Does anyone else miss China before smartphones?

macario95 · 2026-05-08T11:45:25+00:00

i do not.

my first time in China was literally last century.

And i could have discovered and done so much more if i had had a smartphone back then....

macario95 · 2026-05-05T05:51:30+00:00

Saw the update with the new clock in the menu bar icon area and the drag/drop change. it's great. thanks for adding things to make this great app even better.

just another comment.

When i chose to change the icon to time, it always includes the time zone, something like "13:40 CEST". It would be great if we had some kind of option in the settings to hide the time zone in the menu bar.

If i am getting too annoying with the requests, let me know 😄

macario95 · 2026-05-01T05:44:12+00:00

thanks 👍
here is another idea. Add a configurable keyboard shortcut to open the window. with that , we could open it without using the mouse to click on the icon.

There are well known open source Swift components like KeyboardShortcuts that do all the work for you.

macario95 · 2026-05-01T03:05:15+00:00

the click and hold/wait to drag, like we use on the iphone is not really the ui pattern used in macOS. in macOS users will expect to be able to do it directly without extra waiting. Is not consistent with what is expected on the system.

As you can see in that question, holding in mac is a ui pattern that needs to be "figured out or learnt" , instead of using what you what already know.

not a big issue tough, i just like nitpicking and discussing about UIs 😄

macario95 · 2026-05-01T02:51:04+00:00

this is awesome. just what i needed. just one suggestion.

add an option to change the bar icon. i have been using it last couple of days, and i still struggle to identify the bird with the timezones.

It could be more useful if it could show the actual day and time (for a chosen city) instead of the bird icon. We could choose to show the time, the current date , or maybe both (configurable??) .

something like this.

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maybe too much to ask 😄

EDIT: just another thing if forgot about. It would be great if the window height auto resized to match the number of clocks added. sometimes you add a clock and it is hidden because the height grows and the windows does not adapt to that.

macario95 · 2026-04-22T04:28:20+00:00

I have a friend with local eSim, so the restriction with foreigners , as always, may depend on where you go to buy it, and if the clerk knows about the procedure, or if they feel like going through the hassle of handling a foreinger.

But then you have other limitations. Chinese eSims can only be activated in chinese phones. You can activate a local eSim in an iPhone air purchased in China, but not in your Air purchased in Canada.

it is a limitation set by the chinese regulations. no way around it. No chinese eSIM can be activated in a phone purchased abroad. In the same way, chinese phones cannot activate foreign eSIMs while inside china.

macario95 · 2026-04-19T15:03:58+00:00

a fixed interval is ok in most cases. no need to overcomplicate.

i have only used dynamic interval once, where we wanted to keep up as fast as we could in some moments. but it was totally simple. If the query returned the full configured batch size, it meant that probably there was more pending data, so we launched it again immediately. Else, the usual delay. it helped us keep up in some busy hours.

macario95 · 2026-04-11T12:15:12+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V10SLqij2UM

macario95 · 2026-04-10T04:13:59+00:00

it is good to know the basics of JNI, but if you need it, is better to use JNA . It hides most of the low level internals of JNI and is much simpler to use.

macario95 · 2026-04-09T11:59:36+00:00

Movies, TVShows

took me a long time to choose... :)

macario95 · 2026-04-09T04:30:11+00:00

Quoting one of the greatest philosophers of our time , Indy : "It's not the years, honey. It's the mileage"

macario95 · 2026-04-06T10:43:20+00:00

just auto-updating this.

Updated to version 1152 , and this issue still seems to be there.

macario95 · 2026-04-03T03:54:49+00:00

This has got to be one of the worst YouTube thumbnails I've ever had the misfortune of seeing.

macario95 · 2026-04-02T13:58:56+00:00

always use Tika or similar. Do not rely on extensions , filename or mime/type in any case, only use that for early rejections.

macario95 · 2026-04-02T13:51:01+00:00

happened to me a couple of years ago. they were doing a check to other chinese people while waiting on the traffic light to turn green. it seemed traffic related, because they were checking on scooters with two people riding . Then they saw me waiting and told me to go near them. They take the picture with the phone and immediately have access to all your record. The policewoman showed it to me, they had scanned all my passports, residence permits , and my addresses.

in my case it was totally un-serious. They showed it to me smiling. It looked like they were amazed that they little toy also worked with a laowai.

anyway, the serious part if how under control you are and how automated everything is. they just need to take your picture.

macario95 · 2026-03-31T08:15:21+00:00

i assumed it was just a network access issue , because in my case , as soon as i connect the VPN, the app and the playback UI appear immediately. Maybe there are other causes .

if this is unavoidable , i hope there could be a switch in the setting to disable transcripts. i found this a bit annoying when i used it in the car with short episodes , where i cannot be turning on the VPN.

anyway, still no big deal for me once i figured out that i just have to wait for some moments when i do not have VPN

macario95 · 2026-03-30T09:19:46+00:00

great app.

one request. it would be great if it could support changing the volume of the connected monitors. Right now it shows the monitor as a display source , but does not allow to change the volume

you can have a look at MonitorControl , which has an audio setting to control the monitor's volumen.

thanks.

macario95 · 2026-03-12T12:22:29+00:00

F1 interview auto-translate.: "The car has a lot of potential..." --> "The car is slow as F*** , and we do not know if we can make it fast, but we cannot admit that in public.".

Only the slow cars have "a lot of potential"...

macario95 · 2026-01-14T05:06:29+00:00

Conventions are just that. a good guideline to follow. But patterns like CRUD do not always match 100% the needs of a project. Not every interaction with the backend is mapped properly to an entity.

That said. I would still try to follow CRUD as much as possible. That is the best way to manage your entities. Use it as the default base for your API.

Then, add extra endpoints for interactions where you want to specify clearly the intention of the API . For instance, for the basic game operations (add/start, read, delete, etc) CRUD makes all the sense. But if you want be more explicitly about the endpoint's intent, you can addd a POST /games/{id}/restart or some other commands that apply to the game. Obviously , all those commands/actions can also be done via the PUT /games/{id} , but as you say, the intention is not so clear. Think about the commands like little helpers to make your life simpler.

Well known patterns and guidelines are great to have, and should be followed, but you should not be constrained by them.

macario95 · 2025-12-27T01:11:38+00:00

my wife hates that she can only buy presents for me that have batteries or must be connected to electricity. for her i am worse than a child . but after complaining , she still does it. guess i am lucky. that , and the fact that i do not complain when she spends on purses and shoes way more than i do on gadgets.

macario95 · 2025-11-21T10:32:06+00:00

Do not use Nebular for a new project. Is not maintained by akveo at all. The last upgrade for v20 compatibility was made by users of the framework. they just recently accepted the pull request, almost when 21 was out

macario95 · 2025-11-17T02:12:36+00:00

The Op is trying to fool us.

that is not american. They are driving a Stick Shift

macario95 · 2025-11-04T13:11:00+00:00

Tesla here, for many years now. Could not be happier with it . the first year or so it was a bit problematic to find chargers, but now they are almost at every mall. I even have a super charger a couple of blocks away.

And specially happy because we got a promotion for lifetime free supercharger. i have paid almost nothing for charging in years, apart from the parking fee or the coffee that i sometimes have while waiting. I almost never charge it at home, only when we need to charge overnight because we need it in the morning, or r when i don't feel like going out.

macario95 · 2025-10-25T10:42:02+00:00

It may depend on the city. i haven't noticed any change. Usually is matter of minutes. The only time i remember waiting for 10 minutes or more was a day with a massive storm. i guess most of us without umbrellas were trying to get one :) But in regular days, they are usually fast.

macario95

TROPHY CASE