marco's blog

In continuation of week 21, here are a few thoughts and things that caught my attention in the 22. week of 2024:

• 🚴‍♂️ This week was relatively quiet in terms of tech-related news, partly because my wife had a bicycle accident in the middle of the week. I have borrowed a car, transported her 100 km from one hospital to the local one, she had surgery, and now she is hopefully recovering quickly at home and will soon be back on her feet (and back on the bike).

• 🌦️ CARROT Weather has been released in version 6.

• 💻 The trick on how to Get ChatGPT for Mac and skip the waitlist actually works seamlessly.

• ⏯️ This week, I repeatedly¹ came across IINA - the modern media player for macOS - which I amusingly already had in my bookmarks collection but hadn’t looked at yet. While I was at it, I finally connected Transloader with Downie. BTW: Papertube - Turn any YouTube podcast, TED Talk, or chat into easy-to-read text with real speaker names: I need to take a closer look at it when I get the chance. And while I’m at it, cobalt also looks like an interesting service.

• 📝 pixelgraphix pointed out Bebop. If Drafts is an overkill (or maybe too expensive) for you, you might be able to quickly and easily push texts to Obsidian with this really nice app.

• 📅 I use Dato, but if you’re only interested in the Week Number in the menu bar, you can install the app of the same name from the same developer for free.

• 📱 I completely overlooked that there is now a sister application for iOS for Carbon Copy Cloner. I need to check it out when I get the chance.

• 🎥 ‎Kino - Pro Video Camera from the makers of Halide has been released. It also looks very promising.

• 🎮 In a quiet moment, I need to take a closer look at this: Another Majora’s Mask PC Port Is Here.

• 🎮 I wasn’t aware until now that you can even run Android on the Steam Deck. I’ll keep that in mind until I figure out what I would actually use it for 😎.

• 💻 Recently, I wanted to find out what a specific setting is called in English in macOS System Settings, so I set up a virtual macOS installation with UTM - Virtual machines for Mac. Wow, that was easy. (Unfortunately, I can’t manage to access external USB devices/hard drives yet.) Next, I should get into Docker…

• 🎮 This week, after more than two months, my “repaired,” i.e., replaced Playdate arrived. It’s now the third one. Maybe this one will last a bit longer 🤞.

• 🎮 I also acquired an old Nintendo N64 console. The picture quality of PAL games on the PAL version of the console is abysmally bad on my LG LED TV. Interestingly, NTSC games, started from the Everdrive, look good 🤷‍♂️.

• 🌐 I was happy to hear from Adam again.

Have a great week and take care 😇

In continuation of week 18, here are a few thoughts and things that caught my attention in the 19. - 20. week of 2024:

• 🚴‍♂️ I was cycling with my wife for a few days along the former East-West German border. The weather was fantastic, the inclines were not to be underestimated but manageable. A bit of a shame, but we tried to take it with humour: Once again, we had to realize that the concept of Deutsche Bahn has unfortunately totally failed. Train travel is an absolute disaster in our country, and that makes me very sad and angry at the FDP (the party that provides our transport minister). But that’s a topic for another time.

• 📵 During the bike tour, I decided to take a one or two-week break from social media. I deleted my Mastodon clients from my devices (I already don’t use Threads, Instagram, X, Facebook, etc.) and also avoided YouTube. I still read a few posts in my RSS reader, though. So, do I feel better now? I don’t think so, but it was good anyways, I think.¹

What else was interesting to me?

• 🚴‍♂️ Hammerhead Karoo 3 In-Depth Review: Worth the Upgrade?: there’s a successor to my current bike computer. Since my two biggest criticisms, battery life and responsiveness, have obviously not been addressed, I am not in danger of wanting to spend the 500 € (!) for it for now.

• 🎮 ‎RetroArch has been released for iOS and similar platforms. For those who aren’t totally into retro gaming, dedicated emulators like Delta, PPSPPP are probably the much more convenient way to enjoy some old games. Nevertheless, it’s wonderful to see that RetroArch now runs on the iPhone and especially on the AppleTV! (I use a dedicated Raspberry Pi with Batocera or my Analogue Pocket with its dock for the TV, though.)

• 📑 ‎PDF Squeezer is now also available for iOS.

• 💾 Carbon Copy Cloner has been released in version 7, and I took the opportunity to support the developer by purchasing the upgrade.

• 🖼️ If you have an old, currently unused iPad lying around (I’ve heard there are new ones 😇), you might want to check out Synced Photo Frame by Re-Frame and repurpose it as a digital photo frame.

• 🖼️ Photo Tape - Connect Images: the app looks like a pretty neat way to simply merge images.

• 🔖 Plinky - Easily Save Links: there’s another bookmark manager. I just bought the lifetime license for Anybox and therefore my search (for now) is over.

• ⏳ ‎Time - Ring - the elegant and fun way to count down to your most anticipated events! For those interested who haven’t yet paid for Pinning, Up Ahead (which has resumed development), Countdowns, or one of the many other apps and are looking for a simple, free option.

• 🎮 I installed chiaki4deck on my Steam Deck and can now effortlessly do PS5 Remote Play. However, I fear that someone might empty half the PSN Store with my account, but certain risks have to be taken 😬

• 🎮 Due to the early access release of Hades II, the first one was very cheap, so I bought it for the Steam Deck and started playing it. Actually, I wanted to keep my hands off these rogue-like games, but it’s just too good.

• 🌞 Have a great week!

In continuation of week 16, here are a few thoughts and things that caught my attention in the seventeenth week of 2024:

• 🖱️ Logitech’s Mouse Software Now Includes ChatGPT Support, Adds Janky ‘ai_overlay_tmp’ Directory to Users’ Home Folders: It seems to be a good time to reconsider using SteerMouse or BetterMouse – Comprehensive mouse utility for macOS instead. In addition, lots of people seem to like Mac Mouse Fix. Guess, I have to evaluate “mouse drivers” now 🤦‍♂️.¹

• 🎮 The enthusiasm for retro gaming continues to hold on. Delta received its first update in the AltStore PAL (installation went absolutely smoothly) and a native iPad version has been announced for non-Europeans. Moreover, Sean Fletcher has released absolutely great skins for Deltas GBC und GBA cores.

• 🖥️ macOS can also be beautified, as Louie Mantia, Jr. has updated his beautiful Time Machine icons. Thanks to Harshil Shah for bringing this to my attention.²

• 🎮 And for all those who have now rediscovered their love for Pokemon thanks to Delta, BenRiceM has released the appropriate app: Ketchup for Pokémon.

• 📝 As you might know, I switched from Apple Notes to Obsidian as my main notes app some time ago, but those who still use Apple Notes as their App Defaults now have in addition to NotesOllama another extensions available, ProNotes, which hopefully further improves working with it.

• 📊 Speaking of Obsidian, for those still looking for new plugins, the current episode of AppStories Obsidian Setup Check-In and the blog post 10 Lesser Known But Super Useful Obsidian Plugins by Lou Plummer might be worth checking out. Additionally, Brett Terpstra has released a plugin for his brilliant Markdown Preview App Marked 2.

• ⌨️ I own a KeyCue license and use the app less than I thought I would. The app is not exactly cheap, but fortunately, there are a number of alternatives for those interested, including KeyClu.

• 🏋️‍♂️ Donovan has released a free Bodyweight exercises tracker for iOS.

• 🍏 Apple users are being locked out of their Apple IDs with no explanation - fortunately, I have not been affected so far.

• 🕹️ I also played a lot of Dead Cells on the Steam Deck OLED this week but couldn’t get past the penultimate level. I also briefly looked at Hades on the PS5. It looks very nice, but I need to play something other than RogueLi[kt]e games before I dive into this. I really long to be able to load a game save to progress in a game.

• 📚 I know I definitely shouldn’t do it, but I’m thinking about whether or not I should spend 150 € on a book 🤦‍♂️.

• 🎬 Watched Sterben, a German movie, in the cinema - very intense 3 hours.

• 🤒 I’ve been sick with a cold for two weeks now and feel unable to exercise and in general struggling through the day. I’m really looking forward to hopefully getting over this next week.

Wishing you a beautiful week! ☀️

2024-04-29: Fix credentials for Time Machine Icons

In continuation of week 15, here are a few thoughts and things that caught my attention in the sixteenth week of 2024:

• 🎮 This week was an exciting one for retro gaming on iOS. After some initial debacle with a ripoff GB emulator, which was pulled after a few days by Apple, another one, Bimmy, was pulled by its developer just a day after it was approved. But then the well-known Delta emulator developed by Riley Testut, which was previously only available via the AltStore was released worldwide in the App Store, except for Europe. Here you can get it exclusively via the AltStore PAL, an alternate iOS Appstore.¹ Its developer wrote a little about the availability of Delta and the AltStore PAL in general. Installing the AltStore and downloading Delta went as smoothly as Apple currently allows, and the app is just great. Very nicely designed, customizable through skins and comprehensive. However, I see myself rather less playing GB[AC]* games on my iPhone, as they bring more fun on the Analogue Pocket or one of my other devices with a built-in gamepad. However, the situation is similar to photography, you know, the best camera is the one you have with you …

• 🕹️ If you’ve now gotten a taste for it and also want to play some of your legally acquired Roms on your Mac but don’t want to install an all-in-one solution like RetroArch or even ES-DE right away, you can also pick up some tips on stand-alone emulators here: Emulators aren’t new; here’s the great ones on the Mac. More emulators are also apparently in the starting blocks, and I also downloaded a C64 emulator, but I haven’t looked at it yet and therefore don’t know if this a valid recommendation.

• 🧠 This week, MetaAI unveiled its new Llama 3 models, which can be easily downloaded to the Mac using Ollama with commands such as ollama pull llama3:8b or ollama pull llama3:70b. If you prefer not to use the command line to interact with the LLM or any of the GUIs mentioned in Week 8, you might consider exploring ‎Enchanted LLM. This app offers a free and slick interface to interact with Ollama’s LLMs.

• 💻 I mainly use Rectangle Pro for window management on macOS, which also offers the possibility to throw windows into predefined areas via mouse gestures (Window Throw), but if you are looking for an alternative, you might want to check out the free Loop.

• 🤖 This is so f*%king incredible: Farewell to HD Atlas. But of course that can still be topped: All New Atlas 🤯.

• 🦉 As already mentioned on my little Site Project, DropScout for iOS / iPad is out of beta and available for free: DropScout tracks your Amazon products and alerts you when prices drop! Also mentioned there, since version 3.11, Soulver once again includes an iOS version that can be unlocked with a one-time purchase. After years of incompatibility, you can finally exchange files between macOS and iOS again. Did I mention before, that I love Soulver?

• 💻 Lou blogged about apps that Open at Login on his Mac, and two apps were new to me. As Mission Control Plus - Put the “control” back in Mission Control - is included in my Setapp subscription, I started evaluating it. The app does mainly two things, it adds an X-button to Mission Control’s windows and several keybard shortcuts managing them. The other one was Backup Status - View the status of Time Machine right from your desktop or Notification Center. Bookmarked but not tried myself yet.

• 💻 On A Better Computer, I stumbled across 10 useful Mac apps you may not have heard of and found Cleft quite interesting. However, it absolutely did not want to work for me and instead of transcribing my spoken text, it bombarded me with error messages and just deleted everything. Well, I might look at it again in version 1.1 or maybe 2.x.

• 🛠️ Whether I spend a lot of time troubleshooting to get something running that I would like to accomplish depends strongly on the platform I’m doing it on and my expectations of the project/product.² With Apple products or other commercial services, my tolerance for having to spend a lot of time to make something work as it should is quite low, for example. This was also one of the reasons why I switched from Windows to macOS about 20 years ago. I just didn’t feel like dealing with the fiddling anymore. With Linux projects, it’s different for me. I almost expect it to be difficult, and it’s fine with me because in general it’s open source and I heavily benefit from the hard work from others. So, I spent countless hours trying to set up a WLAN access point on a Raspi that is connected to my network via LAN and brings the connected devices into the network via VPN. (My regular router can’t do this, and I have one or two devices that I’d like to connect to the network via VPN, but I can’t install a client on them.) I ultimately failed and gave up a few weeks ago. Last week, I stumbled across the BerylAX GL-MT3000 and it took me no more than 5 minutes to get it up and running with NordVPN. This really blew me away.

• ⏺️ The Stream Deck Neo was announced and looks really compelling to me.

• 📺 Continued watching Palm Royale - still not sure about this TV series.

• 🎥 Watch Riders of Justice - enjoyed that one.

• 🕹️ Spent way too much money for discounted games on Steam and played a lot of Dead Cells. Really hard but I like it a lot.³

Have a nice week! 🙋‍♂️

In continuation of week 14, here are a few thoughts and things that caught my attention in the 15. week of 2024:

• 🎮 I was briefly excited when I read that the first GBA emulator had landed in the iOS App Store. Unfortunately, it was not a legitimate app, and it was subsequently removed (again too late and why at all approved?) from the store: Apple Removes Game Boy Emulator iGBA From App Store Due to Spam and Copyright Violations - MacRumors.

• 🛠️ Jarod Blundy released another great shortcut: Simple MB Image Uploader.

• 🏎️ I’ve learned that in Mario Kart 8, you can choose from 703,560 driver, kart body, tires, and glider combinations, but you can still be more clever than others: Mario meets Pareto 🤯.

• 📱 At first, I was skeptical, but Simple Scan • Quick Scanner gets updated regularly and has reached a stage where it is definitely much more useful than a simple one-step shortcut or going into the Files app and initiating the scan from within there.

• 💻 I am a long-time Bartender 5 user and don’t see a reason to switch. However, for those who don’t already have a Setapp subscription or don’t want to pay that much money for a “simple” utility app, ‎iBar-Menubar icon control tool might be worth a look. However, you have to more or less blindly trust the developers, as their website will probably remain incomprehensible to many people.

• 🛑 If it also bothers you that every App Store link in Safari directly opens the store instead of just calling up the overview page, maybe this will help: StopTheMacAppStore - Mac app that stops Safari from automatically opening the App Store app.

• 🖥️ I used to have a version of iStat Menus (Setapp) running on every Mac, but nowadays I do without. However, there is also a number of alternatives, for example, the freshly updated Usage, which, for instance, also allows access to the status of the Mac from a mobile device, or the free Stats - macOS system monitor in your menu bar.

• 📁 In week 9, I mentioned Manila, a free app that lets you change the color of a folder’s icon. There seems to be a similar paid upfront app called Foldery, that might be easier to set up and is regularly updated; bookmarked for the case that Manila stops working someday. If just a color is not enough, ‎Folderizer might be worth a try, too. So far, I was occasionally using the Setapp version of Image2icon but might give the former a shot.

• 🎮 I fell in love with ‎Gamery - Game Tracker and switched to the app from GameTrack. Actually, I was looking for an app that runs both on iOS and macOS, but I am not very satisfied with the macOS version of GameTrack. The developer of Gamery has mentioned that he plans to enable the iPadOS version on macOS and is working on a native macOS version, too. That all sounds very good.

• 🗓️ Sindre Sorhus makes so many great apps, and many of his programs are free. To support him, I bought the Mac App Store version of Dato even though it was available via Setapp, too. Anyways, if you’re looking for a free alternative, Itsycal for Mac or Calendrx might be worth a try.

• 📸 I briefly looked into the new app from Aptonic, the developers of Dropzone (Setapp), called ScreenSnapAI - AI Powered Screenshot Manager. But that’s not for me. I will definitely stick with CleanShot X (Setapp) for the time being. By the way, did you know that pressing space to switch to window capture from capture area mode also works with CleanShot X and not only with the built-in macOS tool?

• 🌐 The one and only master of the indie web, Robb, released EchoFeed. You have most probably already heard of his service to pipe an RSS feed to open web endpoints, like Mastodon or Micro.blog, etc. Love it.

• 📲 Did you know that you can change the iOS wheel picker to a number pad by just clicking on it? I did not!

• 🌍 Marcus reminded me that it is a very good idea to support OpenStreetMap. I am now an associated member.

• 📺 Watched the Pilot of Palm Royale with my wife. Not yet sure what it will turn into.

The week before Easter was once again very quiet in terms of new software and tech-related stuff. This was probably also because there was a lot to do at work before we went on our Easter vacation. For a few years now, we have been traveling more or less regularly during the Easter holidays together with my wife’s family. She has three siblings, all of whom have partners and children, and our dog joins us as well. This year we went to Belgium, the weather was quite rainy and gray, but that’s okay. We were 15 people and, of course, it was very bustling but also very nice. There was a lot of hiking, eating, reading, playing, and laughing. Especially for the younger ones, who let it show more, the fact that there was almost no functioning internet in the area and in the vacation apartment was quite noticeable. Wi-Fi and mobile networks were unusable. It took several minutes just to retrieve a single email. Social media, game streaming, YouTube, etc. were completely unthinkable. Digital detox par excellence. Actually, it did quite good and that was the reason there was also no post here on the blog last week. 🐣

Therefore, in brief and in continuation of week 12, here are very few thoughts and things that caught my attention in the 13th and 14th week of 2024:

• 📘 During the vacation, I finished my first novel ¹ in a long time and read a second book within another day. The third one is also already half done: DOOM Guy: Life in First Person by John Romero. I wouldn’t have thought it, but I find the autobiography very interesting so far. (Doom actually had a big impact on me during my school years.)

• 📷 Also not a novel, but already noted, a new Take Control Book: Take Control of iPhone Photography.

• ✍️ I couldn’t resist playing with Vincent’s Scribbles; I “secretly” played with a small side project there, which Habit immediately discovered.

• 💻 Alongside Rectangle Pro and Superkey, I started trying out another app by Ryan Hanson: Charmstone - The quicker switcher launcher for macOS.

• 🖥️ I asked on Mastodon for Terminal alternatives and three were mainly mentioned: Warp: Your terminal, reimagined, WezTerm - Wez’s Terminal Emulator, and iTerm2 - macOS Terminal Replacement. I haven’t had the chance yet, but hopefully, I will be able to take a closer look at them over the next week(s).

• 🎮 I was not aware of how easy it can be on macOS to get Windows games purchased from the Epic Game Store or GOG to run: Heroic Games Launcher - An Open Source Epic, GOG, and Amazon Prime Games Launcher.

• Speaking of games: Played Slice & Dice and Balatro. (It’s all Daniel Santos' fault! 😎)

• 🛠️ Chris Hannah released a CLI Tool to Post to Micro.Blog.

• 🌱 Spring is coming and we took this as an opportunity to completely reseed our lawn; it was more of a field than a lawn and therefore urgently needed; we are curious to see if it will turn out well.

• 📺 No television, no movies, no series in the last two weeks.

Have a pleasant week ahead!

In continuation of week 11, here are a few thoughts and things that caught my attention in the 12th week of 2024:

• 😴 Actually, this week was a very quiet week in terms of tech-related stuff. It was probably because I was very busy at work and in the evenings, I preferred to relax with a game of Balatro¹ instead of surfing the net a lot.

• 🛠️ This week, many things just broke. It started with dishes, not just once, followed by a PS5 controller that wouldn’t turn on anymore and got dangerously hot while charging and started to smell. Then, the power supply of the old MacBook simply quit working, a 256 GB USB stick made my Mac crash reproducibly as soon as I tried to access it, the crank handle of my Playdate just broke without any external force², our eCargo bike suddenly refused to go any further (Error E010), the coffee machine at work gave up the ghost, and my knee is broken. Well, it’s been messed up for 30 years, it just hurts more this week than usual. I think that’s a good sign for next week. It can only get better.

• 🔄 The developer of Anybox has released a new app: Event countdown & up - Pinning app. I was a long-time user of Countdowns before I switched to Up Ahead because the latter was much more fun to use. However, there has been no update for over ten months, and I’m somewhat reluctant to pay a subscription price for that. I’ll take a look at Pinning, although there is no macOS version yet and it also has a subscription model behind it. Otherwise, I should dig out Countdowns again. It works wonderfully, it just doesn’t look nice at all.

• 🎉 Robb announced that his Podcast Ruminate joined MacStories. Congrats!

• 🤔 I was curious and also signed up for Scribbles. I definitely don’t need another way to blog, but I kind of like the projects by Vincent.

• 🧩 Table of contents — for Safari on the App Store: A funny little plugin that does exactly what it promises.

• ❤️ I was absolutely impressed that I sent a feature request to the developer of Default Folder X and he replied on the same day that he had implemented the feature and it will be included in the next release.

• 🐶 Besides, I was pleased that you can now use Siri in German without saying “Hey.” This solves our biggest mistake in dog training. We chose “Hey” as a stop signal (“no”) for our dog, and therefore we could only ask the Homepods to do things via voice very limitedly, otherwise, we would completely confuse our dog every time 😅.

• 🎮 I’ve finished Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins (GB) on my Analogue Pocket and started playing Mario vs. Donkey Kong (GBA). The next real Mario game will be Super Mario 64. I’ve been thinking a bit about how and on which system I want to play it. I’ve decided to buy the Nintendo 64 bluetooth controller and try it on the Switch via Nintendo Switch Online Plus.

• 🎥 We watched The Shawshank Redemption (1994) (again) with our sons. What a damn good movie.

• 🎸 I was at an IDLES concert 🤘.

Have a wonderfull week ahead!

In continuation of week 10, here are a few thoughts and things that caught my attention in the 11. week of 2024:

• 👀 Adam is once again working on something new: Neato.

• 🏦 IndieAppSales 2024 was going on last week and I bought some new apps.

• 📱 Just like for iA Presenter, there is now also an iOS version of ‎Deckset. I had hoped that it might do without a subscription, but far from it.

• 🖥️ Nitro for macOS might be something to keep an eye on.

• 📆 Currently, I also have no use for this, but I can imagine that might change: ‎Rules Shortcuts based on Event.

• 💎 Here I found a few Homebrew gems: Hidden FREE Mac Apps!. Especially interesting I found mailsy, speedtest-cli, ata, wifi-password, mas, and yt-dlp.

• 🎵 There are media control apps for macOS now like sand by the sea, but this one is free and looks quite nice: Tuneful - Control your music with ease.

• 🎮 Summerhouse (Steam) looks cozy, and thanks to Daniel I stumbled upon Balatro. In addition there were (are?) significant discounts on VVVVVV and Celeste on Steam . I especially suck at the latter on the pico-8 but I adore its aesthetic and am excited to play it on my MacBook.

• 🕹️ For the Playdate, I stumbled upon Quandino and bought Mars After Midnight.

• 📺 I did not know now that Retro Gaming on the Amazon Fire TV Stick is a thing.

• 🎥 Wikiflix: an interface to browse, search, and view movies published as public domain at Wikimedia Commons, the Internet Archive, or YouTube.

• 🚀 Nice idea and cool implementation, for which, however, I have no necessity: ‎iPulse - Monitor Your Device.

• 😓 Habib wrote about Overwhelming Tech Fatigue. I too have been feeling an increasing kind of dissatisfaction with technical devices in general lately. I am becoming more intolerant regarding shortcomings, especially of the system’s software. I yearn for things to simply function and find myself increasingly reluctant to invest significant time in troubleshooting things that have been implemented with minimal effort and, as a result, are prone to errors. (Although I still like trying out new software and starting new projects 🤷‍♂️.) I suspect that this actually has to do with age. In the past, I passionately tinkered with (Windows) PCs but eventually had no more desire to spend more time making things work than using them.¹ I then switched to Apple because its OS and software was (seemingly) much more thoughtful, functional, stable, and beautiful. This love is massively being lost in recent months, and since there seem to be no real alternatives, turning away from the enthusiasm for technology itself would be the next logical step - even though I don’t actively pursue that of course.

• ✨ There seem to be only two opinions about Asteroid City, and I belong to the fraction that had a lot of fun watching it.

• 🎉 Celebrated my birthday, had a lot of good food and nice people around me.

• 🪙 Last but not least, go and check out the One a Month Club and become a member of all those great blogs listed there 😎

Have a nice week! 🙋‍♂️

Continuing from week 09, here are a few thoughts and things that caught my attention in the 10th week of 2024:

• 🌸 Michael made incredible paper flowers and you can help him picking the best one: Battle of the Blooms 2024.

• 🎥 In addition to Office Space, Jason made The Matrix Gifs available as well 🥳.

• 🎞️ Full of Themselves: An analysis of title drops in movies (thanks Robb).

• 🖼️ New wallpapers by BasicAppleGuy: Glassy Wallpapers.

• 💰 The Indie App Sales! will start at March 12. It’s a great opportunity to support individual developers and their projects. Here is a list of apps I already own and like, or will look into: Blur sensitive data with BlurData for macOS, Bridges Link Formatting (Mac), Bridges: Link Formatting, Clorde, Countdowns - Event Countdow, DisplayBuddy - Control monitor brightness directly from your Mac, DoMarks, Focus & ADHD Reading - Glide, HomeButtons for HomeKit, HomeCam for HomeKit, HomeLog for HomeKit, HomePass for HomeKit & Matter, HomeRun 2 for HomeKit, Iconic, Logger - Log, Track & Journal, Longplay, Mastowatch, MindMac — Elegant and Fullfil ChatGPT Client for macOS, Kaleidoscope, Relog: Task Logge, ReminderCal - Reminders to Cal, Signals for HomeKit, Sleepr App, Timeview - Calendar Statistics, Yosum: Subscription Manager, and many more.

• 💻 PowerMode for Mac - A utility app to control the energy mode of your MacBook from the status bar.

• 🎵 Enjoyed CDK - Somebody That I Used To Know by Gotye - YouTube.

• 🎮 I’ve bookmarked these homebrew games for the Gameboy: Enceladus - GBCompo2023 Version by mr.papshmir, Feed IT Souls by Gumpy Function, and Hermano (Game Boy) by Pat Morita Team.

• 🎮 Finished playing Super Mario World: Super Mario Advance 2.

• 📺 Watched an episode of For All Mankind S4.

• 🌤️ As you can see, I didn’t discover much new this week, which isn’t a bad thing per se; the work was very intense due to exams week, and I was able to go cycling outdoors a few times in good weather together with my wife, practice curving with our dog, and go to the theater 😄.  

In continuation of week 8, here are a few thoughts and things that caught my attention in the 9. week of 2024:

• 🎥 Inspired by Jason’s awesome OfficeSpace.gif, we (re)watched Office Space (1999) as a family. We had a lot of fun.

• 😆 Cool: RSS IS DEAD LOL.

• 📚 Bookmarked Calibre Sync. It seems like a great way to access your Calibre library on the go. I’m thinking about moving my library to my NAS and sharing it via WebDAV.

• 💻 A few years ago, I had this little Finder Service installed that let me change folder colors via the context menu. Somehow, it was not migrated to my new MacBook, and I had a hard time finding it on the web again: Manila.

• 🛠️ This might come in handy at times: Mist - A Mac utility that automatically downloads macOS Firmwares / Installers.

• 🔄 OnlySwitch for macOS was updated.

• 🎮 If I had a PSP Go and shipping did not cost three times the price of the adapter, I would have bought this right away: Micro SD Memory Card Adapter for the PSP Go.

• 📱 There was a lot of buzz about the changes in the upcoming iOS version to comply with the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA). One positive outcome might be this: MacPaw Announces Upcoming Beta Version of Setapp Mobile. Now, I’m just waiting for retro gaming emulators to be released for iOS on an alternate store.

• 🕹️ Right now, Emulation on iPhone is a mess. It’s easier to stream PS5 games to your phone or even Apple TV.

• 🤖 But iOS is not the only complicated platform for emulation (frontends). As mentioned last week, ES-DE was released for Android. The programmer did not get permission to distribute it on the Google Play Store and therefore went to Amazon. They delisted it too, and he had to move to Patreon. Anyway, it’s a bit finicky to set up but runs very well on my Retroid Pocket 2S.

• 🎮 On my Anbernic RG35XX, I stumbled upon VVVVVV. How could I have ignored this for so long?

• 🐸 Came across Bubble Frog by Timbo Johnson. It’s a lovely little game for the Game Boy, and the developer seems very passionate about his project. You can download it for free on itch.io, and to support him, I backed it on Kickstarter.

• 🕹️ BTW, there is a new GBA emulator out there. So, if you collect ROMs and emulators as well, you can get this one: Hades: A Nintendo Game Boy Advance Emulator v1.0.0 released

• 🏰 Finished Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 3. This took me a while and was really, really hard at the end. Next, I finished Super Mario Land. This was the opposite; it only took a few hours. Right now, I am playing Super Mario World: Super Mario Advance 2.¹

• 📚 Even though I’m not 100% convinced that my purchase of a PocketBook Era was the right decision, I still like the idea of an e-ink reader/tablet. These look really great: BOOX Note Air3 C and Note Air3 Series. I’ve never heard of them before, and I wonder if they are more performant than normal e-readers.

• 🚴‍♂️ My wife and I went for our first bike ride (55 km) of the year outdoors. The weather was fantastic, and there was a hint of spring in the air. It was beautiful.

Continuing from week 07, here are a few thoughts and things that caught my attention in the eighth week of 2024:

• 📱 Simple Scan • Quick Scanner was teased by Agile Tortoise. Curious to see if this will be a better solution than just opening the Files.app and initiating a scan from there. (Actually, I’ve never checked if those generated PDFs have automatic OCR.)

• ☑️ Twodos - Simple Todos: Interesting concept but definitely too basic for my needs.

• 🌧️ Looks Like Rain: Another weather app. It focuses on graphical bars showing the rain tendencies for the next couple of days. I like that because that’s the main reason for me to open a weather app.

• 🖥️ And another updated utility: Dock Exposé - MacOS window previews on the dock.

• 🐬 Flipperzero - Portable Multi-tool Device for Geeks. I totally missed the hype about this device and am not that tech-savvy, but somehow I wish I was able to do something with it.

• 🤔 I still don’t quite understand why I am still looking for alternatives to Anybox. The only thing that bothers me about the app is that the sync speed is a bit too sluggish for my taste. Everything else is great. Regardless, after I took a closer look at Link Cluster last week, this week there was an update for Linkeeper. The new version also looks quite promising but unfortunately does not support the import of bookmark collections as an .html file. And therefore, there is no easy way for me to migrate my bookmarks. I’ll keep both Apps in mind, though.¹

• 🛠️ Stumbled upon Zint - a complete cross-platform open source barcode generating solution. For individual QR codes, I still use V2 of QR Factory, which is now available in Version 3. Zint is only available as a CLI on the Mac but I’ll keep it in mind in case I want to generate a lot of codes automatically someday.

• 💻 Mainly for work, I revisited various ChatGPT / LLM frontends and local LLMs. I had somehow completely lost track of the tools and their capabilities. In the process, I stumbled upon MindMac - Connect seamlessly, chat effortlessly with ChatGPT on macOS. It’s a (not very pretty) GUI for more or less all the AI services in the world. Together with OpenRouter, you can quickly and easily try out the major commercial APIs (OpenAI, Google Gemini, etc.), but also, for example, integrate a range of local LLMs (Mistral, Llama, Llava) with the help of ollama. Even uploading images is possible, and the integration of the Google Search API for queries that do not allow online searches. (If you only want to use Ollama with a GUI, there is also, for example, Ollamac - A macOS app for interacting with the Ollama models). In addition, MindMac also combines LM Studio and GPT4All under its interface. The developer is also extremely helpful. I like the app. Apart from that, at the end of the day (more or less in the truest sense of the word), I had to realize once again that ALL of these LLMs are still not capable of doing what I hope for them. Serious work on scientific texts is simply not possible with them. The models make too many mistakes and fail at seemingly simple tasks. I’ll take another look at this in six months. But it does scare me a bit that these tools are probably already being (supposedly) used productively in many related areas.²

• 💡 I’ve learned quite a bit from JDHeyburn’s How I use Obsidian to journal.

• 🎮 As mentioned last week, I really enjoy EmulationStation on my Anbernic RG35XX H (for which a new release was just published) and Raspberry Pi. Actually, there was no reason, but this week I’ve installed ES-DE Frontend (EmulationStation Desktop Edition) on my MacBook. Next, I will try to get the Android version running on my Retroid Pocket 2S. According to Retro Game Corps, it might not be that hard. IMHO it’s just the best Retroarch / Emulation frontend and it’s fun tinkering around with it.

• 🎮 I wanted to check something on playstation.com this week and had to enter my password three or four times, provide a 2FA code, and solve a CAPTCHA. WTF!? That’s why I took the opportunity to switch my account to a Passkey. I am curious to see what hurdles Sony will now put in my way when using it.

• 📊 This graphical 2023 Report Card breakdown I found interesting in terms of the biggest Apple fanboys in the “community” 😜.

• 🍿 Watched L’immensità (2022) with my wife. Neither of us liked the movie.