From the Couch of Ben Johnson

Father, Principal Engineer at Prodigy Education, serial hyperbolist.

✴ Bring Back Captain Planet

It’s been 31 years since Captain Planet and the Planeteers was on TV. It was somewhat influential to my upbringing. My childhood self had awareness that the planet could use some help and there was actually something people could do about it.

Now that I have a kiddo of my own, I’m wondering what it would be like if you revamped this for today. Some rough thoughts in no particular order:

  • Just make the whole thing about climate change.
  • Jeff Goldblum is still working and is crazy enough to agree to reprise his role as an enormous rat-based villain. (Maybe he’s anti-vax and so wasn’t vaccinated…
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As companies get big they get slower and harder to turn. I love this exchange from Steve and Bertrand. It’s proof that even in a huge company you can still make fast, meaningful, and decisive decisions. It’s also such a well written email.

“On Wednesday, CNBC reported that Trump’s blog has shut down less than a month after its launch.”

Only a month? I’m curious what he didn’t like about it vs. Twitter. I bet he thrives on likes and wasn’t getting the dopamine hit.

Finally hung the art my wife bought me for my birthday. Hidden cats!

I think I’ve been letting my 5-year-old watch too much YouTube. Today he told me he was “Sponsored by Mattel™”. He’s also started speaking to his YouTube audience that only he can see…

✴ Lou’s Rum Cake

In April, my grandfather, Lou Siminovitch, passed after 100 incredible years.

He was famous in science circles for significant contributions to the study of genetics, the mentoring of hundreds of scientists, and sending letters to people to tell them how to do their jobs better. Later in life, the relationship he had with his wife provided fuel for the Siminovitch Prize in Theatre, the largest prize for theatre in Canada. He was honoured with the Order of Canada, the Flavelle Medal, and a slew of other awards. Personally, he had an incalculable impact on my worldview, ethics, motivations, and…

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I’m really hoping that SwiftUI is more baked this WWDC. For every app I can think of it’s just not ready. There’s either missing APIs or when you start to do anything outside the path of a demo app you hit bugs that need difficult or impossible workarounds.

My son has been getting into “Who Would Win” books where they compare the characteristics of animals and then put them into a mock fight. I’m so tempted to write a simulation model. The books do one to one, but I’d love to test 1000 hornets versus a T-Rex.

Googling whether or not you can get Apple TV on the 3rd generation Apple TV is… not possible.

“We’re creating the entire amount of commerce on the store, and we’re doing that by focusing on getting the largest audience there,” says Cook.

This quote is indefensible and infuriating. The entitlement is going to be ringing in the ears of every developer watching WWDC.

Finished 📚 Back in the Frame: A great read about the joys of getting back on a bike as an adult. I learned a lot from the way that Jools describes the feeling of being a black woman in white-male dominated cycling. And Jools’ love of cycling is contagious. 🚲

✴ Some People Are Still Hurting

This week my mind keeps floating back to a post written by Kottke from early in the pandemic:

Some people feel helpless & anxious.

Some people are bored.

Some people are self-quarantined alone and are lonely.

Some people are realizing that After will be very different from Before.

Some people are really enjoying this extra time with their kids and will miss it when it’s over.

Some people just got off their 12th double shift in a row at the hospital and can’t hug their family.

The whole piece is worth reading. It was written in March 2020 when we were all scared and trying to surf the…

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✴ Start Small

I have a pattern I want to look out for and avoid.

When I have a habit I want to start, I bring the baggage of an expectation of what it would mean to do the final version of that habit. For instance, if I want to start running, I bring the expectation that a “proper run” is at least 30 minutes, or at least X fast, or at least 5 days per week. But, the critically important thing is just starting the habit. It’s way better to run for 3 minutes a day, slowly, twice a week than to push myself hard at the beginning, burn out, and never do it again.

I find myself doing this all the time. I can see…

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My five-year-old: “I learned from YouTube that all the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park are girls, and so now I don’t even have to learn that from school!” 🦖

I’m glad Twitter now seems to have a functioning product department that is willing to try new things. But, it hurts that the concequence of their long product drought was that they shuttered Vine. They didn’t just sunset a product, they sunset a community.

I managed to get my hosted micro.blog backed by a CloudFront CDN (with some hacky use of Hugo’s replace function). Next step: something to resize these enormous images.

I’m setting up a CDN and my son is asking me to buy him a T-Rex toy. It’s weirding me out that I’m doing both things at the same time from the same company.

✴ OmniFocus 4 Beta

Learn OmniFocus has a First Look at OmniFocus 4 coming on the heels of Omni announcing the beta.

TLDR: Switching to SwiftUI is allowing Omni to build new components for the iOS platforms that are much more akin to what we get on the Mac.

The iPad and iPhone versions of OmniFocus are great for quick entry or checking a list but I find they are not as easy to think in or work in as on the Mac.

The rapid editing of tasks and notes on display in OmniFocus 4 is a huge step in closing this gap. It also feels aligned with the design style of touch interfaces that have you directly manipulate your…

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✴ Smart Home Standards “Matter”

We have some details on the new smart home alliance (now called Matter).

Stacey Higginbotham:

With Matter, consumers won’t have to research if their Nest cameras will work with their Schlage locks or if their HomeKit compatible sensors will also work with Alexa, for example. Developers won’t have to keep up with multiple ecosystems and integrations. Initially, this will only work across a limited number of devices, but those devices include lighting, blinds, HVAC, TVs, access controls, safety & security products, access points, smart home controllers, and bridges.

I’m half surprised it…

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That’s an ambitious exclamation mark. It’s like they think you’ll be genuinely excited about being tracked.

For the record, I didn’t even know my grocery store app had ads.

I kind of love that Trump has a blog. I’m unlikely to spend time reading it, but I hope this encourages more people to consider creating an internet garden of their own. I’m curious how long it takes him to stretch out beyond 280 characters.

Today’s nugget of knowledge from my 5-year-old: “Holes in a car, not so bad. Holes in a boat, VERY bad.”

Tried Lightlife’s Facon. Surprisingly crispy and delicious. I kind of missed having something with crunch in a breakfast sandwich.

“They just want to build cool shit all day,” the employee said. “They don’t want to deal with people…”

Casey Newton has some killer reporting on the whole Basecamp debacle.

People just aren’t well equipped to understand the complexities of ad tracking. Especially when companies are forced to try to explain their usage in a paragraph.