Last week, Elgato released an intriguing addition to its line of streaming automation hardware: the Elgato Stream Deck Pedal. As the name implies, it's a three-button pedal that functions as a foot-operated Stream Deck (sans the backlit display). As an avid user of the traditional Stream Deck for its unique and convenient productivity applications, I pretty much instantly ordered the Stream Deck Pedal if for nothing else but to check out the novel form-factor in the flesh, and discuss a bit why Elgato's continued hardware creativity is so delightfully uncommon.

Evie doesn't appreciate the Pedal encroaching on her usual spot.

Hard-Soled Hardware

The Stream Deck Pedal is an intriguing piece of hardware that follows Elgato's pattern of over-engineering in a market where under-engineering is the usual norm. PC peripherals (especially in the Windows world) are often cheap, flaky hunks of plastic that bug out from time to time and usually don't live up to expectations. Elgato is among vanishingly-few peripheral manufacturers that spring to mind when I think of "build quality" and "reliability" — and the Pedal lives up to their reputation. The first thing I noticed when the package arrived was how much larger the box was than I was expecting — the Pedal has a 10"x7" footprint and weighs a surprisingly-chunky two pounds, owing in no small part to the rigid steel sheet forming its bottom plate. The rest of the Pedal is made of hardy matte plastic with a pleasant texture on the top surface, so your (hopefully-socked) feet have something grippy to register on. One subtle yet essential design element in an otherwise-uncomplicated three-button pedal is the slight elevation of the left and right pedals over the middle button sandwiched between them — about a quarter-inch of tactile feedback that makes tapping the wrong button pretty difficult to do.

Customizing spring weight in a foot pedal reminds me of my mechanical keyboard friends, with ever-so-specific preferences about bottom-out force.

The Stream Deck Pedal also comes packaged with an assortment of springs with varying strength, which you can swap in to adjust the foot force necessary to depress a given pedal, as well as two stoppers to entirely disable the middle pedal and (in Elgato's own words) "...convert it into a convenient footrest." It would have never occurred to me to make the pedal's depression force adjustable (let alone include the kitting to make that happen), but it's a nice touch nonetheless.

All-Toe Automation

The actual process of using the Stream Deck Pedal is fairly straightforward, and will look pretty familiar to anyone with a Stream Deck. Just open the Stream Deck app, connect the hardware, and customize the three available buttons with the same extensive range of actions (and Multiactions) available for the traditional Stream Deck. I've covered the assortment of actions and plugins (plus the real killer feature: profiles) in a previous post, so I won't waste too much time here rehashing that here.

Configuring your Pedal is pretty much the same as configuring a traditional Stream Deck, just with fewer action slots.

I did play around with some specific use cases I could imagine for the Stream Deck pedal to see how well the software would accommodate them. For instance, I could see folks using the Stream Deck Pedal in racing games with in-game braking and acceleration hotkeys tied to a specific pedal. I confirmed that holding down one pedal simply repeats its designated hotkey until you let go again, and interestingly any additional pedal pushes (a virtual clutch?) are sent in parallel while the other pedal is being pressed down with no interruption. This opens up some intriguing possibilities; you could, for example, set one pedal to be a "push-to-talk" hotkey for recording a podcast with minimal background noise when you aren't speaking and simultaneously use Jason Snell x Dan Moren's shortcut for marking edit points while recording — even if you need to mark an edit point while holding the push-to-talk pedal, the Stream Deck software should handle both commands seamlessly. Of course, the distinguishing feature of the Stream Deck Pedal is the ability to run your usual assortment of commands hands-free — Elgato highlights examples like Twitch streamers changing scenes while busy playing a first-person shooter, but there are any number of situations where your hands might be occupied when you need to fire off an automation, switch on a light, or change audio tracks. I'm already imagining creative ways I can use the Stream Deck Pedal in my workshop while my hands are covered in glue or occupied while working on a piece (but that's a story for another time). Conveniently, the Stream Deck software also generates a virtual overlay of the active Pedal profile to remind you of what each pedal does at any given moment — especially useful if, like me, you rely heavily on the visual cue inherent to the traditional Stream Deck to keep all of your smart-rotating actions straight.

The floating "Action Bar" shows the currently-available actions on your Pedal, providing some useful visual feedback to a device normally operated by feel.

Elgato's Fascinating Footprint

The Stream Deck Pedal is another excellent addition to Elgato's eclectic offering of hardware products — from the original Stream Deck's unique niche as a dynamic macro pad, to their clever Multi Mount system of extensible boom arms and assorted attachments, all the way to their incredibly-specific Green Screen Mouse Mat tailor-made for game streamers. All of Elgato's products are, of course, marketed heavily toward content creators, gamers, and streamers — but what I think makes their products so compelling (beyond their quality) is how easily their features translate to other uses. The original Stream Deck was designed (as the name suggests) as a "deck" of quick actions you could fire off while in the middle of a live stream — but so many of its clever applications (and its best plugins) extend well beyond the arena of streaming and into everyday productivity and efficiency. The same can be said of the Stream Deck Pedal: a well-made product for a specific niche...with so many other possibilities. One of the first things that jumped to mind when thinking about unique uses of the Stream Deck Pedal was accessibility applications — folks with limited arm mobility or other upper body disabilities using the Pedal as an alternative method of interacting with their devices in a way that accommodates their needs (without breaking, or breaking the bank).

Few companies are putting out high-quality, opinionated products that fill a niche and yet readily spill over into other areas quite like Elgato — and frankly, we all benefit from a company releasing odd-but-clever hardware products that expand our imagination — and our reach — just a little bit further than arm's length.

This three-minute clip from a 1995 interview with Steve Jobs is making the rounds today given Apple's intransigent greed in the face of Dutch regulation of the company's app store payment processing policies. The clip features Jobs bemoaning what greed had done to Apple in his absence. Steve Jobs, from the clip via "Rusk86" on Youtube:

They cared more about their own glory and wealth than they did about what built Apple in the first place, which was making great computers for people to use; they didn't care about that anymore...They cared about making a lot of money.

Meanwhile, Apple responded today to Dutch regulators on the subject of alternative app store payment methods with a jarring series of requirements. From the horse's mouth:

Apple will charge a 27% commission on the price paid by the user, net of value-added taxes. This is a reduced rate that excludes value related to payment processing and related activities.

Jobs of course passed away only three years after the launch of the App Store, and in very different times. I wonder what choice words he would have for the company — which today sits just under a $3 trillion in market cap and regularly posts $100 billion quarters — as they shamelessly wring every loose nickel they can out of the developers on their platform.

Federico Viticci writing on MacStories:

Like others, I hope that the new owners of Wordle won’t ruin the game; like others, I’ve also learned my lesson with such things on the Internet before, which is why I created WordleForever. With this shortcut, you’ll be able to play Wordle’s collection of thousands of words for years to come. That is, assuming the Shortcuts app will still be around or that you’ll still want to play this game.

The entirety of Wordle in a 182KB HTML file, delivered via a home screen Siri Shortcut. Peak Viticci.

I was scrolling through Twitter on Sunday when Ryan Jones’ iOS 16 wishlist popped up in my feed. In skimming his list, the handful of suggested improvements to iMessage stuck out to me — things like creating hyperlinks within the iMessage composer or selecting text within those iconic blue bubbles. These suggestions got me thinking about other iMessage improvement ideas, like the oft-suggested expansion of tapback reactions to include all Emoji rather than the piddling six options we’ve had since 2016. Dan Moren made exactly this request way back in 2018, and the ever-increasing popularity of chat apps like Discord and Slack only exacerbates the absence of many modern messaging niceties in iMessage. But one overlooked feature of Discord, Slack, and others that iMessage could benefit from has been kicking around since 2004: support for good old-fashioned Markdown.

A Modest Markdown Mock-Up

The evolution of iMessage has mostly been a process of stacking new features on top of the underlying core of “text-based messaging app”; some duds and some delights. Additions that pop to mind are the iMessage App Store (a dud, mostly), iMessage Effects like “Sent with Lasers” (delights, unless you’re in an SMS group chat), and Voice Messages (winner of the “worst-placed button” award). Apple has a long track record of trying out new features in iMessage the app, but has seldom re-evaluated how the text of messages themselves could be improved on. That’s where Markdown comes in — the ubiquitous plain-text markup language that let’s you quickly bold, italicize, strikethrough, or add a link in-line as you type your message. Markdown is essentially the standard method of composing rich text on the internet these days — anyone who has written a Reddit comment since 2005 is probably familiar with the basic syntax, and modern messaging apps like Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, and Telegram all support some portion of the Markdown spec. In fact, I’d wager lots of folks use “Markdown” in iMessage too — just without the benefit of actually seeing the formatting. I add *emphasis* stars around words in iMessages all the time, but would much rather see that Markdown syntax parsed and displayed as rich text inside the conversation. I’ve mocked up what that might look like below:

My mockup of Markdown support in iMessage — Apple could add an entire Markdown “Aa” menu, but they’re a bit low on space in the iMessage UI.

Apple could theoretically add support for Markdown with no change whatsoever to iMessage’s UI — Discord, for instance, gives no Markdown hints when composing a message and has no dedicated UI element for inserting syntax. That said, I think Apple typically takes a layered approach to features like this — nerds could just type out their syntax manually, but the option to insert syntax via highlighting a word and selecting “Bold” in the Edit Menu would probably do the trick for the uninitiated. Many iOS apps support this approach to applying rich text, or even have entire panels of quickly-insertable markdown syntax options.

Outlook, Obsidian, and iA Writer all have different approaches to Markdown text formatting — perhaps iMessage could implement a seamless solution too?

That said, I don’t think Apple would need to hand-hold users too much if they added Markdown support to iMessage. Familiarity with Markdown is incredibly commonplace in online communication, and adding it entirely “invisibly” to iMessage (until the message is sent) would have few negative consequences. Even in the case where an iMessage user sends a Markdown-filled text message via SMS to an older device, the message would be entirely human-readable — after all: that’s the entire point of Markdown!

“Message” is in the Name

A lot of digital ink has been spilt in recent weeks on Apple’s supposed “dominance” in the text-messaging space thanks to iMessage’s “blue bubble effect” — claims that iMessage has an unfair advantage over competing services thanks solely to its in-group color scheme. What went largely missed in this whirlwind of discussion was how unequivocally bad iMessage is as a messaging app in 2022 — luckily, Jason Snell explained this well in a recent Macworld column:

When you look at the messaging landscape today, iMessage isn’t a colossus that dominates the world. In fact, I’d say that iMessage’s first decade is more of a failure than a success in terms of worldwide acceptance, user experience, and innovation.

Snell hits the nail on the head here — Apple’s haphazard strategy of lumping features on-top of iMessage while a dozen competitors embrace modern messaging technologies (including Markdown, editable messages, good replies/threads, etc) has resulted in a UI mess and a stagnant plain-text core still living in the shadow of SMS limitations. iMessage needs a refresh — not more satellite features like Apple Pay or Memoji, but actual improvements to text messaging itself. Markdown support is perhaps the lowest-hanging fruit of the many ways iMessage desperately needs to catch up to its peers in peer-to-peer communication.

Every year around this time, I listen to the latest Yearly Themes episode of Cortex, crack open a new Theme System journal, and ponder my goals for the year ahead. I try to think of my yearly theme by considering "where I’ve been, where I’d like to go, and how I’d like to grow on the way” — while reflecting on these questions, the turbulence and pain of recent years combined with the anticipated flux and transition in the years ahead of me stood out the most. I’m in a season of challenge and change, and it’s so often the case that these periods are ripe opportunities for renewal and growth. The imagery this drew to mind was that of a horrible forest fire incidentally clearing the underbrush and fertilizing new life in the flame-hardy giant sequoia trees of eastern California's Sierra Nevada mountains. Sequoia trees grow to towering heights over thousands of years, and evolved during this time to endure extremely harsh environments — including forest fires, which historically benefited sequoia groves, with their fire-resistant bark and heat-triggered pollen cones. The resiliency and longevity of the giant sequoia serve as an apt analogy for my current situation and goals, and helped lead me to my theme this year: The Year of Sequoias. Part of the inspiration also stemmed from my favorite line in one of my favorite poems:

Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias. Say that your main crop is the forest that you did not plant, that you will not live to harvest. - Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front, by Wendell Berry

This line (really, the entire poem) captures quite well what I am striving for in the Year of Sequoias — thinking about my choices and priorities on a "millennium" time-scale, improving both my physical and mental resiliency, and forming more meaningful and lasting connections with others. The Year of Sequoias, to me, is an opportunity to grow in that fertile soil of challenge and change into the person I'd like myself to be in the next decade, rather than just the next year. It's a chance to consider carefully how what I do, say, eat, play, and care for impacts others around me...and others a millennium away. After all, planting a sequoia tree means thinking with future generations in mind, and leaving behind gifts instead of curses.

I’ve been using home screen widgets to remind me of the Year of Sequoias and its principle aims.

I’ve made the mistake in previous years by creating too rigid of a rubric for my themes — usually work-related components with specific grading criteria that did not work well for my brain and ultimately left me dissatisfied. I tried something a bit different with the Year of Sequoias by incorporating more “soft” targets and “heart and soul” scoring in lieu of hard-and-fast metrics. I've broken the Year of Sequoias down into three primary components: "Strengthening My Bark", "Deepening my Relational Roots", and "Planting for the Millennium" — I'll expand on each a bit more in the rest of this post, and touch on some of reasons for choosing these specific theme tenets. It'll be a bit personal at times and certainly a bit off-color from what I usually write, but right now getting these thoughts written down and published somewhere feels important to me. Take what you will from it.

Strengthening My Bark

This is the most "ordinary" branch of the Year of Sequoias — resolving to become more physically and mentally fit has been a big priority for me in recent times, and I'm hoping to take that resolve to the next level this year. The biggest change in the Year of Sequoias moving forward is increasing my focus on the physical side of "physical and mental health". I've spent a lot of energy in the last two years trying to stay mentally-resilient and sound (haven't we all?), and I feel I've found stability in my current therapy schedule, various anxiety-taming strategies, and general worldview. Turning my attention towards physical health has meant going on more (and longer) walks with my wife and our dog, and joining her in more Apple Fitness+ workouts (usually pilates). My wife just marked the milestone of closing her rings every day for a year, which is an example I'm hoping to emulate this year (or, at least try to). For now, I'm off to a good start:

I’m hoping to keep this trend going as long as I can.

I've never struggled with my weight, but I've certainly never devoted the time and energy to fitness that my body needs. I still don't think I'm disciplined enough in my exercise habits, and I'm hoping that the Year of Sequoias keeps my eyes focused on shoring up my physical health and better preparing my body for the unknowns in life. If the pandemic has taught us anything, it's that you should never take your good health for granted.

Deepen My Roots

My dad died about a year ago as I write this of liver failure. He struggled with alcoholism for much of his life, and as a result he and I had a strained relationship. In the weeks after his passing, the thing that struck me the hardest was how isolated he was in his final years...and how that extreme isolation was indicative of his lifelong tendency towards solitude — few friends, and fewer still close connections. The context of The Quarantimes only amplified my strong reaction to his bare apartment and lack of connection. We've all probably struggled with unusually potent feelings of loneliness in recent memory, but so often (especially for introverts like myself) we do little to address these feelings, like reaching out to the people in our lives. The Year of Sequoias means actively prioritizing my “root system” — that is, the connections and relationships in my life. Like roots, some connections are small, tendrillous, and fleeting — others are entirely vital and require constant nourishment. Both varieties, however, bring richness and life to the tree (and, in this metaphor: to me) that it cannot go without. I’ve long been someone who has been content with few close friends, and sometimes even cagey with my time and my vulnerability with others — no doubt traits I inherited from my father. In the Year of Sequoias, I aim to fight these habits and actively seek out connection with others — strangers, acquaintances, co-workers, friends, family, and loved ones — to develop deep and lasting roots that (ideally) will be life-giving resources when harsh seasons inevitably come to pass. Every reaching root will look a bit different — it could be a kind message on Discord to a complete stranger, or an extra game night with my circle of friends, or even a week-long escape to Mexico with my wife (COVID-allowing 🤞). Whatever the case, my goal is to remember that each root I form necessarily adds to who I am; I can't pretend that "I don't need very many friends" or "I'm comfortable alone" when I know that's not true! "Deepening My Roots" means prioritizing both passing friendships and life-long bonds so that one day when drought strikes, I'm not starved for water.

Plant for the Millennium

This section of my theme is the "fuzziest", but in many ways is also the most crucial to me. "Planting for the Millennium" to me means adjusting my perspective from "now, this week, or this month" to "this year, this decade, and next generation". It's knowing that even my small decisions can and will impact others around me, perhaps for a lifetime, and acting accordingly. I'm hoping that "millennium thinking" finds its way into every area of my life — in small things like how I behave to strangers on the internet, and in big things like career decisions, life priorities, and what I build and leave behind when I'm gone one day. I mentioned before that I'm in a season of challenge and change; "Planting for the Millennium" feels most relevant to me in the context of the changes going on in my life. Whether it's the hunt for our first house (bad timing, I know), or my imminent transition from PhD student to...something more, or in spending time with my fast-growing nieces (who I swear just yesterday were one and two years old), I've noticed "millennium thinking" creeping more and more to the forefront of my mind. I ponder my career and what actions I can take to lead changes and elevate our lab's work, my wife and I discuss at length our goals and how we choose to serve our community, and I see myself as a role-model to the people around me and try to carry myself as such. This aspect of my theme is entirely about a change in perspective resulting in preferred behaviors and attitudes; I am under no illusions that I am doing or building anything that will truly "matter" in 1000 years — but that doesn't mean I can't think that way in hopes of making better choices and leading a happier life.

Renewing A Theme

Although I am writing and posting this in early 2022, I’ve been living the Year of Sequoias for the better part of the last year as well. I’ve had mixed results, and the theme feels entirely incomplete (perhaps due to its ambitious scope!), so I'm renewing it for the upcoming year and redoubling my efforts in doing so. I think that some themes strike so deeply and fit a season of life so well that the “yearly” in “Yearly Theme” is easily and eagerly discarded in favor of an "extended" theme. I'm hopeful that the Year of Sequoias ends up outlasting it's designated duration and helps me grow into more of who I want to be — after all, surely each of our Yearly Themes (if successful) is anything but "yearly" in their impacts on our lives.

If you believe that it is possible to grow without change, you are probably neither growing nor changing. - Merlin Mann

Apple’s AirTags are one of the most feature-rich and useful consumer tracking products on the market — extensive OS integration, pinpoint tracking accuracy using Apple’s U1 chip, and perhaps the biggest benefit of all: the unrivaled network of iOS devices on the Find My network, which essentially guarantees a lost item is able to “ping” its owner with a location. That said, easy, affordable, and ubiquitous tracking devices have caused some considerable concern particularly from victims of stalking — Ryan Mac and Kashmir Hill summarize the issue well in their New York Times coverage:

Ms. Estrada is not alone in her experience. In recent months, people have posted on TikTok, Reddit and Twitter about finding AirTags on their cars and in their belongings. There is growing concern that the devices may be abetting a new form of stalking, which privacy groups predicted could happen when Apple introduced the devices in April.

The sharp increase in reports of people being unknowingly tracked by bad actors using AirTags is clearly indicative of a major problem — but the question I’ve been wrestling with since these stories began is “Has Apple made the problem of stalking worse with AirTags, or just easier to discover?” This question stems from one of the primary features of AirTags that most competing products entirely lack: the “anti-stalking features” baked into iOS. From the AirTag’s product page:

AirTag is designed to discourage unwanted tracking. If someone else’s AirTag finds its way into your stuff, your iPhone will notice it’s traveling with you and send you an alert. After a while, if you still haven’t found it, the AirTag will start playing a sound to let you know it’s there.

Put simply, if an unknown AirTag is seen moving with you for a period of time your iPhone will send you a notification to let you know, and even cause the offending AirTag to beep and give away its location. I’ve gotten this notification myself on a day where I had my wife’s car keys, “unknown” AirTag included. Since the AirTag did not belong to my iCloud account, I got a warning notification after about four hours of driving around town on my errands. Obviously, in my situation the warning notification was frivolous and almost worth a chuckle (after all, I knew my wife’s keys were the culprit) — but to someone who finds an AirTag in their purse after a party or on the underside of their car? I imagine discovering that some stranger is tracking your location (and has been for a couple hours) would be greatly distressing.

AirTag Notifications and the Frequency Illusion

For a moment, let’s place the many recent stories about unwanted AirTag stalking in context with Apple’s anti-stalking feature (which notifies iOS users of the fact they are being tracked) and the surrounding market of other readily-available tracking devices (Tile, Chipolo, or no-name options from Amazon and Alibaba) with no such anti-stalking features to speak of. Yes, Apple’s AirTags have the U1 chip, which greatly narrows the accuracy of the device to under one foot versus the bluetooth-limited range of 30 feet for most other trackers. That said, I would argue a nefarious individual wanting to stalk someone would debatably be foolish to use an AirTag to do so…since their victim has a high probability of being alerted to the tracking device (if they have an iPhone — more on that later). Surely to a criminal, the benefit of AirTags’ highly-pinpoint accuracy is immediately overwhelmed by the downside of getting caught. AirTags’ anti-stalking features make the discovery of an unwanted tracker trivially-easy (for iPhone-users), and each AirTag being paired to a specific iCloud account (and in the case of a surreptitiously-placed AirTag: a specific criminal’s iCloud account) creates a scenario in which victims are readily-notified and perpetrators are easily identified by law enforcement (presumably with a simple subpoena for the owner of the discovered AirTag). In fact, I think the increase in news stories about AirTag stalking situations are less indicative of AirTags causing more stalking, and more indicative of how frequently stalkings already occur — with AirTags’ anti-stalking features simply bringing more of these horrible situations to light. These stories may be a classic example of the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon (AKA the "Frequency Illusion") — in which increased awareness of creeps using AirTags to stalk women creates the illusion that it is happening more often, or even that AirTags are responsible for this illusory increase in incidence.

Finding More Solutions

Stalking is a serious problem, and Apple’s foray into the tracker market places the hefty responsibility of harm mitigation on their shoulders — if nothing else due to their sheer scale making trackers like AirTags so much more ubiquitous. Apple’s iteration on AirTags’ anti-stalking features seems to indicate the company is aware of their role in protecting users, but there’s still plenty of room for improvement. Perhaps the highest-priority item should be bringing the iOS-integrated unknown tracker notification to Android devices as well, as Benjamin Mayo from 9to5mac and others have suggested. Apple has released a dedicated Android app so users can “scan” for nearby AirTags, but the lack of constant background checks and the necessity of manually seeking out the app in the first place renders it all but useless. I’d guess most of the foundational work for Android system-level tracker alerts was done with Apple and Google’s joint effort on the (painfully underutilized) COVID exposure notification API, so a partnership with Google to further-reduce the harm of stalking is probably feasible. In addition, the nebulous amount of time (usually on the order of hours) that an unwanted AirTag needs to be following you seems somewhat untenable if preventing stalking is the goal. If it takes five hours of moving around before you’re notified that you may be being stalked, is the harm really prevented? I proposed on Twitter that Apple (and perhaps Google down the road) should add the ability to lower the time before such a warning is sent to a user’s preference — or perhaps even better, set the default duration very low (30 minutes?) and allow users to raise it if they feel comfortable with the added risk.

Ultimately, I don’t think AirTags are to blame for any perceived increase in stalking incidents since their release — in fact, I think their innovative anti-stalking features are likely resulting in more unaware victims discovering the unwanted trackers and avoiding much worse outcomes. That being said, the ball is still in Apple’s court to take a very negative PR situation and apply some creative solutions (like the ones suggested above) to deliver real-world protections for potential victims of stalking. AirTags’ anti-stalking features have already put pressure on other tracking companies like Tile to develop similar anti-stalking solutions, and hopefully further improvements will make stalking someone with a consumer tracker dingus much more difficult for creeps and weirdos; or if nothing else, results in more of them getting caught.

Chance Miller, reporting today via 9to5Mac:

With Find My integration, the Chipolo Card Spot can be paired with the Find My app on your iPhone and easily located using the Find My network. You can also receive a notification when you leave your wallet behind using the new “Notify When Left Behind” feature of iOS 15.

The Chipolo Card Spot looks to be the best offering available to anyone looking for Find My compatibility in a wallet tracker. Apple's lackluster attempt in the MagSafe Wallet with Find My is such a compromised and incomplete implementation of "Find My" compatibility that the product description includes two asterisks. I covered my disappointment with the MagSafe Wallet back in September, when it's primary feature (left-behind notifications) was quickly revealed to be more annoyance than loss-avoidance with its lack of smarts. The only other way to add true Find My integration to a wallet are the many grotesqueries that lash entire AirTag to your wallet (with the obvious and unacceptable caveat of...an entire AirTag bulging out of your pocket).

Chipolo's new product (which is available now for pre-order, shipping in February) is better in almost every possible way than either of these solutions. The Card Spot is $35 (vs $29 for an AirTag or $59 for the MagSafe Leather Wallet), but offers fully-featured tracking using the Find My network (vs the MagSafe Wallet only remembering where it was removed from your phone), in a slim credit card form factor (as opposed to an AirTag-shaped bone spur jutting out of your pocket). It also has all of the primary features of the AirTag, including Lost Mode (which notifies you when your item is found near any iOS device) and the ability to play a sound when nearby. Oh, and no more obnoxious "Wallet Disconnected" notifications! Truly the best of all possible worlds. The only downside I currently see with Chipolo's offering is the lack of a replaceable battery — though this trade-off is somewhat mitigated by Chipolo offering a 50% discount and prepaid recycling for its customers.

When I got the MagSafe Leather Wallet with Find My, I was hoping for a solution that would A. Hold my credit cards and B. Help me find my wallet if I lost it. While it succeeds at A, it fails spectacularly at B. Chipolo has created a product that would actually help me find my wallet if it were lost or stolen. I immediately pre-ordered it, and hope to have a positive update when it arrives in February.

Merlin Mann has been collecting nuggets of wisdom, and you can read those nuggets here. I’ll spare you any puffy prose and provide a short bulleted list of some of my favorites instead:

• People think about you much less than you either hope or fear.
• Buy the nicest screwdrivers you can afford.
• If you have cool stickers, use them. Put them on things. Be joyful about using your stickers. If you die with a collection of dozens of cool stickers you never used, you did it wrong.
• Whenever you meet someone new, ask them what they're most excited about right now. Everyone interesting is excited about something right now, and they'd probably love to tell you about it.
• Treat everyone you encounter like they're having a way worse day than you.

Read these (and so, so many more) in Merlin’s Gist (but leave your glassware and flammables at the door).

Listeners of Connected on Relay FM will be familiar with the recurring round-robin rivalry known as the Rickies — in which Stephen, Myke, and Federico compete to predict what will be announced at every Apple Event as well as Apple’s entire calendar year. Complicated rules, passionate debates, Snell-judication, and the occasional coin toss tiebreaker all culminate with the crowning of the Keynote Chairman (for event predictions) and the Annual Chairman (for yearly picks). Naturally, such a complex contest with such thorough documentation and competitors on two continents makes commemorating a winner quite cumbersome. As it stands, the current winner of each contest is awarded control of a corresponding Twitter account: @KeynoteChairman and @AnnualChairman. These social media accounts convey bragging rights while avoiding costly international shipping fees to pass around a physical trophy multiple times per year...but there's still something special about a tangible testament to victory, right? With that in mind, and with the help of some clever design and a single round of international shipping, I’m happy to present the official trophies of the Rickies:

The Rickies trophies shortly before shipping (with only one “demo set” of acrylic sheets in place).

These trophies are made out of maple hardwood with a walnut accent, and each hold a total of seven acrylic sheets which are illuminated by a small USB-powered LED strip embedded in the base. The acrylic sheets have been individually laser etched — one sheet for each possible combination of Rickies Chairmanship (three hosts, two chairmanships, for a total of six), and one for the Connected "flight lines" pattern. The front of the trophies hold three sheets (the flight lines and two city rings), and the remaining four sheets are neatly stored on the back side. This configuration allows the trio on Connected to rearrange the current standings on the fly, with no need for shipping. For instance, the photo above shows two illuminated circles on London indicating the current former reign of His Royal Highness the Consolidated Chairman Myke Hurley (unfortunately, the results of this week's MacBook Pro event have rendered my photos obsolete). However, since Federico just won the latest Keynote Rickies, each host can simply remove one of London's acrylic panels and replace it with one of Rome's. I've mentally decided that the outer ring indicates the Event Chairman and the inner ring indicates the Annual Chairman, but either configuration works. And beyond the significant logistical benefits of this trophy design (if you'll allow me a bit of self-indulgence): they are lovely to look at.

I was pretty excited when Stephen took an off-handed comment I made about Rickies trophies and let me go wild with this design to surprise his two co-hosts; listening to Myke and Federico’s reaction on today’s episode of Connected was so much fun! I hope they enjoy them as much as I enjoyed making them.

And on that note, I'd love to show you a little bit of what that process looked like:

The Build Process

Complex projects like this one usually start with some prototyping in Shapr3D to get both an immediate visual reference and accurate measurements that I can transfer to my shop notebook. As you might imagine, a digital prototype eventually runs into the harsh limitations of reality, so iteration on the design often goes back and forth between my workbench and my iPad multiple times. I had a pretty solid mental image of what I wanted these trophies to look like at the outset — wooden placards with the Connected logo laser engraved, complete with illuminated acrylic panels resting in slots in the base — but you can still see some of the subtle changes and improvements I made inside my Shapr3D file.

I often treat Shapr3D projects as “iterative canvasses” where I keep modifying a design until it’s just right.

After modeling a good starting point and jotting down the critical dimensions of each piece, it's off to the shop to joint, plane, and cut to size some maple hardwood. One large plank of maple was enough for all three trophies plus some leftovers that I used for cutting boards. The vertical component of the trophies was pretty straightforward — just slice to size, laser engrave, and they were ready for glue-up and edge treatment.

Gotta love the wavy grain in these pieces of maple.

Speaking of laser engraving, that was obviously a very important step in this entire project. Stephen was kind enough to send me a Photoshop file for the Connected artwork, which I modified slightly in Affinity Designer to create both the wood engraving files and the acrylic etching/cutting patterns — all of which required precise alignment to keep each glowing circle centered on the appropriate city. Once my files were ready, I was off to my alma mater's library maker space to use their laser cutter.

Having access to a high-quality laser cutter has been invaluable to so many of my projects — check out your local library to see what resources they have to offer you!

The engraver did an etching pass on the acrylic, and then cut out eight panels at a time from each sheet of acrylic.

Although making the top portion of the trophies and the acrylic panels was fairly easy, making each trophy's base was considerably trickier. Each piece needed three channels routed out of its top surface and one channel routed out of its bottom surface. I lack the advanced toolage (like a CNC) to do this with professional-level accuracy, and so I had to rely on patience to cut each of these sections away without ruining the piece. First, I routed a channel down the middle of the base where the vertical face would sit snuggly. Then, using some carefully-placed stop-blocks, some two-sided tape, and many clamps, I routed out both channels for the acrylic sheets (one for display, one for storage). This entire process is a complicated dance of carefully placing stops such that the cutting bit stayed within my marked lines, while also paying careful attention to the depth stops on my router (as the depth of the channel is also crucial). But once you've set up a monstrosity of clamps and scrap boards for one base, the next two take shape a bit more quickly. Then, I flipped each base over and routed out a narrow channel for the wiring to sit and a slot in the side for a small On/Off toggle switch.

You can never have too many clamps when using a router.

Once all of the channels were roughly routed out, I then had to hand-chisel each one to its final dimensions to ensure the acrylic panels would fit just snuggly enough not to be misaligned, but also loosely enough that they could be easily removed. I don't tend to do a lot of chiseling, so this was a nice project to practice the skill on!

Chiseling square the rounded edge of each recess was a nice opportunity to test out my new chisels.

Once I had each of the main pieces at a point where I was happy with them, I started working on the electronics component of the trophies. I didn't take many pictures of this phase of the process, but to summarize: I ordered a reel of USB-powered 6000K LED light strips, some USB-A power cables, and some small On/Off switches, then wired them all up in an incredibly basic circuit. The switch is flush mounted to the side of the base, and when plugged in to USB power serves as the only source of control for the lights. I almost used LED strips with actual AC adapters...but then realized I was making three trophies for three people with three different electrical socket standards — so USB-A was the way to go! I did a lot of test fitting before final assembly to make sure the acrylic panels fit properly and the lights worked as intended, and did some fit and finish adjustments to make sure that the etched rings lined up correctly on their respective cities. I used a thin piece of walnut I had lying around as the "cover" on the bottom that seals all of the electronics inside the base, which I think adds a nice contrast to each piece.

Turning this on for the first time was such fun.

All that was left was the final glue-up, adding the 45° chamfer to all of the sharp corners, an extensive sanding process, and a few coats of Danish oil to finish off the look. And boy, do they look pretty. Each trophy was shipped off to its final destination with all of acrylic sheets still having one side of their protective plastic on it (to avoid scratches in transit), and were obviously well-padded to avoid any damage or other unforeseen issues. The best part of today's episode? The boys came up with an official name for the Rickies Trophies: the Trickies.

I’m quite pleased with how these trophies turned out.

Other Offerings From MVO Woodworks

Periodically, I list products on Peer Reviewed's secret store page known as MVO Woodworks — I recently restocked the store with cutting boards, and I should have some wooden keycap pullers in stock as well (so sorry if they've been depleted!). And, of course, if you have a custom project in mind you should definitely reach out to me via my Contact page — custom builds like this are my favorite type of project, and if you can accommodate my unpredictable woodworking schedule, I'd love to help with your idea!

Last week I announced a raffle for a lovely black walnut cutting board benefiting Relay FM's St. Jude Children's Research Hospital fundraiser, coinciding with a restock of cutting boards on this site's store page. Although Relay has extended their fundraiser to October 5th for any last minute donations (which the procrastinators among you should take advantage of now!), the cutting board raffle ended with the month of September. Donation receipts sent to me for the purpose of this raffle totaled just under $1,000 in contributions to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital — that's 10 Red Wagons to help lift the spirits of children being treated at St. Jude. This of course is a tiny sliver of the $680,000 raised by Relay FM and its broader community as of this writing — a staggering figure for such a worthy cause.

I've reached out to the winner of the raffle via email to get their shipping information, as well as all other entrants to thank them for their generous contributions. If you didn't win (or didn't enter): there are still some cutting boards in-stock, if you would like to purchase one the old-fashioned way.