Links
- Ergonomic Mouse Pad - $9.99 - This has a wrist rest and can be used with a mouse of an Apple magic Track Pad.
- Logitech MX Master 3S $99.99 - Even though I am a big old Apple fanboy, this is a better mouse than the ergonomically unfriendly Magic Mouse
- Logitech MX Keys S for Mac $89.99 - The Apple Magic keyboard with fingerprint ID is expensive and arguably not as good as this option.
- Anker USB C Charger $39.99 - This charger is what I travel with and it takes care of my MacBook, my iPhone and my Apple Watch. It's the best charger I have ever used.
- SanDisk 1TB Extreme Portable SSD $97.95 - This rugged, small, portable drive is good for the computer bag or for use as a Time Machine backup on your Mac. It's fast and dependable.
- Smartish iPhone Wallet Case - $24.99 - This family of cases is why I have not carried a wallet in years. It holds enough cards to get me by, plus it provides outstanding protection to my phone, which I drop on the regular.
- Screen Cleaner Wipes $14.99 - This is another good item for the computer bag. I don't know how may computer gets a dirty as it does, but it needs regular cleaning. These wipes re my go to for that.
Enjoyed it? Please upvote ๐ - Research and development costs are huge
- They sell printers at a loss. HP claims that a printer it sells for 120 to manufacture, so it needs to recoup costs and make a profit from the ink.
- Consumers are accused of wasting ink by doing unnecessary maintenance (like cleaning print heads)
- Causing printer maintenance cycles to use half of every cartridge
- Disabling your ability to use the scanning features of your all-in-one device if you let your ink get low
- Premature low ink warnings
- Blocking access to third-party cartridges
- Preventing the refilling of cartridges
- Say yes to less stuff. I am a people pleaser by nature and take pride in being helpful, but that can get you put in the middle of the 20% of people in any group who do 80% of the work. That's cool if you enjoy the work, not so much if it is a burden.
- Knock out the hard stuff first. More often than not, the pain for procrastinators is in the dread of having to do things they don't want to do rather than in actually doing them.
- Have hard hobbies - whether it's riding a bike for 100 miles at a stretch, dead lifting and squatting 400 lbs. or hiking the Appalachian Trail, I've done enough hard things that I can't lie to myself when faced with lesser tasks.
- If you fear doing something, if that is the hard bit, having someone to talk it through with is a life saver. I'd rather relax my ego some and confess trepidation than pretend to be stoic when I'm scared.
- Chicken and rice
- Chili
- Spaghetti
- Homemade tacos
- Vegetable soup
- Tuna casserole
- Meatloaf
- Hot dogs and beans
- Pinto beans and cornbread
- ๐จ Mail Client:โญ Kiwi for Gmail/ Work Outlook via Office365
- ๐ฎ Mail Server: Gmail
- ๐ Notes: Obsidian and โญScratchpad
- โ To-do: Things3
- ๐ท iPhone Photo Shooting: ProCamera
- ๐ฆ Photo Management: Photos.app
- ๐ Calendar: Fantastical legacy features, not paid
- ๐ Cloud File Storage: Google Drive, iCloud, Dropbox
- ๐ RSS: Inoreader
- ๐๐ปโโ๏ธ Contacts: Cardhop
- ๐ Browser: Vivaldi on macOS and iOS
- ๐ฌ Chat: Messages.app, โญ Discord, โญ Caprine for Facebook Messenger
- ๐ Bookmarks: Raindrop.io
- ๐ Read It Later: โญ Pocket
- ๐ Word Processing: Obsidian and Drafts
- ๐ Spreadsheets: Microsoft Excel at work, Google Sheets at home
- ๐ Presentations: nope
- ๐ Shopping Lists: Anylist, a great app!
- ๐ฐ Budgeting and Personal Finance: Monarch on Mac and iOS
- ๐ฐ News: Google News, โญProPublica, โญDemocracyNow!
- ๐ต Music: Apple Music
- ๐ค Podcasts: Overcast
- ๐ Password Management: โญApple Passwords
- ๐ Mastodon:Ivory, social.lol, 500.social
- ๐ฆ Bluesky: โญ Skeets, โญDeck.blue
- ๐ Launcher: Raycast
- ๐๏ธ Media Tracking: Trakt via Watcht, Sequel
- ๐ป Screenshot Tool: Cleanshot X
- โ๐ป Blogging: Micro.blog, OMG.LOL, Scribbles, BearBlog
- ๐ Websites: Amerpie, Living Out Loud, AppAddict, Linkage
- โ๏ธ Automation: Keyboard Maestro, Hazel, Popclip, Better Touch Tool
Enjoyed it? Please upvote ๐ - View RSS feeds as Mastodon links using RSS Parrot
- Find Accounts popular with your friends follow that you aren't following with Followgraph
- Use the Mastodon web client, Phanpy
- Get all your Fediverse questions answered at Fedi.tips
- Get stats on your account at Mastometrics
- Get stats on the entire fediverse at Fedi.db
- Learn how to bridge you mastodon account with Bluesky
- Learn to use Mastodon search
- See other collections of mastodon tools
- See meta posts on the Fediverse from the Fediverse
- Find cool accounts and topics to follow on Fedi.directory
- Find tending topics
- Explore your Fediverse connection by servers, follows and followers
- Use the web Mastodon client, Elk
- Use the wen Mastodon client, Statuzer
- Schedule your Mastodon posts with Fedica
This Week's Bookmarks - Appealing Claim Denials, Post-Truth World, Using Any Emoji, Comedy Wildlife Photography, Facts and Time's MOY, Chronic Back Pain and the CEO's Death, Racing's Deadliest Day
2024 Brought Big Changes to My Workflow
This year, my time online skyrocketed. I started blogging and I became active on social media, primarily Mastodon and Bluesky. At my day job, I moved from a creaky old Dell to a maxed out iMac. As a result, I had to reevaluate some of the tools I'd used for many years.
I dumped Evernote, which I'd used since 2009 in favor of Obsidian.
My 10 Favorite Things About #Obsidian
I switched from Pathfinder, an app I used for 18 years, to Qspace for file management.
After 17 years with Launchbar, I started using Raycast Pro and never looked back.
My 10 Favorite #Raycast Use Cases (and all the apps it replaced)
I deleted my Twitter account and started using Ivory for Mastodon on my iPhone and Mac.
After being all in on Microsoft Edge for my browsing needs, I switched to Vivaldi for the customization options.
What to Get Geeks
I don't have any beef with personal bloggers who use affiliate links. Everyone has a right to have a hustle. Besides, I've found some helpful items on the web pages of people i follow. I don't particularly like commercial newsletters that continually post lists because I begin to doubt the work that went into them. I don't do affiliate links because I 1) can't be arsed 2) I am terrified of blogging ever seeming like a job. What I'm listing here are just some ideas you can use to get gifts for the geeks on your shopping list.
Why Does Printer Ink Cost More than Cocaine?
Top reasons given by those that sell ink:
Actual Reason
Because they can - using various unethical tactics:
Why Is Printer Ink So Expensive? - Consumer Reports
Why Printer Ink Can Be More Expensive Than the Printer Itself - Business Insider
How printers keep us hooked on expensive ink
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Race and Music
I'm not a music historian, nor have I taken any classes on theory or appreciation. I'm just a reasonably well-read layman who knows that for over a century, white people have had some wacky ideas about race and music. I's been going on since the Jazz age. If you play hip-hop around most white boomers, they freak out on a pretty regular basis. If it's not the language, it's some other criticism, usually centered around rap, and it's fellow travelers not being โregularโ or โAmericanโ music. These are the same boomers who all listened to Motown when they were in school and came of age watching Elvis Presley get away with movements only a white boy could get away with.
Today there are regular controversies over institutionalized racism in country music, with the CMA ignoring the immense popularity of Beyonce's country album, Cowboy Carter. Then there was the ridiculous and unnecessary inclusion of Billy Ray Cyrus on Old Town Road by Lil Nas X, who being both black and gay was as big an affront to Nashville as there could be for someone who made a damn fine song.
Fortunately for me, I was born 52 day into 1965. Thus, I am firmly in Generation X and I feel no irony in my appreciation of Public Enemy and NWA from the heady days of the late nineties. In fact, I am just the right age to have enjoyed Rapper's Delight by the Sugar Hill Gang when it was being played on the radio.
If you are a hip hop loving boomer, don't be offended. I am happy there are outliers like you.
Debates Around Rap Musicโs Validity Rooted in Racism โ The Oberlin Review
The Sugarhill Gang - Rapper's Delight (Official Video) - YouTube
Black artistry is woven into the fabric of country music. It belongs to everyone | Music | The Guardian
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How to Do the Hard Stuff
My favorite time to do most almost anything is "not right now." I am a world class procrastinator by nature. In case you are wondering, yes, that can be a serious impediment to personal and professional goals, so I've learned a few tricks over the years. None of them are really surprising, but they can and do make life easier when i use them.
How to Convince Yourself to Do Hard Things
10 Ways To Train Your Brain To Do Hard Things
How to Do Hard Things โ JOHN MASHNI
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Cheap Recipes for Hard Times (or Nostalgia)
I grew up in a family of five. I've never been hungry a day in my life but as a kid, we weren't eating much steak and shrimp, if you catch my drift. My mom employed tricks like using bread to stretch hamburger and making her own waffles instead of buying the ready-made kind. It was the 70s and grocery stores were not the multi-choice bonanzas they are today. It was also a time before refrigerated cargo-containers, so we didn't have the year round access to all the fresh produce you could ever want.
The biggest luxury of having a good income to me isn't the opportunity to travel or to buy whatever i want in the technology arena, it's being able to go to the grocery store and put whatever I want into my cart. When I was finally able to do that, I felt like I'd arrived. Plenty of the meals I enjoyed in my poorer days are still among my favorites.
These include:
I enjoy fancy meals too, but these staple dishes have gotten me through some hard times. Here are a few websites with low cost recipes for anyone, not just the budget conscious.
Cheap Family Meals Under $10 - Julia Pacheco
Recipes under $10 | Budget Bytes
Ten buck dinners! โ Well balanced and delicious meals for 2. $10 or less!
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Where to Find Discounted Software
I've shared plenty of places to get free software over the past few months. I use plenty of it. Many people say that when software is free, you are paying with your data. That isn't always true. There are plenty of independent developers making FOSS tools that aren't data collectors, but there are also popular programs that collect as much as they can get away with. Take the time to read the privacy policy from Threads, the Meta microblogging platform. Sometimes, you just can't find certain features in free software, and you have to rely on a paid product. No one likes to pay full price, so here are a few places to get name - brand software titles at a discount.
Student App Centre
Student App Centre is a paid, but cheap service that provides discounts on more than 200 well-known software titles to anyone with an education affiliation who can verify it via email or providing documentation. I'm nether a student, nor a member of the faculty, but I am employed by a university and that qualifies me. Some of their popular titles are Downie, Better Display, Little Snitch, Al Dente, Cleanshot X and Parallels. A membership is $21.40.
Bundle Hunt
Bundle Hunt is a website that periodically offers 40โ50 titles at the time for very steep discounts. I have purchased dozens of programs from them over the years. They email you download links and serial numbers for your purchases, but they also have an online database for you to reference. I recently re-downloaded an app I bought nine years ago. Some of the current titles they have on sale are Mountain Duck, MacPilot, MonsterWriter and Smultron.
App Sumo
App Sumo specializes in business software, although they sometimes have consumer titles and training discounts available. Their titles include apps for SEO, static website creation, CRMs, email marketing and lead generation among many others.
Setapp
Setapp is a $9.99 service that lets you download, install and use over 250 quality Mac apps. I currently have over 40 of their apps downloaded. They offer some of the most highly rated programs in the Mac ecosystem, including Bartender, Default Folder X, CleanShot X, CleanMyMac, Dropzone, Downie, Permute, Houdah Spot, Mind Node, Pathfinder, Soulver, Ulysses and MarsEdit. I can't recommend them highly enough.
Enjoyed it? Please upvote ๐
This Week's Bookmarks - Maximize PTO, Best in Show, Public Domain 2025, History of Playing Cards, Best Soccer Goals, French Resistance Fighter, Get off Twitter
Request These Days Off to Maximize Your PTO in 2025 | Lifehacker
Meet Vito the Pug, Winner of the 2024 National Dog Show | TIME
What Will Enter the Public Domain in 2025? โ The Public Domain Review
The History of Playing Cards: The Evolution of the Modern Deck
Best Soccer Goals of 2024 - A Playlist
Madeleine Riffaud, resistance fighter, internationalist 1924-2024 โ Workers World
Default Apps for 2024
A year ago, I was just getting back into the tech scene after not paying close attention for a couple of years. As I was updating and cleaning up my RSS feeds, I saw many people talking about their default apps as a result of an episode of the podcast Hemispheric Views.. I learned about a lot of great software that I'd missed out on during my hiatus. I wanted to get in on the fun as well, so I started a blog for that express purpose, and the rest is history.
A full 12 months have passed, and some apps have been replaced or discarded over time. Here is my current list. Apps with a โญ are new choices since last year.
A Collection of Mastodon Tools
I'm maintaining a growing collection of links to various Mastodon resources. You can bookmark this page or subscribe to the collection via RSS.
With these tools, you can do things like:
Sandwich Origin Stories
During my time as a long distance hiker, I spent a lot of time fantasizing about food. I was constantly hungry, desperately trying to take in more calories than I was using making my way north through the Appalachian Mountains. More often than not, my go to order when I was lucky enough to find a diner or a deli while passing through the small mountain trail towns was the humble hamburger. There was a place in Hot Springs, NC that had a burger called the Hiker Special weighing in at 12 oz of ground beef. I ate two of them.
I still enjoy hamburgers and other sandwiches of all kinds. My favorite fast food-ish restaurant is Jersey Mike's Sub Shop where i get the #13 Italian fixed the traditional way plus banana peppers. They have gluten free bread for Wonder Woman who sticks with the lower calorie turkey and provolone.
Other than liverwurst, I've never met a sandwich I didn't like. They are best with good fresh bread and the toppings piled on, but I've eaten many, many plain bologna and cheese sandwiches on loaf bread in my day.
Here's the fascinating story behind some of the most popular sandwiches in America.
Who Really Invented the Reuben? | Saveur
Cuban Sandwich: The Complete History and Guide
The History of the Grilled Cheese | The Committed Pig | NJ
The Fried Bologna Sandwich Is A Southern Classic
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Health Insurance Companies Are Evil
It's common knowledge that the for-profit medical industrial complex in the United States is broken and has been so for a long time. Bills are inscrutable. Insurance companies provide little help when trying to determine the cost of care patients are considering, if they have that luxury. There may be occasional bright spots, but almost everyone who deals with the system has a personal horror story. For-profit companies are beholden to their stockholders, not patients, you knowโsick people. Even non-profits have dubious decision-making skills. I am in long-term (16-year) recovery from substance abuse. I have a mood disorder that requires me to take medication daily. It's no big deal. I was diagnosed in the '80s, so I've dealt with it almost all my adult life. I once got a letter from my insurance company that explained they noticed how expensive my medication was. They suggested I ask the doctor to prescribe Valium instead, a highly addictive and often abused drug. They suggested that to me, a recovering addict.
I dealt with bone-on-bone arthritis for years. The only relief was a shot that I could get every six months. The red tape, delays, and stalling by my insurance company (I was a state employee in NC) would often result in delays of two to three months, stretching the time between shots up to nine months. Arthritis is a painful and debilitating condition that doesn't just get better. The policies of a company trying to save money resulted in my being denied coverage I was promised as part of my employment. I lived in pain and grew depressed when I met so many stone walls. This went on for years.
I am sorry that the CEO of United Healthcare was murdered in the street outside of a meeting for investors in that company. I am not surprised, though. If I thought some exorbitantly paid executive was responsible for the pain, suffering, and death of someone I loved because his company was trying to provide maximum value to shareholders, I might just consider violence myself.
Health insurance CEOs rake in millions: Here's the top 10 list
How Insurance Companies Get You to Pay Higher Costs for Less Coverage
Whistleblower Exposes Health Insurers' Most Evil Scheme
Health insurance horror stories
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The Resistance to the Nazis - Lessons from the Past
For some reason, resisting fascism and the historical lessons from courageous Germans in World War Two has been on my mind lately. Having been involved with social movements and protests over the last quarter of a century, I'm aware of the conservative attitude towards any group of people who don't wrap themselves in the flag. Modern police forces are terrified of ANTIFA and anarchists while they simultaneously ignore or tacitly support right-wing groups. Republican led legislatures across the country have passed laws designed to crack down on protests and those laws are always enforced selectively against POC, the poor, young people and anyone who opposes the power structure. Some states have made it legal for drivers to run over protesters who block traffic, essentially creating a de facto death penalty. Such is the morality of the "all lives matter" crowd.
For information about role models from the past, see these links.
German resistance to Nazism - Wikipedia
German Resistance to Hitler | Holocaust Encyclopedia
A Brief History of Anti-Fascism | Smithsonian
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Police Misconduct and The Promised Immunity
After the Ohio State vs. Michigan football game this past weekend, the players (ages 18-22) got into a scuffle on the field when Michigan players attempted to plant their team flag in on the Ohio State logo at midfield after winning. Within moments there was a massive police presence on the field. The police tried to separate the players, and when they didn't immediately comply, some of the officers deployed pepper spray - against student-athletes on national television. It wasn't a good look.
I've never been a police officer, but I worked within the criminal justice system for seven years as a correctional officer, spending eight hours a day with convicted criminals so I have some understanding of the stress of the job. Not everyone is cut out to be a cop. If you are easily frightened, angered or slow to make important decisions, being a police officer is probably not the job for you. There is no shame in that. Unfortunately, the US court system is set up in a way that allows police to assert that they fear for the safety to justify just about any action up to murdering children holding play toys.
Nationwide there is an issue with sub-standard police officers moving from one agency to another as they get fired for incompetence or misconduct. President Trump has promised to give police blanket immunity for crimes they commit, regardless of the circumstances. Under his policies, police will be free to choke people to death whenever they feel like it without ever facing justice. The evidence proves that they will do exactly that.
National Police Misconduct Database - Center for Justice Research
10 Outrageous Police Misconduct: A Compilation of Videos - YouTube
"The Wandering Officer" by Ben Grunwald and John Rappaport
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This Week's Bookmarks - Nazis in Paris, Fiction Disclaimer, Ancient Dinners, Apple Award Nominees, Microwave Tips, Colosseum Facts, The Kakistocracy
Mystery uncovered of photographer and forbidden photos of Nazi-occupied France : NPR
The bizarre true story behind the โthis is a work of fictionโ disclaimer.
What the Mesopotamians had for dinner
Apple reveals 45 app and game finalists for the 2024 App Store Awards - Apple
7 Tips From Our Microwave Expert | Reviews by Wirecutter
Everyone but You Sucks, and I Hate Them
One of the least fun parts of having bipolar disorder is unexplainable irritability. Sometimes there are a few identifiable causes, but I know that on better days, they would not bother me. Today I woke up to find that a carefully curated collection of newsletters and online subscriptions was somehow decimated by technical snafus beyond my understanding. As I went through my habitual morning reading on my favorite websites, I could tell it was going to be one of those days.ย
The people of Reddit are engaged in the usual paranoia and security theater they indulge in regularly over app privacy policies. Two of the most hated apps by the little uninformed Russian trolls over there happen to be two I like just fine, Bartender and Clean My Mac. Someone called me disrespectful for not agreeing with them.
Bluesky is full of people taking sides in the PC vs, Mac wars like we are all living in 2001 again. It seems like the only people not participating are the Linux people who could solve all our problems if we would just install Arch/Mint/Ubuntu/Gnome etc.
On top of the technology drama, I also had to leave home, not something I always enjoy, accompanying Wonder Woman to the supermarket. To top it all off, instead of feeling grateful for a paid five-day break from work, I'm mad because I have to go back tomorrow.
I needed some advice, so I did some research.
What to Do When Youโre Super Cranky and Hate Everyone | SELF
5 Scientific Reasons (and Solutions) for Your Crankiness
How to Be Grumpy: A Guide to Managing Grumpiness Well
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On Collecting Quotes
In an early morning fog, I posted this to the wrong blog today. I am reposting it here for the people who follow Linkage via RSS so they will have today's links.
More than a decade ago, a discovered a fun little app called Quotebook the app was deprecated within a couple of years of my discovery. By some miracle, it has continued to work. I have transferred from phone to phone and continued to use it for its intended purpose, collecting quotes from news stories, books and memes. As a backup, I also use individual text files named after the speaker/writer. Once that folder contained over 500 individuals. I created a GitHub repository to make it easy to share with others. Available as a ZIP archive or as single files you can find it here.
I prefer finding my quotes organically rather than harvesting tons of them at a time, but I will occasionally go looking for a quote on a specific topic. A good place to do that is here -
If you use IFTTT, you can get quotes emailed to you daily. I've been doing it for years. The day's choice goes out shortly after midnight, so it's always waiting for me when I wake up. You can get the same service with a free account.
Email me a famous quote every day - IFTTT
There are a few other quotes collecting apps available for iOS and Mac. I've tried them all.
Black Friday - Alternatives to Shopping
Any shopping I do on Black Friday will be of the online variety. There aren't enough bargains in the world to get me into a store with crazed bargain hunters today. I've seen the videos of shoppers being trampled so someone could save $50 on a big screen T. I plan to spend the day in the company ot my kids, grandkids and my Mom. We will hang out, telling stories and snacking. Our one trip away from home is a planned excursion for lunch to get some pho from the very appropriately named Vietnamese Restaurant. That's its name. The even funnier part is that all the people who work there are Korean.
Black Friday Alternatives: Things To Do Instead of Shopping - Parade
What To Do On Black Friday Instead Of Shopping
12 Things To Do On Black Friday Besides Shopping - It's My Favorite Day
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Weird Thanksgiving Traditions
Here in the United States we traditionally celebrate Thanksgiving on the last Thursday of November to celebrate the supposed feast celebrated by New England Pilgrims and Native Americans in 1621. President Lincoln created the holiday in 1863 in the midst of the American Civil War.
My family's traditions are pretty normal. Wonder Woman and I alternate each year between her family and mine. Both families have all the expected Thanksgiving foods, turkey, dressing, cranberry sauce and various vegetables and deserts. No one person has to cook it all. We do it potluck style, where everyone attending brings a dish or two. The only slightly out of the ordinary offering is the occasional bushel of oysters we may have on hand, since we all live relatively close to the Atlantic coast.
Doing a little research, I discovered there are some definitely strange customs followed by different people in the US. Here are a few for you to peruse.
Weird Thanksgiving Traditions: Turduckens, Cap'n Crunch Stuffing & More
These Are The Weirdest Thanksgiving Traditions Ever
These Unusual Thanksgiving Traditions Are Common in the U.S. - Immihelp
Whatโs your โunusualโ Thanksgiving tradition? : r/thanksgiving
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