Links

Mar 19, 2025 ∞

My Current Online Hangouts

These are the places I go online to interact with other folks. If you are not familiar with any of these places, maybe you can check them out.

My Mastodon Server

I am a big fan on the community at OMG.LOL and its Mastodon server, Social.lol, which requires that you have an OMG.LOL account. There is also a Discord community and a Signal group.

Discord

I am a member of several communities on Discord My favorites are : Obsidian.md, OMG.LOL, MacApps,

AppRaven

AppRaven is a community based around the iOS app of the same name. It's for people who like to discover new Mac and iOS apps,

Forums

I have a tom of forum accounts, mostly for software. The most helpful are Obsidian, Drafts, Keyboard Maestro

Reddit

My favorite communities on Reddit are r/MacApps, r/ObsidianMD and r/MacOS

BearBlog Discover

A great place to get to know bloggers is on BearBlog's Discover Page.

Scribbles

The new posts on the Scribbles platform are on the Explore Page

Micro.Blog

Did you know that you can get an account at Micro.blog for $1 month?

Others

I’m on Bluesky if you want to hook up there. I’m also on Pixelfed. Let’s Connect

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Mar 19, 2025 ∞

Setapp is an app subscription service ($9.99 a month) owned by the Ukrainian company Macpaw. It has approximately 1 million subscribers, which is a good testament to its usefulness. Here are some of the things I've learned in a year and half of being a customer.

Unfortunately, Macpaw is a frequent target of Russian trolls because of the ongoing war between the two countries. Macpaw also makes the utility suite, CleanMyMac, which some people confuse with an older Mac malware program, MacKeeper. The two are not related. If you read the tech press, you'll see good reviews of Setapp. If you rely on Reddit or anonymous online sources, you are likely to run into those pesky Russians I mentioned.

I get tremendous value from my Setapp subscription. The numbers fluctuate a bit, but I currently have 42 apps from the service installed. More than a dozen of those apps are login items that are always running on my Mac. Obviously, they play a vital part in my workflow.

Anyone can try Setapp and all of its app for free for seven days, however if you use my referral link and code PLUMMER you will get 30 days free instead of seven. Also if you are a student, you are eligible for Setapp at 50% off. And, finally, anyone who pays by the year gets a 10% discount.

One tip I can offer is to get your own API key from Open.AI for use with AI apps like Typing Mind or Elephas. It is much cheaper. In a year of constantly using my API with multiple apps, I've spent $15.

If you have any apps from Setapp that you have already purchased, consider using the Setapp version while you have a subscription since it adds to the money that the developer make. It's just a nice thing to do. Brett Terpstra wrote a script and an automator workflow that will tell you if any of the apps on your computer are also on Setapp.

One last thing - I tried the iOS add-on and didn't get that much from it. I do have the add-on to run the apps on a second machine though. It doesn't add that much and it comes in handy.

Here's a List of the Login Apps I Use

Other Setapp Offerings I Have Reviewed

Full list of apps on Setapp, listed by popularity

✉️ Reply by email

Mar 18, 2025 ∞

Expanding My Horizons

Every so often in my adult life, I find a new passion. I'm not happy until I master it or come as close as I can. I've done it over a wide array of activities, cycling, photography, long-distance hiking, political activism and now blogging, I suppose. Based on all that, I know I have the capacity to learn new things. I am still curious. There are some areas of my life, where I'm not sure how to incorporate new things. The arts are a good example of this. I do not remember the last time I listened to an album by someone with whom I wasn't familiar. I used to get new music all the time but these days I am very much my own classic rock radio station. I'd like to discover some rabbit hole of a TV series to dive into. I'm in a rut of moving from one Netflix or Max new release to another one (with some Britbox thrown in). I have so much time now but I'm at a loss for ways to find new things. Time to do some research.

7 Ways To Expand Your Horizon And Push For New Frontiers - LifeHack

6 Easy Ways to Find the Streaming Movies and Shows You Want to Watch | PCMag

17 Ways To Find Good Books To Read - Cushing-Malloy

Too Many Places: Overcoming the Paradox of Choice

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Mar 17, 2025 ∞

The Racial Construct

Racial Diversity

If you haven't noticed the US government's full court press to assert the supremacy of whiteness in this country, you're probably white and conservative. The whole MAGA movement is predicated about returning to a time when white people reigned supreme over the cultural and economic realms of the country.

I find the whole concept of race to be an artificial construct, useful only to a dominant group who wants to draw lines between themselves and others, mostly to keep the others from assuming any privilege or availing themselves of perceived scarce resources. The whole notion of whiteness is fluid. There was a time when Irish and Italians were not considered white. Plenty of mouth-breathers still consider anyone who is Jewish to be ineligible for whiteness, the same with other Semitic people and for Spanish speakers.

If you spend more than thirty seconds thinking about race, it starts to become evident that it's only purpose is to keep people separate. One of the favorite beliefs among the Silicon Valley eugenics fans is the supposed differences in the IQ among the races. Guess who they believe to be #1.

Spend a little time looking at the arguments against using race to draw lines.

How the Irish Became White by Noel Ignatiev | Goodreads

Eugenics Isn’t Dead—It’s Thriving in Tech – Mother Jones

Race Is a Social Construct, Scientists Argue | Scientific American

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Mar 16, 2025 ∞

Amazon Exit Toolkit

My wife and I are in the process of detangling ourselves from four of the biggest tech companies: Meta, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon. Of those four, Amazon is the most firmly entrenched in our lives since the company, and it's owner without a soul, billionaire Jeff Bezos provide various services we use, forcing us to find alternatives in several different areas.

News

We dumped our subscription to the Washington Post during the 2024 election when Bezos, the owner of the newspaper, compelled the editorial department to kill its endorsement of the Harris/Walz ticket. While there are some quality journalists working at the paper, Bezos recently became even more involved with editorial policy, making it more pro-MAGA. We took the money we were spending on the Post and the New York Times and used it to support

eBooks

We've been ebook readers since shortly after the Kindle was released. We no longer use Kindle devices to read on, opting for our iPads these days, but we've purchased over 500 titles for the platform from Amazon. I recently downloaded all those files, removed the DRM and converted the files to epub format. Going forward, we will use the following stores and our technical skills to make our eBook purchases available to us on whatever platform we choose.

Audiobooks

Although you can still download audiobooks purchased from the Amazon owned Audible company, the day may come where you are prevented from doing that. I used a free tool to download and convert another 500+ books using Libation - Audiobook Downloader and Converter. I used the Mac app, Permute, to convert some older audiobooks I had downloaded from an account to which I no longer had access. Going forward, we will use these sources for audiobooks instead of Audible.

Television

While Amazon Prime Video has had many shows we've enjoyed, our primary use of the service has been as a conduit to British television via Britbox and Acorn TV. Luckily for us, both of those services have app for the AppleTV, the streaming device we use.

Photographs

We have nearly a terabyte of photos and videos uploaded to Amazon's servers and they don;t make it easy to download them, limiting individual downloads to 200 images at the time. Just to get our photos from the single year of 2014 required 96 separate downloads. Never again. Once I finish getting all the files onto my drive, I will be using an end-to-end encrypted service with servers in Europe to store my photos in the cloud. It also has automatic uploads of iPhone photos, just like Amazon and Google, another place we are leaving.

Ente - Private cloud storage for your photos, videos and more

Shopping

We've found that we can get better deals on products these days by shopping around vs. just buying from Amazon. A couple of examples are the companies Wonder Woman uses for her sports nutrition products and her running shoes.

Mar 15, 2025 ∞

Aging Parents

I am still trying to get used to my parents as elderly/senior/old. Both of them were born in 1947 (does math) which means they will turn 78 this year. They are long divorced, so my relationship with them isn't a joint one. My Mom has been a widow since 2008. My Dad has been married to my step-mom for 43 years. Wonder Woman's wonderful parents are also still kicking. Her mom just turned 80 and her dad is 85.

Mom is exceptionally healthy. She's always eaten well and taken care of herself. She exercises regularly. And, she assures me frequently, she's only had two glasses of wine since Christmas, which is a likely story, but she doesn't have any alcohol related issues.

My Dad has had three or four heart attacks, numerous stints and coronary bypass surgery. An Army helicopter pilot, he had to quit flying in the 80s because of his blood pressure. He walks with a cane these days and not very far.

I've gotten good, personalized advice from kind people on the Internet about being an asset to my folks in the struggles we are all going to face as we age. It's a topic that isn't alwats fun to research, but I think it's better to do it electively, than to wait until panic strikes.

Vivaldi - 2025-03-15 at 09

50 Things to do with elderly parents

Complete List of Things to Do for Elderly Parents

Ageing parents need help? 6 things you can do

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Mar 15, 2025 ∞

This Week's Bookmarks - Taxi Reunion, Gen Z and Phone Calls, Sports Analytics, Best Books, The Pandemic, Best Sports Moments, Facebook Exposed

Taxi Stars

“Taxi ”stars reunite to pay tribute to castmate Danny DeVito more than 40 years after show's end - Tony Danza, Marilu Henner, Judd Hirsch, Carol Kane, and Christopher Lloyd met up to watch their former costar Danny DeVito accept the Jason Robards Award for Excellence in Theater at the Roundabout Theatre Company's gala at the Ziegfeld Ballroom in New York City. The show's cocreator, James L. Brooks, also attended

‘No, I’m not phoning to say I’m dying!’ My gruelling week of calling gen Z friends rather than texting them - Of those aged 18 to 34 – 61% prefer a text to a call, and 23% never bother answering

Analytics transformed sports. Has it also made them less entertaining? - The Washington Post - The "Moneyball" era changed how teams play, coach and are built. But the quest for efficiency is increasingly being blamed for robbing sports of their beauty.

Five Books - Expert Book Recommendations - The best books on every subject

30 Charts That Show How Everything Changed in March 2020 - The New York Times - Decades from now, the pandemic will be visible in the historical data of nearly anything measurable today: an unmistakable spike, dip or jolt that officially began for Americans five years ago this month.

The 100 Best Sports Moments of the Quarter Century - The Ringer - When the impossible becomes possible, when the definition of absurd is redefined, when men and women turn into superheroes—you don’t easily forget something like that.

Book Review: ‘Careless People,’ by Sarah Wynn-Williams - The New York Times - The publisher of "Careless People" kept the existence of this memoir a secret until a few days ago — with good reason, it turns out. For seven years, beginning in 2011, the book's author, Sarah Wynn-Williams, worked at Facebook (now called Meta), eventually as a director of global public policy.

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Mar 14, 2025 ∞

Five Bloggers You Should Get to Know

Vivaldi - 2025-03-14 at 17

Some people just have a talent for blogging. They have innate curiosity, a good command of language and the discipline to combine the two in digestible bits for the web. Sometimes they are funny, often scathing, usually insightful and cheefully devoid of ego. These people get bookmarked. They get their own folder in my RSS reader and tonight they get shared with you.

shellsharks

His intro reads - Welcome to Shellsharks - a blog, an IndieWeb site, a community, and a central point-of-presence for myself on the web. What I publish here is a reference for myself but is available to be consumed by all. I write about all things Infosec, Technology and Life in general. Follow shellsharks on Mastodon

Hollie - Small Good Things

Follow Hollie on Mastodon - Her bio - she/they
Enthusiastic about #nature, hats, kindness, #puns, #tea, funny stories, personal websites, lichen, bags, space, boats, hobbits, #UrbanSketching, #books, #watercolors, laughing, ham radio, #bicycling, #monsterdon, #cooking, #knitting, spinning, sewing.

#HSP, #fibro & #MECFS, MCAS, #anxiety, #ADHD.

GenX, happily married to @gregtitus for 29 yrs, mom of two adult kids (one hard-of-hearing, one autistic trans). Wears heart on sleeve. Trans rights are human rights.

mb - jarunmb.com

Follow mb on Mastodon - Not just another tech guy on the Fediverse. Instead, you get a real live human, sharing about the ins and outs of work, parenting, blogging, learning and adapting to life in 2025. One of my favorites.

Pratik - Nerve Endings Firing Away

Follow Pratik on Mastodon - Do you like smart, challenging people? I do. That's why I follow Pratik. He's an authentic guy who isn't afraid to point things out when they need to be pointed out. His Mastodon bio - "I live in Austin. I typically post photos and post personal and work-related updates, especially travel. I offer my opinions on Internet trends and media, talk about TV and movies I watch, share books I read or want to read, rant on right-wing politics, and advocate for inclusion and diversity in all facets of life."

Mark R. Stoneman

Follow Mark on Mastodon - Like I said, I like smart people and this New England historian fits that bill. Mark is friendly, thoughtful and has a knack for relating what is happening today with events from the past. As a veteranr who has lived around military bases my whole life, I've know a whole bunch of Gis, but Mark is the first Ivy League combat arms guy I've encountered - and an enlisted one at that!! Good people as we say down here.

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Mar 13, 2025 ∞

Giving Criticism

Feedback Dandwich

On my software review blog, AppAddict, I focus on apps I like and that I think will be helpful to other Mac users. The only time I write negative reviews is when I don't like a company's business practices or when my take on an app is different than that of the majority. I give apps a fair test and I'm generally willing to give a developer the benefit of the doubt. I've gotten good feedback from a number of them, including a few I've kind of idolized over the years. The day will come, though, when the author of one of the apps of which I was critical is going to hit me up with a WTF? I'll be glad to listen and if I got something wrong, I'll correct my mistake.I won't just change my take on it because someone asks me to. Lame.

I don't think many people are good at giving constructive criticism or negative feedback. Have you ever had a boss that would email the entire department when trying to correct one person's behavior because they were just to chickenshit to talk to them one on one? I endured that for years with more than one boss. Another indicator of poor people skills is when a boss waits until your annual performance review to criticize you, instead of being a coach or a mentor. Managers get paid to manage, but too many of them don't seem ti like that part of the job.

Giving criticism isn't being mean. Sometimes withholding it is. It's a skill that can be learned. Here are some resources.

How To Give Constructive Criticism: 6 Helpful Tips - Personal Excellence - Includes the infamous feedback sandwich method

Do You Know How To Write A Good Bad Review? | by Liz King | Medium - By now we all know where to look for online reviews — on Yelp, Google, or Facebook. But do we know how to write them, and do we understand how they can impact a small business?

Are You Being Too Critical in Your Relationship? | Psychology Today - Because we aren't taught how to navigate differences in our relationships, we tend to do it badly. However, as adults, we can learn to navigate differences in a healthy way, fostering more safety and connection in our relationships.

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Mar 12, 2025 ∞

Quotes for Every Occassion - Please Share Yours!

Speakers

I love quotes. Nothing would make me happier than for you to send me any of your favorites in an email, or post them on mastodon or Bluesky and tag me. I'll be glad to give a shout out to anyone who cares to share.

"Everything you can imagine is real." — Pablo Picasso

“Dreams are extremely important. You can’t do it unless you imagine it.” — George Lucas

"Who looks outward dreams, who looks inward awakens." — Carl Jung

I was doing some maintenance on my collection of quotes today, a relaxing, if never ending task. I had a few highlights I'd saved without also recording the author's name, so I did a full text search for them on Kagi and found out that Goodreads has a huge quotes repository. Every single quote I was looking for had a Goodreads page. I found pages for Albert Camus, Maya Angelo, Joseph Campbell and several other notables.

More Quote Websites

Quote Topics - BrainyQuote

A-Z Quotes | Quotes for All Occasions

Best and famous collection of quotes at QuotesLyfe

Wikiquote

My Collection of 500+ Authors and Quotes

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Mar 11, 2025 ∞

Underrated Awesome Stuff

Vivaldi - 2025-03-11 at 17

One of my favorite parts of living in the information age is the ease of discovery of entertainment options. I remember when we had to wait for the TV Guide to show up in the mailbox, listen to FM radio and read the siges outside the cinema for information. Now, thanks to huge databases and fan communities, you can get in depth suggestions from your digital alter ego at a moment's notice. It's also fun tio find out what your friends like. You can ask questions and give feedback. Here are a few under the radar picks from yours truly.

Books

Lexicon by Max Barry - a science fiction novel about an organization that teaches it's candidates how to use language as a way to control the minds of others
Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing by Ted Conover - the author practices immersice journalism by placing himself in situations where he experiences life first hand in order to write about it. In this case he takes a job as a guard at Sing Sing prison in NY to explore modern American prisons.
A Rising Man (Sam Wyndham, #1) by Abir Mukherjee - Set in India during the British Raj, this is a novel featuring a detective who is an opium addicted veteran of The Great War. It has a great sense of time and place.
Never a Dull Moment: 1971 The Year That Rock Exploded by David Hepworth - I love books about music and this one thoroughly explores the greatest year in rock hostory when classic albums by Led Zepplin, The Who, Carole King, James Taylor, Rod Stewart, Joanie Mitchell and more were released.
The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World by Michael Pollan - Michael Pollan may be the best popular science writer alive. In this book he explores four plants: the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato in a way that us informative and entertaining.

TV Shows

Scott & Bailey - D.C. Rachel Bailey and D.C. Janet Scott have a robust and engaging friendship which enables them to draw upon each other’s strengths and investigate murders for the Manchester Metropolitan Police. I love the strong female leads.
Broadchurch - The murder of a young boy in a small coastal town brings a media frenzy, which threatens to tear the community apart. I've been a David Tennant and an Olivia Coleman fave ever since I watched this.
The Fall - When the Police Service of Northern Ireland are unable to close a case after 28 days, Detective Superintendent Stella Gibson of the Metropolitan Police Service is called in to review the case. Under her new leadership, the local detectives must track down and stop a serial killer who is terrorising the city of Belfast. Not one to watch alone. It is intense.
Inspector George Gently - A British crime drama adapted from the George Gently novels by Alan Hunt and set in the 1960s. Inspector George Gently is an old-school detective trying to come to terms with a time when the lines between the police and criminals have become blurred. British cop shows are so much better than American ones. They think more, shoot less.
Foyle's War - As WW2 rages around the world, DCS Foyle fights his own war on the home-front as he investigates crimes on the south coast of England. Foyle's War opens in southern England in the year 1940. A great job of recreating Britain during its greatest hour.

Movies

The Station Agent (2003) - When his only friend dies, a man born with dwarfism moves to rural New Jersey to live a life of solitude, only to meet a chatty hot dog vendor and a woman dealing with her own personal loss. Peter Dinklage before GOT.
Yesterday (2019) - A struggling musician realizes he's the only person on Earth who can remember The Beatles after waking up in an alternate reality where the group was forgotten. Lot's of Beatles music and a few surprises.
The Dig (2021) - As WWII looms, a wealthy widow hires an amateur archaeologist to excavate the burial mounds on her estate. When they make a historic discovery, the echoes of Britain's past resonate in the face of its uncertain future‎. One of those movies that will have you reading Wikipedia articles as soon as it is over.
Chef (2014) - When Chef Carl Casper suddenly quits his job at a prominent Los Angeles restaurant after refusing to compromise his creative integrity for its controlling owner, he is left to figure out what's next. Finding himself in Miami, he teams up with his ex-wife, his friend and his son to launch a food truck. Taking to the road, Chef Carl goes back to his roots to reignite his passion for the kitchen -- and zest for life and love. Even though Jon Favreau is responsible for a bunch of MCU schlock, he redeems himself in this story about self discovery and parenthood.
The Bookshop (2017) - Set in a small English town in 1959, a woman decides, against polite but ruthless local opposition, to open a bookshop, a decision which becomes a political minefield. Another story with a strong, indomitable female character.

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Mar 10, 2025 ∞

Can We Agree That Recipe Blogs Are the Worst?

Vivaldi - 2025-03-10 at 15

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.

Mar 8, 2025 ∞

Newsletter Management

Vivaldi - 2025-03-08 at 19

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. One is a weekly collection from my personal and links blogs that goes out on Mondays. - ✏️ Subscribe | Amerpie by Lou Plummer

The other newsletter is a daily app review, in case you don't have enough software in your life - Subscribe | AppAddict Newsletter

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Mar 8, 2025 ∞

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

Michael Kenneth Williams as Omar Little, “The Wire

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 – 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 — 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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Mar 7, 2025 ∞

The Great Eastern Pine Forest

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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Mar 6, 2025 ∞

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

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

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 (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

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

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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Mar 5, 2025 ∞

Country Music but not THAT Country Music

When my brother and sister watched TV on weekday afternoons in the 70s, usually syndicated episodes of the Andy Griffith Show and Gomer Pyle, one of the primary advertisers was a company that specialized in greatest hits albums of country music stars. I must have watched 1,000 commercials trying to get me to order 8-tracks of Conway Twitty's classics. The three of us were found the music, distasteful, shall we say. Our parents were more into The Beatles and James Taylor. Country music was for our grandparent's generation and the member's of the family who still farmed.

While, I never did become a Conway Twitty fan, my attitude towards the music softened over the years as I opened my mind up and explored some of the classic albums. The capstone was my discovery of Uncle Tupelo and the whole alt-country movement, none of which would have been possible without the talented stars I disdained as a kid.

I still don't like the majority of what comes out of Nashville today. I don't like the way the industry as a while treated Little Nas X and Beyoncé. I don't like the fake country nostalgia and I certainly don't like the right-wing, flag waving of people like Lee Greenwood and Toby Keith.

What I do like are some classic albums, by talented people.

Red Headed Stranger by Willie Nelson

Live at Folsom Prison by Johnny Cash

Nothing Ever Hurt Me Half as Bad (as Losing You) by George Jones

Mama Tried by Merle Haggard

Buck Owens by Buck Owens

Hank Williams 40 Greatest Hits by Hank Williams

Van Lear Rose by Loretta Lynn and Jack White

Van Lear Rose Check it out at AllMusic.com

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Mar 4, 2025 ∞

Photo Sharing Websites

North of Santa Fe

I enjoy looking at my photos. I take some time every day to look back at this day in history on one of the websites where I am still storing my archive. I also have an Aura Frame and an Amazon Echo Show that display photos all day long. I never got into Instagram as a means of sharing photos socially, but I've experimented with a few other sites, some that put the emphasis on the social aspect and others that are more for "serious photographers" Whatever that means. These days, I am primarily posting a couple of photos a day on Micro.blog and Mastodon, I even have a gallery for my 100 Strangers Project.

Here are a few other places where I and others I know post photos.

Refrakt - A more meaningful home for photography
Glass — Photography Community - Glass is a paid, global community platform for photographers. With no ads or manipulative algorithms,Glass is your home for photography.
Flashes for Bluesky on the App Store - A Bluesky client just for photography. The devs suggest opening a second, photos only account. I'm trying it out
pxlmo - The Pixelfed server I use
Flickr | The best place to be a photographer online.
Best Photo Sharing Platform for Photographers | 500px
SmugMug: Protect, Share, Store, and Sell Your Photos
The World's Largest Free Photo Contest | Pixoto

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Mar 3, 2025 ∞

Having Fun with Wikipedia

Wikipedia

Not long ago, an Internet friend and I discovered a way to find out what the apps were that we installed on our first iPhones. For both of us, it was an app to access Wikipedia. One of the world's most popular websites, it's come a long way since it's inception. While there was a time when teachers discouraged students from using it, today Wikipedia is seen as a valuable resource full of links to its sources. It's such an excellent source of unvarnished truth in a world increasinglu controlled by maniacal oligarchs, that it's under attack by them. They seek to destroy what they cannot control.

There are several tools and websites that make Wikipedia rabbit holes fun to go down.

Weeklypedia- join a list to receive a weekly email with the top twenty Wikipedia articles and top five Wikipedia discussions from this weekk, available in English and more languages.

WikiTok - This website combines Wikipedia and TikTok to fight doomscrolling. WikiTok users can swipe through an endless stream of Wikipedia article stubs, discovering random facts and interesting information along the way.

I Made a Graph of Wikipedia... This Is What I Found - YouTube - A deep dive into the network of Wikipedia and some of the the most interesting, bizarre, and unique articles on the website.

Obsidian Web Clipper Templates - For any obsidian fans, this collection of templates for the web clipper includes on that allows you to import complete articles with media straight into your vault.

Use KIWIX to Access Wikipedia and Other Resources Offline AppAddict - You can download Wikipedia, along with all of the pictures and videos!

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Mar 3, 2025 ∞

Using Kagi Search Engine on a Mac - Software and Tips

Kago Logo

For those not familiar with it, Kagi is a subscription based, no-ads, privacy-focused search engine that provides an extreme level of customization. Unlike DuckDuckGo, which relies on Bing for most of its results, Kagi has its own scraper and while it does make API calls to other search engines, it is not totally reliant on them. Understandably, not everyone needs or wants to pay for privacy, but for people in vulnerable communities or who are politically active in ways that aren't supporting their nation's current government, it is a valuable resource.

Privacy Pass

Kagi recently released Privacy Pass, " a privacy feature that allows you to use Kagi Search without revealing your identity. When enabled, it lets you perform searches anonymously while still verifying that you're a valid Kagi subscriber. Think of it as a digital token system - similar to getting tokens at an arcade, where once you have them, you can use the services without showing your ID each time." To use Privacy Pass, you need to install a browser extension that enables it.

Kagi Search Extension

Kagi also has a search extension that automates setting it as your default browser and also provides for continuing a search session is a private browsing window.

Using Kagi with Safari

Since Apple limits the selection of custom search engines in Safari, due no doubt to the $18 billion that Google pays them for the right to be Safari's default search engine. There is a good work around though, Xsearch for Safari lets you instantly switch between multiple custom search engines from the Safari address bat. It works in macOS, iOS and iPadOS.

Kagi Features

Kagi has zero ads and zero trackers. It's so secure that what you search for can be totally separated from your identity. You can customize your results easily. If, like any sane and rational person, you don't want to see any stories from the popular news channel that was fines $700 million for lying on the air last year in your search results, you can block the site from ever appearing. If you realize just how many answers to life's questions can be found on Reddit, you can tell Kagi to prioritize the site. In fact, you can customize up to 1,000 sites, either by blocking them or by promoting results from them.

I created a list of sites that are over-represented in search results because of search engine optimization,. It's not that their content is good. It's that the sites are engineered through content farming and keyword usage to appear high in search results. You can copy and paste the list right into Kagi's settings and never have the sites pollute your searches again. Because of problems with the mainstream media in the US, I also created a list of alternative news sources that I told Kagi to prioritize.

You can make your own custom search environment. Kagi calls that a Lens. Kagi Lenses allow you to customize your searches by specifying which websites (and other parameters) you see in your results. They provide a few Lenses to get you started, such as one to search only online discussions and forums.

Have more questions about Kagi? Get all the answers here.

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