Thord D. Hedengren

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  • Reset

    Wil Wheaton, hitting a little too close to home in his reset piece, writes this:

    Going all the way back to last August, I swore that I’d take more time away from other things to focus on writing and taking the pages and pages of story ideas I have in my little notebook and turning them into actual stories. The thing is, when I took that time off, my health and mana were so depleted, I couldn’t find it in myself to do the work. Every few months, I’d take a week or two off, and instead of writing like I wanted to, I’d play video games and do nothing else, because I was just so goddamn tired. Then I would look up, realize a couple of weeks had passed, I hadn’t done anything, and I needed to get back to “real” work. I would feel frustrated and empty, and the whole cycle would start all over again.

    It’s just a coincidence I’m posting this so close to the new year, promise!

  • Everything Apple in 2015

    9to5mac doing what an Apple blog should, listing everything Apple released in 2015 year by year.

    […] 2015 has been one where Apple has truly released new products all across the year. So many, in fact, that it’s probably difficult to recall every single new hardware and software product without referencing the history books. Starting with the X released in X to the X released in X, we’ll take a retrospective look at everything new that came out of Apple this year and what to expect in 2016.

  • Bucket ad blockers

    Digiday on Dennis Digital’s take on ad blocking:

    It has now split ad-blocker users into three buckets: “zealots” whom publishers will never win over, “privacy protectors” who are wary of being tracked in general, and finally those concerned with the speed of the Web and data usage.

    A representative for Dennis Digital also said they’d yet to see any real mobil ad apocalypse, but points out that it could change. Don’t worry, it will.

  • Intolerant discourse

    Sundar Pichai:

    And it’s not just about opportunity. The open-mindedness, tolerance, and acceptance of new Americans is one of the country’s greatest strengths and most defining characteristics. And that is no coincidence — America, after all, was and is a country of immigrants.

    That is why it’s so disheartening to see the intolerant discourse playing out in the news these days — statements that our country would be a better place without the voices, ideas and the contributions of certain groups of people, based solely on where they come from, or their religion.

  • Distracted by the internet

    Tony Schwartz, writing about distraction and the internet:

    Beyond spending too much time on the Internet and a diminishing attention span, I wasn’t eating the right foods. I drank way too much diet soda. I was having a second cocktail at night too frequently. I was no longer exercising every day, as I had nearly all my life.

    In response, I created an irrationally ambitious plan. For the next 30 days, I would attempt to right these behaviors, and several others, all at once. It was a fit of grandiosity. I recommend precisely the opposite approach every day to clients. But I rationalized that no one is more committed to self-improvement than I am. These behaviors are all related. I can do it.

  • Open Live Writer

    Microsoft has open sourced its blogging application Windows Live Writer, as Open Live Writer:

    Open Live Writer is an open source application enabling users to author, edit, and publish blog posts. It is based on a fork of the well-loved but not actively developed Windows Live Writer code. Open Live Writer is provided under a MIT license.

    This is what you do when you can’t or won’t support software anymore. Google and Dropbox have a lot to learn about doing the right thing in this regard.

  • Mozilla launches iOS content blocker

    Mozilla joins the content blockers – I don’t know, arms race? – with an option of their own for iOS, called Focus by Firefox. This content blocker isn’t about stopping ads, but rather limit tracking scripts. It only works in Safari in accordance with Apple’s content blocker rules.

  • Odd Alice söker backend-utvecklare

    Odd Alice fortsätter växa. Den här gången är det en backend-utvecklare vi behöver, helst i Stockholm men det är inget krav. Läs jobbannonsen på OA:s sajt, och om det inte är för dig så tipsa dina vänner vetja.

  • WordPress 4.4

    WordPress, the world’s most used publishing system, got another major update today. Version 4.4 is available in your WordPress admin interface, or as a download from wordpress.org. Among other things, 4.4 features the first half of WordPress’s REST API, which is a huge deal for developers.

  • Let's encrypt, y'all

    Let’s Encrypt automates SSL certificates, for free, which is all kinds of great for the web. It’s now in public beta:

    We have more work to do before we’re comfortable dropping the beta label entirely, particularly on the client experience. Automation is a cornerstone of our strategy, and we need to make sure that the client works smoothly and reliably on a wide range of platforms. We’ll be monitoring feedback from users closely, and making improvements as quickly as possible.

  • iPad Pro full-time

    Benjamin Brooks on going full time iPad Pro:

    And now, just over a decade later, I am staring at this iPad Pro and thinking to myself: this is the same jump I made back in 2004. Yes, there will be somethings which won’t work, but I jumped because I knew that I had found the future of computing and I didn’t want to stay on the old crap I had before. It’s the same, but I admit it may be difficult for many to see this right now.

    A lot of things in this post rings true to me. Switching to the iPad Pro full time is possible for most, albeit perhaps not entirely so for me if I want to stay fully productive. It’s something I haven’t wrapped my head around yet, but suffice to say, it’s easier with a Mac. Not as fun though, and I think, in all these posts and arguments pro and con switching to a tablet, people are missing some crucial use cases. It’s a half-baked thought for now, and I think I’ll be returning to it in the future.

  • Barrikaden.se recenserar Ashen Sky

    Jonas Bengtsson tycker så här om Ashen Sky i en novellsamlingsspecial på svenska Barrikaden.se:

    Varje del har sitt eget huvudtema. Först är det att överleva. I del 2 att göra det ”omöjliga” – det vill säga att ta sig upp i bergen och ovanför de gråa molnen och i del 3 är det ett nytt mål (vill inte spoila) som driver Dirk vilket ger varje del sitt eget fokus och identifikation. Spännande, mystiskt, bistert och actionfyllt är ledorden för Thord D. Hedengrens läsvärda postapokalyptiska novell.

    Läs hela specialen vetja. Mer om min långnovell Ashen Sky, inklusive inköpslänkar, hittar du här.

  • The real problem with gaming on Android

    Prune developer Joel McDonald, in a comment to Polygon:

    In fact, from a developer’s perspective, Android has been the most pleasing experience of any of the platforms I’ve released on, not to mention that the players have been great,” he continued. “But as a dev you’ve also got to take the platform’s particularities into account. One thing I knew going into it was that the ‘unpaid install’ rate would likely be around 95 percent and this is exactly what I’ve observed. In a lot of cases the smart thing to do is to convert your premium game to be free-to-play on Android, but that just didn’t make sense for Prune, nor was it something that I was personally interested in.

    Emphasis mine. The Polygon piece, written by Ben Kuchera, is about switching from Android to iOS because the games launch faster there. While true, the more pressing matter at hand is the piracy, and the fact that this will lead to more crappy/greedy free-to-play business models. This means that there are no premium, pay once and play, games to pirate, but also none to enjoy. From a gamer’s perspective, this can’t be a good thing.

  • WordPress.com is now open source

    WordPress.com is now open source, which is incredibly cool.

    The new WordPress.com codebase, codenamed “Calypso,” moves WordPress.com away from MySQL and PHP. It’s built entirely in JavaScript, and communicates with WordPress.com only using our REST API. This means the new WordPress.com is a browser-based client for our API, just like any other application built on top of it — lighter, faster, and more flexible for a mobile-focused world.

    This is just the beginning, folks. The WordPress REST API will power the web, be it in a browser or in apps, mark my words.

  • The rise and fall of .ly

    Some light Sunday reading about the rise and fall of the .ly domain, at Priceonomics:

    In April 2004, some 12,400 domains ending in .ly disappeared. The British company managing it had disappeared, too, and for a time nobody knew what to do. According to Bridle, “some but not all” of the domains came back online within a few days, and one “Dr. Hosni Tayeb” sent a cryptic email to all domain holders communicating, in broken English, that everything was fine: “Thank you very much for your concern about .ly cc TLD. People do care around!”