I was really stressed out today and nothing I did made me feel any better until I said "at least I'm not Ilya Sutskever," and the tension in my shoulders immediately released.

I have found myself inefficiently navigating to the GitHub web UI from the terminal, so I wrote a silly little script to quickly open the current directory's github remote in a browser (without relying on gh or hub, etc) gist.github.com/searls/7a54ba1efc3733f7e2ce9c0000718e7d

I am very grateful to Andrew Coleman for suffering all my Docker FUD and general impatience with DevOps to nevertheless automate a pretty kickass automated Docker image workflow for my new feed2gram gem blog.testdouble.com/posts/2023-11-15-from-github-actions-to-docker-daemon/

tl;dr I made a gem a year ago that is very good and could have a tremendous positive impact on how Rails developers write tests, but that will only happen if YOU (or someone you share this with) steps up to maintain it. Read more here: blog.testdouble.com/posts/2023-11-13-the-future-of-rails-test-data-management/

I don't do this often, but I'm ready to make an endorsement: Buttondown is good software. I've been publishing my Searls of Wisdom newsletter for 6 months now and it all just works. Plus, Justin Duke has been SUPER responsive to every question I've had.

If you're thinking about decoupling how you keep in touch from social platforms, take a look. Referral link for $9 off: buttondown.email/refer/searls

Music services still recommend music by answering, "what do other people who listen to the stuff you listen to also listen to?" This Balkanizes our libraries, because it fails to cross cultural and regional boundaries.

Suppose two tracks, one in Japanese and one in English, are great for extremely similar reasons pertaining to how they actually sound. Spotify and Apple Music would would never recommend one for the other. It seems like high time that algorithms drew from analyses of music's intrinsic qualities: sound, BPM, lyrical sentiment, etc.

TIL that Yelp now includes the health inspection reports of all the restaurants in my area, so I guess I'm never going out to eat again.

It really crosses people's wires at cocktail parties when I tell them that I believe Covid was a conspiracy by the Chinese to force the West to finally adopt the use of QR codes.

My Onkyo receiver just turned itself off. I turned it back on and it ran a diagnostic on each of its amps, before landing at a message that says "Check Sp[eaker?] Wire."

Neat.

Instead of my usual tradition of making predictable predictions before Apple Events, I'm going to go on the record saying I'd pay $10,000 for a 12" MacBook Pro that weighed 2 pounds or less.

Won't happen, but should. Especially with the Vision Pro, developers are going to want as small a Mac as possible to screen share from when they travel.

This weekend, I decided to grow my POSSE by creating what essentially amounts to feed2toot for Instagram. It's called feed2gram — check it out! 📸 github.com/searls/feed2gram

I don't know why it took me so long to think to do this, but I finally started a playlist of some of my favorite TV theme songs and title tracks. Too bad how many aren't available on streaming services at all. Apple Music: music.apple.com/us/playlist/theme-songs/pl.u-e2RvqtVKP3B

Raycast's AI assistant is such a low-friction operation (command-space, type a thing, then hit tab), I've gotten in the habit of asking for keyboard shortcuts.

It's so much faster and clearer than Googling that I do this several times per day and have gotten way faster at using the apps I depend on. raycast.com/pro

My name is Justin and I'm a Timeline Addict. Give me a pull-to-refresh UI and I'll pull it all day long in the hopes of one more like or reply. I've tried moderating, but at the end of the day… the juice just ain't worth the squeeze.

Instead of posting to Twitter-like services, I'm going to post to my blog and syndicate elsewhere. Want me to see your reply? Email me! ✉️ justin@searls.co

Are Truth Social users called Truthers? 🫠

I've been curious for a while if it might be possible to trick iMessage into
formatting a link preview for takes I post to my blog as if they were Mastodon
posts.

Turns out, it is possible! Inspect my <head/> to see how 🤯

Just cracked a beer while saying "it's 5'oclock somewhere" before realizing that it was 5:11pm and the place was here. 🍻

There's a reason I exported my Twitter archive the day Elon took over. theverge.com/2023/8/20/23838823/twitter-x-deleted-pictures-links-2014-metadata-t-co-shortener

The iTunes revolution of selling individual songs for 99¢ was something I fought
against at the time, because I conceived of my favorite albums as complete,
integrated works. I worried decoupling the song from the album would optimize
the industry to pump out ever-more-saccharine pop hooks.

It's interesting now, looking back and seeing the thread connecting the 99¢ song
to infinitely-scrolling algorithmic video feeds as the logical endgame. Back
then, I could never understand why someone would want to buy a single song ala
carte, and today I can't get my head around the appeal of TikTok or Instagram
Reels. 🤷‍♂️

The iPad's relative uselessness for getting real work done is probably one reason I get so much value out of it. When I'm on my iPad, there's not much I can do but think through, sketch out, and plan my work—whether that's with the Pencil in Notes or organizing my to-do items in Things.

I rarely do these things as diligently on my Mac, because it's so much easier to stick my head in the digital sand and just bury my head in whatever work is right in front of me.

Not exactly a ringing endorsement of iPad, but it is genuinely useful.