Rob Napier @cocoaphony@mastodon.social

In several talks, I use a line "all we ever do in iOS is parse JSON. Is there anything else we care about?"

And today it occurred to me that there is. Countdown timers. Seriously, what's with all the questions about countdown timers? https://stackoverflow.com/search?tab=newest&q=%5bswift%5d%20countdown

So far, Spider-Man is good. Swinging is good. Zip zip zip webbing up baddies is good. Sneaking around as MJ and taking pictures is good. But where is the plot? I am ready for a story now.

Still, swinging around the city is definitely what I needed. RDR2 would have been way too much right now.

So it's looking pretty official now. Just got the letter. My oldest son is off to the University of Twente next year to study Advanced Technology. We're so excited and nervous. It looks like a great program for him. But so far from home…

Finished God of War and needed a new game. Kept thinking RDR2 but it’s just so serious and I want a good story without that right now. So thought Zelda, but need to work out accounts on my son’s Switch (it’s his and I don’t want to just barge in w/o talking to him, though I know it’ll be fine).

And finally it hit me: Spider-Man. Yeah. That should be good. Swinging around the city sounds like just what I need.

When did candy corn become some stand-in for "candy no one likes?"

Candy corn is delicious. Simple. Yes. Perhaps monotonous if you have too much. But I love candy corn. I'm not a huge fan of Halloween candy in general, but of the traditional choices, it's definitely my favorite.

My Grandma lived to be 100, and she didn’t bake her whole life, but well into my college years she sent me shoeboxes of rugalach and hamentashen. Mostly at Purim, but other times as well.

And suddenly I wonder, years after she’s gone, where the shoe boxes came from? She was 80, 90 years old. She couldn’t possibly have bought so many shoes and I was far from her only grandchild.

I hadn’t really thought of the hunting and gathering she must have done, a year’s intent. I miss her.

Finally getting into God of War. It took me awhile to get reasonably comfortable with the controls. I still wind up doing a lot of actions I don’t really mean to, but it works out well enough that I can keep moving through the story and meet the characters (which is what I really like in these things). I do kind of want to just tool around the lake so Kratos will keep telling stories though :)

I’ve never flown through MSP before. It’s a really nice airport. I would definitely schedule a longer layover here.

I think I looked at @davedelong a little 🤨 when he mentioned these ideas to me the first time, but now that I've seen the whole talk, it's quite compelling. Highly recommended insights on MVC. https://vimeo.com/291601827

DRY is not itself a goal. It is just an engineering principle to be balanced against all other principles. Like "avoid memory churn" or "minimize your algorithmic complexity." The point of DRY is to bring together things that are the same. If you think it's about avoiding typing, you've misunderstood it.

I was one day…one day! away from having a whole house generator installed.

And here I sit in the dark. Install delayed until at least Monday because of Michael.

Finally finished Horizon: Zero Dawn. Immediately bought The Frozen Wilds, started a new game and the expansion is also awesome. I really love that game. The dialog is shaky at times, but I love the story, and even after collecting just about everything you can collect (all but the Hunting Grounds), and doing every side mission I could find, I still want to play some more. So glad for the expansion. Hoping a sequel isn't just a rumor.

Kitchen remodel is almost done. Finally getting to use it.

So often I tell myself, “if I just had X, then I would be happy.”

And I’m generally right.

I so love this new kitchen.

(I need a good "amazed and delighted" emoji, but all the surprised ones seem negative.)

Microsoft's VS App Center SDK is

?? MIT LICENSED WITH SOURCE ON GITHUB ??

Seriously? I can see the code you're going to inject into my project? I can build it myself? I can stick a debugger on it if things go wrong?

What is this source-ry? Who does that?

It even has a Code of Conduct?!?!

Thank you, Microsoft.