Writing

Mar 19, 2025 ∞

Setapp Goodness and Tips

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 19, 2025 ∞

Me, the Digital Packrat

pr2

When I bought my first computer in 1993, an IBM PS1 Consultant, 486/33SX, it had a 140 MB hard drive. I kept the computer for three years, and although I added a CD-ROM, sound card and extra RAM, I never increased the amount of storage. A quick check of the computer I use today, an M2 MacBook Air reveals that I have 78 apps that take up more storage by themselves than I had available on that first computer. My camera, a Canon 6D takes photos so large that six of them would have filled the hard drive of that first computer.

I still have documents I created on that machine. In fact, I have a great many things I wrote and preserved from the 1990s, including digital photos from the expensive Kodak camera that belonged to my job. Many of the documents were written in Microsoft Works, a productivity suite it stopped selling 16 years ago. There was never a Mac version of it. At some point, I had to jump through some hoops to recover the information from those files using a document interpreter. These days, I save everything I write as plain text so that I don't ever face that problem again. I did not save everything I wrote from that era, but I was able to use The Wayback Machine at the Internet Archive to recover numerous web pages from my first blog.

When Napster was popular, you could download almost any song you could think of just by searching for it. I accumulated all 500 of the Rolling Stones top albums that way. While I was still living that pirate life, a short time actually, I also collected the full discographies of several prolific artists and groups and that's why I have 25+ albums (each) by Neil Young, Van Morrison, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, and Bob Dylan.

In setting up my new home office recently, I rounded up the embarrassingly large collection of hard drives I'd accumulated over the years: 7 portable 1 TB drives, 2 portable 2 TB drives, 2 powered external 1 TB drives, 5 internal 1 TB drives and 2 powered external 3 TB hard drives. That's 24 TB of storage added to the 5 TB that I have available on the computers I use daily. The drives contained various collections of software, photos, music, podcasts, movies, TV shows, hard drive back-ups and documents collected over the past 30+ years.

I recently added over a thousand more files to keep up with when I downloaded our entire Amazon Kindle and Audible collections. We had over 500 books in each of those. My challenge is to consolidate all of that information, removing duplicates as I go along. My goal is to have a local copy, a copy kept offsite but readily available and a copy in the cloud. A lot of this information is only important to me. My kids will probably preserve the photos and may avail themselves of some music, but who will want an archive of decades of my writing? If you ask them, they'd most likely says yes, but it is a lot of work to maintain so many files and like all 21st century people, their collections of digital data are growing too.

My decision to create a home lab made things even more complicated since now I have three computers to maintain and a fluctuating number of virtual machines. This means I have a half dozen large USB thumb drives with operating system installations on them. Yay! More data! Having high-speed Internet also allows me to suck information off the internet at an outrageous rate. I can download dozens of GB of data in a morning if I feel like it, and of course, I often feel like it. I don't know for sure, but I suspect there may be a diagnosis associated with my personality type.

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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 18, 2025 ∞

Who Are Your People?

Freedom Riders

One thing I learned prior to traveling to Ireland is that the people of that country grow really and truly tired of Americans (meaning people who were born and raised in the United States) coming over to the Emerald Isle and proclaiming themselves to be Irish because one of their 32 great-great-great-great grandfathers was from County Cork. I made it very clear to any of the Irish people I spoke to that I was not one of "those" Americans. One fellow couldn't believe that I wasn't trying to claim to be his long lost cousin. I explained that my grandmother was of Scottish descent. He asked me her family name. "McFadyen," I told him. He assumed a triumphant look and led me to a monument located right beside the famous Free Derry wall. The monument was to a man whose last name was, you guessed it, McFadyen. He told me that I might not claim Ireland but that Ireland would claim me.

Honestly, I don't really care that much where any of my long dead relatives came from in the sense that i just can't identify with national pride. It's seldom a good thing is it? It leads to nationalism and feelings and acts of unearned and undeserved superiority. I'm fine with other folks who feel some sort of spiritual kinship with the home of their ancestors, as long as they aren't obnoxious about it. Just don't tell me that you know you'd be good at bullfighting because you have Spanish blood or any kind crap like that.

As a general rule, most cultures have two sides. For every selfless act of sacrifice, there tends to be a corresponding act of something horrible. Even the Irish, a people I hold in high esteem for persevering under years of exploitive English colonialism, seldom talk about their Nazi sympathies. Wait, what? Well, after Irish independence, certain folks decided that any enemy of England was a friend of Ireland and well, that kind of led to a certain acceptance of Germany that was most underserved. Read about it in the Irish Times

The heroic American Army of World War Two had soldiers stationed in America guarding their fellow citizens in Japanese Internment Camps. That doesn't take away anything from the men who landed on Omaha Beach, it just solidifies the fact that it's a very grey world, no matter how black and white we wish it could be.

For my fellow pale skinned brethren, expressing something as warped as racial pride is just weird AF to me. Thankfully, the tendency of white people to express that notion was on the decline prior to the last election, although it seems to be making a comeback. I can see where traditionally oppressed people have a sense of "Yay! We survived!" but I'm not sure what their genocidal oppressors have to celebrate. Don't even come at me with an "But not all white people" argument either.

I am much more inclined to identify with my self-chosen tribe of freedom fighters. I celebrate my people based on what they did and not on geography or the amount of melanin in their skin or the shape of their eyes. Our real families are the people we choose and not the blood in our veins. My people were the abolitionists, the Freedom Riders, the IWW and the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War. My people were Susan B. Anthony, Fannie Lou Hamer, Fred Korematsu and Sitting Bull. My people started Occupy Wall Street and rioted in the streets of Seattle. They were gunned down at Kent State by the Ohio NationalGuard and in a Greensboro housing project by the KKK. My people are finding ways to resist the tide of fascism right this red hot minute.

If you feel the same way, then you are my sister or my brother. I love you.

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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 ∞

I Need an Analogy for the Internet

Bluesky

Sometimes being online is absolutely like panning for gold. I can be perusing one of the blogging platforms I frequent and discover the most heart touching essay by someone i've never encountered before. They could be writing about anything, a relationship, or work or just anything about surviving life in 2025. When I find someone like that, it brightens my day and gives me something to look forward to. I felt that way when I found Keenan and Annie.

There are times when even a well done commercial site providing high-quality content is a joy to spend time on there. The Atlantic or The Verge or Wired on a good day are prime examples. I happen to like and respect quite a few journalists. Some of them are doing some absolutely vital work for our democracy right now, and i appreciate it. I also like the tech nerds, who I can tell are just as excited to find an interesting new tool as I would be in their shoes. After all these years, I still think computers can be fun. I'm not jaded yet.

But.

But then... I log on to Mastodon or Bluesky and I see a message in my inbox, not from some software curious Mac fan, but from an incredibly attractive woman, appearing younger than my adult kids, who is just dying to find out how I'm doing tonight. Sigh. It only takes a minute to block and delete those kind of scam messages. They are such downers, though. There's some lonely guy out there, maybe someone who isn't as sharp mentally as they once were who is going to fall for that kind of thing tonight. He will get taken to the cleaners and have his heart broken. I don't like the constant reminders of that reality.

Other times, I'm just doing my thing, minding my own business and I get a text message, which is cool if it is a friend or our kids or grandkids. What's not cool is when it's someone from the political party I don't support crowing about the latest MAGA atrocity as if it's a good thing and asking me to send them money.

Lately, I've voluntarily been extricating myself from my involvement with the websites of the billionaire class. It's not a project to be taken on lightly. It changes the Internet, injecting friction into areas where I am not used to it. I have to think instead of using muscle memory. Having a new email address for the first time in 20 years is disconcerting. Leaving Facebook was absolutely the right thing to do, but I miss the people from my old job and high school friends I only saw on there. For years, I've been able to watch whatever blockbuster show I wanted because subscribing to ALL the streaming services wasn't that expensive. Now, having a moral code is giving me FOMO. What if something superb comes on Amazon Prime after my divorce from Jeff Bezos goes through? I hate the thought.

It's been a good weekend. I got to spend a few hours with my oldest friend today. Wonder Woman and I wrapped a good British TV show. I have a couple of trips to look forward to, And, I am still retired.

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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 ∞

Quiet

Laurel creek

Our house is a quiet one. Our neighborhood is quiet. Neither me not Wonder Woman have loud voices normally, although we do occasionally get excited. My kids follow my lead on this. My son doesn't even have a TV and although, like me, he loves music and has a large collection, he enjoys nothing more than sitting in silence with a book. My daughter does have a TV, but it isn't on much. She has a six-year-old who can be a little rambunctious, but generally, it's a calm home.

Although Wonder Woman is like me, the rest of her family is not. Her girls and her parents like having a TV on in the background. The grandkids are all big gamers so you get those sounds too. My Dad is another person who gets nervous without a TV on in the background. He turns one on just as soon as he wakes up, and it stays on all day, either on Fox News or sports, although he does enjoy the odd YouTube video from time to time. It doesn't bother me, but I'm usually ready for quiet when we go home.

When we have grandkids over for a visit, I know that it will be louder than normal. I am OK with that. I may occasionally ask one of them to use headphones or to turn the volume down on their video game or tablet, but I don't make them feel bad about it or walk on eggshells. I wasn't always that cool about it, though. I've grown more flexible about that with age.

One of my greatest traveling anxieties is being trapped in a loud hotel. I've left more than one in the middle of the night because I just couldn't handle the racket and the staff's inability to do anything about it. I may have even yelled at the noisemakers, a group from a ski trip who came rolling in loud at midnight. I just don't understand the mentality of people who are not volume aware.

Camping in a group campground brings on the same feeling. Breaking out a boom box and serenading people who may have different taste in music or who might want to, I don't know, hear the birds sing is just pure rude. Getting drunk and talking loud around a campfire past the "quiet hour" is another sure sign of low intelligence and poor home training. I also consider hiking spaces to be close to sacred. When some trail runner with a Bluetooth speaker comes blasting by, I want to trip them. Then kick them.

For years, one of my hobbies was downloading, listening to and rating music. I'd sit at my computer for long stretches happily tagging songs, reading reviews of albums and making wish lists of songs or albums I wanted to get. Streaming took the joy out of that, and I rarely add anything new anymore, unless it is an album by an artist I already like. If I am home alone, I'll play music while I cook or clean house, but apart from that, it's quiet.

Oddly, I can write in the noisiest locations. I am perfectly fine to work on my blog on a car trip while a podcast plays in the background. Writing on a plane is no problem. Before I retired, i'd often write at work during my lunch break, with the usual office sounds going on around me. I get aggravated in loud restaurants if i am can't have a conversation with my companions, but it is that fact and not the noise itself which I find grating.

My idea of heaven is sitting on the deck of a cabin up in the Appalachian Mountains, preferable beside a stream on a mild day with a cold beverage and something good to read. That's the spot I go to in my mind when I am trying to relax when tense.

Oh, and leaf blowers suck.

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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 14, 2025 ∞

Retirement So Far

Dawn

As the end of my second week of retired life draws to an end, I am reminded that nothing is routine. Weather irregularities and disruptions caused by maintenance issues at the university have had Wonder Woman working from home, which is nice because I like hanging out with her even when she is busy. It's kept me from firmly entrenching myself in a routine, however. When I told her that she was messing with my flow, she didn't appreciate it. All I meant is that it is challenging to establish a routine when the pattern of the days varies so much. Sheesh!

I've continued to work on my home office. It got relocated from our unused dining room to the living area where the two of us hang out so that I can work on my projects without being in a different part of the house. I rounded up all the external hard drives I had floating around, a total of eleven. When added together, they give me 17 TB of extra storage added to the four TB of internal storage in my computers. A lot of that will be unused space for a while. Some of it is being used as backup locations. I set up a Plex server on my Linux computer with movies, TV shows, music, and photos.

Another project is disconnecting from all the big tech companies apart from Apple to the extent possible. We are leaving Gmail and using Fastmail. I have all my important accounts using the new email already. I spend about an hour a day moving some other 240 accounts using my Google credentials each day. I will have that finished by the middle of April. I managed to download and remove the DRM from 500 Kindle ebooks and 500 Audible audiobooks. We are trying to decide on new vendors for each of those media types. We are dropping Amazon Prime next month, so I am in the process of downloading nearly a TB of backed up photos from there. I uninstalled all Microsoft products from my computers, but those sneaky bastards left several processes behind that I had to remove via the Terminal to finally disconnect.

I set up a weekly lunch data with my father. He's the primary caregiver for my step-mother who has advanced Alzheimer's. He needs a break once in a while, and I am happy to spend time with him. We've never been especially close, but he is fun to spend time with. He's a talented storyteller and good at making conversation.

I've assumed sole responsibility for the grocery shopping so that our weekends aren't partially given over to that chore. Wonder Woman wanted me to start making some of her favorite vegetables more frequently, so I've been loading up on asparagus, zucchini, fresh green beans and the like. She never turns down a cuppa either, so we've been having many mugs of the top-shelf Irish tea I love so much.

My sleep patterns are shot all to hell. We go to bed early because Wonder Woman likes to run before work. I am usually awake for good between 2:00 and 3:00 AM, when I get up to start writing. Of course, I get sleepy later on, indulging in a nap while sitting on the couch. I'd like to consolidate that sleep to a continuous period during the night but so far it's not working out.

We've had a couple of weekend getaways. One was to Raleigh for my birthday where we had a good time visiting our favorite restaurants and shops. Then we went down to the South Carolina low country for a race. Next weekend is the first camping trip of 2025 with five of the grandkids. Next month we are going back to Southwest Virginia for the first time since Hurricane Helene. My kiddos have been on the road too or are getting ready to. My daughter and family went to Costa Rica for a family vacation. She's been sending me daily pictures and keeping me updated. My son is preparing for a trip next week to Frankfurt and Berlin for business. His passion is art and I hope he gets a chance to see some good museums between meetings.

As you can see, I have not been bored or looking for things to do. My dream of long spells of uninterrupted time to write has yet to come to fruition, but it will get here soon enough.

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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 ∞

How To Make Me Like Your Blog

Purpose-of-Blogging

Reblogged from last May because I like this one!

As I spend less and less time on commercial websites and more time exploring the blogs on IndieWeb platforms, I am developing a type and preferences. There's plenty to choose from.

I like tech but not too much tech

For better or worse, it takes a fairly technical person to get involved in blogging. A lot of the people I read are developers of some sort or other even if they don't write about that part of their lives that much. I enjoy reading about the relationship people have with the tech in their life and how that has evolved over time. I find it interesting to read about what people are making, although if a blog primarily consists of code blocks and inside baseball talk about the nuances of particular programming languages, I'm probably going to move on. Most people do a pretty good job at striking a balance.

I like smart and smart-ass but not people who think themselves smarter than everyone else

There are a few bloggers who consistently write about how dumb people are and it's a big old turn off. I like smart people. I like people smarter than me (not hard). I even like people with a smart ass sense of humor but I have worked for too long with stereotypical computer support people who think all end users are stupid and I'm so very weary of that attitude. I think it's great to point out the misconceptions of others but it's boorish if that's the main thing someone writes about.

I like people whose political content is about peace, compassion, equality and diversity

In other words, I'm not a fan of, nor will I read very much of what passes as conservative ideology these days. I don't want to live in a bubble but I'm just not going to waste any of my remaining time on this planet engaging with people who don't believe in climate change or the importance of stamping out white supremacy or in allowing people to be as non-traditional as they want to be. Luckily, I haven't run into too much of that on Mastodon or Scribbles or Micro.blog.

I like consistency

If you are the kind of blogger who just spits out content day after day, I'm here to tell you to keep it up! I realize not everybody has that in them and that's OK. With me, you just don't have to worry that you post too much. If you only write a few paragraphs a week, it's harder to get to know you, to develop curiosity about your the things you share. I don't always have the time or the inclination to read 5,000 word missives, but I like knowing what folks are up to.

I like friendly

I'm from the south and have lived here my whole life. Down here we have a sort of innate familiarity. We are apt to ask how your Mama's doing even if we don't know her. I like people who come across with that same sort of vibe, letting pieces of their real lives leak out. I absolutely do not mind hearing about you feeling tired taking your kid to basketball practice or shocking news about your grandma's affair. I like authentic people who don't posture, who are just themselves, struggling like the rest of us to make sense of a confusing world without resorting to barrier building between themselves and their readers.

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 ∞

ACAB or Not?

Vivaldi - 2025-03-11 at 19

The centrist and traditionalist wing of the Democratic Party stays perpetually irritated at the more progressive and leftist members of the party. James Carville recently said that "defund the police" were the three stupidest words ever uttered by a politician. I can never tell whether the Democrats who rake in all the corporate dollars are compromised progressives or not. I have a hard time believing that Barak Obama was ever truly against same-sex marriage, or Bill Clinton either for that matter, but both of them stood in front of news cameras and said they were. I tend to think they were both temporary sell outs for the sake of courting middle of the road voters.

Richard Nixon and George Wallace both ran a law and order campaign in 1968, appealing to older people who were put off by all the scary black people and the college kids raising hell about the war. For a long time, members of both parties were all about mandatory minimum sentences, building more prisons, and hiring more cops. Right-wing television has never met a killer cop they didn't like and defend. Most voters seem to be OK with short-changing all kinds of people in need to be able to spend money on law enforcement. Smart politicians try to scare the hell out of people because it works. Scared people vote for those they think will protect them.

I'll go ahead and say that no, I do not think All Cops Are Bastards (ACAB). I don't believe that all of any group is homogeneous. I do think that police work, unfortunately, attracts too many people who aren't suited for it. Too many cops shoot to kill, claiming they were scared for their life because some black person did something besides lay perfectly still on the ground. Too may judges and juries fall for that shit and too may people are dead because of it. Hey, it can be a scary job, I get it, but if you tend to frighten easily, don't sign up for the police. Do something else.

The tiny university where I worked spent big bucks buying gear for the campus police, including two four-wheel-drive vehicles and new long barrelled weapons. This was the same year they laid off librarians, admin assistants and humanities professors. Of course, they also changed the names of the DEI department since January too. But hey, people still have their pronouns in the email signatures and discreet pride flags can be seen, so the important stuff is covered, I guess.

I'm going to go ahead and say, too, that if you think we need militarized police forces with armored vehicles and arsenals of automatic weapons, you and I probably should not hang out. If you think we require more prisons while ignoring aging school buildings, stay away from me. If you are already over the death of George Floyd and think all that Black Lives Matter stuff was a bad idea, well, you aren't alone, but neither are you right.

All over the US, people who were late to the party to recognize police violence against people of color are already sauntering back to their liberal (I don't mean that in a good way) attitudes. That's when you support people of color as long as they don't live next door. The right-wing crazies are making room for the reluctant supporters of maybe, just maybe, spending a little less on cops and a little more on preventing crime to abandon that risky idea. I mean, when James Carville is calling you stupid, how can you be right?

Well, not me folks. I'm all for spending money on kids, education, health care, poverty prevention and a host of other worth causes and instead of the po-po. I don't think giving the police even more immunity from violent crimes they commit is anything but crazy. I think that anyone who is afraid to publicly state that Black Lives Matter is a POS. Sorry, if the shoe fits. I'm not going to be one of those white folks who are secretly relieved that it is OK to be a little racist again. I'm not going to sell out my LGB or my T friends either, no matter how easy it now is to get away with it. Why, because right is right and wrong is wrong and popular opinion ain't got shit to do with it.

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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 ∞

Communication Evolution

Vivaldi - 2025-03-10 at 20

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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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 9, 2025 ∞

Tips on Being a Good Spouse

Me and Wonder Woman

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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