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Why can’t you show AM/PM time on an iPhone?

So apparently you can’t set your iPhone to show AM and PM alongside the 12-hour time. This may not seem like a big deal, but I think it’s a pretty significant accessibility issue.

My grandpa is 100 years old, we just celebrated his birthday in March. He’s doing pretty darn well for his age. The only thing he’s having trouble with is short-term memory. This usually isn’t a big enough problem to cause any major concern at the moment. Although he lives on his own, it’s in an apartment that is equipped for his needs within an assisted living building, and my parents aren’t too far from him.

The thing that is causing problems, pretty major problems, is when he takes a nap and then wakes up and thinks it’s the wrong time of day. This causes him to miss meals because he doesn’t go down to the dining room in time. And when older folks start to regularly miss meals, they get pretty weak pretty fast.

He doesn’t want to cause a fuss, so we don’t know exactly how often this happens. I imagine with other folks, it also might be a bit embarrassing (maybe it is for him as well, I’m not sure). He naps a lot, which is fair enough considering his age, so I suspect it might be more often than we think.

I was talking about this with my mom, asking him if he has a big digital clock in his apartment or something. He does have a clock, but he usually looks at his watch or his phone for the time. I don’t want to suggest that he wear a digital watch, because his watch came from my grandma. So we were looking at our phones, and she pointed out that there’s no AM/PM.

There’s no way of changing it! That seems ludicrous.

I know he could change it to 24-hr time. But I doubt he would do that, because he would probably convince himself that it’s fine and he doesn’t need it. It would be a heck of a lot easier if you could just show AM/PM via the iOS Date & Time settings, as one would expect.

If any Apple folks happen to read this, I’d love if you could take this feedback onboard in some way. Or if you happen to know anyone at Apple, I’d really appreciate if you shared this with them.

In the meantime… I guess we get him a bigger digital clock for his apartment? I’m really not sure.

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How to make around 40 applesauce and oatmeal mini-muffins with a 1½-year-old

Ingredients
  • 1¼ c (112 g) rolled oats
  • 1¼ c (250 g) unsweetened apple sauce
  • ¼ c (50 g) sugar
  • ½ c (118 mL) milk (oat milk works too)
  • 4 T coconut oil (melted butter works too)
  • 1 t vanilla extract
  • 1 large egg
  • 1 c (130 g) whole wheat flour
  • 1 t baking powder
  • ¾ t baking soda
  • 1 t ground cinnamon
  • ¼ t salt
  • ½ c (80 g) raisins or sultanas
Equipment
  • Cooking spray or room-temp butter for greasing the muffin trays
  • Two 24-count non-stick mini-muffin trays
  • Scales or a measuring cup set
  • Measuring spoon set
  • Liquid measurement jug
  • Medium mixing bowl
  • Large mixing bowl
  • Fork
  • Spoon
  • Spatula
  • Learning tower or a sturdy step-stool for the kid to stand on
  • Aprons, ideally

Preheat the oven to 375F (190C).

While the 1½-year-old is playing with their toddler-sized soccer ball at your feet, take all of the ingredients and equipment out of the cupboards and grease the mini-muffin trays. To get started, pour the oats in to a medium sized bowl and pour the “dry” ingredients (flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt) in a bigger bowl.

Let the kid climb up on to the learning tower platform, and immediately recognize that starting with the oats was a mistake because they love oats. Try to prevent them from shoveling dry oats in to their mouth by giving them a spoon to stir with, and then realize that just compounds that mistake since they’ve recently learned how to use a spoon at dinnertime.

Switch the spoon out for your grandma’s 100% flat spatula to confuse and confound them (“…what on earth is this?”) while you measure out and pour the applesauce in to the oats. Let them lick the applesauce spoon, making them doubly excited about the mixture in the medium bowl. Remember almost too late that their Nana recently gave them a very cute apron, and manage to pull that over their head right before a glob of oats and applesauce dribbles off their chin.

Measure out and add the sugar to the oats-applesauce bowl. (That bowl is only becoming more and more exciting to the kid.). Then measure out the milk in to the jug and pour that in. Mix it up a bit to distribute the chill of the milk — because you learned last time that if you throw melted coconut oil directly on top of cold milk, it congeals in to one big lump — and then measure and add the coconut oil.

You could add the vanilla now, or you could forget it entirely because you hid the little bottle behind the fruit bowl away from cute grabby hands.

Add the egg last (adding it last means less likelihood of raw egg making its way into their mouth), then stir the oat mixture together thoroughly. Put the bowl aside, well out of reach.

Open up the raisins and put a handful on the counter to distract the kid. Fluff the dry ingredients in the big bowl together with a fork, and then pour in a half cup of raisins.

Pour the wet ingredients in to the dry ingredients while the kid absolutely houses the rest of the raisins, and then mix it all together with the spatula until combined.

Using the spoon you abandoned earlier, fill as many of the mini-muffin cups as you can. You want them each to be almost full, maybe seven-eighths of the way there. If you have any empty cups, use the kettle that’s always sitting on the stove to pour a little bit of water in them. You do this because someone once told you it protects the tray, but you have no idea if that’s actually true.

Part way through filling the cups, get the kid down from the learning tower because they’re bored and have spotted their ball again. Try to avoid having them step in the spilled oats and flour because it will stick to their feet and track throughout the apartment. Finish up the filling, then put the trays in the oven and bake at 375F for 15 minutes. Remember as soon as you’ve put the trays in that you always mean to put them on a baking sheet since it’s easier to take them out that way, and make a mental note (again) to do it next time.

When they’re done, let them cool momentarily in the tins to “loosen up” and then remove them to a wire rack to cool completely. Accidentally forget that the kid really loves muffins (why else would you be making them in the first place?) and belatedly realize that you’ve left an actual mountain of one of their favorite things out in plain sight. Blow on one frantically while the kid shouts “MUH-IN!” until it’s cool enough to eat.

Let the rest cool completely before storing them in a gallon-sized Ziplock bag in the freezer. I can’t say how long they keep, since we never keep them all that long.

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Moody tree

A moody, leafless tree on Ilkley Moor with many small branches

We made it up to the northernmost stanza stone with B. He wasn’t thrilled about the whole walk, but he did love squishing his boots in the mud and chowing down on a vegan Greggs sausage roll.

During lunch one day, we heard an insane screeching in front of my sister-in-law’s house. A sparrowhawk had caught a bird not much smaller than itself and was squeezing its talons around it, with its wings fanned out on guard and its head darting around to spot competitors. We wanted to intervene, but it would have been pointless. The sparrowhawk needed to eat (and well done for catching such big prey!), and the other bird seemed likely too injured to survive. It took a long time though.

Photo taken by Sam on his dad’s RICOH GR1v.

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The serial (“Oxford”) comma and screen readers

People think that serial / “Oxford” commas should be an optional style thing. But if you’re writing for the web, please use it.

Here’s an example of a sentence without a serial comma:

Please bring Jack, your brother and your uncle to the party

And an example of a sentence with a serial comma:

Please bring Jack, your brother, and your uncle to the party

First point: the second sentence makes it much clearer that Jack isn’t some questionable relative and that you’re meant to bring three people to the party.

Second point, and more the point of this post: the sentence with the serial comma is much more intelligibly read by screen readers, particularly when content is being read quickly.

Use the serial comma!

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NOW v7: More of the same

Updated my Now page, contents below for posterity. View past presents.

Since the last update in April 2022:

In broader, non-personal news, for posterity’s sake: 🌻 the terrible war in Ukraine continues, 💔 Roe v. Wade was repealed, 🐦 Twitter was bought by a megalomaniac and is subsequently imploding (who saw that coming?!?!?!?), 🇧🇷 Brazil finally got rid of their Trump (swiftly followed by a January 6th-esque attack on Brasília), 🇬🇧👑 the UK saw three prime ministers and two monarchs (all before B was 18 months old!).

We continue to see major tragic events being caused or exacerbated by climate change: flooding devastation in Pakistan, heat waves shrank the Po and Rhine rivers in Europe as well as the Mississippi in the US, Europe experienced its hottest summer on record, Category 4 Hurricane Ian left destruction from the Caribbean up through Florida and the Carolinas.

AI technology and use is accelerating rapidly. It really scares me. Worsening problems with misinformation is part of it, but honestly, deepfaked sexual content and its implications (made-to-order revenge porn, teens using AI to generate idealized images that are even more divorced from reality than IRL porn, etc.) scares me the most right now.

As with the last update, it feels a bit dark right now. But there have been some brighter points. Scientists seem to have made a breakthrough with ☢️ fusion technology. 🏳️‍🌈 Conversion therapy was officially banned in Canada. In Europe, ☀️ solar and wind power overtook gas for the first time. Both sides of the civil war in Ethiopia have signed a disarmament plan. Germany returned 22 Benin Bronzes to Nigeria, as did The National Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian, and the RISD Museum (you listening, British Museum?). In terms of US politics, the midterms weren’t as hard-right-heavy as had been expected. (Probably because the majority of American citizens aren’t nuts and think that abortion should be legal in most cases? IDK, call it a hunch.)

***

In more personal news: It looks like I’ve made progress on most of the things I’ve wanted to do, which is a nice feeling.

We’re still in Brooklyn, and loving our neighborhood. But honestly, it’s probably too expensive for us long-term, and our apartment is definitely too small. So sad, because we love it in every other regard. Do we find a slightly larger apartment in a slightly less ideal location in this neighborhood? Do we find a much larger apartment in a different Brooklyn neighborhood? Do we try Queens? Do we look at a suburb? I really don’t know. Meanwhile, if you know of any 3 bed places coming available, give me a shout. We’d really like to stay where we are.

I’ve been working at SuperHi for a little over seven months now. Early on I was feeling very impostor-y, but I feel a lot more settled in now and have been loving it. My team is great, our projects are exciting, I’m learning so much. In particular, I’ve come up with a system for accessibility auditing that I’m really happy with. I’m hoping to write about that soon.

The day-to-day home routine has just been getting better over time, as long as you ignore the frequent days when it gets thrown off completely by daycare colds… Anyways, it’s pretty much the same as before, only I’m trying to get up a little earlier in order to do at least 15 minutes of exercise per day. I’ve been doing this routine plus some abs stuff, but I really need to branch out a bit. I’ve started running 💨 to daycare pickup which is a super new thing for me, I’ve never been a runner because of my knee. But it isn’t a long distance and it gets my heart rate up, which is good. I’ll keep doing it until the knee thing seems unbearable.

I have been meeting up with people more often, which does wonders for my mental health. Finally went to visit SJB and get the boys together, what a gorgeous house. And the daycare moms meet up for drinks 🍷 about once a month, they can tip it back. RIP Lizzie King’s, hopefully you’ll find a new home. Haven’t found a choir yet… but I’ve only recently felt like it might be a sensible thing to do, both because of Covid and because of time constraints.

Speaking of Covid 🦠, it feels like it’s… gone? Not gone, but we’ve reached some sort of uneasy equilibrium. To be honest, it may be less of an equilibrium and more of a shifting of priorities. Flu, RSV, and just general cold season is so unbelievably bad right now. B got RSV very early in the season, which was awful at the time (Sam was just getting over Covid but still testing positive, so I had to take B to the hospital alone). But looking back, I’m sort of thankful he got it back then? At least we had OTC meds and the hospital wasn’t too busy. There has been zero infant ibuprofen or acetaminophen on the shelves for weeks now, I check basically every store I pass. And hospitals have been packed.

Spring 🌷 can’t come fast enough. I said to Sam the other day that spring is going to come quick, and he gave me a very skeptical look. I think he may be right, but maybe not… time seems to be moving so fast.

B has changed SO MUCH over the past 9 months. First words (“hello” 👋, “ALL DONE” 🙅, “apple” 🍎, “ball” 🔵, “Stu”), animal noises (snake 🐍, lion 🦁, cow 🐮), pointing to body parts (belly button, nose 👃, eye 👁️, ear 👂, feet 🦶), walking then almost immediately running, lots of soccer ⚽️, absolute obsessions (and meltdowns) over anything hand-held with wheels 🛞, so many teeth 🦷. He still loves being startled, and cuddly things. He just started saying “please” (“eeethzzzz”), on command only. On the whole, he’s pretty “easy”. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop…

Nah!

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Winter cherry tree

Went to an HTML Energy gathering last weekend, got to see some great old faces and meet lovely new ones. I tried to hand-draw a leafless cherry tree ASCII-style but got the grid wrong. Here’s a re-attempt.

A teensy, tiny bit of snow stuck to the ground overnight and there was a light dusting when we woke up. First of the season.

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What a cake

EL and KT came over for dinner last weekend and brought cake. WHAT A CAKE.

It was a chocolate coffee crunch cake. I asked EL, basically it’s this chocolate cake with coffee whipped cream and honeycomb as per this Serious Eats recipe.

It was insanely good. Super decadent, but also somehow very light. Just the perfect texture.

The cake itself kind of reminded me of a cake from a long time ago, so I dug out my grandma’s recipe book again. Turns out my great-aunt’s Texas Sheet Cake recipe (jump to recipe, though I recommend reading the critical notes first) is pretty similar in a lot of ways. Most of the measurements are the same, and both are pretty much one-bowl recipes that call for boiling water.

I haven’t made it recently, but it seems to me that it might be a bit denser / richer than the cake recipe linked above since it has more fat and less milk (1 c butter and ½ c buttermilk in the sheet cake versus ½ c oil and 1 c buttermilk/milk in the layer cake). A denser texture would make sense I suppose for a single-layer cake.

I think the recipe above makes more sense for a layer cake, but I’ll write my great-aunt’s recipe out below since the many-times-Xeroxed version in my grandma’s cookbook is almost unreadable and since it might be worth trying this out with the coffee whipped cream + honeycomb topping.

A few critical notes about the sheet cake recipe:

  • The most notable differences between the sheet cake below and the layer cake linked above is the quantity of cocoa (3 T = ⅛ c in the sheet cake versus ¾ c in the layer cake) and the presence of espresso powder (none in the sheet cake versus 1 t in the layer cake). I suspect it would benefit from a stronger chocolate kick… So maybe it would be worth adding more cocoa powder.
  • I’ve added the metric measurements below by using the Traditional Oven converters online. They’ve never failed me yet, but I should say that I haven’t tried these exact metric measurements so can’t vouch for them. If you want Marie’s original version, go with cups.
  • I’ve written the “preparation” section more or less exactly as my great-aunt wrote it. I do actually think it could be simplified though, probably more along the lines of the recipe that EL shared and linked above where you essentially mix all of the dry ingredients + sugar, then beat in the wet ingredients, then carefully beat in boiling water. But I haven’t tried it myself!
  • This recipe calls for buttermilk, whereas the layer cake recipe linked above calls for whatever milk you have on hand. I have a feeling that you really do need to use buttermilk or faux buttermilk (milk + lemon juice or vinegar) for this recipe to work since it only calls for 1 t of baking soda. If you don’t have buttermilk or can’t make faux buttermilk, I’d probably add some baking powder.
  • This recipe doesn’t call for salt, I think because she assumed you were using salted butter. If using unsalted butter, add ½ t salt as well.

Texas Sheet Cake

Marie Longman

Ingredients

  • 2 c (400 g) sugar
  • 2 c (250 g) flour
  • 2 sticks (1 c, 226 g) butter
  • 3 T (⅛ c, 15 g) cocoa powder
  • 1 c (235 ml) water
  • ½ c (118 ml) buttermilk*
  • 2 large eggs
  • 1 t baking soda
  • 1 t cinnamon
  • 1 t vanilla

Preparation

  1. Oil and flour a 15″×10″×1″ jelly roll pan, and preheat the oven to 350F (175C).
  2. In a large mixing bowl, briefly stir together 2 c sugar and 2 c flour.
  3. In a small pot, bring 2 sticks (1 c) butter, 3 T cocoa powder, and 1 c water to a boil, then pour it over the flour and sugar mixture.
  4. Add ½ c buttermilk, 2 eggs, 1 t baking soda, 1 t cinnamon, and 1 t vanilla to the bowl with the other ingredients, then beat everything together just until smooth.
  5. Spread the batter in to your prepared jelly roll pan, then bake for 17-20 minutes at 350F (175C) until a toothpick inserted in to the center comes out clean.
  6. Let cool completely, and then top with the frosting of your choice.

* To make ½ c buttermilk, pour ½ T of lemon juice, distilled white vinegar, or cider vinegar in to a ½ c measurement and then top it up the rest of the way with the milk of your choice. Actual dairy products will curdle when they hit the acid, which is what you want.

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“But still, you’ll live there beside the ocean”

Even though I’ve said to you that she hardly ever wrote a full-page poem, I know of one that I think relates to writing. And I’d like to read that if I could. I happen to have a copy of it. As far as I know it’s never been published, but I’ve kept Ursula’s poems from our group and I remember this one very well. And I think it relates to our discussion about writing.

It’s called The Practice.

That was writer Molly Gloss introducing and reading one of Ursula K. Le Guin’s unpublished poems that she kept from when they were in a small poetry writing group together. This was in conversation with David Naimon on his podcast Between the Covers in the 10 February 2022 episode “Crafting with Ursula: Molly Gloss on Writing the Clear, Clean Line”, at 42:04.

Check out the podcast to listen to the poem in full.

GC shared this podcast episode with impeccable timing, as always.

Edit 29 Jan 2023: The original version of this post had a transcribed version of Le Guin’s poem. But it was pretty presumptive of me to publish it here considering Le Guin had decided not to publish it in her lifetime. Finally got round to removing it today.

I really recommend listening to the podcast in general, but also of course to hear the poem. If for some reason you can’t listen to the podcast but still want to hear it, just email me. I do still have it written down privately.