2025
- Folder watching
- Album art fetching
- Playback Notifications
- Last.fm scrobbling
- Separate playlist windows
- Find and replace tag editing, with regex support
- Smart playlists
- Library stats
- Playback over AirPlay
- Automatic Podcast downloading
- Applescript control
- 10 or 31 band Graphic Equalizer
- Supports Flac, MP3, AAC, ALAC, Ogg Vorbis, WMA, WAV, Opus, AC3, AIFF, MusePack, DSF, and APE.
- Gapless playback
- Automatic changing of device sample rate
- Support for cue files and embedded cue information
- In app browser with preview - If you've looked for recipes online, you know they can be buried in SEO slop and lots of stories about how Aunt Nancy used to bake this cake. Mela helps avoid that by automatically extracting most recipes from wordy websites.
- Feeds - If you have favorite cooking blogs, you can subscribe to them from within Mela and read the recipes in the viewer.
- Cook Mode - Displays the recipe in a large, easy to read font and can load multiple recipes for the same meal
- Timers - In app timers to use when preparing meals
- Scanner - Scan and OCR recipes from cookbooks and magazines
- Apple Integration - Meal planning is calendar based and can be viewed and shared on devices whether Mela is installed on them or not. Grocery lists are managed in reminders and can also be shared on non-Mela devices.
- Printing - You can print Mela recipes
- Organizing - Create categories for your saved recipes based on your won criteria
- Task Til Dawn - A Free Mac Automation App - Also automates some file management tasks, printing and browser based tasks
- Alarm Clock Pro - An insanely useful app for all sorts of things, app launching is just a single feature
- Shortery - The Missing Mac Automator - Unlike iOS, you can't trigger shortcuts based on conditions. Shortery takes care of that by running shortcuts when triggered by time of day, wi-fi connections, calendar events and a dozen other conditions
- Scheduler for Mac - Free Automation Utility - this app can launch scripts as well as appsto accomplish all sorts of tasks
- Running Cron Jobs on Your Local Mac - If you are a CLI pro, you don't need a third party tool to automate events. You can use crontabto run scripts that do all sorts of things for you on a time based schedule
- LaunchControl: The launchd GUI - This is another pretty technical app, one that l provides all the information you need to create or debug a launchd(8) service through an easy to understand GUI.
- How to schedule workflows on Mac - You can use the Automator app built into your Mac to create launchers for apps, documents and URLS and then activate those through a calendar alert. One of the available alerts built into the Apple calendar is the ability to open a file. If you just want to open an app, you don't even need to use Automator, just tell Calendar to open the app at time relative to the calendar event your created,
- An Applescript to eject my backup drive in the morning before I wake up so all I have to do is unplug it. ChatGPT can write Applescripts pretty well
- An Applescript that moves tasks in Things 3 to a different data and time every night
- A shortcut that imports imports screenshots that meet certain conditions into a designated photo album every night
- Open and close an app on my two Macs at alternating times because I don't want it running on them simultaneously
- Before I retired, I automated the launching of the web page for my job's time clock systm so that I could clock in and out for the day and my lunch break
- Morning Brew
- Letters from an American | Heather Cox Richardson
- 5 Bullet Friday - Tim Ferris
- Democracy Docket
- Lifehacker
- NextDraft | Dave Pell
- Ian Betteridge
- Cult of Mac | Apple news, rumors, reviews and how-tos
- Tangle News
- Wired Daily
- Political News for Normal People. | What The Fuck Just Happened Today?
- Particle: News, organized. | by Particle
- Potentially Interesting Roman History | James Coverley
Swinsian Music App - The Answer to Feature Bloat
Swinsian is an app for playing
music that ticks every box in what a Mac based music player for local
libraries sgould be. I can think of no other app that exemplifies bloat
like Apple's Music app, a product desgned not for ease of use, but for
maximization of revenue. Someone in Cupertino decided that none of us
who had massive, carefully tagged collections of music files collected
over the years deserved an app to make thge best use of our tunes. They
decided we' were just going to stream and that we were going to be happy
doing it.
Swinsian took a backup of my iTunes (yes, iTunes) library from 2017, with 32K songs from 2.3K albums and imported the information in a matter of minutes, complete with play counts, ratings and playlists. The customizable interface is reminiscent of a time when iTunes just worked. Now that the information is imported, Swinsian will monitor the folder where I keep my music and automatically add any other files I place there.
You can download and use all of the features of Swinsian without limitations for 30 days, after which it requires a license costing $25. It's available at the developer's website.
Features
Customize
There are multiple ways to view tracks: art grid, column browser and track inspector, all of which can be hidden if you are into a minimal interface.
Organize
Tag multiple tracks at once with ease. Use regular expressions to find and replace tags, ensuring your music stays perfectly tagged. The Duplicate Finder comes in handy, helping you find and remove duplicate tracks with flexible criteria, keeping your library organized and clutter-free.
Control
Control playback with global shortcuts and the mini window. The customizable desktop art widget adds a nice touch to the interface.
Other Nice Touches
Audiophile Information
Other Reviews
SW Virginia Before the Hurricane
From The Virgina Creeper Trail, Mount Rogers National Recreation Area prior to Hurricane Helene. It looks much different now.
Communication Evolution
For years when I was growing up, my Mom's husband refused to get a telephone put in our house. What was strange was that he was a journalist. He spent so much time at the newspaper office that they never needed to call him at home. The rest of us just did without talking to our grandparents or friends except in person. I'm not sure how my mother managed to arrange visits with the family, but she figured it out.
One set of grandparents were on a party line. One long ring meant the call was for them. Two short rings meant it was for the neighbors. If you wanted call someone in the same town, you only had to dial five numbers. Theirs was the first phone number I ever learned and more than 50 years later, I still remember it.
I moved to my uncle's farm when I was a freshman in high school. He and my aunt lived in a 100-year-old farmhouse that thankfully had a telephone, but just one. It had about 50 feet (ca. 15 m) of phone wire tethering it to the wall, so it was semi-portable if you cared to string the wire all through the house to get someplace where you could talk in private.
I wasn't dying to get a cell phone when they first became popular. The whole process of typing out texts on a keypad seemed utterly ridiculous and only business executives and politicians had Blackberrys. Besides, I wanted an actual portable computer, so I spent my money on a Palm Pilot at first. I eventually had to get a cell phone for work. My youngest daughter got a job at Subway, just so she could buy a cell phone, buy somehow I got stuck with the bill. She started dating a GI whose home state, and cell phone number were both Florida based. It didn't matter that he was right down the road at Ft. Bragg. Every time she called him, and she called him A LOT, it was a long-distance charge. She also couldn't stay within her limit of text messages and I got a few surprises there too.
I wish I had the nerd cred to claim ownership of a first gen iPhone, but I didn't make the move until 2009. One of my co-workers was at the Apple Store on Day One though, and he laid down the dough for that squat, under-powered little world changer. There wasn't even an app store. You just went to websites that acted like apps. Steve Jobs said they were just as good.
Once I got an iPhone, I became one of those new phone every year people for the next decade. I made a few release day drives to the nearest Apple Store, a 75-mile one-way drive from home. Luckily, I've never broken a display despite dropping the damn things hundreds of times. I've even driven off with my phone on the hood of my car and didn't break it by slinging it onto the road. I have washed an iPhone in the washing machine. I was sad about that. I also left my phone and wallet at a store when out on a long bike ride once and didn't get either of them back.
I kept the iPhone 11 for four years. I only upgraded because Obsidian wouldn't work correctly on a phone that old. Of course, these days everyone has a phone. My parents both have iPhones and only call me about them occasionally. All but the youngest of the grandkids have phones and I absolutely love texting them. If Wonder Woman and I do anything fun without them, I let them know. I don't go in a candy store without sending "Wish you were here!!" One of our kids, the youngest is a rebellious sort occasionally goes over to the dark side and rocks an Android from time to time. My sister, who has multiple degrees, good politics, a kind heart and a giant brain, has never owned a single Apple product in her life, a character flaw if there ver was one. My Republican brother is also Not An Apple Person. Everyone else is, though.
I like to look at my usage stats from time to time. My goal each month is to have less than five minutes of actual voice use. I don't care how much data I burn through or how many messages I send and receive, I just don't want to talk on the phone. This isn't the 80s.
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Can We Agree That Recipe Blogs Are the Worst?
I like a great many elements of the Internet, even in 2025, when cookie banners, privacy warnings, newsletter subscription popups and the like rob us all of some joy while we browser. I get hives when I have to search for a simple recipe. Every person who's ever read an article on how to monetize a blog seems to have decided that the blog they need to create should have recipes and a metric ton of search engine optimization crap on it. Not only that, instead of just saying "This is good. You should cook it." Recipe bloggers need to talk about how their Aunt Nancy made the recipe on ger organic Vermont rabbit farm when they were kids. I don't like it. Not a fan.
Here are some recipe websites where you don't have to deal with that anxiety inducing clutter. If you want to make some cornbread, they will tell you how to do it without commenting on how you should feel about doing it.
If You Need to Bake a Cake - Get Mela Recipe Manager
I've got cake on the brain today, for some reason...
I've extensively tested four different recipe management apps, all available in the App Store:
All of them are quality apps and they are not mirror images of each other. Anylist, for example has helpful features unrelated to groceries or cooking. It, along with Crouton, is a subscription app. Paprika is a one time purchase of $29.99. Mela, my pick for recipes, is only $9.99. The developer, Silvio Rizzi, is also responsible for the popular RSS app Reeder Classic and the chronological timeline app, Reeder. He's a talented developer but has a reputation for being difficult to get a response from. I don't have personal experience in that area. His apps work fine for me and I've never had to contact him.
Mela Features
The iOS/iPadOS version of Mela is an extra purchase, but it is only $4.99
Tips on Being a Good Spouse
As a happily married person, finally, with a lot of experience being an unhappily married person, I'm going to share a few lessons I learned the hard way. They may not be universally applicable, so use your head. You know your partner better than I do.
Time
I believe that when it comes to spending time with your mate, quality, and quantity matter. If you limit the time you spend together intending to making that time extra-special, you run the risk of creating unrealistic expectations and putting too much pressure on you both. Wonder Woman and I do things together that aren't on most people's data night list. We go to the grocery store and run errands together. We go to our grandkids events together. We have time apart too, but the important thing for our marriage is that we like each other's company. Even when we aren't actively in conversation, we stay in the same room to read or work.
Honesty
Come as absolutely as close as you can possibly get to being 100% honest. Lying, either overtly or by omission can be habit-forming. It will always be damaging. Being honest with another person is the way that you demonstrate respect for them. Not doing things that you feel you have to lie about is the way to demonstrate that you really and truly do love them. Hopefully, you are with someone you are not afraid of, so telling them an unpleasant truth may not be fun, but it won't be damaging. Feeling that you just can't be honest with the person you are with is a fatal sign.
Communication
Honestly, I could be a better communicator when things are bothering me. I'm not one to complain or criticize as a general rule, but there are times when It would be better to say something than try to just deal with a negative feeling. What I am good at, and what I practice regularly, is being vocally supportive and complementary. Wonder Woman knows in her heart of hearts that I consider her beautiful, intelligent, hardworking and kind. I don't let a chance go by to build her up. It's all honest too, not flattery. I think she is remarkable, and I let her know that regularly. I grew up with men who were not complimentary and I didn't like it. I try not be that way.
Respect
When you love someone, you treat them with respect. Full stop. I make decisions on things I do, based on how will they will affect my wife. We worked at the same place for a couple of years and the way I acted was definitely influenced by my desire not to cause any issues for her. Have I ever fallen short here? Absolutely, but hopefully, I've learned from my mistakes. I know what she considers important and because of the way I feel about her, that makes those things important to me by proxy. I laughingly refer to her preferences as "the rules," but in reality, there are things I do because I respect her and that's the way to show it.
This doesn't come close to a comprehensive list of what it takes to have a happy home life. It's a good start, though. I hope you have someone to practice this stuff with.
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Time Based App Launchers
Every night my Obsidian Vault
is synchronized to a folder on Dropbox. I use an app called Sync
Folders Pro, in which you can schedule tasks. The only problem is
that in order for the task to run, the app must already be launched.
There's no way I can remember to launch it when I'm done using my
computer for the day, so I had to find a way to have it launched for me
prior to the time the task is supposed to run.
I chose Keyboard Maestro to do it for me, since Keyboard Maestro can also quit the app after the task completes. I use KBM for a lot of things, so it wasn't like I had to spend extra money just to get that feature. There are other, less expensive and simpler apps that can do the same thing.
Some other time based tasks I use include:
The Fourth Time is a Charm
(Originally published in June 2024)
By the time I was mature enough for marriage, I'd already been married twice, once to my high-school girlfriend with whom I had two children and again to a woman I met in drug and alcohol rehab. I can't say that I'd suggest either one of those places as the ideal location to find your life partner. Marriage #1 lasted about three years. I still see her, of course, we have the kids and the grandkids, and I'm pleased to announce that our early parenthood didn't ruin anyone's life. She is a successful IT security consultant in the DC area, and our kids are both professionals. Marriage #2 also lasted about three years, during which time neither of us drank or used drugs, although maybe it would have been better if we had. It was pure insanity. I haven't seen her in over 30 years, and that's perfectly fine by me.
I met my third wife at the tail end of my 20s in the Westinghouse factory, where we both worked on the manufacturing floor. We were married for 18 years, most of them pretty happy. I had custody of my two children, and she had a daughter that I raised with her. During our marriage, she got a degree in elementary education. And became a second-grade teacher. I found my calling in IT. We supported each other until the very end, when it became obvious that we'd grown apart. She spent most of her time wrapped up in school, and I pursued riding my bicycle to fanatical ends. By this time, all of our kids were grown and gone, and it was just over. Four years after our divorce, she died of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
I've been with Wonder Woman since 2012. When we met, we were both into endurance sports, me mostly cycling and her in triathlons, although running is her true talent. Fittingly, our honeymoon was a five-month thru hike of the Appalachian Trail. Like me, she had two children early and between the two of us, we have five kids and thirteen grandchildren. I was a little apprehensive about several things when I first met her. My fragile male ego had never been out earned by a partner in my life and she was a CPA and partner in one of the largest accounting firms in the area. I had to get over that. I have always been just an average athlete, but she is a true competitor, blessed with well above average physical skills and a tremendous discipline to train and get the most out of every iota of talent she possesses. She has never, not one time, ever made me feel bad for not being able to keep up with her. I had to have both knees surgically replaced and during my ongoing rehab, she's content to go as slow as me as I lumber around the neighborhood.
We typically watch an hour of TV a day, always with her laying in my arms with her head on my chest. We have a huge sectional sofa, but we choose to sit right beside each other. Not only that, but we worked at the same place after I came out of retirement. Of course, she's the associate VP of finance, and I was just doing end user support in the IT department, but it doesn't matter. Riding together back and forth, eating lunch together and having the same co-workers was pretty cool. My kids love her to death. My son flew up from Texas to help me serve as her support crew when she ran her first 100-mile ultramarathon. He ran a 16-mile leg of the race at 3am to serve as her pacer. Our grandkids are just that, our grandkids. Her daughters lost their dad shortly before we got married, and although I am not his replacement by any means, I still love them very much.
I know I am a very lucky man. Not having the best track record at marriage hasn't kept me from finally having a successful and happy one. We don't have "buy a helicopter" money, but we do all right. We've traveled a fair bit, and we can be there for our kids if they need us. Likewise, we make each other happy most of the time. She wishes I could match her energy sometimes and I wish she'd take it easy sometimes, but ultimately, we are fine. She is a classic introvert, and she's taught me how to value time recharging at home. I like people, and she's come a long way in her willingness to interact with folks she doesn't know well. As clichรฉd as it may be, we really do complete each other.
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Newsletter Management
Modern email clients typically have robust filtering options. If you get email you don't want, and you can't be bothered to unsubscribe, you can filter it right into your trash, spam or into a folder that you never look at.
Gmail - How to filter email
Fastmail - How to set up rules
Apple - Filter emails on a Mac
Many other services let you create aliases so that you can easily determine if any spam you get is coming from an address you used at a certain website. Because management is easy and because I like having useful information come to me instead of searching for it, I subscribe to a lot of newsletters. I even pay for a couple of them.
There are some easy to use tools out there for dealing with newsletters. Inoreader, my RSS provider, gives subscribers 20 different email addresses to use to subscribe to newsletters with. You can use the same address for different newsletters, so you aren't limited to just 20 subscriptions. Instead of reading the newsletters in your email app, you can read them in an RSS app or the Inoreader website.
It's common for people with established email accounts to feel overwhelmed by the amount of email they receive. The Unroll.me app can analyze your inbox and help unsubscribe you from newsletters you no longer want. It can also consolidate what you do want to receive into regular digest, combining many emails into just one. It's a free service to boot.
Here are some worthy newsletters to subscribe to:
I have a couple of newsletters now.ย One is a weekly collection from my personal and links blogs that goes out on Mondays. -ย โ๏ธ Subscribe | Amerpie by Lou Plummer
The other newsletter is a daily app review, in case you don't have enough software in your life -ย Subscribe | AppAddict Newsletter
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Using Joplin as a Reference Tool
Joplin is a free and
open-source notes app. It's available for Macs, Windows, Linux, iOS and
Android. You can pay for Joplin E2E encrypted synchronization on its
servers which are located in France for those looking to avoid US based
cloud computing companies who are cooperating with the government. You
can also use DIY synchronization on other cloud accounts, like Dropbox
or iCloud.
My use case for Joplin is single purpose. After using Evernote from 2009-2023, I exported my data into ENEX files and closed my account due to its exorbitant pricing. I wanted a way to access that information without dealing with Evernote or its owner, Bending Spoons.
My preferred notes app is Obsidian, which is a plain text app that uses markdown. Many of my notes in Evernote were complex HTML emails that didn't translate well into Markdown. The material isn't anything I'll be editing but I want a way to use it for reference when I need it. Joplin did a good job of importing the notes in a readable format. It brought over all my tags. Organizing the information is easy inside Joplin. I elected to use Dropbox for syncing. It took a long time to sync 9K files even though the total file size is just over 1 GB.
I don't plan to add new notes to Joplin, but there is a web clipper available for those who can use that feature. There is also a plugin available that lets Joplin retrieve emails, something easily accomplished in Evernote but that requires considerable workarounds in Obsidian. Joplin doesn't have the same robust extension environment that Obsidian has, but there are several add-ons available.
Joplin is an electron app, so if the prospect of using an app of that nature is against your religion, move on along. I don't mind using electron apps, so it works for my purposes.
This Week's Bookmarks - Best TV Performances, Best Musicals, Putinization of US, Horse Racing, Opting Out of Tech, COVID Makeover, US Descent, Movies from Books
The 100 Greatest TV Performances of the Century - When one thinks of the defining TV performances of the past 25 or so years, what comes to mind?
The 25 best musical movies of this century - The Washington Post - From "Les Mis" to "La La Land," from "Walk Hard" to "Wicked," these films show that the musical genre isn't just standing โ it's got new moves, too.
The Putinization of America - The Atlantic - Trump's deference to the Russian dictator has become full-blown imitation.
Dead Athletes. Empty Stands. Billions to Keep Horse Racing Alive - The obvious solution here is also the simplest: Just stop. Let the sport stand on its own and dwindle to whatever size its fan base supports. Instead, state legislatures keep funneling money to it. "The biggest fear that our industry has is that the states are going to stop subsidizing, using slot machines to subsidize the sport," said Jeff Gural, who owns three harness racing tracks. "Without that, there is no sport
The Opt Out Project - Yes, you can live without Big Tech. If data is the new oil, then I'm here to help you go electric. Join the resistance.
How Covid Remade Our America, Five Years Later - t's impossible to imagine that humanity would suffer a global pandemic and come out unchanged. And we certainly didn't. "America is a harsher place, more self-interested and nakedly transactional. We barely trust one another and are less sure that we owe our fellow Americans anything โ let alone the rest of the world."
America is Going Just Great - A timeline of America's descent into a fascist hellscape
New and Upcoming Movies Based on Books 2025 - From 'The Housemaid' to 'The Women in Cabin 10': Upcoming Book Adaptations in 2025. From beloved classics to recent releases, a myriad of books are set to be reimagined for the small and big screens.
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Glorious Moment
White Mountains Sunset from Lake in the Clouds Hut, near Mt. Washington, NH on the Appalachian Trail
Regional Cooking
I don't think I am sophisticated enough to qualify for foodie status. For one thing, I'm fairly cheap. While I enjoy cooking, I don't enjoy spending hours in the kitchen, reading cookbooks or hunting down ingredients. I just like to eat. When I travel, I'm always on the lookout for regional dishes fixed the way locals eat them. If I miss out, I'm sad.
Eastern North Caolina
First off, where I'm from, barbecue is not a verb. It's not something you do. There is no such thing as a barbecue, singular. You are thinking of a cookout or maybe a grill if your mind is on an appliance. No, here in Eastern North Carolina, barbecue refers to one thing, pork, cooked low and slow and seasoned with a vinegar-based sauce that also contains chili flakes, brown sugar, salt, and pepper. The preferred way to prepare barbecue is a whole hog at the time over hardwood coals, preferably hickory. Admittedly, a good portion of it is prepared on gas grills that those proficient at hog cooking pull behind their pickup trucks to the site of the next pig picking, the name that we give to meals where barbecue is served. The traditional side dishes are coleslaw, potato salad, baked beans and fried cornbread, known as hush puppies.
Texas
Texas is the one other place in the world where what they call barbecue is truly fit to eat. Whether it is my favorite, brisket, ribs, burnt ends or even turkey. chicken or kielbasa, they know how to make it taste exquisite. Tex-Mex is the other regional dish you don't want to miss, particularly breakfast. Their breakfast tacos and migas are my favorites
Chicago
I'd never heard of Chicago-style hot dogs until well into the 21st century. Served on a sesame seed bun and not contaminated with ketchup in any way, they use condiments, including celery salt, that I have not seen anywhere else. The other enjoyable meal I ate in the windy city was Chicago-style pizza, a deep dish specialty that makes it hard to eat more than a couple of slices.
Maine
The two great Maine dishes to me are whole belly clams and of course, a steamed fresh lobster. What makes them taste even better is if you are half starving when you get them. I had both dishes while hiking in Maine as part of my Georgia to Maine hike of the Appalachian Trail, the last 240 miles (ca. 386 km) of which go from the New Hampshire border to the peak of Mount Katahdin in Baxter State Park. They sell seafood everywhere in Maine, it seems. I had the best clams I've ever eaten in a gas station / grocery store in the historic little town of Andover. I was talked out of getting a lobster roll after it was described as lobster and mayo on a hot dog bun, compared to the fresh fried clams that were sweet and tasty and nothing like the battered rubber bands I'd eaten my whole life.
Belfast
Forget drinking Guinness or eating Irish stew. If you are looking for the most authentic meal in the six counties of Northern Ireland, you're going to get it for breakfast. You may not need to eat again for the rest of the day. The Ulster fry consists of bangers {sausages), streaky bacon, beans, eggs, white pudding, black pudding and tomatoes, with the addition of griddle-baked soda farls (quarters) and potato bread. A few mushrooms are also acceptable, but don't get crazy and order has browns. They have a condiment, called brown sauce, that we don't use in the states. You should try it too. Furthermore, order some tea to go with your fry, fixed sweet and milky.
New York City
Walking in to an authentic slice joint anywhere in the five boroughs of New York to get pizza for a quick and affordable meal is a treasured experience. You can see anyone in these places from corner boys to Wall Street executives, and tourists, many, many tourists. I'll also confess to eating one of those dirty water hotdogs from a cart on the Manhattan end of the Brooklyn Bridge.
Santa Fe
I did quite a bit of research before traveling to Santa Fe. The dish that was suggested as being most representative of the area was green chili stew. Man oh man, was it good. New Mexico's signature dish is typically made from roasted local green chili, cubed pork, potatoes, onions, garlic, broth, and various spices. The flavor is a mix of savory, spicy, and slightly smoky, with a rich, broth.
A few other places I'd like to shout out along with their foods are Miami and pork with black beans and rice, fixed Cuban Style. If you go to the South Carolina low country, get some shrimp and grits. A trip to Cincinnati is incomplete without a bowl of their signature chili. Paris is renowned for its fancy chefs, but just slip into a pรขtisserie and sample some baked goods. If you're ever in Alaska, get the haddock. It's delicious.
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The Great Eastern Pine Forest
Although I live in town, the region where we are located is still largely rural. The military reservation for Ft. Bragg, covering 161,000 acres is close enough that artillery fire routinely rattles our windows. During World War 1, the government bought hundreds of farms and timber tracts to create the installation. Except for a few historical churches and cemeteries, all the civilian homes and buildings were removed. The land was allowed to return to its natural state as part of the great eastern pine forest. Carefully managed through the same type of controlled burning that the Native Americans once practiced, the landscape resembles what the Highland Scots who settled the area saw when they traveled up the Cape Fear River to settle here. Today, the land on Ft. Bragg is wild enough to support the endangered Red Cockaded Woodpecker, which lives and nests only in the cavities of mature long-leafed pine trees.
When I travel, I enjoy observing the signature characteristics of what region I am in. If you've ever flown into Ireland, you know why they call it The Emerald Isle. Seeing Pike's Peak towering over Colorado Springs is breathtaking. Send some time in New Hampshire and you will see why they call it The Granite State.
In North Carolina, especially In the coastal plain area where I am from, pine forests are our trademark. The nickname of our state's flagship university, The Tarheels comes from the industry we once had using pine resin to make the tar that sealed the hulls of wooden sailing ships.
1920s Fort Bragg, NC: A Visual Trip | by Matthew Peek | NC Stories of Service | Medium
Longleaf Pine Forests: Protecting and Restoring Habitat | TNC
Long Journey of the Highland Scots | NCpedia
Red-cockaded woodpecker - Wikipedia
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My Favorite iOS Time Killers
When you have a lot of time to kill and nothing but your phone,
what apps do you turn to as time killers?
My wife is running a 10-hour race this weekend. As usual, I'll be there as her crew, filling her water bottles, handing her food and bandaging blisters in short little bursts of time every hour. The rest of the time, I'll be left with just my phone as entertainment. Unfortunately for me, I don't game. Confessions of a Non-Gamer
I'm also not one to watch movies on a phone. After a few YouTube videos, I start to get restless. I'm a reader with attention span issues. I'm prepared to do without Internet, although hopefully I'll have connectivity. These will be my go to apps.
Pocket: Stay Informed - Pocket is where I save all the articles I want to read, but don't have time for. I also have a couple of RSS feeds that go straight to Pocket. I can add to it on my phone or my Mac. It's also integrated into Inoreader, my feed reader. You can download your saved articles for offline access.
Amazon Kindle - The cool thing about Kindle books is how little space they take up. I have hundreds of books saved on my phone.
NextDraft - I've been reading Dave Pell's daily links blog for over a decade. He suggests and comments on about a dozen stories a day and has a real knack for digging up fascinating content. He's as good at as anyone, even Kottke.
Medium: Read & Write Stories - Since its inception, I've read most Medium stories on Archive.ph. Then one of my cousins started a Medium blog and I got a subscription. It's been nice. Removing the friction and having the ability to subscribe to blogs has exposed me to a lot of good content.
Amerpie's Custom Tech Feed on Reddit - I will confess to being addicted to Reddit like no other place on the Internet. If you hang out in the wrong places there, it can be a real downer, but it also has some helpful and fun communities too. This is my collection of 37 tech related subreddits and where I hang out the most.
I don't think I'll die of boredom.
On Memory
Secretariat winning the Belmont Stakes
As a sports obsessed kid, I committed statistics to memory without even trying. I'm normally not much of a numbers guy, math and I are mortal enemies, but I could remember Ty Cobb's lifetime batting average, .367, the number of home runs Babe Ruth hit in his career, 714 and the name of the only pitcher to win 500 games, Cy Young. I knew the number of lengths by which Secretariat won the Belmont Stakes, 50 and the name of the only horse ever to beat Man O' War in. race, Upset. I learned all these facts in the 70s and they've never left me.
On the other hand, the plans Wonder Woman makes and shares for our present day lives are not usually something I can recall a day or two later. I know we are going somewhere to do something on a certain date, but I'm never really quite sure, without asking several times, where it is we're heading and what the activity is we are going to do. Future date do not stick in my mind.
I was on the Quiz Bowl team in high school, where groups of students from all over the state competed to answer the kind of questions that make you good at Jeopardy. Most of my teammates were Beta Club and National Honor Society members while I was a very determined C student trying to graduate from high school without ever doing any homework. I did not have a good work ethic when it came to school. If a subject required memorizing and regurgitating material, I was golden, but when you had to puzzle out answers like you do in Algebra and Chemistry, well, I did not shine there.
The years of hard drinking I subjected myself were bad for my memory in two ways. I killed a lot of brain cells. My IQ is measurably lower post recovery than it was when I was tested as a teenager. That's the price I paid for the lifestyle I lived. I'm just gald to be sober. eTh other thing that living in addiction does is give you a great many things over which to feel guilty. Drunks and addicts make poor decisions. They get in trouble. They let people down. Repeatedly. Acknowledging that and putting it behind me took years and honestly, some of those memories will never cease to be painful.
My Dad married my step-mom when I was 17. She worked for years for Northrup Grumman where she was hired as an administrative assistant and left as an executive. She is the only person to ever master my fathers difficult personality. She has always handled his various quirks and oddities with great skill and all of us admire her for that. We can't do it like she does. She is 79 now and has advanced Alzheimer's disease. Dad is her caretaker and it isn't easy. Like a lot of people with her illness, she can become verbally abusive for no apparent reason. She requires a lot of patience and compassion. I cannot tell if she still knows who I am, but I tell her I love her and hug her when we meet. If she wants to talk to Dad while I'm visiting, I keep quiet. They have a home health assistant who comes over five days a week and when I asked my step-mom last weekend how she like her, she didn't know who I was talking about.
Seeing what Alzheimers does to her memory helps me not feel sorry for myself because I lost 5% or 10% off my edge. I get by just fine. I'm not as good at some things I as I'd like to be, but I'm not handicapped, just a bit humbled. Even though Wonder Woman wishes I was better at retaining information that really matters, she still professes to be amazed when pull random facts out of the air. Somebody has to remember all of Roosevelt's vice presidents. It might as well be me.
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Time Travel
I've enjoyed all types of science fiction since I was in junior high school, but the one type of sci-fi novel that has always been my favorite are time travel books. I think because I also enjoy historical fiction and have spent many an hour imagining myself back in the past, the notion of time travel is particularly appealing. For some reason, I have never had a desire to go to the future. Even before climate change started ruining that for everyone, I just wanted to see all the different historical eras about which I've read so much.
Here are a few of my favorite time travel books.
Blackout (All Clear, #1) by Connie Willis | Goodreads and All Clear: A Novel (Oxford Time Travel) by Connie Willis | Goodreads - two novels that take place in London during The Blitz, they give a convincing look at what life was like in the tube shelters as the residents of the city underwent Nazi bombardment. The evacuation of children to the countryside is also covered as is the Dunkirk evacuation. The time travelers are historians from Oxford University in 2060.
11/22/63 by Stephen King | Goodreads - I think Steven King is as entertaining as any writer who has ever lived. I'm not a literary critic, I just like a good page turner and this book certainly qualifies. It has the usual King touches of life in Maine and many, many unexpected twists. You can tell King did a lot of research for the book, so even if your more knowledgable than most about the Kennedy assassination, you won't be put off by incorrect details.
Outlander (Outlander, #1) by Diana Gabaldon | Goodreads - My daughter looked at me dubiously when I asked to borrow her copy of the first Outlander book. I didn't know that it was considered a romance novel. Even after finishing the book, I wasn't convinced that it wasn't for men too. There are plenty of details about the rebellious Scots and the dastardly British Army. I enjoyed it.
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North | Goodreads - Unlike most time travel books I enjoy, this one didn't take place in a historical era. It covers the same years of the 20th century, over and over and over again, as Harry August dies and is reborn with total recall of the lives he's led in the past. Calire North does a good job of keeping it interesting.
The Door Into Summer by Robert A. Heinlein | Goodreads- Some of the later works of Robert A Heinlein were problematic, a little too right wing and way too sexist for modern sensibilities, but his novels from the Golden Age of science fiction are delightfully imaginative. Heinlein has a fertile imagination and a deft touch with dialog. This is the story of a man who was tricked into going into suspended animation only to awaken to a world where time travel is possible. He goes back to deal with the people who tricked him.
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