@aubreypwd

Last night I spent some time—now that I have it—playing around with the idea of switching back to Jekyll or Hugo for my site. Well, after tinkering with both—and having issues exporting my WP content to .md—as you can see I’ve just decided to keep the current site as it is. So what’s this site running?

WordPress Classic

Yes, I just wanted to try it out. I just want to blog, I don’t need a block-editor. Just the classic editor and the most basic function: posts & pages. So far WP Classic has worked out. It’s bare-bones and I’ve modified it to be even more so. Categories and tags are disabled. It runs an SQLite database integration for easy backups, and that’s it! Comments are even disabled! It’s currently running a theme called Boxstyle with some CSS customizations. It works, but I’ve seen the code—it’s a mess. Maybe one day I will fork it and clean it up.

Hugo is so much better than Jekyll by the way. But I already moved my content from various sources to WP and the idea of re-formatting it again for either of these platforms as markdown just didn’t appeal to me. I was going to use this theme for Jekyll which I really liked, but maybe I like this one better.

So TwentyNineteen just wasn’t cutting it. Just wasn’t loving it… So decided to give this one a try, again with some customizations. Hopefully it sticks around. I really would love to build my own theme, but I just simply don’t have the time (I’ve tried before). 

Finding a WordPress theme is hard (no, don’t care to build or maintain one). But I’ve settled on TwentyNineteen with some dark mode enhancements. Wanted something simple. It’s not perfect, but I will continue tweaking it to my liking.

As someone who uses Apple Notes and Reminders daily, I have to admit Apple really makes crappy software.

As a senior developer, I’ve found AI incredibly useful for boosting productivity and handling a lot of tasks. It’s like having the Internet on my computer and it can speak to me, it’s really awesome. But, it can be infuriating when it doesn’t quite get what you need, especially with more complex stuff. It feels like working with an amateur developer who keeps missing the mark over and over, needing constant guidance and re-instruction.

For me, this has led to something I’d call “AI burnout.” The frustration builds to the point where I just want to give up trying to use it. It’s annoying, exhausting, and frankly, not worth the energy. I begin to distrust it and lose confidence in its ability to help, to the point where I’d rather push it aside and I often start to continue working on my own.

I wonder if other developers feel the same way—when does the help stop feeling helpful?

Yes, when you hover over the very edge of the Safari (any in many other apps) window, the sidebar will trigger for you!

Now for many years I have had this issue. It became more prominent in my ChatGPT.app where the sidebar would somehow get triggered automatically. I thought it was a bug, but it’s actually a feature. Usually I slide my cursor to the edge of the screen out of the way and apparently I was hovering over this area since I maximize most of my apps.

Not only that you can even drag the sidebar into not existing anymore by simply dragging it towards the edge of the window and it will go away! 

Go ahead, hide a sidebar in an app (try Finder) and hover near the edge of the window. 

It’s a feature!

I’ll be returning the AirPods 4 tomorrow—not because they’re bad (they’re actually really impressive) but because of one key reason: comfort.

I guess I’ve grown used to the fit of my AirPods Pro 2, especially after switching away from silicone to foam tips. That change made them fit so much better, and I never worry about them coming loose. I fee like I could get into a boxing match and they would stay in! With the AirPods 4, however, I constantly feel like they could easily get knocked out of my ears—they are so light!—especially the right one, which often feels loose after extended use. They’re so lightweight that, after long periods, I also feel like they’re falling out, and I find myself trying to push them back in repeatedly. I also noticed some ear strain after wearing them for a while due to that.

That said, the ANC on the AirPods 4 is surprisingly good—probably about 75% as effective as the AirPods Pro 2 IMO. Sitting in a loud coffee shop, I had no complaints. My AirPods Pro 2 still have an edge, both in ANC performance and sound quality, but I was fine to put my AirPods Pro 2 away for the AirPods 4 w/ ANC. For sound, I’d compare the AirPods Pro 2 to HDR video—vibrant, rich, and deep—whereas the AirPods 4 feel more like a great display without HDR. They’re clear and balanced, but they lack the same depth and bass response. Still, they’re about 80% of the way there IMO, which is impressive.

One thing I did appreciate about the AirPods 4 is how much cleaner they stay compared to the AirPods Pro 2, which tend to get dirtier due to the in-ear tips. This is one reason I bought them, and wished I could have kept them for this. But bottom line—if you don’t like the in-ear fit of the AirPods Pro 2, the AirPods 4 with ANC are a fantastic alternative. But for me, the fit of the AirPods Pro 2 make them the better choice.

I’m a perfectionist, and I know it. Ask anyone I know, and they’ll agree. But honestly, I’m not really that way. The thing about perfection is that it frustrates me. It’s a struggle, and it’s obsessive for me. That’s not healthy. However, I’ve heard many people, especially those I’ve worked with, tell me that “good is better than perfect.” I think that’s wrong, and that saying has always rubbed me the wrong way. While I think pursuing perfection is unhealthy, settling for just “good enough” also isn’t right.

Instead, I try to aim for something between good and perfect. After doing some word research, I was pleased to find that the word “excellence” is the right word for the place I am always aiming for.

Not good, not perfect, but excellent!

My wife and I had used the Apple Photos Shared Library since its introduction in October 2022. After almost a year, we decided to turn it off—but Apple’s process for separating shared libraries between two people seemed anything but straightforward. Here’s how I managed to separate our libraries while keeping the photos we took intact.

Step One: Moving My Photos to My Personal Library

The first step was to move all photos I had contributed to the shared library back into my personal library. Here’s how I did it.

I opened a photo I had shared in Apple Photos on macOS, clicked the ( i ) button to view details, and selected Shared by You. Then, I selected all photos listed under Shared by You by clicking the first one, holding Shift, and selecting the last one to highlight everything. I right-clicked the selection and chose Move X items to Personal Library. 

Step Two: Handling Burst Photos and Syncing Issues

Syncing took over a day to complete fully. Numbers on every device were wonky and it went very slow.

Moving burst photos didn’t work as smoothly. I filtered the photos by typing “Burst” in the search bar, selected all burst photos, and hid them (in the hidden folder) temporarily—I could unhide later. Some photos that my wife had marked as favorites still showed up as favorited in my personal library though, so I had to go through and manually un-favorited these.

Gradually, I noticed the numbers going down in the shared library (sometimes it went up, but eventually went down), reflecting that my photos were syncing to my personal library on both macOS and iOS (iOS was much slower). This took a while, especially on our phones. Over a day! But eventually I stopped noticing any of my photos in our shared library, so all that was left was my wife’s.

Step Three: Leaving the Shared Library on My Wife’s iPhone

Once my photos were out of the shared library, I went to my wife’s iPhone and had her leave the shared library, opting to keep only the photos she had contributed. On my computer and phone I started to notice the shared library item count go down.

Step Four: Deleting the Shared Library

I let this go on overnight, eventually the shared library on my computer was empty, my photos seemed to have gone to my personal library (I didn’t have any of hers) and my wife’s had gone to hers (and she didn’t have any of mine). On our phones, it was a different story. I could tell photos in the shared library were going down, but it was slow. My wife’s personal library seemed to have finished, numbers on her phone were not going up or down and she no longer had a shared library option. 

Seeing the shared library empty on both my and my wife’s computers, and seeing her library intact, I decided to delete the shared library on my phone. I chose to keep any photos I’d contributed, which resulted in about 200 lingering photos that were likely due to syncing issues, I am not sure.

Within 30 minutes I no longer saw a shared library option on my phone or on my computer. My computer still has about 18k count while my phone has about 64k, but I am sure it will eventually sync up because it still says “Deleting Shared Library” near the sync area.

Conclusion

It appears that when you leave a library, you have the option to retain everything or only what you personally contributed. Similarly, when you delete a shared library, you can choose to keep only what you contributed. However, I had anticipated that when I deleted the shared library, I would only select my contributions. I was concerned that all the photos in the shared library (my wife’s) would be copied over because Apple states that this would occur if anyone was in the library for more than a week. Surprisingly, when I deleted the shared library, it seemed that my wife’s photos were not copied into my library after her leaving it. Instead, I only have what I personally contributed from what I can tell, not a copy of all her photos —so far. Therefore, I’m not entirely certain if the above process was necessary. I believe I could have simply had my wife leave the library on her phone, selecting to keep only what she contributed, and then deleted the library on mine, retaining what I had contributed. In this scenario, the outcome would have been the same —I think.

Apple needs to make this easier, I was dealing with 200k+ photos here and I’m still not sure if the magic that happens in the background of Apple Photos and iCloud is doing what it’s supposed to do. It should be instant when you leave a library and you shouldn’t be worried about all the photos your spouse contributed being copied to your personal library, you just want your photos—likewise for deleting a shared library. I get why anyone else wouldn’t trust doing this and feel stuck using shared library.

Continued…

1 hour later

It’s been about an hour or two later. It was strange because my computer displayed 63k photos (I know I don’t have that many), while my iPhone showed ~43k, and iCloud.com indicated about ~16k (16k seems accurate). So, I restarted the iCloud sync on both my computer and phone. My computer quickly caught up in about 10 minutes, reflecting the same numbers on iCloud.com. However, with my iPhone, this didn’t happen. Instead, it’s been gradually reducing the number of items, and it currently shows 31k. I’m not sure what’s being deleted (I’ve noticed a few of my wife’s photos in my library), but I assume it’s more of my wife’s photos. I’m not sure why they’re even there. On iCloud.com, I don’t see any of them. 

1 day later

My phone’s photo count (approximately 20k) is incorrect when synced with both iCloud.com and my computer (16k). I’m not sure why this is happening, but I’ll try turning off and then turning on my iPhone to see if that resolves the issue…

Later that night

So, the number of photos on my iPhone (approximately 20k) remained unchanged despite trying to turn syncing on and off. However, I noticed that many photos from my wife were still present in my library. I attempted to search for “Shared by X” again, and this time, I was able to view photos shared by my wife. It turned out that there were around 3,5k of photos, most of which had “no lens info” in the meta. Upon closer examination, I realized that these were indeed my wife’s photos that were still in my library. I deleted them. Once I did this, the number of photos in my iPhone library began to align with the approximately 16k number on iCloud.com and my computer.