Debugging the changing QR codes for Fitness SF
The QR codes for Fitness SF started changing. I had previously created an Apple Wallet pass that would automatically open the code up when you arrived. This stopped scanning at the end of May, and although updating my member ID temporarily fixed it, it broke again two weeks later. This lined up with the update of the app, where v1.3.22 let us know that "this update includes a fix to resolve the error with the QR code when checking in". Let's see if we can figure out what it's doing, and how to replicate the behavior for the Wallet pass.
Make your iPhone grayscale
Like I said in my last post, I'm a big fan of my phone being in grayscale, which helps reduce screentime. This is a quick guide on how to set that up using Shortcuts in a way that automatically disables it for certain apps like Photos and Camera.
Reverse engineering iOS Shortcuts deeplinks
I am a big fan of my phone being in grayscale, which reduces screentime and cuts into into how attention-grabbing the bright red app badges are. The problem is that I don't want all apps to be in grayscale: some because they're effectively broken (Photos, Camera) and others because I'm okay spending time on them (Books, Chess, Crosswords). I used to selectively do this with a Cydia tweak I wrote but nowadays I do it with Shortcuts. A friend asked me how to set it up on their phone, but while the actual shortcut bit is trivial, creating the automation to run it requires tapping a row for every app on your phone. So before I encouraged them to do just that (you should do just that) I wanted to see if Shortcuts had a better way to import or programmatically create automations—through deeplinking.
Getting access to the Letterboxd API with mitmproxy
Unsubscribing from Reddit Community Notifications
America’s Reading Habits
There was a recent tweet I saw saying "I’m willing to bet my entire net worth on neither the median nor the average American reading 11 books a year." There's a lot of people pushing back on it, but all citing different reasons why the data could be wrong. Rather than do that, we can just dig into the underlying data.
Letterboxd Gaps
Kirsten Dunst had a great moment in a 2016 Hollywood Reporter roundtable in response to actresses lamenting that they don't work with female directors, saying that "[she's] worked with so many female directors" and that "it's up to us as actresses to give the opportunity to first time directors". While actors have a lot more sway than audiences in getting projects greenlit, I was curious what percentage of the movies I'd seen were directed by women. I googled around, but the website I found wasn't working and this script was non-trivial for breaking down custom lists. So I built my own!
Tracking down the movie poster for Possession
I recently watched the 1981 movie Possession by Andrzej Żuławski. It's a weird movie, ostensibly horror, but primarily used as a lens for the dissolution of the director's marriage (and political commentary). However the default poster on Letterboxd is explicitly horror focused (claws gripping into a woman’s back, blood trickling down, and bright blue spikes like something out of The Thing poster). I was curious about why they went with this and tried to look up some details on the poster — thus began the rabbit hole. Come along with me on a two day hyperfixation through the history of Possession and its artwork!
Apple Podcast Transcript Viewer
Apple recently added transcripts to their Podcasts app, quickly becoming one of my favorite new features. I wanted to copy a paragraph out of the transcript though, and ran into the 200 word cap on their selection screen. Luckily the MacOS Podcasts app locally caches the transcripts, and so I built a simple web app that allows you to browse the transcripts and easily select parts of them.