Notices by Sean Heber (bigzaphod@mastodon.social)

Wild solar panels have appeared!

The roof shape and location of some of the chimney/vent things apparently made it difficult to have a nice symmetrical layout, but hey... free energy! (Eventually... when they get wired up and approved... whenever that happens.)

(I don't have a drone and it's hard to get high enough to get a good pic without busting out a ladder. 😛)

@montyhayter man Thunderbolts* was great too. Feels like both of the big studios are kind of figuring out what we need at the same time and that could be a very fun thing for the next few years, I hope.

I feel like... way back when the MCU started with Iron Man, it ushered in the kind of superhero movies we needed at the time but times have changed, and this new Superman is the kind of superhero movie we need now.

Superman was Terrific. I loved that it didn't take itself too seriously and everyone clearly had a lot of fun making it. Kyrpto was a huge hit - the kids loved him! I've not seen many of the last few Superman movies, but this one felt Super fun and fresh to me with some interesting twists on the usual story beats and characters. Everyone finished the movie with a smile.

Tonight’s movie night move will be, “Superman (2025).” After being surrounded by comics and action figures all day it seemed somehow fitting.

@justincox @Ronnie the Marvels wasn't nearly as good as Thunderbolts, but yeah I liked it and wanted more. The reaction to it was disappointing for sure.

Tonight’s movie night movie will be, “Thunderbolts* (2025).” I wonder which actor plays Captain Asterisks?

I did not expect Thunderbolts* to be this good. Wow! Easily one of the best Marvel movies in like... maybe 10 years?! It builds on a bunch of past stuff from the last few lackluster films while growing into something deeper than a "superheroes beat up the bad guy" special effects spectacle. In fact, beating folks up almost never worked out for them in this one! It felt like a much needed tweak and improvement to the somewhat stale MCU formula and I hope they can hang onto it.

@Ronnie @justincox I didn't know it got bad press - I'd only heard good things about it here and there on socials. On the tomato site it's got 88% / 93% depending which score you look at, so that doesn't say bad reviews to me.

I really hate the length limit on "what's new" in App Store Connect.

I wrote a huge long detailed narrative about things for this week's Tapestry build and I was way over the limit.

I don't know if anyone actually reads these long things I sometimes write, but I'm pretty annoyed it won't let me post them for the 5 of you who do want to read them!

Meh.

@jwisser @gedeonm an uncomfortable thought is that, this is how some people see AI - as a replicator for the things they don't want to pay for. Easy for us to want a replicator for physical stuff because we don't work in that world.

On the other hand, I figure if a replicator existed and could make food... do I really *need* to work? 😛

@jwisser @gedeonm I would think that once a single Trek replicator exists, getting a second one is trivial as would all future scaling problems - just replicate more of whatever you need! Might not be instant, but like, there'd be a progression there. I picked replicators too. 😛

A great thing about retro consoles (or pseudo-retro ones like the NES Classic) is that the games start pretty much instantly. The old cartridge model was kinda awesome.

When I have 10 minutes to kill, it's trivial to turn the NES on and play a few Mario levels or something. Makes it a lot easier to pick it up and put it down on a whim.

Plus there's no user account, no updating, no unlocking the device, no pairing a controller or whatever - it's maybe 2 button presses and you're crushing turts.

My favorite sub genre of post is the one that publicly yells at other people to stop telling them what to do while completely failing to notice the irony.

I finally setup a blog for the first time in like 20 years. I don't know if I'll use it much, but here it is: https://bigzaphod.com/blog/welcome

ChatGPT and other AI services are basically killing @Iconfactory and I'm not exaggerating or being hyperbolical.

First Twitter/Elon killed our main app revenue that kept the lights on around here, then generative AI exploded to land a final blow to design revenue.

YOU GUYS! https://www.commodore.net

(Referral link for $10 off: https://www.commodore.net/referral/YDHCyXhdnuzl?utm_source=referral_program)

We call this fella Doofus. Three years ago a young hawk was born in one of our trees and spent awhile learning to fly around our yard. He'd crash land right in front of us and just... stand there awhile and look around. He let us get pretty close to him, too. He's been hanging out here in the summers ever since then. Sometimes he flies down and looks in the window.

Some of iCloud is down. Does that make it... iFog?

Do any of you guys work at any companies that could use some design services for a project? Like, needing an app icon, a new logo, an advertisement, a website? Big or small is fine - @Iconfactory has some of the best designers around sitting idle and waiting for something to do! They can get started on new stuff basically right away if you email.

(Please help spread the word! Maybe someone you know needs these things? We can do whatever. Just get in touch.)