Quick bits:

• Merry Xmas for those who celebrate! I spent my time with friends, wasting spending a few hours on GeoGuessr pretending that every place name in the world is pronounced as if it’s Finnish. Savannah Perkele, am I right?!

  I am also reminded that, just like last year, I haven’t been to any Xmas markets this year.

• Merry Ruby 3.4 release day for those who celebrate!

  I also haven’t been to any Ruby markets this year. Now wouldn’t that be something?!

• It is still a few days until the start of 2025, but there already seems to be a low-key but constant stream of fireworks in Berlin. This morning, I got woken up at 5 AM by fireworks. Why?!

• Isn’t it interesting how 3D film just sort of… disappeared? I’m not sure why I was thinking about that this week. I certainly don’t miss 3D films. Technically 3D films are still being made but I’m not sure they’re all that popular — I haven’t been in cinemas that screen 3D films lately.¹¹1 The same was true for 48fps too, I suppose, though it was far less of a Thing. 

• I reached a 500-day Duolingo streak! My Spanish is still, unfortunately, rather mierda.

• I gave myself a haircut. My Braun hair clipper is on its last legs, but works just about enough for a single haircut.

• My 2024 Year In Review is making slow progress. I’ve got a few more days!

• I’ve signed up for continued acting classes. Up and to the right!

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Shower thoughts:

• Why can a notebook never finish a race? Because it’s stationery.²²2 Yeah, this one definitely works better when said out loud rather than written down. 

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I’ve put D★Scribe on hold for now.

• Writing rich text editors is painful. I’ve played with both ProseMirror and Lexical, but none of them are satisfying to work with. HTML, CSS and JavaScript just don’t make for a good-enough platform for writing text editors or word processors in, especially not ones that are off the beaten path.

• Making a JavaScript/Electron app work well on macOS is, to no-one’s surprise, a lot of work, and some things are just not quite possible. At least Electron is mature; Tauri and Wails are too limited to be an option.

• Creating a tree view (akin to a NSOutlineView) is incredibly difficult, especially when considering drag-and-drop support. There aren’t any good pre-made libraries for this, surprisingly.

• JavaScript applications are still remarkably slow, with visible loading delays — even on a high-performing MacBook Air M2, and even when being careful to implement things efficiently.

• Electron started crashing on me regularly. I’ve given Xcode flak for being unstable, but Electron deserves it too.

I thought about restarting the project with AppKit (maybe with some parts in SwiftUI). But you know what? I don’t really need this project: Scrivener is just fine. I’ve got my gripes with it, and I think a structured prose editor alternative to Scrivener still makes sense, but I think it really isn’t worth my time investment.

I want to do the things that I was working on D★Scribe for. Write fiction! Continue with my interpreter book! I can do those things just fine with Scrivener.

It feels good to put D★Scribe on hold, actually. It now feels like this whole project was a detour³³3 A yak shave!  from what I really wanted to do: write. So that is what I will do.

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I’ve come to realize that plenty of the software I write is related to writing and publishing. Most famously, there is Nanoc, but also D★Mark and of course D★Scribe.

It makes me wonder whether it makes sense for me to properly lean into my writing-and-publishing interests, and see what other ideas I can come up with. The aforementioned projects are not end goals in and of themselves, but stepping stones to improving the way I write and publish (and edit, and collect ideas, and format, etc). There’s definitely more where that came from.

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Entertainment:

• I’ve dropped ELEX.⁴⁴4 ELEX (Piranha Bytes, 2017), published by THQ Nordic.  It’s just not worth it. Not engaging enough by far, and I’ve got better ways to spend my time.

• In my frustration to play an RPG with an engaging setting, relatable characters, and an interesting storyline, I once again picked up The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt⁵⁵5 The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (CD Projekt Red, 2015), published by CD Projekt.  in New Game + mode. But this would be my third playthrough, and I’m just not quite feeling it — so I abandoned it, too. I’m curious about the recent story mods, though.

• Dead Ringers⁶⁶6 Dead Ringers, directed by David Cronenberg, written by David Cronenberg, Norman Snider and Bari Wood (Téléfilm Canada, Mantle Clinic II, 1988).  is haunting and has only a smidge of body horror in it.

• Close⁷⁷7 Close, directed by Lukas Dhont, written by Lukas Dhont and Angelo Tijssens (Menuet bvba, Diaphana Distribution, Topkapi Films, 2022).  is an interesting movie. It’s well directed and well acted, though it isn’t much more than a (rough) emotional journey. I feel the film doesn’t quite do justice to what grief really is. Having lost two friends on two separate occasions in high school, I know what teen grief is like: vast and deep and life-changing. There is only so much that you can show in a two-hour film, of course, but in my opinion, there needed to be more of an exploration of how grief is handled. Otherwise, it’s just emotional wankery.

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Links:

• I “Fixed” Sandisk’s New Logo (Linus Boman)

• Exposing the Honey Influencer Scam (MegaLag): I am entirely not surprised that Honey is a shady service, but I had no idea it went to outright fraud.

• We Made Our Friend An International Fugitive (Boy Boy): Wild!

Entertainment links:

• Five Stars (James Tomasino): Hmm! I thought about my review of Glaube, Geld, Krieg und Liebe while reading this. That play was strongly recommended to me and yet I did not like it at all. It is the first time I have given anything a star review on my week­notes, and I didn’t feel great about it, especially as this play clearly worked very well for others.

• What the hell happened this year? (Good Work)

• The Millenial Captcha (Mike Lacher and Brian Moore for McSweeney’s)

• The worst English phrasebook ever written (RobWords): I want to get a copy of that phrasebook!

Tech links:

• The accounting tool Bench shut down without prior warning, effective immediately: This illustrates extremely well how much I dislike relying on hosted services.

• Why I’m excited about text-box-trim as a designer (Jason Bradberry for Piccalilly): This is exciting, and browser support is getting there!

• A tour of Self (sin-ack): I’d love to try out Self, but it doesn’t work on recent macOS versions.

• Boris Gamazaychikov on OpenAI’s o3 model: Quote: “Each task consumed approximately 1,785 kWh of energy — about the same amount of electricity an average U.S. household uses in two months.” Appalling.

• Fish 4.0: The Fish Of Theseus: Rust!