Leesa Ward

One of the things I really hate about QR code ordering at restaurants is giving out my contact information to places I'm extremely unlikely to ever visit again. Stop for a bite at a random pub while travelling and suddenly I'm on their mailing list (or worse, they use *SMS*, but I digress).

What a fucking Orwellian time we are living in. The "cash is king" people are onto something. Wouldn't surprise me if we start seeing "burner" debit cards like "burner" prepaid phones, not necessarily to do anything shifty but to just not leave a trail anyone other than your bank is privy to.

One of the things I really hate about QR code ordering at restaurants is giving out my contact information to places I'm extremely unlikely to ever visit again. Stop for a bite at a random pub while travelling and suddenly I'm on their mailing list (or worse, they use *SMS*, but I digress).

LOL, dear reader, LOL. I then immediately got a receipt email. What? I didn't give you my email address *or* my usual phone number! Turns out this place uses the same payment provider as a place I went to the other day whose pre-booking system* uses the same thing.

One of the things I really hate about QR code ordering at restaurants is giving out my contact information to places I'm extremely unlikely to ever visit again. Stop for a bite at a random pub while travelling and suddenly I'm on their mailing list (or worse, they use *SMS*, but I digress).

A phone app (with mandatory account creation too!) to use the guest laundry in a hotel is one of the most unnecessary, solution-looking-for-a-problem, borderline dystopian things ever invented. 1/3

Unlike the one I had to use another time, this app didn't even tell me how long my washing had left or notify me when it was done. It exists only to pay, providing precisely zero benefit to me - not even doing the *one job* that could maybe, a little bit, justify an *optional* app for this. 3/3

A phone app (with mandatory account creation too!) to use the guest laundry in a hotel is one of the most unnecessary, solution-looking-for-a-problem, borderline dystopian things ever invented. 1/3

Aside from its ugly docblock comments, I'm really enjoying building my pet project with C#/.NET. The docs on Microsoft Learn are really good; I bought some books, my uni provides access to O'Reilly for instant access to more (on top of some physical books of course, when I can go and get them). 1/3

There's no shortage of good resources when I come across something and think "I just need to read a bit more about this thing...in a somewhat vetted form." I'm finding myself reaching for the index of a book to look up a topic much more than I have in years. 2/3

After a 9-week break I have started a new job and my grievances with MacOS feel sharper than ever. (There are valid reasons my current employer has us on Macs so this is not a dig at them.) This is not a rhetorical rant. Solutions are welcome. I am allowed to install utilities on my work machine.🧵

4. The menu bar not being attached to the application. WHY?! Not only do I move my attention and cursor to it only to realise the wrong app is in focus, but on a large monitor it ends up very far away from the actual app window - which makes no sense and gets very, very annoying.

After a 9-week break I have started a new job and my grievances with MacOS feel sharper than ever. (There are valid reasons my current employer has us on Macs so this is not a dig at them.) This is not a rhetorical rant. Solutions are welcome. I am allowed to install utilities on my work machine.🧵

2. A dot under an icon is not a sufficient differentiator for which applications in the dock are open and which aren't. (My Windows setting for "Combine taskbar buttons and hide labels" is "Never".)

After a 9-week break I have started a new job and my grievances with MacOS feel sharper than ever. (There are valid reasons my current employer has us on Macs so this is not a dig at them.) This is not a rhetorical rant. Solutions are welcome. I am allowed to install utilities on my work machine.🧵

1. The most egregious first because it's an actual accessibility issue. UI scaling. The Windows PC that lives plugged into the same monitor that my work Macbook does is set to 125% and it is rare for me to have an application that doesn't look good, clearly readable, and not like that's not native.

1/3 I'm developing a UI component library for PHP, almost from scratch aside from some usage parameters that inform the architecture (making it work with WordPress blocks in the first instance).

2/3 So far I have: - Accidentally embraced atomic design (to an extent) - While writing docs, realised some of the output contradicted my library's own purported principles - Hacked together my own "template syntax" - More than once, wondered how far away I am from accidentally reinventing MVC.

I feel a distinct lack of closure when I ask an LLM about some coding thing, it spits out hallucinations or overly complex partial suggestions, and I go and find the answer elsewhere but there's no forum post to go back to post the answer on.