collinsworth

collinsworth, 1 month ago to random

I think we're focused on the wrong thing when we look at what tech works for a company like Amazon or Facebook or Netflix.

We should be looking at what tech works when you don't have a small army of staff engineers optimizing it. I want to know what I can scale without paying someone a half million dollar salary to do it.

There should be more case studies on things that don't have a billion-dollar company propping them up, humming along quietly on a cheap-ass VPS somewhere.

collinsworth, 8 months ago to random

Really tired of "we must adapt to this new reality" takes in response to horrible people doing preventable things.

Fuck that.

Make anti-vaxxers adapt to 20th century medicine. Make selfish people adapt to living in a society. Make billionaires adapt to paying their fair share. Make climate deniers adapt to science. Make conspiracy theorists adapt to reality. Make fascists adapt to getting punched in the face.

The rest of us aren't the ones who need to be "adapting."

Once more: fuck that.

collinsworth, 6 months ago to random

Made this just for fun.

Honest LinkedIn notifications: https://codepen.io/collinsworth/pen/eYxMQbj

collinsworth, 8 months ago to random

New post:

https://joshcollinsworth.com/blog/tailwind-is-smart-steering

collinsworth, 9 months ago to random

I took this photo of my kid playing with his blocks the other day, and when I realized it reminded me of something, well...I had to make this.

collinsworth, 9 months ago to random

Does Apple Music's UI suck? Or do all music apps follow a set of conventions I'm unfamiliar with because I just haven't used any before now? (Or both?)

collinsworth, 6 months ago to random

I wish (Android?) Phones had a way to just disable vibration for an app, without blocking its notifications entirely.

The @NPR app vibrates in an obnoxious pattern for like three full seconds whenever there's breaking news, but I can't find any way to disable only the vibration without completely disabling all breaking news notifications.

collinsworth, 1 month ago to random

PC Gaming is a ruthlessly difficult game where your reward for beating it is getting to play an actual video game.

collinsworth, 10 months ago to random

Every time I try to add a style attribute to an element in React and I'm forced to refactor it to object syntax, I die just a little bit inside.

collinsworth, 11 months ago to random

When you realize the answer in pretty much any situation is almost never A or B, but some context-dependent, highly nuanced blend of the two, you begin to notice how much of (social) media subsists on erasing that subtlety to perpetuate a feverish ideological shouting match.

(Case in point: office work vs. remote work, but it's pretty much everywhere.)

collinsworth, 9 months ago to random

Every time my M2 MacBook sleeps, I have to reconfigure all the displays.

On my iPad, FaceTime calls just fail instantly with no given reason.

Apple Music just stops playing after one song in the morning and needs to be restarted.

AppleTV+ constantly loses track of where I am.

My AirPods constantly fall out of my right ear, no matter the size of the rubber thingy.

Safari's the only browser with a whole slew of rendering bugs.

The state of UX is dismal if this company is the best there is.

collinsworth, 7 months ago to random

This morning, I put my AirPods in. They wouldn't pair. No reason. Just wouldn't work.

Then I went to work, and every time I stepped away from my Mac, I had to arrange my windows again when I came back. Just like every day.

Then a coworker reported an issue that's only happening on iPhone.

So I started Xcode device simulator, and it just doesn't work. Literally none of the commands do anything.

The only thing that sucks worse than Apple is that every other company sucks just as much or more.

collinsworth, 4 months ago to random

I like TypeScript, but I maintain that beyond a certain point, it makes you feel more productive than it actually makes you.

It feels like an amazing achievement when you finally, satisfyingly, invoke the proper incantation to banish those cursed squigglies in your editor...

...but you might have just spent hours "improving" the code, when what actually ships and runs is 0% different that it was before.

It's possible the only thing you meaningfully changed was your own feelings.

collinsworth, 7 months ago to random

It took almost four years, but I just had my first positive Covid test. 😞

(Hard to be surprised; I was traveling internationally last week. But still.)

collinsworth, 10 months ago to random

It's astounding to me that, despite Apple making Safari the default browser on all devices—and actually forcing users onto it on iOS—it still has barely over 10% of the browser market share.

The most successful company on the planet has done everything it can to promote the browser, and roughly 9 out of 10 internet users are still saying "no, thanks."

Safari is the Metaverse of browsers.

collinsworth, 9 months ago to random

My 4yo just told my wife and I that he gets our money when we're gone, and he likes money, so if we want to die, that would be ok.

I really, really need to hear that young kids just say shit like this without really understanding it. Please tell me this.

collinsworth, 2 months ago to random

I used to wear a wrist brace, for pain from working on a computer all day.

It just occurred to me today that I don't even know where my wrist brace is; I haven't worn it probably since October, when I started using the MoErgo Glove80 keyboard as my main daily driver.

Keyboards like this take a lot of time to adjust to, but if you have RSI from typing (or want to avoid it), I'd definitely say it's worth a look.

collinsworth, 3 months ago to random

Every time my AirPods case is touched or moved in the slightest, it makes a loud chirping noise for 10 seconds. It's supposed to help you find it but it's annoying as hell.

I managed to turn it off once but that preference got wiped out in an update.

Spent literally a half hour yesterday trying to turn it back off again. The setting is completely disabled in MacOS until you do a hard reset.

Finally got it; first thing that happened today when I went to put my AirPods in:

They chirped at me.

collinsworth, 1 month ago to random

Few things make me as explosively grumpy as trying to do something that seems like it should be extremely simple with my Apple account.

(Because it takes 15 minutes doing multiple searches and signing in at least 2–3 times across multiple apps and websites every single time.)

collinsworth, 6 days ago to random

Anybody else notice it seems like all software has gotten extra buggy and unreliable over the last year or two?

I don't have an exact timeframe, but I'd say it loosely coincidences with when all the big tech companies started doing mass layoffs.

Weird.

collinsworth, 4 months ago to random

Never heard of negging as a blogging strategy, but Tailwind seems to be giving it a go.

More highlights from the blog post: "Ever heard of forced color mode? Your site probably looks pretty bad in it. Well now you can't blame us at least."

collinsworth, 3 months ago to random

Pros and cons of Bluetooth

Con:

• Need to constantly recharge
• Setup takes time
• Flaky connection
• Latency
• Can't work without power
• May connect to wrong device
• Consumes more power on playback device
• Subject to interference
• Harder to switch between devices
• Hard to share devices; might need to ask someone else to disconnect first before you can connect

Pro:

• No cord. That's it. That's the entire list.

collinsworth, 3 months ago to random

New post, kind of weirdly personal-feeling one. I don't know if it'll land with you, but I hope it at least gives you something to consider.

https://joshcollinsworth.com/blog/devaluing-frontend

collinsworth, 2 months ago to random

"Do your own research" is horrible advice, because almost nobody has any idea how to do actual, unbiased research.

Rule of thumb: if it involved a search algorithm (and just about everything on the Internet does), it wasn't research.

collinsworth, 1 month ago to random

Thinking about the mental gymnastics required to say "React is the most popular; it won; React is king; there's no sense in choosing anything else" while ALSO staring at a mountain of data that shows PHP is like 20 times more popular than React.