Back before the holiday, I found myself reviewing OmniFocus and decided to, apropos of nothing, change the name of “Office Christmas Party” to “In the Spirit of the Season.” It occurred to me that I must have read or heard that somewhere and my mind dredged it up from my long-term memory. That’s pretty interesting on its own, cognitively speaking.
It also occurred to me that I might be getting soft and corny now that I’ve turned the page to the age of 50.
But then I woke up on Sunday, on my side of the bed, and looked at the wall next to my warm spot, and saw this:
Our wedding invitation It’s our wedding invitation, framed, which has been hanging on our wall ever since we got it. It think my mom had it done for us. And it opens, “In the Spirit of the Season.”
This a powerful video that echoes a line of thinking that’s currently ascendant around the web. Call it “antifragility,” Stoicism, productive struggle, or not giving a fck. I do like Vivek Murthy’s twist on it, though, in that he highlights relationships as the antidote. The more you look into the productivity literature, the more you read about managing stress and other internal states and cognitions.
Fulfillment is not the lack of hardship and it’s also not lack of stress in your life and I think sometimes we assume that we got to get rid of all stress in order to be happy but when we’re truly rooted in relationships and purpose and service that foundation actually makes us more resilient in the face of stress.
in life there are going to be some stresses and struggles that come our way and the question is can we be in a position where we’re more able to manage them and handle them because we’re not alone…because we have folks around us to support.
Speaking of automation, I used Jason Snell’s excellent tip to make a shortcut to list all of the USB devices connect to my Mac, in plain text.
AppleT6000USBXHCI Portable SSD T5 AppleT6000USBXHCI Scarlett Solo USB AppleT6000USBXHCI AppleT6000USBXHCI MagSafe Charging Case (USB-C) AppleEmbeddedUSBXHCIASMedia3142 USB3 Gen2 Hub Razer Kiyo Pro USB2 Hub Apple Watch Magnetic Charging Cable
One thing: I can absolutely see where a HomeKit thermostat would come in handy. I did in fact once attempt to replace ours, but it’s an older style of wiring that I’m not messing with.
All of my automations control the two HomePods Mini I have. The first Homepod I bought is in our bedroom; we use it as a white noise machine to replace the din the window air conditioner makes during the summer months. My custom, for years, would be to say, “Hey Siri… play white noise.” And that she would.
And that was pretty much all I did with it.
I decided to get another HomePod mini for my “office,” such as it is, for music and maybe some voice-command action while I worked. I started by automating it to play music when anyone came home, and then pause when they left. It just seems to play most of the time, though, which is fine.
My second automation was a little more specific. I set up the bedroom HomePod to play white noise starting at 10 pm on Monday through Friday, and then switch to music at 6:40 am, which is around when Rhonda and the dogs are rousing. It plays music until 9 am, at which time it pauses. For some reason, I have it resuming music an hour later. Not sure why I did that. I’ll have to update it.
Sad news, but I suppose with four-cylinder turbos being so ubiquitous, this made more sense. Rhonda had one of these that she bought in like 2002 if I remember correctly. It was an Indigo Blue VR6 GTI with leather and some kind of fancy speaker system. It was a blast to drive, powerful and throaty. It was, sadly, plagued with electrical problems, so between that and the difficulty of putting an infant travel system in the back of a hatchback coupe, we traded it in for a more practical grocery getter.
Cool Cars
I can only find this picture of the GTI. It was pre-iPhone days, so casual photography was still a more purposeful endeavor than it is today. My favorite part, though, is that you can see my 2000 Toyota MR2 Spyder on the other side of the GTI. Look how tiny! That was a fun car: mid-engine, rear-wheel drive, light, and of course, a drop-top roadster.
2 Row, dark specialty malts, dash of flaked oats. Cacao Nibs and Coffee from Revolution
Rhonda and I stopped at Tonewood last night after dinner for Joey’s birthday at Fuji (for his 20th 😯 birthday) while the boys shopped the House of Fun, and I got one of these. It was delicious and I’m glad I got to try it. I wanted to last weekend but I tried two other styles instead. Rhonda got the Stratocaster, which was also good.
I can’t believe that I haven’t written about Humboldt Fog here on Uncorrected yet! This soft-ripened goat cheese from Cypress Grove has a brie-like rind and a creamy outer layer, with a more traditional goat cheese center. We get it at Bagliani’s when we go, and when it looks fresh. When it’s looking old, it gets really runny in the brie-like section, and loses some of it structural rigidity. You can tell for sure. It’s worth getting if you like brie and goat cheese. I like it just by itself, but it pairs really nicely with a drizzle of honey.
Humboldt Fog Cheese
ChatGPT Integration in iOS
I’ve been using ChatGPT, and before that, Microsoft Copilot, for my chatbot needs. I really really like ChatGPT, but I want the deeper OS integration that would come with a more fulsome Siri… or maybe something else. Whatever it is, I hope it’s a lot like the chat I had Friday on the commute home. I was asking ChatGPT, via the iOS app, some questions, which led to my learning about a CLI for the Mac App Store, mas-cli. (One of my favorite things about using Windows is using Winget instead of their GUI-based store.) I was asking about Honebrew and our “chat” led me to find out about mas-cli. That wouldn’t have happened outside of that chat. I’m pretty excited for Siri to work this way… I just hope that happens. I’ve been waiting for Siri to be more useful for a long time. The integration of the Apple ecosystem is one of the defining experiences of using the platform.
It’s also not much of a prediction to say that Apple Intelligence will continue to be the same mishmash of useful and useless features as it has been up to now. I’m not sure if anyone in the tech industry really knows which AI features will be the ones that blossom into game changers and which ones will be duds. So for now, everyone just keeps throwing spaghetti against the wall. Apple’s got several pots full of spaghetti still on a boil.
It’s also not much of a prediction to say that Apple Intelligence will continue to be the same mishmash of useful and useless features as it has been up to now. I’m not sure if anyone in the tech industry really knows which AI features will be the ones that blossom into game changers and which ones will be duds. So for now, everyone just keeps throwing spaghetti against the wall. Apple’s got several pots full of spaghetti still on a boil.
I’ve been using ChatGPT, and before that, Microsoft Copilot, for my chatbot needs. I really really like ChatGPT, but I want the deeper OS integration that would come with a more fulsome Siri… or maybe something else. Whatever it is, I hope it’s a lot like the chat I had today on the ride home. I was asking ChatGPT, via the iOS app, some questions, and even learned about a CLI for the Mac App Store, mas-cli. One of my favorite things about using windows is using Winget instead of their store. I was asking about Honebrew and our “chat” led me to find out about mas-cli. That wouldn’t have happened outside of that chat. Impressive.
This limitation extends beyond the realm of pro apps such as Final Cut or Logic and applies to all kind of software that, due to the nature of iPadOS, is impossible to find on the platform. Because of a mix of technical limitations and policy decisions, it’s still impossible for an application that wants to perform something in the background to exist on iPadOS. From clipboard managers and video encoders to automation utilities and AI-based photo editors, if you want to run a time-consuming task in the background on iPad, you’re out of luck.
I thought the exact same thing today while typing on my iPad. On the Mac and Windows, you can stack a bunch of text and images up in your clipboard and insert them in any order in another document. The iPad? Not so much. All the window switching is bananas.
While I have used a handful of RSS readers over the years, NetNewsWire is one of the earliest I used and one I still come back to, even after a bumpy ride. There are probably more than a handful of blogs and sites that I’ve subscribed to that have made the jump from NetNewsWire to NewsFire to Reeder to whatever else in between and more than a handful of back-end sync services to keep track of it all. If I see something insightful that someone writes and some of their other posts are enjoyable, I’ll subscribe. Social media comes and goes, but the little geeky list of things that computer enthusiasts, designers, and other interesting folks are writing has been a part of my daily routine for the better part of the last twenty years.
My RSS feed is something I check every day. Using it would have took different than it does today to catch a toehold with social medians, though.
I wrote at the beginning of Christmas break that I was bringing the Chemex home to see how we felt about it vs the Melita pour over rig I usually use. (I use the Chemex at the office.) I still have to check in with Rhonda, but for myself, I feel like the Melita at home is just fine. Maybe what I like at the office is the difference, another way to have coffee. I love my pre-workout Moka pot. Is it better than the Melita? Nah. Different? Sure. I can say the same for the Chemex: do I prefer it? Nah. Is it different? For sure.
Here’s what I’d say, if I were forced to be reductionistic about it:
If I could only have one way to make coffee, of the three, it would be the Chemex.
If I could only have two, it would be Chemex and moka.
But none of those material restriction apply.
So the Chemex is packed up and waiting, like an impertinent child having a time out.
I made our usual spritz with this cava today. Rhonda and I tried the cava solo and it is a much tighter carbonation, and a bit dryer than the Proseccos we’ve been buying. It’s a statement to how sweet the Aperol is. We both liked it.
