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.

Wonder why so many people on Mastodon refer to Twitter as “the bird site”. Feels like the people in the Harry Potter books who refer to “you know who” because they are frightened to say Voldemort.

Sometimes I think television drama is far too obsessed with murder mysteries. What about other crimes, why aren’t there shows about unpaid parking fines or income tax evasion?

When I buy something online, anything, and within days I’m pestered by needy requests for me to write a product review or to otherwise rate the product, my immediate thought is “I regret doing business with this company and will try to avoid them in future”. Can you imagine how you’d feel if, after purchasing something in a physical shop 30 years ago, a sales assistant ran down the road after you with an intrusive questionaire?

I wonder where people find the energy to be bigoted.

It’s that time of the year when I have no idea what day of the week it is. This might seem strange to overseas readers but much of New Zealand goes to sleep for two weeks around Christmas - New Year and the days merge into one long glorious summer holiday for many people.

Very early days, but here is the first version of my New Zealand media on Mastodon directory.

billbennett.co.nz/new-zeala…

Please get in touch if you have updates or additions. bill@billbennett.co.nz

I’m looking to lift my IndieWeb game. This Micro.blog site links to Mastodon (and from there to Twitter), but I haven’t integrated the Ghost site at billbennett.co.nz yet.

This post from Jason McIntosh prompted me:

fogknife.com/2018-05-0…

My main aim to be findable online if Twitter falls over or becomes unusuable. Linking the various islands should help.

I’m not going to pretend I have a clue how to use or read Google Analytics. I used it years ago and it was fine. Now it seems to be complex and geared entirely to sites that sell something.