From the bridge on North Road:
Photo of the Day, December 15, 2021: Brunette River
Month: December 2021
Smoke-flavored cheddar sticks and keyboards
UPDATE, August 14, 2023: I bought the Keychron Q1, complete with knob. I'm not sure why I never posted about it. Or maybe I did, and I have failed in searching my own site.
Smoke-flavored cheddar sticks
They taste exactly like smoke and cheddar. Somehow this does not delight me as much as I thought it would, and now I am sad.
Also, the “peel here to open” plastic wrap is strangely difficult to peel open, as if it’s designed to make you work up an appetite or something.
Keyboards
Dave Lee disses on the very keyboard I own in the video linked below. Now I want a Keychron Q1. This is completely irrational, as my CTRL keyboard continues to work perfectly. Still, I want one.
Remember writing prompts?
Yeah, it’s been awhile. I remember vowing to do every prompt in a book filled with a thousand of them. I did ten. Here’s the last post regarding the prompts from just over five years ago: 1,000 creative writing prompts: No more of 1,000
Basically, the prompts weren’t working for me. Maybe that makes me a bad person. Probably. Either way, I gave up after achieving a mere 1% of my stated goal. I feel like I could do better. That I must do better.
So I’m going to start again, and absurdly I am going to use a book of 5,000 writing prompts that I reviewed two years ago. Here is the Goodreads link to the book:
5,000 WRITING PROMPTS: A Master List of Plot Ideas, Creative Exercises, and More
I feel these prompts will be better-suited to what I want to do, and I’m not necessarily going to try completing all 5,000 of them, though that would probably win me some kind of internet prize.
I am going to use the same parameters as I did back in 2016, so I will repost them here:
My intent is to write ultra-short stories that are no more than a few paragraphs long, working through the prompts in order. When I am done, I will perhaps have a party of some sort. Sometimes the short stories will be longer and sometimes instead of a story I will answer the questions (most of the prompts are in the form of questions).
I will begin doing this in the next post.
UPDATE, December 15, 2021: Weirdly, it’s just one day later and the very book I’m using has shown up on sale in Book Bub again. It’s like this was meant to be. Or just a complete coincidence.
Note that below is just an image, not a link, since the sale will expire a few days after this post goes up, and I don’t want people crushed by being offered the book for full price.
Photo of the Day, December 12, 2021: Sunset at Colony Farm
Late afternoon sun at Colony Farm, taken on Saturday, December 11th.
Good design: The Design Lobster newsletter
I figure it’s time to accentuate design that works, not just design that stinks.
The first is simple:
The Design Lobster newsletter by
You can read and subscribe (it’s free!) here: Design Lobster on Substack
Here’s what I like about it:
- Ben Strak seems like a genuinely nice guy
- It’s concise–no filler or fat here. Every week, Ben discusses:
- One question
- One object
- One quote
- Each newsletter has a theme, with interesting and/or quirky examples from history
Check it out!
Bad design: Cryptic firmware updates
Yes, Apple again. Apple makes this too easy.
This MacRumors story outlines a firmware update for AirPods today. Here’s the relevant quote:
Apple does not offer information on what’s included in refreshed firmware updates for the AirPods, so we don’t know what improvements or bug fixes the new firmware brings.
Why would any company push out updates to a product and not tell the customer what the updates contain? I cannot think of any reason for this that is not consumer-hostile, and the Apple executives who have signed off on this policy are wrong-headed and dumb.
And on top of being needlessly secretive, Apple has pushed out firmware updates that have actually degraded the user experience, but with no way to opt out of the updates and no way to see what has changed, the user is effectively held hostage to the hope that Apple won’t screw up.
It’s just such a bad way to treat customers. It really baffles me. If anything ultimately brings down Apple, it will be the hubris behind its “we know best” policies and actions.
Welcome to 1993 (again), courtesy of Grandpa Apple
Apple has awarded the 2021 Mac Game of the Year Award to…
Myst.
Yes, the same game that came out in 1993 for the Mac. This is a full 3D version of the game, but it’s still got all the same puzzles, so it’s really just a nicer-looking version of the same game that came out 28 years ago and ran on System 7.
Is it fair to say this sums up gaming on Macs? Not entirely, but more than a little. Kind of embarrassing, considering there were better contemporary games that could have been highlighted. Apple is devolving into the corporate equivalent of the dad-soon-to-be-grandpa who’s grown conservative, has questionable taste and likes his food packaged and processed, not that hippie natural stuff.
Walk-run 63: The wind blows
Today’s run did not go as expected.
Original plan: 5K run at the lake or river trail.
Actual result: Walk to lake, run back along river trail.
Why: The freaking wind.
I normally check weather conditions before heading out for a run, especially as we get into the fall and winter, to make sure I am dressed properly for the outing. I had checked yesterday and it said it would be sunny and 8C. I figured two layers up top would be fine.
Before heading out, I looked out, confirmed clear skies, and set off.
What I didn’t realize and would have noticed if I had checked the forecast again, was the high wind, gusting up to 25 km/h. The temperature was lower than expected at 5C, but the windchill meant it felt like 0C. My arms (single layer) and upper body were thoroughly chilled on the walk to the lake, so much so that I could not bear the thought of running 2.5 km into that wind before being able to turn around and having it at my back.
Instead, I just ran back along the river trail. At one point I checked and my heart rate was a somewhat unnerving 170 BPM, due to the cold. I did my best to slow down, but am glad I didn’t go farther than I did.
I have learned my lesson. The next time it looks to be windy, I will wear my running jacket, which has worked well even in the rare cases of snow runs.
Since I didn’t plan this walk-run, it’s split between two walks of about 4 km each. I’ve combined the stats accordingly below.
Other than the cold, no other issues were encountered, but the cold was plenty enough. Brr.
Stats (combined):
Walk 63 Average pace: 8:28/km Location: Brunette River trail Distance: 8.21 km Time: 69:55 Weather: Sunny Temp: 5ºC Humidity: 59% Wind: moderate to strong BPM: 130 Weight: 180.3 pounds (fat) Total distance to date: 478.26 km Devices: Apple Watch Series 5, iPhone 12
How about that pandemic?
Yep, I’m officially tired of it 21 months in!
We had a tantalizingly brief window back in early July when it seemed it might actually be under control and on its way out. BC moved to Step 3 of 4 in its “Restart” plan and masks became optional. Everyone (well, almost everyone) was getting vaccinated. Cases were down to a few dozen or so per day and heading toward single digits.
Then the far more contagious Delta variant hit. And in August the mask mandates came back. Step 4, originally set for September 7th, was postponed indefinitely. Today we are still seeing 300-400 cases per day–and that’s actually reflecting a downward trend! And just as it starts to go back down, the new Omicron variant arrives, which seems to be rattling a lot of scientists, though no one really knows much about it.
For me, the masks are how I gauge progress. When masks become optional (again), I will consider the pandemic to be actually winding down into something managed like the flu. I’ve asked people when they think masks will go back to being recommended rather than mandatory, and no one will even venture a guess.
But I will!
I think the soonest will be in March 2022, or roughly three months from now. But that’s only if the current trend continues, and I have no confidence that it will. A safer bet will be by summer–June 2022, or about seven months from now–more than two years after the pandemic started.
I mean, I’m still glad to have not caught a cold or the flu since January 2020, but I do yearn for the good parts of everyday life to return to normal or normalish sooner rather than later.
Things you wrote that make you go, “Hmm”
I use the Drafts app to capture notes on the go and my typical use case is to invoke it through a complication on my Apple Watch. I tap the mic icon, then dictate whatever witty/clever thought I want to record. Sometimes the voice dictation is not completely accurate, but I can usually get the gist of what I meant from context. I found the note below in Drafts and:
- I have no recollection of making this note
- I have no idea what it means. Bad voice transcription? Fever dream? Who can say? It feels like something an erratic AI would compose, with actual meaning just out of reach.
A mystery for the ages.
11 leaven 30 you might have a talk tonight 11 leaves 30 you might have a talk tonight
Answering the question, “Will there be snow this winter?”
Technically, it’s still fall, but the answer is yes.
Boo.
The view outside my home office window this morning:
It’s mostly gone now, but the portent remains, ominous, white and fluffy.
Using Obsidian to try to keep myself organized
Not actual obsidian, though it would be totally cool if I could find some way to make an igneous rock keep my life organized.
In this case, it’s the Obsidian note-taking app, which promises “a second brain for you, forever.” This sounds suspiciously like promising immortality, but I’ll settle for just keeping all of my notes in a single location, so my current and only brain has an easier time remembering to find things.
Why Obsidian. Well, let’s face it, it’s a new (to me) app and I like new toys, so I had to try it out. There’s a mobile version that can sync over iCloud Drive, allowing me to make notes from any device, which is convenient. So far this doesn’t sound much different from other note-taking apps like OneNote or Evernote, but Obsidian also uses a plain folder structure and text files, so everything is portable and accessible through simple apps like Notepad (Windows) or TextEdit (Mac). Because nothing is proprietary or stored in the cloud (unless you choose to put it there), your data is secure and yours alone. Obsidian also supports Markdown for quick formatting and has some features that promise to expand it beyond just a random collection of notes, such as:
- Backlinking. Obsidian allows you to easily create links between notes, expanding what notes can do.
- Plugins. Both core and community-made, extending the capabilities of the app.
- Graph view. This visually shows relationships between notes.
Really, if I can just stick to Obsidian for all my note-taking, that would be a huge improvement over having to search for notes in OneNote, Ulysses, iA Writer, Drafts, the iOS Notes app, Notepad, Notepad++ and whatever else I’ve used over the years. None of these are bad programs–some of them I really enjoy using! But scattering my notes over all of them just makes it harder to find things, and stuff gets lost or forgotten. Or both. Lostgotten.
We’ll see how it goes, but I am cautiously optimistic that this is the beginning of some actual organization on my part and will usher in 2022: The Year of Really Fantastic Organization.