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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

"Gen V" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13159924) episode 2 is a lesson on trust that really drives home the point in multiple ways.

You know the characters shouldn't trust certain people, but they themselves don't know due to how their character works.

It's interesting in how people work and yet, has me screaming at the TV for them to not fall for it 😛

I’m still enjoying the core story and I do like these little touches of psychology and the inner workings of people ...

#TV #English #GenV #Writing
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Fahim Farook

From AnyType (https://anytype.io/) and it's inability to import data in a way that is easy, I went on a whirlwind tour of similar applications — some open source, and some only freemium.

I tried NoCoDB (https://nocodb.com/) to BaseRow to SmartSuite to Fibery to Mathesar to Budibase — there are a lot of interesting solutions.

Way too many to list in about 500 characters for sure 😛

Sometimes I wish I still blogged so that I could do detailed write ups about all these but that’d probably be too arduous a task given how many of these solutions are out there!

#DataManagement #PersonalDatabase #KnowledgeManagement #Tools
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Fahim Farook

Edited 1 year ago
Just when I think people can't get any sillier, they do 😛

From, "you believe in what I don't believe in" to "you use a different phone" to, it's now "you don't use an OSF/FSF (or whatever TLA you prefer) license for your open source project" 😀

Live and let live people! Don't get so dogmatic!

As long as they aren't hurting themselves or others, why does it matter to you how somebody else chooses to live their life or what they believe in?

Why must everybody conform to your worldview?

#Questions #Beliefs #Dogma #Reflections
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@Rycaut As I started reading your reply and got to “wiki”, I was thinking TiddlyWiki since I’ve used it in the past … and then you mentioned it 😛

I’ll have to go see how it looks/functions now since I haven’t used it in at least 10 years perhaps? It was really easy to use back in the day …

But I think my issue with a wiki is always that I see it as browser-based and somewhat heavy … I want a “light” app that I can bring up as needed and dismiss when I don’t want it. But I think that’s a peculiarity on my part …

I do want to go take a look at TiddlyWiki now that you’ve reminded me, thanks!

I’m currently getting ready to install NocoDB on my NAS since it’s open source and works like AirTable, which I’ve also found in the past to be very easy to use for almost any type of data … What always put me off was the data limits on the free plan, even if I never hit the limits 😛
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@Rycaut I haven’t gone through each of the items in the following list in detail yet, but there might be something there that might work for you 🙂

https://alternativeto.net/software/filemaker-pro/?license=opensource

My first instinct always is to go for a solution that I can extend/code for, and so I’ll need to do some checking on each … If I find one that I really like, will let you know …
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@Rycaut Will do 🙂

Ideally, what I’d like to have is a free-form database along the lines of FileMaker, Bento, or Records where I can define the schema for each table, set up relations and so on so that I can go to town in precisely defining how each type of information is stored …

But it seems like a really long-term project and I’m not sure that it’s feasible …

AnyType actually works really well, is free, and is open source. Only trouble is that it’s heavily (but slowly) under development and so far doesn’t have an API and so isn’t easily extensible …

I did manage to write an importer for movies for it yesterday but it involves creating a single JSON file for each movie and then importing each JSON file in manually (and individually). So a bit cumbersome …

A custom solution would be the fasters, but then I’d have to create separate apps for each type of data, or it would only cater to the types of data I want and so might not work for others …
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Fahim Farook

Edited 1 year ago
"The Boys" is violent, rapey, murdery etc. But I think it's closer to how humans would behave if they had super-powers than what Marvel or DC thinks ...

So, I was ambivalent about "Gen V" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13159924) since "The Boys" is a bit over the top for me. But the first episode of "Gen V" was interesting and has enough in it to keep me hooked. Will watch more to see if the potential pans out or if this is going to just go with over-the-top violence …

#TV #English #TheBoys #GenV #Comics
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Fahim Farook

Edited 1 year ago
AnyType allows me to keep a list of movies I want to watch and create various views based on different criteria such as movie language ... but it's hard to automate adding data to AnyType. Easiest way is to type it all in manually.

My own app lets me do things as I wish and I can automate movie information retrieval easily from say IMDB, but it is task-specific and I can't easily store (or rather, store in an organised fashion) movie information side-by-side with say, book info, or a comic book collection.

Can I find a middle ground?

#PersonalDataManager #AnyType #Swift #SwiftUI #Automation

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Fahim Farook

I started using AnyType (https://anytype.io/) to maintain my movie/TV watchlist, tasks, notes and a few other things ...

So of course, I start working on a #Swift app which will allow me to add movies to AnyType easily by doing a simple IMDB search 😛

Only about a day of work so far, but the search works. The transferring data easily to AnyType part is a bit more involved but there’s some light at the end of the tunnel.

#Swift #SwiftUI #macOS #AnyType #DataManagement
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Fahim Farook

The second episode of "The Continental" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6486762) is much better.

It gives you a hook, a slightly bigger world, and a wider cast of characters (and backstories for existing characters) that makes things interesting.

Much better than the first episode, IMO. I think I'll watch for a little longer to see how things develop …

#TV #English #TheContinental
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@FalconMarkSix My issue is with how slippery that initial glass implementation was 😛 Later stuff wasn’t that hard to keep on a surface …

I’ve been using the iPhone X for an hour or so today and without the case it’s a nightmare! It won’t stay on any slightly inclined surface — it just slides off.
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Fahim Farook

Got my old iPhone X out to do some testing ...

The case was falling apart and I took it off. That was the first time I'd ever bought a case (back then) for a phone ...

I had forgotten how slippery the iPhone X was without a case. Just leave it even on a (mostly) flat surface and it starts sliding …

Was that a deliberate design decision on Apple's part to drive case sales? I have to wonder (in hindsight) given that I've bought a case for every new iPhone since then 😛

#Apple #iPhoneX #iPhone #Cases #SlipperySlope
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Fahim Farook

"The Continental" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6486762) has the bones of a story, but not much to actually like/care for till the very end of the first episode.

I wasn't going to watch further, but the ending did hook me. So maybe one more episode to see where it goes, possibly?

#TV #English #TheContinental #JohnWick
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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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