The less friendly pandemic, Part 2 (Plus bonus more friendly)

The sign at Hume Park warning that the playground (er, “park feature or area”) is currently closed now has a new sticker on it warning of a $200 fine.

“You there, little boy. Let’s see some ID. You’re being fined 200 clams for riding on that swing set.”

“But I don’t have any clams.”

“It’s a metaphor, kid.”

“A meta for what?”

But while the city is turning up the heat in some ways, they are turning it down in others, as the first signs of going back to a kind of normal have emerged. Here’s another sign, this one at the tennis courts.

As long as you are unorganized and have few, if any, friends, you are good to play tennis again. So that’s something.

In the meantime, a weekend of unseasonably hot weather meant people were jamming the parks and beaches, physical distancing be damned. It will be interesting to see what new cases look like in a few weeks. The week ahead appears to be largely wet, so that should dampen a lot of venturing out.

Also in the meantime, I got confirmation today that the college is committed to online courses for the entire summer, as well as for the fall semester, barring those that require specialized equipment or face-to-face interaction–but only if it’s deemed safe to do so. It is expected that “most” classes will remain online.

My thinking on this is that they realize how difficult it is to do physical distancing on the campus–it’s essentially designed to jam people together, not keep them apart–and want to delay this until a vaccine or other effective workaround can be ironed out that would keep the majority of people safe, rather than turning an education into a trip through the plaguelands.

What this means is that I’m all but guaranteed to be working from home until September and may be working from home until December. Basically, for the rest of the year.

While I like my new no-commute very much. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about this.

Oh Siri, Part 87

Adding containers to a shopping list.

Attempt #1: Kool Aid
Attempt #2: Cooler
Attempt #3: Containers. Hooray.

I pronounced the word “container” the same way, with the same inflection each time. This is why the reports that say Siri is better than Alexa ring false to me (or they are testing something else, like depth of trivia knowledge). When Alexa fails, it’s usually because it can’t process the command, either because I’m asking something impossible, or just phrasing it in a way that it’s not been programmed to recognize. It could be as simple as omitting a key word.

Siri is different. Siri will sometimes just fail completely, offering up a baffling “no internet connection” error when the internet is right there, or asking me to try again later because maybe someone at Apple has tripped over the server’s power cord again or worse, insisting that I have no such list to add an item to, after which I will ask Siri to show me that list and it does–then still refuses to let me add items to the list because it still doesn’t exist. But more often than these, Siri will misinterpret what I am saying, giving me Kool Aid instead of containers.

It does this often enough that it doesn’t surprise me. It doesn’t even bother me, really, I just accept that it’s part of the whole Siri experience. But Siri has been around since the iPhone 4S (2011)–it really should be a whole lot better than it is. Bad Apple.

The 8th gen ThinkPad X1 Carbon is priced to sell (to the 1%)

First, I realize the ThinkPad X1 Carbon is a business class laptop and business class means expensive. But this pricing just seems silly.

I get newsletters from Lenovo (I have a 6th gen X1 Carbon) and they’ve just announced the 8th gen model, which uses 10th gen Intel CPUs. There’s a lot of generational stuff here. Anyway, I’ve modified part of the newsletter below to highlight my concern.

The thing, though, is what does that absurdly high (starting!) price of $3149 get you? It’s really just standard specs for any decent ultrabook:

  • 8 GB ram
  • 256 GB SSD
  • 14 inch 1920×1080 non-touch display (not even 16:10)

You get a few minor extras like a fingerprint reader (which is pretty standard on ultrabooks now, anyway), the infamous red nub for navigation (which I find a mild irritant when typing), an alleged 19.5 hours of battery life (take this one with a huge grain of salt–like, jumbo salt), a promise of ruggedness (which I can verify from my model) and the rest is really just configurable options, like a privacy screen, touch display and so on.

Now, compare this to the just-updated MacBook Pro 13 inch model (the one with the 10th gen Intel CPUs). It starts at $2399. This is also a lot of money, but it’s $750 less than the X1 Carbon. What do you sacrifice for that?

  • No USB 3.0 ports
  • No Wi-Fi 6
  • Battery life rated at 10 hours instead of “19.5”
  • Heavier at 3.01 pounds
  • No shutter on webcam
  • Aluminum case will dent and scratch when treated roughly

What do you get over the X1?

  • Four Thunderbolt 3 ports instead of 2
  • Touch Bar (OK, some might consider this a negative)
  • 13 inch display–smaller, but running at a higher resolution of 2560×1600 and at a more productivity-friendly 16:10 ratio
  • Wide color support
  • True tone (display can detect ambient light and adjust automatically)
  • Faster integrated graphics
  • 16 GB ram (twice as much)
  • Ram is significantly faster
  • 512 GB SSD (twice as much)
  • Faster CPU (2.0 GHz vs 1.6 GHz)

Really, unless you absolutely need Windows (which you can still run on the MacBook Pro, actually) or some of the privacy features, or must have Wi-Fi 6 now, the MacBook Pro is not just a better deal, it’s a significantly better deal.

How weird.

But good for Apple. I’ll be posting again about my own laptop possibilities again soon. I will not be considering an 8th gen ThinkPad X1 Carbon.

A summary of the worst president of modern times

You know who I’m talking about. I don’t post much about politics because so much of it is flat out depressing, but I think it’s important to examine the politicians who make it into government, to learn from them, even when they are terrible. Or maybe especially when they are.

I came across this piece on John Gruber’s Daring Fireball. It’s an examination of Trump, what he is and where we are now. It’s depressing, accurate and important.

The Cancer in the Camera Lens, by David Roth, published in The New Republic.

A quote:

And so they ask Trump questions about what he’s saying, and he talks about what he always talks about; he never knows anything useful, cannot tell the truth about the few things he knows, and is pulled by his own preposterous vanity and insecurities back toward the only thing he really cares about, which is himself. This is what the news is made of, now—the things that a vainglorious fraud says, and then the things that other people on television say about how Dangerous and Irresponsible they are, and then what Trump says about that in his amphetamized after-dark Twitter sessions or scrambling tantrum-swept mornings. It’s not that the things Trump says aren’t actually dangerous or irresponsible: They absolutely are. The bigger problem is that the definition by which these things are considered news—basically, because the president says them—is no longer workable.

Bonus quote. Really, go read this now:

…what Trump says will always be nonsensical and self-serving because his brain is a gilded bowl of rotten nectarines

Bad ad

I subscribe to the Bookbub newsletter, which delivers a daily list of bargain-priced ebooks covering any genres you highlight as your favorites. It’s a handy way to find the occasional bestseller for cheap, but better still for finding new authors with minimal financial risk. I’ve started reading several new authors, so can recommend at least checking it out.

This post is not about the Bookbub newsletter.

Rather, it’s about the coveted ad space that appears at the bottom of the newsletter. This is where authors can highlight their efforts and reach a potentially wide market.

Most of the ads are new, but I’ve seen a few repeats. This is about one of them. It is a bad ad.

Here it is:

Why is it a bad ad?

The image of a young woman with blood splattered on her face and finger is obviously meant to be provocative, but something about it just screams stock photo. Visually, I find it dull. I guess the story is about a murderer?

There’s no description of the story, not even a pithy little blurb or one of those mash-up quotes. “It’s Jaws meets the Stepford Wives!”

There’s no title. What is this story called? Beats me. You have to click the link (where does it go?) to find out. But why would I? If the author can’t be bothered to even include the title of their own novel, how much should I care about it?

The quotes feel a little too selective. “Evocative of Stephen King” sounds positive, but for all I know the rest of the quote could be, “but fails to match the horror master’s craftsmanship.”

Also, the author expects people to know what KU is. I do, because I’ve been a longtime Bookbub subscriber, have read up on self-publishing and am familiar with Kindle Unlimited. But what about someone who is new to Bookbub? I’ll concede this part may be aimed at a more specific segment of the Bookbub readership.

This ad has come up a few times and I have yet to click on it. I was tempted to for this post, but still couldn’t be bothered enough. It’s a mystery, but not one I care to solve.

It is a bad ad.

UPDATE: But it is also a ubiquitous ad, as it ran for the next week in the Book Bub newsletter. This prompted me to finally click the link and discover that I had actually checked out the book before, then forgotten about it. I don’t blame the book for this, just my addled mind.

It’s called The Demon King and the basic plot reads a lot like Stephen King’s IT, which is where they “evocative of King” quote likely comes from. It’s also the first book of three in something called “The Bloodletters Collection”, is rated 4.5 out of 5 stars on amazon.ca, and costs $4.25 in Canada thanks to our lowly Canadian dollar. Each book appears to be longer than the previous, also evocative of King. The price is fine, but I ain’t committing to a trilogy from an author I’ve never read that spans over 2,000 print pages. But I’ll probably remember it now.

Death of a butterfly

Today Apple released the updated 13 inch MacBook Pro. As updates go it was pretty tepid. The lower end version is essentially unchanged, still shipping with 8th gen Intel processors, but now with more base storage and the revised Magic keyboard. The magic part is that it’s not prone to fail like the butterfly keyboard. The higher end models include 10th gen processors, but are otherwise pretty much the same as well.

This has led people to speculate that another update is coming later this year, that may include a larger display and other niceties. We shall see.

The important thing here, though, is that with today’s update, Apple is no longer selling any laptops with the butterfly keyboard. From the introduction of the new MacBook in 2015 to today that means that users have been suffering through one of the worst keyboards to ever be fitted into a laptop for five years.

Watching Apple’s flailing attempts to fix the design (multiple times) was painful. And nothing could fix the actual typing experience that some loved, but many actively disliked, or even found uncomfortable (raises hand).

At long last, though, the butterfly keyboard is dead. Hopefully it has taken along with it the obsession with thinness over function that seemed to have Apple designers in its thrall. Yes, the butterfly keyboard was thin. It was also terrible. I still find it amazing that it made it into an actual shipping product (ironically that first product, the new MacBook, was killed after only four years).

Anyway, good job, Apple, for finally purging the butterfly keyboard. But next time don’t make your users suffer through years of a deeply flawed product, OK?

Photo of the Day, May 2, 2020

Actually taken on May 1st. Brunette River, with a heron that landed a few moments before I took this picture.

Here’s a cropped view that a) shows a closer view of the heron and b) demonstrates how smartphones generally suck at zooming in on things.

Treadmill walk: May day (Pandemic #11)

I didn’t intend to stop doing workouts and here it is almost two week since my last one. I am bad. And fat. But it is time to stop morphing into a sloth and morph into a slightly less pudgy human, and so I metaphorically dusted off the treadmill and did a workout tonight.

I made one small tweak–I set the speed to 6.0 (10 km/h pace) instead of the usual 6.5 pace. I was surprised at how different it felt. At 6.5 I have to hold onto the handgrips nearly the entire time, as the treadmill is pulling hard, trying to whisk me off the back. At 6.0 I can hold on with a loose grip and walk without holding at all, though 6.0 is probably near the edge of where that is possible, as I don’t feel entirely steady walking hands-free at this pace.

Overall, I felt fine. The slower pace helped and the 30 minutes went by quickly, even though it still took 30 minutes. The notable differences in the stats are pace (slower treadmill means slower pace, though I was comfortably under the official 10 km/h pace), fewer calories burned (naturally) and a lower BPM (also unsurprising, but nice to see it dropped as much as it did).

Maybe next time I’ll so a mix of speeds. Maybe I’ll actually try jogging. Maybe I won’t wait almost two weeks before doing something again. The world is full of possibilities.

Speed: 6.0 km/h (6.5 km/h)
Incline: 10

Pace: 9:47/km (9:31 km/h)
Time: 30:04 (30:04)
Distance: 3.07 km (3.15 km)
Calories burned: 251 (296)
BPM: 132 (141)

The less friendly pandemic

A few days ago I went on one of my near-daily walks down to Hume Park and saw some visual confirmation of something I’d read online, where the City of New Westminster is shifting tactics when it comes to physical distancing. This sign is now on the lacrosse box, which as you can see, is now padlocked:

“Lack of physical distancing” is pretty clearly saying, “You jerks kept tromping all over the place like there wasn’t a pandemic, so no more fun for you.” The second paragraph carries a veiled threat that parks and trails could be closed entirely.

I can’t say I’m surprised. I think there is a group of people who just don’t care or grasp the risk the virus carries, so they go about things as they normally would, aware that there is a pandemic because they always see it on the news, but indifferent to its effects and of taking precautions.

There is another group, too, one that has been drawing more attention to itself as lockdowns stretch on: the protesters who bristle against their “freedom” being curtailed by the enforcement of physical distancing, restaurant closures and the inability to get a haircut. Especially in the United States, where “rugged individualism” has morphed into a kind of scary self-parody, you see these people gathering outside government buildings, yelling and screaming about being able to do what they damn well want, when they want and more importantly, where they want (some of these protesters wear medical masks, which is curious). These people willfully ignore signs related to physical distancing, because they will not be oppressed. They will, of course, continue to endanger the health of others.

This is the world we live in.

Welcome to May, 2020.