2026-02-08 20:00:00
Sinners
2025, Ryan Coogler
My rating: Loved it!
While the movie takes its time to get going, it is so well worth it. It keeps reinventing itself every few minutes and just keeps getting better and better.
The soundtrack, though, is just on another level. It is so good. One particular scene is gonna stick in my mind for a while, it was freaking amazing. If you watched it, you know which one it is.
2026-02-08 00:31:35
Snow Day
A very cool way to spend the afternoon, just 30min away from home. Lots of kids and dogs playing in the snow!
Taken in Piani Resinelli, Lecco, Italy.
Photos taken on Saturday, 07 Feb 2026
2026-02-03 23:53:06
More invoker commands, and more reasons not to use JavaScript please, by Paweł Grzybek
HTML is getting more powerful! Now you can add some predefined commands to HTML elements that can do things like open (or close) modals, for example, without a single line of JS. This article explains really succinctly how that works. The custom commands thing is neat as well.
2026-02-02 20:00:00
Bugonia
2025, Yorgos Lanthimos
My rating: Loved it!
Gosh I loved this movie. A thriller that managed to make me both really tense and laugh out loud in the same scene without any of these reactions contradicting each other. It’s absolutely ridiculous in the best way.
2026-02-01 20:00:00
The Secret Agent
2025, Kleber Mendonça Filho
My rating: I like it
As a Brazilian I’m extremely proud of this movie, and it’s extremely good in pretty much all regards. Trying to avoid spoilers here, but… it feels like it’s missing a huge part though? With the historical context I have I can kind of imagine why it’s missing, but it felt frustrating, unlike the rest of the movie that’s actually there.
2026-01-31 08:00:00
TL;DR: I’ve just released an iOS version of Phanpy on the App Store and AltStore. It provides better performance and a Liquid Glass icon compared to the installed web app.
Now, if you want some more context…
If you’re reading this, chances are you already know what Mastodon (or the Fediverse) is. If you don’t, the gist of it is that they’re people-owned social media; a bunch of different websites that talk to each other as if they were all the same thing. It’s really nice, and has garnered a lot of interesting people over the years.
One of the best perks of Mastodon is that there’s a bazillion ways to use it. Even though there are official apps (and they’re pretty good), there’s also a ton of 3rd party ones that do an excellent job of satisfying many usage niches. I’ve used a few, but one of them has always stood out: Phanpy.
Phanpy is a web client for Mastodon developed by Chee Aun, and it’s easily become my favorite way to use it. It’s not only pretty and kinda soothing, but it packs a bunch of UX touches that actually make a difference.
It is a web client though, and while on desktop it provides a top-notch experience (and probably on Android too), on iOS the experience was less than ideal, because Apple hates web apps (and the web in general). While you can install Phanpy as a full-screen web app via Safari, it has significant performance limitations, keeps reloading when in the background, and now with iOS 26, can’t have adaptive icons to fit in with other apps.
Which is why I decided to take advantage of Phanpy’s open source code, wrap it in a native package for iOS, and distribute it as an iOS app!
[!info] Launching iOS apps costs money, but my developer license was fully covered by the good folks at AltStore! AltStore has been around for a while as a way to sideload apps into an iPhone, but now it’s a proper alternative marketplace for iOS in the EU and Japan! Meaning that it’s the only way to install apps that Apple won’t allow you to. iPhanpy is available on both the AltStore and the Apple App Store, but I highly recommend checking out the AltStore version if you’re able, so you can also check out the other apps in there 😊
Phanpy is a web client for Mastodon developed by Chee Aun, and it’s easily become my favorite way to use it. It’s not only pretty and kinda soothing, but it packs a bunch of UX touches that actually make a difference.
These touches can be small, but make all the difference. For example, whenever your timeline includes a reply to another post, Phanpy will show a preview of the post being replied to (something that is challenging to do on chronological feeds):
Some can be also small, but very opinionated, like the fact that Alt text is automatically displayed below an image (if it’s short enough to fit in there). This highlights how alt text is not just for vision-impaired users; it’s also a way to provide context to the images, or draw attention to the thing you specifically wanted to highlight.
But the UX touches can also be big: one of my favorites is “Catch-up”, perfect for when you haven’t opened the app in a while and want to see if you’ve missed anything important or want to quickly check posts by the people you care about the most. You choose a period of time and Phanpy will grab all the posts from that period and display them in a highly filterable view.
In the screenshot below, I’m seeing the posts from my timeline from the past 8 hours:
These are definitely not all the nice touches in there, just my favorites. Definitely check out the main Phanpy website to learn about the rest.
Since Phanpy is open source and under the MIT license, this means I could create a fork of it and add whatever changes are necessary to get it to work as an installable iOS app (I did get Chee Aun’s blessing for doing this, though, as I felt it was polite to ask). Why is what I did: this is iPhanpy’s source code, which I try to keep as up-to-date as possible with the main one.
The repo explains the technical side of the implementation in case you’re curious.
While the installed web app (PWA) on iOS is perfectly usable, in my experience it has a few annoyances:
As I said, these were mostly annoyances, not dealbreakers. Still, iPhanpy fixes all of those.
Technically, it’s possible to make one, yes. It wasn’t a priority for me because I don’t use Android (and don’t have a device to test with), but I’m not saying it won’t happen. I just need time and volition to work on it. Maybe once I get a bit more comfortable with keeping the iOS one up-to-date.
If you know a little about Capacitor and how to build/test Android apps, feel free to try it and open a PR with your findings!
I’m aware that logging in to some specific instances is not working on the iOS app, even though it works on the web app. I’m looking into it. What I know so far is that it seems to be related to either an older Mastodon version (< 4.3.0) or to some specific security settings being enabled/disabled. It will be fixed in a future update.
Update: this issue has been resolved in version 1.5.2. Make sure you’re running the latest version!
If you’re using the installed version, iPhanpy, then probably to me. You can do it either on the GitHub repo if you have an account there, or just shoot me a message on my Mastodon account.
For feature requests, it’s better to do it on the original project’s repo.
Keep in mind that Phanpy and iPhanpy are hobby projects to both of us and we have no obligation to work on your issue. Be sensible.
