Nerd Cred Time

May 20, 2022

Nerd cred time! That one time in 1990 that I asked my friends at the Singapore Microcomputer Society for a recommendation letter.

Throughout the 80s, I was a very active member of the Singapore Apple Users Group (or AUG(S) as they liked to call themselves), which later became part of the SMS. I created a tiny CMS and published their newsletter articles on 3.5″ disks with a custom bootloader/reader that booted in under one second from powerup on an Apple ][—complete with keyboard navigation and paginator. I was pretty proud of that.

I acted as a co-sysop for the SMS BBS. I also ran my own BBS, which I wrote from scratch using Apple BASIC and ran on my Apple //e, which detected when you used ProTERM, and would offer you MouseText-based iconography and keyboard navigation.

My latest project: Swift Playgrounds 4.1

May 17, 2022

I’m proud to tell you about the latest product I worked on: Swift Playgrounds 4.1, now with Mac Catalyst support! You can now work on the same project files on your iPad and Mac, and publish them as native apps on both platforms.

Specifically, my work was around implementing the Mac Catalyst preview pipeline, which involved a rather unique dance between UIKit, AppKit, Core Animation, and many low-level services to orchestrate a fully interactive app preview experience across multiple processes.

It was very hard work sometimes, but I’m proud of the result. I hope this update opens up new opportunities for developers new and experienced alike to experiment with Swift and SwiftUI on the Mac.

https://developer.apple.com/swift-playgrounds/

Swift Playgrounds - Apple Developer

Swift Playgrounds is a revolutionary app for iPad and Mac that helps you learn and explore coding in Swift, the same powerful language used to create world-class apps for the App Store.

#personal

Memento Mori: A million dead of COVID-19

May 6, 2022

We’ve reached a grim milestone: one million dead from COVID-19.

“The number — equivalent to the population of San Jose, California, the 10th largest city in the U.S. — was reached at stunning speed: 27 months after the country confirmed its first case of the virus.”

Imagine the population of San Jose one by one suffocating, then dropping dead, until no one is left, in a little more than two years. That’s what COVID-19 has done to this country. I think it would be appropriate to mark this ignominious milestone with a national day of remembrance; a memento mori, a grim reminder that this disease is not yet over, not by a long shot.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/covids-toll-us-reaches-1-million-deaths-unfathomable-number-rcna22105

Covid's toll in the U.S. reaches a once unfathomable number: 1 million deaths

"It's an exponential number of other people that are walking around with a small hole in their heart," one widow said.

Video: Theory of Stupidity

April 27, 2022

I have to agree with this video: Stupidity is less about intellectual deficiency that can be argued with, but more about a sociological state where a person surrenders their agency to defer to a strongman.

“Almost as if this were a sociological-psychological law: where the power of the one needs the stupidity of the other.”

Photos from ISSIMI Meccanica open house

April 23, 2022

ISSIMI Meccanica garage interior

Incredible array of cars at the ISSIMI Meccanica open house last Saturday! Check out the full album here:

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