Sal's

Alfred's core values

2026-05-20T00:00:00Z

Writing to share the Alfred team’s latest blog post:

Handcrafted with Care: Alfred’s Core Values

I use Alfred constantly all day long, and I feel these values in action as I do. I appreciate how the team has stayed true to these values in the face of this crazy age of tech, with all its private equity and frothy AI insanity.

I’ve been meaning to write about my most helpful and frequently used Alfred use cases. Maybe I’ll get to that one of these days.

Fear of sharing AI opinions in the workplace

2026-05-20T00:00:00Z

I try not to write or even think much about AI because I find it so … ugh. But this struck me.

From Anil Dash’s post, The Majority AI View, which I found in Nicolas’s May links:

One of the reasons we don’t hear about [the more] popular, moderate view on AI within the tech industry is because people are afraid to say it. Mid-level managers and individual workers who know this is the common-sense view on AI are concerned that simply saying that they think AI is a normal technology like any other, and should be subject to the same critiques and controls, and be viewed with the same skepticism and care, fear for their careers. People worry that not being seen as mindless, uncritical AI cheerleaders will be a career-limiting move in the current environment of enforced conformity within tech…

(Emphasis added.)

As a manager at a BigCo, I feel this, big time, and admit my cowardice. It’s not a feeling I’ve ever had before in my career, and it’s not a great one.

That said, I am optimistic that sanity and reason are waiting for the tech industry somewhere around the bend. But we’re in a fucking weird stretch right now.

Re: lowercase posts

2026-05-18T00:00:00Z

Puppy wrote a post, the appeal of lowercase text. There are several comments on Bubbles disagreeing, saying that lowercase posts are hard to read.

I won’t agree or disagree with the commenters. I believe they are being honest about their perspective; however, I don’t think lowercase text is in the same hard-to-read category as, say, low-contrast color themes.

Meanwhile, as wiser peeps have said, variety in the blogosphere is a good thing. Don’t we more or less want each blog to reflect the unique personality and preferences of its owner? I think so.

So, while I don’t intend to write any lowercase posts myself, I’m happy that they exist and add some spice to my blog surfing. Puppy, you keep doing you.

Breaking news: Oregon man buys Peloton bike

2026-05-18T00:00:00Z

I know I know, 2020 called and wants its exercise bike back.

I was about to buy one of these a year ago, but then I got a screaming deal on a different “smart bike” (a Stages SB20) that can send power and cadence data to apps like Zwift. So I used that for a good while, and I liked things about it, but I overcomplicated my setup in the hopes of outdoing the Peloton. I built a stand for a large screen in front of the bike so I could watch shows and movies while I rode. I hooked up my old Apple TV to that screen and wireless earbuds to the Apple TV. I used an iPad on the bike’s tablet mount to run Zwift, and a phone on the separate phone mount to run the Zwift companion. I used wireless headphones to connect to the TV.

You see where I’m going here. It was a lot of screens and cords and shit. Sometimes the Apple TV wouldn’t turn on, or the screen wouldn’t switch to the right input. All of the time my headphones would connect to the iPad, which was running Zwift audio, instead of the Apple TV, which was running Andor or whatever I was trying to watch at the time. This necessitated delicate swipes and taps on one of those older, obnoxiously skittish Apple TV remotes to get audio routing properly.

It was janky.

Switching to the software side, people (or at least Redditors) seem to agree that, if your goal is get better at riding a real bicycle, an app like Zwift or Trainerroad is superior to Peloton. Those apps are designed for cycling training.

I like riding a bike, but I’m not trying to be a competitive cyclist. I’ve had moments where I thought I might get into group rides and such, but it never took. At this point, I just want to get and stay healthy. And I want to do that in relatively tight windows of time — thirty minutes here, an hour there.

Most cycling-oriented workout programs involve long-ish rides because a lot of cycling training is about building stamina on a bike. That makes these programs challenging for me because I rarely have enough time to complete a full workout.

Also, Zwift felt kinda lonely. While there are plenty of other humans in the simulation, and there are lots of group rides and races and whatnot, it felt like I was interacting mostly with the simulation rather than the humans.

The Peloton, then

I was feeling unmotivated with my overly complicated and somewhat soulless rig. So one day I did a Peloton bike class on my Stages bike using the iPad app, and within a few minutes I knew that Peloton was a much better fit for me. A couple weeks later, I sold my Stages and ordered a Peloton, splurging on the new Cross Training Series Bike+ due to a promotional discount (looks like it’s still $900 off retail until May 26, btw).

I like the human element; there’s a person coaching and pushing you rather than a GUI. This is more motivating and fun for me.

I like the workout lengths. There’s an endless list of classes that fit into 30 minutes.

I like the workout variety, because I don’t just want to ride a bike. I want to lift weights, build core strength, and stretch, too. The fancier bikes have a rotating screen, so I can get off the bike, turn the screen 90 degrees, and do a floor class. The “bike bootcamp” sessions have me switching between bike, weights, and core intervals multiple times in a single class. And I try to follow my workouts with a 10-minute stretch class. I love how easy it is to get a holistic workout in.

Last but far from least, I like the simplicity. The Peloton bike does away with all my janky DIY rigging. It has one, large, nice touchscreen and pretty decent built-in speakers. I just push the power button, tap the screen a few times, and start riding.

The question of course is what happens after the honeymoon period wears off. I’ll keep you posted.

Those old modem upgrades

2026-05-16T00:00:00Z

I liked Kev’s recent post, Upgrading My Home Internet to Full Fibre.

I too wrote about upgrading to fiber (as we Yanks spell it), but this is the part I want to talk about:

I remember when I upgraded from a 56k MODEM, to ~2Mbps broadband and it blew my mind. I was thinking this would be the same, but no.

Man, those old modem upgrades were the best.

The one that still gives me nerd-tingles is when I upgraded to a 14.4k modem. I was playing multi-user dungeons (MUDs) back then, which were text-based adventures where many users could play simultaneously; the early, super geeky precursor to games like World of Warcraft. They looked something like this:

Image courtesy of Wikipedia per CC BY-SA 3.0.

This was probably around 1993, making me 13ish. I’d stay up until 3 or 4 am during summer vacation, dialed in on the family computer, hoping my parents wouldn’t wake up to go pee and find me still in the living room, bathing in the CRT glow.

Before my 14.4,^[1] a page of MUD text would progressively load a few lines at a time. This meant a single screen of the game would load over several iterations and seconds.

When I upgraded to 14.4, the page would load all at once in a flash. It was freaking awesome. I was blown away.

I later upgraded to 56k, and then finally got access to my first high-speed line (a T1 or something) when I went to college and stayed in the dorms. Those upgrades were big and super exciting, too.

But it’s the memory of that colorful MUD text racing down the screen that sticks with me the most. Those were fun times. Peak PC.

I wish I could remember what speed I upgraded from, but I’m just not sure. ↩︎