mattgemmell

mattgemmell, 5 months ago to random

Remember: iPads are for media consumption, not creation or real work.

mattgemmell, 5 months ago to random

I still feel nervous when my wife reads one of my books for the first time.

mattgemmell, 5 months ago to random

Careful out there, Edinburgh. Pavements are an ice rink this morning. I’ve just put my neighbour into an ambulance after she fell in her own driveway and broke her shin.

mattgemmell, 5 months ago to random

Here’s to what’s coming in the new year.

mattgemmell, 5 months ago to random

It’s the time of year when my three-year-old barges into the bathroom while I’m in the shower and insists on singing a litany of Christmas songs back to back, concluding — as always — with a statement that he is hungry but only for biscuits.

mattgemmell, 6 months ago to random

Watershed parenting moments this weekend. Son, 3, has lately been watching a kids’ entertainer on youtube whose schtick is pretty much scenarios that use what I know to be videogame mechanics. My dad brain thinks, aha, I can use this to get him into games! So I casually mention I have a game where he can also see lava, and things freezing with ice, and monsters, and so on — and I put Tears of the Kingdom on.

mattgemmell, 6 months ago to random

Even if you don’t do crafts, may I recommend a cutting mat instead of a desk mat for under your keyboard? Not just useful for lining things up 😅, but also for easily visualising the sizes of things you’re looking at online with listed dimensions.

mattgemmell, 6 months ago to random

Really enjoying the Kindle Scribe. By far the most affordable e-paper writing tablet, and it does just enough of the stuff I want for a notepad replacement, as well as of course being a huge Kindle. The killer feature is that all your notebooks are visible in any Kindle app or device at any time. You can also export text conversions of notes, and/or PDFS — which are searchable!

iPhone screenshot from Kindle app, showing the same to do list.
Exported pdf from to do list notebook in Safari on an iPad, using the Find function to locate and highlight a handwritten word.

mattgemmell, 6 months ago to 13thFloor

My 150th free weekly mini-story is out, and you can read it here: https://mattgemmell.scot/books/once-upon-a-time/stories/talking-to-the-lights/

(Why not subscribe to get these in your inbox too?)
#amwriting #fiction #shortstory

mattgemmell, 6 months ago to random

Can I just do something that authors don’t tend to do often, and be brutally honest about life-as-regards-writing lately? 💔 This is especially for the KESTREL fans, of whom there are an inexplicable amount out there. https://mattgemmell.scot/an-update/

mattgemmell, 6 months ago to random

It’d be nice if Apple used all its iCloud trickery to just… temporarily disable things like Voice Control on other devices nearby if you start using dictation or Voice Control on a different one.

Also, sorry if you find text messages to my wife interspersed in the manuscript of my next book.

mattgemmell, 6 months ago to mechanicalkeyboards

Look out, your uncle Matt wrote about #mechanicalkeyboards again. 🙄 https://mattgemmell.scot/thumb-keys/

mattgemmell, 6 months ago to mechanicalkeyboards

More #mechanicalkeyboards content. Feel free to mute that hashtag, which is a thing you can do. Or just enjoy the rainbows.

Left half of keyboard with LEDs animating.

mattgemmell, 7 months ago to random

It’s just so very humanly crappy that we got to the 21st Century and decided we’d give something that isn’t even remotely a hoverboard that name anyway, instead of waiting until we could make a real one, then we did the same for AI. Bombast trumps truth and accuracy every time.

mattgemmell, 7 months ago to random

Actually it’s like three entirely separate sets of five-and-a-third gigabytes, for regulatory purposes. 🙄 https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/8gb-ram-on-m3-macbook-pro-analogous-to-16gb-on-pcs-claims-apple.2410269/

mattgemmell, 7 months ago to random

Numbers of seconds by which my wife has prematurely stopped the microwave dot tumblr dot com.

mattgemmell, 7 months ago to random

For avoidance of doubt, this (article regarding text contrast on the web) is utter nonsense, as is immediately apparent from looking at the examples: https://uxmovement.com/content/why-you-should-never-use-pure-black-for-text-or-backgrounds/

If you need reductive rules of thumb, here they are:

1. Don’t override the user’s choices, because those choices may be accessibility necessities.
2. Pure black text on a light background is best, under light/bright/normal circumstances.
3. You can grey a white BACKGROUND a bit to reduce accomodation-deficient glare.

mattgemmell, 7 months ago to random

Had a child-free lovely lunch out to celebrate nineteen years together!

mattgemmell, 7 months ago to random

I know it’s culturally taboo and everything, but honestly, sometimes I read back over something I wrote a while ago and I just think: jesus christ that is so good. That is amazingly good. I wish I’d written that, and I actually did, and I kind of want to both present AND attend a seminar on how damned good that is.

Then I think the usual things like I started too late, and I’ve peaked, and I’ll never do it again, and so on, so I do have the normal ego-deflation and self-doubt too, just FYI.

mattgemmell, 7 months ago to random

If a company involved in the provision of food, energy, and related necessities of living increases or even maintains its profits during a time of increases in the cost of living, that company has by definition committed an immoral act.

mattgemmell, 7 months ago to random

I've been trying out Voice Control on iPadOS 17, and honestly, I'm amazed. It's just like the third–party dictation and system control utilities I used to play with on the Mac. It's even useful for writing fiction, complete with punctuation and necessary text styling, all controlled via your voice alone. I wrote this post with it, and it felt natural and not at all burdensome. Incredible work.

mattgemmell, 7 months ago to random

I switched my iPad Pro to greyscale and Increase Contrast, and it’s very pleasant to write and sketch on. Reminiscent of both e-paper and my mono-screen laptops way back in the day, but of course on an incredibly high-resolution display.

(In fact, it’s a Shortcuts automation when starting my Work focus: wi-fi off, greyscale and Increase Contrast on, and start a 2-minute timer.)

mattgemmell, 7 months ago to 13thFloor

My 146th free weekly mini-story is out, and you can read it here: https://mattgemmell.scot/books/once-upon-a-time/stories/mr-hideaway/

(Why not subscribe to get these in your inbox too?)
#amwriting #fiction #shortstory

mattgemmell, 7 months ago to random

Neighbour’s daughter’s girlfriend has a new car, and I had to take a pic of the sticker on the fuel flap. 😁

mattgemmell, 7 months ago to random

I noticed the new caps lock warning glyph floating below text fields in iPadOS 17 if you have caps on and are using a physical keyboard. Tapping it makes it go away, and toggles caps lock off again, even switching off the in-key caps indicator light on the Magic Keyboard.