Exposing Floating Point
Despite everyday use, floating point numbers are often understood in a hand-wavy manner and their behavior raises many eyebrows.
Gems
Blog
Reflecting on the year 2018
Reflection on the year 2018, checking progress of the goals, and some numbers.
Journal
The Little Drummer Girl
The Little Drummer Girl is a British-American limited series. It aired on BBC One and AMC from 28 October 2018. Park Chan-wook directed it. The show adapts John le Carré's 1983 novel. Florence Pugh plays Charlie, a young English actress recruited by Israeli intelligence to infiltrate a Palestinian bombing network in the late 1970s.
TV Series
Merry Christmas
Christmas calls me to remember the basics with fresh eyes. The birth of Jesus stands as evidence of divine love.
Christianity
21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari
In 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, Yuval Noah Harari steps back from the deep past and the far future to ask what we should focus on right now in a world of fake news, lost jobs and rising tribalism.
Books
Bundles and Packages
The article clarifies the distinction between bundles and packages on Apple platforms, often confused due to overlapping use cases.
Development
CharacterSet
The article introduces CharacterSet, a Foundation type in Swift for manipulating Unicode scalar values, distinct from Set<Character> despite its name, as it conforms to the SetAlgebra protocol rather than storing Character values directly.
Development
Love Liberty Disco by Newsboys
A late discovery of Newsboys' 1999 album, a playful disco turn from a band better known for pop rock.
Music
Monthly update #0343 • November 2018
Monthly update 343 • November 2018 • 2018-11-01 - 2018-11-30
Monthly Updates
SecKey
SecKey provides one time passwords to be used with the two factor authentication of Dropbox, Google, Facebook, GitHub, Proton Mail and many more.
Projects
Past Tense by Lee Child
Past Tense follows Reacher to his father’s New Hampshire hometown, uncovering family secrets, while two Canadians face a deadly trap in a rural motel.
Books
Locale
Internationalisation (i18n) means building your app so it can support many regions and languages. Localisation (l10n) means actually translating and adapting it for a specific market.
Development
The User Experience of Chatbots
I absolutely hate chatbots! So much that I added a rule to Quiet to hide/block chatbots from websites.
Development
Equinoxe Infinity by Jean-Michel Jarre
Jean-Michel Jarre's 2018 electronic album, a sequel to Equinoxe asking how we will live with machines.
Music
Useful macOS defaults: System UI Server
Handy defaults write commands for com.apple.systemuiserver, controlling the menu bar and system UI elements.
Mac
What is ctkd?
If you see ctkd running on your Mac, here is what this smart card and security key process does.
Mac
Monthly update #0342 • October 2018
Monthly update 342 • October 2018 • 2018-10-01 - 2018-10-31
Monthly Updates
Only Jesus by Casting Crowns
Casting Crowns' 2018 record about laying down our own name and wanting only the name of Jesus to remain.
Music
Cowboy in Paris by Jul
Lucky Luke escorts the sculptor Bartholdi and the torch of the Statue of Liberty across America, then sails to Paris to bring the great lady home.
Books
It is time to leave the Facebook universe!
I left Facebook on 1 January 2012. I never used Instagram and stopped using WhatsApp on 30 April 2017. I have not missed them for a second. People often ask why I abandoned these platforms.
Essays
FileManager
On Apple platforms, the FileManager class in the Foundation framework provides a robust abstraction for file system operations like creating, reading, moving, copying, and deleting files and directories, using paths or file URLs.
Development
Holy Roar by Chris Tomlin
Chris Tomlin's 2018 worship album built around the many old words the Bible uses for praise.
Music
What is touristd?
If you see touristd in Activity Monitor or in a firewall log, here is what this macOS process does.
Mac
The Elements by TobyMac
TobyMac's 2018 record blends Christian hip hop and pop rock into a steady set about faith under pressure.
Music
DateComponents
The article introduces DateComponents, a versatile Foundation type in Swift for representing either a specific calendar date or a duration of time, emphasising its use over hardcoded time intervals like 60 * 60 * 24 for a day.
Development