Reverting to an older version of Safari Technology Preview

Apple try to make it impossible to revert to a prior version of Safari Technology Preview (STP) – and they also try to force updates to the latest version immediately, without user consent. This is bafflingly hostile behaviour for what is supposed to be a beta version of the browser that users voluntarily, out of… Read more

People vs Products

I’ve experienced an interesting arc over my twenty or so years (thus far) of software development. I started out as a one-person shop, doing my own things, selling shareware. I had no manager nor technical lead. I had to make all my own decisions, in all aspects, without guidance or assistance. Subsequently, during my four… Read more

Swift on Raspberry Pi (in 2019)

After the horrible experience just acquiring, installing, & configuring a basic Raspberry Pi, I was anticipating much effort – likely ending in failure – to get Swift working. I was pleasantly surprised. There are multiple ways to do it, apparently. One would think that there’d be the correct & working packages already available through apt,… Read more

The dumpster fire that is the Raspberry Pi

For a couple of little home projects I need an always-on computer. In an ideal world, perhaps, this would be something like a Mac Mini. Powerful [enough], easy to install & maintain, runs anything & everything (including anything Linux through Docker or at worst a straight VM). Unfortunately, Mac Minis are surprisingly expensive – even… Read more