Jay Wardell

@jaywardell.bsky.social

1745 Followers 3489 Following

Introvert. Working my way toward curmudgeon Shark River Studios: https://sharkriverstudios.com

To the Engineers and Product Managers at Toshiba, Who, exactly, thought it was a good idea to dedicate one of the standard function keys to “disable the user’s only pointing device”? Not mute. Not volume. Not brightness. The touchpad. And then to make that the default behavior. I’ve just spent hours tracking down a problem on a Satellite C55 that has plagued its owner for years. Every few months she accidentally presses F5. She doesn’t know she pressed it. She doesn’t know what a touchpad is, much less that a keyboard key can disable it. As far as she’s concerned, “the computer is broken.” She’ll stop using the laptop for days or weeks before asking me to fix it. Every single time. This is not an isolated technical curiosity. It is a human factors failure. A good UI design principle is simple: don’t let a single accidental keystroke render the primary input device unusable. If you absolutely must provide such a function, hide it behind Fn+F5, require confirmation, or provide an unmistakable on-screen message explaining what just happened and how to undo it. Instead, the laptop silently disables its only pointing device. Even after changing the BIOS to standard function-key mode, the firmware on this machine still appears to intercept F5 before passing it through to Windows. That means the system is carrying around years of legacy behavior for a feature that virtually no ordinary user has ever asked for. Think about the support cost this has generated: * Users convinced their laptop has failed. * Friends and relatives wasting time troubleshooting. * IT departments fielding pointless support calls. * Repair shops diagnosing “broken” touchpads that aren’t broken. * Countless hours of unnecessary frustration. All so one key could instantly disable the only practical way many people have to control their computer. Good engineering is invisible. Bad engineering announces itself every few months when an unsuspecting user brushes the wrong key and believes the…
The clue is "WHTSLDRLRSFR"
another clue screenshot. The clue is "TRGNMTR"
iPhone screenshot showing a category: "Don't Know Much 'Bout"
Screenshot from App Store Connect showing 0 downloads
screenshot of my iOS notifications showing 3 messages from App Store Connect. The oldest says "The status of version 1.0 has changed to In Review." and is marked as arriving 39 minutes ago. The second says "The status of version 1.0 has changed to Rejected." and also is marked as having arrived 39 minutes ago. The last says "Version 1.0 has unresolved issues." and is marked as having arrived 38 minutes ago.
Screenshot of the history share card for VWLSS showing a bunch of yellow flowers some of them with some red petals and the text that says 23 perfect daily challenges
Screen shot of the history view for VWLSS showing the old garden marker design
Screenshot of the success screen in my new game VWLSS. shows a flower with all yellow petals and a cartoon water well. Text says “not a state capital” (the puzzle category), “8 correct 3 minutes 6 seconds” and then there are some navigation buttons.
Vwlss card for 5/21/26 Comedians of the nineties Jr rs nf lad
Result card for vwlss 5/20/26. Category board games
Big cats:JGR
screenshot of a ChatGPT response that says: probably either: • say almost nothing in the body • or say one honest explanatory sentence I would lean toward: Writing This is Clover, one of the cats 1 made for the app. 口 Shorter is better here. Or honestly: leave the body completely empty. Reddit image/video posts often perform better with: • strong title • strong media • no explanatory essay Your title already carries the emotional framing. Also: You want: • cozy • personal • handmade-feeling the phrase "There are others" accidentally makes it sound vaguely Al-generated / NFT / collectible / mascot-franchise-ish. not: • expandable content universe.
Screenshot of VWLSS history view, showing a set of yellow and red flowers, arranged vertically in an organic pattern over a green background
Screenshot of a iOS app that shows a set of flower imaged
Screen movie of Purr & Relax opening for the first time and starting a purr session
Screen movie of using share sheet to add a link to cnn.com in Link Later
Photo of black cat sleeping between the legs of a middle aged man
Picture of a black cat lying on a beige carpet
Cast photo for the CTV sitcom Corner Gas
Screenshot of https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S9-C2-1/ALDE_00001087/ taken on an iPhone
Image Playground-generated cartoon of a male lion setting a soccer ball to be kicked.
Screenshot of iOS settings app showing the settings for notifications for the Wallet app. There’s a single toggle labeled “Enable Notifications”. It’s turned off.
Official portrait of president Obama
Generated sketch of a Bassett hound in a basket
Picture of a female ginger kitty cat with very large green eyes.
picture of a car with dented bumper and rear panel and the rear windshield shattered
Cartoon image of a blonde villain in an orange robe smiling menacingly and holding a mug covered in orange whipped cream
Screenshot of a cartoon with a Dutch caption. Below the cartoon is a translation English which says “and the snake spoke”
Screenshot of a definition of the word celebrity with the word “popular” highlighted
Picture of my kitten’s new cat tree
Screenshot of a notification on an iPhone from msnbc saying “Breaking news 5m ago Newly released Oath Keepers founder NBC NEWS Stewart Rhodes says Trump 'did the right thing' by pardoning Jan. 6 rioters”
Xcode screenshot showing an error: /var/folders/xx/4y1770ys3093v_78kr921njw0000gn/T/swift-generated-sources/@__swiftmacro_14ImageTextViews7SpeakerC10isSpeaking18ObservationTrackedfMp_.swift:1:34 Stored property '_isSpeaking' of 'Sendable'-conforming class 'Speaker' is mutable for the code in the editor view: @Observable final class Speaker: NSObject { var isSpeaking: Bool var spokenRange: NSRange? let synthesizer: AVSpeechSynthesizer override init() { self.isSpeaking = false self.synthesizer = AVSpeechSynthesizer() super.init() self.synthesizer.delegate = self } ... }
Screen recording showing a user looking at an image. Below the image is a text representation of what’s in the image. The user taps a button at the bottom and a sheet appears showing the standard iOS translation interface translating the text to Spanish.
Screen movie of a user of an iPhone tapping an image of a business letter. A new window appears with the image at the top and the text from the image below in a large font. The user begins scrolling the text and continues for the remainder of the video
Screen movie of a user tapping an image in a Bluesky post, then tapping a button and getting a screen that shows the image in the top of the screen and the text from the image in the bottom of the screen in a scroll view. The user then taps a button and the iPhone begins to read the text from the image and highlight the words being read in the image and in the scroll view. The user then closes the sheet that was opened.
Screen recording of a person using SkyMarks on a iPhone. Use is doing a search and the string he’s searching for is appearing underlined in yellow and bold in the bookmarks that are showing in the interface.
swift code: #if DEBUG public extension View { /// When you are trying to figure out SwiftUI layout, /// sometimes it helps to have some simple visual debugging. /// This modifier will draw a colored border around the view it modifies. /// - Parameter color: a SwiftUI color, pass in nil to get a randomly-generated color /// - Parameter lineWidth: the width of the border, 1 by default /// /// NOTE: This method only compiles in DEBUG mode, /// so if you are calling it in release code, it will give an error func debuggingBorder(color: Color? = nil, lineWidth: CGFloat? = nil) -> some View { let color = color ?? Color( red: CGFloat.random(in: 0.2 ... 0.9), green: CGFloat.random(in: 0.2 ... 0.9), blue: CGFloat.random(in: 0.2 ... 0.9) ) return self .border(color, width: lineWidth ?? 1) } /// When you are trying to figure out SwiftUI layout, /// sometimes it helps to have some simple visual debugging. /// This modifier will draw a colored background behind the view it modifies. /// - Parameter color: a SwiftUI color, pass in nil to get a randomly-generated color /// /// NOTE: This method only compiles in DEBUG mode, /// so if you are calling it in release code, it will give an error func debuggingBackground(color: Color? = nil) -> some View { let color = color ?? Color( red: CGFloat.random(in: 0.2 ... 0.9), green: CGFloat.random(in: 0.2 ... 0.9), blue: CGFloat.random(in: 0.2 ... 0.9) ) return self .background(color) } } #endif
screenshot of Xcode screenshot. user has right-clicked a branch in the Source Control navigator and is selecting the option that says "Merge next_release into next_release"
screenshot of an iPhone screen showing a new app called "SkyMark". It's a help screen and it says: To bookmark a Bluesky post: • Find a post you like on Bluesky • Tap the Share button, or choose "Share" from the menu • Choose SkyMark from the second row of options (You may have to go into the overflow meu the first tew times) Bookmark • Tap the Bookmark button When you come back here, the post will be at the top of the list.
Female orange tabby cat resting on the chest of a middle aged bald man. Her eyes are mostly closed