A microblog sharing my ramblings on various topics. Opinions written are my own and are not representative of the entities I work with.
Profile image created by Kabora Mackraid.
2023 has been an interesting year for me. I wanted to focus on maintaining the various gardens of my life, such as app development, physical health, and mental/social/emotional health. I feel that Iâve done a decent job overall, though some areas couldâve better improved.
The worlds of the Fediverse garden are many
Fedigardens has been a year-long experiment by now, discovering and trying out ideas to make a more humane social media experience. The first half of the year was strong, as I worked to add features such as a frugal mode, blocked servers list, and more. However, it had fallen on the wayside in the later half of 2023, as I took on a major effort to refactor the project such that I could test things more reliably with guaranteed states.
In and of itself, this isnât a big deal; I had a roadmap to move everything over to the new architecture, and it was going well. Despite this, I began to realize that my relationship with the Fediverse (and social media as a whole) began to deteriorate. Opening Mastodon up felt like a chore at times, and I often felt I was swimming in an ocean of negativity, far greater than I can reasonably handle and process. Being a part of the Fediverse isnât as fun as it used to be for me. The reality is that the world just sucks right now, and no Mastodon client can ever fix that, even if it tried.
I hope that I can continue to develop Fedigardens, but I think I need to better establish my relationship with the Fediverse and get some help with developing the app as it grows.
A fully indexed heart
While Fedigardens has been on the rocks, the development of Indexing Your Heart has been rock solid. In July, I took on an effort to refactor the game to use the Godot engine (again), using Miguel de Icazaâs SwiftGodot library. This later developed into a prototype that feels substantial compared to the last build in May. Iâm excited to keep developing the game thanks to the new direction Iâm taking with it.
Iâve mentioned a lot on this in a blog post on the projectâs website already, and I recommend reading it over there.
The other gardens
In other areas, I feel that I have lacked a little on my own health gardens. While I moved to Delaware, and I am staying with close friends and participating in more activities online, my emotional garden hasnât flourished as much as I hoped. As aforementioned, my relationship with the Fediverse hasnât helped, either. I hope tending to this garden will allow me to reap the rewards later, but it appears that Iâm in for the long haul.
My physical garden appears to be okay, even though Iâm not as active. Iâm still being cautious around COVID, wearing masks and getting booster shots when I can. Likewise, I have been walking a bit more thanks to countless trips to the grocery store and other places. I do feel that I can continue to improve on these fronts, but I appreciate that it hasnât gotten worse.
Overall, it seems this yearâs goals have been met to some degree, and I look forward to seeing what 2024 brings.
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I'm pleased to announce a brand-new build of Indexing Your Heart, which includes some improvements and other enhancements.
First, a lot of time went into improving the performance and memory usage of the game. Some of these improvements include preloading tile sets on startup, reducing memory leaks when transitioning between scenes, and improved state management. This should make the game feel faster while taking up less resources.
Next, there's a new way to move around the map when in puzzle mode: sprinting! Double-tap on a given location, and Chelsea will run to that spot more quickly. This will allow for faster travel in larger environments.
On top of that, you'll finally be able to see the real Chelsea for the first time! The game includes new sprites created by Kabora Mackraid, and they look absolutely fantastic. In fact, Chelsea's iconic hammer costume has now become the game's default icon! Special thanks to her for making this possible. đđť
This update is available in TestFlight for iPhone and iPad. If you arenât already part of the TestFlight program, head over to the prototype page (https://indexingyourhe.art/prototype) to become a part of the program.
Introducing Fedigardens, and why I'm not fond of Hyperspace Desktop.
The app space for the fediverse was sparse when I started working on the Hyperspace project back in 2019. Although there were a good handful of clients on mobile and a couple decent web interfaces, I felt none of them were fully suitable for college students to use. This was ostensibly a big problem for me, since I wanted to show what the fediverse had to offer to others. So, I decided to make one myself, and thus Hyperspace was born.
The year is now 2023, and many things have changed since then. Twitter is burning to a crisp, and the fediverse is growing more than ever. At the time of writing, there are twenty-two unique apps listed on Mastodon's apps page, and the Mastodon project finally has its own official app. The Hyperspace project has two apps in the incubator: Starlight, a Mastodon client with Twitter integration for Apple platforms, and Luna, the spiritual successor to Hyperspace Desktop. Although I'm unsure if these projects will see the light of day, it's exciting to see the fediverse expand and take center stage. With all of this said, there are some things I've been reflecting on and pondering for a while now, which I'm going to present to you today alongside my yearly goals post.
Hyperspace Desktop wasn't my finest hour.
Important Note: The Hyperspace project, including the desktop app, is maintained by a small team. However, I will be focusing on my particular contributions, hence why I use "I" instead of "we".
There: I said it, and there's not much you can do about it. I won't deny that I really enjoyed creating this app; I learned a lot about software development and teamwork through this project. For the goals I had set forth, the app did exactly what it was supposed to; in fact, I often see many posts under the #hyperspace tag talking about its simplicity, even if there are parts of the app that are out of date. I'm glad that I've helped make the fediverse less daunting.
Yet, simultaneously, I consider Hyperspace Desktop to be one of my weaker attempts in the world of app development. First (and foremost), Hyperspace Desktop is unashamedly an Electron app. Yes, I did the best I could to have native integrations where possible, but I could only go so far with essentially a limited Chrome browser. It flagrantly breaks the design guidelines of the operating systems it runs on, and accessibility and performance were thrown out the window. This obviously made for a terrible experience for those fronts alone.
Scale and maintainability became major issues with Hyperspace Desktop as well. Several Node dependencies needed to be updated constantly because of the various vulnerabilities found, and the code was simply harder to maintain with all its spaghetti code and object-oriented approach. It became a grueling chore to maintain the codebase, especially with newer advancements such as Apple Silicon coming around the corner at the time. It was no surprise that Desktop was discontinued in 2022 as I made plans with the current desktop team to create Luna to supersede it.
A flower blooms in the garden
Last year, I revisited the topic of social media and fediverse clients as I wanted to experiment with how to make social media apps more humane. This experiment became the basis of my capstone project at Goucher, and Codename Shout was created as a result. Codename Shout treated the Mastodon timeline like a mailbox and stripped out typical social media features, like statistics for favorites and reblogs. Likewise, it focused heavily on being discussion-oriented with its text-first approach. It also aimed to be lightweight and frugally performant by limiting network resources and preferring a native UI on iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
Unfortunately, I never got to the testing phases due to some other hurdles; however, Codename Shout did get me to rethink social media and how we interact with it. Moreover, it rekindled my interest in the fediverse and creating a decent client.
A few weeks ago, I rummaged through the source code for that old project and started refactoring the code, tweaking it to take advantage of iOS 16's new APIs for SwiftUI. These tweaks included customizable toolbars, improved navigation, and proper multiple window support. I also stripped the macOS support because I felt the Mac version wasn't as polished as I'd like, and I was already using my own personal fork of the Mastonaut app, anyway.
Sooner than later, I realized I had a decent, email-styled Mastodon app that I'd want to use on my iPad and iPhone. Not only that, I realized that others might want a similar experience, where they can contribute to a conversation and then walk away just as easily, free from social media engagement traps. So, I spent some extra time preparing the app for general use and decided to make it available on TestFlight. That app became Fedigardens, the simplified, discussion-oriented Mastodon app for iPhone and iPad.
This is Fedigardens.
Fedigardens is all that I imagined Codename Shout to be and more. I've taken the lessons I've learned from Hyperspace Desktop and tried to create an experimental app that takes the fediverse in a different direction. Fedigardens is still in its infancy, however, and is by no means a finished product. I hope to continue working on it and making it suitable for general use in the coming months while doing my day job and working on Indexing Your Heart.
I recognize that most people might not be interested in how Fedigardens approaches Mastodon, and that's fine. They are more than welcome to use more typical apps such as Ivory, Toot!, and the official Mastodon app. But, for those that want to join me in this experimental journey, you can head over to https://fedigardens.app to get into the TestFlight program.
I'm not sure what's going to happen with Starlight and Luna; the future for those projects is unclear, and we haven't done much since May. I wouldn't be surprised if Hyperspace rides off into the sunset this year. Regardless, there are new contenders that can follow in Hyperspace's footsteps, and anyone is more than welcome to make a fork of the original Desktop app. You might need to make a few adjustments, though.
In any case, I'm excited to keep playing around with and continuing the Fedigardesn experiment. I hope you join me as I try out different ideas to change how we engage in discussion on Mastodon in a more humane way.
When I started writing my goals out for 2022, I had thought it would've been my "Snow Leopard" year, where I focus more on refinement and general improvement rather than big, ambitious (but realistic) goals:
2022 is going to be eventful for me for various reasons: graduating and finding a place for myself, for one. I donât want to be worrying on trying new things in the tech space and push myself too hard. Rather, I want to spend this year refining what I know and making even better products than before. I want to take time to master SwiftUI, SpriteKit, Godot, C#, etc., to make more performant, solid products. I want to have fun with the work Iâm doing and make it the best I can be.
It is now the end of the year, and I have to say that this did fortunately come true. Besides graduation and getting a job as an iOS developer, I spent a lot of this year refining my current skills with a multitude of projects. This allowed me to accomplish a fair amount, and I'm pretty happy with that.
First, I started some serious work for my upcoming game, Indexing Your Heart. I was unsure if the project would last for various reasons, but I was able to get out of my creative block and create a prototype for iPhone, iPad and Mac. I've never been more excited, as this game is more ambitious than Unscripted.
After spending four years at Goucher College, I have finally graduated and continued to refine my software development career by becoming a full-time iOS developer. It's no secret to anyone that I really enjoy creating apps for Apple's platforms over the years, despite the challenges such as App Store restrictions and API limitations. Now, I get to continue to foster that love and excitement as I take it on, both personally and professionally.
I'm looking forward to how 2023 plays out in the future, and I hope that things continue to look up from here.
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This is one of those few designs that I could not implement technically in Hyperspace, yet it turned out to be better that way because of the intentional design to click to load more.
Lack of infinite scrolling (or at least off by default) is my main design strategy for new apps going forward.
Tip: the current interface is disturbing and not aesthetically pleasing. You should try to make it easier for a better UX and UI. So I've created two different templates using your old layouts, which are definetly better than the new one.
Hello, @sonocloe!
Let us first say that we really appreciate your feedback and the work you have put in hereâit's fantastic! Only we're afraid we have already tried to put everything on the same line, and it's not possible considering the number of buttons we have to support. We also have to support smaller screens and different languages: for example, the translation of the "notes" label ("note" here in Italian) can be longer than 5 characters.
The share button removed in these screenshots is quite useful for sharing your own posts or a post you liked, and there is also an optional "queue" button that is not shown here.
It's also worth adding that the second line (with the blaze, edit, and delete buttons) is only shown on the user's own postâor other users' posts only if they have tipping enabled, like here:
We're sorry we can't do much more about thisâit's the best way we can make it all work at present.
What we would say is that while we cannot promise anything, we are always working on simplifying our user experience. And so this might change in the future. But as we say, we can't offer anything more concrete than that rightâthanks again for your feedback. It's appreciated!
Interesting that the team has noted why there are two toolbars here, essentially. We ran into similar issues when creating Hyperspace Desktop v1.0. Though, we resorted to having an overflow menu at the top, which works (but isn't ideal).
Despite this, I find "the current interface is disturbing and not aesthetically pleasing" to be kind of funny. I can't say whether the proposed designs do result in a better user experience, though it does look more pleasing. The important thing, however, is not just how it looks; it's also about how it works. It seems the Tumblr engineers have concluded that the proposed designs won't work well for now, but they're at least looking into simplifying it.
Vivaldi Social, our Mastodon instance, is your gateway to reliable, big-tech-free social networking
The Vivaldi team has launched a Mastodon instance that integrates directly with my Vivaldi account, thus bringing me back into the fediverse! Iâm still likely going to post here first as Iâve pretty much set up here but Iâm glad to be back again, participating in the fediverse.
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I share the same sentiment with Rene here. I talk a lot more about this on my main blog, but I definitely agree with his opinion on how iPad should work. (The simplification part, that isâŚ)
More than 30 countries have already broken the link between emissions and economic growth.
From the article:
The countries in the chart show that there doesnât have to be a tradeoff between reducing emissions and growing the economy, as many economists and laypeople once assumed. And itâs not just that emissions-reducing policies are not fundamentally hostile to the economy. In fact, these policies can actually boost economic growth in the coming decades. Investing in climate change mitigation now means weâll have to spend less in the future â on rebuilding after fires and floods, on coping with premature deaths and the lost productivity that results from them, and more.
We ought to keep our focus and attention on addressing climate change and make our voices heard. We may not have to completely sacrifice the economy to do it, but now is the time to work on implementing green policies to combat this problem that weâve stirred up ourselves.
The growth in fossil emissions this year is largely due to higher oil and coal useâparticularly oil, as the aviation industry is strongly bouncing back from the pandemic.
Global carbon dioxide emissions from all human activities remain at record highs in 2022, and fossil fuel emissions have risen above pre-pandemic levels, according to a new analysis by an international body of scientists.
The analysis, by the Global Carbon Project, calculates Earthâs âcarbon budgetâ, which is how much COâ humans have released, and how much has been removed from the atmosphere by the oceans and land ecosystems. From there, we calculate how much carbon can still be emitted into the atmosphere before Earth exceeds the crucial 1.5â global warming threshold.
This year, the world is projected to emit 40.6 billion tons of COâ from all human activities, leaving 380 billion tons of COâ as the remaining carbon budget. This amount of emissions is disastrous for the climateâat current levels, there is a 50% chance the planet will reach the 1.5â global average temperature rise in just nine years.
A quick response to â7 Unacceptable Problems with macOSâ, and my problem with tech enthusiasts
As someone that uses macOS on a regular basis, I would like to add my two cents on these âunacceptable problemsâ that they list. While I may not agree with all opinions, they are seemingly reasonable requests.
Lack of corner snapping: I would love to see this come to macOS natively, but I think itâs a lot more nuanced. For one, I am pretty sure the window corner snapping feature is patented by Microsoft, and itâs likely Apple doesnât want to pay the patent license fee for this. On top of that, as is seen with iPadâs multitasking, itâs clear to me they prefer you to have two windows open side by side this way as a compromise. I use Swish and Rectangle for anything more complicated, but I find myself to be using the corner snapping a lot less. I guess this is âunacceptableâ if youâre a Windows user or someone that wants that feature, though I donât really agree that it is.
Full screen is weird/Traffic light inconsistencies: This ties in to my previous point. The iPad doesnât have window controls like this, and theyâre hidden behind a menu. Itâs being consistent with how the multitasking situation works in Split View in that regard. Would it be nice to have the controls visible at all times? Sure, and I think it should be an option, but turned off by default. But an option, not a forced requirement. Despite this, I do very much agree third party developers need to stop doing âwhatever they pleaseâ with a control like this. It needs to be consistent across apps.
Natural scrolling decoupling: I know there are many that hate natural scrolling, but I am not one of them. The decoupling would be a nice idea, but I wouldnât really care because I use natural scrolling all the time anyway.
Multiple monitor UI issues: I think this is one of those âWindows-ismsâ that theyâre upset doesnât exist on macOS. I never understood the behavior in Windows a lot, and I generally prefer the way itâs done in macOS because it made more sense to me. I think this a fundamental debate between how Apple expects users to use the interface and what the users want, and thereâs no clear resolution in my eyes. Adding an option could solve the problem, but that would also be another thing to maintain, and it takes away from Appleâs general design philosophy. This was the major problem that I thought Iâd have to address here, though most of the issues they presented were pretty reasonable.
Multiple external monitors: I do agree with this argument to the extent that itâs kind of weird that itâs locked by processor kind when it wasnât before. Iâm not one to use a lot of external monitors with my Mac, but that is a bit frustrating.
Volume mixer MIA: This should be integrated better into the Sound menu in the control center. It is pretty weird I have to use the appâs settings to adjust volume instead of a universal source for handling volume. Better yet, put this on iPad, too!
Rapid points: Iâve never really made new text files using the context menu, so I donât really get that. I do agree on the Ethernet settings being buried, even though I donât use Ethernet, and I hope we see improvements to this as System Settings gets polished and updated. And I think that Apple prefers wireless connectivity over a hard-wired connection, despite what the techies say. For window previews in the Dock, that did exist with HyperDock and there is App ExposĂŠ. Though I use my Dock very differently and minimize windows into the appâs icons instead (works best with Swish and behaves like elementaryOS).
I havenât been a fan of any Apple-related videos from Linus Tech Tips recently, but I think this was one of the more reasonable ones I can get behind, even though I donât use my Mac they way Linus Media Group would like to. And I do appreciate that they list some positives to show that they arenât saying these things to dump on Apple incessantly and unnecessarily. However, I do take issue with the conclusion of âbeing a blind fanboy is bad, but being an enthusiast that complains and sends feedback is goodâ. This sends a sentiment to me that you have to always complain about something and never like the defaults. I donât dispute that you should send feedback to help improve software, and I always encourage it from the people that use my apps and play my games on a regular basis. But the conclusions paints this image of âliking things the way someone designs them intentionally bad, screaming and kicking until it works the way you want it goodâ, and I donât agree with that.
Itâs not a problem specific to Linus Media Group, but with a lot of stuff I see on the Internet from tech enthusiasts. While techies are very vocal, they are still a minority. When I raise these issues and agree or disagree, I try to come from the perspective of an average user who knows less about computers and software than I do. This is also why I take so much issue with the whole âI want macOSâ on an iPad; itâs a techieâs wet dream that would definitely make it usable for them, but harder for average users to use and understand. It sends of signal of not thinking of others to me that I just cannot stand. Does this make me some Apple fanboy that takes no criticism whatsoever? Absolutely not, and I do think Apple can and should improve their platforms respectively. I just tend to view things more pragmatically and think more about just myself and those in the same tech circle as me.
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In today's episode of "a billionaire bought our neighbour's house and set it on fire", the big blue bird had just called off their developer conference which was set to start in two weeks:
All is good and normal and Twitter. Nothing weird going on.
Itâs just getting worse and worse⌠yikes. I guess it was a good thing that I moved over from Twitter when I did for personal stuff, as this is insaneâŚ
