Lehane last night. I’m going to try starting True Grit by Charles Portis. I love the movie versions, especially the Coen Brothers one, and hope that the book is even better.

This is a test post from iA Writer on iOS. It is cool that iA added MicroPub support. 😀 I had some issues with the authentication, and had to generate and enter an app token manually. The app creates a new draft and opens it up the web browser; it does not publish immediately—which is a good thing and a bad thing, I guess.

My state (New Jersey) announced today that school is closed for the remainder of the school year. This is exactly what I expected, but it is still going to be hard to explain this to my daughter, who misses school desperately. It’s for the best, though.

I am reading a lot more lately, basically to try to tamp down the level of stress and existential dread. I just loaded the last of the six Kenzie-Gennaro novels on my iPad.

My son’s preschool announced today that it is closing for the remainder of the academic year. It isn’t a surprise, but it is upsetting to think of the learning and socialization opportunities he is missing. He’s a bright, bright kid, and we just can’t pay as close attention to him as we want to right now. It’s sad.

I just set up a “Windows" style keyboard (it’s a Razer BlackWidow Lite) with my Mac for a trial run. I mapped the Alt key to “Command”, and the Super/Windows key to “Alt” so that it is more Mac-like. I’m still getting used to the layout, but it is working out all right so far.

Well, my wife and I gave me a haircut this afternoon, and now I know exactly what I will look like when I, someday, lose all of my hair. 😀

I still haven’t attempted to cut my own hair during this “social isolation” period. I guess I could give myself a buzzcut with these instructions. My wife has, thus far, not been willing to help me cut my hair, especially after the cut she gave to our son.

Is the Virus on My Clothes? My Shoes? My Hair? My Newspaper? My wife and I area asking ourselves these questions every day, and we are at relatively low risk. I only go grocery shopping once a week, and we don’t order takeout anymore. But some essential supplies must be ordered and delivered every few days.

Right now, I’m thankful for my good BlueTooth headphones, a Radiohead playlist on Apple Music, and not being on the phone anymore for work.

The new iPhone SE looks like a great option for me if I break my current phone, which is a three-and-a-half-year-old iPhone 8 Plus. Mostly, though, thinks I can stay on my current phone for another year, or even more, if I can get another battery replacement.

Just wondering, does anyone use the “menu” key on the bottom right of their computer keyboards? I feel like I should start trying to, to see if I can rely on the mouse (well, in my case trackball) a little bit less in Word and Excel.

I find myself listening to fewer podcasts, but more podcast ads (I don’t skip them as often), now that I’ve been social-isolating for so long. I want to hear the soothing voices of my favorite podcast hosts talk about something other than Covid-19.

I learned this morning that lawn services are up and running my neighborhood. I guess they are “essential services”; who knew? It’s a good thing and a bad thing, really. I detest the noise, which never seems to stop in my neighborhood, but my kids do need the lawn mowed, especially now that their only playground is our back yard.

I spent more time tricking out my Visual Studio Code install today. I installed the Local History extension, which, after some configuration, will save a copy of every file I edit, every time I save them, to a folder tree on my machine. I had something like this on Sublime Text for years, but this is even better. It integrates the the editor, and shows diffs between versions.

I kind of wish I had COBOL skills to help out my state right now. Why can’t the state retirement systems run on Swift? (I kid!)

I created an even more useful Excel VBA module that lets you resize the currently selected chart to cover, exactly, a range of one or more cells. You specify the range after you run the macro.

I created an Excel VBA module for resizing the active chart to a (hard-coded) standard size. This sort of thing is useful at work when developing reports.

The March 2020 Visual Studio Code update just came out. Microsoft and the community are adding feature after feature to it at an astounding pace. As long as you have a fast computer, it is an amazing programmer’s editor and Git client now.

I don’t know what took me so long to think to do this, but today I coded a VBA module with macros that increase and decrease Excel row height by one row at a time. I call them via the “Quick Access” toolbar, which is easy to customize.

Arq Backup 6 was just released. It is really compelling software if you want to “roll your own” backup service, rather than use something tightly integrated with the back-end, like BackBlaze. I’m very glad, now, that I bought a lifetime license when Arq Backup 5 came out, four years ago. I got a free (as in, already paid for) upgrade! Arq Backup 6 is much simpler looking than prior versions were. It is set up almost like a web app. Unfortunately, it no longer looks and feels much like a Mac app, which is one of the things that brought me to it in the first place. I don’t use its main UI that much anyway, though, so that probably is not a big deal.

Bernie Sanders dropped out of the race. It is amazing that I didn’t get a New York Times news alert about this.