After reaching 60 posts, I realized that if I posted 62 it would be the most ever in a month, and I’ve been blogging since 1897 2005! So naturally I had to do it.
This is Post #62.
Here’s a photo I took at Burnaby Lake back on September 2 showing a pair of dead trees next to a pile of plywood. I wanted to say something clever or profound about this juxtaposition, but couldn’t come up with anything good, so never posted it.
UNTIL NOW.
Enjoy.
(And think of your own clever or profound observation on this.)
Occasionally my phone will take a photo on its own. I’m not entirely sure how it happens, but the image almost always looks like a fight scene from the 1960s Batman TV show, with the angle all askew.
One such photo happened recently when I stood on top of the Cariboo Dam, preparing to take a picture of the scenery. What my phone caught on its own was a shot of my feet and the railing.
I’ve cropped the image and applied a lot of effects using Luminar AI to give it a high contrast, hyperreal kind of look. It’s all abstract(ish) up in the hizzy.
I’ve also included the original photo for reference.
Heavily editedUnedited! Shot courtesy of my iPhone 12 doing its own thing
This is the 60th post I’ve written this month. I don’t know why I felt compelled to make sure I had an average of two posts per day for the month, but here they are!
On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 meaning “I will sell vital organs to get this now”, based on recently released tech gizmos:
Apple stuff
It’s fair to say I did not find their September event particularly “far out.”
iPhone 14: 2 (I don’t need to spend $1,000 on an incremental upgrade)
iPhone 14 Plus: 1 (see above, but bigger)
iPhone 14 Pro: 3 (mildly interesting, mainly due to the camera improvements)
iPhone 14 Pro Max Super Ultra Deluxe Who Approves These Names Anyway: 2 (put in pocket of shorts, act casual as weight of phone pulls shorts down to knees)
Watch Series 8: 5 (I probably need a new watch, but this is just so boring as an upgrade)
Watch SE 2: 1 (no better than what I have now, really)
Watch Ultra: 3 (some mild intrigue, but $1099 for a watch? lol no)
AirPods Pro 2: 3 (I’d probably go for a deal on the original Pros first)
Other:
Steam Deck: 2 (I know it would end up sitting in a drawer)
Wacom Cintiq Pro 27: 8 (this would be awesome for drawing, but at $3,500 U.S. I would actually need to sell vital organs to get one)
Amazon Echo Show 8″ or 10″: 7 (I kind of want one to sit on my desk, but it pretty much defines “inessential”)
Garmin Forerunner 255: 9 (I will almost certainly get one of these, due to a combination of frustration with my increasingly flaky Apple Watch, tech lust and a desire to get more/better stats on my running and other activities. Also, being able to use the watch during a run in the rain would be novel).
I feel like I’ve missed some other recent stuff, so I may update this list later. Or not. I can be all unpredictable like that.
While looking over the list of sponsor offers for this year’s National Novel Writing Month, I noticed a similarity among them: Subscriptions are dominant. Pay up, writer! And keep paying, forever! [evil laughter here]
Here’s a look at the sponsors that are offering novel-writing editors (ie. a text editor, but tailored for writing fiction):
Dabble
Subscription
World Anvil
Subscription or Lifetime purchase ($650 U.S.)
NovelPad
Subscription
First Draft Pro
Subscription
Campfire Write
Subscription or Lifetime purchase (by module)
4thewords
Subscription
Storyist
One time purchase
Scrivener
One time purchase
Monthly pricing starts at $4 at the low end and the high end varies quite a bit, but seems to be mostly in the $15-20 range. Interestingly, Novlr (apparently not a sponsor this year) sent out an email today noting that its pricing is changing, going from $10 a month to $18. Yikes. But you can now also write one full novel for free, so if you think you only have one book in you, you’re set! Otherwise, that’s a serious case of inflation.
Conversely, I got an email recently from Ulysses announcing a drop in price, from $49 per year to $39. They claim research showed it was their “sweet spot.” What does it mean that one company is jacking up their prices while another drops theirs? It may mean the same thing–both are underperforming and they’ve each taken different approaches to shoring up revenue. I don’t know how successful Novlr will be (I think even $10 a month is too much), but their new pricing puts them more in line with most of the subscription software out there (again, Ulysses and a few others being exceptions).
Now, I have previously established that I’m no fan of software as a service (SaaS), so I’m not going to rant about it yet again, just note that it’s a little depressing to see so many developers turn to it. Subscription fatigue is real, not to mention there are plenty of good one-time purchase options that will work just fine. Two of them are in the above list! Also, you don’t need to go full Harlan Ellison and write out your novel longhand on a legal pad, but Macs come with Pages, Windows comes with WordPad and both will allow you to write an entire novel. Want to go minimalist? Try TextEdit and Notepad instead. Notepad even has dark mode now!
The main thing is while these tools may offer nice-looking interfaces and handy tools, Steven Erikson didn’t use any of them, and he’s written like two tonnes of novels, at least. Stephen King has written probably a billion pages, only half of them being the uncut version of The Stand. Don’t pay these people a monthly fee, just write. Write write write. Spend the money on important things, like muffins and a really nice mouse pad.
Since 2009 I have participated in most NaNoWriMo outings, with a success rate of something less than 50 percent. It has been enjoyable at times, maddening at others, and has proven to me that one cannot wait for inspiration to arrive (not that I ever really believed that).
My last effort produced very little of note (and while I did enjoy my re-read of what I wrote on The Journal, I moved almost all of my creative energy back to drawing, rather than writing, so it remains unfinished, neglected but not unloved).
So here’s a list of pros and cons on participating this year:
Pros
Could be zany fun
If I finish, I have an entire novel I can brag about to people, maybe even real people
It would get the creative juices flowing like a mighty river after a huge storm
My typing might improve slightly
Cons
Would occupy a big chunk of time that could be used for other things that might yield more results, like:
Brushing my teeth
Reading other, already completed novels
Walking around
Maddening lack of progress would be maddening and also make me a little sad
Writing a novel in 30 days would probably produce a lousy novel
Seriously, I have no idea what I’d write. The pressure would cause an ulcer, or anxiety, or maybe some kind of rash
The outlook doesn’t look good, but you never know. We’ll find out for sure in just 31 days!
I set off today planning a more casual sort of run to end a week that has seen me feeling pretty tired and droopy. I ended up doing better than expected.
The weather was nice–16C and sunny, but with enough canopy that I was still in the shade for much of the run. Humidity was high, so I did sweat more than I’d have preferred, but it, uh, clears the pores or something.
Fridays are usually the busiest in terms of other people being out and aboot, I assume because more people take Friday off to get a coveted three-day weekend. Today the number of people was even higher than that would account for–then I remembered that today is the first statutory holiday for National Day for Truth and Reconciliation (spoiler: this is definitely not one of those “feel good” official holidays). Lots of people were wearing orange t-shirts–and so was I1 In my case, it was a coincidence, since my usual running shirt is orange.
Most people were pretty good, but a few fell into that “OMG a jogger, what do I do? WHAT DO I DO?!” category. We all got through unscathed.
At one point after exiting the Cottonwood Trail, I just stayed on the left side of the trail, there were so many packing it. Kind of weird, though the sunny conditions at this late time of the month probably brought out even more.
My left hip signalled a bit of displeasure partway through, but was not too bad. I felt a bit creaky, but turned in a good pace despite that. Run smarter, not harder, or something. It also helped that I encountered no park workers, vehicles, construction or other detours/obstacles, just lots and lots of people. Dodging a guy is one thing, dodging a giant mowing machine of death is another.
Here’s a photo from atop the dam shortly before I started the run.
Stats:
Run 721Average pace: 5:53/km
Location: Burnaby Lake (CW)
Start: 10:38 a.m.
Distance: 10.06 km
Time: 59:10
Weather: Sunny
Temp: 16ºC
Humidity: 76%
Wind: light
BPM: 152
Weight: 157.0
Total distance to date: 5307 km
Devices: Apple Watch Series 5, iPhone 12, AirPods (3rd generation)
Shoes: Brooks Caldera 5 (415 km)
The good news is I finally broke out of the long plateau in my weight loss. The less-good news is it took long enough that my weight loss for the month was fairly modest.
But I ended with a flourish, coming in at my lowest weight of the month (157 pounds), with a total loss of 2.6 pounds. I am now exactly seven pounds from my stated goal of 150 pounds. Could I do it by the end of October? Possibly. But November seems more likely.
I’ve been pretty good on snacking and have maintained a regular run/exercise routine, so I am confident I’ll get there, barring a sudden and unexplained addiction to donuts.
Stats:
Weight:
January 1, 2022: 182.8 pounds
Current: 157 pounds
Year to date: Down 25.8 pounds
September 1: 159.6 pounds
September 30: 157 pounds (down 2.6 pounds)
Body fat:
January 1: 23% (42.1 pounds of fat)
August 31: 17.4% (27.4 pounds of fat--down 14.7 pounds)
I skipped yesterday’s run as I’d gotten little sleep the night before and was still feeling wiped out by my fall booster shot. Today I thought of going for a walk and decided to do a 5K at the river instead, since 5K now almost seems short!
It went fine. I didn’t try to run fast and instead just maintained a semi-casual pace, letting the flat, even terrain of the river trail allow me to ease up and enjoy a run that wasn’t as technical.
The only real glitch came when a notification popped up on the watch, invoking a bug that muffles music playback. I ended up pausing the run while trying to fix it, and eventually got it going again. It also gave me an unnecessary break, but them’s…the breaks. At least the heart rate monitoring behaved this time (I did run the heart rate app before starting the run).
My OCD is mildly bothered by my total run distance of 5297 km. I want to do a 3K run just to get it back up to a nice, even number. Maybe next week.
Stats:
Run 720Average pace: 5:43/km
Location: Brunette River Trail
Start: 3:02 p.m.
Distance: 5.05 km
Time: 28:57
Weather: Sun and high cloud
Temp: 20ºC
Humidity: 66%
Wind: light
BPM: 147
Weight: 157.4
Total distance to date: 5297 km
Devices: Apple Watch Series 5, iPhone 12, AirPods (3rd generation)
Shoes: Brooks Caldera 5 (405 km)
When you speak to old Mac geezers (OMGs), they will often wax poetic about Snow Leopard as being the best version of OS X (and remind you it’s the Roman numeral 10, not the letter X), not because it came with a boatload of new features, but because it didn’t. Apple advertised it as having “0 new features” because it focused on improving existing features and fixing bugs found in Leopard, the previous version of OS X.
Back then (roughly the first decade of the 2000s) Apple released its updates on a “when they are ready” schedule, which meant you could go almost two years between updates. That changed in 2012 when Mountain Lion (OS X 10.8) came out a year after Lion. Henceforth, all Mac OS updates would come out on a yearly basis, ready or not.
Ready or not.
iOS updates and the rest of Apple’s lowercase-Uppercase OS releases followed suit, and now yearly releases are the norm.
And they are a bad idea, bad for the industry, bad for users, and Tim Cook should feel bad.
Why? One word: Bugs.
Apple has tacitly admitted it can’t keep up with yearly releases, because it now regularly leaves out major features until “later”. Just this year they delayed iPadOS 16 altogether from September to October just to get things working properly. Yearly releases are not sustainable, they’re dumb, and serve no one when they come with incomplete or missing features and copious glitches. Apple is the 800 pound gorilla in consumer electronics, so if they change course, the industry is likely to follow. And they should!
And the thing is, if Apple switched to updates every two years or “when they’re ready” people would still buy tens of millions of iPhones, plus oodles of iPads, Macs and AirPods, not to mention staying subbed to the cash cows that their services have become. But Apple is not only gigantic, they are incredibly conservative and unlikely to change course unless forced by circumstance or the law (but mostly the law).
Why do I think this? Why am I posting now?
Because watchOS 9 is a bug-riddled mess and since I use my watch for my running workouts, the glitches affect me on a regular, ongoing basis. None of these issues happened before watchOS 9 was released (Apple eventually forces updates, so you can’t even just stay put, eventually you’ll need to upgrade).
Among the bugs I’ve encountered:
Stuttery or missing animations (not a big thing, but annoying)
Unreliable heart rate monitoring, especially at the start of a run (this is a big thing)
Music playback on the watch being permanently muffled when interrupted by a notification. It happened today (again) and even closing the music app did not fix it. I restarted the app and tried three albums before the music finally popped back to regular volume.
Pausing music playing from the watch via the AirPods (clicking the touch control on one of the earbuds), then unpausing, and the playback switches to whatever you were previously listening to on the iPhone. It’s like having someone come into your living room, quietly pick up the remote, change the channel from whatever you were watching, then just as quietly leaving the room.
I suppose I should be happy most things are still working. But bleah, the yearly updates are clearly not going to improve, so I really wish Apple and the whole industry would move away from them.
