What's it all about, Alfie?

With the Early Release of Ivory by Tapbots, I think I've found the clear winner for a Mastodon client. This is very good - and it's got a lot more work that they want to do on it... so it's only going to get better.

Right now, it's got everything I used on Twitter, plus other nice features that are part of Mastodon natively. All in all, it's actually a nice upgrade.

I would still like to see the local town alerts (weather, service interruptions, etc.) come to Mastodon, but even if they don't, it's far better than whatever Twitter is turning into.

With the recent demise of the Twitter API for third-party clients, it was time to move to Mastodon, all I really needed was a little push from a friend, and then off we went. I will say, the native client isn't bad, and Tapbots is creating Ivory, which sounds promising, but I'm pretty pleased with Ice Cubes - an Open Source Mastodon client using SwiftUI, available on the App Store. It's not bad at all on iPad, and on iOS it's really very nice.

I still will be very interested in seeing what Ivory looks like - as I really want one client that syncs on all my devices - as Twitterrific did, and I know the Tapbots guys will make that happen. But we'll see... who knows, given that it's SwiftUI, it's possible to imagine that Ice Cubes will be on macOS too... Could be interesting.

In any case, it was the people... the community, that made Twitter nice, and they're moving, and the place won't be worth a tenth of the purchase price in a few months.

This morning, Twitterrific for iOS had problems logging in, and at first, I thought it was the 2FA I had applied to my account after a friend's account was hacked. The token on my iPhone expired, and I needed to re-authenticate my account with the 2FA, and yet when I tried to do that... nothing.

It was an hour later that I was still trying to find out what it might be, when I saw the news that Twitter had simply revoted the access tokens for some of the third-party iOS clients - while leaving the macOS clients alone. For example, Twitterrific for macOS is fine. This wasn't a mistake - it was intentional, and that's a shame. They chose to do this, and it's their company, so OK... but I can't imagine this standing - or maybe it's the beginning of the end?

I guess I'll see what Mastodon is all about...

Another year in the books, and another year for me. As a kid, my birthday was way too close to Christmas, but as I've gotten older, it's nice to have them close together. I don't have to worry about people making a fuss on my birthday, and I can be assured that most everyone will be thinking about, and making plans for, their New Year's Eve activities, and so don't really think much about me. It's almost like stealth birthday - which is just fine with me.

Today, I'm heading down to Indy to visit my siblings, and just enjoy the day. I'll be back later, and that's OK. I've got The Talk Show to listen to on the way down and back - and Gruber is without a doubt, one of the more entertaining talk show personalities to me. It's always a good listen. So on my birthday I get to have good food, good company, and something good to listen to.

I am so very grateful for it all.

It's another amazing Christmas, and all is quiet. Quiet times... noisy times... it's all a wonderful time of year to spend time with family and friends and enjoy the Season. It's time to enjoy a nice movie, or maybe a football game, and to have some special treats that you don't normally have - all to remember the traditions you grew up with.

Today I'll just be relaxing and enjoying the quiet. It's Sunday, so I'll send out my weekly texts to family and friends, and then sit back and enjoy the quiet of the day. It's just my favorite time of year. 🙂

This morning has been a Big Update morning to be sure... iOS 16.2, tvOS 16.2, iPadOS 16.2, and macOS 13.1 all ready to go from Apple, and so everything I had went through the update. It's nice to get things up to date, not just because some of the things I've seen in Safari on macOS and iPadOS are iffy... but it's a chance to get some little surprises as well.

One thing that I've read about that I didn't really like is the new What's Up on tvOS... it used to be the things in my list, and now it's almost advertising for the things that some folks think I might be interested in. Not a huge fan, and would love to have a way to get back to the way it was. We'll see...

Until then, things are humming along, and it's nice to get it all done in an early morning. 🙂

This morning I did the first day of the 2022 Advent of Code. What fun it is to get back into Clojure - for a month. If I thought it the least bit reasonable, I'd be doing back-end Clojurescript as it gets generated into Javascript in the same way that Typescript does, so it would run on the same stack with the same speed, etc. But it's just too big a leap for most folks, and it's not worth the education cycles.

But still... the simplicity of the language, and it's ability to run in highly multi-threaded environments is a huge win, and so it will remain one of my very favorite languages.

About a week ago, I got my latest Moderna COVID Booster - with the Flu Shot chaser, and I wanted to get Walgreens, my Insurance Company, and my Doctor a chance for all the bits to be pushed around, so that I could update my COVID Vaccination Card in my iOS Wallet. Today was the day.

I had done this before, but it was a while back, and so I expected a similar smooth operation, and they didn't disappoint. 🙂 I went to my Doctor's website, they had a button to pull up the COVID Proof, and I could refresh the records to show all four shots, and then get a QR Code. Pull that up in the camera, and click the link, and Bam! It's in. Just as easy as I remembered.

But the surprise is that I was able to link my iPhone's Health App to my Doctor's back-end system and receive updates, etc. Now I know there will be plenty of folks saying this isn't safe, or secure, but honestly - nothing really is - not with computers these days, as I've worked with the devs writing this code... and if anyone is going to try really hard to keep it secure, it's the largish Medical Groups, and Apple - so I feel pretty good about it.

But it's really nice to do the Auth within the Health App, and get the 2FA, and then link my Doctor's records about me to my Phone. Why? Because when I need it most - knowing that I have a Doctor - like when I'm in an accident - will really help the folks trying to help me... even when I can't speak.

And the way it so smoothly integrated with iOS... maybe I'm just jaded from my work in the field, but that was done well... and with a lot of attention to details. Very nice. 🙂

Today it was time to get the latest Moderna COVID Booster, and back it up with the standard Flu Shot. It's been a while since my last booster, and with the new variants, it was clearly time to schedule a visit to Walgreens just down the street, where it's so easy to get the hosts.

So in a few weeks, I'll be all set for Thanksgiving which is about my only social event of the Fall, and I'll be safe from the worst of it. Science is a good thing. 🙂

After a very smooth initial set-up yesterday, this morning, I pulled up my iPhone 13 Pro, and completed the ordering of my iPhone 14 Pro... Space Black, and it's going to be here on the 16th - about a week. It's a yearly fun thing to do, and I always like shipping my current phone to my sister so she has something fun to get in the mail this time of year.

I mean, who doesn't love a surprise? 🙂

As always, there are a lot of things to look forward to, but the Camera is a biggie, as is the new Dynamic Island, or "What to do with the notch". I think it's going to be very interesting what they use that for.

It'll be a fun Friday!