I have one of the giant 13 inch iPads, for the most part I love the thing. Most of the time I either use it with that stupid expensive turns it into an laptop case Apple makes or I use a it in a thin cover with the pencil.

When I use the latter, I mostly use the tiny keyboard, and either click or swipe depending on what language I’m writing in. Being left handed, it would have been great if there was an option where I had the option to invert at least the stock sidebars. Instead of having to do all kinds of finding the spot where the keyboard kind of is close to where I want it to be, while also seeing the menu etc.

How is it that Shortcuts have gone on for so long without any real way of sharing things between different Shortcuts?

Okay, fine, you can run separate Shortcuts, and that is kind of the same. But not really.

So, if you want to send data into another Shortcut you can either use the input system, something I never get to work like I want to. Or use the clipboard. And if you want it to return data you have to put it back to the clipboard.

At this point I have a stupid amount of shortcuts that aren’t designed to run by themselves, that just support various other shortcuts. And I wish all of them could just be replaced by a function or similar.

Both to clean up my library and have a better way of managing them. But also to avoid the whole putting input data on the pasteboard, then reading it out, parsing it, doing some shit and putting it back on, for so to do the reverse on the other side.

It’s fucking stupid.

After being annoyed by the Apple Folio thingy for my 12.9” iPad Pro. The main things were that it looks boring as fuck, plus that the pencil fall off all the time. I started looking for a replacement and found this thing by Native Union.

It had a cooler yellow color than the terrible black or kind of black colors Apple has. Plus this rubber band thingy to wrap around where the pencil sits.

I love this thing. The folio itself has a cool texture, the color is better, or it is great, but not my favorite kind of yellow and the way it secures the Apple Pencil turned it into a non problem within minutes of getting it.

Just a list of some apps and devices that have been very useful to me as I’m well on the way to have lost 40KG and hopefully 45 and 50 since May of 2020.

• Happy Scale. I love this weight tracker. It let you define goals and milestones, have various average calculation algorithms to pick between. And it always keeps the lowest weigh-in of the day. It is a very useful tool to stay motivated a be reminded that loosing weight over the long term is a lot of ups and downs.
• FoodNoms the only good calorie tracker I have used. It is just a paid app that let you add the food you eat. No upsells on training or diet programs. For the most part it is based on you adding things manually, but it also have some integration with databases. Requires some work in the start, but after a while it gets easier. I currently don’t track calories, but in the start and at various points during my weight loss journey it have been immensely useful and a large part of why I have been able to stay with it.
• Apple Watch. For me it is very useful to get data on how fit I am, how much I move and all of that. Especially after I got more into Gentler Streak. Most fitness trackers that sync to your smart phone platform of choice can probably to most of the same.
• Gentler Streak. I find this app very interesting, and some very useful metrics on how tried I seem to be. My only complaint about it is that when I started using it I started to hit the “start workout” button on watch more diligently than in the past, and it considered it an increase in activity, even though I was the same amount of active as before and was bothering me about it. I use the metrics it give me on heart readings in a very human understandable way to guide how many times a week I go to the gym.
• Any scale that syncs to the cloud: I use this from Withings. It is okay. Not a huge fan of their app, and I’d love for it to be able to sync things to Apple’s Health app without having to launch the app and letting it sync things. Other than that I don’t have any big complaints about it. Most of the time I just step on it for a big. And later sync the weight into where I want it.

As we all freak out over this and move back to having a proper passcode instead of a numeric one, I’d like to say why I’m using 1Password and not the built in Keychain stuff from Apple.

The Keychain is a really solid if you just look at the encryption and all of that. But there are a few things about it that made me never consider using it.

First of all, sometimes I need to use my password manager from non Apple devices in work related situations.

The main thing thought is that I like having another layer of security between all my passwords, and other information inside my password manager and my operating system.

Here is the main difference: if I cover the selfie camera row on my iPhone and try to open the Apple password manager section in Settings, it tries a few times and then asks me for my passcode. But if I do the same with 1Password they ask for my vault password if FaceID don’t work.

This may seem like a minor difference, but it is actually huge. Someone can steal a regular 4-6 character numeric passcode without much fuss. A bit harder with a alphanumeric one. Especially if we’re talking about the long password I have for my 1Password vault.

I have two skateboards, both of them are in the “longboard / cruiser” category.

The first I got is a big 36” x 9.5” drop through board, and the second is a smaller plastic 27” board from Penny.

The big board

The big board is awesome, and feels great to ride it. It is huge so the giant I am can stand on it comfortably. Big wheels that make it comfortable on the terrible streets in Bergen.

It is a drop through board, meaning the trucks are mounted through a big hole in the deck. I like it a lot because it is so easy to feel and see there I need to be to not fall on my face when pushing.

But it is huge, so it can be a pain in situations where I go into a lot of places etc.

The small board

I got this board for three reasons:

• It is small and easy to bring places
• Cheap
• It is plastic and I don’t have to worry much even in the rains a lot.

Out of the box these boards has a “waffle pattern” instead of a grip tape. After I had used it like 5 or 6 times and taken in for like a couple of longer trips to the office I just ordered a grip tape for it.

I had a bunch of issues standing on it before I put it on, mostly because it felt like my feet were sliding and a bunch of things like it. But the moment I put grip tape on it I had enough grip on there that almost all of that went away.

My only issue with it today is that I’m still not 100% used to standing on a board that small.

What I use when?

If I’m going to skate for longer distances I’ll always pick the large one. And probably also if I’m just going out for a ride.

But when I skate to the gym or downtown to do something else I’ll probably often take the small board because of how easy it is to carry, and bring in places.

When I go to work is kind of a question about if I’m skating all the way or taking the bus / tram parts of the way. If it is the former I’ll probably take the big board, and if it is the former I’m taking the small one

Over the last few weeks I have to a larger extent than before tried to do stuff with Shortcuts. While some of it is amazing, other parts are really weirdly terrible.

• Why isn’t there any good way of doing a multi-value form in there?
• Why can’t I just give any block a name without having to add a “set variable” block?! Would have made it a lot easier to find things.
• The mac app is really fucking slow
• Why isn’t there something like a function?
• I really wish it had better data structures and blocks to deal with them. Like lists, adding, removing, finding, filtering etc.
• And the features for changing shortcuts as you go are really terrible. Most of the time when I move things around I usually have to re-assign most of the variables affected.

In the end I ended up just writing a simple app in SwiftUI for the more complex of the things I tried to solve with Shortcuts.

I love my 12.9” iPad Pro. It is the 2021 version, the first one with M-chip in it. This is how I use mine.

It is always with an Apple Pencil either laying next to it or attached to the side. And I always use one of those Apple accessories with it. Either a Smart Folio or the Magic Keyboard. It is that ridiculously expensive keyboard thingy that turns it into a kind of MacBook.

My iPad is usually in the Smart Folio most of the time, and I put it the Magic Keyboard case when I’m using the keyboard or trackpad for as long as I’ll be using that. And I usually only bring it when I’m not also bringing my MacBook Pro. But I always bring it in any situation where I have my iPad and would like to type more than a sentence or two.

Part of me wish there was a way to kind of have a Smart Folio that I didn’t have to take off when I wanted to use the Smart Keyboard.

I did for some ADHD reason decide to start looking at baseball caps at etsy while watching a movie. Or the person I watched it with hates Men in tights one of my favourite movies and a movie we watched together a while back. So I started to look if I could find one of those dumb “Robin Hood Hat baseball cap” combinations that movie features. The short version is that: I didn’t. And I’m very dissapointed at the internet for that.

• https://www.etsy.com/no-en/listing/1094827997/big-foot-is-real-embroidered-adjustable
• https://www.etsy.com/no-en/listing/558712788/cute-but-psycho-baseball-hat-cute-dad
• https://www.etsy.com/no-en/listing/937077118/reach-for-the-stars-dinosaur-dad-hat-hat
• https://www.etsy.com/no-en/listing/1084237008/big-cancer-energy-zodiac-sign
• https://www.etsy.com/no-en/listing/1212302474/birds-arent-real-baseball-hats-flexfit
• https://www.etsy.com/no-en/listing/1232399024/slipknot-cotton-unisex-baseball-cap
• https://www.etsy.com/no-en/listing/1313987330/not-today-baseball-hat
• https://www.etsy.com/no-en/listing/897902957/ball-mom-hat-distressed-baseball-cap-or
• https://www.etsy.com/no-en/listing/1273052572/my-dog-thinks-im-cool-dad-hat-funny
• https://www.etsy.com/no-en/listing/819204395/hatphile-pre-washed-soft-embroidery-dad
• https://www.etsy.com/no-en/listing/1252357705/daughter-cap-daughtasaurus-dinosaur-cap
• https://www.etsy.com/no-en/listing/889298268/unisex-do-it-for-the-memes-embroidered
• https://www.etsy.com/no-en/listing/600425518/number-one-dad-baseball-cap-fathers-day
• https://www.etsy.com/no-en/listing/1355795050/shush-be-quiet-dad-hat-funny-unisex-cap
• https://www.etsy.com/no-en/listing/755229277/ok-boomer-embroidered-meme-dad-cap
• https://www.etsy.com/no-en/listing/1236708938/idk-idc-idgaf-text-baseball-hat
• https://www.etsy.com/no-en/listing/1347401414/difficult-expensive-funny-unisex
• https://www.etsy.com/no-en/listing/951662070/i-pee-in-pools-unbeatable-quality-and
• https://www.etsy.com/no-en/listing/1252725528/absolutely-not-logo-embroidery-on