As you may have seen from my update on my micro blog and on social media, I've just came back from a week long trip to Gran Canaria. While I was there, I made full use of the beautiful scenery and landscapes, and took a ton of photos.

I've just finished refining a bunch of them, and I'm left with 14 photos that I'm really happy with.

Note: I took a load more photos at the coast on the last day during sunset. I'm going to edit these separately, as I think they could serve as a great wallpaper pack. But whatever happens with them, I'll post about it here.

All photos were taken on an iPhone 15 Pro Max.

Walking to the terminal. Gatwick Airport. | Full Size

Playa Taurito Beach | Full Size

Walking around Mogán. | Full Size

Lighthouse near Puerto Rico beach. | Full Size

Boats near Puerto Rico beach. | Full Size

Basket structure exposing the view from Tejeda village.| Full Size

A flowery scene in Tejeda with the views of the valleys and mountains. | Full Size

Tejeda village. | Full Size

A small village in the mountains. | Full Size

Another view of the mountains from Tejeda. | Full Size

One of many rock formations at sunset. | Full Size

Cascading waterfalls in Firgas. | Full Size

Local church in Firgas. | Full Size

Shopping centre in Las Palmas. | Full Size

Jose M. Gilgado talking about finished software:

Finished software is software that’s not expected to change, and that’s a feature! You can rely on it to do some real work.

Once you get used to the software, once the software works for you, you don’t need to learn anything new; the interface will exactly be the same, and all your files will stay relevant. No migrations, no new payments, no new changes.

This kind of software can be created intentionally, with a compromise from the creators that they won’t bother you with things you don’t need, and only the absolutely necessary will change, like minor updates to make it compatible with new operating systems.

I like the idea of software being finished. Especially for utility and productivity tools. And even more so for tools that people rely on. For that kind of software, I like it when things work, and stay working.

This is also something I've partially thought about my two current apps Text Case and Text Shot. Text Case is obviously a lot older, and has matured through a few big overhauls. But as of now, I'm not looking for any big new feature additions, or any redesigns. I may add more formats into the existing structure, but I think that is it.

As for Text Shot, that app is rather new. And it provides a single function, to transform text quotes into styled images. It has some basic support for colours, fonts, and even allows for Markdown formatting. But the core of the app is finished. And I think I'd like to keep it rather minimal rather than add a bunch of short-lived features.

There seems to be a small about of controversy with Apple's recent Scary Fast event, since they've showed everyone how it was all shot using an iPhone.

The criticism seems to be along the lines of "Yeah, you used the iPhone, but you also used a ton of other camera tools and accessories.".

In my mind, this misses the point of the #shotoniphone idea. To me, shot on iPhone means that the entire filming process used an iPhone in place of where a real camera used to be.

To think that using an iPhone to film a video suddenly mean a camera dolly isn't needed, or that an iPhone torch can replace flood lights, is pretty stupid.

If an entire video can be made on an iPhone without any extra accessories at all, then that's great. But if an iPhone can slot into a big-money filming process, replacing a probably hugely expensive camera, then I think that's still something worth shouting about.

I'm on holiday in Gran Canaria this week, and whilst I was sitting on a sun lounger, I decided that I'd add a few more formats to the Text Case CLI tool.

Coming in the latest release (version 1.4), are 5 more formats which are all different counts:

• countCharacters -Count number of characters.
• countCharactersExclWhitespace - Count number of characters, excluding any whitespace characters.
• countWords - Count number of words.
• countLines - Count number of lines.
• countLinesExclBlanks - Count number of lines, excluding any blank lines.

That now means Text Case CLI has 49 different formats.

You can find installation instructions on the Text Case CLI GitHub repo.

While you're there, I'd encourage you to show any appreciation with a star or a watch, since I'd like to eventually move this tool to an official Homebrew cask. And one of the requirements of that is that the repo must be notable as in over 30 forks, 30 watchers, and 75 stars.

If you haven't heard of Matter, it's a pretty powerful reading tool, that can serve as a basic read-it-later service, or or more complex reading system.

While I don't use it fully, I've found one feature to be very useful for when I want to read long-form posts, but while I'm doing something like playing a game or doing chores. I'm sure it has a fancy name, but it's the text-to-voice feature.

It's super easy to use, just send over an article to reader (I tend to use the Safari extension), and then inside reader, you can just press the play button to have it start reading the post to you.

Maybe in the future I'll use Matter for actually reading posts. But right now, it's meaning that I can read a lot more blog posts than before, and I can sit and play World of Warcraft at the same time.

Numeric Citizen, recently wrote about slow but delightful conversations via email:

One advantage of email is that it allows for more thoughtful and deliberate communication. Unlike instant messaging or phone calls, where responses are often quick and on the spot, email will enable individuals to take their time to compose well-thought-out messages. Email communication allows for more thoughtful and well-considered responses thanks to its asynchronous nature. Unlike synchronous forms of communication such as phone calls or instant messaging, where there is an expectation of immediate responses, email allows individuals to carefully craft their messages and review and revise them before sending them. This contributes to clearer and more accurate communication, as people can take their time to gather information and reflect on their thoughts before replying.

I've always thought of email in its purest form being akin to writing a letter. There's an expectation that comes with it, that you won't necessarily receive a reply very quickly after writing to someone. And this changes the dynamic and the attitude towards how emails (and letters) are written.

However, as much as I enjoy the process of writing and reading emails. My realistic experience of email is that my inbox is usually a mess. Various order confirmations, random deals or sales from annoying brands/stores, newsletters that I've forgotten to unsubscribe from, and random ones like "you've just signed in via a new device" or "we've updated our terms and conditions".

I've been thinking of a solution, and the only thing I've come up with is to have a completely separate email address for communicating with people. And to try as hard as possible to keep spam away, newsletters, account updates, etc.

So, for now, I've created a new email address just for that purpose, chris@chrishannah.me. At some point, I'll add this a "reply via email" button to my posts, but for now, it can sit here.

One thing I would like to say about that email address is that I will be very stringent on spam emails. It's for conversations between people only. Let's see how it goes.

Having a menu bar full of apps is a common problem on macOS, and for a while, the agreed upon solution was Bartender. However, the problem with Bartender is that it's grown quite substantially over the years. So if you just want to a quick way to clean up your menu bar, it's probably not the most suitable product anymore.

Thanks, to Superbits (and ldstephens for the tip), there's a new app that addresses the problem in the most minimalist way possible, Hidden Bar.

It's a totally free app. And all it does, is add a separator icon to your menu bar, which you can place to the right of the icons you want to hide. And then another icon that you can use to toggle the visibility of those extra icons.

There's also an auto-hide preference, so after expanding, they will automatically hide after a specified number of seconds.

It's literally a perfect solution for a very common problem. And it doesn't come with any kind of bloat at all.

I love these kind of apps.

One of the biggest problems that I have with my blog, is that I spend too effort making it look nice.

Not that it takes my time away from writing, or that it's not important. I definitely appreciate the effort I take with the design of my blog.

The problem is, I appreciate it a bit too much.

My blog currently has around 336k words across 1k or so posts. So I'd say there's a fair bit of writing here.

But when I spend too much time refining the design of the blog, it makes me want to only publish the most elegant and perfect essays. It starts to feel like a brand new notebook where you try to write as neatly as possible, never making a mistake, etc.

That’s why at times I’ve written posts along the lines of “This is how I want to write for my blog” before. I guess it's some kind of pre-emptive warning to try and set the readers expectations. But I think it was more for my benefit than for anyone reading.

At the same time, I don't want to belittle that type of blog post. Because I think it has its use. While, it may not serve any use on its own, it gets the ball rolling. Whatever friction was there before has been slightly reduced.

Maybe that's why bloggers always talk about writing regularly and being consistent. For me, it seems that biggest factor that helps me write for my blog is momentum.

My blog isn't a perfect Moleskine notebook. It's a old and battered collection of notes, photos, longer pieces of writing, and all sorts of scribbles and mistakes. And sometimes I need to remember that.

I've been using Sonoma now for just a few days now, but there are a few things that I'm already impressed by.

Wallpapers

The first being the new animated wallpapers, and how they transition from the Lock Screen to the desktop. It's such an Apple feature, which I don't feel like we've had for a while. The Lock Screen having an animated wallpaper would be great on it's own, but the fact that it slows down, and then settles on a frame is 10x better.

(I've just been going between the various Scotland options so far.)

Web Apps in the Dock

Then I've got to mention having web apps in the Dock. I've already got 2 configured on my personal machine, Fosstodon, and Chess.com. And I've also set a few up on my work machine, for common web apps that I use, like, for example, our document management tool. Sometimes websites don't have apps, and sometimes the website is just better than the app, so I think I'm going to end up using these a lot.

Another bonus for this feature, is that if you view a website that you have added to your Dock, in Safari, it will prompt you to open it in the app instead.

Desktop Widgets

Finally, there's Desktop Widgets. These are so much more useful than having it hidden away in a menu.

I've currently got just Weather, Calendar, and NetNewsWire widgets at the moment. I'm not sure if I'll ever have a ton, but just having these few details in a place where I'll see them often will be very useful.

These aren't exactly groundbreaking features. But I don't particularly want the Mac to keep changing. So these little touches go a long way for me.

After owning an iPhone 13 Pro for two years, I received my new iPhone 15 Pro Max in the post earlier today. And I already want to share some of my very early impressions. Primarily because I'm very glad I upgraded to this model, and it's (obviously?) a very good upgrade from the 13 Pro.

Design

Starting with the actual design of the device, it's not too much different from recent models. I don't personally care what material is used, but I'm definitely a fan of the finish. And while the edges of the 13 didn't cause me any trouble, I am finding myself appreciating the slightly softer edges of the 15.

In both the 13 Pro and my new 15 Pro Max, I've chosen the colour closest to black. The 15 seems slightly darker in appearance, which I appreciate. My favourite colour so far was the black iPhone 5, but I think this is pretty close.

Action Button

I haven't set this up properly yet. Although I do envisage settling on having it launch either the standard Camera app or possibly Halide.

I can't say I have particularly strong opinions about it at the moment, but I think I'd prefer if the action was immediate, rather than requiring a long-press. Although, it would be better if you could configure different actions for a long-press or a typical button press.

USB C

Most of the time I've charged my 13 Pro via a MagSafe charger on my bedside table. However, I do have a Lightning cable in my work bag that I use occasionally, and I also prefer to take a cable when on trips. So USB C won't exactly make a huge difference to me. But it will certainly be handy to be able to have one cable for practically all of my devices.

Camera

I haven't used this too much yet. But I did play around with Portrait mode, and so far I've been very happy with the results. The adjustable aperture and focus point both work well, and while I don't know how often I will use them, they're good additions. I think all three cameras are different to my 13 Pro, so while I've been initially impressed, I want to spend more time with it to have any real opinions.

Speakers

I don't know if the speakers in my 13 Pro had deteriorated, or if an improvement came in last years or this years models. But the speakers seem much better. They're certainly louder than my iPhone 13 Pro, and they seem to also be clearer.

Dynamic Island

I want to separate my feelings on the Dynamic Island into two parts.

Firstly, it's clearly a bad thing to have a cutout in a display. It means that software either has to work around it, or completely disregard that area of the screen.

On the other hand, I do like what they did with the cutout. I like having quickly glanceable information there, like timers, food delivery times, and also the currently playing music. And I also like having the ability to tap it and quickly navigate to whatever is appearing. For example, tapping the now playing "bar" (not sure what this is called) to open the Music app is handy.

However, if I was given the option, I'd rather the cutout didn't exist at all.

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My opinions on the 15 Pro Max will no doubt change as I use it. But as for right now, this is how I feel. I may write about it here again, or if not, I'll probably just post about it on Mastodon.