Via Tools and Toys:
Ever since the mid–1980s, actor Jeff Bridges has become known by his castmates for taking candid black-and-white photos of on-set happenings between takes, using his trusty Widelux F8 panoramic camera, which he would privately print and gift to fellow cast and crew members.
The Iron 2 photos are fascinating on how they juxtapose a grainy black and white style with what we know is an otherwise futuristic palette.
My first blush with iPadOS’s mouse support left me underwhelmed. Using a Magic Mouse, I was able to click and otherwise emulate a finger, but one absent feature in particular–support for scrolling in apps like Safari–left me uninterested in using a mouse with my iPad.
A little reading, however, led me to discover that mice with scroll wheels–notably Logitech mice–scroll as you might expect. I tried a leftover USB mouse from my son’s computer, and low and behold! Scrolling!
I picked up a Logitech Anywhere MX 2 today and set up the mouse. I must report that in addition to scrolling working, the ability to program each button to complete a number of useful features makes the mouse even more intriguing.
I set up the mouse to support click/tap with button one; button two activates the menu; other buttons will snap a screen shot, open the app switcher, and even summon the dock. This list action blew me away; I had hovered over the bottom of the screen a number of times looking for the Dock to pop up, but this is possibly even more interesting than standard macOS behavior.
One small detail bothered me, however: leaving Assitive Touch turned on when not using the mouse leaves the small menu button, semi-transparent as it is, on the screen at all times. I don’t like that one bit.
But Shortcuts to the rescue! I quickly made two shortcuts: Mouse On and Mouse Off. One turns Assstive Touch on, the other off. I keep these sorted near the top of my shortcuts, and keep Shortcuts pinned to my home screen.
[I]t serves as a canvas for Phoenix, who goes to strenuous lengths to deliver a performance of operatic bombast. Alarmingly emaciated, affecting a maniacal laugh that Arthur barks out when he’s scared or angry or confused, he delivers a self-consciously larger-than-life performance in a role that simply doesn’t warrant the gravitas afforded to it by fans and filmmakers alike. “Joker” is, finally, so monotonously grandiose and full of its own pretensions that it winds up feeling puny and predictable. Like the anti-hero at its center, it’s a movie trying so hard to be capital-b Big that it can’t help looking small.
It’s hard to say if the muddle “Joker” makes of itself arises from confusion or cowardice, but the result is less a depiction of nihilism than a story about nothing. The look and the sound — cinematography by Lawrence Sher, cello-heavy score by Hildur Gudnadottir — connote gravity and depth, but the movie is weightless and shallow. It isn’t any fun, and it can’t be taken seriously. Is that the joke?
The storyline in and of itself is not a total miss. But once the movie starts lifting shots from “A Clockwork Orange” (and yes, Phillips and company got Warners to let them use the Saul Bass studio logo for the opening credits, in white on red, yet) you know its priorities are less in entertainment than in generating self-importance. As social commentary, “Joker” is pernicious garbage. But besides the wacky pleasures of Phoenix’s performance, it also displays some major movie studio core competencies, in a not dissimilar way to what “A Star Is Born” presented last year. (Bradley Cooper is a producer.) The supporting players, including Glenn Fleshler and Brian Tyree Henry, bring added value to their scenes, and the whole thing feels like a movie.
I’m not a cinema buff, but these reviews have me anxious to see Scorcese’s “King of Comedy.” And Glenn Kenny knows how to pussy-foot.
Make two great martinis:
Stir3 this for at least a minute and then strain into two martini or coupe glasses. You’ll get about 205 ml per drink.
1 Bombay Dry (not Sapphire) is my go-to gin. Tanquery is better; there’s a bit more nose to it, so it’s warmer and softer at the same time. As for the other big name, Beefeater is also delicious. There are a number of other, more expensive gins that you can experiment with. I wouldn’t go much higher in proof with this classic, but Plymouth, Bulldog, and Hendricks are all excellent.
2 Ignore exhortations to leave out vermouth. Swishing it in the glass and pouring it out, glancing at the bottle… all cute but glib. Add vermouth; 6:1 gin:vermouth is a good place to start.
3 Stir, don’t shake. You don’t need a bar spoon but stirring will teach you the correct way to agitate the drink. Shaking makes the drink too watery and cloudy.
Saw Joker yesterday with the family, and we all agreed it was really good.
A couple of pain points in the plot for me:
Quibbles aside, the movie was gritty, showcasing a simulacrum of seedy New York City in the 70s. A series of events unfold that allow an already unhinged person to realize that he is capable of a kind of violence that makes him feel powerful, after a long life of powerlessness.
The first scene–where Joker defends himself from yet another pummeling where’s he’s literally kicked while he’s down–by shooting his assailants is, despite the consequent investigation, empowering to Joker. Even this moment was thrust upon him in a way: the gun was given to him by a well-meaning, if otherwise cowardly, co-worker after Joker suffers a beating at the hands of some bullying teens. So much of what leads to him becoming Joker are matters of happenstance: not situations that he chose, but rather found himself in.
My initial impression, reinforced by the revelation that Sophie Dumond was not, in fact, cultivating a relationship with Arthur, was that much of what Arthur was experiencing was a delusion: he would remain convinced of Thomas Wayne’s parentage, never having an opportunity to find out otherwise; he would believe he had been featured on the Murray Franklin show, but never truly was; he had a conversation wherein he was invited onto the Murray Franklin show, but never truly was. In the way that his relationship with Sophie was wholly imagined, I thought that his motivations and inducements would be, as well.
Despite some of these points being a little to on the nose for my taste, I did love how Arthur-cum-Joker embraced, organically, the power of spectacle to showcase his brand of terror and chaos. He realizes, in a moment of lucidity, that he was brought on to the Murray Franklin show to be made fun of, and rather than use his own suicide to shock the audience, he turns to a shocking display of TV violence. As the movie closes, he revels in bringing chaos to a world that was cruel to him. He is suddenly welcomed, surrounded by a flock… and crowned the Clown Prince of Crime.
It was really well done.
Deiter Bohn, reviewing iPadOS:
I’m weirdly proud of Apple for having the courage to present power users with that difficulty curve spike. Apple used to be so worried that people would get lost that it kept the iPad working like a big iPhone for a really long time. Now, it’s not afraid to just make things complicated and assume people who need it will figure it out.
That sure sounds like a computer to me.
Inspired by the succinct and fun Top Four by Tiffany and Marco Arment, I offer here my top four egg preparations:
A few notes:
I generally follow the Gordon Ramsay egg scramble method, which is very different from the hard scramble you find in most restaurants and homes in the US. I like a hard scramble just fine, but eggs prepared this way are a real treat.
I try to make a classic French omelette, and one of my favorite tutorials is by Jacques Pepin. He describes both the classic omelette and the country or dinner omelette in this video.
This is a disappointment; the mouse has a number of programmable features within the OS, but because it’s considered an “assistive” affordance, the device interprets clicks as touches that your finger would make. I think I could make the buttons work, but the lack of scrolling makes the device kinda pointless. That’s right: you have to click and drag to scroll in a Safari window. This is where the iPad as laptop replacement hits a pain point: If I had to choose between pointing and mousing for long periods of time while working at a desk, I’d choose mousing.
While I don’t care for dark mode on the Mac, I really like it on iOS. I could (but don’t) leave it on all day on the iPhone. I similarly have it automatically switch on my iPad. I find the dark theme is appropriate for when I used my iPad most (at home, in the evening), and especially if I’m reading in bed before I nod off.
I tried the cut/copy/paste gestures but haven’t used them on iPad. If I’m really doing some writing, I have a keyboard. And I know how to use it.
Slide over mode is as good as I’d hoped… I love having a carousel of apps available right on the side of the screen, or tucked away off screen. I can pull out the stack, make notes in Drafts, check Slack, check Twitterrific, and then slide the stack back off screen. It’s evolutionary and iterative in the best way.
Still not really usable for me. It’s the navigation. One day, far in the future, the only people using traditional computers will be spreadsheet jockeys.
I really like having the Today view on my home screen. Rigth now, it’s weather, Files, upcoming events, and Shortcuts. I want to use Shortcuts more but I don’t know if it’s gonna happen.
A few thoughts after watching a quick recap of the Surface Event:
I have started to collect some usage notes on iPadOS for a later post, but I will say that I like having the Files widget pinned to my Today view on the home screen. I used to make smart folders in the Finder with the intention of reviewing them each morning to see where I left off the day before. Files pinned to Today puts it front and center.