Writing
- White Men Can't Jump | Rotten Tomatoes
- The Thin Red Line Official Trailer - YouTube
- No Country for Old Men (2007) - IMDb
- Zombieland - Wikipedia
- True Detective - Wikipedia (All time favorite)
- The Highwaymen (film) - Wikipedia
- 123456
- password
- 12345678
- qwerty
- 123456789
- 12345
- 1234
- 111111
- 1234567
- dragon
- Make it long - longer is stronger, at least 16 characters
- Make it random. The best option is to create a memorable phrase of 4 โ 7 unrelated words. This is called a โpassphrase.โ For example: purplecoffeebusboy
- Make it unique. You need a different password for every single site. If you reuse the same one, it will be used against you the first time there is a breach at one of the sites where you have an account.
- Adobe
- Tumblr
- MySpace
- Dropbox
- last.fm
- Bitly
- Edmodo
- Diet.com
- My Fitness Pal
- Cafe Press
- Advanced Auto Parts
- Download the ZIP files using a browser on to an external had drive.
- Copy one archive at the time to a folder in my Mac home directory. I called mine local,
- Use Better Zip to unarchive the just the subfolder containing the images and video. Better Zip is great because you don't have to unzip the whole archive to get just the files you want, plus, when you install it, you gain the ability to use Quicklook to inspect the contents of archives without opening them.
- Use A Better Finder Attributes to change the creation date of the photos to match the creation date contained in the EXIF information.
- Use Hazel to sort the photos into folders based on the year and month they were taken. Hazel can also name the photos using the same type of convention. My DSLR photos are names my Lightoom, but my iPhone photos have the default names given to them by iOS.You may find it easier to create the Hazel rule if you use Finder's Smart Folders feature to consolidate all the images into a temporary folder before sorting them.
- After the photos are sorted, you can trash the local copy of the ZIP file and empty your trash.
- Use a photo management program that respects the files system to inspect, edit and view your photos. Some decent choices are XnViewMP (free), Adobe Bridge (free), FlowVision (free), Musebox (12.99), Pixea ($9.99)
Enjoyed it? Please upvote ๐ - Breaking bad habits
- Increased productivity
- Meeting people
- Going for a walk
- A half-hour to an hour of housework
- Cooking dinner
- ๐จ Mail Client: Kiwi for Gmail
- ๐ Writing: Obsidian
- ๐ Temporary Notes: Drafts and Scratchpad
- ๐ Calendar: Fantastical legacy features, not paid
- ๐ RSS: Inoreader
- ๐ Browser: Vivaldi on macOS and iOS
- ๐ Bookmarks: Raindrop.io
- ๐ Read It Later: โญ Pocket
- ๐ฆ Photo Management: Apple Photos
- Optimization - Clop
- Screenshots - CleanShotX
- Automation - Dropover
- More Optimization - ImageOptim
- Editing - Toyviewer
- ๐ Clipboard Management - Raycast
- ๐ Password Management: Apple Passwords and Access
- ๐ Launcher: Raycast
- ๐ Security
- VPN: Nord
- DNS: Next DNS
- Firewall: Little Snitch
- Tracker Blocking: Privacy Badger
- Ad Blocking: Ublock Origin
- โ๏ธ Task Management: Things 3
- ๐ฑUpdating Apps:
- Homebrew: Cork
- Almost Everything Else: MacUpdater
- Etc: Topgrade
- โ๏ธ Journaling: Day One
Big Woody Harrelson Fan
I've enjoyed watching Woody Harrelson since I first saw him in Cheers in the 80s. His ability to play a wide variety of roles is evident from the nominations he's received for the Oscars, the Emmy's and the Golden Globes. I went to see his latest release, Last Breath today just because he was in it. I didn't know a thing about it. It's the true story about a crew of saturation divers working on the floor of the North Sea off the coast of Scotland and the fight to rescue one of them when he gets trapped in an accident during a repair operation.
Some of my other favorites from his career include:
My favorite, but unfortunate fact about Woody Harrelson is that he is the son of a hit man. His father was convicted in the contract killing of a judge. Really.
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Getting Untangled
The five big tech companies have gotten so deep into our lives that at times it seems almost impossible to cut them out. If you overlook the bad stuff, they make life much easier. Facebook is is easy enough for the oldest seniors to figure out. Amazon will not only sell you the stuff you want, it will provide you with all kinds of entertainment โ TV, music and books, both to read and listen to. Microsoft products are installed on most of the world's computer, even on Macs, many of which have a copy of office. Two companies, Apple and Google, managed to corner the cell phone market. They also handle your email, your files, your music, your viewing needs and more of your health information than you are probably aware of.
Meta
We started detangling after the election when I saw the billionaire owners of the tech companies beginning to bow and scrape to the new fascist regime. I closed all my Meta accounts (Facebook, Instagram, and Threads). I went so far as to block all connections to facebook.com on my computer. Wonder Woman still uses Facebook for her mother's sake, but that is about it.
Amazon
I also canceled our subscription to the Washington Post. Wonder Woman found new vendors for some of her recurring needs, running shoes and sports nutrition products. I rescued by Kindle and Audible purchases from Amazon and started researching alternative marketplaces. We are not going to renew our Amazon Prime subscription.
Microsoft
We do not own a computer that uses Windows. Most of my ties to the company were through the job I recently left. I installed a copy of Libre Office on my computer to deal with any documents that come from Microsoft Office. I have a personal free Microsoft account that I do not use and that I am going to close.
At the risk of stressing out my wife, who is in the middle of a huge software implementation at work, I told her today that I wanted us to leave Gmail and Google Drive behind. I opened a Fastmail account using the discount from OMG.LOL, and I am starting the process of migrating twenty years worth of Gmail. I have to convert my Google Docs to another format and download all the photos and music I have stored on Google Drive too. I opened an account with Kagi and have already changed my search settings on all my devices. The process of de-Googling will take a while.
Apple
This is the company with which I will end up being most intertwined. They make the phone and the computer I use. I get too much joy from those devices to become a full-time Linux user or to adopt some off brand phone. I don't use them for email or bulk data storage and what I do use is under advanced data protection. I am working on moving to as many self-hosted services as I can manage for home use, including photographs and music.
I've adopted other privacy protecting tech practices as well, like using a VPN much of the time and using encrypted DNS 100% 0f the time to keep my Internet history private. We are already using several non-US companies for some of our needs and looking for end-to-end encryption on as many services as we can. I hope you see that the trend is moving towards people leaving thesse companies and their terrible practices. You can leave them too.
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Survival Skills
Dr. Maya Angelou, the poet, professor, and activist said, "When people show you who they are, believe them the first time." I don't think she was advocating for harsh, unforgiving judgment as much as she was advocating for the opposite of blind faith. The opposite of blind faith is the observant form. Making judgments is a vital survival skill. It is not a character flaw to evaluate the character of others. We are unable to surround ourselves with good and kind people unless we first determine whether they meet that criteria.
In the world of 2025, adults have had almost a decade to show what their beliefs are in the most treacherous political atmosphere in the US since the Civil War. The people who continue to support a man whose actions and words repeatedly demonstrate his contempt for important values, have shown us that they too have contempt for those values. The time for dialog and trying to understand them has long been over.
While it is indeed a gray world because not everything is black and white, there are some key performance indicators to demonstrate where people stand on racism, sexism and class differences. The biggest of those is the obvious one. I was pleased beyond measure to spend time with two of the most significant people from my formative years yesterday, Both of them are Republicans but neither of them voted for Trump. That kind of country over party regard for right and wrong is what we need and what we have so little of.
When People Show You Who They Are Maya Angelou - Poetry & Poets
When Someone Shows You Who They Are Believe Them
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This Week's Bookmarks - Self-Segregation, HP Sux, Amber Alerts, Recipes, IMDB, Avoiding Fees, Better Searches
Are We Self-Segregating on Social Media? - Dame Magazine - Many of the journalists criticizing social media platforms like Bluesky and Mastodon for being Liberal echo chambers are actually just upset because they worked hard to build a following on Twitter and now that it's a toxic hellstew, they are loathe to admit that their effort has gone to waste
Pluralistic: We bullied HP into a minor act of disenshittification - The Internet erupted in anger when it was revealed that HP was forcing consumers to be remain on telephone hold for a minimum of 15 minutes listening to recordings urging them to use web self service even if operators were available to speak to them
How to Turn Off AMBER Alerts on Apple Watch & iPhone - It's not that missing kids don't deserve help, it's just that your phone noisily going off in the middle of a funeral or a business meeting shouldn't be unavoidable
Off The Menu : Recipes and Cooking Food Network | Food Network - Useย these recipesย to make restaurant-style favorites at home.
He created one of the worldโs first websites. It was IMDb. - Still, no one really knows who Needham is in these parts. The only sign that he founded one ofย the 50 most visitedย websites in the world โ and one of the first 100 to 200 websites ever created โ is the black car that takes him and his wifeย Karen, a former schoolteacher, around to movie theaters.
10 of the Most Ridiculous Fees (and How to Avoid Paying Them) | Lifehacker - Why am I being charged in the first place? What can I do to circumvent these fees and save my hard-earned money? Here are some of the most common fees that have been infuriating me lately, and what you can do to avoid paying them.
How 16 Companies are Dominating the World's Google Search Results (2024 Edition) - Detailed.com - They aren't dominating because they have the best content, they are dominating because they are designed to do well in Google Searches. They clog up your attempts to find good content. Learn how you can block them.
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Better Than Gold
I moved around as a kid, attending 13 schools, even though I went to the same high school for three years. As a result of all those moves, I was never able to keep up with any childhood friends from my younger years. There is one guy though, that's been a constant going all the way back to the 70's when we attended the same junior high. He and I went to the same Presbyterian church, so when I ran into him in the cafeteria in my first week at the new school, he was the only person I had any connection with.
He came from one of those families where everyone is above average. The youngest of five, his older brothers were a division one college football player at Duke, an ROTC scholar at Wake Forest and a West Pointer. His sister and Mom were teachers and his Dad was a retired Army officer and a successful businessman.
My buddy's name is James. We really bonded when he came to work at my family's farm. We spent long, long hours picking vegetables by the bushel, pulling acres of weeds once August came around, we mixed football practice in with the farm work. We also caught a break over that summer when we got to take driver's ed together. James was a natural athlete. I was more of a church softball guy but be never made me feel any less for it.
We went through high school together, sharing some classes. We also drank some beer, listened to many records and hung out. I was making alcohol influenced bad decisions even in those days, and he helped me recover from a couple of those. By the end of our senior year, I was estranged from my family and became a long-term house guest of his. His mother treated me with great tenderness. That she really and truly cared was very evident. She just had a gift for nurturing and a soft spot for me personally. She recently celebrated her 90th birthday. Wonder Woman and I went to the party, and she greeted me as warmly as ever, although I hadn't seen her in years.
After high school, James went to one of our state's flagship schools on a ROTC scholarship. He met and married a beautiful flight attendant at the chapel at Ft. Bragg. When the Gulf War happened, he was one of the guys sitting in the desert for months wondering if Saddam Hussein had chemical weapons. Not too long after the war was over, he got out of the Army and used his business degree to land a few management jobs, eventually making his way back to North Carolina. Although he was raised in the church, it was more of a cultural thing than a serious conviction until he was introduced to the doctrines of the Seventh Day Adventists, a church he joined and became dedicated to.
He felt the call that some feel to become a minister, enrolling in the Adventist Seminary in Michigan. He also decided that the Army was where he was going to do his ministry as a chaplain. He's still in the Army today at the age of 60, a full bird colonel with a couple more years to go before he retires. James has lived all over the states and in Europe. He also spent several years deployed to combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan, ministering to soldiers who were fighting and dying in some of the worst parts of those wars.
He and his wife had a daughter and two sons. I knew his oldest two kids briefly before he went to seminary, but I've watched all three of them grow up through pictures. James and I always stayed in touch. I've always had his phone number and his email address. His mom's recent birthday party was the first time I'd laid eyes on him in quite a while. It was the first time he's met Wonder Woman. His job will bring him back to Ft. Bragg, near where I live, regularly for a while and we have plans to meet for breakfast at my beloved local diner when it does.
For over four decades, he's been there for me whenever I needed him. He talked me through the lowest spots in my recovery from addiction. He hasn't judged me for some of my questionable life choices. He's been a gentleman to everyone I've been married to, a number a little higher than the average guy. Hopefully, you have a friend like him. You're fortunate if you do. I know I am.
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Password Paradise
The security measures we have to take in the modern era are generally a gigantic pain in the ass. At some point we had to stop using the same password everywhere. Then we had to add in uppercase letters, then numbers, then special symbols. Our passwords had to be longer than before. Every smart person who thought that 12E456 was a good password got schooled. After all the password drama, we had to start using two forms of authentication: getting a text, getting an email or using a special app like Microsoft Authenticator. It gets even more confusing wjhen computers start to want your fingerprint or to scan your face like the iPhone does.
We have a good idea of what the most common passwords are because of files recovered from giant security leaks, and there have been many, many of those.Common passwords are so well know that they have their own Wikipedia page. Every black hat hacker in the world has the database of common passwords ready to use to crack accounts whenever they have a chance.
Top 10 Most Used Passwords
Making a Good Password
You have no idea how many times over the years that I have seen people panic when I've asked them to change their password when working with them on support issues. Some people, when put on the spot, simply can not come up with one, and if they do, the chances of them immediately forgetting it are a sure bet. Here are some tips on creating strong passwords.
Have You Been Pwned?
Go to this website right now to see how many times your email address has been found in a security breach. My Gmail account is 20 years old. It's been compromised many, many times.
Password Manager
Lastly, you need to get a program known as a password manager and I';m not talking about the one in your browser. If you aren;t tech savvy, get someone who is to help you set this up. You've heard this before, but it is now time to act. Here are a few suggestions of programs you can use on your computer and your phone.
#1 Password Manager & Vault App with Single-Sign On & MFA Solutions - LastPass
Password Manager & Extended Access Management | 1Password | 1Password
Best Password Manager for Business, Enterprise & Personal | Bitwarden
Use the Passwords app to create, manage, and share passwords and passkeys across Apple devices - Apple Support
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What Were Your First Seven Jobs?
As a kid growing up in a house where there wasn't much disposable cash, I learned early on that I had to figure out a way to hustle up some dough if I wanted spending money. In the 70s you could collect glass bottles and turn them in at the grocery store for cash. The going rate was a nickel apiece. My step-father was the editor of the local paper, The Harnett County News, and he let me sell newspapers on the street on the day the weekly edition was published. A couple of years later, aluminum cans replaced steel ones and a new opportunity for scavenging was born. I did that for a while, and then I finally had a job where I had pay taxes. I was 12.
Job # 1 - Newspaper Delivery
By the time I was in sixth grade, I was deemed old enough to have my own paper route. We'd moved to a new town, one where the newspaper, The New Bern Sun Journal, was printed six days a week. I split the six-mile route with my younger brother, who took the densely packed first mile. I pedaled the remaining miles on my bike, equipped with a front basket and two rear baskets, plus a bag slung around my shoulders. We hadn't had the route too long when my brother was struck by a careless driver and injured pretty severely. I took over his portion. On Saturdays, I had to go knock on doors to collect payment from my customers. Nothing was automated. I'm still mad at the people who tried to stiff a sixth grader for free newspaper delivery.
Job # 2 Farm Hand
By far the most difficult job I ever had was working on my uncle's farm from the time I was 14 until I was 18. I went to live with him after being asked not to come back to the junior high I attended in Jacksonville, NC just because I happened to have a little tiny bit of weed in my pocket one day. I may have tried to smoke it on the playground too. Anyway, my uncle had a small farm of just 60 acres. We cultivated the entire property with vegetables, known as truck farming in our area. The two of us, along with a tenant who lived on the farm and several high school students we hired, were responsible for all the labor. We sold all the produce directly to the public on the farm; none of it was taken to any market. Some were row crops we allowed our customers to pick at a discounted price, but the majority of the harvest was gathered by a farm employee. Picture 1,000 tomato plants raised waist-high, acres of butter beans, snap beans, field peas, English peas, Irish potatoes, pumpkins, squash, okra, cucumbers, peppers, watermelons, collard greens, turnip greens, mustard greens, and my least favorite crop of all: sweet corn, also known as roasting ears in the rural community. More farm tales
Job # 3 Landscaping
During holiday breaks from school , like Christmas and Easter, I would take advantage of the opportunity to earn extra money by working for a landscape company at commercial sites like banks, liquor stores and a large Monsanto factory on the outside of town. In the days before there was a large Latino presence, high school kids actually did work like this.
Job # 4 Bus Boy
My senior year in high school was tumultuous. By Thanksgiving, my girlfriend was pregnant. By the end of January, I left the farm after a big fight with my uncle. I lived briefly with my Dad who had just moved back to the state before finishing out high school, basically couch-surfing. My high school football coach called in a favor with a college buddy and helped me land a job working at Shoney's busing tables for minimum wage, money I was glad to have. I went there straight from school and usually worked until around 11PM. It was not a fun year.
Job # 5 Soldier
I started my time in the military by joining the National Guard when I was still in high school. For the last few months of my senior year, I spent one weekend out of four at the armory or in the field with the unit I would join after completing my training. They let me come in my civilian clothes and observe because they knew I needed the money, a little less than a hundred dollars was what I received each month. Eleven days after I graduated, I left my girlfriend, then seven months pregnant, for basic training. Our son was born about two weeks before I graduated.
Job # 6 Carpet Cleaner
After returning from training and immediately getting married, I moved a couple of counties away from where I'd gone to high school to take a job at a business owned by my aunt and uncle. It was one of the major mistakes of my life. The promise of a living wage they'd made me turned out to be 75 cents above minimum wage. I had no car, knew no one in town, had a wife and a baby and was doing a job that I had no experience in, cleaning carpets in the mansions of millionaires in the wealthy golf community of Pinehurst. It didn't last long. Thankfully, the head enlisted man of my National Guard unit offered me a way out of it one weekend as a bribe to keep me from murdering the sergeant in charge of my mortar crew. That's another story.
Job # 7 Carpenter
The last job I held before entering active duty was doing commercial construction for the civilian company my first sergeant ran as his civilian occupation. He helped me get the tools I needed and assigned me to work with experienced carpenters to learn how to do everything from preparing foundations, framing the floors walls and roof to hanging doors and installing baseboards and molding. I learned how to read blueprints and building plans and though briefly about making a permanent living doing that work, but the pay and benefits could not compete with what I could earn in the regular Army. I thanked the boss and enlisted in the regular Army. I was 19.
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Better Internet Searches
I am in the midst of a project I'll probably never finish. I'm doing what I can to protect myself from the rapacious appetite of the big tech companies, who are finding more and more ways to ruin the experience of what many refer to as "life". Don't think for a minute that these companies won't sell you out to whoever wants to buy information about your life that you thought were private. Insurance companies are already increasing rates, denying claims and canceling policies based on information they purchase from data brokers.
Using Kagi
The best solution is to use Kagi as your search engine. It has zero ads. 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 Fox News 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.
You can make your own custom search environment. Kagi calls that a Lens. Kagiย Lensesย allow you to customize your searches by specifying which websites (and other parameters) you see in your results. We 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.
Improving Google
Google used to be miraculous. Before it came on the scene, there were sites like AltaVista and AskJeeves and none of them could give you information they way Google could. But, when Google became the monopoly it is is today, the suits there decided to make its search results worse so that people would spend more time looking for what they are after, thus giving Google an opportunity to expose them to more advertising.
Read about it here - The Man Who Killed Google Search
Like every big tech company these days, Google is injecting AI into every search you do to prove to shareholders that they are on the cutting edge. Well, the shareholders don't know jack about what people want. We don't want AI crap. You can search Google using an easy to implement work wround to avoid having AI injected into your results.
Here's how - Don't Want AI Overviews? How to Get 10 Plain Google Search Results - CNET
Did you know that only 16 companies own the 500 websites that show up most often in search results? They don't show up because they have the best content. They show up because they have the best search engine optimization (SEO.) Their articles are written to do well in Google searches, not to provide you with information. Well, you can block all of them with one browser extension and one web page where you can subscribe to a list (for free) to keep that SEO garbage from ruining your life.
Ublacklist blocks sites you specify from appaearing in your Google search results
bbbhltz/16CompaniesFilters: uBlacklist lists for the 16 Companies that dominate search results - Codeberg.org
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The People Who Fear Email
To the best of my recollection, I got my first corporate email address in 1996. At the time, I worked for a subsidiary of the Westinghouse Electrical Corporation as a technical writer. I started there as a temp on second shift shortly after I left my job working for the state department of correction. After seven years of being a prison guard, I found myself in a noisy factory on my feet for a nightly eight-hour shift. Eventually, I was hired as a regular employee on days when my enthusiasm for all things technical drew the attention of a quality engineer, who got me what was supposed to be a two-week gig in the white-collar world to write some work instructions for the assembly line. I managed to leverage that into a full-time position and never went back to work on the factory floor.
The company gave me a powerful second generation Pentium computer, an expensive Kodak digital camera, a copy of Corel Draw and Corel Photo Paint and a color laser printer that cost more than the car I drove to work. They also gave me an email address. I developed a habit. When people asked me to do things via email, I'd respond to them and let them know whether I could accomplish what they wanted. It didn't matter to me if the email came from the manager of the facility or from a foreman in the machine shop. Email was no different to me than a phone call or a conversation. It was just a way to communicate about the job.
Little did I know that a particular type of person would evolve in the workplace. I found as years passed that it would become impossible to get some people to commit to doing anything in an email. You couldn't get them to answer questions, put forth ideas, or even acknowledge that you'd conveyed information to them. These people were all too often bosses. Someone put them in positions of authority to make choices and, by god, to be leaders. Unfortunately, they were so concerned with never being accountable for a damn thing, they'd rather have a conversation face to face in the middle of a hurricane than actually make a commitment in writing which you could later use to remind them of a promise they'd made.
And , you know what would happen if one of their verbally conveyed decisions or promises went sour? You know. You know that they would then lie and gaslight and deny ever having said such a thing. Furthermore, you obviously misunderstood them, or, maybe you are just making things up because you are a troublemaker. Yeah, that's it. You are not a team player. It's not like you have anything in writing, now do you?
I certainly hope that my scathing dislike for this kind of bullshit is coming across clearly. I wrote emails that conveyed, to the best of my ability to use the English language, exactly what i meant to say. I would make a commitment to you, in writing, to actually do my job, the one the taxpayers or the university paid me to do. My goal was to help my customers, fulfill my duties and earn my paycheck. I had no reason to make every decision based on covering my ass and self-preservation because people who feel like they have to live like that are a cancer in the workplace and I don't like them. At all. Not one bit.
Please be the kind of person who doesn't play silly games. Answer questions. If you are supposed to support someone, then support them. Don't be afraid to make commitments and, by all means, be honest. Everyone hates a liar.
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DeGoogling My Photos and Setting Up Local Management
My recent goal has been to get a copy of all my photos onto a local drive and use an app that respects the file system and doesn't hide the files in a mysterious, impenetrable database like Apple Photos does. I am also trying to get Google out of my business, a slow and difficult process.
For years, I've backed up my iPhone photos to three different platforms: iCloud because it's built into iOS and easy, Google Photos, because it's easy to do it automatically using the iOS app and to Amazon because photo storage is included in Prime and my wife and I can use our joint account so all the family photos end up here, including the ones we take with our "real" cameras.
Each platform has disadvantages. None of them mirror your file system. iCloud requires you to use the Apple Photos app. Google and Amazon both require you to use a web browser. I experimented with ways of downloading my photo archives from Apple and was not satisfied with the result. The only alternative is to set up the Photos app to download full-sized images and hope that actually happens.
Downloading content from Amazon involves using the Mac app and choosing folders and albums, a process that is cumbersome and has too much friction to be a practical solution. The simplest way for me to get all of my photos, as files, downloaded to my hard drive in a way that I could name them and organize them as I see fit was through Google Takeout An hour after placing a request to download my photos in 10GB ZIP files, I had an email with the links to 15 archives - the totality of my still photos and videos.
Here's my workflow to turn that massive collection of files into a usable archive.
Mortality
My fortieth high school reunion was a couple of years ago. The organizers set up a table covered with pictures of our classmates who've died since we graduated in June 1983. It started happening almost immediately. A friend of mine named Hope Pleasant was killed in a car crash within a year or two. The trainer for our football team, Stuart Arrowwood, died along 250 other soldiers in a plan crash at Gander, Newfoundland around the same time. More car crashes, cancer, and other mortal illnesses took their toll. A couple of our memorable athletes are already gone. We were the very first class of Generation X to graduate. This year we are turning 60.
Most people in my family make it into their 80s despite a predisposition towards high-blood pressure and other 21st century curses. Both of my parents are still alive, and my Mom is remarkably active, having walked across Scotland and Spain well into her 70s. I try not to think about my mortality too much. I could be healthier. Wonder Woman will probably outlive me for years. Her family's longevity is remarkable and she is extraordinarily fit. Doctor's always react with surprise at her low heart rate until she patiently explains her mutant status to them. She was tested in the sports lab at our local university. She had the fitness level of a college athlete, even though she was well past 50. She may have won the genetic lottery, but she works hard and eats right.
I'm not one who worries too much about leaving a legacy. I don't care what happens to my stuff. Mostly it's just books and computers. I have my digital memories, passwords and important accounts set up so that Wonder Woman can access them. She's tech savvy and can figure out how to save the photos and documents easily enough. Unless I happen to kick the bucket on the day all my domains expire, anyone else who wants to save anything should have an opportunity before I disappear from the Internet.
I intend to leave my body to science. The parts will be too worn out for anyone to be a second-hand Lou Plummer, but maybe some medial student can get some use out of whatever is left of me. I am not concerned with whatever kind of after party my kids and grandkids want to have. I'll be gone, and I'm not wasting any time picking out hymns or venues or silly stuff like that. They can play bluegrass music and eat my favorite foods for dinner, if that makes them miss me any less.
I am concerned with living out the rest of my life trying to be useful, trying to keep growing and sharing whatever I can to help out the people that will carry on the fight when I am gone. The challenge is to make the most of every day that I can. That's why I stay in contact with the people who matter to me and why I tell them that I love them frequently. If you ever take any advice from me, let it be that.
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The Coffee Shop as Office
I drove the same two-lane country road to my office for twenty years. Most of the time, I'd roll up to the front door totally unable to recall a single thing I'd seen on my drive. It wasn't an unpleasant commute unless I was running behind and trapped behind a school bus. It's very difficult to form new memories when you are continually in the same surroundings. That's why travel has such an appeal top so many people. We are able to recall and savor the new things we see and experience when we travel in a way we just can't do staring at the same four walls or the same commute.
Because of this, I've resolved to take the opportunity to work from local coffee shops a few days each month. The ones I have in mind have Wi-Fi, aren't too busy and are open to people like me nursing a cup of java while we GSD.
The benefits of working this way include:
Benefits of Working from a Coffee Shop
Why People Love Working From Coffee Shops and 10 Tips to Do It Effectively
The Benefits of Working in a Cafรฉ | Limepack
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Little Projects
My wife is exceptionally handy and seldom asks me to do much. We aren't big gardeners. Our yard is well established, and it's easy to maintain. We pay to have big home improvements done, and the smaller projects we either do together or she just knocks them out. I will never forget when we first got together. We lived in a house with a pool. One day the pump just died, She went online, found the right pump, ordered it overnight. The next day she came home from her CPA firm, took off her business suit, unboxed the pool pump and installed it herself. In an hour, it was done. I was amazed then and I am amazed now.
Since I am newly retired, I am working on making myself a routine and coming up with a few projects. Things I want to do daily include:
Writing can now take up a sizable chunk of my day. I have a list of software to download and test before reviewing it for AppAddict. I plan to spend more time coming up with ideas to create link bundles about for Linkage. As far as this blog goes, my goal is just get better. I don't know what that looks like, exactly. I can take my time now, polish things a bit, quit using the word "awesome" so much, get better at commas - that kind of stuff.
I have several tech projects underway. I used the process Jason Snell wrote about to download my entire Kindle collection instead of just select books like I did previously. It took just a few minutes to get all 555 of them from Amazon's servers to my hard drive. Now I have to set up Calibre and import them to remove the DRM and get them ready for use wherever I want them.
Now that Amazon is keeping people from actually owning the things they've purchased, i found a way to get all my Audible books converted. Using the free and open-source tool, Libation, I am downloading another 500-plus books, but this process is much lengthier. Thankfully, the new Mac workstation I just set up can work on this job around the clock.
I also want to get a local copy of all my photos for various reasons, mostly to use local search tools and for quicker access to them. I requested a Google takeout today and within hours I had 15 zip files of 10 GB each ready to download. I recently exported all my iCloud photos to Google, so hopefully the files I'm downloading will have all of them complete with metadata. I will let you know.
I'm also going to pull my music collection out of the cloud so that I can set up a music server that not dependent on my Internet connection. I have about 30K songs from the olden days when we were still buying our own music, including some difficult to find bootlegs from Dylan, as well as many do it yourself albums from bars and coffee shops that aren't to be found on Apple Music or Spotify.
To hold all this data, I've rounded up a pile of various hard drives I've accumulated through the years and looked at possible reusing the housing from some small external drives with upgrades. I found a supremely useful website for locating the lowest priced drives on Amazon, and I'll be keeping my eyes on that for bargains while I assemble this homemade NAS of mine.
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Books, Books, Books
Looking for book recommendations is a favorite pastime. My areas of interest are wide and varied, probably a little more guy-heavy than they should be, although I did unashamedly find myself a fan of a genre I only later learned was called "Paranormal Romance." I even read a couple of the Twilight books a few years ago. Just to give you a taste of what my main jams are, here are a few lists I've collected or put together through the years.
My Favorite Books About the Appalachian Trail | Linkage
Best Baseball Books | Goodreads
23 Best Time Travel Science Fiction Books - The Best Sci Fi Books
Readers Weighed in on the Best Books About the Vietnam War - The New York Times
7 Books Every Nordic Thriller Fan Should Read
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Observations on Booze
I don't think I could have made myself drink this even on my darkest days.
I had next to no drama involving alcohol while I was growing up. My Dad sometimes drank beer in the evenings while watching TV, but I only lived with him for a couple of years in elementary school, so there were limited opportunities for me to witness anything ugly. For a long time, he lived in Alabama, where he was an instructor pilot at the Army'd helicopter flight school at Ft. Rucker. My siblings and I all lived in North Carolina, along with most of the rest of our extended family. I'd never seen a single drop of anything alcoholic in my grandparent's house. My grandfather, who reportedly used to like a cold beer once in a while, forswore it when he turned his life over to the Lord, a decision he did not take lightly. I couldn't conceive of my grandmother taking a drink. As an adult, I found out that she would accept a glass of wine at dinner when visiting my Mother, I was absolutely scandalized.
Anyway, when Dad would come to visit, he would keep a cooler of beer in his car and make periodic trips to it during the evening to pour cold Budweiser into a red solo cup, which he would then take into the house. I lived with my Dad's brother at the time and I can assure you that he did not approve of this behavior. My uncle liked beer himself, but he didn't believe in taking it into the house. He was a farmer. He would drink beer out at the barn or sitting in his truck listening to country music, but that was as close to the house as it got. Not only that, but he is nearly 80 now and still has a refrigerator and a recycling barrel at the barn.
I went with my first wife to her family's Thanksgiving dinner the year we got married. When I saw them sitting bottles of wine on the counter, I didn't know what to think. I had no experience with people doing such a thing. My family drank iced tea with Thanksgiving dinner. Even today (different wife) when we go to Sunday dinner at my in-laws, and they break out the wine and liqueur to sweeten the coffee with, I am still faintly surprised that people, nice people too, do things like that.
As a recovering alcoholic in long-term sobriety, I try not to make any kind of value judgments on anyone else's drinking. I totally get the fact that my family followed a Souther Protestant tradition where drinking is frowned upon, and holy communion is always taken with Welches grape juice. My in-laws are Catholic, with a sprinkling of military life and strong Italian heritage thrown in. Their take on booze is that it isn't a sin and responsible adults can do whatever they hell they want to do - as long as they go to mass. (Just kidding - kind of)
My own inability to drink moderately didn't come from a constant exposure to booze as a kid or the ready availability of it in any house I grew up in, and there were many in my tumultuous early life. I was just born without that feeling that tells non-alcoholics to stop. Scientists have identified the gene that indicates a genetic predisposition to addiction. People don't develop alcoholism because it's fun (it is not.) I'm fully on the side of the illness being from nature, not from nurture in my case at least.
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Telling Stories to Children
When a child says, โTell me a story,โ she is not asking for a narrative. She is asking for your attention - How to Tell Stories to Children
When my kids were in late elementary school and middle school, I started making up different stories about certain houses in our neighborhood. One house had a well-maintained yard, but there were seldom any cars there, The curtains were always drawn and there were no decorations or personal effects ever in evidence. I decided to tell the kiddos that all of those facts were clear evidence that this was a CIA safe house. I never backed down from that assertion. To this day if one of them mentions it, I support my original premise with whatever I can make up on the spot. Its been a running gag for thirty years.
Another house got labeled as The Church of Satan just because I didn't like the look of it. It sits on a double lot, which I find pretentious. It also has a secluded backyard and an extra tall privacy fence. Wonder Woman has never heard me refer to is as anything else.
My son loved camping trip ghost stories until I made one up based on the character of Blue Duck, a psychopathic Indian from a Larry McMurtry book. I found out recently that my story telling skills had traumatized him for years. Oops. Sorry, Buddy!
We always read to our kids. I think it's an invaluable way to spend time with them. I was glad to see the tradition carry on to another generation when my grandkids came along. It is a sacred part of their nightly routine. Maybe I was a little unconventional with my stories, but the kids all turned out OK, so no harm done.
How to Tell Awesome Stories to Your Kids | The Art of Manliness
Dads, what are your go-to strategiess for making up bedtime stories on the fly? : r/daddit
How Telling Stories Helps Kids Learn |โฆ | PBS KIDS for Parents
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Bike Life
During the years that cycling was at the center of my life, I enjoyed signing up for charity events all over the southeast. For somewhere around $50 I could register for an event that would provide a marked course of 100K or 100 miles with several rest stops along the way, stocked with Gatorade and carbohydrate rich snacks to fuel all the spandex clad riders coming through. Oh, and portable toilets were also provided, which was always helpful. Usually, the organizers would also provide a souvenir shirt to commemorate the event. I've got a closet full of them.
The size of the events varied. If the ride was new and didn't have any kind of history, there might be only 30 or 40 participants. On the other hand, established events, like the rides for multiple sclerosis would stretch over an entire weekend, providing camping, meals, showers and two rides of 100 miles (160.93 km) each. There would be well over 1000 participants, all of whom raised money and paid an entry fee to participate. In North Carolina, the rides start and end in the eastern city of New Bern, in an area that's blessed with smooth, flat roads that don't have a lot of traffic. Typically, if we had to cross any really busy highways, the sheriff's department would station a car there for safety.
One of my favorite was the annual Mountains to the Sea event, known as Cycle North Carolina. Sponsored by the state tourism board, it draws people from all over the US and abroad for seven consecutive days of cycling across the widest state east of the Mississippi River. A normal day's mileage is somewhere around 70 miles (ca. 113 km). Most people bring a tent that is ferried from one town to the next by the event organizers along with their luggage. All the riders have to do each day is eat like their lives depend on it and ride their bikes. Each host town along the way goes all out to make the riders welcome. There are always some unique folks making the journey. One year I rode with a man who rode in business clothes and had heavy racks made from lumber attached to his bike. Since I don't live close to the mountains, the days we spent there were always challenging as we pedaled along the Blue Ridge Parkway with much larger elevation gains and losses than I was used to.
North Carolina has 100 counties, and my goal was to ride my bike in every one of them. Before physical ailments curtailed my riding, I'd managed to pedal at least a few miles in 78 of them. Even today, I find myself miles and miles from home, recognizing spots I cycled by in the past. A few places are really memorable, either because of the difficulty or the scenery or both. There is a climb in western South Carolina up the Greenville water shed that is more than five miles uphill. It looks very imposing when you see it on the day's elevation profile, but it proved to be a pleasant experience, something to feel good about at the end of the day.
That was one of the real joys of riding to me. It wasn't just the endorphin rush from the physical exertion or the scenery or the camaraderie, although all of those things were wonderful, What I loved was the sense of accomplishment achieved by voluntarily doing something difficult. The discomfort from too many miles on a narrow little bike saddle, the hills that make it feel like someone is sticking daggers in your thighs, the miles, and miles in the rain, far from home have faded into the background and what remains are the memories of the joy I felt so many times when mile 100 came earlier than I ever thought it could. I never had the kind of hand/eye coordination needed to be good at sports involving any kind of ball, but when it came to endurance, that I could do.
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Everyday Apps
I never realized this blog would become as popular as it has. I
picked up blogging as a hobby to accompany the other joy in my life,
which is the never-ending process of refining my workflows to use the
absolute best software for every task. Somehow, I ended up with three
blogs, this one, Living Out Loud,
Linkage and another that is a combined fire hose of everything put
together. I'd be lying if I told you that I'm always able to
remember what I've written on each platform. In 2024, I wrote 500K
words. I'm too old to keep all that straight.
I don't think I've ever shared the actual list of apps that I used to get work done here on AppAddict. These aren't the coolest or the most powerful or the best bargains, not necessarily. They are the workhorses that allow me to do what I need to do. I'm not saying they are the best for everyone. If you do a lot over email, you need something more specialized. I don't do much with spreadsheets or presentations, so I'm not even listing those.
Most (not all) of the links here describe my use cases or what I like about the app and why I use it. All links contain download info.
My Favorite TV Shows By Decade
I've lived in seven decades. These are my favorite TV shows from each one.
1960s The Andy Griffith Show
I don't know if my affection for this show arose based on it happening in a fictional town in my vert real home state or because I really wanted to hang out with Opie, but I'v enjoyed watching Andy and Barney and Aunt Bea and the rest of the folks from Mayberry my entire life.
1970s MASH and All in the Family
I remember watching MASH when I was seven or eight and not getting many of the jokes but having the feeling that the characters were kind. It made me feel good. By the time the last episode aired, I was a senior in high school and only a few months away from the army myself.
Watching Archie Bunker on All in the Family, I think, taught me the ridiculousness of bigotry and misogyny. It also helped me understand those traits a little better. I loved watching Archie come to little realizations about his own nature.
1980s Hill Street Blues
Until the Golden Age of Television commenced at the end of the 20th century, I considered Hill Street Blues to be the best show ever to air. Every police procedural for the past 30 years owes it a debt of gratitude. The writing, acting and directing were all way ahead of its time and the show's gritty realism and willingness to confront the humanity and shortcomings of the officers assigned to Hill Street Station made it a classic. When I retired from the school system in 2020, I spent the first few months wtching a couple of episodes a day until I'd rewatched the entire run.
1990s NYPD Blue
This is the decade where I watched very little TV. My kids were coming of age and I didn't want them spending a lot of time in from of the tube, plus I was a cheap bastard and didn't want to pay for cable. We spent many weekends with rented VHS tapes from the local video store. Early in the decade though, I was a big fan of NYPD Blue, mostly because I admired Steven Bocho's work so much. It wasn't the same a Hill Street Blues, but the characters were so developed and real. Good show.
2000 The Wire
To me, this show is and will always be the GOAT. I've never thought about the lives of fictional characters as much as I have the ones from this show: Jimmy McNulty, Omar Little, Stringer Bell and all the other cops, gangsters, politicians, reporters, dock workers and teachers who gave every show of every season a special touch. I think I am up to four complete viewings. Whenever someone tells me they are watching the show for the first time, I get so damn jealous.
2010s Stranger Things
I don't know if it is 80s nostalgia or just the superior quality of the show, but I've loved Stranger Things since episode one. Watching the kids from from middle school into high school was handled well and Millie Bobbie Brown's character, 11 (Ellie) is one of the best viewing experiences Netflix has ever offered.
2020s Ted Lasso
Man, was I sad when I the last show of season three aired. And, man was I happy when I found out they were going to make at least one more season - just because we fans want one so badly. This show is unique. It's not really a sports show in the way Friday Night Lights was. Maybe because it is a marriage of English and American culture. I adore the characters. Fucking Roy Kent. Am I right?
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This Week's Bookmarks - Defending Democracy, 100 Greatest TV Performances, True Crime, Travel Tips, Southern Cooking, Pharaoh's Tomb, Lessons from Jim Crow 1.0
Choose Democracy What can I do to fight this coup? - Choose Democracy - If you look, there are people resisting at every level.ย Blockades of freeways. American Bar Association urging an end to illegal orders. Past inspector generals penning op-eds, as a current inspector general refuses to accept her illegal firing. The Pope slamming VP Vance's theology.
The 100 Greatest TV Performances - When one thinks of the defining TV performances of the past 25 or so years, what comes to mind? Some of the answers included a teacher-turned-drug kingpin, spies working both for and against the U.S. government โ and perhaps the defining comedy character of this long political moment, in part for how dark her will to power becomes.
The True Story Behind the Grisly Murder of Cash App Founder Bob Lee - When Cash App creator Bob Lee was stabbed to death on a San Francisco street, it sparked outrage about random violence in the city. The true story of his death was deeply personal.
The Technium: 50 Years of Travel Tips - I've been seriously traveling for more than 50 years, and I've learned a lot. I've traveled solo, and I've led a tour group of 40 friends. I've slept in dormitories and I've stayed in presidential suites with a butler. I've hitchhiked penniless for months, and I've flown by private jet. I've traveled months with siblings, and with total strangers. I've gone by slow boat and I've ridden my bicycle across America, twice.
The Woman Who Introduced Southern Cooking to the World | Finding Edna Lewis | Full Documentary - YouTube - From Freetown, Virginia, to New York City, Edna Lewis carved a remarkable path. She introduced many Americans to seasonal cooking, Southern cooking โ the cooking of the Black community in rural Virginia that raised her. Yet despite a life that included fame and acclaim, she is not a household name. In FINDING EDNA LEWIS, Deb Freeman travels to the places where Miss Lewis made her mark.
Thutmose II: First pharaoh's tomb found in Egypt since Tutankhamun's - A British-Egyptian team has located it in the Western Valleys of the Theban Necropolis near the city of Luxor. Researchers had thought the burial chambers of the 18th dynasty pharaohs were more than 2km away, closer to the Valley of the Kings.
Surviving Fascism: Lessons from Jim Crow โ Scalawag - Accept that this is happening. Denial won't change the outcome.
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