I just updated my ‘How Much Do I Have to Save for Vision Pro?’ shortcut to version 1.2:

Added a congratulatory message when you reach your savings goal, and the math and checks necessary to know when you’ve done so. Removed the dashes from the list of need-to-save amounts so they don’t look like negative numbers. Added import setup questions for the cost of the Vision Pro you want, the local tax rate, and the launch date.

Get it here from the HeyDingus Shortcuts Library.

Holy shit. Stripe’s real-time Black Friday weekend stats: bfcm.stripe.dev 🤑

🆕📝 Two-Sentence Reviews of Some Gizmos I Got

None of these were Black Friday deals, but I still wanted to get in on the fun. (Is it fun?) Instead of long-winded, extensive reviews that I’ve put off writing of all these gadgets, you get just a couple of (sometimes run-on) sentences for each.

I just discovered Blogit from Yuexun’s App Defaults blog post. It looks like a super simple way to make a blog out of your Notion database. I don’t use Notion, but I imagine it’d be appealing to people who entrust their life to that app. And I’m all for more folks blogging!

Since the Vision Pro was announced in June, I’ve been dutifully stashing away any tips I’ve made from guiding, plus proceeds from selling off stuff and Shortcuts commissions. Today, my savings tracker shortcut returned negative numbers, so I had to update it to account for that surprise. 😁

An iPad alert saying, “Try not to cry. You must save… $-0.8 per day, $-6.77 per week, or $-27.08 per month until Jan 1, 2024 to purchase the Vision Pro."

An iPhone alert saying “Huzzah and well done! You’ve saved up enough to purchase the Vision Pro on launch day! You’ve saved $3806 out of the $3778.92 you need. Now you’ve got $27.08 to put toward upgrades, accessories, or AppleCare+. Make sure to keep it somewhere safe. Apple Card Savings has a pretty good interest rate."

🔗 Monokai Inspired Mona Theme - acn.lol

I’ve already shared this on Mastodon earlier today, but thought it would be worth sharing here also.

The theme is avaialble as dark mode theme only, for now, but should you want to use it yourself, open THIS which should open Mona on your device and apply the theme.

I don’t even use Mastodon very often (occasionally for the @HeyDingus@mas.to account) and I’m still probably going to pay to unlock Mona’s pro features just so I can use @andyn@social.lol’s gorgeous theme.

You’ll never guess where I left my shoes last night. 🤦‍♂️

A pair of shoes soaked and covered in snow.

Love this town. 📷

Moon rising behind wispy clouds above a quaint townscape.

🔗 Hot take: It’s okay if we don’t consume all of the world’s information before we die // Keenan Schneider

I know I just said that I love ‘Smart Speed’ in Overcast, but I’ll be damned if Keenan doesn’t have me rethinking things.

🔗 ktool.io

I’ve been getting great use out of Kobo’s native Pocket integration. But if you’re using a Kindle, this KTool app looks pretty good for getting articles, newsletters, and RSS feeds over to your e-reader.

🆕📝 7 Things This Week [#120]

Great haul this week!

I thought that the Defaults fad was dying down after about 100 posts. Oh how wrong I was. Today alone there were 13+ new entries, and now 188 posts in total catalogued in the trend. The snowball keeps growing…

🔗 Clear the cache of single website in Safari - Eric Gregorich

I find that Safari tends to cache websites aggressively. Other browsers recognize the change immediately when I publish updates to my site’s CSS, but Safari often does not.

Great little tip from @ericgregorich!

🔗 ChatGPT just blew me away (again) // Matt Birchler

The experience was absolutely delightful, and it was really exciting to be able to get this sort of feedback in a conversational format. I was naturally able to pick up on something the bot said and then ask a follow up question to dig down a little deeper or to get it to clarify something it said. This is one way that LLMs are different from a blog post or a book and they’re more like choose your own adventures where you get to choose where things go.

Great idea to use conversational LLMs to dive into what specifically you want to learn.

🔗 Mountain Dew VooDEW 2023 Zero Sugar: The Dewfinitive Review — Keenan

Shame on the folks at Mountain Dew. Shame on PepsiCo. Shame on Elon Musk, because this shit is so bad that he must be involved somewhere along the line. If there is any greater indication that we’re speeding head on into full societal collapse, I don’t know what it is.

This is the most fun I’ve had reading a blog post in quite a while. I could almost taste the disgust in their voice.

🔗 Buying DRM-Free Audiobooks - Flamed Fury

That’s it. Nine steps to audiobook freedom. Also, shoutout to Libro.fm for being cool and a not-so-friendly “sup?” to those annoying publisher restrictions. Who needs borders on stories, anyway?

Bookmarking this for later use. 📚 🎧

Got the first ski of the season in today and, boy, are those legs in protest! One day earlier than last year’s start, so maybe an even longer ski season this year. 🤞⛷️❄️

🎧 The first half of Connected this week had me giggling like an idiot. One of the highlights of every week. (Out of respect for @ismh@eworld.social’s strong feelings, this will not be cross posted to Threads 😝)

Robb Knight’s website is a work of art. 😍 I could (and probably have) spend hours exploring through it in each of its many design refreshes. Gotta say it’s quite the thrill to find my name on both his blogroll and podroll pages.

🔗 “Pooping With The Quest 3 Is Magical.” - The Verge // Umar Shakir

OK, there are clear benefits to taking the new Meta Quest 3 to the bathroom, though. As Redditor Tall_Whole_5777 describes: You don’t need to touch screens or buttons to watch and control a YouTube video.

I guess I can’t disagree, even if I want to. 😂

Empathy requires each of us to never ever forget that we should treat fellow humans like human beings and not human-shaped objects. No exceptions and no excuses.
Andy Ihnatko

🔗 Blog Envy // Greg Morris

Jealousy is not a bad emotion to have about the results of someone’s hard work and years’ worth of effort. However, the response is emulating the effort put in and not worry about the design or the way they do things. Not least because if you do finally achieve the emulation you desire, it won’t be yours anyway.

🔗 Apple Watch Crash Detection saves another life: mine // Daniel Eran Dilger

With the amount of blood that I was losing, I couldn’t have laid there very long before I would have died. Loss of consciousness and blood is a bad combination for threatening brain damage, too.

I am grateful that I’m living in the current future where we have trusted mobile devices that volunteer to jump in to save us if we are knocked out.

Make sure this is turned on for you and your loved ones.

🔗 The kids are okay // Annie Mueller

It’s like asking if the ocean concerns itself with the ongoing fate of a singular drop of saltwater. The ocean isn’t mean; it’s just so big.

🔗 The new iOS 17 notification sound is quieter, and there’s no way to change it back - 9to5Mac // Benjamin Mayo

Alongside the dozens of new iPhone features found in iOS 17, Apple also took the opportunity to update the collection of ringtone and alert sounds. There’s a bunch of new tones to choose from in the Sounds setting for incoming alerts, text alerts and more.

I just got around to listening to these and I quite like the new ones. They sound modern and nice. 👍