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I'm a bit of an eclectic mess 🙂 I've been a programmer, journalist, editor, TV producer, and a few other things.

I'm currently working on my second novel which is complete, but is in the edit stage. I wrote my first novel over 20 years ago but then didn't write much till now.

I post about #Coding, #Flutter, #Writing, #Movies and #TV. I'll also talk about #Technology, #Gadgets, #MachineLearning, #DeepLearning and a few other things as the fancy strikes ...

Lived in: 🇱🇰🇸🇦🇺🇸🇳🇿🇸🇬🇲🇾🇦🇪🇫🇷🇪🇸🇵🇹🇶🇦🇨🇦

Fahim Farook

Edited 1 year ago
At least some open source projects seem to go to great lengths (intentionally or unintentionally) to make the PR submission process convoluted 😛

I just want to make the code better because I feel that others can benefit from it. I don't want to jump through multiple hoops to do that ...

Instead, I just shrug and move on most of the time. There's only so much time to work on stuff, after all.

Maybe I just don’t work well with people? That’s certainly possible 🙂

#OpenSource #GitHub #PullRequests #Hoops
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Fahim Farook

"Adiyae" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27618123) started out as an interesting movie, but the protagonist's utter confusion at anything and his apparent inability to understand anything or to cope with anything except by screaming at the universe just makes it very annoying to watch ...

The protagonist seems to be only capable of showing a confused look throughout (at least the first part) of the movie. I don’t feel anything except annoyance at having to watch him 😛

#Tamil #Movie #Kollywood #SciFi #ParallelUniverses #AlternateReality
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@AngelaPreston That looks like an interesting place to visit … now I guess I’ll have to find out more about it 🙂
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Fahim Farook

Interesting ...

I use Bodega (https://github.com/mergesort/Bodega) in my Mastodon client app to cache old posts, and my app has gotten progressively slower over time.

In fact, trying to open an image or the post detail screen takes several seconds while the app just sits and churns ...

Since nothing else had changed, I tried deleting the Bodega data folder and re-launching the app. Instant speed boost 😛

Now if I can figure out if this is just an issue of there being just too much data to read quickly (which I thought I’d eliminated by clearing the cache …) or something else, that would be the real win 🙂

#iOS #Catalyst #Swift #Performance #Caching
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Fahim Farook

This weekend's project was to create a 2FA key manager that was cross-platform and uses the latest Swift stuff like SwiftData since I want to move away from Google Authenticator.

Both targets achieved — plus, has migration from Google Authenticator built in by importing the export QR codes that Google Authenticator creates 🙂

But iOS 17 and macOS Sonoma only since some of the functionality I used isn't backward compatible 😞 Doesn't really matter as a personal app though, so all good?

#Swift #SwiftUI #macOS #iOS #2FA #Authenticator #SwiftData
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Fahim Farook

Another post in Karl Guttag's series of posts discussing Apple Vision Pro is now up:

https://kguttag.com/2023/09/26/apple-vision-pro-part-6-passthrough-mixed-reality-ptmr-problems/

I find the passthrough mixed reality issues he mentions interesting, and am curious as to if the released product has the issues he mentions and how much it would impact your eyesight when you use the AVP over a long period of time ...

Also, curious as to how well the Quest 3 handles this given the placement of cameras on the Quest 3.

To be frank, I am less and less inclined to get an Apple VisionPro (even to try it out to see if it meets my requirements and/or will serve as a platform to develop for) as I continue to read Karl’s posts on the subject …

#Apple #VisionPro #Hardware #MixedReality #Analysis #Passthrough
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@afchristopher I do reazlie that this happens immediately after update (and I have been using the betas for a while) but it shouldn't take this long — at least, it hasn't in the past 🙂
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Fahim Farook

New iOS, and my phone seems to drain battery faster ...

Created a document with all the ways to turn off battery draining processes. Seems to have made a huge difference.

Now experimenting with Shortcuts to turn on/off battery drainers as needed. Looking pretty good.

Mix in automated Shortcuts to turn off stuff when I go to sleep and turn them back on when I get up, and things hopefully just work? Maybe? 😛

#iOS #Battery #Automation #Shortcuts #PowerDrain
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Fahim Farook

Recently, British detective shows have not had the quirkiness and humour which makes them so enjoyable and watchable ...

Enter, "Mrs. Sidhu Investigates" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt21259542)

It has the humour, the quirkiness ... and it has Meera Syal.

What's not to like? 🙂

This is one of the good ones. Give it a try, you won’t regret it!

#TV #Detective #Mystery #British #UK
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Fahim Farook

I'm trying to get going on a game since I've got the itch to do another game ...

I've been looking at free assets to build a quick demo version to see if the idea holds up and it seems sword wielding men are the most common characters you can find?

What about women/children? Or people not prone to violence?

I just find this interesting ... and telling ...

I can go into more detail — like how the first female character I found was tagged with “extra breast bouncing for sexiness” (or something similar). I found that rather disturbing — is the only attribute to identify you as female, bouncing breasts?

Is this how that particular person sees the world? Or are they just trying to be “marketable”?

#Games #GameDev #Artwork #Characters
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Fahim Farook

"Blue Beetle" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9362930) is just mostly annoying ...

His family are annoying, the situations aren't funny, the beetle AI is stupid, and generally, it was a huge disappointment since I expected so much more from the movie ...

#Movies #DCComics #Hollywood #DCHeroes #BlueBeetle
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@whoosh Yep, we really enjoyed the first episode as well 🙂 So looking forward to watching the rest …

The Indian version tried too hard to add comic elements and it just didn’t work … The Indian version of “Flower of Evil” was much better, but maybe a flash in the pan?

Since Indian remakes of KDramas seem to be picking up, I guess we’ll know soon?
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Fahim Farook

"MY3" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt28744259) is the Indian remake of "I'm Not a Robot" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7521778)

Watched the first episode of "MY3" and it was rather horrible. Tried the first episode of the Korean original and that actually looks much better ...

#TV #Indian #Korean #Hindi #SciFi #KDrama
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Fahim Farook

Keerthy Suresh (https://www.imdb.com/name/nm7146337), who's 31, has appeared as the sister for both Rajinikanth, 72, and Chiranjeevi, 68.

Not quite sure how that family math works, but who am I to question Indian cinema? 😛

#IndianCinema #Tollywood #Kollywood
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Fahim Farook

I haven't read "Fables" recently, but I do remember how excited I was when I first read it — it was a brilliant interpretation of classic fables.

This is a brilliant move by Bill Willingham to free "Fables" from the clutches of DC 🙂

https://billwillingham.substack.com/p/willingham-sends-fables-into-the

It’s also a great way to let others play in your sandbox and simply enjoy creating new content for an IP that you might love.

So many possibilities …

#Fables #PublicDomain #Copyright #DC #Comics
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Fahim Farook

Apple’s “Foundation" has bothered me for a while since it’s just not Asimov’s “Foundation” except in name …

But today’s episode is so full of crap in so many ways that I can’t even begin to get into it 😛

There were logic holes, plot holes, and holes of all sorts. Ugh.

#TV #Foundation
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@Alexbbrown I meant using the shared audio feature of AirPods. The audio sharing wasn't the issue though since that's much improved over using a hardware splitter with the shared audio feature 🙂

The issue is using a single iPad between the two of us for the same content.

Ideally, what I wanted was to be able to watch the same content on two devices (without WiFi, so SharePlay might be out .. though I'm still looking into it) and have the playback synced. This should also lend to being able to use devices like the XReal glasses to get a much bigger screen/display but still have synced playback ... At least, that's the dream 🙂

I know this is a long answer for the headphone question 😛 As far as headphones go, our current solution only works for two. But the solution I'm working on should work for more than two as well ...
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Fahim Farook

So this is my day so far:
Update iPhone to iOS 17 RC ✅
Update macBook to macOS 14 RC ✅
Update Xcode to Xcode 15 RC ✅

Now to actually get work done 😛

#DevLife #BetaCycle #iOS #macOS
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Fahim Farook

Would have had to stay up to watch the Apple event last night. Went to sleep instead.

Got up in the morning and discovered I'd missed nothing since all the important stuff had already been leaked weeks in advance 😛

#Apple #iPhone #NewHardware
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@Rycaut Since my memory is failing me (😛) I couldn’t remember what the change to SharePlay was this year. So went back through my old posts just now and realized that you can now (supposedly) start SharePlay sessions over AirDrop! That would be interesting to try and as soon as I have two iOS 17 devices (and provided the feature is available now) I want to try that out and see if the lack of Internet access affects things.

As for your suggestion about a small WiFi network, that’s there already with multiplier connectivity 🙂 You can connect multiple iOS/macOS devices without a network to chat, watch videos, or to transfer files. That’s what I’m using to implement my idea …

Just not sure if that’s good enough speed-wise though since I’ve not had enough time to test this yet. The basic idea works, and I’ve gotten file transfers working too. Am working on chat at the moment, but I really need to do more testing …

Oh yeah, in case you’re interested, the SharePlay session from this year that probably has the info (I forget now if I even watched it) is this one:

https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2023/10239/
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