A friend recently asked me for tips on illustrating. He’s writing content for a specific topic, and wants to include visuals to explain the ideas. 

A few tips I suggested to him:

1. Just start sketching – If you can draw a stick figure with arrows and labels, you can use those to illustrate an idea. Messy is fine. In fact its encouraged. Don’t try to be perfect, just sketch out an idea, show it to a few friends for feedback and ship it. I like to sketch with an iPad + Apple Pencil in Freeform, but all you need to start is a napkin and pen. Draw out that idea and show it to a friend. 

2. Worry about style later – Right now your focus should be on conveying your idea. If you write a thousand word article and want to include an illustration alongside it, that illustrations goal is to help summarize some key point of the article. Don’t worry about if it’s not perfect. In fact, A List Apart made a game of its illustrations being incredibly abstract and not really on point with the article. They’re amazing. 

3. Copy the masters – When you’re ready to figure out your style, spend time straight up copying illustrations that you like. This is entirely optional and only if you want to to get closer to a specific style you love. In college my professor encouraged us to trace out drawings from Leonardo Da Vinci or Michaelangelo, copying stroke by stroke to understand they did things. For me it was a lot of fun to start to figure out what type of lines I wanted to create, what types of shading I wanted, etc. 

4. Iterate on the fly – Your first sketch will be messy, at least I hope so. If it feels too perfect you probably spent too much time on it. Just doodle out an idea and ship it, then move on. You’ll improve on future sketches, not this one. 

For inspiration I recommend looking at some of the visuals from Ben Thompson, the beautifully simple and elegant drawings of from Randall, and consider grabbing The Shape of Ideas by Grant Snider.  

—

Above all else, you’ve got this. You don’t have to be an artist to convey an idea. In fact I did a whole talk on this years ago. Just sketch out your idea and ship it, learn from it, ask others if they understood it, and keep tweaking in future iterations, not in the current one. 

Also, if you’re tempted to use AI I’d say go for it, try it out, see if you like it. The challenge I’ve seen with AI is that it takes the median of all ideas and creates a rather generic concept. That may be useful if you don’t trust your skills at all. But I’d suggest that the time spent flexing your drawing muscle may in fact help with your writing.

Thank you to Arlen for the inspiration to write this.

Sometimes I find myself in a state of incompleteness. There’s so much to be done and not enough energy left. When life includes many important things, it seems impossible to do them all. Sometimes days feel like Hal changing a lightbulb. 

Today I sat down and played with something that had been bothering me for a few weeks. We bought a new bookshelf for my office, and the middle shelf keeps falling down. I thought I’d lost a screw, and finally sat down today to investigate with my iPhone’s flashlight as a camera. 

After some testing I realized the slot for the screw is somehow designed wrong and the screw can’t go in. The problem was much easier to solve once I thought about it for a minute. Instead of forcing the screw to fit I just moved the entire shelf down a notch. There are, after all, several other heights for the shelf. 

Problem solved, and now I can move onto the next thing. 

I’m a huge fan of voice memos. I’ve been using them on iMessage for years to message friends. One of the recent tricks I learned is you can swipe across the voice memo. Sometimes I inadvertently end a message early and need to relisten, so imagine my joy when I found out I could swipe my finger back and forth across the sound wave to find my spot again. 

One pro tip: If you have a long message to listen to you, you can save it to your Mac, open in preview, and listen to it at 2x speed. 

An amazing video by Cabel Sasser has been floating around the internet the last week. If you’re one of the lucky 10,000 who haven’t seen it yet, my pitch is simple. If you love anything, want to create anything, and ever wonder about your purpose in this world, you may find some joy and hope in watching this short video. 

On October 3, the British government announced that it was giving up sovereignty over a small tropical atoll in the Indian Ocean known as the Chagos Islands. The islands would be handed over to the neighboring island country of Mauritius, about 1,100 miles off the southeastern coast of Africa. 

The story did not make the tech press, but perhaps it should have. The decision to transfer the islands to their new owner will result in the loss of one of the tech and gaming industry’s preferred top-level domains: .io.

This is nuts. I get it, reading through the history of top-level domains there’s good reason to retire a domain based on greater geopolitical changes. 

However, as someone who has always strove to own my little piece of the internet, and not be at the whims of tech giants and social media platforms, it saddens me that even something as perceivably solid as a domain can still be a shaky foundation to build a business on top of. 

The IANA may fudge its own rules and allow .io to continue to exist. Money talks, and there is a lot of it tied up in .io domains. However, the history of the USSR and Yugoslavia still looms large, and the IANA may feel that playing fast and loose with top-level domains will only come back to haunt it.

I really hope so. .io is a fantastic TLD and I hope there’s some workaround. Also, I can’t even imagine what would happen with the businesses built on it, do they have some sort of expiration to work against?

Via Every.to

A few weeks ago I picked up some new books, including The Wild Robot, book 1. Since it’s an easy read I went through a few chapters each night with the kids. 

Last week we watched the new movie together as a family, and my wife and I were blown away. It’s one of the best movies I’ve seen all year. It has the heart of Iron Giant, and the parenting vibes of Bluey. 

If you have kids, or a nostalgic attachment to Wall-E, it’s worth watching. 

Here’s a great write-up if you’re curious to learn more!

A reminder to anyone in the path of adverse weather, if you have an iPhone 14 or later, you can upgrade to iOS 18 and text loved ones for free via Satellite. I’ve tested this with my wife on the tallest peak in Idaho and it works amazingly. You just need to give it a little time and be away from any trees or buildings. 

Those of us still rocking AirPods with Lightning ports finally have a way to upgrade them to USB-C that doesn’t require complicated modifications or the cost of completely replacing the case. 

I threw this weird looking case on my list and thought about buying it. But really it’s a solution in need of a problem. Do I like carrying around lightning and USB-C cables? No. Not really, but since I still need it for my ohter devices, it’s just not worth spending more on this problem. 

In a few years I’ll be lightning free, but our family is currently running the following devices that require lightning:

AirPods, AirPods Pro (2x), AirPods Max

Apple Keyboard (2x), Apple Magic Mouse

iPhone 12 Pro (attached to the watch my kiddo uses), iPhone 14 Pro (keeping around for a bit as a backup for testing Figma designs)

Frankly it’s annoying to never know which cable is which until checking both ends, but one day I’ll be USB-C only and I can’t wait for that day. 

Thankfully I’m 99% there (except for the cars!) with USB-A. 

Code analysis firm sees no major benefits from AI dev tool when measuring key programming metrics, though others report incremental gains from coding copilots with emphasis on code review.

I’ve tried ChatGPT and its variants with development tasks. For someone who is still relatively knew at coing, I’ve found it helpful to move me further along in my goal. 

Reading through the rest of the article it sounds like it’s still a big question mark as to whether AI tools make a difference. 

However, anecdotally talking to friends who are developers, it sounds like there can be a benefit if you already understand what you’re doing, but want help moving things along. 

The biggest challenge I’ve felt is forgetting what I know or being blocked in some area I don’t understand. It seems that an AI assistant can help a bit in these areas. 

VIa CIO

Sleep is tricky for me, I’m highly alert to any environmental sounds. 

For over a decade I’ve used a noise maker to sleep. Before that I slept with a fan on.

Nowadays I generally prop an iPad or iPhone near my pillow and turn on a white noise app. I love Dark Noise and highly recommend the brown noise option. 

I’ve tested ear plugs, and am somewhat happy with the results, but sometimes it’s just not enough. 

Beats recently released a new 18 hour earbuds, which are fantastic. The only problem is their bulky size hurts my ears while side sleeping, and they tend to slip out if my ears get sweaty (a problem I think I can solve with some foam tips). 

I’ve been debating trying the new Pixel Buds Pro 2. But I’m not sure if the cost is quite worth it. 

We’re introducing canvas, a new interface for working with ChatGPT on writing and coding projects that go beyond simple chat. Canvas opens in a separate window, allowing you and ChatGPT to collaborate on a project. This early beta introduces a new way of working together—not just through conversation, but by creating and refining ideas side by side.   

I’m not sure that I get this tool from the outset, but I’m curious to try it. I’ve been wishing Xcode would have some sort of ChatGPT integration, or use Apple Intelligence of some sort, sot hat I could get help coding simple iOS apps. 

This tool might be helpful on that front.

Now, with the writing tools that Canvas suggests, I’m not interested in a tool that will draft up an article from a prompt, that’s not interesting at all. But I wouldn’t mind something that reviewed my longform writing and helped suggest improvements to the structure. 

A friend recently suggested some writing tools that do just that, and I’m curious to explore them. I haven’t really looked at longform tools in a while, since publishing my last book, but my dream would be something that helps me (as a scattered writer) see an outline of what I have and help me sort and organize it. 

Via OpenAI

I’ve got an iPhone 14 Pro that I no longer use daily, thanks to upgrading to the iPhone 16 Pro Max. 

I’ve been debating whether to sell it, or find some other use. At some point I’d like to get into video podcasting (or YouTube, as the kids call it), and have been trying to figure out a cleaner way to use the old phone’s camera as a webcam.

I’ll report back once I pony up for some stands, but so far the Elgato mini mount is looking the best. 

I’ve heard a lot of passionate takes on the whole WordPress fiasco the last few weeks. But I think I resonate the most with Manton’s post earlier today. 

Automattic offered a severance package to anyone who took it, and 8% of the company accepted. 

This is indeed very generous. It’s not often you get a chance to leave a job and walk away with six months of salary. For many people that might be a down payment on a new house, or enough money to pay off debt, or time to travel before figuring out what to do next.

He then parallels this with some drama at Basecamp years ago, it does feel similar. I’m curious where the future of WordPress will head with all this and, having many friends in the space, hopeful for the livihoods of them all!

Via Manton

I don’t have a full fledged review of the iPhone 16. Many others have done a fantastic job at that. But I do want to share a few quick thoughts on how the new camera fits into my life in a very practical way. 

I’ve been using the device, an iPhone 16 Pro Max in Natural Titanium, since Friday. It did take me about 3 hours to transfer over from my previous phone, an iPhone 14 Pro. But once that was done I eagerly wanted to find out what I could do.

First, like always, I jumped around inside the phone trying to figure out what was new. I tested the camera, the new camera styles, the camera button, and tried to get a sense for what was different. I also tried to figure out if I could trigger Apple intelligence, but it’s mostly unavailable at the moment (I am on a beta so I’m trying out a few things, but that’s not technically public yet). 

For me, an amateur photographer who barely knew how to use the power of my previous phone, I can’t say that much has changed in a way that I’ll truly be able to capture (yes, intentional), but there’s always a universal truth for me and new phones. 

Every 2-3 years, when I finally upgrade my device I find that I have a 6-8 month period where I take more photos of my family, along with the occassional landscape. Something about having that new hardware inspires me to go on a photography binge. It’s a bit unnecessary, I could take pictures that were just as good before. But it often feels like the quality is just a little better, even psychologically, and frankly that’s enough. 

I’m thankful now, as my kids get older, that I went through bursts of photo capturing over the last decade. I’ve got some great pictures of them, and if nothing else part of the excuse I tell myself is that I need a new device to inspire me to capture a bunch of cool pictures all over again.

There’s something else too, beyond the improved quality. With photography, at least the kind I’m interested in, speed of capture matters. 

Also, the contrast between what I can catch in low to medium light today and what I could do years ago is crazy. I tested portrait mode with my daughter in some close-to-golden-hour lighting. The results were astonishing. I was able to snap quickly and often, capturing dozens of bokehesque shots of her in different poses.

Something about kids, and most people in general frankly, is smiles are hard. Most of us instantly put on a specific expression when facing a camera, and the results don’t capture the true essense of who we are. I’ve always struggled with this for myself in photos, and in taking pictures of others.

With my kids, and in group photos of them alongside their friends, I’ve employed a bunch of tricks to try and see their true smiles. When that happens those photos are truly magical.

So, with my seven year old daughter, instead of asking her to smile, I simply started talking to her. We had a chat. She knew the camera was rolling, so to speak, but she engaged with me in some silly banter, and I frantically snapped the camera button dozens of times. The result? I was able to catch something that I’ll treasure for years to come. 

That’s why I’ will keep upgrading my phone for the foreseeable future. When she was little I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t take nearly instant blurry-background pictures of my kids in mid expression, with the real smiles on their face as they laugh at a silly joke, or move in the natural motion of a kid in mid-play. But the fact that I can do that a little better each year, that is magical. 

Beyond that, I’m thankful for a great battery again, and after two years on a normal iPhone size (at least normal for 2024) I’m loving having a massive screen again. The 6.9” screen feels great for watching things. Yes, I’m one of those suckers who watches movies on my phone at night. 

The camera control button is interesting, but as Gruber pointed out (and frankly I think he was a little generous), it’s not as good as I’d hope in having a picture ready to take the instant I pull the phone from my pocket.

Years ago, as a teenager, I bought a digital point and shoot camera with a 20x zoom (or something like that). It was some sort of Olympus camera from Costco. I loved that thing. I’d fiddle with it, take photos, try to capture sunsets, and generally geeked out with what to me was a crazy expensive piece of hardware (about $500 in 2003-2004). I remember upgrading the camera from a previous one, and counting the time in seconds that it took to load up. From the time I had the camera in front of me, to the time it was ready to capture a picture, was about 5 seconds. I knew at the time that was ridiculous, but it was as good as I could get. 

Now, of course, we’re far from those days. It’s sooo much improved in time-to-first-photo. But still I can’t help but think it could be faster. 

There’s either some period of time where I’ll need to get used to the new camera capture button on the iPhone, or I’ll just have to accept it’s a little finicky. What I’d hoped for, a button I could literally press as I aimed the camera upward, a movement I sometimes wish to do in less than a second, that doesn’t seem to be what we’re getting with this button. I’ll keep trying though, and report back if I figure it out. 

Hope has been something that has kept me going lately, I have learnt how true the saying is about hope that dies last. But hope needs something to catch, hope isn’t given, it has to be found. But it is difficult to search for something so ephemeral on your own. I tried, I failed, I asked for help, I got help, I tried again and I succeeded. The lesson was learned. That was the moment I decided to come out of hiding once more. Maybe once and for all, who knows, certainly not me.

I’m glad to see my friend is back at it with writing. 

In the end, life surprised me once again, providing help and guidance in ways I least expected. But it confirmed my belief that sometimes a word, a short message, a seemingly unimportant message can change everything.

As always, I find Michal has a way of taking a concept and writing it in a way that embues meaning, often poetically. 

Glad he’s back at it, and excited to see what he writes next. Also, since I’m weird about RSS, I’ll find out when I randomly type his website into my address bar again (or hear see it posted on Mastodon).

Via Michal Zelazny

Chip giant Qualcomm made a takeover approach to rival Intel in recent days, according to people familiar with the matter, in what would be one of the largest and most consequential deals in recent years.

I don’t know what this means, but everything I’ve heard about Qualcomm suggests they’re a relentless organization focused on doing what it takes to win. Maybe that’s bad, maybe that’s good. But eithery way this is an interesting twist in the Intel saga. 

Via Spyglass

Dieter Rams and his friends (Dietrich Lubs and Ludwig Littman) designed many great looking alarm clocks.

This is amazing. Fatih goes through the process of designing an iPhone dock, heavily inspired by Rams, and shares the 3D model to print it yourself. I’ve never wanted a 3D printer more. 

Throughout this Summer I’ve been enduring the notification harassaments from Apple asking me if I’m really reallllllly certain that I do in fact want the app that I’ve used for nearly a decade to absolutely for sure function the way I want it to. 

I know everyone in tech ridiculed them for this, but maybe Qualcomm was onto something when they talked about Apple’s annoying popups. 

Recently Jason Snell talked about this very thing, although I can’t remember the exact episode. 

So what am I talking about? As a Mac user I regularly use apps to record portions of my screen. Between Loom, Droplr, Screenshot X, Zoom, and others it’s a crucial part of how I do my work that I record my screen. 

When I go to load one of these Apple puts a popup asking me if I really want the app to do this, and then I can say no, or remind me in a month. There’s NO way to disable this. 

Apple assumes that I’m not smart enough to know which app I want to use and what it does. So they harrass me week after week (thankfully once a month with the final release of the new Mac update), and ask me if I’m really certain I want these apps to continue doing what they’re doing. 

And here’s the thing, these notifications don’t actually know whether the app has changed in anyway that might be dangerous for me, it just assumes that I shouldn’t be using them. 

This is ridiculous.

Enter Amnesia, a tiny app that makes this disappear forever. Thankfully I can control my device enough to fix this. But it’s incredibly frustrating.