ZigPress is non-fungible ☑️ @zigpress@mastodon.technology

How amusing. #wordpress (i.e. #automattic) has had a tantrum and disabled both of my wordpress dot org accounts. Not sure if it's because I've mentioned #classicpress in forum posts or because I've criticised WP on the birdsite. Either way, their loss not mine.

For years I've used #Mozilla #Thunderbird for mail, calendar and contacts. A few years ago I tried Mac Mail and found its interface too childish and limiting.

Forward to now: Thunderbird's insistence on tiny fonts, and its terrible search function, is becoming intolerable.

So I fired up Mail in Big Sur, added some IMAP accounts, and guess what? It's fucking great. So I guess I'll be using the Calendar and Contacts apps as well, with my caldav and carddav accounts.

Bye bye Thunderbird.

CLIENT: Can you create a website login for our new team member please?

ME: Yes, but since I'm not clairvoyant I'll need their name and email.

CLIENT: Oops!

Facebook has realised that religious nutjobs' data is just as valuable as anyone else's data.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/facebook-decided-faith-groups-are-good-business-now-it-wants-your-prayers-2021-07-22/

After a few weeks using the #MacBook Air #M1 (which replaced a 2017 MacBook Air Core i5), my (subjective) assessment is that for most tasks*, it's roughly 3.5x faster.

*Video transcoding with Handbrake, complex SQL queries, opening GIMP, running Electron apps, loading complex JavaScript-based web apps, etc, etc.

Website: Ohai! Why not use the great new AVIF image format? It's tiny and it's the future!

Me: Great, tell me more.

Website: You just have to prepare a set of progressive enhancement images with special srcset markup for every image on your site!

Me: FFS... just tell me when every browser supports it, until then piss off.

3 months ago I hibernated my #LinkedIn account due to it containing nothing but crap. A few days ago I reactivated due to a brief feeling of #FOMO. Turns out I was right in the first place. It's full of humblebragging and judging disguised as motivation and now it's closed.

So now I have a MacBook Air M1 with 8 CPU cores, 8 GPU cores, 16Gb RAM and 512Gb SSD. It's seriously fast, Big Sur is excellent, and the hardware oozes quality.

In fact when I look at this sleek dark grey artefact on my desk, with its perfect aesthetics and bulletproof construction, I can't believe I thought I'd be happy with anything less.

But I still don't have an Apple ID and never will 🙃

3/3

It was a costly mistake compounded by shipping costs and delays and I vowed never again to import from a small overseas supplier without a chance to check the hardware quality in person before buying.

But I still had to get a new laptop. I agonised for weeks about Thinkpads but in the end decided that the MacBook ownership experience was worth more than my misgivings about Apple policies.

Also, the Asahi project is making good progress in getting Linux to work on M1 Macs.

2/2

#Laptops. Thoughts.

About 8 yrs ago, after yrs of IBM, Asus & Dell Windows laptops I joined a firm that only used Macs. They bought me a #MacBook Pro Retina 13.

After getting used to it I learned to love it. Mostly it Just Worked™ and was remarkably hassle-free. I continued using Macs after going full-time with ZigPress.

I gradually got less happy with Apple's policies and last year got a Starlabs Linux laptop. Linux is great, especially Kubuntu, but the Star Labs hardware & firmware was crap.

1/2

Oh boy. Having to use a #Google Sheet on a client project. I can't believe how utterly, utterly bad the UI and UX is, compared to something like LibreOffice.

The 16G/512G grey MacBook Air M1 arrived today - 3 days early - and it's fucking magnificent.

JavaScript is to Java what carpet is to car.

Having problems with #git?
Maybe it's one of these problems:

https://ohshitgit.com/

Went out for dinner to a place without wifi or signal, returned to find that half the internet went down in my absence, and is now back up on my return.
It seems #fastly was using my phone as a key #CDN node.
Sorry about that!