Probably my most-used Signal sticker. What does it say about me? Speculate!
Hello! If you are not a bot or LLM scraping this site to help churn out AI-based internet flotsam, then welcome to my blog! I don’t know how you got here, but if you stick around for a few moments, here are a few things you may find useful to know as of January 2024:
I like lists
I frequently write about my jogging (three times a week, usually). This is probably not interesting to anyone but me, but I never found another good place to write about it. I at least include a photo or two in these posts for you to enjoy as you scroll past.
Other popular topics include:
Book reviews (these have fallen off in the last few years).
Complaining about Apple (they’re big and carry an outsized impact on us, so I hold them to a higher standard; I am trying to reduce complaining in general, though).
Technology (I am not an engineer or anything fancy like that).
This blog (I often go meta).
Birding (started this back in 2021).
Writing prompts (both creating and using them).
Photography (mostly birds–see above) and drawing. I don’t get into the technical aspects of photography, I just post my photos.
Like a dinosaur, I use WordPress’s Categories.
I have plans to redesign the blog, but until I do, some things, like photo galleries, are hard or even impossible to find. This is bad and I feel bad.
Generally, I write about whatever I want to write about.
Last year, I gave myself permission to write about anything that popped into my head. I have done this multiple times since.
I have a Mac and a PC. I generally prefer the PC. I do my drawing on an iPad Pro.
My tone can be sarcastic at times. I try never to be mean. I think life, in a way, is absurd, and my writing here may reflect this at times.
Starting this year (2024) I am writing a monthly newsletter called Doodlings and Noodlings1We’ll see if this one comes back to haunt me.
I am working on my first video game. It should come out this year2We’ll see if this one also comes back to haunt me. Also, I like using footnotes..
I am white, male, Canadian, left-handed (but I use a mouse right-handed) and gay.
That’s about it for now. Thanks for reading. I don’t have comments turned on due to spam, but if you want to say something to me, or just send me an inscrutable emoji, I can be reached on Mastodon here: @stanjames@mstdn.social (I’m on other social media platforms, but rarely check or post to them these days. I’m a very low-key social rebel). You can also reach me using old-timey email here: ned@creolened.com
Firefly has been extensively trained on chicken scratch.
I couldn’t remember if I had made resolutions for 2023, which may give you an idea of how well I did at keeping them. Let’s find out and have a good cry together!
The 2023 resolutions were:
Get to 150 pounds by the end of February.
Verdict: Massive fail. As of today, I am 171.8 pounds, which is exactly seven pounds higher than a year ago and more than 20 pounds above my intended goal. I dreamed of being a hummingbird and ended up being a blimp.
Keep running.
Verdict: Success! Despite knee issues, I kept running regularly throughout the year.
Finish my Gum Gum game.
Verdict: Neither success nor failure, as I put the GGP game on pause to develop a different game first as a prototype.
Do more bird art.
Verdict: Success! I am working on more bird art right now.
Keep birding.
Verdict: Success! But this was a gimme.
Finally finish my blog redesign.
Verdict: Failure-ish. I did tweak the design a bit, but the big redesign still awaits.
Finally start doing some stretching.
Verdict: Success! After the issues with my knees and a couple of visits to a physiotherapist, I now stretch before I run.
Weird bonus resolution:
Record an original song in Garage Band.
Verdict: Failure. I think I opened Garage Band once. Fortunately, this was a silly resolution.
Overall: Eight resolutions, four successes. This is actually better than I expected. Onward to 2024!
My Fancy Resolutions for 2024
NOTE: For 2024 I am skipping the "easy" stuff that I would probably be doing anyway, like running and birding.
Get to 150 pounds. But for real this time. Gotta go with the classics.
Finish my prototype game. Title to be revealed soon™.
Complete my blog redesign. Another classic. It could happen!
Revive my newsletter. I am actually working on this now, and have moved from Substack to Buttondown for the hosting.
Complete one of my unfinished novels. Likely either The Mean Mind or Road Closed. I’ve been itching to get back into writing again, and either of these stories will be fun to noodle around on.
Start a new blog or something. I kind of have something in mind, we’ll see what happens.
Focus on:
Being happy
Staying healthy
Bringing good into the world
Getting decent sleep, which will help with all of the above
New for 2024: I will check in at the end of each month to see how well I am doing on these things and use a letter, star, number or some other system to mark my progress or lack thereof. It’ll be fun!
If you’d like a nice, non-sarcastic (mostly) take on what Apple unveiled today, have a look at Jason Snell’s post on Six Colors.
If you’d like my take on the actual event, which may contain a wee bit of sarcasm, read on!
Scary Fast
Everyone knew this event would be all about Macs since the preview image included the Mac Finder and so it was. It began at an unusual 5 p.m. Pacific and, being a day before Halloween, had a spooky Halloween theme. The scariest part is checking the prices of everything in Canadian dollars.
I didn’t do timestamps for the event, but the whole thing wrapped up in 30 minutes. There were no interminable sketches about how great Apple is doing on the environment or constant reminders about Apple’s (newly more expensive) services–though there were still reminders.
The event starts with music that is bad, but not overly loud, possibly because really loud music is not spooky.
We then transition into a Mac ad about “hard work” where everyone is cute and riffs on comments everyone else makes, including a guy from Porsche, because everyone can relate to the simple pleasures of a Porsche. At the end, everyone has a good laugh about how they may be doing hard work, but working isn’t hard on a Mac! I can see the marketing team high-fiving each other over this.
We see Apple Park at night, but it’s been enhanced to look all foggy and spooky (I will be using that word a lot). The camera is flying all over, but you know its destination: Tim Cook. Will he be dressed as a pirate? The ghost of Steve Jobs? A giant carbon credit? He is dressed as none of these things. He is dressed as Tim Cook, though he is favouring dark clothes because spooky.
Tim doesn’t say much and we move on to the “lab” with Johny the Chip Guy. The lab is dark and spooky. In the back is a glowing pumpkin that is actually an orange iMac from like 2002 or something.
Johny intros the M3, M3 Pro, M3 Max and M3 Fred. Just kidding, Fred is not ready yet. Neither is the M3 Ultra, but it will presumably come out later, as did the M1 and M2 versions. These chips are totes faster, though if you look, they constantly emphasize performance vs. M1, because vs. M2 they’re merely 10-15% faster, which is nice, but not roll-your-socks-up-and-down exciting.
Dynamic caching is introduced for the GPU. It will help with demanding applications and make for better games. Both of them!
Ray tracing, just like on the iPhone 15 (they don’t say this, but it’s basically the same thing). Ray Tracing would also be a great character name in some future noir thriller.
More vague graphs comparing M1 to M3.
M3 Max now supports up to 128 GB ram, which is impressive until you remember the Intel Mac Pro supported 1.5 TB.
We now transition magically to Kate! Kate is dressed in black because spooky.
Kate talks about the MacBook Pros. They have axed the 13″ MBP ($1299) and replaced it with a 14″ MBP ($1599). You may be thinking, “Don’t they have a 14″ MBP already?” Yes! Now they have two. This new one is basically the same 14″ model, but only gets the M3, no Pro or Max. Also, the touch bar is DEAD. They should have had a ghostly visage of it floating behind Kate.
I kid you not, they highlight performance by showcasing Myst. You know, that game that came out 30 years ago. It’s like they sit down and say, “We need a list of popular Mac games” and no one ever comes up with anything other than Myst.
For some reason, taking 18 months to bump memory from 96 GB to 128 GB of ram is touted as a great feat.
22 hours of battery life. Impressive!
They slam Intel laptops, including older Intel Mac laptops. 11x faster! 11 hours more battery life! WHY ARE YOU STILL USING INTEL MACBOOKS YOU GODLESS HEATHENS? Intel Mac laptops actively seek out kittens and rub their fur the wrong way. It’s true.
Modest card: “World’s best laptop display”
A new colour!
An ad for the new oclour!
It’s Space Black, or as everyone else calls it, dark gray.
They promise it hides fingerprints better and is durable, a handy quality for an electronic device.
Suddenly an awkward plug for Monarch, coming next month to Apple TV+. Totally worth the price increase! It’ll look great on these new Macs, see?
Baldur’s Gate 3 is name-dropped. This is actually a current top-tier game, a unicorn among Mac titles.
Suddenly, Kate is standing in someone’s living room. Behind her a guy on a couch is playing a guitar while a girl sits next to a coffee table kind of looking at her MacBook. A keyboard is on the floor. Neither of them seem to notice Kate is suddenly with them and talking to what would be a wall.
Kate suddenly zaps into a lab of some sort. It is an immaculate lab, everything perfectly arranged. It’s not spooky, though.
Kate leaps again (not literally, though that would have been awesome) to her final stop: Some tony home where a person is using a MacBook to control three monitors and what seems to be a large TV above them. The little nook he’s in has foam on the walls to dampen and absorb sound, such as all the gabbing Kate is doing, which the guy sitting there does not seem to notice.
It has taken 24 minutes so far to say “We have new chips in our laptops, which are otherwise unchanged.”
Back to John. He announces prices, which are the same as before but truly scary when converted to Canadian, just in time for Halloween and forevermore.
He also mentions the 24″ iMac getting the M3. No other changes. Price the same. He talks about all its features, which, again, are not new or changed in any way. You can sense the audience starting to squirm at this point. I am starting to squirm.
One more potshot at Intel: 4x faster than their lousy old iMacs.
John then claims the 24″ iMac is the “perfect size” to replace both the 21.5 and 27″ intel iMacs, which is an odd thing to say. I suspect some people with 27″ iMacs would not consider a smaller display to be better, nor would they like the utter lack of ports or other compromises in the 24″ iMac, which, again, is a desktop computer, where thinness and lightness are not really a top priority.
Back to Tim! He reveals himself to be a gay werewolf. Nah, just kidding. He actually says “Only Apple can deliver” the deep integration between all their devices, so BUY ALL THE DEVICES, OK? Especially Macs, because sales are way down.
We are now 30 minutes in and the event ends with a card that notes it was shot on iPhone and edited on Mac. It will later be cut up into memes and posted on TikTok.
And that’s a wrap!
One of the shortest Apple events ever, with no real new products (the low end 14″ MacBook Pro is kind of new), so basically 30 minutes to say, “New chips, yay!” to plug Apple TV+, and mercilessly diss Intel. It could have been a press release.
I got my monthly Jetpack report, dig it1Do cool kids say “dig” now? I want to be hip again. I want to be lit, or a banger, or something.:
That number of visitors translates to about 12 per day! A dozen people! That is double digits. Double digits is only one away from triple digits, and from there the sky’s the limit.
I want to thank the following for making this success possible:
Birds
Jogging (?)
Lists
Doodlings
That writing prompt I did about a barista going back in time to kill Hitler
Apple held its annual iPhone event today. They showed two new phones and two new watches. This took 82 excruciating minutes. Behold below, my summary written in a magical list as I watched/endured.
First, some alternate titles for the event that Apple didn’t use:
Paddedlust
Titaniumlust
CarbonNeutrallust
And, of course:
Magicallust
And now, the event, minute by agonizing minute!
NOTE: Gratuitously bolded words and phrases ahead.
The event starts with obnoxiously loud music, as per usual. Seriously, if normal volume is a 1, this is about 100. If it’s too loud for my ears, it is too loud for all of humanity.
Before anyone speaks, a sizzle reel!
But this sizzle reel is all about feels!
Specifically, it is framed around people celebrating birthdays because their Apple Watch called 911 when they crashed/had a heart attack/got kidnapped by aliens, so instead of dying, they had another birthday to celebrate. Teary testimonies all around.
LESSON: Buy an Apple Watch OR YOU WILL DIE.
Next up: Tim Cook, who says they’ll be covering the iPhone and Watch for the next 78 minutes, though it will seem much longer.
First, though, Tim highlights new Macs released in June, quoting Marques Brownlee on how rad they are, because if you can’t trust some guy on YouTube, who can you trust? Also, a plug for the Vision Pro, because it’s still coming and you better start saving now lol.
They also use the Vision Pro segment to highlight how great TV shows will look on it (?!) like “The Morning Show”, new season debuting next week on Apple TV+. Synergy!
Tim’s voice sounds a bit odd and tinny? Maybe they recorded it using a mic on the drone that was flying toward him.
About 10 minutes in, and we are onto the first actual hardware, the Apple Watch.
Jeff Williams appears, and he is dressed weirdly in a mismatched dark blue button-up shirt and light gray pants, like they were the only clean clothes he had.
Another sizzle reel with Stupidly Loud™ music.
The Series 9 watch…looks exactly like every other Apple Watch.
But it’s “next level”. They say this.
S9 chip, so it’s faster.
After 8 years, it still has 18 hours of battery life (lol). But it does more now! Like find your iPhone precisely. But only if you have the newest Watch and newest iPhone. Start saving for these, too!
It goes from 2,000 nits down to 1 nit. I have nothing to offer on this.
Jeff is walking like a badly programmed robot. This is somewhat unnerving.
New feature: Double Tap™ to allow one-handed (hehe) use for times when your other hand is busy or absent. (Note: This was already an accessibility feature, it’s just official™ now).
Another sizzle reel, this time for Double Tap. Use Double Tap to take a phone call while rock climbing. Safe! (This was actually shown in the sizzle reel.)
Now in pink aluminum! The Apple Watch, not the sizzle reel.
Like Tim Cook, Jeff Williams also cannot pronounce the word “important” for some reason. But they each pronounce it differently. Diversity!
And now the Apple 2023 Carbon Neutral Sideshow and Revue, starring Tim Cook and Octavia Spencer. It is now safe to go use the potty, have lunch, take a bath, whatever you like, because this is going to drag on FOREVER.
This isn’t a sizzle reel, it’s like a little very long sketch going on (and on) about Apple 2030, which is when the company plans to be fully carbon-neutral.
Your expensive watch is now made out of recycled everything!
God, this won’t stop. Mother Nature is depicted as a sarcastic grump. It’s not offensive because Mother Nature is make-believe, like elves, unicorns or owls.
We are now 23 minutes into the event and they are still talking about how great Apple is with the environment. Now you get bullet points in the bullet points:
No more leather (which was previously mentioned, but hey, why not mention it again?)
FineWoven™ instead! It’s the new leather, but without any cows involved.
Jeff is still walking like a robot.
Hermes bands, still super expensive, but now without actual leather!
Nike bands with recycled bits of stuff in them that make each one unique (and ugly).
They mention Double Tap AGAIN. It’s magical. You know, like everything else Apple has manufactured in China using cheap labour. Magical!
30 minutes in, the Watch Ultra is mentioned. It’s more Ultra! It’s Ultra 2!
A rehash of everything that is in the Series 9 goes here.
But the Ultra goes to an Ultra bright 3000 nits.
A new watch face! More about software because THERE IS NOTHING ELSE NEW ABOUT THE WATCH.
It lasts 36 hours, just like before. In eight years it will still last 36 hours.
Now they combine their two favourite things about the event: Recycled junk and titanium. The Ultra has recycled titanium. It’s the best!
No dark titanium model. If you had that on your Apple Event bingo card, too bad.
No price changes on any of the three models. Reasonable!
We are now 35 minutes in. It feels like 350.
iPhone! Yes, they are now going to spend the next 47 minutes talking about iPhone. Please stand to insure your legs get circulation.
Dynamic Island™ added to it. Now maybe devs will do something with it? Or maybe not!
It “feels magical2A hundred thousand years from now Apple will still be describing things as magical.” If everything is magical, isn’t everything actually not magical?
Dynamic Island lets you track a pizza delivery and the big game at the same time. A wonder for the ages!
2000 nits! It’s the Year of Nits! Also, contoured edges! Colour infused throughout the glass! Five colours! All the colours are washed-out pastels because Apple is very afraid of colour.
Still has a mute switch! (They don’t mention this, but you can see it in one of the beauty shots.)
STILL MORE carbon-neutral talk. Recycled junk inside everything. New iPhones are probably made out of surplus lightning cables.
48 MP main camera. Basically getting everything the 14 Pro had last year, save for the telephoto lens, variable refresh rate and whatever else that is so important I’ve forgotten it.
LESSON: Wait one year to get the good iPhone.
Portrait mode is better! Switches to it automagically. Even works on dogs and cats. Possibly apes.
You can switch focus to a different person/dog/cat/ape in post. This is actually neat if it works.
Better night mode, A16 Bionic, better battery (but they don’t say how much better).
Wireless features! Uh, wireless features?
New UW chip allows for “precision finding” to better stalk people find your friends.
Better audio on phone calls for the five people who use their iPhone as an actual phone.
Emergency SOS to more countries, roadside assistance via satellite (free for two years).
LESSON: Buy an iPhone or be trapped in the middle of nowhere FOREVER.
We are now 50 minutes in. How is it possible that there are still 32 minutes to go? But there are.
Wired features!
Briefly highlighting USB-C and trying to make it sound like they weren’t totally forced to adopt it due to the mean old Europeans.
EarPods and AirPods Pro 2 both use USB-C now, but use MagSafe instead, OK? We make a lot more money on those accessories! (Seriously, they start talking about MagSafe during the “wired features” section.)
Another sizzle reel with REALLY LOUD MUSIC. So much bass. Please make it stop.
$799/$899 (prices unchanged).
Back to Tim. Pro models! We are 55 minutes in.
Sizzle reel for the Pro models. Titanium, as expected. The music is horrible. This is music for aliens or robots. Or robot aliens.
It’s the most pro phone ever. Tim actually says this.
Greg (or “Joz”) up next. He’s Apple’s actual marketing shill. And yes, his nickname rhymes with the famous shark, so I do a bit of a spit-take every time someone says, “And now over to Jaws.”
Lightest pro model ever!
Titanium! Did we mention that?
A delight to hold in your hand. We won’t tell you how much less it weighs, though. (I looked it up. The iPhone 15 Pro Max weighs 19 grams less than the iPhone 14 Pro Max, or about the equivalent of 4 U.S. nickels.)
YET MORE on titanium. It’s titanium all the way down. Grade 5 titanium! Same as the Mars rover. Maybe The iPhone 15 Pro is made from recycled Mars rovers.
Brushed texture, just like that old version of OS X everyone says was the best.
Look at these non-colours you can get the Pro in!
More repairable, with back glass easier to replace. No reason for the change. Not like there’s pressure to do this from outside forces. Right to repair? Never heard of it! Nope!
Pro gets a new Action Button™. Suck it, non-Pro models!
Choose from pre-defined actions (looks like nine). One probably allows you to start playing horrible music at the touch of a button.
Joz/Jaws is also moving like a robot. What the hell? He shuffles awkwardly when moving left to right in front of the giant display behind him. Is this an Apple event or some covert preview of a new season of Westworld?
A17 Pro. It’s even better because they finally dropped that dumb Bionic name. It’s Pro all the way down (unless it’s titanium).
Whimsical transition to Apple’s hardware lab. Check your Apple Event bingo card!
A17 Pro gets its own bullet points:
USB-C but more better. It’s USB 33USB 3.0 came out as a standard in 2008, BTW fast! (10 GB)
3 nm chip!
GPU mentioned again. It’s Pro class, in case you were wondering.
20% faster!
Ray tracing! Also faster! But only 4x faster.
30 FPS with ray tracing. Don’t ask about 60 FPS.
Jaws: iPhone Pro is best for gaming. Candy Crush has never run better! Buy games! Buy IAP! BUY! (I am extrapolating a bit here.)
68 minutes in now. Remember to feed the cat, if you have a cat.
Sizzle reel #367: Games, featuring devs from various software companies. Apple is so cute when they pretend to cater to gamers.
The cameras!
Larger sensor on the main camera, better low light performance. “Feel her emotion” Jaws implores you, while showing a photo of some woman standing around.
Zoom: 3x telephoto, Pro Max 5x (120 mm).
Better stabilization in case you are taking photos while drunk or riding atop a train.
Tetra prism™ design on Pro Max (don’t call it a periscope lens).
Ultrawide camera is also more better, with 10x optical (?) zoom range and macro (I think I missed something here, because 10x seems wrong, but I’m too lazy to check.)
Fast transfers to your Mac! You have a Mac, right?
Record directly to external storage! Just like any digital camera has been able to do for 20 years or so.
4K video at 60 FPS.
Hey, you can view your photos on the Vision Pro! Isn’t that handy?
Capture spatial video now. You know where you can relive these “magical” memories? That’s right, on your Vision Pro!
Thank the merciful lord, that is it.
Cut back to Tim summarizing how great everything is.
$999/$1199. Pro Max is $100 more, but gets bumped from 128 to 256 GB storage, so effectively the same price as last year with same config.
6 TB and 12 TB iCloud plans now. I bet those will be reasonably priced!
iCloud still comes with 5 GB of free storage, the same it came with in 2011, when iCloud debuted. Because storage needs have not changed in the last 12 years, you see.
Tim says the following words in conclusion about Apple products: Amazing! Indispensable! Innovative! Essential! And he’s thinking Magical. You know it. We all know it.
LESSON: Without Apple products, your life is a worthless sham, and also you are at grave risk from everything around you.
82 minutes later and we are finally done. Tim is now off to wake up members of the press, so they can look at the new phones and watches.
Seriously, the padding of this particular event was downright silly. If brevity is the soul of wit, Apple has no soul and no wit. But they have sizzle reels. Boy howdy, do they have sizzle reels.
Next year’s sizzle reels will be made entirely from recycled titanium. You’re going to love them.
Time for another list. Is my blog becoming some hack listicle site? Maybe! Mostly I’m just in a list kind of mood.
Saturday’s Lotto 6/49 jackpot is $46 million. Even in Canadian dollars, this is a lot of money. What would I do if I had this kind of essentially bottomless wealth handed to me out of the blue? A lot of things. Some of them might even be sensible.
In no particular order:
I’d donate to a favourite YouTube channel in exchange for them never doing another sponsored video again.
Buy a nice place to live, nothing flashy.
Buy a nice vehicle to drive, nothing flashy. I’d also need to renew my driver’s license. Then I’d probably hire someone to drive me around, anyway.
I’d buy one of those stupidly expensive Wacom Cintiq pen tablets.
Give a lot to a list of worthwhile causes and charities. It would be private, so I won’t share names here.
Give to my friends and family. But not too much. I wouldn’t want to corrupt them with my easy money. Yes.
Travel somewhere. Somewhere that isn’t on fire, flooded, under a landslide or swept away by a mega-storm. There are still a few places left.
Buy out as many buildings-named-after-rich-people-or-corporations as I could and have them renamed something to reflect the area or history they’re in, instead. Goodbye, Jim Pattison Acute Care Tower! So long, Rogers Arena! That’s probably all I could afford, actually.
The ability to grow hair or not grow hair on specific parts of your body. Lush beard and moustache? Yes! Hair in my ear? No thanks!
A bubble around me that extends about three meters in all directions and forces everyone who enters it to act nice to me and anyone else in the bubble. And yes, I get to judge what counts as nice. Also, it randomly makes a lollipop every 10 minutes.
Bug-free software
Reasonable prices for storage and memory on Apple computers
World peace (you knew this was coming)
Logical, intelligent, and compassionate people who really want to make the world better running for the highest political offices1Joke: but then they wouldn’t be running, haha. It is a sad joke, not a funny one!
A single day in 2023 where AI is not covered or mentioned by tech sites and news
A magic solution to climate change that would fix things instantly
Teleportation (I secretly think this would also lead to chaos and complete change the world in ways we can’t begin to imagine. I just really want to avoid having to use public transit.)
Weather was mostly nice, except for all the forest fires everywhere. Locally it was sunny, but not usually too hot and humidity is lower compared to last summer.
I resumed running at a more regular pace and my right knee is improving.
Sexy legs, now nicely tanned.
Progress continues on my epic game.
I have kept up writing on this blog.
I’m still not working in tech support.
My social media intake has gone down. This has made me very slightly happier.
We’ve decided to get rid of our cable TV package. This will make me slightly happier, too. And save us a heap of money over the year as a bonus.
The Bad:
My weight went up 2.5 pounds
I got hit with what was probably some flu bug, and while it didn’t hit hard, save for a day or so, it lingered on for weeks before finally going away. Long enough that I appreciated feeling healthy again afterward.
We have a mouse. It is not a pet.
My left running shoe has a hole that is opening up like the San Andreas Fault during The Big One.
No more billionaires. Technically not an invention, but it’s my list, so it stays.
The holodeck. Yep, the holodeck. Not this “put a stupid-looking piece of gear on your face” VR/AR stuff. I don’t care if Apple calls it “spatial computing”, it still looks dumb and no one wants to wear one of these things on their heads for hours at a time.
The Undo Device. Lets you undo any decision you’ve made and all of its consequences. This would, of course, lead to new and more horrible consequences, in true Twilight Zone-style, but I’m willing to risk it.
Purple cats
Replaceable body parts
A microwave oven that works the way we imagine a microwave oven should work
