vanderwal.net

A Quick Category Page Lab Update

Today I thought I may be able to tackle 2 of the 6 tasks for features and functionality I want to take care of before moving the Category page in the Lab to the production side. Well, one of the tasks (the definitions) I knew is going to be pushed out as it going to take sit down and type words time. The other sort of large task was going to break some ease of use functionality and breaking something I find helpful is a bit of a problem, but also adds odd friction.

What Got Done

I was able to knock out four of the tasks that get the Category page in a much better place than it is at the moment.

The sidebar with the “Year Range” and “Co-category” selection was cleaned up and now with fixing the line wrapping for the long category names, so they no longer go under the radio button when the line wraps.

The inconsistency of the design of the counts for the two areas of selection is fixed and now the count has a subtle light box around them so the counts are noticeable but not drawing too much attention. Working with shades of orange is always tedious, but I like orange enough to deal with it.

There is now a noticeably clear filter selections button for the sidebar and in the main content section at the top. The button at the bottom of the sidebar to submit the filter selections matches the clear the filters buttons. The sidebar radio buttons (if you have JavaScript on) don’t require the submit button, but it is there for those with JavaScript turned off. This wraps up the sidebar.

The unfiltered category page now starts with a distribution chart that is larger than the sparklines on the category listing pages and it has small demarcations every 5 years. This is generated with SVG, like the sparklines.

When you make filter selections the distribution chart goes away (until the selections are cleared) and the filters selected are now laid out properly. This section also has a clear filter selection button as well.

You can try it from the link in the category filtering test section of the Lab notes about this.

This May be Close to Pushing Live

I am going to sleep on it and possibly push it live tomorrow on on the holiday Monday.

A Vision Pro Perspective

I have used many different VR headsets at hackathons and studio labs, but the visual quality was less than desirable. Reading in them was far less than optimal. I had found the 3D immersive capabilities somewhat interesting for training physical tasks and heightening awareness skills. But, the quality of the headsets’ visual quality and rough interaction models were large hurdles to overcome.

A couple years back (or so) I had tried the Apple Vision Pro out of curiosity at an Apple Store, after its launch and impressive walkthroughs. I was blown away with the visual quality as it was generations better than other options out there. But, the interactions with the apps and interface were incredibly simple to understand and became very quickly intuitive.

The Apple Store demo really piqued my interest. I could see its upsides for consumption. But, I could also see the potential for using it for remote work and interaction environments. That work potential became a large curiosity. The price of the Apple Vision Pro was a huge hurdle to go digging for the sake of curiosity. But, when Apple added the capability for a virtual monitor for your Mac with wide and ultrawide options, that started nudging the viability for curiosity. But, the price was still a bit too steep. I started looking at used Vision Pro models and prices were around $1k off new purchase prices. The friction there was knowing how to find one in good shape. I asked in an Apple forum I am part of how to purchase a used Vision Pro and someone in the forum had one they were thinking about selling. We chatted and worked out how to meet and purchase the device.

I figured if the two big things I had interest in it was worth the investment in the used AVP: 1) Viability for virtual meetings; 2) Virtual monitor. If it didn’t meet my interest or curiosity waned, I figured I could sell it on and get close to what I paid.

Before the Two Use Cases I Care About

The questions many ask are around:

Quality?

The quality of the hardware, visual displays, and interactions are seriously impressive. Opening web pages and reading ebooks is really nice clean and really impressive. There are no jaggies nor glitching.

Does it feel heavy?

I picked up the Annapro 2 add-on that is a brace that is padded and used at the top of the forehead area that takes the weight off your face and balances it much better. I regularly will have 2 to 5 hour sessions with the Vision Pro on and it doesn’t feel heavy nor cause neck strain for me.

How much do you use it?

I used it at least once a week, but many weeks around three times a week for tasks, virtual monitor use (more on this below), and some content consumption.

App availability?

There are apps for most things I do (many of my regular apps are available as visionOS native apps, and most other are available as iPad apps that are made Vision Pro capable), but not all apps that I really want are available as native visionOS apps. Two of the apps I really want on the device are the Drafts app (this is how I capture and surface quick notes across devices, not having it natively is a pain) and iA Writer as the Vision Pro a great device for focussed work (the input side is something). Having native Obsidian would help a lot as well, but that is more difficult as it is an Electron-based app.

I really want data visualization apps for larger data sets or data with a lot of complications, so that scaling the interface allows for better examination and interrogation of the data.

I really want Freeform as a solid whiteboard option, but it is so close and yet so far.

Isn’t it mostly a content consumption device?

The consumption capabilities of the Vision Pro are amazing, but for a consumption primary device the price is a bit much. The immersive environments to work in or consume content in are insanely well done. The immersive video content is stunning to say the least. Watching movies or other video content is a really good experience in 3D or regular viewing.

Curiosity Around Virtual Meetings

The Apple marketing pitched the Vision Pro as a good virtual interaction device. It used personas that were your face and hands. But, the big question I had around this was the ability to have meetings with colleagues that normally require hopping on a train or plane to get in the same room for 2 to 4 hours, or a couple days. That in-person interaction around plans in documents, presentations, spreadsheets, and whiteboards with a few people seems really viable. I really wanted to test it out that interpersonal interaction capability.

People that work together are most often rather distributed these days and there is no getting around that and travel isn’t cheap. But, if you can shift two or three fly-in meetings to Vision Pro you have basically paid for the device. But, if you can have more solid interactive meetings between the fly-in meetings that have better value than Zoom or Teams or even augment them with greater interaction and fidelity, that is a great win as well.

When I picked up my used Vision Pro it was still the first version of visionOS. The personas were decent and far better than other VR / AR providers, but could be better. Within a few months a major update was made and the personas really became good. Within a few minutes you forget you are interacting with a persona, and it feels normal with great facial gestures and hand and shoulders captured too.

Trying the interaction around documents and presentations with friends has been incredibly good. Once you open a document the person(s) you are interacting with shift from in front of you to arranged next to you and can point and touch what is being shared. This was and is incredibly good. I’ve done 2 and 3 hour sessions in the virtual meeting sessions and for most things it is really good where showing, talking about, interacting in shared documents, and editing is quite good.

The two limitations of this model are: 1) SharePlay is used for the interactions so it is capped to 5 people in the virtual interactive environment at a time; 2) The whiteboard with Apple’s Freeform (Apple launches Freeform) is their virtual whiteboard, which is similar to a Miro or Mural. The 5 person limitation isn’t bad and it is fine for many fly-in meeting needs for planning and check-ins, but 10 for in the same space and then have 5 person breakout sessions with much better interaction would really go a long way. Freeform in Vision Pro really need an input device and the best option is an iPad, which is rather good, but really needs a few more improvements. The iPad Pro with the Pencil Pro and the virtual shadow and the shadow for bevelled orientation seems like it was designed with Vision Pro in mind. But there needs to be some sort of pass-through to take some of the friction out of this. You can get rather proficient with a little time using the iPad Pro as the Freeform interface to do detailed work. The dedicated virtual pens lose fidelity and detail and from my perspective are a poor option.

A great advantage of using the Vision Pro virtual meetings is the focus of participants. In regular meetings most participants aren’t focussed on the matter at hand. For fly in meeting with distracted participants that is a very expensive problem. The distractions are normal and viable to keep on top of projects and problems that happen no matter if a meeting is happening or note. The advantage of Vision Pro is it puts the meeting front and center and the interactions with others in the shared virtual meeting, which is an amazingly strong value.

For virtual meetings this is a good option, but almost there and there needs to be some focus on what is needed to get there. There have been small steps, but the steps need to be more frequent and a bit larger. The other downside is a network effect problem (network effect as the converse), as there aren’t enough people who have Vision Pro devices to have ad hoc meetings with partners and clients at the drop of a hat. I have a few friends whom I interact with that I can test the advances around Share Play and different shared interaction capabilities.

Virtual Monitor

The other added value functionality I was curious about was the Virtual Monitor for Macs. I use the Vision Pro as a virtual monitor for my MacBook Pro quite a bit. The ability to use regular width screen (roughly equivalent to my 16 inch Mac Book Pro or a bit bigger), wide screen (about two screen widths), and ultra wide that wraps (about 3 screens) is really impressive. I most often use the ultrawide option when I need 3 or 4 apps open to have a screen I’m working in, one screen size for my notes, and one or two for reference.

There are two upsides for the Virtual Monitor mode. One is the ability to have Vision Pro apps open around the monitor mode as sticky notes, MindNote mindmap app, Safari floating with a page open, OmniOutliner lists open, and Apple Music. When I’m at my desk I have an external monitor to the left of my laptop stand, so I have two screens. The real life two screen setup causes more neck strain than the wide or ultrawide screen (by a long shot) and that is including the weight of the Vision Pro headset.

The quality of the pass through was a big question. The quality isn’t the same as the amazing screen on the MacBook Pro, but it is two 4k monitors with one in front of each eye. It sometimes is a little less than optimal, but if I move the virtual monitor either closer or farther back it gets to a sweet spot for really nice clarity. I don’t use the virtual monitor or ultra detail work or color precision work as the MacBook Pro screen is superior (similar for my 4k external monitor on my desk).

Two things I really enjoy doing in the virtual monitor are working on system mappings as I can go really wide and tackle and working in Freeform as a virtual whiteboard (it would be so much better were Freeform inputs much better in Vision Pro in its native app). I use Canvas in Obsidian for some capturing of systems and models, I also use OmniGraffle (the Mac version, as there isn’t an Vision Pro version yet, nor a working version of the iPad app for OmniGraffle 8 - I’m moved most of my OmniGraffle work into the beta of version 8 over the last year). In OmniGraffle I don’t use paper size, as I only use it for digital work, so I can go quite wide and tall.

One other advantage of the Virtual Monitor is that for the price of three good 4k monitors the Vision Pro is around the same price.

Vision Pro Impression Today

I still have the Vision Pro and I still get a lot of value from the device and regular use. There are some weeks where much of my use in the device is consumption, but pure consumption weeks are fairly rare.

One of my favorite uses is to put it on and just focus on work and tasks. Dropping into an immersive environment or the TGV app (a virtual TGV train trip that can provide a train focussed environment through the developer capabilities). I find trains are a great focus environment to get things done for me and this app works really well to resemble that.

I am really happy I picked up the Vision Pro, particularly used, as the price point felt it was quite on target. I really would love for Apple to take larger and more progressive steps. There are times I don’t know that Apple understands the full impact and focus of all the use cases, but I’ve virtually attended a few of the Vision Pro Developer full-day series and Apple is covering a lot of ground and covers many of the use cases well. I look forward to what is coming down the road.

Markdown Apps Loosely Joined

I recently posted about the different web browsers I regularly use, My Browser Family, and it makes sense to go through my different apps I use for Markdown in a similar way. My use is very closely tied to my Small Apps Loosely Joined mindset (part of the Shift Happed series on Personal InfoCloud). “Small apps loosely joined” focusses on having a core adaptable data structure (like markdown) and use different apps with written content where the app has helpful capabilities that are needed in a workflow or to focus on a type of work as a step in a workflow. Much like a woodworker picks up different tools to perform different tasks and doesn’t use a saw or chisel for all tasks, the small apps loosely joined model is similar. This works and has worked insanely well for 15+ years that I’ve leaned heavily on markdown.

I end up in markdown discussions rather easily it seems. The way I have taken notes in text apps with asterisks or dashes for bullets and the octothorp (you know, this thing #) for headings goes a long way back for me (starting somewhere in the 1990s). When I came across markdown in the early 2000s, after I had looked at and tried Textile Markup, but markdown didn’t fully connect. It echoed what I had done and offered more, but at the time I didn’t see the advantage of the added capabilities.

In 2010 and 2011 I started to shift much of my note taking and writing away from apps that were siloed and lock-in models. The flow from notes from a meeting, to my personal notes and annotations, and on to writing that gets shared out was a series of less than optimal apps that all had lock-in and heavy friction. Microsoft products not only had intentional lock-in but were continually buggy. I loved (and still do) Scrivener for writing longer pieces in it due to its managing notes and scraps related to the longer writing piece, but getting things in, as well as getting things out into my various sharing / publishing workflows had a lot of friction. At this time my parents were sick and passed on. When my mom passed my laptop hard drive took it as a hint and it too left the living world. I had everything backed up and I was working off the back up drive hanging off my Mac, and was waiting on a hard drive replacement, but needed something for notes for meetings (with banks, lawyers, and so much more) that I could move across everything. I nabbed an iPad for that mobility to take to meetings have files move across and back to my Mac. This tipped me into a full markdown life.

Like Many, Not All Markdown Goes to the Web

Markdown started by John Gruber to be an easy means of writing with light structure, while maintaining decent readability and to fit his model notes, which Textile didn’t fully fit. John created markdown and the markdown conversion to HTML as a matched set. Over the years many write markdown that gets converted to HTML, but around 2010 I’d see people were using markdown that never was converted to HTML. Markdown was what they wrote in as it was highly portable and editable from any text tool or markdown app and not in buggy and lock-in software. I noticed this in San Francisco on a trip where I stopped in a couple law offices to visit friends and the receptionist and legal assistants were mostly using markdown. This surprised me, as it wasn’t something I expected. Largely markdown for writing has been in tech adjacent roles and organizations. Later year seeing high school kids and college kids using markdown for their notes and paper drafts, then pasting to Google Docs was really impressive with the deftness they worked and how they managed everything. (A funny sidenote is many who went through school this way were appalled that Microsoft Word didn’t natively understand markdown). Markdown isn’t the parent’s use case any longer.

Today markdown for me only has around 20% that gets turned into HTML. Most are notes and documents that stay in markdown or turned into Google Docs, PDFs, text in Keynote presentations, and much more. Markdown is incredibly flexible with just enough structure to get converted as needed.

At First Many Apps Only Sort of Joined

This 2011 timeframe was the heyday of small light markdown apps. I picked up many apps and found a few that worked well. I was knee-deep in the markdown matrix table that Brett Terpstra maintained that showed the markdown app and the capabilities and compared what seemed like well over 60 apps. I used Simplenote, Byword, 1Writer, Ulysses, and Bear notes quite a bit and have kept them around but don’t use them as much due to friction for where and how they keep markdown files and some interfaces didn’t evolve. I also have used Working Copy, Git on iOS on Mac and iOS (iPad) for working on larger documents across devices and with others.

Moving to Less Friction for Markdown Loosely Joined

Apps that stayed around and were added in respected where I kept my notes and work. Most of the notes and writing stayed in a notes directory, but also were in project work. My notes directory on my Mac was linked out to iCloud so I could have access from my iPad or other devices. For a long stretch my basic notes app on my Mac was NVAlt, which allowed for tagging the markdown files, which meant that while they lived in my notes directory, I could aggregate all project work in the project folders, other media, and notes all with a file tag on Mac. This was fine until NVAlt stopped opening.

My Menagerie of Markdown Apps Now

My markdown notes that NVAlt sat over (which also included a folder from Notional use) had a few thousand notes when it stopped opening. But, the markdown notes weren’t owned and controlled by NVAlt and I could use nearly any markdown app I had to open and edit them. I wanted something very close to NVAlt.

Obsidian

In June 2020, after trying to find a replacement for how I worked with NVAlt I tried a few apps, but the one standout was Obsidian which slid perfectly into the exact role that NVAlt had for me. This role was to sit over the directory of notes and oversee them, but functionality on top of the markdown notes. Obsidian added even more capabilities (which most of my other markdown apps also adopted portions of over time). Obsidian is where my daily notes, drafts of longer pieces, meeting notes, and so much more go. Everything is relatively findable and refindable through backlinks (wikilinks) that are bridges between notes (but also with a plug-in Strange New Worlds - Obsidian Plugin I can see what other notes link to the note I’m linking to, and part of the magic is the note I’m pointing to doesn’t need to exist to see those links), tags to aggregate related notes with that tag, and search.

The other great advantage of Obsidian is transclusion, where one note can be added in as a view into another note. I can start a note in a meeting note or a daily note, then highlight a section and extract that section as its own note, but then transclude that note back in to show it where it was. This extraction and transclusion allows for that one piece of notes to mature and / or be included as a transclusion into other notes. The transclusions can also bring in a sub-heading into another note to show the section in the sub-heading. (I have a longer take on how and why I don’t use zettelkasten, which is similar to what I learned going into college for how to have far better study habits and write papers far more easily, but it also broke contextual understanding and really broke multiple contextual relationships).

iA Writer

My longer form markdown writing app is iA Writer. Often an idea for writing will start as something small in Obsidian (often in a larger note) and gets fleshed out a little there. But, when it starts getting longer I will extract it as its own note and then pick it up in iA Writer to take it farther. I love iA Writer as the interface is quite plain and it is just me and words and minimal structure. I often will create sub-headings early in longer pieces as outline structure to be filled in. Then it is just writing. The iA Writer app also has some light grammar checking (which fits my needs well), a quick preview to see your work as output that has some design and layout in the UI. It can be turned into a very minimal interface as well with focus on the line your cursor is on and just a few lines around that active line.

By and large, iA Writer replaced Scrivener and Ulysses as my longer writing app. The segmentation and notes capability in these other apps have made their way in as sort of similar forms into iA Writer (not everything, but enough for me). What largely caused iA Writer to replace the other two was very little friction getting my writing out into other outputs. Dragging the proxy icon to Marked (now Marked 3) is all that I need to get to HTML, styled PDF, or Word.

Marked (now Marked 3)

The Marked app, which is now in its 3rd major version, is the markdown conversion and clean-up app of choice. Marked has a lot of different capabilities, including proofing, writing statistics (like readability score and much more), writing support with proof reading, linting, and support for a wide set of markdown capabilities. Everything for using Marked for converting markdown to other formats is quite customizable and rather straight forward if you have some skills.

MarkEdit

The MarkEdit. app is one app I use as my default markdown file opener. It is like Mac’s TextEdit app, but focuses on markdown. It shows all of the markdown marks in plain sight. I find the showing everything raw is a good thing for review and understanding structure quickly.

I receive markdown files from others quite a bit, I also have access to other’s Obsidian vaults, and I have many markdown files that are spread all around my Mac and cloud environments. When opening one of these from search or a link I want to keep it outside of my Obsidian so they don’t get included and intermingled. This is really helpful reading and editing other’s shared Obsidian vaults as I can open, read, edit, and then close it while keeping clear of my Obsidian. If I want to copy something from my notes in Obsidian to another’s Obsidian, the two apps for two different environments look different, which helps reduce errors.

BBEdit

Another plain interface for markdown I use is BBEdit by Bare Bones Software, which supports markdown, but is the jack-of-all-trades text and basic coding tool. BBEdit is a go to for a lot of different text and coding needs where clearing out the cruft of an IDE or app is needed. I often open markdown documents in BBEdit when there are a lot of consistent text modifications I need to make. I have pulled in large outlines I have made in markdown and I need to do much work with nested levels in the outline.

Drafts App

I use Drafts for text and idea capture when I am away from my Mac. Everything from quick atomic notes (like where I parked, name of a book mentioned when at coffee, etc.). Drafts has long had solid voice-to-text for all Apple devices (iPhone, Watch, iPad, Mac) so it a great capture application. Drafts also has a highly adaptable capability for what to do with the note once captured, like sending it to my notes directory that Obsidian sits over. It is fully markdown capable. I can take a voice-to-text note on my Watch when driving, or invoke Siri and have it open Drafts to a blank not and tap the mic and leave a voice-to-text note that automatically is save and I can open it when I park and add some markdown elements and use and action to send it off to Obsidian, text message, or so many different end points.

iPad Apps

I started using markdown heavily, largely because my Mac hard drive crashed and I was taking notes on an iPad. I’ve gone through a lot of different iPad apps for markdown.

I have Obsidian, iA Writer, and Drafts, which I use pretty much the same way as how I use them on the Mac. Obsidian on iPad is a bit more limited, but still good for capture and modifications of notes in the directories I have it sitting over. I have Drafts always available as a slideover option off to the right of the screen.

I have Editorial for iOS as a relatively plain markdown editor. I don’t use it as much as I used to, but good to know it is there and it is quite capable.

The iPad also has small focussed apps for certain tasks. I use TextCase for changing capitalization in notes. I use Terminology by Agile Tortoise, which is the same developer as Drafts, as a really good reference tool when writing on iPad.

Trying a Couple Apps

There are a couple of apps that I’ve been trying on Mac, which may have a place. The first is Lettera, which is a markdown editor for Mac by the makers of Bear, which is currently in a limited beta. When I was using Bear notes app I loved the interface as it was clean, but what I didn’t like about Bear was the lock-in of notes in the app, as there was too much friction to use a note outside of Bear. Lettera is the markdown editor that is free of Bear. It still seems to default to a Lettera folder in iCloud, but opens markdown notes from anywhere. This may be a better reading and annotation app (it has easy to use callouts) for some of the uses I’ve used MarkEdit.

The other app is one I’m trying again as I used it 8 years ago (or so) when it was in beta and free, but became fragile, buggy, and would crash. It looked good and was rather simple. They changed from the free app to a paid app with the same name. I ended up with two versions with the same app with the icon and it was difficult to discern which was the flakey app and which was the good. Once the good version became pay, so I had neither working. This was Typora. In recent months many new to markdown have been talking about Typora and I get asked about it. Today I finally downloaded it again after deleting both of my instances of it a few years ago.

The current Typora has a lot of capabilities now, far beyond what it used to have. It has a similar interface, until you open settings then it has a lot of customizations. Typora can now cover a lot of ground. Much of it is covered in other apps I have, but I may find my current model of having different apps for different uses that are incredibly good for the purpose I use them is my preferred way of working. Having different apps helps me focus on what I am doing in that app to the markdown file and the task and focus needed from me for that task. To get to the same thing in Typora I would have to go to settings and make changes to keep that focus, but the context of the different app isn’t there. Moving between apps I will also keep the markdown file in multiple apps and see an edit in one instantly show in all the other apps (what good magic is this). Typora nice interface with additions for math UI (through LaTex) and charts (through Mermaid) may be a draw to keep it around.

Vibe Markets Don’t Always Rhyme with Good Product

My recent Four Cornerstones of Development post (which I found the initial blog mention on a March 2001 archive page - Off the Top :: March 2001 and later on mention I’m working on an essay on it, which I somewhat remember having a publication ask me to write it for them, but no longer exists) was surfacing in discussion a bit lately when talking with those building quick things for themselves that they had used LLM for coding (as well as much of the interaction and visual design), which is viable for personal use for a stretch and then you hit the reliable, maintainable, repeatable thresholds of pain.

Ooh! This Looks Interesting

But, I’ve looked at a quite a few of these projects (not those that aren’t really products) as they initially seem like they would solve a use case gap I have. But, I saw a video for an app that was pitched and it hit a long-standing need I had that has heavy friction. It was an app that linked to Glaze, which is a product / service from Raycast. I read through the information about Glaze and thought this could be “interesting”. I had trouble finding the app that caught my interest as the Glaze app marketplace is a mess. I finally found the app, looked at the descriptions and images and figured I’d give it a go. I found I had to download the Glaze app to seemingly run the app I wanted within Glaze. This was less than optimal putting a silo wrapper around apps, that has never worked well and there is a long and abundant history of attempts at this poor model. (An app with scripts and workflows that can be added through a marketplace / gallery like Raycast or Alfred is a good model, but full apps that is a very different story).

The Needed Perspective Framing (Likely to be skipped to preserve a rant)

I’m not adverse to people using coding assistance, but there is a lot more to building an app or script than just code (and often being a developer or engineer helps keep the AI coding assistance in check as they can resurface long gone poor practices that are abundant in the training material). Not having background in development nor product management nor design creates a lot of gaps and little depth to know if something is actually good or not.

I’ve Seen this Movie Before and …

I opened Glaze and got the app I had interest in set up, and it was slow, not well considered with limited functionality that would be helpful for a basic app in the genre it sat in. The hope I had was shot, I was rather disappointed (it happens a lot) with the level of a “proof of concept” build that only examines is something possible to let you then you interrogate the hell out of it to figure out what is wrong and how to improve it before you get to the prototype or alpha version. I shut the app and won’t open it again.

I looked at other apps in Glaze. All I looked at had the same level of quality (or I should say lack of quality and basic understanding of what an app is, let alone what a product is).

I jumped to the four cornerstones, as I would on something I was building or running a product group that is creating and developing. Things were sort of usable, but half a cornerstone doesn’t get you very far. There is a lot to know and understand beside an interface that does something and I haven’t found AI services that fill much of this ground that needs to be covered in a solid manner. They can help code decently on small-ish projects (and slightly larger) and get okay (yet often problematic) interfaces. But, the other considerations and forward-looking needs to plan for or at a minimum consider so to account for future adaptation are missing or not supported well. The person building has to bring that understanding with them to drive this to a decent outcome.

Creating an app seems easy but there is a lot that should be considered and accounted for in the process, even for something simple. Putting out what will soon be abandoned ware with a “developer” / creator that didn’t quite ship something solid and left it at that, and not to return.

It May be an Idea Farm

There are a lot of great ideas in Glaze, but the lack of quality has me deleting the Glaze and adding a reminder to not go back. The deletion of Glaze took around 2 hours as the thorough app deletion tools I have were getting errors from many components claiming deletion was not permitted. This often happens when an app is running, but the app had been quit. It has been a long time since I’ve had to go through rounds of rebooting my Mac to rip out stubborn poor app remnants.

Know What You are Getting In To

There are people who have been building good niche products that have used AI to help fill gaps. Most of them have a lot of experience with UI, UX, product, and/or development to know what needs to be done at least at a basic level. Not all of them have worked through all four cornerstones, but they have considered them, and have lived through the hell from not considering and/or working through the cornerstones.

Adjusting Daily Aggregation for Less Friction

Sunday I hit a point where my daily automations (which I layout in part here - My Automations Over the Ages and Today’s View in my morning process and weekly process) and placing the outputs into my Daily Dump note sections was really making for a lot of friction in my note taking / note making. Additionally, it was breaking focus and holding my concentration on what I was trying to capture in my note’s sections.

How Daily Dump Notes are Setup

My Daily Dump has 14 sections: Plans, Thoughts, Review, Read, Talked With, Listened, Watched, Productivity, Worked, Learned, Played, Ate, Health, Bought, and Added to a wishlist.

The intent with the subheads in my note is to quickly jump to the section as I run across something or am thinking through and idea or concept and capture the thoughts or what I consumed and ideas from it, so I can get back to it later in my notes. But, since this is markdown and in Obsidian I can take the notes with its subheading and text, extract it, and then transclude it (move it out and link it back in to show it in another note). But, having each day’s note relatively clean (the exception is the Plans section for things brewing and on the front burner to do are moved from the prior day’s note to the current day’s with a python script that keeps the completed tasks on the prior day and removes things not completed and moved them to today).

Friction from Adding Aggregation to the Sections

The daily aggregations pulled in things captured from various reading and copying or favoriting tasks that get automatically captured in Instapaper and Pinboard, as well as all the files I created and modified. I also have notes from Drafts that I capture on the go and tagged to get pulled in aggregated, as well as a list of things I watched online that I want to track, but also list of videos watched where I’ve captured the transcript in Readwise I may want to review (and likely do a further clean-up step).

All of this was getting aggregated into collective notes by type and transcluded into the relevant groups in my Daily Dump note. This added a lot of friction to the intent of my Daily Dump for quick easy drop into a section and capture a note and then after sort out how I may handle it. Add to this, Sunday my Weekly Review runs and captures all of this from the week and compiles it into one note so with a heat map at the top so I can review it to see what I’ve been doing and find things to cut back on or put focus on for the upcoming week. The Weekly Review was transcluded into Productivity, which is ironic as all of this adding of aggregation transclusions was making me really unproductive.

The Fix to Bring Back Focus and Quick Capture

On Sunday I had enough of the friction and took time to sort out a solution. I liked the capture and the ability to scan through and find things I need to continue working on or make a change on, but having it in my quick capture notes area made it tough.

I added a “Review” section just under Plans and now all aggregations and transclusions go there. The best part is when I’m not reviewing it, a heading in Obsidian can be collapsed, which gives me focus on everything else.

On Sunday I did a quick manual restructuring of my note by putting everything aggregated into the Review section and then collapsed it. This was a magical focus trick.

Updating the Python Script that Automates Transclusion

Sunday I did the first edit of the python script that takes the aggregations notes created earlier in the moring and transcludes them in and repointed them to not go into the other categories, but all go into Review. This hasn’t run perfectly yesterday nor today (it works when I trigger it to run manually, but not from the trigger to run the script), but it is getting closer.

Protecting Focus is Key

Protecting focus and being able to quickly shift focus and be productive is key and has been something I’ve been working to do since I was a kid. Over the years I’ve learned the distractions and how to pull focus and calm back in. Removing the friction from abundance of information already in where I needed clean space to quickly capture created the large problem.

Now my big next step is sorting out the time to actually get a good weekly review done from what I’ve aggregated. The capture has been really good, but I just need to get better about protecting time on Sunday (or move this to Saturday) so I can sit and focus on what was done, what I can reduce and what needs focus to get done.

Four Cornerstones of Development

In the late 1990s through 2010s when working with development and product teams the four cornerstones of development were always at the tip of the tongue or as a small poster on a wall somewhere. I know I wrote this up somewhere before and likely presented it in the late 1990s and/or early 2000s. Working in enterprise environments where people would get involved in product and development, but don’t have background these cornerstones were essential to bring up as basics.

The last few weeks and months I’ve been thinking of this a lot and wanting to point to it, but realized it isn’t really on line other than a quick mention in a 2003 post of mine – Needs When Running a Service. Actually, it is something I am always wanting to point to. With the increase of vibe coding and people creating products for “unique” purposes, but then people are sharing these more widely than personal use, the need for understanding and considering what they are getting into is really needed.

The Four Cornerstones of Development

These four cornerstones were initially called out for information application development, but applied to all user-centered development and product management. If a team building didn’t focus on all four of the elements from the beginning to make the right decisions early (or have them framed and adaptable) the product was really going to struggle.

The four elements are: Usable; Reliable; Maintainable; and Repeatable.

In the current state of quick development by non-developers using LLM coding tools the only one of these cornerstones that is known or partly handled is the first cornerstone, usable. What is made may be usable, or mostly usable, but that won’t really last and when selling it, sharing it widely, or having others rely on it. The reality means the person developing and shipping has unintentionally signed up for things they don’t have background in and often the LLMs aren’t that helpful with. Much of what is coming out as apps are proof-of-concept level of completion, which doesn’t get into any consideration of the other three cornerstones.

Usable

Usable is the first hurdle and focusing on the user and their needs. If things aren’t usable the offering doesn’t really have much. The other cornerstones don’t really matter, if the offering isn’t usable. But, usable and not having the other cornerstones will be problematic.

To be usable, even if it is a single simple use case, how adjacent use cases that aren’t supported are handled or avoided should be as clear as possible. The capabilities and limitations being clear help with the ease of use and understanding something when someone hasn’t touched it in months.

Reliable

The reliable cornerstone is what starts making the offering stable, secure, and enduring. The bugs have been remediated and it works as intended continually. Security and levels of privacy considerations have been put in place and consistently work as intended. But, so do the core myriad of use cases that were intended to work and also be supported, continue to work.

Lacking reliability you have something that breaks at various stress levels and use cases (core uses cases or edge cases). Building and shipping requires setting bounds for what is supported and how, but also how well the edges of what is supported are handled.

Maintainable

Maintainable gets to the reality that products and shipping them doesn’t mean something is done when shipped, it is the beginning. When planning out what is being built how it will be maintained over time and supported is essential. How will the product be updated to support changes to the coding language and/or operating system, and device updates. How do the regular changes in languages and operating systems get handled where security patches are made and break apps and services for users that use apps and services that aren’t updated.

User / customer support and how this is handled also falls into the maintainable cornerstone. Planning for maintainability and how that will be handled needs to include support as the two are often tightly related. When something breaks or doesn’t work as expected, that becomes support work. The support work is often related to considerations and steps (or not making them) the area of the maintainable cornerstone.

Repeatable

Repeatable is one that often gets left of consideration and one that is essential if what you built gets popular and scale. It is often thought of as something that may happen in the future, but understanding early on how to handle repeatability means it should be easier when the time arrives. Repeatability is needed when a server or service built on crashes and is not available or you need to replicate server backends for supporting the service as it scales (there are a lot of needs for repeatability, including building sandboxes to test and develop).

Everything changes as it scales and understanding that at the start of everything (product, organization creation, shared simple scripting project, etc.), gives a decent foothold to when growing and scaling hits. Planning not to scale is also an option, but often that can take just as much work as scaling and you need to be prepared for not scaling when others really want what you’ve made.

Not planning for this early and accounting for how to design the development of the app and/or services for this will lead to painful issues with growth or the reality of moving from one supporting backend server / service to another as things change (often more quickly than we expect).

Wrapping the Cornerstones to Help Make Decisions

The cornerstones were really helpful 20 to almost 30 years ago for a quick reality check for early early-stage planning and building something to ship. Building something and shipping it is the start, not the end. All four cornerstones will provide stability once things are shipped if you have planned understanding and using the cornerstones.

Today, much like early-ish web thinking of how far you want to open something up for use by others comes from considering the cornerstones. If all that is considered is just use and there is no interest in the other corner stones or just partial interest or capacity, it is likely good to keep the use of it limited to friends and or family, similar, or perhaps tighter.

Halfway Through Blaugust

At the halfway point of Blaugust following my saying I was in on Blaugust and aiming for 31 post in August, it is time for a check-in. On the 16th of August I have 22 posts (counting this post), which is more than I expected. I had two personal goals for the Blaugust endeavor: 1) Get back in the habit of posting and comfortable with the workflow; 2) Make a dent on my long list of blogfodder.

Back Comfortable with My Workflow

Not only am I comfortable with my workflow, but I’ve made tweaks to it. I have a lot of Daily Dump notes with things written out in the sections that could easily turn into a blog post. Now I have a smoother flow taking those notes and quickly extracting them to their own note, immediately having it transcluded back in, add the blog note framings, as well as blogfodder tracking, which makes it very quick to extract, wrap it for a post, and run through the edit and posting steps.

I am not only more comfortable with my process, but I’m feeling like I’m back living in my site again. I am using my blog search as I prep a note to potentially post to see what I have that may be similar or nice to add to a post as a reference. I also have been finding quite a few small UI gaffs that needed fixing and knocking them out. All pages in the blog area should have “Blog Search” in the navigation. There were layout twitches in layout switching between blog main page and individual post pages, which has been there a long time. This twitch isn’t fully gone, but far less noticeable.

Another thing I did was add some categories to accommodate creative and fiction posts, which I have been trying to sort out what to do with them. I may have another option at some point, but for now I have a decent option.

Making a Dent In Blogfodder List?

Uh… On this front I have knocked out a few items on the blogfodder list, cleaned up the list a little, but the list got a bit longer. Many of the posts for Blaugust have been new ideas and not coming out of the blogfodder list. Many of the items on the list are longer pieces and need more work, but they are likely going to be posted on Personal InfoCloud, but I will note here that I’ve posted there (just like the old days).

Some of those longer pieces will cover: “folksonomy and LLMs” (this question comes up a lot and helping quite a few understand the realities and frame their needs); “My working with AI since 2008”; “My AI policy for my sites (in short nothing read was created or edited by AI)”; “AI and Social Computing (particularly around teams and organizations)”; and other topic. I have quite a few others I swore I have posted over the years, but nope, so I’ve queued those up as well.

Did I Leap on Mac Developer Beta Too Soon?

I’ve been following along with this year’s round of Apple Operating System updates (OS 27) and had jumped on the iPad and visionOS developer betas in the first round or two. With iOS and ipadOS 26 with Liquid Glass if I turned it down and turned much of it off it wasn’t horrible, but it didn’t seem like a finished product. Since some of the inspiration came from visionOS for Liquid Glass it was mostly fine. The updates to the OS 27s are solid improvements for the most part, with odd bugs (mostly in YouTube app and some Meta apps). The iPad has been far more performant on the ipadOS 27 than the ipadOS 26 and fewer odd bugs.

On the Mac the OS 26 experience was poor with bugs, performance issues, UI design decisions seemingly made by people who had no understanding of interaction nor digital design. Hot mess would be too kind. My Mac is my core beast and my backup brain. I was tired of bugs and was pestering those I know whom had jumped on the macOS 27 betas if things were fine. The one oddity I didn’t want to run into was the menubar not working with menubar managers.

Yesterday the macOS 27 Developer Beta 5 was released and I ripped through the developer notes and saw the menubar had an update and claims it should work like it did on OS 26. That was enough for me to give it a try. After updating the other two devices I put in harms way, I finished a fresh back-up of my Mac and took the plunge.

First Impressions

The macOS 27 first impressions are it is more responsive and quick like it was prior to OS 26. Also OS 27 seems like it is what should have shipped last year as it has a finish and more design cohesion and relative purpose. Things in settings have been somewhat easier to find. Nothing seems broken.

I did hit an oddity and bug in Apple Music where the sound profile for hi-res lossless tracks was noticeably different when using my usual DAC/Amp and good headphones that are open back and resolve things really well. The sound stage seemed wider and the spatial separation of voices and instruments was much more pronounced, and the resonance of metal sounds (acoustic guitar strings, cymbals, and upper register piano (like an open grand piano)) were all really pronounced and forward. Something in the equalization had changed in the upper registers. I tried the track in other apps as hi-res and they sounded as they did. I also plugged in my DAC/Amp into my iPad and Apple Music like it did the day prior before the update. So I filed a report. I also found trying to edit a playlist in a playlist by clicking “edit” would crash Apple Music, so another report filed. Other than that Apple Music is much improved, but I’m not sure it is fully on par with the iPad Apple Music, which is really well done and has music content with production notes and more, but favoriting a song or album doesn’t beach ball the app.

To Test

One of the reasons I took the leap is I like using Apple Freeform for quite digital whiteboard and quick sketching of idea and there are some features with it that have improved that I want on my Mac and not just iPad (even though I largely use it on iPad and Vision Pro).

I also want to give Keynote a solid run through as that is also one of the tools I think in. I’m doing a few things in Keynote lately around folksonomy, Model of Attraction (as I’m walking new generations of product and engineer folks through it they want to know why they didn’t know about it before as it would save time tying to work through problem sets the model frames more easily to think through) with the four InfoClouds, and various Complexity Lens / Social Lens frameworks for seeing and thinking through problem sets.

Search Pages Brought Up to Our Standards

As I’ve been searching my site a fair amount before starting to blog, the small type (compared to the rest of the page and site) in the search form and search button were bugging me. So thinking of you, well from my perspective, I’ve updated the Search page and Search Results.

I also noticed the navigation for the search related pages the navigation still had “Lab” and it was selected. Fixed that. Now the pages are up to your (well my) standards.

Hiding Music in Plain Sight

As I was working on something today and had music going in the background I went to switch gears and I swore Apple Music had experienced a stroke and when I clicked to this song:

I clicked play and it fit the EDM style of music I appreciate and it sounded like an artist / DJ I liked, but couldn’t place it. But, I was deeply thrown by the type as it was well outside a Latin character set. Not only was the song and album in this outside the usual character set, but the artist name and label were too. I used the UI and clicked where I should be able to get the artists page in Apple Music and it was the same. But… the information about the artist unlocked it is Four Tet - Four Tet.

The downside is I don’t know how this is searchable, but a friend found a link to another Four Tet album that has used the same character set on the web. But, once I searched for Four Tet I found this Pitchfork review that explained much of of the “why” behind the characters - Pitchfork - Four Tet - Wingding - review. That led to finding it on Wikipedia Wingdings (album) - Wikipedia (James found it about the same time).

I loved the backstory and the reviews, but I still can’t freaking understand how to search for it easily. I have thrown it on a couple playlists, even started a new one with (so far) just it on the list.

Uncovered.ink - A New Way to Find Books

Uncovered.ink · Judge a book by its first pages - Thanks to Jason Kottke for the recommendation for Uncovered.ink, which is a site that shows you a few pages of a book with no book cover, title, nor author. This is such a brilliant idea. The interface is clean and just has options for genre and a nice display of a page at a time show up. I like this far more than Amazon’s book preview (for narrative books / fiction). The focus is on the words and if you like it you can get the title, author, and cover. I have found a couple books of strong interest and have tucked away the titles and authors.

The Blue Ant Trilogy and The Near Future and Everynow

This may need another edit, but it is still a bit time-foldy, but what I’m focusing on is very time-foldy.

When I read the Blue Ant Trilogy from William Gibson (Pattern Recognition, Spook Country, and Zero History) as they came out in 2003, 2007, and 2010 I wondered then how they would hold up, as they were near future scifi. Each was sat in the now and /or the just about to become. If, at the time, you were paying attention to culture (particularly around a technology focused world) all of the elements in the book were familiar to nearly familiar. Most of the roles, technology, and ways of thinking were already at the edges of society, but very very niche and not yet made it into the main consciousness. How does near future look in the future?

I regularly pull Pattern Recognition off the shelf and read snippets and it takes me back to that time in 2003. I’m a big fan of that book on many levels. But, to me it still holds up, yet I’m looking at it from the living through this at the front edge of emergent culture and technology. I still wonder how someone would read this today who was less than, say, 10 years old would read and perceive this today.

In the past week or two I’ve run into a handful of YouTube videos and blog posts / articles by people who have recently read one of the books, most often Pattern Recognition. I find interesting in that some see things in the books from 15 to 20 years ago are still coming in the near future (this really intrigues me) and others things seem quite foreign and more futuristic. Yet for some of us they have happened and became normal outside of the far edges of culture, but were far from mainstream. I was expecting reviews, at least some, to talk about how these books seemed set in the past. But, yet no, not one. They focused on, what to me is, an odd perspective continuum.

This surfacing of ideas and perceptions in a society and culture hit two scenarios and situations: 1) Common, but at the edges; 2) Things from the past that still seem futuristic as they haven’t happened in someone’s (or mainstream’s) perception lens. Yes, William Gibson’s famous, “The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed” applies readily. But, there is more to this where things happen in pockets and spread more widely, but not too widely and don’t take hold broadly, nor are they known of more widely.

This phenomena isn’t just related to scifi and technology, but global understandings around mental models, and the language structures around broad cultural mental models (that are mainstream in another culture in an other part of the globe that people in another culture don’t have curiosity about and are more settled in their parochialism and pedestrian thinking to look up and notice). The scales of this and the complex mappings around it from edge cultures, out to large global cultures are more than a lifetimes of effort. But, the key piece is a response of curiosity or defending one’s own currently limited understanding. The common responses are often, “Wait, what? Tell me more.” Or, “That is wrong.” My common phrase when people discover something new that changes how they see and understand things, and they feel like they were doing things wrong, or didn’t know of other helpful possibilities, is, “You can’t know until you know.”

But, with in those interested in exploring at the edges and particularly around the fluidity of time and understandings and seeing something from the past (20 plus years in the past) that was then just happening at the edges and moved more into some cultures mainstreams and faded, as still in that same state of temporal now or about to happen. Now is different for everybody.

In 2004 I started using the term Everynow and included it in a lot of presentations and writing and ended up writing about it explicitly in the linked post in 2013. I was focussing on technology and ideas that set in play the now. But, for some reason concept of having people read a piece that is around 20 years old about the early edges of something and it being still near future, is really surprising to me. The concept of near future from 20 plus years in the past and for many (yet still a small few in the whole of it all) today becoming again (or still) the near future is wild.

The near future idea, has a sense of anticipation in it that something is coming. But, for those who went through that near future and lived it as it was happening, and to the past transition cycle, it seems odd that a near future for something in the past doesn’t just jump straight to the now stage as they experience it. Having a near future anticipatory stage for something that happened for many in the past feels odd, but it is just another reflection of experiencing the now of others viewed throw and really wide and elastic everynow.

The Poetry of Time

Today a package arrived that I’ve been deeply looking forward to. Part of the anticipation is the pure utter whimsy of it, part is it was a Kickstarter project that involved hardware (read hardware is hard when manufacturing is involved), and knowing the creator and watching all the steps along the way I was happy to see it and touch it. This is the Poem/1.

Most of all, this device is giving me a lot of enjoyment and, well, glee.

The Poem/1 Arrived

This poetry clock in the few hours I have had it running, with its e-ink display that updates every minute with a new poem for the time, which is / was generated by AI. Some of the poems are, well unique, and others are wonderful, but they can be favorited with the one button on the device.

The one button does a lot of work. It can be used to favorite a poem. There is a site with a dashboard for your device where you can push it notes you write to display, but to clear the note and get back to the clock you use the one button. There is a sleep mode with a screen saver and to clear that, you use the one button.

The Poem/1 also has one USB-C cable. There is no manual in the box. Everything you need is the new Poem/1 device, the USB-C cable, and the e-ink screen tells you the rest.

After plugging it in you get a screen with some technical details and a QR code and using your phone with the QR code it then walks you through everything from easily connecting it to your WiFi (if printers could do this…), then make a selection or two and you have poetry time. There is also a dashboard website and the setup to your device is incredibly easy as is the setting up the account on that site.

The Journey of Poem/1

About 3 years ago Matt Webb blogged about an idea he had about an AI poetry clock, My new job is AI sommelier and I detect the bouquet of progress (Interconnected). This soon got connected to an e-ink device and Matt was on his way.

Matt setup a Kickstarter, which I happily backed. It wasn’t that I was overly keen with the AI bits (I’ve been working with AI/ML going back to 2008 and stayed current and it is a thing that I treated, like most everything else, as a tool). But I enjoyed the process of little printer – BERG and its outcome from afar. Having watched Little Printer’s journey of toil to come to life from Berg London (Matt and the amazing folks there), I wanted to support Matt (who mostly did this Poem/1 project alone). This provided insite into his long journey of quickly getting to a working prototype, then the slog of finding viable parts, a manufacturer, various regulatory approvals, and iterations when due to various things there were changes made late mid-stream to add to the delays.

Matt has done a good job logging his slog and journey. There were times where I’d realized I’d forgotten about Poem/1 and not heard of any progress in a while. About that time Matt would have an update in Kickstarter or on his blog.

Then there was US Customs, which stalled things for a while (not the tariffs, which became a hurdle earlier), but there there was more paperwork needed around “what is this clock”, oddly I (the customer) was sent the forms and I knew there wasn’t a winding mechanism nor jewels in it (well I haven’t checked inside, but pretty sure there are no jewels). Matt did a great job documenting the US Customs documentation hurdle in his post, How global logistics got me over my fear of personal agents (Interconnected) (my having worked at a Custom’s Brokerage for a few years I know the many reasons brokerages are needed).

What Time Is It?

I love the ability to favorite a time. (What is your favorite time?) In a few hours I have a couple favorites that I quite like:

Puddles reflect lost skies, / At two forty-five, heart sighs.

At twelve fifty, shadows creep, / Secrets held within silence deep.

Willow branches gently sway, / It’s twelve twenty-five today.

Thank you Matt I now have favorite times and a wonderful product.

Updated Categories with Sparklines and Search is Now in Production

I made a couple of updates I have long wanted to make to this site. I’ve been wanting to see frequency of categories used on my blog for more than 15 years (or pretty much since I’ve had category list pages). I have also wanted to have blog search and the utter mess that Google Search has become in recent years, where my site isn’t showing at all at times has driven this. These additions will likely iterate and adapt a bit going forward.

Updates to Category Lists with Sparklines

I have basically had two category list pages for years: Category List (which is alphabetical sort) and Category List by Use. I have kept these two and added sparklines to them (Sparkline - Wikipedia). Each line now has a small line chart that covers the 25+ years and what periods had used the category and some sense of the volume of use over time. One category list view I wanted and was missing was one to show a view with the focus of most recently used categories, so there is now a Category Recently Used List that not only groups by most recently used (and in the same entry keeps the alphabetical sort) but also shows the date of the last use in the list. Personally, I have been finding this recently used list view the most helpful and interesting. Skimming through the list I know I have more recent posts that have covered or touched on a subject, but it didn’t include the category, and that becomes a quick task to fix that gap.

Sparklines?

I have been a big fan of sparklines to give quick understanding of data’s distributions at a glance, which I learned about in “recommended reading” of Edward Tufte’s book The Visual Display of Quantitative Information | Edward Tufte in grad school in social / policy quant classes. (There are are many Tufte essays and book annotations on sparklines at Edward Tufte Notebooks & Sketches | Art, Science and Sculpture).

Creating the Sparklines

In creating the sparklines for my category lists I looked initially (and have long looked at them) creating static images from the data and bringing the images in (this would mean updating the images and replacing the old with the new ones, which is relatively straight forward programmatically and something I’ve done in the past, but not optimal) and I also looked at JavaScript but it was a bit slow. I poked at using creating SVGs (which work well when printing or zooming in) and often are much quicker and less strain on a browser than JavaScript. I’ve had a few goes at SVG in the past and I get get my mind around simple shapes, but I would need a little help with sparklines. A couple years back on a sparkline spelunking I found Easy SVG sparklines | Alex Plescan which showed the how. But, I have SVGs somewhat in the same category as regex, which is I do it rarely and I’ll just use Claude Code | Anthropic’s agentic coding system \ Anthropic to assist with the creation.

Chunking the Data for a Sparkline

The other part of sparklines is they are intended to be small glimpses and I have 25+ years of posts and a monthly temporal segmentation would make for a long graphic. I played around with breaking things down to quarters, but in the end I went with two segments per year and roughly 50 data points to map out on a line chart. Running a test with the two data points a year was a reasonable enough glimpse to sort out if the category was used recently or what the variation of use was over time.

One of the interesting discoveries with the first lab run of the categories of sparklines was the rather “U shaped” distribution of the use of categories, which pretty much calls out the lull I had in blogging. This softening of blog post rhythm is something I call, “when Twitter ate my blog” (where the interesting things I would discover and want to share and interact around ended up on Twitter rather than my blog(s)). Other patterns that surfaced were limited use a category in a period when I was rather sure I had posted on the subject, some of this was I was not using the term in that way or I didn’t have the category in my system yet. One of the things that helped sort this out was using my blog search.

Search is Now Out of the Lab

One of the things I have been working on and using my my Lab at vanderwal.net is blog search. But, the modifications I made to the Category pages I found I was leaning on my blog search a fair amount to investigate things. But, the categories and blog search are both in the blog section of this site, so making the change from the lab to the production side made sense. One of the things holding back moving search over, was I had an SVG of a magnifying class in the menu bar with “Blog Search”, but no matter how small I made the image it still was messing with the vertical layout of the menubar. In removing the magnifying glass and just using text things kept to the same layout.

Bringing in Search

The search in the menu in the pages in the blog section with “Off the Top” or “random” in the URL which is where there are currently menubar links to Blog Search. I have the menu bar link to a search page to search from rather than a JavaScript drop down or other menu bar convention (again layout of the menu bar was part of the considerations).

When I was working on search in the Lab section I found I needed to make some modifications to the database to have quicker search and I needed to modify the database engine so I could have search include 3 letter terms as a minimum rather than 4 letter words. In working on search I found many of my early posts didn’t (and still don’t) have titles and I was using the title as the link. I initially thought I would just add titles, but there are around 300 posts that don’t have titles (I’m adding some as I touch the posts for other clean-up issues), but I ended up coding the search results to have the results just fill in “Blog Post #…” as a proxy for a proper title.

The initial 170 or so posts are not in the database and are therefore not in the search.

Bringing Search and Categories In

As I went to move the category list pages out of the lab and into the production side I needed to modify a few other templates and pages to add the updated links. In doing this I realized I could also easily update the menu bar to include “Blog Search”. So, I took a little bit of time and made both changes at the same time.

Not all of the links are in yet. If you see something a little off with category lists or missing blog search links let me know.

Swan Song's AR Design and Creation

I have a serious soft spot for the movie Swan Song (which stars Mahershala Ali and Glenn Close that is set in the near future in the Pacific Northwest. I was a fan of its soft and deep thought invoking exploration of life and replication, but also its near future view of technology. While others have been excited by the Minority Report’s manic augmented reality (AR) interface, the design and use of near future AR as part of work and personal life was really good. To say I was fascinated, may be putting it lightly. Swan Song (2021 Benjamin Cleary film) - Wikipedia was released in 2021 and Apple had yet to have announce Apple Vision Pro with its visionOS and really good graphics and workable interface. The visual and interaction design of what the main character (Cameron) worked in was incredibly good. Once Apple Vision Pro was out it felt like Cameron’s interfaces and interactions were part of the future road map.

The Design Studio Behind the Digital Interfaces and Interaction Design

Being that Swan Song movie was part of Apple Studios - Wikipedia I was believing Apple had a part in the creation of the user interfaces and interaction design of the AR in the movie. But, poking around in Vimeo I stumbled on the design reel for Swan Song - Territory Studio, so I finally found the studio that created the AR and digital design elements in the film.

Territory Studio’s Design Overview

Territory Studio’s page for the high level design overview of what they created for Swan Song is really good. I had been feeling like Swan Song’s design and AR team were more closely tied to Apple as their AR interaction design is very much like Apple’s sensibilities, with a more muted palette from a calm future. A lot of things that are in Apple Vision Pro’s user interface and interaction design patterns seem to have been hinted at, if not felt like they were previewed in Swan Song. But, I’m not so sure of the connection or how specious it may be.

The Territory Studio page has highlights of their visual / virtual design language, personal UIs, home office AR, AR home gaming, speculative hardware, smart watch UIs, and virtual mimoji. I really would love an even deeper dive, as this is much of the virtual interactive world I’ve been waiting for, and been hoping to see come to life for years prior to the film.

There is a whole lot in Swan Song that I loved from the time it was released, which was a couple years or so ahead of Apple Vision Pro being released. The headset-less AR and interaction design is one piece. But, I also was deeply taken by the whole story, cinematography, and feelings the film evoked, but also the keep thinking and consideration it evoked.

Swan Song Demo Video from Territory Studio

The show real from Territory’s work on Swan Song is in Vimeo: Swan Song Breakdown Reel - Vimeo