freeform goodness

Hard to believe that I’ve been using Apple platforms for 40 years, Macs for 35, the internet for 30, and the web for 25 years.

Here’s an interesting resource: “A collection of open and indie Mac, iOS, and web apps that help promote the open web.”

Admittedly, I’ve largely ceded my online presence to generally unpleasant silos like Facebook, Twitter, etc. No need for links to those, of course. The gravitational pull of these “click and go” platforms is hard to overcome.

I’d like to add some functionality to my PyBlosxom install here that would reduce the impedance wrt regular posting, but it just never seems to happen. It’s hard to justify spending a weekend buried in an IDE when I’ve got a 6 year old at home. If anyone’s aware of a relatively simple blogger/metaweblog/atompub server-side tool I can point at a Blosxom-style blog-store, I’m all ears. Eveything I’ve found has bitrotted to the point of unusability.

:: 15:45
:: /tech/computers/web | [+]
::Comments (0)

Proud parent of a bouncing baby mortgage.

:: 18:51
:: /personal | [+]
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I’ve owned:

• iPad (2010)
• iPad 2 (2011)
• iPad mini 2 (2013) (bought in 2015)
• iPad Air (2019)

As you can see from the above timeline, I got off of an annual replacement cycle for iPads pretty quickly. My primary workhorse machines are MacOS laptops, and as much as Apple has pushed (in fits and starts) an iPad-first computing philosophy, they are, and remain, consumption devices. Traditionally, I’ve used them for websurfing and light reading from the couch or in bed.

That said, the iPads that felt reasonably zippy for such tasks in the first half of the decade are noticeably less so as the weight of our framework-heavy, Javascript-laden web has placed increasing strain on hardware.

This is a very longwinded way of saying that Apple’s cpus have gone through many generations since I last had a new iPad. Going from an A7 to an A12 is an upgrade you feel. Webpages that took 5-10 seconds to fully render on my old iPad render nearly instantly on the new one.

I was actually torn between the Air and the new Mini, but I decided that I might want to try using it with a Smart Keyboard later. I haven’t picked one up yet, but I did get the 1st generation Pencil. The Pencil is primarily going to be used by Julia on her currently backordered Mini, since she can actually draw. 😄

:: 18:54
:: /tech/gadgets/iPad | [+]
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Ziggy really is quite the cat.

(link)

:: 10:25
:: /personal/pets | [+]
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I was due, so I upgraded my phone. And yes, overall my big impression is that 20 years buys you a lot of progress.

My other big impression is that, if you’re in the dedicated compact (non-interchangeable lens) camera business, I hope you had a plan B.

Here’s to the next 20 years.

(all photos resized but otherwise untouched)

:: 12:23
:: /photo | [+]
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I can’t see how this is even legal. If this were happening with, say, stocks instead of concert tickets, someone would be getting indicted.

:: 12:27
:: /entertainment/music | [+]
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The hunter takes down his prey.

(link)

:: 16:55
:: /personal/pets | [+]
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Our longtime cat, Giant Kitty, passed away a couple of months ago. She had a good, long life (15 years) and we miss her terribly. We’d decided that we would like still like to have a cat in the house, so we planned to get a rescue cat. Giant Kitty was about 3 years old when she was adopted, and our original plan was to get another adult. We were also open to getting a younger cat, as we thought it would be fun for Jacob to watch a kitten grow into adulthood.

We stopped at the Michigan Humane Society on Saturday and spent some time with the residents. There was a wealth of beautiful animals there, all waiting for loving homes. In the end, we went with Ziggy (née Trucker), whose personality was immediately apparent. He’s a 3-month-old domestic short hair mix. He spent the first few hours hiding behind and under things in my home office, but it didn’t take long for his social nature (and love of wiggly toys) to win out.

:: 11:31
:: /personal/pets | [+]
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Go get 'em, little lion!

:: 16:32
:: /personal/family | [+]
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They always look so good, don't they?

More here.

:: 12:03
:: /photo | [+]
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:: 20:15
:: /personal/family | [+]
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I’m often an early adopter when it comes to Apple gear. I picked up my Apple Watch, iPad, and a few other things on launch day. When Apple introduced Airpods in 2016, though, I held back a while, for a few reasons.

1. I’m not a huge fan of earbuds. I think I’ve got slightly funny-shaped ear canals, so they never quite feel right in my ears (i.e. they always feel like they’re on the verge of falling out)
2. Though I’m by no means an audiophile, I’m not a big fan of open-ear headphones. They don’t really isolate you much from outside sound (which has its pros and cons, more on this later), and... I like bass.
3. At $159, they’re not an impulse buy. The only time I’ve ever spent more than $75 on a pair of earphones was for a pair of Sony studio monitors (which were totally worth it, BTW.) These are also tiny, which potentially translates to “easy to lose.”
4. Bluetooth largely sucks (but Apple seems to have eliminated most of the pain points -- see below.)
5. They were a 1.0 product with a lot of unproven tech.

Let me get the other disclaimers (the caveats mentioned in my title) out of the way first. If you’re not completely inside the Apple ecosystem, these are probably not for you. Like a lot of Apple products, a lot of their virtues come from their integration with the rest of the ecosystem. If you’re an Android person with a Windows or Linux laptop, keep looking.

If you primarily buy earphones/headphones for audio quality, keep looking. These are (quite) decent as far as earbuds go, but they’ll never sound as good as a set of high-end closed-ear phones.

The solution to my “earpods fit weird in my ears” issue was surprisingly simple.

That said, I finally found a use case that justified picking them up. We live in an open plan house, and I like watching TV at night (really, it’s the only chance I get.) I’ve tried other solutions for balancing the TV volume, but generally speaking I’m either in a situation when I can’t hear programming well enough to enjoy it, or I’m annoying others in the house. The killer feature for Airpods, for me, is that I could pair them at the iCloud account level. This means that after pairing them once on my iPhone, they automagically became accessible from my Apple Watch, my iPad, my MacBook, and, most importantly, my Apple TV. Plop them in your ears, then hold down the play/pause button until the audio output device selector pops up. There is no step 3.

I use them sometimes from my phone (mostly when grocery shopping), but where they’re most useful is at the office (paired to my MacBook Pro) and on the aforementioned Apple TV. Since they’re not completely audio-isolating, they work well in an office where people may actually have need to get your attention, and since you’re sitting down, you’re not really worried about them falling out. They also work surprisingly well for conference calls.

I haven’t even gotten into how clever the charging case is, or how slick and painless it is moving them between your various devices, or how much better the AAC compression sounds than A2DP.

In short, they’re great and I’m very glad I bought them.

:: 17:19
:: /tech/gadgets | [+]
::Comments (1)

I don’t know if AR is “cooler” than VR, but at least you don’t need a stupid looking hunk of geek strapped to your face to try it.

AR Dragon

:: 10:21
:: /tech/computers/os/ios | [+]
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:: 10:44
:: /personal/family | [+]
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My current obsession is rooibos tea, served with a teaspoon of heavy cream and lightly sugared. Really hits the spot towards the end of the workday.

:: 18:08
:: /entertainment/foodanddrink | [+]
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As someone who lived through the Syndication Wars, I find this interesting.

I’m way older and balder than last time. I also have a 4-year-old, so I’m sitting this one out. It looks like a PyBlosxom plugin would be a Saturday afternoon project or so, but I don’t really have Saturday afternoons free anymore.

:: 17:24
:: /tech/computers/internet | [+]
::Comments (0)

Woke last night to the sensation of something scurrying across my abdomen. Swatted instinctively, felt a handful of… something. Carried it into the bathroom, hit the light, and found a dead centipede in my hand.

:: 11:44
:: /misc | [+]
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We really liked the way Jake’s birthday cake (from a little over 2 weeks ago) turned out.

:: 12:15
:: /personal/family | [+]
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