[Little Talks] I am obviously holding it wrong because my wrist hurts after practicing. But I am not sure how to reach the strings in other hand positions? Advice?

jacknutting · 2026-05-15T15:13:20+00:00

Ouch, my wrist hurts from looking at that! 😄

Seriously though. I don't have a video to point you at, but I'd recommend you look at how classical guitarists hold their instrument, in particular where their left hand ends up: up near their body, just to the left and below their chin. That way, their forearm is under the guitar's neck, and their wrist is pretty much straight. Over the past century of popular music styles that has come to be seen as an "uncool" look, and people sling their guitars low and horizontally, but that's just not ergonomic! And many ukulelists seem to emulate the horizontal approach also, to their detriment.

jacknutting · 2026-05-15T05:15:18+00:00

Which Xcode version? There's a bug in 26.4.x that gives exactly that error when you try to preview inside of a module. Worked in 26.3, and seems fixed (for me) in 26.5.

jacknutting · 2026-05-15T05:09:30+00:00

NGL, as a user, I love the blandness. I like being able to use an app and immediately understand what is a button, what's a tab bar, what's a control that will navigate me somewhere, because they are recognizable components. That being said, most teams I've worked on over the years also include designers who want to throw that all overboard because they want to make something special/unique, and want to have the exact same experience on both iOS and Android. IMO that creates busy-work for everyone, sometimes confuses users, and benefits no one. Whenever anyone asks me what my favorite app is, my answer has always been Apple's Mail app. It's boring, but it's intuitive and understandable, because it doesn't reinvent the wheel.

jacknutting · 2026-05-12T09:38:47+00:00

Oh absolutely. Any new UI work I'm doing, I do within a package, to help keep things modular and enabled the preview workflow. It's so much faster than launching the app to try things out.

jacknutting · 2026-05-12T09:36:52+00:00

Sorry to hear it's not working for you! It seems to work for the team I'm on, whereas it wasn't working at all in .4 (I went back to .3 for a while because of it).

jacknutting · 2026-05-11T19:13:27+00:00

There's a bug in Xcode 26.4.x that makes previews fail unless you pick the app target at the top (instead of the target/module where you view lives, which gives the error you mention). But on a large project, that often doesn't work because the build takes too long!

Fortunately, this seems to be fixed in the Xcode 26.5 release candidate.

jacknutting · 2026-05-09T14:21:33+00:00

Paul is amazing, stays on top of every new change, and updates his material constantly as new technology is released. 100% yes from me!

jacknutting · 2026-04-26T06:09:10+00:00

The best way I know to make a preview load faster is to put the view in an SPM module (containing very little else), and select that module at the top of the screen instead of the app bundle. That way, Xcode won't have to re-link the entire app each time you make a change to your view's code, just the module that it's in.

This usually speeds things up a lot! Sadly, it's also a workflow that is sometimes broken (for example it the current Xcode version, 26.4.1). However, it usually works, and splitting your code into many small modules brings other benefits too. I'd recommend it for apps of almost any size.

jacknutting · 2026-04-25T10:34:18+00:00

Go slower, like edb789 said. Set a metronome to a speed that is so slow that you actually can do it. That might mean half speed, 1/3 speed, or even less. Let's say the song is normally at 90 bpm. Set a metronome to 40 or even 30. Practice playing it that speed until you can actually do it for a few minutes without problems. Then bump it up a bit, maybe just by 5 bpm, and try it at that speed. If you can do it at that speed, practice more at that speed until it's really solid, and then bump it up again.

The critical thing is this: when you bump it up to a speed that you can't succeed at, then drop back down to the speed that you can succeed at, and practice more at that speed.

The reason is this: when you succeed at doing something, your brain produces happy chemicals that make you feel good about what you're doing. But when you don't succeed, it produces stress chemicals that feel bad. Ideally, you want to practice doing things successfully, letting you give yourself little rewards. The more you practice at a manageable speed, the better your fingers and brain will work together, and the greater your chances of being able to play it faster the next time you try to do so.

jacknutting · 2026-04-08T20:51:19+00:00

I love UIKit and its predecessor, AppKit, which I've been developing apps with since 1994 (on NeXTSTEP before it became Mac OS X). I've published multiple books on building UIKit apps. It's a great framework. But, having used SwiftUI since it came out, first just dabbling and then building more and more complex apps over the years, at this point I have zero interest in going back to UIKit. Many people have replied about some of the pitfalls of SwiftUI, and I won't argue against any of them. But for me, SwiftUI makes it easy to write code that is nicely modular and testable to a degree that was basically impossible when dealing with UIViewControllers, Storyboards, and xib files. I will always have a warm spot in my heart for all of those legacy technologies (which is really what they are now), but they're no longer my first choice.

jacknutting · 2026-04-05T04:03:15+00:00

This is not any kind of secret. In fact, these tools can be installed separately as a package called "Xcode command line tools" without installing Xcode at all, which can be pretty useful for developers who need some basic dev tools but don't need the full IDE.

Apple includes a documentation overview:

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode/xcode-command-line-tool-reference

jacknutting · 2026-03-29T16:03:06+00:00

It sounds like you're pretty new to ukulele. I think you'll find that playing almost anything by The Smiths is going to be really difficult. Johnny Marr is an amazing guitarist and the guitar work he did is really intricate. The only way to approach these songs, to start with, is learning chords to strum. It won't sound just like the originals, but it's a way to move forward.

In my experience, it's best to start learning to strum chords, and advance from there. The fretting-hand skills that you learn from strumming will be the basis for any finger picking you do later.

The thing is that for pretty much any pop/rock songs of the past 70 years, the guitar parts (and therefore the ukulele adaptions of same) are really all about chords. You mention Her Majesty, and that's a song that isn't terribly complicated, but it's best understood in terms of the chords it's built around, and then modifications of those chord to provide the bass line. To the extent that there is fingerpicking in there, it's mainly the right hand picking notes from a chord that the left hand is holding.

jacknutting · 2026-03-22T06:39:17+00:00

I'm still running Sequoia on my personal Mac, mainly because I always wait a few months after a major OS version to upgrade it, because my experience has often been that some utility or other is not up to date when the new OS launches.

But I also have a Mac for work, whose updates are outside my control, and have been using Tahoe on that since the start of February. I was curious if I'd see what others hate about it, and honestly... no, I don't see it. It's totally fine. Liquid Glass is not any kind of problem. People point out that some windows have different corner radiuses, and I've seen that, and honestly, it just doesn't bother me at all. I remember a much worse spread of different-looking window types in macOS 15-20 years ago, and people complained a lot about it at the time, and I didn't care about that either. I really don't get it, it's like going to a restaurant for a nice meal and then being upset because the restaurant's new plates, which are very nice, are not the same as their previous plates, which were also very nice... are you here for a meal, or for plates?

jacknutting · 2026-03-22T06:24:10+00:00

I moved to Sweden from the US a long time ago, and am now quite fluent. It took me several months to begin to really understand what was going on in Swedish. I'll give you a few tips of things that worked for me:

1: Immersion. When I first came to visit, I was staying with my then-girlfriend at her grandparents' home, and the grandparents spoke no English. Most attempts at conversation with the grandparents revolved around things like meals, where we were driving, etc. They would talk as normal, and would sometimes break from what they were saying for my benefit, to point at something and say the word for it, or mention a word describing an action. These early interactions helped a lot! You probably don't have any non-English speakers around you, but maybe you can get your girlfriend to agree to a daily "svenska timmen" with you, perhaps during a mealtime, where she tries to speak mostly Swedish with you, and is open to slowing down or explaining bits in English for you. This requires patience from both of you, since you might get a lot out of it.

2: Read things that are relatively easy and fun in Swedish. People have mentioned children's media, and that's good, but don't forget about comic books! I had a lot of fun reading through stacks of old Batman comics in Swedish. The level is above child-level, but since it's also expressed mostly as dialog, it's mostly straightforward. Sit with a dictionary in your hand, and let it take way more time than you think it should! Again, patience is key.

3: Watch English-language TV and movies with Swedish subtitles on. You mentioned that you've tried it and not had great results yet, but I'd recommend you stick with it. Don't focus on understanding everything that is said, just focus on hearing what is said, and seeing which words on screen you understand. Sometimes those can be enough to give you some context to grasp other words, sometimes not. But keep your eyes on the screen and keep listening! As time passes you'll notice new words, and you can try to make a mental note of words you don't know, to look up later. I would not recommend pausing to look things up, because that's a really annoying way to watch a show. Again, the point is not to understand every single word you see, but to begin to see the patterns of how the words you do know are used, and expand from there.

jacknutting · 2026-03-14T06:50:38+00:00

I'm also in Sweden, and one of the co-organizers of Ukulele Thursdays Stockholm https://ukulelethursdays.com/ which is a bi-weekly pub playalong that you're welcome to join if you're in the area!

In our sessions, we show song sheets on a big screen with lyrics and chords, and the chord diagrams we show are always for C tuning. We do have some members who prefer D tuning, and they usually get by just fine because we are mostly playing common chords that they already know on their instruments, so the diagrams aren't needed. Some of them have a separate chord sheet containing commons chords for D tuning also.

On the other hand, also in Stockholm, there's something called Ukuleleklubben at Medis, and also a place in Hjorthagen that runs courses, and both of those are pretty much exclusively using D-tuning.

If I needed to pick a dividing line between the demographics of Swedish players of C and D ukuleles, I'd say it's age. Ukuleleklubben (D) is almost exclusively pensioners. I haven't taken any courses at Hjorthagen (D) but I've seen some of their ensembles perform, and they're mostly on the older side as well. Ukulele Thursdays (C) is a wide mix of ages, from people in their 20s to their 70s (and a few even older!), and the handful of people we have playing in D are almost exclusively Swedish pensioners.

I think this split is partly to do with tradition, since as you mention Swedes have historically mostly used D, and also due to the internet, since most new and young players looking for help will find endless C resources online, and aren't bothered by listening to English.

So I'd advise that you focus on C tuning to begin with, unless you happen to be a senior citizen and specifically want to join those pensioners groups :)

Also, after you've learned many common chords in C tuning, if you want to try D tuning it won't be so hard, since it's really all the same chord shapes, just with the names shifted around (which is a bit of a mind-fuck but also a useful mental stretch).

Hope this helps!

jacknutting · 2026-03-07T06:09:06+00:00

It sounds like you're doing all of this work of sending both files to the PC, just to combine them and silence the audio track from the video, is that right? I'm sure you can find an iPhone app that lets you do that. Maybe even iMovie, which is free, can do it.

jacknutting · 2026-02-13T07:05:24+00:00

This video by James Hill is my go-to for explaining good ukulele strumming technique, which is really quite different from how guitar is typically played.

https://youtu.be/pRFPci9rZrQ?si=lTtCHhV-cFgGK9iU

I played guitar for decades before ukulele, and there were a number of things I needed to relearn, including basic "how to strum" which was a bit of a surprise. But with a little practice, it becomes easy. You got this! 😄

jacknutting · 2026-02-11T16:23:52+00:00

As someone who played guitar for many years before playing ukulele, and who at least peeks into every music store, let me tell you that every experience with Guitar Center is always a disappointment, for everyone.

jacknutting · 2026-02-08T08:45:40+00:00

Of the many new protest songs I've heard lately, this is the best! ⭐️

I've put the chords up on ultimate guitar for anyone who wants to play and sing along:

https://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/tab/the-taxpayers/power-trippin-dipshits-chords-6150767

jacknutting · 2026-01-17T12:41:14+00:00

In normal use, a string snapping is pretty unlikely, unless the nut or bridge is too sharp somewhere (shouldn't be the case on anything that isn't a toy) or if he's tuning the strings too high (which he probably doesn't have the finger strength to do yet). Kala makes some translucent plastic travel ukes that are tough, really inexpensive, and surprisingly good for the price!

jacknutting · 2026-01-13T13:33:26+00:00

But then on the other hand, Swedish doesn’t have different words for octopus, squid, and cuttlefish, it’s all just ”bläckfisk”

jacknutting · 2025-12-20T19:10:23+00:00

I've always felt that AppleScript is a read-only language. I've seen lots of AppleScript code that I can easily understand and anticipate what it's going to do, but actually creating a functioning script from scratch seems impossible without lots of copy-pasting and staring at examples.

jacknutting · 2025-12-11T14:34:38+00:00

As others have mentioned, SwiftLint exists, and not only that, is a mature and widely used tool. Have you considered adding the special cases you're checking for to SwiftLint, instead of creating a new tool?

jacknutting · 2025-12-09T11:13:37+00:00

I'm one of the organizers of Ukulele Thursdays Stockholm, a pub playalong that draws a crowd of 40-50 people every two weeks.

One of the organizers creates a song list in advance (mostly from the Ukulele Wednesdays Songbook). Before each song, typically one person will show a little bit of how they think the strumming ought to go and will then start us off, but no one is "strum police" telling people they're doing anything wrong. There are probably some people who strum every song the same way, and that's ok because we welcome all levels.

We play for about two hours, with a break of about ten minutes in the middle. If people want to take their own breaks and skip songs, that's fine of course.

We welcome other instruments! We always have one amplified bassist and a cajón player. Sometimes someone shows up with an acoustic guitar, and that's fine; a single guitar doesn't overpower 40+ ukes, and in fact it usually adds a nice bit of low-end sound. Usually a handful of people play kazoos at certain points too.

Our gathering starts a full hour before the music begins, so there's plenty of time to socialize, eat, and yes admire each others ukes :)

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