How writing late at night compares to pictures of cats

Sometimes when I sit down to write something on this ol’ blog, I do it early in the evening, when I’m just arrived home from work or shortly after dinner, when I am full, content and still reasonably alert. Occasionally I will post during lunch, if I’m feeling especially zany. I do not very often feel especially zany.

More often than I would like I post later in the evening. For example, right now it is 10:47 p.m. and after writing this post I will be off to bed and a night stuffed full of weird dreams, as has been the case of late. The reason I say more often than I would like is if I put off my blog entry until the end of the evening I find my mind has gone mushy and I sometimes stare at the blinking cursor and the only thought that comes to me is, “That cursor sure is blinking there.” And so I post an amusing cat image, because there are about 640 million of them to he had on the web. Cat images easy, writing a semi-intelligent blog post late at night hard.

I should soon have more to say regarding my writing, however, and who knows, eventually I may even resume running and have updates on that. There’s probably a spambot out there somewhere just itching for me to mention running shoes by brand name again, hoping to get in a helpful comment (and link) to some amazingly affordable knockoffs and/or male enhancement pills.

Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Cranky Sunday

My inbox is now filling up with notifications of great Cyber Monday deals, which, by coincidence, are pretty much exactly the same as the Black Friday deals. This and another four weeks of Christmas music everywhere you turn.

It’s not that I hate the holidays or anything…but I kind of do. Christmas in particular–you know, that nutty holiday originally celebrated as the birth of Christ–is now like U.S. elections, seemingly never-ending. And there is no subtle context here, no need to dig to find the reasons, it’s simply because the retail sector wants us to buy their junk and if they can convince you to start Christmas shopping in September, I guess they figure you’ll buy more stuff rather than just get your shopping done three months early and spend the rest of the time annoyed by the millionth playing of “Jingle Bells” on any store’s music system.

The best part about my complaint is that A Charlie Brown Christmas pointed all of this out 50 years ago, and It’s a Wonderful Life did it 19 years before that, in 1946. I’m pretty sure there are cave drawings of carolers being attacked. This is to say that not only is my complaint not new, it’s as old as the universe itself, or pretty close.

Anyway, as part of the Black Friday consumer madness I went out and bought groceries, none of which was holiday-themed.

Then today I went out and bought an Apple Watch. But I did it because my partner also got one and somehow that made it seem logical and proper. Plus today is neither Black Friday nor Cyber Monday. So I’m good.

Yep.

(I’ll have my thoughts on the watch in a few days or so once I’ve gotten used to it. I got the smaller 38 mm model and will say already that it’s lighter and more svelte than I had expected, so that’s a plus. I kind of think Steve Jobs would have hated it, though. More soon™.)

Early holiday thoughts: a correction

A few days ago I posted the following:

The Black Friday nonsense seems to be on the wane, though that may be partly related to the U.S. Thanksgiving coming so late this year. I’ll take what I can get.

I can now verify that this was entirely related to the U.S. Thanksgiving coming so late this year. My inbox is stuffed to the proverbial gills with Black Friday deals. I don’t know if it’s years of Steam sales featuring numerous 75% off deals, but none of these bargains are tempting me in the slightest. I am a bad consumer.

However, if I win $20 million in Saturday’s Lotto 6/49 draw I promise to buy many things and help kickstart the national economy.

But I registered!

The other day I found that my copy of mIRC was showing as unregistered, with the nag screen back in place, something I hadn’t seen for years. I’d just done a Windows update so naturally assumed it was to blame because it was a convenient coincidence.

I had my doubts, though, so when mIRC opened a browser tab that took me to a handy “register your copy of mIRC” page, I looked it over and found this:

Question: Will my registration work with newer versions of mIRC?
Answer: If you are a home user, your registration entitles you to ten years of free updates to new versions of mIRC.

I looked up my original registration email and discovered I had done so in 2004. I actually got a bonus year out of registering, apparently. Strangely, I was still annoyed. On the one hand, getting to use the software for ten years before having to pay again is a pretty good deal when most similar recurring licenses (Office 365, Adobe Creative Cloud, etc.) charge yearly. And yet there was something about the program wiping out my registration as if it never existed–and doing so without warning–that rubbed me the wrong way. I started looking at open source IRC clients but eleven years of using mIRC has made me very comfortable with its interface (and quirks and flaws, of which it has more than a few).

Right now I am running it in “free” mode and putting up with the nag screen while I ponder what to do. I’ll probably pony up the $15 registration fee and be good until 2025. By then I’ll have forgotten all of this and will write this post again.

Why haven’t I won millions of dollars yet?

I have always regarded buying lottery tickets as charity donations, as the odds of winning one of those nice multi-million dollar jackpots is about 1 in 14 million. Those are not good odds. And yet I buy because it’s easy, relatively cheap and the money I spend does go to good things. I’m not one of those unfortunate types who has become addicted to gambling, nor am I one who thinks my odds are improved by buying ten tickets instead of one, I sensibly buy only one per draw.

If I won I wouldn’t spend all my money on hookers and blow. I’d give some to charity, some to friends and family, I’d buy a nice place to live, maybe some new furniture. Nothing fancy or extravagant. Sure, I’d quit my job, but I wouldn’t become the idle rich, I’d work to improve myself. I’d travel and draw and write and help others with their worthy projects. I’d be a swell rich person.

Now I just need a big fat win to demonstrate how wisely I would use my newfound wealth.

This may take awhile.

Two sentence reviews of three tech websites

Here they are:

  • engadget: Consumer-focused tech gear reviews and related stories, with trying-too-hard-to-be-hip writing and just enough typos to make you wince. Every story features a stupidly gigantic image that rarely adds anything but takes up lots of screen real estate.
  • Ars Technica: Sort of a grown-up version of engadget, with more substantive stories and fewer typos. Some of their writers look too young to drive.
  • AnandTech: Anand himself left to join Apple but his site lives on, offering exhaustively detailed reviews of products that includes pages and pages of benchmarks that are probably appreciated by robots or benchmark fan clubs. The layout and design is something a computer might love.

Is it the little things? Yes (even when they’re not donuts)

The first major update for Windows 10 came out recently. It adds the usual assortment of enhancements, fixes and tweaks, but of all of these things the one that pleases–nay, delights–me the most is allowing title bars to actually have color again.

In Windows 8 it was possible to adjust the color of the title bar but not the color of the text, which was always black. This meant you could make the text effectively invisible by making title bars black or some other dark shade. Windows 10 changed this by taking away all choice. You had black text on a white title bar, except for arbitrary apps Microsoft slapped color title bars on–and you also couldn’t adjust those, even to make them match the white ones. It was interface design channeled through a 1970 Soviet committee.

Now, though, I can have a friendly, soothing blue title bar on every program. I open Word and a wave of calm washes over me, like a gentle and warm tide. Then I struggle to remember how to make hidden text visible and start grinding my teeth. Focus on the title bar, I think, let the blue calm me. And it works. That and closing Word. Really, after a billion versions Microsoft should be doing more than slapping a coat of paint on the thing every couple of years. I’m leaning toward going back to WriteMonkey or some other tool that focuses more on actual writing and less on doing everything ever with text and stuffing the means to do these multitude of things in an endless series of icons, ribbons and dialog choices. (Hidden text can be shown by going to File > Options > Display and checking “Hidden text” under the “Always show these formatting marks on the screen” option. But you probably already knew that.)

Anyway, colored title bars are nice. Windows 10 is now officially 23% better.

The warm glow of a solid WiFi connection

Google announced the second version of its OnHub router today and it kind of looks like a miniature version of a nuclear power plant cooling tower. I mean, it even has a radioactive glow at the bottom:

nuclear router technology

While nuclear power is not exactly hot (ho ho) after Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima, the subtle shape may not trigger alarm bells for those not exposed (!) to the iconic look of a cooling tower. And it could have been worse. Google could have made it look like a fire hydrant or erect penis. An erect penis with a radioactive glow.

Tags: now in handy list form

I’ve removed the ol’ tag cloud that I’ve had on the site for the past hundred years or so as tag clouds are becoming passe, like parachute pants and a stable global climate. Instead I’m using a widget that now groups the tags into a dropdown menu so you can easily (assuming you have a robust scroll wheel on your mouse or energetic finger for your mobile device) peruse all 463 of them.

My post-to-tag ratio is clearly out of whack as making random tags I’ll only ever use once (364 of 463) is almost as fun as making lists. And I love making lists so much people do indeed ask me, “Why don’t you marry them?”

Because I used the “l” word, here’s a list of my five most-used tags:

  1. he’s got legs (97)
  2. he’s got (tired) legs 91
  3. Africa hot (67)
  4. random stuff (67)
  5. book reviews (63)

Summary: I like talking about my legs a lot (ie. jogging), I regularly complain about the heat (see above, re: stable global climate), I have a lot of thoughts just drift into my head, and finally, I review most of the books I read. Who knew?