Growing increasingly frustrated with the Apple mail client's seemingly unfixable inability to search for emails I just read, I made the switch to MailMate, a good old-fashioned Mac OS X-style app with a lot of useful features, good performance, and, most importantly, working search. Of course, ANU in their infinite wisdom have not seen fit to bless MailMate as an allowed client on their OAuth server, but this is nothing that a little davmail can't fix...

In general, the quality of software on the Mac is getting worse, primarily because a large amount of it isn't even for the Mac (and secondarily because Apple themselves are enshittifying their software and their design guidelines). I'm tired of running 18 instances of Chromium to do basic tasks. This is why I continue to use Nova, TextMate, MailMate, etc. I would use Orion too, except for its jankiness and poor performance compared to Zen. The other major motivation is my aversion to the dreaded bots and those who use them, which is why I moved away from ghostty and to alacritty lately, although I'd welcome suggestions there.

As part of my embrace of well-designed old Mac software, I've started using TextMate again. I made a bundle for building Forester forests that supports completion using forester complete (not LSP, as TextMate predates that).

The bundle can be downloaded from my git repository on tangled.

Last week I auditioned for Coro, a festival concert choir located here in Canberra. I'm delighted to announce that they have invited me to sing with them starting with Motets, their first concert for 2026, scheduled in May.

Oculi mei semper ad Dóminum, quia ipse evéllet de láqueo pedes meos: réspice in me, et miserére mei, quóniam únicus et pauper sum ego.

This Sunday our director was hit with the double-whammy of being both sick and busy, so the choir at All Saints Ainslie was under my (figurative) baton as we sang Saint-Saëns' Ave Verum Corpus, a piece new to me:

Ave verum corpus natum de María Vírgine;	Hail, true body, born of the Virgin Mary;
Vere passum, immolátum in cruce pro hómine;	True suffering, sacrificed on the cross for Man;
Cuius latus perforátum unda fluxit sánguine	From whose pierced side flowed waves of blood,
Esto nobis prægustátum in mortis examine.	Be for us a foretaste in death's trial.

Our organ scholar Lillian also very successfully played for the entire service for the first time. Congratulations to her!