Found another Little Memory 2.0/2.1 bug: if you don’t have a memory for a day, you get a random memory pushes instead. That shouldn’t be happening. Fix in 2.2.
Ready Time 3.11: iPhone Duo and iPad
Ready Time has run on iPad for a while, but it was really just a stretched out version of the iPhone app, which was kind of lame. It really didn’t take advantage of the large display on the iPad, and you had to navigate around the app as if you had limited screen space. With iPhone Duo coming out, we wanted to make better use of the bigger screen. Now on iPhone Duo and iPad, your Plans stay in a list on the left while you can see a selected Plan on the right.
Editing on the bigger screen
Editing has also been updated to better suit the larger screen. On the iPhone, editing a Step’s duration, time lock, and travel options made sense where the keyboard is displayed. But with the larger screen, we have much more width on the screen to be able to show you these options on the side of the Plan Editor.
Closing iPhone Duo
If you close iPhone Duo, the Plan you had open stays running on the outer display. You can pack the night before with it open, close it on your way out the door, and your notifications and Live Activity keep going.
Spotlight and Shortcuts
3.10 was also recently released, and with it came support for Spotlight search, and the Shortcuts app has an Open Plan action. You can now search for your Plans in Spotlight so you can quickly get to them without needing to search for the app.
Picking a duration
The duration picker for Steps finally got a face lift. We’d been using the standard iOS spinner wheels for selecting durations, but oftentimes, you want to set something preset like 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, etc. Now, you can select one of the common durations right in the picker. This should speed you up when setting up your Plans.
We also made it quicker to start a new Plan from one of the built-in routines, tapping a Live Activity now takes you straight to that Plan, long Step titles wrap onto more lines, and we cleaned up the colors in every theme so Step times are easier to read.
Onward
You can download Ready Time on the App Store.
If you have feedback, we’d love to hear from you. Drop me a note.
Lost & found in Tokyo: a first-timer’s adventure (via):
I felt the city was way more quiet and relaxing than I expected. It was refreshing to be in a place where society puts the needs of others first instead of the general “gotta get mine!” attitude everywhere you look in the US.
I could sense there was a push-pull of how Japanese people felt around social pressure to comply with accepted standards, but I did see streaks of rebellion from time to time and I bet the balance between those two viewpoints is constantly moving back and forth.
I love hearing (thoughtful) first time experiences of folks visiting Japan. It lets me relive my own wonder and discovery that I had before, and touches on my own nostalgia.
Went to a fun party last night:
- bring your own fun hat
- swap your hat with other folks during the party
- live band 8 piece band which included a horn section
- 4 cakes!
- a mix of younger and older crowd
- a church in the hills
- epic view of the bay during sunset
- at one point, whistles were handed out and you could participate with the band: this was like handing out toys to toddlers, folks would not stop whistling randomly 🤪
Cherish the moment
He just smiled and handed me the origami crane (via):
Ten years later, as a high school student, Matsuda found herself thinking about that moment again. […]
“I started to think deeply about that time and tried to remember the details,” she said. “And I thought that maybe while I was on the phone with my grandfather, possibly [the man] wrote something on the paper.”
She hurried home from school and unfolded the crane to check. He had. Inside was a well-known Japanese expression about how every encounter is precious.
Roughly, it means “We should treasure each time we cross paths with someone because it might never happen again.” Or, more simply, “cherish the moment.”
Spoke with a friend recently who said: “I miss how fun the internet used to be.”
It’s still fun, you just have to know where to go. Join us on the indie web!
Little Memory 2.1: Fixes from 2.0 Feedback
Little Memory 2.1 is out. Most of the updates for it came from feedback on 2.0:
- Fixed the iOS 27 bug I mentioned a few days ago, where the paging dots under the diary didn’t match the top toolbar
- The import screen is clearer about the two toggles that need to be turned on to continue
- Opening a day in a large diary is faster
- When installing on a 2nd device, the app now knows you have memories in iCloud and welcomes you back; the old wording was confusing
Thanks to everyone who sent in bug reports and feedback.
Claude is a snitch too
We already knew ChatGPT was a huge snitch, so it’s not a surprise that Claude is a tattletale too:
According to the arrest report, Carli Michelle Heller, of Bonita Springs, Florida, wrote on September 26 that she would attack the Sheriff’s office. She later said that she uses Anthropic’s chatbot like a “diary.”
Claude’s safety systems flagged the entry and it was escalated to a human reviewer. After deciding it was a credible threat, the reviewer reported it to law enforcement.
We don’t know the full context of what she was writing, and she may have been totally serious or she may have been just venting. But having folks writing into Claude like it’s a diary does not sound like a good idea. People think they’re writing in a private space when chatting with AI, but they’re actually dumping their data into the AI provider’s databases.
Things like moving Little Memory’s data out of the cloud and into your own sovereignty is, in my opinion, the way to go. Keep this important private data… private.
There’s a visual bug with Little Memory on iOS 27 in the main diary view. The paging indicators have a different background than the top toolbar. Fix will come in 2.1. Working on bugs that have come in from 2.0 too. Thanks to everyone who’s given me feedback and bug reports.
Ready Time 3.9: Live Activities
Ready Time has always had push notifications when it’s time to start each Step. But in between each Step, you had to unlock your iPhone and open the app to see the status of your Plan. Now a running Plan stays on your Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island with Live Activities.
The whole idea of the app has always been to help you stay on time and to know what to do next, but keeping the Ready Time app open constantly doesn’t always make sense. You may be driving on your way to a meeting. You might be dealing with a screaming toddler during your morning routine, trying to juggle texting your babysitter or partner at the same time.
Being able to set your phone down and quickly glance on your Lock Screen to see the status of your Plan helps you make sure you’re on track to get to your meeting, your appointment, and any deadline you’ve set on time. It even shows up on your Apple Watch.
Turning it on
Live Activities are part of Premium. With Premium, every Plan shows up on its own when it starts. If there’s a Plan you’d rather keep off your Lock Screen, tap the Live Activity button on the Plan. And if you don’t want them at all, you can disable Live Activities in Settings.
Onward
You can download Ready Time on the App Store.
If you have feedback, we’d love to hear from you. Drop me a note.
Ready Time 3.8: Weekdays and Two New Themes
We’ve had daily and weekly repeating Plans for Ready Time, but some things we only do on weekdays. Welp, now we’ve got Weekday repeating Plans (Plans that repeat only Monday through Friday). This is perfect for school drop-off, the commute, the walk to the bus.
Repeat is easier to find
Repeat used to live in the menu in the Plan Editor, and it was a bit hidden. It now sits at the top of the deadline section in the Plan Editor, next to the time it applies to. The time row also tells you which days it covers, like “Mon-Fri at 8:15 AM”.
While we were there, we made Buffer a bit easier to find too, so it’s right on the top toolbar.
Two new themes
- Kyoto. Sakura, wisteria and pale silk. It’s the softest theme in the app. Inspired by our recent travels to Japan.
- COOLMOVES. Synthwave purple with teal Steps. So 80’s. What, you don’t know COOLMOVES?
Both are now in Premium.
We also cleaned up some of the existing themes where the contrast would sometimes make it hard to read items in your Plans. Sedona and Countdown Classic should now read better in Dark Mode.
Onward
You can download Ready Time on the App Store.
If you have feedback, we’d love to hear from you. Drop me a note.
The stock Mac UI is designed by Apple, the best designers in the world, and do you really think you can do better? Really?
The app world is full of people who think they’re better and they’re really, really, really not.
This is the same way I feel whenever I see a Porsche with a giant after-market spoiler on it. Do folks really think they can do better than Porsche?
He’s talking about Mac apps here, and I feel similarly about iOS apps.
Macross: One Day More
I saw this at Anime Expo in 2001 at the Anime Music Video Awards. It was in the Drama Category, but it was, for me, a bit of comedy as well. So epic.
How to Dim Sum
Offer elders to sit away from the aisle and closer to the wall. Maybe this is a subtle tactic to steer them away from being able to pay (see below).
Do not use your own chopsticks to grab things from communal dishes. Instead, use the communal chopsticks.
If you must use your own chopsticks to grab something from a communal plate for some reason (maybe there are no communal chopsticks or they haven’t come to the table yet), you can use the back side of your chopsticks since that side has not been in your filthy mouth yet.
If your teapot runs out of tea, you can take the lid and place it off to the side of the pot to signal to staff that you need a refill. If it’s a metal teapot, just keep the lid open.
If you’re at a place where they have staff pushing carts around, the cart person can be aggressive in getting you to accept something from their cart. If you’re unsure, they may say something like “It’s really good, you should try it!” Just a polite “no thank you” and/or a shake of the head is a good response.
Dim sum is not an all-you-can-eat buffet.
If you see others at the table, especially elders, who have empty tea cups, get the teapot and pour tea in their cup; and then, always lastly pour for yourself.
When someone pours tea for you, tap your index finger near your teacup to give thanks.
Eat the chicken feet.
If something’s too hard to grab with your chopsticks (it’s slippery or irregular shaped), sometimes it’s just easier to stab things with your chopsticks instead.
If there’s a lazy susan, don’t turn it if someone else is already turning it.
Fight to pay the check. Lose. Be upset that you lost.
The pro move is: going to the bathroom, paying the check on the way back, and making others upset that you paid without them knowing.
Take all the leftovers home: there’s no shame in it, and they make great leftovers. Wetter foods (like chicken feet, you got those, right?) should be in separate containers from dry foods (like buns).
On the one hand, this looks like a direct threat to us software engineers - because it means that the models can build effectively any piece of software you can define in this way.
Look a bit closer though and you’ll note that defining goals, providing unambiguous instructions, and figuring out the right tools… is kind of what software engineering is.
It takes a lot of experience and skill to do this well. If you can do it well, you’ve now got superpowers.
This helped me a little bit with my Deep Blue feelings: the realization that there’s still a lot of skill to be had in driving models that get this good.
Outlining that simply:
- defining goals
- providing unambiguous instructions
- figuring out the right tools
The smart home graveyard is getting crowded
The smart home has reached a tipping point. Many of its early pioneers are aging out — a decade plus is a long time for a startup. Most have been bought by bigger companies, likely attracted by the shiny thing but then quickly dismayed by the bottom line. Back then, a cloud server was cheaper to build than a local hub, but servers continue to cost money, and once a company decides to shut down a product, reasons to keep paying fade rapidly.
Definitely for me a consideration when buying products, especially smart home products, is whether they can keep working even after the company shuts down.
Also, the same thoughts have crossed my mind when I was rebuilding Little Memory to 2.0. If a bus hit me today, would the app still keep working without me? I don’t want folks getting stranded without me and losing access to their diaries. For me, it’s a matter of respecting the user and their data.
Meta’s New A.I. Agent For Losers (via):
What do you mean you had your robot shop for collectible ceramics? Is there any other part of collecting ceramics as a hobby besides shopping for them? Is your hobby now “having bowls?” Hi, I’m Eli Tan, writer for the New York Times. In my leisure time I enjoy owning dishes.
As a flashlight nerd (aka collector), this spoke to me. Yeah, I own (a lot of) flashlights, but, yeah, shopping for, thinking about buying, or even impulse buying is most of the fun of collecting.
And this bit:
This is my life. These are the things that life consists of. There’s my work, there’s my hobbies, there’s my health, my future. All the big meaningful elements of life are just a collection of little tasks that you have to do one at a time.
Colors in Cantonese
Here are the names of colors in Cantonese.
| Color | English | Cantonese | Jyutping |
|---|---|---|---|
| Red | 紅色 | hung4 sik1 | |
| Orange | 橙色 | caang2 sik1 | |
| Yellow | 黃色 | wong4 sik1 | |
| Green | 綠色 | luk6 sik1 | |
| Blue | 藍色 | laam4 sik1 | |
| Purple | 紫色 | zi2 sik1 | |
| Pink | 粉紅色 | fan2 hung4 sik1 | |
| Brown | 啡色 | fe1 sik1 | |
| Grey | 灰色 | fui1 sik1 | |
| Black | 黑色 | hak1 sik1 | |
| White | 白色 | baak6 sik1 | |
| Gold | 金色 | gam1 sik1 | |
| Silver | 銀色 | ngan4 sik1 |
Little Memory 2.0: Moving 15 years of memories off my servers
In April, I started inviting folks to test out Little Memory 2.0, a full re-write of the one-sentence-a-day journal I launched in 2011. I had most of the bones of the new app ready at that point, but, as most folks who develop software professionally know, the last 20% can often be the most tricky, difficult, and filled with unforeseen bugs.
What the first testers found
- In the first batch of testers, 4 longtime users imported thousands of memories, and the world didn’t crash and burn, yay!
- Lilmem previously had a way to write memories via SMS. Twilio sent a webhook request to us when these would arrive, and, for longer messages that were over 160 characters, I would get 2+ requests. However, they wouldn’t always come in chronological order. Moreover, they didn’t have a single message ID to let me know they were a single message. Because of a bug in the backend, this ended up letting some users have multiple entries on a single day (oi!). I cleaned this up in the import into the app, but it did cause some issues for some folks who did their initial imports into the app.
- Some users really enjoy writing on their desktop before bed, and being able to add memories only from the iOS app was a problem. I didn’t want to end up back in a place where I was storing entries in my DB again, but I did figure something out: Drafts. Drafts lets Premium users write a memory from the web for the day, and when the iOS app is launched, it fetches the unsaved drafts and reconciles them so they end up living in the app.
- There were some users reporting that they didn’t see photos on days where they were sure they had photos saved. There was a concurrency issue where even though a photo would get downloaded, it wouldn’t get properly attached to a memory. After a good amount of logging and tracking this down, I got a build for testers that included a repair pass to get their photos back.
- So glad I did a few rounds of testing on TestFlight. These would have been super expensive things to handle after release.
Get off my lawn! And servers!
I’ve generally felt uncomfortable storing people’s memories on my own servers. What if I got hit by a bus today? Someone would have to make sure the servers keep running so folks could keep reading and writing in their personal private journals. That’s definitely not something I’d want for myself or for Lil’memmers.
Not only that, but now that all your memories live on your phone, you can read/write offline, even without internet access. And it opens up the door for some exciting new features. I can’t wait to get 2.0 into people’s hands and start iterating on the app with some ideas I’ve had queued up for years.
On AI, privacy, and your diary
A diary is about the most personal data an app can hold, and every app holding it is one breach, acquisition, or bad decision away from leaking that extremely sensitive and private data. With AI becoming more and more capable every day, the possibility of servers getting hacked grows. I’ve never used any Little Memory data for AI training, but even the possibility that your data could be read or used for training is something I would rather avoid.
With Little Memory 2.0, the iPhone app is offline-first. Memories are written and stored on the phone, you can keep a diary without an account, and your private and personal data stays in your control and in your phone rather than in the cloud.
What’s new?
- Your memories are imported into your iPhone
- All your memories are now synced across your devices with iCloud
- You can now add/edit memories even when offline (yay!)
- A ground-up redesign of the whole app
- The app is now free to download, and if you already paid for it, you keep Premium
- After you update and import your memories, you’ll no longer get email reminders
- If you want to write from the web or from your desktop, after importing to the app, you can still visit the website and write an entry for Today with Drafts (Premium feature)
- There’s a new Photo Recap feature that lets you view photos for a day alongside your memory for that day
- Still here: charts, reminders, streaks, Dropbox backups, export
- Little Memory supports Dark Mode now, woo-hoo!
The blast from the past is back again
Little Memory 2.0 is now live in the App Store with all the latest updates.
Longtime users: Your memories are ready to come home to your iPhone. Download the new app and import them to your device so you can read and write without needing to be online.
New users: Welcome! Write one sentence about your day in less than 15 seconds, and start seeing your memories come back to you.
I’m excited to share Little Memory 2.0 with you. It’s been a joy getting it ready for users, and I’ve been wanting to get it into people’s hands to make the meaningful experience of reflection and journaling even easier and more enjoyable.
I think you’re going to really like the new app, and please reach out if you have any feedback or find any issues.
Some thanks
A big thanks to the design and user research done by Ray Inoue. Much of the learnings that came out of Ray’s work informed the design decisions that ultimately went into the 2.0 rebuild. It’s taken me way too long to get these changes into production, but it’s finally here! Sorry it took me so long, Ray!