It looks like I’m headed to the bench at work. That honestly terrifies me.
I will make the best of it and dive into SwiftUI and async-await. I haven’t done much with either on a real project.
I could also study JavaScript and React. 🤔
I thought it was allergies. Nope, it’s a cold. NyQuil and DayQuil have once again become my best friends. 🤧
Avila Beach
I saw a picture someone posted of the beach and I thought of Avila Beach, California.
Kim and I lived not far from it and would go to the beach at least once a week. We’d load up Maggie — our Yorkie — grab a coffee, and dive to the beach.
We’d throw the ball for Maggie and she’d run up and down the beach until she was worn out.
If we could live there for the remainder of our lives together we would. It’s our little paradise.
I miss our beach dates. I miss California.
Kim’s flowers are pretty darned happy. There are a few new flowers in the mix but the purple and yellow flowers and her mini roses have been around for years.
Saturday Morning Coffee
Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️
Welcome to this Special Sunday Edition of Saturday Morning Coffee. What makes it special you ask? Nothing! 😆
Kim, my lovely bride, let me sleep in yesterday. It was glorious! And since we had plans to be out of the house by around 10AM, well, that meant I couldn’t put things together yesterday. Now you know why you’re seeing this on Sunday.
Grab some coffee and enjoy the links!
Last Saturday, as 39 million Californians went about their daily lives—taking showers, doing laundry, or charging their electric cars—the whole state ran on 100% clean electricity for more than nine hours.
I find this very encouraging and I believe it’s only going to get better.
Down the hill from where we live one of our power providers is installing a large field of solar panels. I don’t know how large it is or how much power it’ll generate, but I’m here for it.
Naomi Hartono • blogs.nasa.gov
For the first time since November, NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft is returning usable data about the health and status of its onboard engineering systems.
Engineers this smart blow my mind.
“Oh, the thing I need to repair is millions of miles away? No problem.” 😳
Rick Perlstein • The American Prospect
And that’s when the man in the castle with the seven fireplaces said it.
“I’m glad there’s OxyContin and video games to keep those people quiet.”
Andreessen is another piece of Silicon Valley garbage. Even if he said he was joking there’s always a nugget of truth in there. I’d say he really believes what he said.
Jesse Wegman • New York Times 🎁
Trump’s Immunity Case Was Settled More Than 200 Years Ago
That seems about right. We’ve managed to have 240+ years of Presidencies without one committing crimes against the nation that I doubt our founding fathers expected it to happen like this.
Trump is a rapist and a mob boss looking to use the Presidency as his own personal piggy bank.
I hope the Supremes do the right thing and declare the President isn’t above the law.
In my previous post, I just scratched the surface of iOS development in Neovim. Since then I discovered many new things that allowed me to move my development almost completely to Neovim.
If you’re really good with keyboard commands this could be the editor for you. I’ll stick with Xcode and BBEdit. 😄
I just don’t get Taylor Swift. There, I said it. (DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT DISLIKE HER. I WISH HER ALL OF THE HAPPINESS AND SUCCESS IN THE WORLD. PLEASE, I HAVE A FAMILY.)
Better be careful! The Swifties won’t be happy!
Remember the hubbub caused by Tool releasing their first album in 13 years keeping Ms. Swift’s new album out of the top spot? I do. It was kind of funny.
She’s a cultural phenomenon and apparently a very kind, caring, human being. What’s not to like?
A few weeks ago, I got a bit miffed reading yet another article that was too dismissive about memory safety, basically being mostly dismissive about the need for change. The following weekend, I started seeing flippant responses from security luminaries, saying essentially that you’re irresponsible and dangerous unless you drop C and C++ faster than I dropped my 8 am classes my first year in college.
I’m an old curmudgeon and I still love C++ as a development language, especially if you’re doing something that needs to be cross platform. But, I certainly understand the trend and the desire to move to memory safe languages. Swift and Rust are both great choices. Swift has made development on Apple OS’es easier and safer. I love it! Rust is on my to learn list but given my latest project is React Native it makes more sense for me to learn JavaScript. Rust will have to wait.
Jonathan M. Gitlin • Ars Technica
Honda announced today that it will spend $11 billion to expand its electric vehicle manufacturing presence in North America. The Japanese automaker already has a number of factories in the US, Mexico, and Canada, and it’s this last one that will benefit from the expansion, with four EV-related plants planned for Ontario.
That’s a lot of money and it’s interesting it’s happening in Canada instead of the US.
Here’s to Honda building better, more affordable, EV’s than Tesla.
Gary Bernhard • Destroy All Software
This science fiction / comedy / completely serious talk traces the history of JavaScript, and programming in general, from 1995 until 2035. It’s not pro- or anti-JavaScript; the language’s flaws are discussed frankly, but its ultimate impact on the industry is tremendously positive. For Gary’s more serious (and less futuristic) thoughts on programming, try some Destroy All Software screencasts.
It’s easy to poke fun a JavaScript but equally as important to understand how important it’s become to our industry.
Archeologists have made a remarkable find at George Washington’s Mount Vernon in the ground beneath the cellar — two sealed bottles containing plump cherries.
Very cool! Now what? Who wants to open a jar and eat one? I kind of do, but there’s no way that’s gonna happen. 🤣
Did you know that while George Washington was away fighting the American Revolutionary War he was also writing home to instruct his brother how he wanted his home renovation to proceed. Then he’d go off and fight some redcoats.
Porting a cross-platform GUI application to Rust
This is something my cross platform loving brain could get behind. The Mozilla team rewrote — not something I recommend — their crash reporting tool in 100% Rust. Nifty!
That included writing four abstractions for different UI toolkits; Mac, Windows, Linux, and one for testing. So three plus. 😄 Love it!
The possibility of a TikTok ban is inching closer to becoming a reality at this point. On Tuesday, the Senate passed the bill that would bar the social media platform from operating in the U.S. unless ByteDance, its Chinese parent company, sells its stake.
So this was earlier in the week. The President signed it. Now ByteDance has nine months to get the deal done or pull out of the United States.
I still feel like this could’ve been handled differently but I have no idea what that would entail.
So let me re-iterate: the three-and-a-half features listed at the top are the only forms of run-time polymorphism in Swift. Now when someone asks “how can I allow arbitrary different argument types to result in different behavior”, you know the answer: make a protocol.
You heard the man! Make a protocol! That will cause the compiler to enforce the contract between your implementation and the definition. You’re obliged to implement it.
If you only need to know an object “is-a” thing that protocol doesn’t actually need to define any properties or methods. Yes, it can be that simple.
Ghost has announced they are working on ActivityPub support
Manton has been on the open standards software train for years and years. That’s why Micro.blog implements ActivityPub, BlueSky’s AT Protocol, and Micropub.
Micro.blog is a great blogging tool for $5/month. I use it to post here.
Don’t ignore AI because it’s dumb. Figure out how to create patterns and processes where you can use it as the useful tool it’s becoming.
Keep in mind that AI is just another tool, created by humans, full of flaws. Yes, it’s extremely useful, yes it can get things wrong. But, it’s still growing and changing. Hopefully it’ll will get better over time.
Will Democracy Survive?
Former President Donald Trump’s attorney on Thursday argued that a president could order the assassination of his political rival and stage a military coup without being prosecuted for it.
How have we arrived here? One man is single handedly doing his damnedest to unravel American Democracy to placate his narcissism and for some reason nobody wants to tell him he can’t do it.
I just don’t get it.
For 240+ years we’ve managed to exist as a nation without having a President use the Office as his own corrupt money making scheme.
Now, here we are, at the Supreme Court waiting for a tiny group of people to make a decision that could destroy everything we have, all for one man.
There is an upside to this, I suppose? If the Supreme Court decides the President has full immunity and President Biden is willing Trump could be stopped.
I’ll leave it there. Let your mind wander on what that solution might be.
If Trump isn’t stopped now he’ll use that unchecked power in unimaginable ways. Political rivals will mysteriously fall from high rise buildings, die of poisoning, or be thrown in prison.
He’ll rule until he’s hauled out of the White House in a body bag and pass the reins to Bevis or Butthead or some other crony.
Vote for Democracy. Vote Joe Biden 2024.
UPDATE: Apparently Craig Hockenberry is thinking along the same lines as I am. Yeah, the Supreme Court needs to be very careful.
They really should just say “The law applies to everyone."
Saturday Morning Coffee
Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️
Life is just flying by. Another week in the books.
I’ll be helping Kim paint the kitchen today. Should be an adventure. 👨🎨
Sure, watches that tell you when you’re walking unsteadily and pocket computer phones that show you the closest pizzeria are swell, but were you around for ResEdit?
Unfortunately I wasn’t a Mac user during the ResEdit days but I do know a lot of folks who had fun with it, does that count? 😃
Elon Musk’s X is a thriving hub for Nazi support and propaganda, with paid subscribers sharing speeches by Adolf Hitler or content praising his genocidal regime.
Shocked! Surprised! Said no one hearing this. I really don’t know what else to say. He’s a garbage human.
An ex-Apple designer who went on to startup success once told me, “I wish I could give a workshop for Apple jumping into startups, to help them un-learn The Apple Way.” I think Apple makes some of the best products in the world, and I strive to build products with their level of craft and quality, so it pains me to admit that The Apple Way can destroy a lot of startups. Which brings us to Humane.
I have yet to read anything positive about the Humane Pin. It’s not such a bad idea to be able to talk to a device you’re wearing. I’ve had an Apple Watch for years and years, that’s the device to talk to. Siri could use some work but I have a feeling that’s already happening.
Sell Trump Media Stock (DJT) Now - An Implosion Is Likely
I feel bad for all the folks who believe so much in Trump that they invested their entire life savings in a company poised to fail. There’s a sucker born every day and if Trump is good at anything it’s grifting.
A React Native app is made up of two sides, the JavaScript side and the native side. The native side could be Objective-C/Swift for iOS or Java/Kotlin for Android (not to mention the other platforms for React Native like web and desktop). The React Native Bridge allows the native code and the javascript code to talk to each other. Without the bridge, there is no way for the native code to send any information to the JavaScript code and vise versa.
I’ve been working on a React Native project that integrates into an existing iOS and Android app. We’ve created ways for our React Native developers to use the native iOS and Android code to do work for them and allow them to navigate between React Native views and Native views. There’s definitely more work we could do to improve on what we’ve started but it’s in a decent position.
We’ve already released some React Native based work and will be rolling out more soon.
I’m having a blast!
Jaws' Most Famous Improvised Line Was A Not-So-Sneaky Dig At Studio Producers
This is a fun little read. Make sure you take the time to visit. It’ll only take a minute of your life.
Ellis Karran,Richard Madden • BBC
When they removed the wooden panel, it revealed a large slab of stone featuring a carving of the Lincoln Imp.
How cool is that!
I hope they find more interesting relics around their home. Let’s hope they’re not cursed. 😆
Alexandra Sternlicht • Fortune via News+
But with the House voting in March to force ByteDance to sell its stake in TikTok, 11 former employees interviewed by Fortune tell a vastly different story. Many of those ex-workers, four of whom were employed as recently as last year, say at least some of TikTok’s operations were intertwined with its parent during their tenures, and that the company’s independence from China was largely cosmetic.
This gets more and more interesting by the day. I was against forcing them to sell and I still think it’s a bit heavy handed.
Is there a way to regulate them to make sure American citizens data remains on servers here in the States?
We know Apple had to hand over the keys to iCloud in China. Could that be done here?
It’s above my pay grade and I’m sure someone much smarter than me could give me the lowdown. In the meantime I’ll keep watching from the cheap seats. 🍿
Maynard James Keenan may be a 60-year-old man ranting against cell phones, but he actually might have a point on this one, at least somewhat.
I like that he does this. When I went to Aftershock in 2019, and Tool closed out the festival, there didn’t seem to be any rules around cell phones. As soon as their set opened it was cell phones up from front to back. I was so tempted to take one away from the dude in front of me blocking my view. Yeah, I was pissed off but managed to keep my cool. It sucked looking around that thing all evening but in the end I got to hear some amazing music.
Our magnolia is just starting to show signs of spring happiness. Beautiful blossoms are just around the corner.
I thought I’d sticker up my work MacBook Pro and after adding the centerpiece WillowTree sticker I stopped. It just looks so nice.
Looking up
Good Morning Mukilteo Chetzemoka
This deliciousness just arrived. 😋
My favorite coffee from Mukilteo Coffee Roasters. It was called Monorail Espresso because it was created for Monorail in downtown Seattle — I used to have a mocha every morning at 5th and Pike — but the name changed to Chetzemoka at some point. I need to go figure out the story behind that. ☕️
It’s a beautiful morning here at the Fahrni Homestead. We have two Dogwoods in our yard and they’re in full bloom. Such beautiful trees.
Saturday Morning Coffee
Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️
This morning started off kind of bad. Mr. Flynn decided he’d nudge my hand as I was putting my coffee down. He got hot coffee on his head. He’s ok but he needs to learn the importance of coffee to start your day.
We have two weeks remaining on our current project. I hope the company extends us for more work but they may not. Even if they did there’s no guarantee I’d stay on the project. I’m so into this one all I can see are the things I’d love to improve. 🤞🏼
As an adult, Kunz loves real coffee. But he also believes that its days are numbered. Climate change is expected to shift the areas where coffee can grow, with some researchers estimating that the most suitable land for coffee will shrink by more than half by 2050 and that hotter temperatures will make the plants more vulnerable to pests, blight, and other threats.
Say it ain’t so! First off we’d all be walking around like zombies. Second, I’d have to change the name of this series. Does Saturday Morning Chicory? Doesn’t quite work for me.
When Tool released their latest album Fear Inoculum back in 2019, it was the band’s first new release since 2006’s 10,000 Days. That’s a long fuckin’ time for new music from any band, let alone one with such a rabid fan base as Tool, and it’s something frontman Maynard James Keenan admits probably can’t happen again.
Yes, Tool kept us in suspense for 13 years — Maynard says 14 — but Fear Inoculum was so worth the wait. Now, do I want them to wait for 13 more to produce a new album? I do not. I’m ready for more but if they never produce another studio album I’d be ok with it as long as they keep touring.
Personally I’d love to see them release a bunch of live covers they’ve done through the years. Their version of Led Zeppelin’s No Quarter is so good and Ted Nugent’s Stranglehold, played 1998 in Michigan featuring Buzz from Melvins on guitar is a real banger. Collect them up and do a cover album. I’d love that.
While honeymooning in Rome, we spotted an Italian translation of my second book in the display window of a quaint old shop two blocks from the Colosseum.
Jeffrey Zeldman has given us so many wonderful blog posts through the years. It seems like he doesn’t post nearly as often as he used to so when he does they’re nice reads. This one is short and it’s a fun story.
In just two months, SwiftUI will be five years old. First released for macOS Catalina in 2019, it’s hard to believe that it’s only two years younger than APFS. Although I’ve been happily developing my apps using AppKit, one of the major components of Cocoa, I’ve been trying to recreate my app Skint using SwiftUI, so I can create a widget for it.
Neat little tour of Apple frameworks and SwiftUI observations. The bottom line is SwiftUI has some catching up to do. I know it gets better and better with each passing year but it does hold back some apps from making a pure 1:1 transition from UIKit/AppKit to SwiftUI.
Don’t worry, they’ll get there eventually. The good thing is you can drop back to UIKit/AppKit if the SwiftUI version of an API doesn’t support your needs.
Apple Vision Pro Owners Complain of Headaches, Neck Issues and Black Eyes
I can see the headache and neck issues but black eyes? I believe it’s happening, no need to doubt it, but it’s just not something I’d have expected.
Charles Pulliam-Moore • The Verge
You might know the broad strokes of the Joker and Harley Quinn’s twisted romance from Batman: The Animated Series and other DC projects. But the first trailer for Joker: Folie à Deux makes it seem like director Todd Phillips is doing something very different with his musical take on the characters.
I’m sold. Let’s get this move to theaters already! 🃏
The factory floors at America’s top seller of electric vehicles are rife with racial harassment, sexual abuse, and injuries on the job.
Does this surprise anyone? Musk is human garbage. Tesla’s board should grow a pair and kick the man to the curb.
Microsoft is getting ready to fully unveil its vision for “AI PCs” next month at an event in Seattle. Sources familiar with Microsoft’s plans tell The Verge that Microsoft is confident that a round of new Arm-powered Windows laptops will beat Apple’s M3-powered MacBook Air both in CPU performance and AI-accelerated tasks.
I hope this is accurate. It would be nice to see Windows boxes compete with M series chips.
“Dune: Part Two” is barreling to streaming. The epic sci-fi sequel, starring Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya, will become available to rent and purchase on digital starting Apr. 16, and will release on 4K UHD, Blu-ray and DVD on May 14.
I’ll be purchasing the Blu-ray, DVD, Digital combo the day it’s available. What a great film.
Apple is leasing 45,000 square feet of space in an office building in Miami, reports Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.
Miami? Really, Apple? Miami? I guess y’all use slave labor in China to produce hardware. Might as well go hang out in a state with an authoritarian Governor hell bent on making Florida a third world state. Disappointing.
Mark Frauenfelder • Boing Boing
A woman who left over $1,000 in tips at a Florida taco restaurant because she thought she was going to be swept up in the biblical rapture on the day of the eclipse, now wants a Rapture refund, claiming the restaurant defrauded her.
Hey, if you’re all in on being Raptured and believe, why worry about that money? You made some people’s lives a little brighter and a little better.
I can’t see this going anywhere.
Ms. Priss set the trap and I fell for it.
It’s been a pretty darned nice day. 🌞
Saturday Morning Coffee
Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️
I’m still really enjoying the project I’m on at WillowTree and I hope we’re able to extend it further down the road.
I’ve been thinking about a way to fix my completely broken layout of Stream for Mac table view cells. For some reason the same layout I used on iOS isn’t working on macOS? Are the layout engines that different between UIKit and AppKit? No idea. But I do hope my new idea fixes it once and for all.
Then I need to get back to adding async await functionality to my feed adding code. This whole time it’s been synchronous because you really can’t mess with the UI during the initial get of the site data. When you select the feed you’d like to add everything becomes asynchronous, just like feed updating is.
This little change is the fire step in moving all of Stream’s asynchronous code to async await. I still need a much deeper understanding of how it works and why I need it. The code isn’t broken as is today but if Apple requires using async await at some point in the future, it will break.
Hey, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, amirite? 😁
The truth is that Donald Trump undermined faith in our elections in his false bid to retain the presidency. He sparked an insurrection intended to overthrow our government and keep himself in power. No president in our history has done worse.
It’s extremely difficult to write about Donald Trump as an equal to Joe Biden. Trump is a narcissist, rapist, twice impeached, criminal former President with desire to be a forever Dictator of the United States of America. He wants to end democracy as we know it. He’s only in it for his own gratification, to be cruel, and as a means to enrich himself.
Joe Biden is a leader who believes in helping people and he supports the Constitution. He’s been an effective leader.
Look, no President is perfect. President Biden is no exception to that rule. I’m a liberal and don’t agree with everything he’s done, but he has done great work for the people of the United States.
Vote for democracy. Vote for Joe Biden for President.
Craig Hockenberry • Iconfactory
This post will explain the technology behind Project Tapestry and how we tested it as a prototype. We’ll keep this discussion at a fairly basic level: if you’re a web or app developer, you’ll have no problems following along.
I just love everything Iconfactory does. Yes, I’m a software developer, yes Tapestry will somewhat compete with Stream, but I don’t care. I love this idea and I’m a little green with envy I didn’t think about it. 😃
This is the way to open up your app and make it more easily extensible internally in the process. There are lots and lots of great JavaScript developers out there.
I backed it as soon as I heard about it and I’m really looking forward to the final product.
I’d like a hosted, centralized web app that is akin to early-era Blogger.com that lets me save new posts into a system, then it’s up to me where the output goes.
My blog began life as a Blogger blog. I published this site from 2001 to 2010 completely on Blogger. It generated static HTML and would FTP the generated HTML to my site. I loved it and it was extremely easy to move my site when I changed hosting providers. I just zipped up the directory and expanded it in its new home, updated Blogger to point to the new location, and went back to posting.
Today I publish this site using Micro.blog. It also generates static HTML but it’s all hosted on Micro.blog’s hardware. If I ever leave it’ll be easy to move.
I have been considering a move to a completely hand written blog. 😃
Of course once I started thinking about doing that I thought up some tools I’d like to write to help me out. 😂
The shift, Apple wrote in a blog post, was technical: The dominant podcasting platform had begun switching off automatic downloads for users who haven’t listened to five episodes of a show in the last two weeks.
This is a piece from January but it is interesting. Like blogging I believe it’s safe to say the idea behind Podcasting was never about monetizing, it was about freedom of expression. But, in the end, you can’t and shouldn’t, stop folks from monetizing it. That’s part of the freedom.
Reliance on a single centralized source of podcasts is a mistake. Apple has been so gracious in sharing their feed directory with the world for nothing it’s difficult to call it a mistake. The fact that it exists isn’t a mistake. The fact that so many podcasting apps and podcasters rely on it is.
There are now many podcast networks, from Indie to BigCo, and some apps and networks have their own directories but Apple is still the dominant player.
Oh, not to mention they have their own player that ships with their OS’es. That’s where the hit to podcast download numbers originated. Apple’s podcasting backend and their distribution front end in the form of the Podcasts app.
Hurubie Meko and Michael Wilson • New York Times
A magnitude-4.8 earthquake sent tremors from Philadelphia to Boston and jolted buildings in New York City. An apparent aftershock was widely felt around 6 p.m.
It’s strange to hear about a quake on the east coast. It was a topic of conversation at work yesterday in our weather Slack channel, of all places.
East coasters aren’t used to this. Here they’re accustomed to cold and snow and hurricanes, not earthquakes.
Amazon is to end the AI-powered “Just Walk Out” checkout option in its Amazon Fresh stores. It turns out that “AI” means “Actually, Indians” and it isn’t working out.
So now we know what AI actually means! What a complete failing on the part of Amazon. It would’ve been so much better to have failed using AI than to move the jobs of cashiers to India where a bunch of overworked, underpaid, Indians are doing the same job.
Just hire some real people to manage the store.
You probably got to this post because you Googled some question about what exactly “the fediverse” is, what “ActivityPub” actually means, or what would happen if you turned on federation on your Threads account today.
I still hear about folks struggling to understand how to sign up for Mastodon. The Join Mastodon site should just present the user with a signup form and host everyone on mastodon.social or a new instance and let folks decide what to do next. Most will probably be perfectly happy to stay on that instance forever. 👍🏼
Christian Bale Transforms Into Frankenstein’s Monster in First Look at Maggie Gyllenhaal’s ‘The Bride’
I’m diggin the look of Bales monster. Sign me up for the finished product.
Ref-counting is garbage collection.
But is it really? I can see the point but it’s a tough sale for this old curmudgeon. 😂
I wrote a tiny sample to explain reference counted objects to a co-worker years back — 13 years at the time of this writing. It still illustrates the point fairly well, I think.
Today C++ developers get a lot of great reference counting and other newer memory management techniques through the stl.
Judge Cannon ‘basically inviting’ Jack Smith to ask for her removal in new filing
This judge seems to be incompetent or in the bag for Trump.
Look, the dude took too secret documents home with him. Probably not a big deal if he’d returned them when he was asked to. But no, not his Orangeness, he hold onto them, claiming they’re his through the magical process of declaring them his through mind control or some crap.
The trial is all about that. Not the Presidential Records Act.
My Junior Playing Cards just arrived. They’re extremely nice. Looking forward to using them with Kim.
Had to mess with the home screen again. The new widgets in McClockface are incredible! I love this new Casette Tape widget is beautiful! 😍
Ms. Gracie sleeping on one of her toys, or babies as we call them.
Isn’t she adorable? Yes, she is. 🥺
There’s no fool like an April fool.
Looks like it’s time to buy a new Nereides watch band. The Velcro on this one is failing and the band is pretty faded. I’ve beat the crap out of it.
Taking a little break from digging out the footing for a cinder block retaining wall we’re building. Yeah, I know, my fire pit looks absolutely pathetic. Once some of these other projects are completed I can clean this mess up and get back to building the retaining wall behind the fire pit. 🫠
Solid advice.
Bitwise Industries and Heartbreak
For more than a decade, Bitwise co-founders Jake Soberal and Irma Olguin Jr. managed to sustain a vision they had for Fresno.
“It’s not at all a mystery,” said Olguin Jr. in a Ted Talk recorded last year. “But we do have to do three very specific and deliberate things. Invite the underdog in the front door. Pay them to learn like it’s their job. And then build them castles in their hometowns.”
In Olguin Jr.’s vision, the underdog city was Fresno. The job was at Bitwise Industries. And the “castles” would eventually rise everywhere – until they started to fall.
I know Irma and Jake personally. They’re pretty regular folks with big dreams just like many of us. I remember well the day I sat down with Irma to discuss what her vision for Bitwise was and how it would help what I once called a Technology Black Hole.
She shared her vision and listened intently to what I had to say. Not that I was giving advice or anything. I was sharing what I’d like to see in Fresno. At the time Bitwise was tiny and Irma and I met in the Tower District of Fresno at the original Hashtag location — I liked this facility a lot.
I’m grateful for everything Irma and Jake did for Fresno and me personally. When I was trying to go out on my own as a freelance iOS developer Shift-3, a Bitwise Industries company, hired me to do some work. They took care of me and I’ll never forget it.
They had this enormous presence in downtown Fresno. Something I adore about Irma and Jake. They wanted to help revitalize the ghost town Downtown Fresno had become. It’s not at all a bad downtown. It suffered the same fate as many downtowns around the country. Urban sprawl. Instead of investing in downtown folks would go off and build office parks and companies flocked to them. I find them horrible for any sort of community building and are often traps to keep employees in the building. In great cities you can walk out of your downtown building and find great places to eat, get a coffee or drink, and go shopping. They’re amazing.
I digress.
When Bitwise collapsed and scandal followed I was heartbroken. All those people busting their butts to make Fresno a better place and make a living to support their families while doing it all gone in an instant.
Fresno is still trying to recover from it and will be for years to come. Not to mention all the lives affected by it.
I wish everyone caught up in the mess all the best for their future. I also wish Irma and Jake well. They had the best of intentions and made huge mistakes along the way.
It’s heartbreaking.
P.S. - KVPR has a nice index of their Bitwise coverage.
Got a picture of this Eastern Tiger Swallowtail yesterday while doing some yard work. We had bumblebees zipping all over the place but I couldn’t manage to get close enough to get a shot of one.
