In general, I have to say that the tech on this year’s iPhones seem pretty good! But I’m a little bummed out by the fact that it seems like they’ve given up on making them look nice. Are they just thinking, “People will throw these in cases anyway — who cares?"1 ? Previous iterations of Apple have also missed the balance between design and functionality — but in the other direction. And let me say that I do prefer them not putting design over everything! But do you remember posts ...| havn.blog
And a Dream of Opening a Store I just lovegood stuff. And I especially love the best1 version of completely ordinary things. (Today I’m talking about clothes — but this could be about most goods.) The thing is, there are things that are luxuries, and made from luxury brands. But while these things are better than your ordinary wares, they’re not honest. Especially in women’s apparel, it seems like you often have choices like the following: A $10 T-shirt, that’s actually a $10 T-shir...| Havn
*Taps the Sign (Again) Today I saw this video, that has a premise I really like: A tier list of different music streaming services, mostly based on ethics. However, this reinvigorated my annoyance with the over-reliance on the payment per stream metric. Check out my grand idea for music streaming here. And also check out what I've written about streaming payment previously here. The most straightforward reason for why this metric is useless is that that’s simply not how the deals with the m...| Havn
Modern Retro Gaming Masterpiece Imagine if someone, especially someone who likes retro gaming, told you: «What’s the NES? I’ve never heard of it, or played any of the games.» And then imagine you could tell them they could buy the 50 best games for just €25. What a treat they’d be in store for! Dusting off old classics, and exploring a treasure trove of retro gaming they haven’t seen before… Cue UFO 50 If you told me about this game/project, available for Steam1 and Switch, I wo...| Havn
On the side, I do a bit of pedalboard building. And finally, I’m done with my own board — so I wanted to present it here! I’ll also go into all the pedals and why I chose them. Board and I/O The board itself is the smallest size made by Temple Audio. On the right side of the board, I can plug in power for all the pedals and Input A and B. I play with two basses live: My 1961 Fender P-Bass and Fender Japan Fretless Jazz Bass — and having them both plugged in is nice. The power supply i...| havn.blog
And Other Major Life Changes The last few months have been pretty wild… In April, my wife and I moved out of our tiny Oslo flat (41 m²) into her childhood home. This is a large (for us) 290 m² house in a smaller town. On the first night in the new house, with things pretty up in the air, our first baby decided he wanted to be born 3.5 weeks ahead of schedule. He’s a lovely guy! But it’s fair to say moving, renovating, selling a flat, and taking care of a bundle like that, is pretty in...| havn.blog
One of my favourite apps to use, is Bike Outliner by Jesse Grosjean/Hogbay Software. It’s simply delightful through-and-through. He’s hard at work on a really promising 2.0, and I wanted to play with Apple’s new Icon Composer. So I wanted to see if I could contribute and adapt Bike’s icon to the new style. The original/current icon.Not optimal The original Bike icon (which I don’t love as much as the app itself) isn’t optimal for this style. If you look at Apple’s documentation,...| Havn
When Blizzard Was the Best in the Business Growing up, I played a lot of the original StarCraft. (Even more than Broodwar.) So I was obviously hyped when StarCraft 2 launched 12 years later, in 2010. This was back when Blizzard Entertainment only made great games (even though I’ve never been into Word of Warcraft), and hadn’t discovered microtransactions and undercooked remasters. I both played through the campaign and was mediocre on the ranked ladder,1 and it was great! Even though the ...| Havn
Episode 137 Is the Perfect Place to Get Into the Most Charming Tech Podcast Some reasons why Hemispheric Views is one of my favourite tech podcasts: Three sympathetic hosts, with great chemistry. Some Australian perspective in my life. The goal of the episodes being “a tight 45” (minutes). Great bits and running jokes. (For instance, their member program is called One Prime Plus. 😁) I can recommend last week’s episode, 137: I Had a Pi in the Drawer, as a good place to start! It’s b...| Havn
The CEO of The Browser Company, the company behind the Arc browser, recently posted a lengthy Reddit post. He explained why they’ve abandoned Arc, and discussed a bit about their plans going forward. They’ve made a huge pivot to an upcoming AI browser they’re calling Dia. But I just wanted to comment on this, very stupid, approach, from the portion about what makes an “AI browser” different: 1. Webpages won’t be the primary interface anymore. Traditional browsers were built to loa...| Havn
One Simple Rule I know that creating laws is very hard — especially at a global scale.1 And figuring out what to do about the rise of AI is the same. But I have an idea about where I’d start, that I would love to spitball. My opinion regarding generative AI is currently something like this: It’s not as useful and amazing as the salesmen claim it is. And overestimating it has its dangers. At the same time, it also does have plenty of very useful use-cases — and more to come. However, i...| Havn
I use several Apple devices. This is partly because I like them, and partly because I think they’re more worthy of my support than (for instance) Microsoft and Google. However, Apple is doing their best to invalidate that second point. I’d also love to be able to support cool companies, like Framework and Fairphone. So, I want to examine: How locked-in would I rate myself? Starting with the iPhone. And I’m not just talking about being locked-in for nefarious reasons. I’m also talking ...| Havn
Just a Really Cool Woman In this instalment of Quick Remmondations, I’m going to recommend a person in general! While listening to the last few episodes of one of my favourite tech podcasts, Comfort Zone, a thought has been growing in me: “I think Niléane might be one of my favourite people online!” (I do like both Matt and Chris as well, to be clear. 🫶🏻) She’s French-Réunionnese – and in addition to the podcast, she, among other things, writes for MacStories, creates a grea...| Havn
A Companion to My Favourite Mac Launcher Raycast 🖇️ is one of my favourite parts about using a Mac. It’s a great launcher, that I also use for snippets, window management, searching, setting a bunch of hotkeys (like for shortcuts), and more. It’s also my main window to AI tools, and the only AI subscription I have. I’m working on a full post on how I use Raycast – but now I just wanted to share that the iOS version is out. Obviously, very limited (thanks Apple) Most of what Rayca...| Havn
You Know, Those Who Need USB-A on the Other End I just listened to the latest episode of the Upgrade podcast. It was Myke Hurley’s first episode after his parental leave – and as someone who got my first child less than a week ago, the episode obviously resonated with me. I intend to write a bit about some baby tech – but here I just wanted to throw out a quick recommendation for an annoyance Myke brought up. (Click here to jump straight to the solution!) USB-C is great – but also a l...| Havn
Not More Dumb There are numerous reviews of the new Light Phone III going around – and this has invigorated discussions about having a dumber phone. There are also Android e-ink devices going around, with 🖇️ or without 🖇️ a SIM slot, which are cool. A friend of mine is considering how far he can get with the combination of an Apple Watch with a SIM and a Boox Palma. 👌🏻 I’m 100% in the category of too dependent on my phone. However, I don’t think having a dumber phone is ...| Havn
I first wrote about this Mac and its setup here — and then I have an update here. However, quite quickly, I learned that the 2 TB of storage I had purchased wasn’t enough. The main culprit is Time Machine — and while I could probably do something to minimise the usage, backing up my wife’s MacBook Air (512 GB) and my MacBook Pro (512 GB) currently takes up about 1.1 TB. I was considering upgrading the internal storage on the Mac, as more and more options for this gets released. Howeve...| Havn
A friend of mine, Simen (who has a nice, Norwegian blog), asked me about Micro.blog. That’s where this blog is hosted, and is also a social medium of sorts. His questions First, I want to give quick answers to the questions he had – and then go into more detail on how I’ve set things up. 1) “Which tier do you use, and why?" Micro.blog has several tiers: When I signed up, they only had the $5/month and $10/month plans. And I don’t quite remember what made me require the Premium plan ...| Havn
Drifting Anime, That Drips With Style I’m not the biggest car-guy, even though I do enjoy a bit of car-YouTube from time to time.1But I just love the anime Initial D. The cars they drive remind me of my first real racing game: Gran Turismo on the first Playstation. And it has cemented owning a car with pop-up headlights on my bucket list. The show has lots of intense racing scenes, backed up by an insane eurobeat soundtrack. Trust me – it works. Here’s the basic setting: Takumi Fujiwara...| Havn
And a Guide to Pronunciation of My Name One of my favourite tech podcasts, is Comfort Zone. It’s hosted by Christopher Lawley, Niléane Dorffer, and Matt Birchler, and is simply a pretty chill time with neat people. Last week they asked for listener input, so I sent them a relevant blog post – and I got a little shoutout. ☺️ I’m thoroughly in the writing into the void phase of blogging. So every share, mention, and email really means a lot.1 My name(s) Matt made a valiant effort to ...| Havn
A Simple Story About iPhones and Perplexity A couple of mates and I have a little (private) Telegram group called The Nerd Garden (in Norwegian). And, among other things, we talk about technical equipment there. Recently, a friend asked for advice on buying a used iPhone. He said he was considering the 15 Pro vs. regular 16, and shared a link to Perplexity.1 Part of the answer he got there, was this table:| havn.blog
I Want Your Opinion! I like custom keyboards, and a couple of years ago, I made my own: It's a Laneware L-67 and Macro-1, with Less But Better keycaps. However, three things made this process harder/more expensive (at least at the time): I wanted a Mac layout, while most keyboards are made for Windows, I needed the ISO layout, while most keyboards has the ANSI layout, and the Norwegian layout is a subsection of ISO. ANSI vs. ISO. Enter: 3D printer This spring, I’m moving from a tiny flat (i...| havn.blog
Do you, like me, get warm and fuzzy feelings from this sound? My Heroes of Might and Magic journey started with HOMM 2 🖇️ – but I’ve probably spent the most time with HOMM 3 🖇️. I still play it from time-to-time, but I’m also always interested in modern takes on the formula. One I like, is Hero’s Hour 🖇️ (currently 55% off!). Here the world map portion is very similar to HOMM, while the combat is more of a free-flowing auto-battler.1 Hero's Hour is also good. But my fav...| havn.blog
Imagine talking to a medieval farmer, about the concept of excercise. Giving yourself “useless” physical strain, to improve your health? Let’s call this idea artifical physical excercise. That wouldn’t make any sense to someone who would get more than enough strain through just living their life. And while it will vary greatly, from person to person, how much artificial exercise is needed, everyone agrees that we need to look after our physical health in today’s society. When discus...| havn.blog
Not too long ago, I wrote some feedback to Iconfactory’s latest app, Tapestry. I just got some great feedback on that, from them, so I wanted to provide a response. Here’s what they wrote, on Mastodon: There’s a lot in your post. Thx for such thoughtful feedback, it’s appreciated. Some things like the ability to turn off the service name is coming. The thing to keep in mind is this: just because a particular part of the design doesn’t work for you, doesn’t mean it wasn’t designe...| havn.blog
Yesterday, I wrote about Iconfactory’s newest app, Tapestry. Today, I want to do a little review of another great app of theirs, Tot. “Your tiny text companion” Tot is a scratchpad app, for fleeting notes. It was inspired by Tyke, which explains the need for this well: I made Tyke because when I’m working I often need a little bit of scratch paper to jot something down. Sometimes it’s because I need to paste it someplace or other times it’s because I just want to clear the formatt...| havn.blog
The 1.0 of Iconfactory’s latest app, Tapestry, just landed. Like the new Reeder, it’s a “unified timeline app”, that collects feeds from many different sources, like RSS, Reddit, YouTube, Mastodon, and more. Some really like this idea (for instance for collecting Bluesky, Mastodon and Micro.blog in one place), while others don’t. I’m not yet sure where I stand. I backed the Tapestry kickstarter way-back-when, so I’ve been able to beta test it. I like a lot of the ideas – and t...| havn.blog
Am I insane? Time and time again, I’m hearing people say that they wouldn’t buy a new care without Apple CarPlay/Android Auto.1 (The after-show on the latest episode of Mac Power Users was the last example.) I also hear how stupid some companies are for not including these systems in their cars. And I just don’t get it. Or, to be honest: I think I know some reasons why my opinion seems to differ from most people’s. I'm intersted in feedback on this! I wrote this (quite warm) take whil...| havn.blog
En invitasjon (med noen reservasjoner) Trykk her for å hoppe rett til hvorfor jeg synes Telegram er bra. Eller trykk her for å hoppe rett til hvordan du kommer i gang (hvis du, forståelig nok, ikke gidder å lese en artikkel som blei alt for lang). Apper for å ringe og skrive meldinger med venner og familie, er noen av de viktigste. Men likevel bruker vi lite tid på vurdere hvilke vi bruker. Jeg har landa på at Telegram er et veldig godt alternativ! Jeg har hatt det som min meste brukte...| havn.blog
Jeg vet jeg ikke har vært snill (nok) i år. Men, sånn i til- felle, har jeg likevel skrevet en ønskeliste. (Den er lik som den i fjor.) Jeg ønsker meg fred på jord, og at alle barn (og voksne, for den slags skyld) får med seg niste hjemmefra. Jeg ønsker meg en ullgenser, som ikke klør, og noen flere bøker – så jeg får påfyll av ting jeg skammer meg over at jeg ikke gjør. Jeg ønsker meg flere kaffikopper, og å ha det gøy. Og jeg ønsker meg noen propper, med støydemping, so...| havn.blog
In the latest episode of AppStories, Brendon Bigley filled in for Federico Viticci. Among other things, they discussed the apps he used, and he said he had research (and some writing) in Obsidian, while using the neat little post-it app Tot for “task management”. By task management, he meant that he kept his daily tasks in a note, and just deleted it at the end of the day. This workflow made me want to recommend an app I like: NotePlan. And this post is a letter to him, about why I recomm...| havn.blog
No Matter Where You Live Let’s imagine a town, where the river is the main source of fresh water for everyone. Then, one day, someone builds a factory, near the middle of the river. A side effect of what the factory produces, is that it releases toxic waste into the river. The owners are aware of this – but they won’t do what’s needed to clean it up, as it would cut into their profits. How would you feel about buying the factory’s products? And would it matter if you lived upstream ...| havn.blog
On Anti-Trust, APIs, and Market Participation This week’s episode of the Upgrade podcast, was a good one as usual. I especially liked the discussions surrounding a potential pair of Apple smart glasses, and the way this connects to the regulatory scrutiny Apple is under currently. Jason refers to the fact that Federico Viticci loves the Meta Ray Bans, but still really wants Apple to create a pair. And he then asked what I deem to be a crucial question:1 Do we want smart glasses from Apple b...| havn.blog
Seeing as Apple just released a great monitor-less Mac, in the new M4 Mac Mini1, it makes sense that there’s more external display discussions surrounding Macs. After answering a couple of questions on Reddit here, I thought I’d try to write a guide. Because, if you don’t use a screen made by Apple, things get a bit complicated… To keep things simple, I'll be talking about regular widescreen aspect ratio, of 16:9 – but the principles applies to things like ultrawides as well. Also, ...| havn.blog
NAS, Media Server, and Light Gaming I spent the weekend setting up my little new Mac – and I have to say: it went pretty smoothly! Here’s what I did, and how you can do it yourself if you like. The hardware As Apple’s upgrade prices are certified insane, I went for the absolute base model. I did briefly consider getting 10 gig Ethernet – but I had to change too much about my setup to get any benefits from it. And I don’t really need that fast a connection for my use case. 16 GB of r...| havn.blog
This is a subtitle, made with h6 Lenke til norsk versjon Today, November 5th 2024, there’s something wrong with the performance on my blog – especially when it comes to Chromium browsers. To help me fix this, I’ve made this blog post, so I more easily can check the features of the design. So if you check out the site this week, the css might be a bit crazy. I admire sites like The Jolly Teapot, that are super minimalistic and fast. But it’s easier when you don’t have images, videos,...| havn.blog
For a while now, I’ve thought that I’ll most likely get a Mac mini when it gets refreshed. My intended use case is pretty specific — and not as my main computer: Connecting some external storage, and using it for backups, and as a media server. (Jellyfin, perhaps?) Maybe use it for some smart home stuff. And I’ll also connect it to my TV, via HDMI, for some light big-screen gaming. (Like UFO 50! But also things that I want to play with a controller that’ll run at least as well as on...| havn.blog
and Open Protocols and Standards I’m very much what you’d might call a software snob. Not only do I care about unnecessary things like how an app looks – I also care about how it feels. I’d also say that apps are an interest/hobby of mine, and I love testing new things. So I love open and portable stuff, so that I’m always able to use the software I prefer. Allow me to explain, with four examples: RSS, Email, Browsers, and Markdown. RSS My current RSS reader of choice, is Lire. It d...| havn.blog
There’s a lot of talk about Google Search these days — and how AI is affecting the search quality. Parts of the algorithm even leaked recently, showing that they’ve actively lied to the public. And the general discussions surrounding whether Google is getting worse, has been going on for way longer. But I’ve sidestepped this whole thing… A while ago, in my quest to use less stuff from the largest tech companies (and due to privacy concerns), I used DuckDuckGo for over a year. But wh...| havn.blog
