Chris Hannah

Moss and Fog:

Houseplants garner a lot of love these days, especially when more people work from home, and put extra effort into making their homes look beautiful. Houseplants can now be ordered online, arriving in curated kits to give your home just the look you’d likeBut some people get really into houseplants, spending big money for that especially rare specimen.This rare white variegated Rhaphidophora Tetrasperma sold in New Zealand on a bidding site for $19,297, making it the most expensive known sale for a houseplant.

As much as I like plants (there’s 17 currently in my office), I’m pretty sure this is a tad too much.

I’ve been experimenting with email again over the past week. This time it was trying out the new email app, Big Mail.

I won’t do a full product review, but I just wanted to write about my own experience with the app, where it excelled, and also where it also fell behind.

So, if you haven’t heard about Big Mail, the shortest description that I can give is that it tries to combine a great reading experience, with a screening tool similar to Hey, and the automatic sorting features of SaneBox, into a universal mail app.

It sounds like an incredible app in theory. But I’ll be upfront, in its current state, Big Mail is not the mail app for me. Let me explain.

First things first, I really like the design of Big Mail, on all platforms. And I totally get the idea of having a place for discovering new emails, separate places for newsletters, purchases, etc. and an email screener is handy to block unwanted email.

I currently pay for SaneBox (which I disabled during this experiment), so I definitely think I’m in the target audience for this app. But I’ve felt that the sorting in Big Mail isn’t that proactive and that I’ve had to assign categories to emails as they come into my inbox. This organisation is supposed to be “intelligent” and “automatic”, and maybe it is working as intended, or possibly it requires me to kick off some base data for the AI to kick in? Either way, it feels like I’m doing way too much manual sorting for it to be useful. SaneBox has possibly affected me in this regard because it’s worked so well for me, but it just doesn’t feel like it’s doing enough.

As for the reading experience, I’ve found that to be pretty good. I especially like the little touches such as the little accent colours and format when reading newsletters. There’s a decent amount of things you can do to an email, there are things like reply later, sort into a category, always ignore, starring an email, and the expected ones that all other clients support.

The major issues I have with Big Mail, except for the automatic sorting, is actually what I feel should be classified as basic functionality that you would expect in all email clients.

Here’s a list of some of those features that I expect in all email clients:

• Ability to perform actions on multiple emails at once.
• Keyboard shortcuts for basic email actions: delete, reply, forward, etc.
• Access to your folders.
• Swipe actions to quickly perform basic actions.
• Drag and drop functionality to move emails into categories/folders.

The problem is, none of those features are available in Big Mail.

As much as some parts of the app I like and enjoy using, if the foundations aren’t there, then I simply can’t use it. So, I’m going back to Apple Mail on all of my devices for now.

I’ve still got hope that Big Mail can turn into a great product, and they seem to be listening to feedback already (It launched without an archive feature for one). So hopefully I can come back to it in the future and give it another go because there’s definitely potential.

The last few updates to Text Case have mainly been bug fixes and refinements, but in this update, there are 15 new formats!

These formats fall into three categories - Hashing, JSON, and Counts.

Hashing

• MD2
• MD4
• MD5
• SHA1
• SHA224
• SHA256
• SHA384
• SHA512

JSON

• Format JSON
• Minify JSON

Counts

• Count Characters
• Count Characters (Excluding Whitespace)
• Count Words
• Count Lines
• Count Lines (Excluding Blank Lines)

The formats list has also ben organised into groups, so finding the right format should also be easier.

Just to confirm, these new formats, along with every other format in Text Case are accessible from inside the app, the Shortcuts app, via the Share Extension, and also via Services on the Mac.

Download

This update is available now for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS!

Something that has intrigued me for most of my life is how people react to what is perceived to some as imperfections. I have multiple reasons why I think it's an odd situation, but mainly as these differences are usually so benign and minuscule. Nevertheless, they can cause huge amounts of discrimination and even anxiety.

The entertainment we watch often includes aliens from other worlds and other strange creatures, sometimes human-like. We accept the blue skin of the Na'vi in Avatar, the various creatures in Doctor Who, and even a talking Racoon in the MCU. But this level of acceptance doesn't always exist in the real world.

For example, I have freckles over most of my body. I've never found this to be a bad thing myself, and I think it's actually pretty cool that I have effectively patterned skin. But I do know that some people will wear makeup to try and hide them. Not even because they don't like the look of them, but sometimes it's the pressure of society and the opinions of peers that persuade people to not "be weird". And when you're young, being weird usually just means not copying everyone else.

Weirdly, a common thing nowadays is to draw on freckles as if it's a fashion statement. But that's a whole other thing.

So while having freckles isn't a massive deal, as in it doesn't tend to incite violence in people. However, it's an example of something that sets people apart, and while obviously minor, it's another thing that our society can pressure people into trying to hide.

There are many more of these perceived imperfections, and they come in all shapes and sizes. There's having a beauty spot, different skin colour, hair colour, hair type, an accent, foreign language. The list goes on.

We seem to be very judgemental creatures, and maybe that's our tribalism coming out, or it's a byproduct of the fight or flight response where we need to judge and react quickly. But I'm not sure if I can totally believe that in 2021, they're more likely to be handy excuses.

It's incredible to think of the number of species on our planet and how we seem to accept their existence relatively well, but members of our own species can be seen as enemies because of their physical characteristics.

What's worse is that I think our current society, mixed with the media and so-called "influencers", make the problem of discrimination much worse. Because I think nowadays we've all been conditioned to expect judgment. So we don't write what we believe on the internet, put filters over our faces, and change our fashion to suit what's popular. And when we mask even the slightest of differences, we're telling ourselves that whatever difference that was, it's not normal. And I think it's this perception of "normal" that causes most of the problems.

If you really think about it, normal doesn't exist. Instead, we are all simply humans with our peculiarities, interests, perspectives, and priorities.

A common thing I see on social media are people asking for certain behaviours or characteristics to be "normalised". But again, I think this stems from the concept of normality. And how we can only truly be ourselves if we can do that within the confines of society's current definition of what normal is.

I personally think that the only thing that needs to be normalised is the fact that we all have the ability to be wildly different to one another in nearly all aspects. And while our differences can sometimes be interesting, we need to remember that it's not up to any one of us to be the bearer of acceptance for others. Nor should we require the approval of others for our own lives.

Depending on the community you live in, the people you interact with, and society at any point in time, it may be harder to be yourself. And that's something that I hope changes in the future. Not by everyone having an encyclopedia of the differences between us, and then actively accept others. Instead, people being accepting by default. Because we realise that whatever our physical characteristics, quirks, priorities, or beliefs that we have, aren't necessarily the standard that everyone else should be held to.

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Sorry if this is seems like a bit of a rant, or too negative. It's just something I've been thinking about for a long time, wanted to get off my chest, and to see if it was anything that resonated with people.

In the new (beta) versions of iOS, iPadOS, and macOS, a redesigned version of Safari includes a new combined address bar and tab bar. Which although, isn’t winning over everyone, it allows for a slight bit of customisation. Your website can provide a colour that will act as a background/tint colour for the new tab bar.

This colour is defined in the theme-color meta tag, and the media attribute can be used to provide different colours for Light and Dark appearances.

Here is an example of what I currently have set up for this website to provide the pink accent colour that’s used for links as the theme colour:

<meta name="theme-color"
      content="rgb(233, 0, 94)"
      media="(prefers-color-scheme: light)">
<meta name="theme-color"
      content="rgb(255, 0, 103)"
      media="(prefers-color-scheme: dark)">

And here is what it looks like:

I’m not totally in favour of the new Safari design myself, but I’m definitely a fan of added customisation.

You can read more about the other changes in the Safari 15 release notes.

A truly great piece on the current state of social media, the internet in general, and what behaviour it encourages.

As you may have seen on Twitter, over the past few days I’ve been creating various wallpapers. I had a goal of coming up with 10, and I’ve finally hit that goal, so it’s about time I made them available.

I’m making these available as a paid offering (my first on the blog I think) which you can purchase via Gumroad. The price is £3, which equates to roughly just over $4.

Here’s a preview of what each wallpaper looks like:

CMYK

Coloured Glass

Ice Cream

Pink Hills

Sunset

Letters

Mint Stripes

Worms

Triangles

Pastels

All of these images are squares, and the intention behind that is to allow you to choose your own crop and positioning when setting them as your wallpaper. Each image comes in two sizes - 6,000 x 6,000 pixels, and also 12,000 x 12,000 pixels, because why not.

My intention with these was to create a collection of wallpapers with various styles and colour schemes. So I hope there’s at least a few in there for everybody.

Buy 10 Colourful Wallpapers on Gumroad.

Twitter have officially announced Twitter Blue, their first subscription, which will give users access to a few extra features and perks. It has been rumoured for a while, so it’s not exactly surprising. But it’s still good to see it officially. It’s only available in Australia and Canada now, but at least we can get a preview of what will be included.

As for features, there are three that will initially be part of the new paid subscription - bookmark folders, an undo tweet option, and a specialised reader mode for threads.

Bookmark Folders are pretty easy to get your head around, it’s just a way to organise bookmarked tweets. Although I think this should be available for all users.

The Undo Tweet feature is a bit interesting. Because it may seem like it’s just another way to delete a tweet, but instead, it’s probably better to think of the feature as a customisable tweet delay. Matt Birchler had this idea not long ago, and his reasoning was that a delay could give you time to rethink whether you really wanted to tweet something. This won’t allow for a huge amount of consideration, as the maximum delay will be 30 seconds. But you’ll definitely be able to quickly stop a tweet from being posted that may contain a wrong link, image, or spelling mistake. I think this could be quite useful.

As for the Reader Mode, this is a way to condense threads into a single view so you can read them much more seamlessly. Rather then manually scrolling through tweets, and getting replies from other people in the way.

There are a few extra perks for subscribers, and they are custom app icons, colour theme options, and dedicated customer support. I haven’t seen any of the app icons or themes, but I’m definitely up for some customisation.

Twitter only announced the pricing for Australia and Canada, with them being $4.49 AUD and $3.49 CAD. But with the way In-App purchases work, you can see what the app offers from the App Store page. And from that, I can tell that Twitter Blue will be £2.49 a month in the UK. Which I don’t think is that bad, and I’m 99% sure I’ll be signing up whenever it’s available.

I've never really been that interested in freestyle skateboarding, but Andy Anderson is becoming one of my favourite skaters. I think I'll always prefer street skateboarding, but Andy certainly makes it enjoyable to watch. Especially when you add in his creativity, style, and attitude towards skateboarding and life in general.

This film, "SEEN HIM", presented by Powell-Peralta, is 25 minutes long. And while that may seem a bit long, considering it's a skateboard movie with one skater, it's a lot more than just a skate part.

I've been trying out a new delivery tracking app recently called Parcel, and it's been absolutely fantastic to use. And while it's a lot simpler than the popular Deliveries app, it does a few things that for me, make it a much better choice.

One main annoyance I had with Deliveries, was that Royal Mail (the main postal service in the UK) deliveries weren't supported properly. You could add them, but it would just redirect you to the web if you wanted to actually view the details. Fortunately, Parcel supports Royal Mail deliveries like any other, which makes it instantly better.

That's not it though as Parcel can also automatically track Amazon orders, which is incredibly useful. And while it's not automatic, there's also support for Apple Store orders, just use the order number and Parcel can fetch all the details.

So while it may not be the most feature packed app, or have the most custom design, I think it's fantastic.

If you want to try it out, then Parcel is free on the App Store, and if you want to track more than three deliveries at once and also have push notifications, then the premium subscription is just £2.99 a year.