2025-08-01 12:00:00
Well, that really snuck up on me. Here I was, power-puttering™ around on the computer: today is the first of August. Not only does that mark the beginning of the end of summer, but it also marks the first day of the month-long blogging challenge/community event/all-around-fun-times that is Blaugust. From the ‘Blaugust 2025 is Coming’ post by Nerd Girl, who is de-facto hosting this year:
Blaugust is a month-long event that takes place each August which focuses on blogging primarily and has started to include other forms of serialized content over the last several years. The goal is to stoke the fires of creativity and allow bloggers and other content creators to mingle in a shared community while pushing each other to post more regularly. Above all the goal of Blaugust has always been to prove to folks that they can in fact sit down every day and create something fresh and then share it with the world. Posting regularly builds a community and in this era of AI-slop content, our voices are needed even more than we ever have been at any point in the past. Our hope is to create a nurturing environment where Veteran bloggers can help those just getting started and the cross-pollination of ideas can create something truly spectacular. Your blog gives you a permanent foothold on the Internet that you own and have complete control of, and that is a really good feeling in the midst of shifting trends.
I managed to post 31 times during August last year, and it really stretched those muscles. Summer has traditionally been when I take an unintentional break from blogging and being very online, which was again the case this year. I just get so busy doing outside stuff that my computer time goes way down. But I dipped my toe back into the blogging waters the other day and had a great time. I figured Blaugust would be a good thing to take a crack at again.
By the way, if you, like me, think it’ll be nigh impossible to write and publish a post on every literal day in August, don’t worry — you can double up:
Blaugust at its heart has always been about celebrating the creation of content on a regular schedule. The original challenge was to post 31 times during the month of August which is 31 days long. This can be posting every day or doubling up on some days to make the schedule a bit easier.
As you can probably tell, I didn’t put much any thought into what this piece would be. I just realized it was August 1st, opened iA Writer, and started typing. I guess that’s really all it takes. But, off the top of my head, here a few things that perhaps I’ll write about this month:
There’s seven ideas at least. Enough to get me through the first week. And if I run out of ideas, the Blaugust community has a calendar of weekly prompts to rekindle the flame — though I tend not to go by those weekly themes.
Anyway, I encourage you — yes, you! — dear reader, to join in the fun of Blaugust. There are many free blogging sites out there if you need one, but my personal recommendation is to try Micro.blog. You can get a site (that will remain on the internet even if you stop paying) for just $1 with their Micro.one plan. It’s a great service at a great deal.
See you again tomorrow, and happy Blaugust!
This is post #1/31 for Blaugust 2025.
HeyDingus is a blog by Jarrod Blundy about technology, the great outdoors, and other musings. If you like what you see — the blog posts, shortcuts, wallpapers, scripts, or anything — please consider leaving a tip, checking out my store, or just sharing my work. Your support is much appreciated!
I’m always happy to hear from you on social, or by good ol' email.
2025-07-28 11:17:00
Fans of Apple’s iPhone Upgrade Program — the one where you pay monthly for an iPhone and have the opportunity to upgrade to a new model after a given number of payments — rejoice! You can now get a similar deal for an iPad Pro. And when I say “deal”, I really mean it. More on that in a bit.
You might remember the folks at Upgraded have offered a MacBook Upgrade Program for a while now. I used it to purchase this very M4 MacBook Air that I’m typing to you on, and have been super happy with the experience. Their website is crazy-easy to use, setting up the loan very quick, and AppleCare+ is included.
People who like to be on the cutting edge have been asking for Apple to offer this kind of program for products other than the iPhone for years. Upgraded beat them to it for the Mac. And now they have expanded their lineup to include the iPad Pro, lapping Apple in their own game! Here’s how it works, according to their emailed announcement:
Right now, it’s just the iPad Pro models — but the experience works just like our MacBook program. Seamless, flexible, and future-ready. […]
Buying an iPad Pro with us is just like buying a MacBook:
- Pay monthly over 36 months.
- Plans start at $31.89/month for the 11-inch, or $40.78/month for the 13-inch.
- After 24 payments, you can upgrade to a new model or finish the last 12 payments to pay it off.
- If you upgrade, we’ll send a prepaid return box. Just transfer your data, send the old iPad back, and we’ll refurbish it for its next life.
I mentioned that the program is great for folks who want the latest and greatest, but I think it’s equally appealing to anyone who wants or needs to pay off their gadgets over time. If you’re happy with your iPad after two years, just hang onto it, pay it off, and it’s yours to keep!
Yep! Crazy, right? But here is is in black and white:
iPad Pro, 11-inch, Wi-Fi, 256GB, Space Black
As you can see, Upgraded has Apple beat by about $150.
How? I’m not sure. But I think it’s because they lined all of this up before Apple’s recent reshuffle of AppleCare+.
I heard that Apple’s monthly and annual pricing went up as they eliminated any AppleCare without Theft & Loss Protection. And I think you used to be able to buy AppleCare for iPads with a one-time payment for a set period (two years?). But that’s no longer an option. It’s now monthly, yearly, or bust.
Even if Upgraded’s AppleCare coverage is only for two years — when you can swap to a new model — instead of three, they’ve still got Apple beat by $50.
Now, for my MacBook Air purchased through Upgraded, I make monthly payments with 0% interest. That interest rate depends on how Affirm, which manages the loan, judges your credit, so I can’t guarantee that you’ll get that same rate. It may not be as worthwhile if you’re paying a higher interest rate. I don’t link raising my personal debt ceiling, so I probably wouldn’t have sprung for the deal if I was paying extra in interest. But it is absolutely possible to not pay any extra, and in fact pay less than what Apple charges, and have the opportunity to easily upgrade to a newer model in a couple of years.
I expect Upgraded will have their hands full for a while expanding to include Mac desktops and other iPad models. But I think they’ve started with the right products.
But what do I want them to offer next?
First of all, the iPhone. I’m not on one of the major cellular carriers, which means I can’t get a phone through Apple’s iPhone Upgrade Program. So, personally, I’d be geeked if Upgraded could offer iPhones on their upgrade program. I kind of doubt it since they’re not a carrier, but maybe!
Next on my list would be the Apple Watch. It’s the only other bit of tech that I feel compelled to upgrade every few years, if just for the battery life improvements and additional sensors they keep packing into newer models. My original Apple Watch Ultra is showing its age, and I’m excited to upgrade it this year. If I could do so at a flat, monthly rate and know that I could easily swap it out for a new one again in a few years if I wanted to, I’d definitely jump on board. Fingers crossed.
I don’t have any sort of affiliation with Upgraded, but they did offer me a one-time discount on my MacBook Air purchase earlier this year. It was unprompted, and basically done as a thank you for all the customers I had sent their way after I first wrote about them last year. I probably would have purchased my MacBook through Upgraded even without the discount just so I could pay it off over time. And now that I’ve actually tried their service, I can wholeheartedly recommend it.
HeyDingus is a blog by Jarrod Blundy about technology, the great outdoors, and other musings. If you like what you see — the blog posts, shortcuts, wallpapers, scripts, or anything — please consider leaving a tip, checking out my store, or just sharing my work. Your support is much appreciated!
I’m always happy to hear from you on social, or by good ol' email.
2025-07-28 09:24:00
A weekly list of interesting things I found on the internet, posted on Sundays. Sometimes themed, often not.
1️⃣ Got a move streak mix up on your Apple Watch where the gadget thinks you missed a day, but you haven’t? There is a fix! (Related: my stand goal cheater shortcut.) [🔗 sixcolors.com]
2️⃣ New CGP Grey video! I know feel so much smarter about zip codes, and also sad that we don’t use Ireland’s system. [▶️ youtube.com]
3️⃣ Stephen Robles wrote about his journey as a creator, which culminated recently in being invited to WWDC. It’s quite touching. [🔗 beard.fm]
4️⃣ There are so many cool new things and improvements in visionOS 26! This newsletter/blog is the best aggregation of all things Vision Pro (though it’s a little disappointing that almost all the sources are from X). [🔗 lastweekinavp.substack.com]
5️⃣ TIL that there are things such as Nest Rafts to provide a place for loons to nest. [🔗 adirondackexplorer.org]
6️⃣ Rafa retrofit an Opal webcam’s guts into an old Apple iSight camera body and it looks awesome!! Ship it! [🦣 mastodon.design]
7️⃣ Matt Birchler did a little digging into ChatGPT’s alleged gender bias and came away with some optimism. [🔗 birchtree.me]
Thanks for reading 7 Things. If you enjoyed these links or have something neat to share, please let me know. And remember that you can get more links to internet nuggets that I’m finding every day by following me @jarrod on the social web.
HeyDingus is a blog by Jarrod Blundy about technology, the great outdoors, and other musings. If you like what you see — the blog posts, shortcuts, wallpapers, scripts, or anything — please consider leaving a tip, checking out my store, or just sharing my work. Your support is much appreciated!
I’m always happy to hear from you on social, or by good ol' email.
2025-07-28 05:58:00
I’m thrilled to learn (via episode #573 of the Upgrade podcast with Myke Hurley and “Mr. Kobo” himself, Jason Snell) that Kobo has announced a new partnership with Instapaper to replace its Pocket integration:
In partnership with Instapaper, Kobo is working diligently to bring this integration to its eReaders, with the aim of launching by the end of summer 2025. The new Kobo and Instapaper integration will take the place of Kobo’s previous integration with Pocket after that service is sunset in June 2025.
Instapaper echos the announcement in their own blog post, which includes helpful links for importing Pocket content to Instapaper:
Since the Pocket shutdown, our top priority has been to help Pocket users migrate to Instapaper. Pocket users who have made the switch praise Instapaper on its clean, distraction-free reading experience, and robust organization tools.
We’re excited to be partnered closely with Rakuten Kobo to power the read-it-later functionality on their Kobo eReader devices!
I already swapped (back) over to Instapaper as my read-it-later service when Pocket shut down, primarily because it has the same great and easy integration with Reeder Classic — my RSS and all-around reading app of choice.1 And now that Instapaper will sync saved articles to my Kobo later this summer, it really is a hot swap solution.
Good on both Kobo and Instapaper for stepping in to help out Pocket’s users.
Also of note, and likewise learned on Upgrade, the team from Pocket appears to have broken off to basically recreate it as Folio. It’s available on the web and the App Store, and looks just like Pocket did.
In my brief testing, Folio imported my Pocket saves without issue, and its text-to-voice feature actually beats what Pocket had. Its (single) voice sounds more natural, speeds up without sounding bad, and — my favorite2 — actually announces blockquotes by saying, “Quote.”
Although I’m going to stick with Instapaper due to its integrations outlined above, I’m happy to see that the Pocket team is still making a go at it. And perhaps has more leeway on their own to improve the product. Certainly, Folio is an app to keep my eye on.
I essentially never open the Instapaper app itself. I only have it installed so that I can use its Share sheet extension to save articles I find outside of Reeder. Unfortunately, saving things with it is notably slower than Pocket was. Pocket’s extension dismissed automatically pretty quickly, but you could dismissed it even faster with a single tap. Instapaper’s extension requires several swipes to dismiss, or you have to wait longer for it to go away automatically. I might work on a shortcut that could save things more smoothly.↩︎
The best blockquote support in text-to-voice that I’ve ever come across was in the also-semi-recently-sunset Omnivore. It would read blockquotes in an entirely different voice. Much like how in Ben Thompson’s podcast versions of all his Stratechery articles, someone from his team voices the (many) blockquotes, this format provides fantastic clarity when listening to an article. In the read-it-later app that I aspire to build one day on Pocket’s Instapaper’s infrastructure, this feature it’s at the top of the to-do list.↩︎
HeyDingus is a blog by Jarrod Blundy about technology, the great outdoors, and other musings. If you like what you see — the blog posts, shortcuts, wallpapers, scripts, or anything — please consider leaving a tip, checking out my store, or just sharing my work. Your support is much appreciated!
I’m always happy to hear from you on social, or by good ol' email.
2025-07-09 04:16:00
Well, a little less than two months since Mozilla announced it was happening, Pocket, the venerable read-it-later service, has officially shut down.
I’ve been meaning for the last few days to check when Mozilla was turning out the lights; go figure, it’s today.
I’ve exported all my saves, which turned out to be a list of nearly 15,000 URLs split across two CSV files.
My real-later journey has been long and winding. I’ve traveled from Instapaper to Pocket to Readability to Instapaper to Reeder to Goodlinks to Readwise Reader to Pocket. But when I got a Kobo a few years ago, I settled on Pocket since you can read your saved items on the e-reader. Pocket has also had great integration with the Reeder app.
Although I rarely use the Pocket app or website, I’ve been very happy with its text parsing and reliability. And I’ve appreciated how democratic it is. It seems like it’s been very developer-friendly, available everywhere, and able to be integrated in other apps.
In fact, I had vague plans of trying to build my own read-later app upon Pocket’s infrastructure some day. I guess that won’t be happening now.
To maintain my current read-it-later workflow, my plan is to import my saves into Instapaper, since it has the same integration with Reeder as Pocket did.1 That aspect should be fairly seamless. But my Kobo will go back to being purely for reading books.
You had a good run, Pocket. Rest easy, my friend.
What I should do, though, is try starting over with my reading workflow and give Artemis, the calm web reader, a serious try. I like so much about what it stands for — namely, reading articles on their actual websites, and having a quieter, scaled-back reading queue.↩︎
HeyDingus is a blog by Jarrod Blundy about technology, the great outdoors, and other musings. If you like what you see — the blog posts, shortcuts, wallpapers, scripts, or anything — please consider leaving a tip, checking out my store, or just sharing my work. Your support is much appreciated!
I’m always happy to hear from you on social, or by good ol' email.
2025-06-02 04:16:00
A weekly list of interesting things I found on the internet, posted on Sundays. Sometimes themed, often not.
1️⃣ Nick Heer does the work in dismantling this sexist post regarding Apple’s ass handed to it by Judge Gonzalez Rogers. [🔗 pxlnv.com]
2️⃣ Whoa. Monty Python and the Holy Grail turned 50 this year! It still makes me laugh out loud every time I watch it (which you can do for free on YouTube). [🔗 kottke.org]
3️⃣ I had no idea Taylor Swift was so web-forward right from the beginning. She had her music available to download from her website back in 2002 (when she was 13) and by 2003 had a ‘Taylor Talk’ tab there — which I presume was an early blog before she had Tumblr. [🔗 webdesignmuseum.org]
4️⃣ This restaurant is mind-blowing. It looks like a drawing inside! [🔗 kottke.org]
5️⃣ The Baltimore Ravens went all out in their Severance-themed scheduled reveal video. [▶️ youtube.com]
6️⃣ BasicAppleGuy is trying a new approach to reader support in which all his wallpapers and other haberdashery remain free to everyone, but can also be purchased to easily download the files all at once. I like the idea and hope it’s successful for him! [🔗 basicappleguy.com]
7️⃣ This overlapping version of “Dear Theodosia” is beautiful. [▶️ youtube.com]
Thanks for reading 7 Things. If you enjoyed these links or have something neat to share, please let me know. And remember that you can get more links to internet nuggets that I’m finding every day by following me @jarrod on the social web.
HeyDingus is a blog by Jarrod Blundy about technology, the great outdoors, and other musings. If you like what you see — the blog posts, shortcuts, wallpapers, scripts, or anything — please consider leaving a tip, checking out my store, or just sharing my work. Your support is much appreciated!
I’m always happy to hear from you on social, or by good ol' email.