Last night I watched the Tom Hanks movie Greyhound on Apple TV. It was about a WW2 destroyer protecting merchant ships from U-boats on the North Atlantic run.

As the high winds and rain lashed the on screen ship, I was thinking at least in the Auckland storm we didn’t have to deal with ice on the windows and torpedoes.

Five headlines in my morning newsfeed about “game changers” please dream up some new cliches, this one was already hackneyed a decade ago

Auckland has potential problems with drinking water at exactly the same time brewers are struggling with beer production because of a lack of CO2.

#Auckland

As anyone in New Zealand knows, Auckland had a serious rain storm yesterday. Two people died, two are missing, the main roads and many suburbs flooded.

There’s damage everywhere. My house dodged a bullet. Another 10mm in my storm drain and the downstairs would have been innundated.

More rain fell in ten hours than the city normally gets in an entire summer.

It’s the kind of event where, despite everything, Twitter continues to shine.

I found constant updates and weather information there. Lots of first hand reports, photos and video footage. There were questions and answers. Fast-evolving coverage dominated my Twitter feed. It was what the social media site does best.

Mastodon not so much. In fact not much at all on the accounts I follow. That’s not say there was zero coverage, but it was far from comprehensive. At best it was sporadic. None of the important civil agencies or news media organisations have a Mastodon presence.

Otherwise, there was less material because I’ve carefully honed my Twitter feed over the years and use lists extensively to zoom in on different groups of accounts. I’ve done this with Mastodon, but there are far fewer Aucklanders in my feed. And some that I know are on both sites spent the day, like me, mainly on Twitter.

Mastodon may improve. Twitter may worsen. Yet for now, when there’s a local civil emergency Twitter is the more important channel.

Every single phone notification is turned off, although messages from familiy members (and two important clients) are enabled.

When I switched mobile provider, I deliberately didn’t activate voicemail.

If I’m called from a no-identity number, I rarely answer. It’s different if I’m expecting a call.

There are no social media apps on my phone.

It might not be convenient for other people, but these are my best productivity hacks. I can get so much more done by not being at every bot’s beck and call.

I’m back on the NZ Tech Podcast with Paul Spain discussing technology news with a New Zealand perspective.

billbennett.co.nz/nz-tech-p…

#podcast

Much as I like the idea of the new Tapbots Ivory app for Mastoden, selling it as a subscription, not a one-off purchase is indefensible.

That’s not to say I’ll never pay for a subscription (never is too absolute) but it leaves a bad taste in the mouth. I’m probably in a minority on this and yes, I acknowledge the annual fee isn’t huge… that’s not the point.

Now that I’m learning how to make better use of NetNewsWire, I’m feeding the important Twitter accounts through it so I can spend less time on that site.

It took me a while, well years actually, to cotton-on to using @netnewswire with iCloud, but boy does it make a difference to have everything syncing across the Mac, iPad and iPhone.

Over at my other site is a long-term (after two months) review of the 2022 iPad.

Apple’s 10th-generation iPad updates almost every aspect of the tablet. It’s a great device, but its greatness comes with a price increase and a couple of questionable design choices.

Twitter has changed, and not for the better. Killing the links to third-party apps was terrible for me. I used Tweetbot to filter and organise. Without it I could be lost in a soup of distraction.

As a journalist I can’t afford to walk away. Twitter helps me stay in touch with dozens of people and news sources. Mastodon doesn’t come close to replacing that.

Yet I need to prepare for a time when Twitter could become more unbearable, unusable or otherwise too messed around with.

So I’m following key Twitter feeds using my RSS feed reader. I use NetNewsWire: a free app for Macs, iPhones and iPads. In my experience it does a better job than the paid apps, but I open to There are plenty of alternatives to suit everyone’s needs, although not every RSS reader can deal with Twitter feeds.

That way I don’t have to miss anything that happens on Twitter, at the same time I don’t need to waste energy ploughing through the inevitable distractions that Twitter seems intent on making harder to ignore.

I’m interested to hear if other people have new Twitter strategies.

I love how when I start typing the names of UK newspaper websites my browser defaults direct to the football pages.

Relieved more than anything that Chelsea managed to beat Crystal Palace. Although the performance doesn’t convince me that we have any hope of qualifying for the Champions League.

Interesting that micro.blog tags the game the entire world outside of North America calls football as soccer. Not a complaint, it’s an observation.

It looks like Twitter has disconnected the third-party clients that we use to help us manage the feed, avoid nastiness and stay in control of the service.

Of course, it could be that something is broken. There has been no communication.

Another possibility is that it has something to do with separating paying from non-paying users.

If the goal is to force people to use the official apps or site and endure ridiculous advertising and general unpleasantness, it could backfire.

Sure, many will take the bait and use the official channels. Many have already and will yet pay up. For others this could be the deal breaking that sends them screaming from the site.

We’ll know soon enough.

Mattias Ott: “So how about we make 2023 the year of the personal website? The year in which we launch our first site or redesign our old one, publish a little more often, and add RSS and Webmentions to our websites so that we can write posts back and forth.”

matthiasott.com/notes/the…

It’s a great idea and, I’d argue, a better Twitter escape plan than using Mastodon - although that is working for many people.

Posted a massive update to my Guide to writing on an iPad - billbennett.co.nz/ipad-pro-…

It covers most of the bases, but if you find something I’ve missed get in touch.

Since Christmas Auckland has had two types of weather: Sticky humidity or unseasonably cold.

Going by the marketing and publicity I’ve seen so far, Tesla designed the Cybertruck for environmentally-aware sociopaths.

That’s one hell of a niche market.

Pakistan one day international cricket matches are cruelly timed for New Zealand fans. They start at around bed time and finish around the time I’d normally wake.

Still, there’s an ex-tropical cyclone on its way to Auckland and things should get noisy here in time for the second innings.

🏏

I’m looking for a device that I can stick in an old fashioned audio jack that will transmit Bluetooth to my headphones. Is there such a thing? I’ve tried googling the obvious terms, but haven’t seen anything resembling what I’m after. Maybe the obvious terms aren’t the best.

Haven’t seen anything even remotely interesting in the press releases coming from CES.

But it’s been that way for a few years now.

As a rule, if a product or service in New Zealand advertises itself as ‘premier’, it rarely is.

This may be unique to New Zealand.

I’m not going to pretend I understand how American politics works.

The structural things are easy enough to grasp; the two houses, the division of power, the electorial college and so on, but not the day-to-mechanics of how and why the two parties act the way they do.

From outside it looks broken and not as democratic as other systems, presumably there’s an internal logic that makes sense to people who take part.

I don’t believe I am the only person who thinks of cryptosporidium when I see headlines about crypto.