chrisphin

chrisphin, 8 months ago to random

I was in the market for a new iPhone this year, so was watching the #AppleEvent. Call me shallow, but I’m currently favouring the iPhone 15 rather than the Pro just because I quite like that pink, and the Pro colours are a bit 🥱

(The 5× telephoto is nice, but I think there’s nothing wildly compelling for me in the Pro. For filmmakers, the USB 3 speeds, abiility to record to external storage and ACES certification look like reasons to skip straight to Pro, but for most folks? 🤔)

chrisphin, 7 months ago to random

Lighting up the Pants In The Boot¹ Batsignal: I am informed by someone who grew up in the US that ‘x' is a British thing. Like, he parses it as a kiss, so he knows what it means, but as a… signoff…? he thinks it's British. 🤯

cc @glennf and the gang

¹ https://www.theincomparable.com/pants/

chrisphin, 10 months ago to random

You know how Macs hold their value well? I mean, it’s true, but it’s all relative. 😅 I was looking to finally sell my lovely big upgraded 5K iMac (£2,889 as specc’d) to fund replacing my lost camera. It’s seven years old, so I knew it wouldn’t fetch huge sums, but I had £600, maaaybe £800 in my head…?

Lol, less than half that even for a voucher at CeX. Sub-£200 cash. My daughter will get more value from it than that, so upgrading her from an even more ancient 2009 (iirc) iMac. 🤷🏻‍♂️

chrisphin, 8 months ago to random

I know Sonoma is less than a week away, but I think it’s important that I say I still hate Ventura’s System Preferences.

It did not grow on me.

If anything, the thing that grew was my loathing.

chrisphin, 2 months ago to random

A while ago my wife introduced me to Stand In Pride, where queer people can find stand-in family members for support and indeed often for big life events — when their biological families don’t show up. And so it came to pass that a couple of weeks ago I had the singular honour of walking Taylor down the aisle to marry Ruth. Family is what you make it. Love endures. Join me in wishing them a long and happy life together! ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

A group shot of the wedding party on a staircase. Taylor’s wife is wearing a kilt in red, with a black jacket, and they’re kissing; other people are arrayed behind them in formal wear. Everyone’s smiling. 😊

chrisphin, 3 months ago to random

A bit of shameless old-school social media froth for you: what is the biscuit¹ that, when you eat it, you’re like “omg, I totally forgot how good these are; why don’t we have these all the time‽” 🍪

¹ We’re safe, lads; the Yanks are barely awake

chrisphin, 9 months ago to random

Not sure how camelids manage simultaneously to pull off ‘haughty’ and ‘dopey’, yet here we are.

Black camelid in profile.
Tan camelid in profile
Baby camelid with spindly legs.

chrisphin, 9 months ago to random

My Kickstarter copies of ‘42’ arrived a couple of days ago. I can see now why the ePub version felt so whack; you need page layout to make a collection of ephemera work!

Coincidentally, I’d started reading Hitchhiker’s to my daughter a week or so earlier. I don’t know if it’s just because he’s such a talented writer or if I so internalised his particular cadence (or indeed entire passages!) as a boy, but I’m struck by how naturally it reads aloud despite being quite dense and mannered language.

chrisphin, 8 months ago to random

Is this interesting? Reactions to Apple’s Mother Nature skit here on Mastodon have been universally negative — cringe, self-indulgent, the mention of carbon credits, padding — but I’ve only seen positive reactions on LinkedIn, where people praised weaving a ‘boring’ message into a masterful piece of storytelling. Makes me wonder about the intended audience.

chrisphin, 4 months ago to random

When twats twat on about how early Christmas stuff is in the shops I’m like, can it, Linda; I’ve spent nine joyless months with nary a mince pie to be seen. Let me have this.

chrisphin, 4 months ago to random

Stumbled across this old photo I took hot-air-ballooning over Bath, edited with a tilt-shift effect to make it look like a model. Never don’t find that effect charming! #tiltshift

chrisphin, 11 months ago to random

Imminent change to my tech setup means this excellent Cam Link 4K is surplus. £50 or free to an org doing progressive work for any kind of minority. Slide into my DMs! https://www.elgato.com/us/en/p/cam-link-4k

chrisphin, 9 months ago to random

This¹ popped into my feed again, and I want to add something else: being a bit shit at stuff and doing it anyway is specifically a radical, anti-capitalist act. ✊🏻 An underlying reason you want to do things well is because you’ve internalised the lesson that stuff only has value if it literally has economic value – if you can sell it.

Post your wonky drawings. Throw an ungainly pot. Make sub-par dinners. You’re literally smashing the system. ♥️

¹ From @ITOmarHernandez, reposted by @girlonthenet

chrisphin, 8 months ago to random

A little stack of obsolescence.

chrisphin, 2 months ago to random

TikTokkers handholding lav mics make my teeth itch. Hate it. Hate, hate, hate. Clip it to your damned clothes.

(PS this is me trying to flush out of the woodwork people who will defend this practice with things I haven't thought about that will make complete sense.)

chrisphin, 6 months ago to random

I don’t really do Twitter Discourse™ here because yawn, but I’m not above the schadenfreude of enjoying seeing a steady stream of high-profile organisations suspend advertising spend; really, surely, the only thing that genuinely hurts Musk. (IBM and the European Commission two notables recently.)

I’m still angry my community was taken away from me on Twitter, and though I’m ashamed of it, I don’t hate watching them suffer.

chrisphin, 8 months ago to random

“I do not accept cookies” he clicks, knowing it is a lie.

chrisphin, 4 months ago to random

Legitimately one of the biggest-little-upgrades in moving from an iPhone 12 to 15 is that Face ID works in landscape¹. I wouldn’t have said I often unlock my phone sideways, but especially since my default behaviour for notifications is to hide the content unless unlocked (in my case with FaceID), this is small but significant quality of life upgrade – for StandBy, yeah, but other uses too.

¹ Did that come in with 13 or 14?

chrisphin, 4 months ago to random

A little light reading just showed up. 📦

(This is Shift Happens, an extravangantly, luxuriantly, juicily indulgent collection of books on the development of the keyboard, written and edited with love by, respectively, @mwichary and @glennf.)

chrisphin, 8 months ago to random

Well, that made the decision for me. Struggled to decide between the Pro Max and the Plus in pink, but my carrier isn’t carrying the Plus in 512GB 🤷🏻‍♂️ so… Natural Titanium here I come, I guess!

(…slowly. 19 Oct, apparently. 💀)

chrisphin, 8 months ago to random

Howling at this sample question to ask at job interviews. Capitalism is a hell of a drug.

chrisphin, 2 months ago to random

Did you guys know that there's literally nothing stopping you buying a retail pack of Mega Double Lollies? Except maybe shame? But I have no shame? Or self-control?

chrisphin, 1 month ago to random

God, I hate and love shit like this. (Paging @ianbetteridge) https://prelaunch.com/projects/byok-bring-your-own-keyboard-the-ultimate-tool-for-distraction-free-writing

chrisphin, 30 days ago to random

Unsolicited recommendation for a hotel in central London. This is seconds from Tottenham Court Road, was a decent price, and just… everything I want, nothing I don’t. It’s cheap, I think, because it’s all subterranean, so no windows, but the bed’s comfy, its keyless entry via an app (smooth process, and you don’t even have to speak to anyone at reception 😄), and super-convenient. I’ll be back! https://www.zedwellhotels.com/tottenhamcourtroad

chrisphin, 8 days ago to random

Why THE FUCK would you advertise a feature that skeevy men use to violate the boundaries and equanimity of women and other vulnerable people using a grab that feels exactly like an example of that? Like, I’m not making the argument that DMs are bad and shouldn’t exist (in this post), but why apparently lean into their worst feature??