Lars-Christian's website - Notes

The rise of Markdown

2026-03-25T00:00:09+00:00

Markdown doesn't do most of what those formats do. You can't set margins. You can't do columns. You can't embed a pivot table or track changes or add a watermark that says DRAFT across every page in 45-degree gray Calibri. Markdown doesn't even have a native way to change the font color.

And none of that mattered, because it turns out most writing isn't about any of those things. Most writing is about getting words down in a structure that makes sense, and then getting those words in front of other people. Markdown does that with less friction than anything else ever created. You can learn it in ten minutes, write it in any text editor on any device, read the source file without rendering it, diff it in version control, and convert it to virtually any output format.

Informative and well-written post from Mat on Markdown's rise to prominence over the past few years. Lots of fascinating information in the backstory detailing the .doc and .docx formats about which I knew next to nothing. I just realised a few years ago that plain text was the way to go, and Markdown was the obvious choice at that point. Now I know more about why that was the case.

Old OS X versions

2026-03-29T00:00:08+00:00

Andreas in Emulating old OS X versions with QEMU:

It's weird, because I never used these systems back when they were new, and yet I feel somehow nostalgic for them. I don't know why, but there's just something about the look of them. The colour palette, the skeuomorphism, the fonts and the overall design are just beautiful, and I wouldn't mind using an OS with this kind of look and feel today.

The early versions of Mac OS X were unequivocally better designed and a preferable user experience than the bastardised offspring that today's MacOS has become. My experience started with Tiger (10.4) and I would love to go back. In fact, if someone put together a Linux distro that closely emulates the early OS X aesthetic and UX, I would finally be forced to switch.

If you want to experience the old OS X versions yourself, Andreas' post guides you through the process.

Small workout log update

2026-03-30T00:00:07+00:00

Well, I guess it wasn't feature complete after all. Easy to forget when you're mostly running on the treadmill. Once the hills come around, though, you know you need to log and display elevation gain, or climbing.

So now my workout log does that.

You can see this in the summary section of today's run. As you can see, I climbed 140 metres. If you want to know the actual elevation profile, you can click on the elevation tab. This is just a little extra data point to give context to that visualisation.

For new readers, if you want to know more about how I went about putting the workout log together, I've covered the process extensively in these three posts:

Software used to be better designed

2026-03-31T00:00:06+00:00

A few years ago a new trend in UI design emerged where related elements would appear more and more detached and unrelated to the things they are meant to point to.

Somewhat related to my comments on old versions of OS X being much better designed that the current iteration, is this post where Rakhim points out that this goes for browsers as well. Nobody can claim with a straight face that this evolution isn't degrading the design and user experience.

Does Apple even have a vision for MacOS?

2026-04-01T00:00:05+00:00

Mat Duggan in I Can't See Apple's Vision:

The first time I thought "oh man, they've lost the thread" was Notifications. On iOS, Notifications make sense — you've got apps buried in folders three screens deep, so a unified system for surfacing what's happening is genuinely useful. On macOS, this design makes absolutely no sense at all.

I absolutely cannot wrap my head around notifications on the Mac. Why are they there? Where do they come from? Who decides what goes there? Every time I accidentally open that right sidebar, I'm always surprised to see a heap of notifications there. Should I be checking up on these more often? Am I missing out on important stuff?

The concept of ‘notifications’ in a desktop environment simply doesn't make sense to my, admittedly not very smart, brain.

Mat's post is spot on. Recommended reading!

Python HTML calendar

2026-04-04T00:00:04+00:00

Alex Chan in Creating a personalised bin calendar:

I start by generating an HTML calendar using Python. There’s a built-in calendar module, which lets you output calendars in different formats. It doesn’t embed individual date information in the <td> cells, so I customise the HTMLCalendar class to write the date as an id attribute.

Neat post from Alex. Can immediately think of a few places where this approach might be useful. Also wish I'd known that Python calendar module fifteen years ago when I spent a not insignificant amount of hours setting up a calendar grid in Photoshop by hand ^_^

France is bacon

2026-04-11T00:00:03+00:00

The internet used to be great.

The wisdom we grow

2026-04-11T00:00:02+00:00

I was going through my old notes and clippings (why is a big post in the making) and I came across this quote by Joel Miller. I don't know who Joel Miller is, but this quote by him feels more relevant than ever in the age of AI:

Our investment in reading changes the book because the book has changed us. ... If books are merely a means of transferring information, then perhaps, yes, a book is a waste of time. If a summary of its thesis and key points could be presented in a brief article or Substack post, why not just save the hours and read the Substack post? All the more if the information is outdated or questionable for one reason or another. But that mistakes what a book is for. A book is a tool. It’s a machine for thinking. And “all machines,” as Thoreau once said, “have their friction.” The time it takes to engage with ideas—whether factual or fictional, emotional or intellectual, accurate or inaccurate, efficient or inefficient—might strike some as a drag. But the time given to working through those ideas, adopting and adapting, developing or discarding, changes our minds, changes us. It’s not about the wisdom we glean. It’s about what wisdom we grow.

Re: RSS feeds

2026-04-13T00:00:01+00:00

I'm inside my feed reader and I click a link to a feed. What happens? The link opens in my browser and the feed file is downloaded.

Downloaded! When I'm in my feed reader and click a link to an actual feed. Come on guys! We need to fix this. But, given that Google hates RSS and are already taking additional steps to kill its usability, I'm not too optimistic.

We should be bringing back feed:// URLs and work to make them ubiquitous. The open web needs it, or an equivalent, in the fight against the lock-in of the tech oligarchies.

Another workout logger

2026-04-19T00:00:00+00:00

Rishabh in Old newspaper like blog design:

I also added another category of posts, i.e., workout, whose design is copied from Lars‑Christian's website. Thanks to Lars for the guidance.

Stumbling across this in my feed reader put a huge smile on my face! Risabh's workout log looks great, and it's so cool to have provided a little inspiration for someone else to take control of their data and share workouts on their personal website.

Another great implementation is by Zak, who created a dedicated site on a subdomain for his workouts.

Of course, I encourage both to create dedicated feeds for the workouts. That way, I can truly recreate the good parts of Strava (with none of the many drawbacks) by building a ‘workouts’ folder in my feed reader to draw inspiration when people get the work done.

Hopefully many people will join us in sharing their workouts on their own websites like this, and this is just the beginning of the workout log revolution!