Jean MacDonald

Congratulations to @becky on the release of YarnBuddy! 🧶

As a lapsed knitter with an unruly stash of unused yarn, I am inspired to catalog it and turn it into projects. I love the intuitive organization of the app and its tools.

It was great to take a break. I stayed away from all social media, Slack, and news. I read an actual hardcover book (I haven’t read a book in ages), I watched Hamilton (first time), Do The Right Thing (first time since 1989), and did some serious decluttering.

What did I miss?

I am taking the rest of this week off. Not going anywhere, but I’ll be on break from the internet*. See you lovely folks again July 6.

*except for streaming Hamilton—first time ever seeing or listening to it, because I always assumed I’d see it live and didn’t want spoilers.

Me: Oooh, big package just dropped off. Maybe a very belated birthday gift? 🎁

:: opens it up ::

Me: Oh right, I ordered this.

Grace and Ada: Thank you for not running out of essentials. 🧻

It’s Micro Monday again! (What the heck is that?)

I’m working on cleaning up the podcast archive and getting more interviews transcribed. If you want a listening recommendation, check out this interview with Patrick Rhone (transcript here) from April 2, 2018. 🎙🗓

The Incomparable - Knights of Exposition (Episode 521)

The Micro scoobies might want to check out our annual Buffy episode, in which we consider Season 5. 👱🏻‍♀️🤖👩🏻‍🦰🩸

Now that WWDC is over, I can focus on the important job of shipping out Micro.blog stickers. I have been collecting requests since June 14. If you get yours in now, you’ll be in this week’s batch going to the post office. Details: welcome.micro.blog

Be Water, the Bruce Lee documentary, is great. I’m not a martial arts film follower, but having watched Ip Man recently because of Netflix’s insistence that I would like it, I appreciate the genre a bit more. The exploration of racial prejudice in Hollywood resonates still. 🎥

Thursday is a great night for partying at WWDC. We’ve made it (almost) through the week!

Here’s the Spotify playlist we play at LIVE Near WWDC before the show and during breaks. Girl power mixed with nerd tunes and Bash bands.

Please enjoy this song about memory management traditionally performed on Wednesday evening at WWDC by @jamesdempsey and The Breakpoints, brought to you this year remotely from homes and backyards around the world. 🤘

Chris Cooper gives a birdwatching tour in Central Park. (YouTube)

He talks about Amy Cooper and social justice, but what he clearly loves talking about is birds.

Maybe you need to take a break all the tech news?

We didn’t do much socializing during today’s photo op. I will organize more virtual meetups after WWDC, in a variety of time zones no one has to wake up at 3 am to attend.

It is nice to put names and faces together!

Thanks to all who came for a 2020 WWDC “group” photo! @miraz @darius @joec @incanus @mitch @apulianas @rexbarrett @foster @paulopinto @johnbrayton @crossingthethreshold @adamprocter @hutaffe @sproutlight @Gabz @vincent @hawaiiboy @mikepj @kimahlberg @chaitanya @zorn @ctm @dejus

I just sent out the invite for the meetup, which begins at 12 noon Pacific time.

Tip: change your Zoom display name to include your Micro.blog handle and your location. We won’t have time for real socializing, but we can put names to faces. 😊

(Jean, @macgenie, Portland, OR)

In about an hour, we are hosting a short virtual Micro Meetup so we can take a snapshot (aka screenshot) as our 2020 WWDC Micro Meetup photo. We’ve done this every year in person, and we want to have this one for posterity.

There’s still time to sign up!

There’s a special Discover timeline for WWDC 2020-related posts, curated by @manton. The main Discover timeline will continue to be updated with posts of general interest with perhaps a few WWDC comments sprinkled in. 👩🏼‍💻🧑🏻‍💻👨🏽‍💻

After a poor night’s sleep, four hours of Apple presentations and two hours of Zoom socializing, I think I’m about as tired as I would be if we were in San Jose. Enjoying some backyard self-isolation now without FOMO.

We’d love to have a short virtual Micro Meetup for WWDC at our usual time (Tuesday lunch, 12 noon PDT) so we can take a “group photo” to add to our growing collection.

Please sign up here to get the video conference link and make an appearance in our 2020 photo!

The new Dance Fitness mode on the Apple Watch will prompt me to emulate my dance fitness idol, @hollyhoneychurch.

Manton is curating WWDC-related posts on a special timeline.

I’ll still be gathering your cats, dogs, kids, and other posts on the regular Discover timeline. Including new Micro Monday recommendations. 😀

Waiting for the keynote at WWDC. (What? Women Don’t Code?)

The lizard babies, all grown up. / @cheri @yorrike 🖖

I know he had more prominent and important roles, but to me Ian Holm will always be Fr. Vito Cornelius. Here’s hoping heaven is like Fhloston Paradise without the Mangalores. RIP.

I came across a podcast I want to listen to, Hear To Slay with Roxane Gay and Tressie McMillan Cottom. But it is exclusive to Luminary. 😭

I’m not paying $35/yr to support a podcast publishing model I disagree with. I would pay that to the creators for this one podcast though.