08JUN2025: I got influenced

Happy Sunday everyone!

This week, I’m finally getting around to watching the original, unreleased Fantastic Four film from my childhood thanks to James' awesome write-up, appreciating Gobino’s insightful analysis of his experiment with turning a standard Fuji camera into a Fuji X-Half camera for a few days, giggling at this guide to Intercontinental Ballistic Missile Ring of Power Feasibility Study thanks to M. Hulot, keeping track of hyperlocal rainfall with Raindrop thanks to my Dad, and spending every spare moment I can get playing Fantasy Life i, Mario Kart World, and Cyberpunk 2077 on the new Nintendo Switch 2.

Lastly, I want to extend my sincere thanks to TRMNL for sponsoring this issue. There’s one week left on their kind offer of $10 off for Hiro Report readers using coupon code: hiroreport. Shout out to my buddy, Ben Brown, who just grabbed a TRMNL last week and already has written up an awesome guide for turning your TRMNL into a slow movie player that shows one frame at a time from movies of your choice.

On to the good stuff!

Note that some of the links below are affiliate links and the Hiro Report may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you.

📷 Not Boring Camera for iOS - The folks from the Not Boring Company have a knack for taking app categories that are pretty oversaturated and finding a way to bring something new and exciting to the space. After making really unique takes on Weather, Timer, and To-Do apps, they are back with their take on a camera app. As usual, they’re bringing really fun and thoughtful design while still providing much-appreciated, good-looking filters for a more authentic look than standard iPhone camera processing allows. My only complaint is that you only get a small handful of test shots before they push you right into a $15/year subscription. I like it, but I’m not sure I’m ready to give up the Leica LUX app for it.

📱Moft iPhone Stand / Tripod - I only mentioned this thing in passing in my Summer Gift Guide last week, but want to give a little more detail here– I’d been seeing this thing pushed by a bunch of influencers in my algorithms for months and resisted for a long time because it seemed kind of cheesy. However, I crumbled a few weeks back, and it’s quickly become one of my favorite iPhone accessories. I’m using it every day for everything from propping up my phone on my desk while I work, to using it as a tripod to take group photos, and as a way to more easily display my Ladder workouts when I’m in the gym. I previously used and loved the Peak Design MagSafe tripod, but this is just so much easier and versatile (not to mention half the price)… there’s no way I’m going back.

🥬 Alma Nutrition Tracking for iOS - I am a sucker for a good nutrient and macro tracking app. The big problem that I usually run into is the old garbage-in, garbage-out issue—meaning if I get too lazy or if it’s too difficult to log the info, I wind up not getting much useful info back, and as a result, I give up on the venture after a day or two. I’m excited to try out Alma because it seems committed to making the logging and entry process as effortless as possible. It does this by leveraging AI to let you either dictate with your voice a description of what you ate or snap a picture, which the AI then analyzes to give its best guess at the nutrients, calories, etc. It also has a built-in AI-powered nutrition coach where you can ask questions to help you make more informed decisions before eating things. Cool!

🕶️ ND Filter Sunglasses - Big thanks to Jeff for flagging these awesome adjustable tint sunglasses. For those who may not be camera nerds, ND filters attach over a lens to cut the amount of light passing through—much like sunglasses do. The difference here is that adjustable ND filters let you twist the filter to either increase or decrease the amount of light passing through. As a result, these sunglasses let you manually adjust how bright or dark you want a scene to be. If you are out in the Atacama Desert on a sunny day, you probably want to dial those things in. On the other hand, if you’re out on a cloudy day in the Irish countryside, you probably would want to let more light in. I need a pair.

 Pico Mac Nano - I am kind of obsessed with this, and if it weren’t for the 90-day backorder, I would probably jump on one right away. These are incredibly small, functioning replicas of the original Apple Macintosh 128k. They use a pico zero microcontroller to power a two-inch LCD screen with a custom-designed PCB to give you a ~2.5in / 62mm tall vintage Mac replica. You can run it with an internal battery or plugged in, and you can attach a full-size keyboard and mouse to put it through its paces.

That’s it for this week! May you find lots of productive mischief to generate this week.

My thanks again to TRMNL for sponsoring the Report!