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📡✨ I Was There

Montreal, June 2026 → Nice backyard view at sunset while taking a walk. Follow the trail.

→ Links 🔗 Every Frame Perfect

Cool little blog post about animating UI elements or UI state transitions. Sometimes, when using an app, there is a weird feeling that something is wrong. It might come from bad animations. Apple, are you reading this post? https://tonsky.me/blog/every-frame-perfect/

📡✨ I Was There

Montreal, June 2026 → From the coffee shop where I’m often creating something besides drinking coffee! It’s a converted train factory. Follow the trail.

The Cosmic Inconvenience of Public Transport

It is a widely known fact that time is relative and not absolute, it is a matter of speed and gravity. Or the irritating beep of your alarm app.  My alarm did exactly that at 4am this morning. While most other people were experiencing the weak gravitational fields known as sleep, Mary and I were experiencing time dilation approaching the same feeling you’d have somewhere close to a black hole. We were moving around at pace, packing the final bits, washing and dressing ready for our journey home. But it felt like we were moving slowly and with no urgency at all.  Then, there was the matter of transportation. We arrived at the quay to await the arrival of the catamaran. A superb vessel that is not content with the simple nautical arrangement of one hull. The catamaran has two, providing exceptional stability, the ability to navigate shallow waters, more...

📡✨ I Was There

Montreal, June 2026 → Poor little and just-opened Apple Store on Ste-Catherine surrounded by road construction! This could last more than a year… Follow the trail.

Hurrying Up to Lay Still

It is a well established fact that on planet Earth we are generally in quite a hurry. Where I am in the English Midlands for example, we are moving at a gentle 635 mph or thereabouts.  And the planet itself? Ah yes, that is in a bit of a rush as well. Around 67,000 mph, so it can make it around the sun in 365 days. Which is convenient if you are a calendar.  Pfft! Snail pace. Or it is when you look at the speed our solar system is orbiting the centre of the galaxy. At a mere 490,000 mph. Which my grandfather from Grimsby might have described as “wellying it”.  All of which explains why I woke up this morning, lying perfectly still yet feeling displaced. We are just back from a holiday on the Isle of Wight. So I awoke with that slightly odd sense that I...

📡✨ I Was There

Montreal, June 2026 → A nice illuminated foot pathway. Follow the trail.

📡✨ Indexing

It's been ongoing for six days now. I didn't know it took so long to index my digital life.

📡✨ I'm in!

Finally! Five days after installing beta 1, I received a notification that my iPhone can now be used to test Apple Siri, Siri AI, and/or Apple Intelligence. That's a tricky naming convention, right? As a side note: Siri AI is better than expected on my iPhone 15 Pro Max, but I don't like the big blob popping out of the Dynamic Island when invoking its service.

📡✨ I Was There

Montreal, June 2026 → A modern office building near my home. Follow the trail.

📡✨ Golden Gate Gated

Well, after many, many tries, macOS 27 Golden Gate refuses to install on my M2 MacBook Air. The last try was to boot in safe mode and then start the update process from the Settings app, and yet, the same error still occurs. I'll wait for beta 2. Sigh. 😮‍💨

USF Turns 70

Celebrating 70 years of USF's rich history and vibrant campus life, where tradition meets innovation under the open skies. As you get older, anniversaries and milestones hit you differently. I don't know why. I don't regret anything in my life, but I do feel nostalgic sometimes. The other day, driving to work, I learned that the University of South Florida is celebrating 70 years this year. That surprised me, because the first founding class attended in 1960, so the 70th anniversary is actually a few years off. I attended USF from 1987 to 1990. I didn't graduate; I would have had about two years left. 1991 would have been my graduation year, but I was taking it nice and slow. Most people were taking five years, so 1992 would have been my year if I had stayed on track. What would have been my degree? Hold your chair and keep...

Cosmic Boredom

If you are currently sitting there feeling bored, please take a moment to consider the plight of the Zaponians. The Zaponians live on the planet Zap, which orbits a fairly unremarkable star somewhere in the Virgo Cluster which is a massive cosmic highway sitting roughly 65 million light-years away. They possess a piece of technology known as the Super-Intergalactic Planetary Observation Lens. A telescope so absurdly powerful it can zoom right past our atmosphere and focus on a single blade of grass. Naturally, the Zaponian scientific community is utterly bored to tears by us. Because of the stubborn, immutable speed of light, the image currently hitting their lens left Earth 65 million years ago. They aren’t watching you browse the internet or complain about the weather. They are staring at a damp swamp where a Triceratops is chewing on a giant fern. And they’ve been watching versions of this same...

You Think Our Weather Is Bad

While you are blown around by the wind, lashed by hailstones the size of golf balls and chilled to the bone, remember that we are having mild weather compared with that of one of our neighbours.  There is a planet 63 light-years from Earth, not far at all, where the rain is made of molten glass, the winds blow at 4,349.59 miles per hour and the daytime temperature is over 1,000 degrees Celsius. The planet itself, viewed from space, is the same deep blue as Earth. It’s not known if it has discarded shopping trolleys in its canals.  The planet has been named HD 189733b. Because calling “Bob” seemed too trivial, but going for something more substantial, like Marmaduke, seemed over the top. Scientists couldn’t agree, so they used the password for one of the lab computers.  Now, It is one of the closest extrasolar planets to Earth. Its star,...

🕖 Now — My Foursquare

You may have seen a post title "I was there" recently floating around this blog. This post included a reference like "Follow the trail". Let me explain what this is all about. I created a custom web application inspired by Foursquare and Path. The former is quite different today than it was in 2009, while the latter is what is the closest to what I wanted to create: an app for sharing check-ins while I travel or visit places. It's my first public-facing web application, called "Numeric Citizen Trails". When posting a new check-in, I can optionally enable cross-posting here on Scribbles.page. These posts will be marked as "📡✨ I was there" with the "Blips" tag, including a link to the original check-in post (I use three tags here, and "Blips" best fits the idea that each check-in is a blip in a journey). This also means, per Scribbles.page configuration,...

The Day The Sun Went In

—Bugger. The sun’s gone in. —Yeah, behind the clouds. —I dunno, yer know, it’s getting proper dark. What they don't know is that ninety-three million miles away, the Sun has actually just ceased to exist. It hasn't gone behind a cloud. It has vanished from the fabric of reality. But because light is stuck on a strict cosmic speed limit, the last remaining beams of daylight are still hurtling toward the Midlands at a brisk 186,000 miles per second. Earth is currently coasting on credit. —Fancy a brew while it’s overcast? —Aye, put the kettle on. Might rain. Four minutes pass. Earth is still orbiting a ghost. The gravitational pull of the now-extinct Sun is still moving through space like a ripple in a pond. For another two hundred seconds, the planet will dutifully swing around a massive, empty nothingness, entirely convinced everything is fine. —Did you check the football...

📡✨ I Was There

Montreal, June 2026 → While taking a walk in my neighbourhood after a rainy day. Follow the trail.

The Elevenses Variable

It is an unwritten rule of British geometry that at precisely eleven o'clock in the morning, the entire population experiences a synchronised biological collapse that can only be remedied by the introduction of hot liquid and a conversation about the traffic. This event is known colloquially as elevenses. On a particularly squally morning on the Ryde esplanade, Mary and I succumbed to the variable. We selected a small, innocent-looking establishment, completely unaware that we were stepping into a highly specialised financial anomaly. The cushions should have told us. In a standard, legally compliant British cafe, the chairs are constructed from a species of rigid, unsympathetic wood designed to ensure you do not loiter for more than twelve minutes. However, the chairs in this establishment possessed cushions of such deep, velvety compliance that the moment you sat down, your centre of gravity was lowered by three inches. This is a known...

"Applying sound methods to stupid projects"

Adam remains one of the most engaging writers in my feed. This post covers a lot of ground, but it does a great job of highlighting that while AI has been developing intelligence quickly along one axis, there's another branch of intelligence that current methods still haven't conjured in these models. This is one reason skeptics think the approach the frontier labs are pursuing is unlikely to lead to Artificial General Intelligence (or the Singularity, or Superintelligence, or whichever label and loose definition you prefer). Here’s what I highlighted: “Some problems have clear boundaries and verifiable solutions, like “What’s the cube root of 38,126?”. These problems require objective intelligence. Other problems are vague and squishy and it’s not clear whether you’ve solved them, or whether they exist at all, like “How do I live a good life?”. These problems require subjective intelligence. Objective intelligence can be trained, reinforced, and validated....

On the Singularity of the 'Drafts' Folder

The universe, according to most reputable astrophysicists—and several rather less reputable baristas in the Andromeda sector—is expanding. It is expanding in all directions, at an ever-increasing rate, much like a person with a mild dopamine deficiency and a free afternoon on the internet. There is a fundamental, cosmic rhythm to this expansion. It is the same rhythm that drives a man—let us call him Andy—to move his thoughts from scribbles.page to Ghost, and then inevitably to Substack, only to find himself orbiting back to Astro hosted on Netlify. Before arriving back at scribbles.page. Astrophysicists call this "Entropy." It is the tendency of all systems to move from order to disorder. Andy calls it "blogging." The physics of a platform hop are not entirely dissimilar to the collapse of a massive star. You start with a great deal of potential energy (a new blog! A clean slate! A perfect template!). You...

The Blogging Singularity

Writing a first blog post is, in many respects, rather like the birth of the Universe, though with significantly less initial explosion and rather more tea. In the beginning, there is the blank page. Leaving a blog post blank has been widely regarded as a bad move. When a physicist considers the Big Bang, they talk about a singularity—a point of infinite density where all of space, time, and presumably the laws of logic go on a prolonged coffee break. When a blogger considers a first post, they also encounter a singularity: the blinking line at the start of a blank page. It is a point of infinite expectation, where all of your potential brilliance, hidden thoughts, and desperate desire to sound profound collapse into a single, terrifying, and stubbornly stationary vertical line. The universe expanded outward at a rate that would make a hyper-intelligent slug look like it was...

By the Numbers: A Look at My Digital Movie Collection

After I posted How Much is Too Much which discussed my feeling overwhelmed with the amount of media I have to consume, my buddy Michael wrote a post about Fanflix has been a bad thing for him. Almost daily, Michael and I exchange texts on whatever Fanflix's latest deal is. We've both have built up our digital collections, thanks in part to these discounted titles, and it made me wonder exactly how many digital movie titles I own. So, this morning, I cross references Fandango at Home, Apple TV, and YouTube to see the number. Now, before I unveil this I do need to preface it with a few facts. 1. Most of my digital copies originated from the old Vudu Disc to Digital (Note: Apparently this still exists!). Back years ago, you could take your DVD or blu-ray, put it in your computer, and then pay $1-$2 to obtain...

📡✨ Liquid Glass Level

Here is my Liquid Glass toning-down level, which I find perfect for me. What's yours?

How Much is Too Much?

A few years ago, I was having a conversation with a colleague when I casually mentioned that I really didn't need any new content in my life. I felt like I could revisit all the movies, music, television, books, and video games that I'd already enjoyed and be perfectly content for the rest of my days. She agreed with the sentiment, and that conversation has haunted me for years now. Was I truly being authentic in that statement? Do I really need more content in my life? How much is too much? I think my problem is I've always wanted to be well‑rounded and well‑versed in what I know. So there is a bit of a completionist in me, but also this desire to stay up to date on things. So when I'm watching an old television show that I've already seen before, I feel like I'm not making progress...

📡✨ Third Try

Well, it appears that my Mac is not as in a hurry as I am to install macOS 27 Golden Gate. This is the third try, previous ones failed at different stages of installation or download. Wish me luck.

📡✨ 32 GB

A side effect of yesterday's announcements by Apple: my next MacBook Air will have 32 GB of RAM instead of 24 GB, which means a 4-5-week lead time. 😑

📡 ✨ Snappier

Of course iPadOS 27 beta 1 on my M4 iPad Pro (with only 8 GB of system RAM) feels snappier… Apple Intelligence is turned off as I’m on the waiting list… 😒

A Wake Up Call

When I first met my wife, around seven years ago, she was what I would call a typical internet user. She was glued to Facebook and Pinterest and spent a lot of time curating her feeds and her image. She wasn't an influencer, but having grown up with social media, she had a solid decade worth of friendships dating back to high school that she engaged with. By that point in my life, I'd left social media and I felt that my life was better for it. So, I'd gently nudge her to weigh whether the time she spent was worth it, and slowly over time, she phased out her social media. For her, social media was the internet. She didn't have websites she visited or news that she read, so when she exited the Facebook world, she essentially exited the internet. Now, I should point out, my encouragement was...

40

Today I turn 40. I'm the healthiest, fittest and happiest I have ever been in my life. I've been married for 15 years, have an amazing, and hot, wife and a beautiful daughter. I couldn't ask for more! I have a handful of very good friends and it's more I could ever ask for. My life is just beginning! ✌️❤️ — Vincent

A Few Good Things - Vol. 22

C4 Reeses Protein PowderI tend to avoid non-clear protein powder these days. I'm just not interested in the milkshake vibes I get from it. However, I do keep some on hand to make protein ice cream with my Ninja Creami. Recently, I picked up some of C4's Reeses Protein Powder and was a blown away by how great it tastes. I typically don't like Reeses branded tie-ins (cereal, peanut butter, etc) but this protein powder just works. It's great on its own and it makes an incredible ice cream. I'm really interested in trying their Hershey's and vanilla flavor. Quiet TimeI've taken the last couple of weeks off from being online. Well, not completely, but I have limited my exposure and I just put a little space between me and my screens. As usual, it's been a mood altering experience, and as I write this I wonder why I bring...

Star Trek: Outposts Unknown PC Game

“Star Trek: Outposts Unknown - Official Announcement Trailer - IGN To boldly go… and build in Star Trek: Outposts Unknown. Check out the Star Trek: Outposts Unknown announcement trailer for this upcoming narrative-driven outpost builder game set in the Star Trek universe. Build complex research facilities through the mysterious X’Lehari System. Explore strange new worlds, guide your crew through dangerous encounters, and uncover a cosmic force threatening all life in the system. Set alongside the era of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, your journey will take you across hostile environments, abandoned ships, ancient ruins, and a fragile civilization in desperate need of aid. Star Trek: Outposts Unknown will be available on PC. A demo is out now on Steam. — @video-game-and-movie-trailers-ign on mastodon via Video Game and Movie Trailers” This looks very interesting. I will be following this closely.

If you're keen to design your own blog themes, please get in touch with me — I've been working on my own templating system so you can download a starter theme, with existing posts if you wanted, that you can run locally and design and work on — and then upload and make it your very own for your blog. At some stage you can also share these with other users. Unsure when I have this ready, but please read "end of June" for this. I'd like to have this in a closed preview first, and then work on any issues that might arise. Happy to give you a complimentary test blog for the occasion if you just want to work on themes.

Thunder Clap Uptime Monitoring

The past few months I had to take a hard look into reworking website uptime monitoring for Tinylytics — which has been working great with updown.io for some very long time now. I don't have anything against Updown, however I had some very niche edge cases that I wanted to tackle. So I've built my own that fits my own use case. I don't want to step on his toes — Adrien, the founder, has been nothing but fantastic over so many years I've used it. Saying that, I did try and create my own internal tool some years ago which didn't work out well at all — because I didn't know much about it. But that has changed since. So, I'm introducing Thunder Clap — my very own take on uptime monitoring. Initially I designed it to be API first so you can hook into it from within your...

📡✨ AI-free?

A few years from now, I wouldn't be surprised to see AI-free products, just like we have sugar-free stuff today.

→ Links 🔗 Liquid Glass v2.0 ?

I hope Apple will provide enough changes and tweaks to Liquid Glass tomorrow so I can update this project. https://crafted.numericcitizen.me/apple-liquid-glass-fails

📡✨ Buttons

While exploring the Halide Mark III camera app, I realized that I never use the iPhone action button. I wonder if the iPhone 18 Pro camera button will be the next button that I never use. 🤔

Basic object editing in slicer aka boolean

I often need small adjustments to 3D models I print, and editing them in Blender or FreeCAD feels like overkill. Often it is easier to edit them right in PrusaSlicer (or, I suppose, any other slicer), even though slicers are not really meant for editing. Let's take a tool holder I created (available at https://www.printables.com/model/1001457-modular-tool-holder-strip). I have a hook which I want to add to the strip. I'll take the pliers holder from the picture keep only the base and add the hook in the slicer. [toolhoder we will use in our example]Slicers have the capability to subtract from or add to an object. It works by creating an entity that is a combination of several objects. We can see an example bellow. The entity pliers_holder-changed.stl contains the original pliers_holder.stl and cube. The cube will get subtracted and pliers holder added, that's denoted be the little minus and plus signs....

Taking care of things

In the last few weeks I've been taking care of a lot of things. All personal in nature. Mostly good, but it took time away from what I usually do. This has been necessary to keep going with what I do, and where I want to go, for the foreseeable future. Next week is my birthday... and a significant milestone for me as I worked through things the last few months. There are a great many things happening behind the scenes of everyday life that I don't ever share. An internal retreat, quiet, sitting, thinking. The universe nudging me over the years. So, it's been quiet here and around my projects, even though I've been quietly shipping a lot of things — I even created a new side project to support another. It's been hard to catch up with everything. Keeping changelogs fresh, work on client projects and you name...

📡✨ Relaxing

After a busy and challenging day at the office with Windows, using a Mac at home seems like a vacation, very relaxing.

The harsh reality

Guess what? Blogging is a marathon, not a sprint. You can stop, quit and restart as many times as you like. It's your space, at your own pace. But don't expect results after just one or two posts. I mostly write for myself and an undefined, occasional audience. I don't expect much from blogging. It's a hobby; it's interesting, and it gives me the opportunity to write down my thoughts.

Cache Out - A Privacy Focused Free Tool For Multiple Browsers

Cache Out, a free new single-purpose utility from veteran Mac developer Jim Mitchell, fits right into an app category that is severely underrepresented - utilities that work across multiple browsers from a single interface. What It DoesCache Out's superpower is selective data removal from a variety of popular macOS browsers with the click of a single button. It removes five categories of information - cache, history, downloads, favicons, and cookies. You select the browsers you want cleared from a list. You select the categories of data to remove. Then, you click a single button and BOOM. It's done. After the files are removed, you aren't left in the dark about what happened since you get a report on the number of files and MBs that were removed. There are currently seven supported browsers: • Safari • Chrome • Firefox • Edge • Brave • Opera • Orion I'd like to see...

→ Link 🔗 Scary

Something is going on with AI companies and their opaque financials. I'm not an expert, but something doesn't add up here. https://om.co/2026/05/29/anthropic-ai-and-the-numbers-problem/