Microblog

Opportunities are whispers, not foghorns.

October 29, 2018 18:49

Today, I finished my sixth half-marathon for this year. It was more of an accident, really. I had not intended to run the distance, but at one point of my run, I simply got lost. When I realized that I have strayed off my path for far too long, I decided to rather run all the way back. I almost always forget to bring money or my ticket with me while running, so, instead of risking getting caught, I ran all the way back.

October 29, 2018 16:23

# If the first screen, an app greets you with is a subscription paywall, it makes you wonder why the author just didn’t ask you to pay right away. Maybe, some people would think otherwise, but to me, such tactics are a no-go. What follows is an immediate removal.

October 12, 2018 20:48

As soon as I came back from KotlinConf, I decided to grab and try to build the conference demo app. I want to use it as a foundation for an idea I have in mind. Yet, as soon as I downloaded it and tried to compile it, came the first problems. Gradle is not really able to download all the dependencies, mainly, when it comes to the iOS-specific Kotlin/Native ones. I posted an issue on Guthub and decided to switch back to an old hobby of mine - generative art. I dusted off an old Processing project of mine...

October 10, 2018 16:39

TIL that pretty much most jeans on the market today are being artificially processed, in order to soften the denim. Believe it or not, but this sort of “processing” involves washing the jeans multiple times over, often throwing bags of volcanic stones in the washer to help “beat up” the denim and make it softer.

October 05, 2018 15:16

One of the things I really love about conferencing abroad, is that it presents a great opportunity to explore new places. Conferences are primarily for networking and learning new things. Yet, as well-versed individuals, we should pursue those two as much outside the conference room, as inside it.

October 05, 2018 11:15

Good morning from the second day of KotlinConf (#kotlinconf18), located in the beautiful city of Amsterdam. I wanted to start the day with a few panoramas I took just outside the central train station. I am hoping that they will convince you just how beautiful a sunny morning in central Amsterdam can be 😍

October 04, 2018 13:30

Http4k is a lightweight but fully-featured HTTP toolkit written in pure Kotlin that enables the serving and consuming of HTTP services in a functional and consistent way. http4k applications are just Kotlin functions which can be mounted into a running backend.

October 03, 2018 22:05

OK, it was about time, I post some photos from my trip up North

September 29, 2018 10:23

On the road again, going to visit Bremen for the first time in three years. A lot has changed in those three years. I remember the last time I left the main train station in Bremen, thinking I would perhaps never go back. Many things I simply wanted to put behind. And here I am, a few years later, a bit older, and hopefully, a bit wiser this time, eagerly awaiting the time when the train will reach the Bremen station again.

September 29, 2018 08:41

I can’t believe that it is so difficult to find a keyboard for my iPad 2018 model. I mean, there are iPad-compatible keyboards out there and many good ones at that, but nothing used and well kept that one could reuse. I roamed through eBay and on different local classifieds sites, but I could really not find anything suitable. Either the keyboards don’t match the width and height of the iPad, or the ones that do, have hinges/slits that don’t match the thickness.

September 28, 2018 08:07

Note to self: Happy 31st birthday! Here’s to another year of joy, happiness and love, but also, of new challenges and tough calls to be made. I feel older, and unbelievably, a bit wiser. 🎉

September 26, 2018 21:14

Steve Jobs used to brag about how Apple’s product line could fit on a single table. Today, Tim Cook’s efforts to enrich shareholders have resulted in a confusing jumble of devices.

September 22, 2018 15:30

It’s that time of the year again. The two weeks of the year when everything else in Munich suddenly loses importance and fades into the background. It’s time for Oktoberfest. Though I am personally not much of a fan, I wish everyone attending lots of fun and easy hangovers.

September 20, 2018 19:16

Federico Viticci wrote an excellent review of iOS 12. Stephen Hackett (a.k.a. 512 Pixels) summed up the best of it in a couple of sentences which I decided to repost, for posterity’s sake:

September 19, 2018 17:52

The Shortcuts app on iOS 12 is a great example of the power of defaults. When it was still a third-party, paid (if I recall correctly) app called Workflow, only a handful of geeks used it, although it was really good back then. Apple bought it, kept the name, released it for free under the same name. Yet, it wasn’t until this year’s WWDC when Apple announced that the app would be renamed and become more integrated with Siri and the iOS services, that it caught the attention of the average consumer. Indee...

September 18, 2018 07:40

The photo on the top represents my heart’s activity during a Saturday full of physical activity - having walked more than 15 km in total. The photo below it represents a day at the job, consisting of mostly sitting behind the laptop and solving our company’s issues. I am not going to get into details, which one of these is more detrimental to helth. I believe that the photo makes it pretty darn obvious.

September 17, 2018 08:00

This is just a quick chart of one of the oscillators I have been working on. The line on the top is the Bitcoin price, and the one on the bottom is the corresponding indicator value for the given data point. Look how closely the lows and highs match the relative dips and peaks of the price line. I think, I might be onto something interesting here.

September 16, 2018 21:52

John Gruber’s review of Apple’s recent event: https://daringfireball.net/2018/09/iphone_xs_xr_series_4_apple_watch_event.

September 16, 2018 20:25

I found a very well kept and cheap 2nd gen iPod Shuffle, and I thought I could be able to use it on my runs, instead of carrying my phone with me. I would really like, if there is an option to listen to my Audible audiobooks, but for this, the iPod has to support playing files in a particular order. Is this supported on the 2nd gen, or is it always random?

September 16, 2018 18:29

Sooo, I managed to get everything hooked, and the microblog is finally live on micro.blog - https://micro.blog/preslavrachev 🎉 Feel free to check out my stuff, ask me questions, fave if you feel like. I’d be glad to into the conversation.

September 16, 2018 16:30

In case I have not mentioned it before, I bought a new running watch the other day: a Garmin Forerunner 235. I have used it for a couple of days now, and am still collecting feedback for a more thorough review. Today, I did my first training run with it today, and overall, I feel satisfied with the quality of measurement.

September 16, 2018 10:33

Ben Horrowitz seems right to me. It’s the technology and its implications that matter. There will always be bad apples, just like in the case of the Dotcom Bubble. This does not change the fact that some of the Internet giants of today were built right during that era. The blockchain/crypto indistry is in the phase of intense battleground testing. Only a few will survive, and IMHO, those will drive the future frontier. As of today, I still remain a long-term optimist in the potential of the technology an...

September 16, 2018 09:03

This is my first official post on the microblog. And, believe it or not, one that I created on the fly, using only my iPhone and a clever Workflow/WorkingCopy contraption I designed for posting. How cool is that? 🎉

September 15, 2018 18:00

Hello World!

Preslav Rachev