Fix the News does a pretty good job of describing itself, so I won’t try to create my own version.
There is a lot of good news out there, we just don’t hear about it. Not feel-good stories about pets and barbershops, but real, big picture stories of progress. Most of the mainstream news outlets miss this stuff. Partially because stories about disaster and division get more eyeballs, but also because the nature of progress is slow. It happens over longer time periods — and this doesn't fit the modern media's fast-paced, 24 hour reporting style.
Our goal isn't to be a comprehensive news source, but to play our part in mending the wider media ecosystem by being deliberately unbalanced. There are thousands of media organisations that excel at telling you about everything that's going wrong in the world. We're one of the very few that tell you what's going right.
I was a journalist for over 30 years, so I have a pretty good idea of why certain stories get bigger play that others. We needed something fresh and interesting every day. A big-picture item seldom works well as your top story.
But knowing there is more to the news than the outrage of the day is not enough. Where is the antidote? Fix the News, with its weekly summary of the good things happening in the world — and there are lots! — is the best I’ve been able to find.
Their weekly newsletter has summaries and links to dozens of stories. There never seems to be a shortage. Reading these stories has helped me become more optimistic and more enthusiastic about making my own contributions.
The newsletter is mostly free, but you can subscribe for $80 US a year for even more stories. Converted to Canadian dollars, this is a bit steep for me, so I’ve stuck with the free version. On the other hand, they say one third of the money goes to charities, so I might have to rethink that.
On top of this, there are ongoing fundraisers for charitable projects. This provides another avenue for those looking to find a way of doing good in the world.
The website does have a few oddities. For example, you have to click on a hamburger menu to switch between system, dark and light modes. It defaults to system, which I found almost impossible to read. Light mode is fine.
They also insist on opening a new tab every time you click to another section on the site. I find this weird and disconcerting.
That said, I actually subscribe to Fix the News via their RSS feed. The app I use, Reeder, formats everything quite nicely.
These quibbles aside, I highly recommend Fix the News to anyone looking for a break from doom-scrolling.
I only drink one or two ciders a week, but that’s enough to have built up quite the collection over the past few years. Enough to sort them and rate them.
You can now see what I think about the ciders from B.C. They’re all rated out of 10, with comments, from the best at 9 to the worst at a measly 2. This uses the same data as my Ciders app.
If you don’t live in B.C., you’ll likely have a tough time finding them at your local liquor store. That’s why I’ve provided links to websites where you can, usually, order them online. There are a couple of exceptions where, sadly, the companies have discontinued cider production.
I’m also averaging about a book a week so far this year, and keeping track of them with ratings from best to worst. That’s nothing new, but I’ve decided to focus things up a little by only showing the books written by Canadian authors that I can recommend reading.
There are a lot of great Canadian writers out there, so it’s not like it’s a challenge to find them. My only real disappointment so far has been Ysabel by Guy Gavriel Kay. Maybe this is simply not a good example of his work. In any case, I can’t recommend it, so it didn’t make the list.
As I watched Apple’s presentation of its new Liquid Glass design, my first thought was one of practicality — if you can see through it, won’t the background be a distraction?
Then I remembered I had this same concern while developing my Ciders web app. At the time, glass morphism was riding a surge of popularity, and I figured it would be perfect for the app. Cider often comes in glass bottles, so it would be fun if each item could look like it was on a pane of glass.
There are a number of things you have to think about if you want a glassy look. The edges need to look like they are raised, have a thicker density, and catch the light in their own way. The main part of the glass should have some frosting and blur so it isn’t completely see-through. A bit of sheen makes it look like it’s reflecting light. Rounded corners are also a nice touch.
The detail I sweated over most, though, was the opacity. It has to be just the right amount so that you can see through without the text becoming hard to read.
I had the advantage of working with a single-colour background that never changes — my idea of what might be the colour of cider. But what if you were designing this for, say, the notifications that come up on your Mac?
You would have no idea what the background might be. It could be dark or light. It could be an image where dark and light are both present. Or it could be a gradient from dark to light.
I’m interested to see how these variables are handled. My inclination would be to program the notifications so they sense the background and adjust accordingly, but I don’t know enough about programming to know whether this is possible.
Apples’s presentation, as you would expect, demonstrated Liquid Glass under ideal conditions. But as we all know, the real world is often less than ideal.
Back in the day — we’re talking about 20 years ago — when I was exploring CMS’s, the obvious choice, then as now, was WordPress.
That wasn’t the choice I made, though, because I couldn’t figure out how to create a WordPress site from scratch. The common advice, even from a book I bought, was to install a theme and tweak it. Making your own design was apparently too difficult.
I never really gave up, though, which is why I bookmarked a blog post, also many years ago, with this promising title: Developing a Wordpress Theme from Scratch. It’s written by Tania Rascia, who has a digital garden well worth exploring.
Every once in a while I would see that bookmark and think about reading the article, but never had the time or incentive. Until now.
With working life behind me, I have time. And with the possibility of one of my old WordPress sites being revived, I have incentive. The site was using a tweaked third-party theme that I was never really happy with. I need to have complete control over a design.
Tania’s tutorial works by starting you off with a what she calls a template. But this could be pretty much any HTML-and-CSS design you can dream up. You take this design and chop it up into all the PHP pages that make WordPress what it is.
For me it made sense, and I was able to get the site looking exactly the way I wanted, with no compromises. I even made my own plug-in.
It’s been a month since my last blog post, but that doesn’t mean Newsonaut hasn’t been updated recently. Check out the books section for lots of recent updates. I’ve been ploughing through some excellent reads.
I finally took the plunge with Louise Penny, a much-recommended author. How the Light Gets In is two mysteries in one — major stakes for all of Quebec and Canada, and personal stakes for a few good friends. Rating: 9.5
I put Fifteen Dogs in the fantasy category because it does, after all, involve Greek gods and talking dogs on the streets of Toronto. We can learn a lot from those dogs about what it means to be happy. Rating: 10
Linwood Barclay was a panelist on Canada Reads, which made me curious, so I read one of his many thrillers — I Will Ruin You. It is indeed a page turner, although a bit frustrating because the main character makes obviously bad decisions. Rating: 9.5
The Martin Hench trilogy by Cory Doctorow proves that forensic accounting can be an exciting and dangerous profession. In the first one, Marty is a jaded old man — something I could more easily identify with. By the time we get the the third book, he is young and idealistic, making mistakes but making them for the right reasons. Red Team Blues: 10, The Bezzle: 9, Picks and Shovels: 8.5
All of these books are by Canadian authors, but only the first two take place in Canada. Barclay may have thought the level of violence in his thriller seemed more believable in the U.S., but I would have been OK with it happening in, say, Peterborough, Ontario. Doctorow’s stories take place in the early days of computer technology, which is associated with Silicon Valley. Still, I could see them plausibly happening in Toronto.
That brings me to Untold Tales of Old British Columbia, a collection of historical snippets about my home province. Some are more entertaining that others, but each taught me something I didn’t know, and I’m glad I learned them. I’m embarrassed to admit I didn’t know there was a major gold rush on the Fraser River in 1858. Rating: 7.5
Newsonaut has moved to a new hosting service and domain registrar. Normally, that wouldn’t be very exciting news, but it is for me — because the site has come home to beautiful British Columbia.
I’ve been using hosting services since the days of dial-up, and my fascination with the idea of making something that could be shared with the world.
My first hosts were actually ISPs that threw in some free web space for their clients. I’m pretty sure that doesn’t happen any more.
I was lured to a real host by TextDrive. It was unbelievably cheap and offered support for Textpattern, a free and open source CMS that I continue to use to this day.
The pricing was indeed too good to be true, and TextDrive went out of business. You can still visit a memorial site.
Forced to move on, I landed at InMotion Hosting, mainly because they at least appeared to promise to help with the move. That never happened. I just copied everything over and hoped for the best. Luckily, it worked out and I stuck with them for a couple of decades.
For my domain registrar, I went with GoDaddy. I can think of no other reason than that I fell for their marketing. I’m glad to have left because I can’t shake the feeling they were ripping me off one way or another.
Now, both my domain registration and web hosting are with StormWeb, a company based in Victoria, B.C., that has been around since 1998. Their servers are in Vancouver.
StormWeb actually did help me move. In fact, they did everything for me. I had to go out that evening, and by the time I got back, they were done.
They’ve been quite responsive to my questions, which are answered by people who know what they’re talking about.
From the novel Red Team Blues, by Cory Doctorow, published in 2023:
From there, I maneuvered to this year's car listings, checking the box for all-electric and unchecking the box for Teslas. I just don't like the man. I've spent enough years around enough bullshitters that I can spot them a mile away. In his case, I could spot him from orbit, using one of his overpromised, underdelivered satellites.
Netflix finally pushed me too far with yet another price increase that supposedly pays for a pipeline of hot, new shows.
They must be going for quantity over quality because I can’t remember the last time Netflix had something I really wanted to watch. In fact, after 10 years, I was subscribing more out of habit than anything else. With tax, I would be paying $20 a month for a service I seldom use. OK, I did try the second season of Squid Game, and it was terrible.
So I cancelled. Ahh, such a relief.
At the same time, I was getting kind of annoyed by the ads on CBC Gem. So with my new-found disposable income, I decided to pay $6 a month to get rid of them.
Not that I was watching Gem a whole lot, but now that I’m a paying customer, I’ve been taking a closer look at what’s available. Here’s what I’ve been liking so far:
Son of a Critch: Home-spun coming-of-age humour about growing up in the 1980s in Newfoundland. Kinda corny but I like the characters.
North of North: A single Inuit mom navigates life with the help of a slightly crazy community in northern Canada. Down-to-earth humour, compelling characters.
The Great British Baking Show: An hour of British bakers competing every week — it’s the ultimate comfort show.
Canada’s Ultimate Challenge: Five teams turn the country into a giant obstacle course. The challenges are actually quite daunting, and they are interspersed with personal drama.
Small Achievable Goals: A couple of middle-aged women, who don’t understand the meaning of TMI, team up to succeed in the podcast industry.
Canada Reads: Limited series where five champions pitch the book “every Canadian” should read. One book is voted off each episode.
Halifax Comedy Festival: A half-hour mix of stand-up comics that always gets a few chuckles out of me.
Coming up on March 21 is a new show called Ghosting that looks good. “Catch a new season full of screams and laughter as Luke and Matthew venture across the country, along with celebrity guests, to investigate some of the most famous hauntings in Canada.”
Go to apple.ca and see the cruel joke Apple is playing on Canadians with their tagline for the new iPhone 16e: “Latest iPhone. Greatest price”
You’re supposed to think of “greatest” in terms of a good deal, but in reality it’s closer to this definition: “of an extent, amount, or intensity considerably above average.”
At $899 plus tax, Canadians are now looking at $1,000 for Apple’s cheapest phone. In my mind, that’s way above average. I simply cannot imagine myself, even in my wildest fantasies, paying that much for a phone.
I currently have a second-generation iPhone SE that still works fine, so thankfully I don’t need a new one. But that day will come and, when it does, I expect iPhones to be even more expensive.
Most likely my next phone will be a used iPhone. Telus, for example, has “certified, pre-owned” iPhones for as little as $499. That’s for an iPhone 13, which, for all I know, might actually be a step up from my old SE.
