Each entry in the “Mixed nuts” series is a collection of random and, occasionally, relevant observations. The series originally was inspired, as noted in the first “Mixed nuts” post, by the famed “Scattershooting” newspaper columns penned by the late Blackie Sherrod.
Sliding into the “Wow, finally, I did live to see it” category is this week’s 1.0 release, after years of beta testing, of the cross-platform1 Typora text editor app. After a fifteen-day free trial of the full app, the price is fifteen bucks. That’s a one-time license fee, so you inveterate subscription haters can stand down. Give it a try. (I’m writing this on it right now, as a matter of fact.)2
A pro tip for anyone who, as do I, lives in a place where fall is just now starting to feel like fall: suddenly cool temperatures can make your vehicles’ tires lose pressure much more quickly than you might think. I thought it had to get below freezing and stay there for a day or two before this would happen, but I’ve learned (the sort of hard way, but fortunately not too hard way) it happens if you simply reach the mid-forties (F.) or so.
At least here in the northern suburbs of Dallas, many of the retail areas seem to have standardized on giant ball ornaments like these, especially red ones, as the external decoration of choice for this year’s holiday shopping season. Didn’t get the memo but, then, I never do.
Autoprefixer no longer runs on this site. After comparing last May’s “Is Vendor Prefixing Dead?” with the CSS this site actually uses, I simply decided Autoprefixer had ceased to be necessary. (If you believe I’m being too hasty, please let me know.)
It’s only anecdotal evidence, but I’d say that, right now, Google’s YouTube TV streaming service has significant pixelation issues when running on at least some Amazon Fire Sticks. Not surprisingly, the problem doesn’t seem to be nearly as bad for Chromecast with Google TV devices. Note to self: file that under “Things that make you say, ‘Hmm.’”
If you’re at a party with web developers who’ve been pried away from their coding, casually mention the term “partial hydration” and watch their eyes light up. Just be sure you don’t suggest it has something to do with not drinking enough water.
Have recently been beta-testing the Orion web browser for macOS. Orion is an attempt to make a better version of Safari (write your own jokes), using the same WebKit engine. One particularly interesting aspect of Orion is that it actually allows use of extensions for Chrome and Firefox.3 There’s also an iOS version in beta, but I haven’t yet seen it.
Flavio Copes switched to Cloudflare Pages?!? “Whoa, Nellie!”
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Yes, it’s Electron-based. I’m okay with that, especially when it enables wide compatibility for an app of Typora’s well-known quality. ↩︎
Most users of other Markdown editors — say, iA Writer — probably will prefer to use Typora in its Source Mode at the start. Just sayin’. ↩︎
Be advised that the support for those other extensions is pretty spotty for now. Still, as the saying goes: if you find a talking dog, don’t criticize his grammar. The fact that Orion has any ability to use extensions built for other browser engines is pretty cool. ↩︎
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2023-04-17 at 6:18:22 PM CDT.
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