Author Archives: ChrisC

Pratchett, Gadgets and Hex

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As part of the tinkering I’ve done for my Period Sites in Period Browsers project, I’ve had to keep an eye on the various pages it produces.

A few, of course, are the damaged product of a failure in somewhere my system and – of the rest – most are utterly banal, only really of interest in the context they appear.

Occasionally, some pique my curiosity. Like this short interview with Terry Pratchett about his working technology, originally recorded in 1998.

The PSPB page will be up sometime tomorrow afternoon but, until then, why not read the interview in a modern browser?

PSPB – Period Sites in Period Browsers

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So, I’ve built a new toy. It’s called PSPB (Period Sites in Period Browsers) and it pulls pages out of the Wayback Machine and renders them in various period specific browsers and operating systems (stripping off all the Archive.org rubbish as it does so).

As of launch it only has a half-dozen Operating System/Browsers combinations and around a dozen source sites – and the site that it posts them too is rather austere – but that’s likely to change as I poke around with it and get things up and running.

While I have no real idea how long it’ll last, PSPB can currently be found here.

WWDC 2020

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As it’s less than a month to the virtual WWDC, it’s time for an Apple/WWDC wish list.

On the MacOS-next side of things:

  • AV1 support baked in (CoreVideo and wherever else it’s needed).
  • APFS idle-time dedup.
  • January’s ‘Pro’ mode rumours coming to fruition.
  • And it’s equal and opposite ‘super battery saver’ mode.
  • Time Machine revamp/APFS based time machine.
  • Internet Time Machine.
  • A BetterTouchTool clone. The touch bar remains a very expensive white elephant, this may make it less of a failure for most.

On the iOS side:

  • Options for simultaneous multi lens pictures/video in default camera app.
  • Raw photos option in default camera app.
  • Option to replace default protocol handlers.
  • AV1 support.

Hardware wise:

Not in a million years but I still want:

  • Aperture 4 with local AI powered object recognition, smart photo manipulation/editing, multi drive support and highly configurable iCloud storage options.