Weeknote: 11 June 2023
Having nearly melted yesterday, I am now hiding from the sun and typing these words.
Published stuff
Over at Stuff, I wrote Dashboard is reborn in macOS Sonoma. Apple: bring back these lost Mac features too. It’s a listicle, but a… not entirely conventional one, as you might expect from me.
TapSmart reprinted my round-up of best calculator apps for iPhone and iPad, along with a piece exploring why sideloading was not announced at WWDC23.
For my blog, I also published a short piece on passport control and the folly of Brexit.
Other stuff
As per the blog post above, I recently spent a week or so in Spain. We were in the south east, which was mostly sunny, fairly warm, and suffering from a plague of what appeared to be a fusion of mosquitos and terrifying flying demons from a B-list horror movie. Still: a nice trip, bar the bites.
Back in the UK, after the relentlessly grey year so far, I wasn’t sure what to expect. So an actual summer came as a surprise, not least when it almost hit 30 degrees yesterday (86°F if there are any Americans reading). At which point we quickly found how ineffective “leaving a window open” is. Oh well. I imagine it’ll be chilly and rainy again soon enough (it’s already very grey today), and so we should enjoy the heat while it’s here.
I’m also mulling over tech, mostly for the child. She turns 9 soon and so we’re thinking of finally getting a Switch. But she’s also a voracious reader and so on holiday ran out of books in about eleven seconds. So we may well soon grab a Kindle for the first time in years. Pretty soon, this entire house will be mostly comprised of mobile rectangular screens…
As a kid who was so into reading that I intentionally caused trouble in the classroom just so the teacher would get fed up and lock me in the library for the rest of the day, I can’t even imagine how amazing it would have been to have a Kindle back then.
Also, lots of Switch games are amazing for people who like to read. I still absolutely love the Phoenix Wright games.
Cunning trick with the library! And, yeah, having a Kindle back then would have been like magic. It probably still will be to my daughter when we’re away from home.
Thanks for the Switch tip. I’d honestly not thought of that. (The kid is mostly currently into puzzlers, kart racers and, oddly, brawlers; but some more text-heavy games would be a good idea for her, I think.)