The pier at Avon on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, just before dawn.

A wooden pier extends over calm ocean waves; the sunset sky glows with orange and blue hues, creating a serene coastal atmosphere.

Datacever - Simple Data Control When You Have to Tether Your Mac

Datacever
Datacever

I don't know about you, but whenever I have to tether my laptop to my iPhone, I get nervous about the possibility of some unknown process running in the background and chewing up my data. Even though my mobile provider calls my plan unlimited, I know that there are always gotchas. I tried TripMode a while back, but it was overly complex for my needs, with more settings and options than I wanted to mess with.

I recently found a much simpler menu bar app that I prefer for its simplicity and ease of use. Datacever by developer sameh sayed is an inexpensive app available from the App Store for $6.99. You can allow or deny any app access to the Internet. For the apps you permit access to, you can set data caps. If you don't want to set a cap, you can still monitor your traffic on a per-app basis. It does exactly what I need and nothing more. The privacy policy states that no data of any type is collected. Your browsing remains private.

If you have ever looked at the DNS logs of your Mac with the browser not running, you know that there are still plenty of apps trying to call home constantly. Control all of that with Datacever and don't let your data be wasted by needless telemetry,

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The Winds on Mt. Washington

Mt_Washington_Summit

I'm no alpinest, but I've climbed the highest mountains in several states via hiking trails. In July 2013, after spending the night sleeping on the floor of the Lake in the Clouds Hut operated by the Appalachian Mountain Club in New Hampshire's White Mountain National park, Wonder Woman and I climbed the highest mountain in the northeast United States, to the 6,288 ft. peak of Mt. Washington. As we started the long climb, a sign placed by the US Forest Service stood beside the trail with a stark warning proclaiming "THE AREA AHEAD HAS THE WORST WEATHER IN AMERICA. MANY HAVE DIED THERE FROM EXPOSURE, EVEN IN THE SUMMER. TURN BACK NOW IF THE WEATHER IS BAD. WHITE MOUNTAIN NATIONAL FOREST"

Fortunately.the weather on this mid-summer day was cloudy and a little windy, although we could see sunshine down in the valley below. It took a couple of hours to reach the peak. The winds grew increasingly stronger and we were soaked by the moisture in the clouds passing around (not over) us. At the summit, there is a weather station that's been there for decades and is manned 24/7/365. There was a place where you could see the weather conditions, including the wind speed. On our summit day, the steady winds were blowing at 50 MPH with gusts up to 60 MPH. We were both wearing every layer of clothing we carried in our backpacks.

One of the most intimidating things I've ever seen was the plaque for all the people who have lost their lives on the mountain. It was crowded with names, but they'd left room to add more, as if it were some perverse employee of the moth club.

Just to give you an idea why that spot has the worst weather in the US, read below about the April day in 1934 when the wind speed was recorded at 231 MPH on two separate occasions, a record that stood until a higher speed was recorded during a Pacific cyclone during the 1990s.

Remembering the Big Wind - Mount Washington Observatory

Happy ‘Big Wind Day': 90 years since incredible 231 mph gust at Mount Washington | Fox Weather

Mount Washington - Wikipedia

Wonder Woman Coming Up the Mountain



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I'm Sorry Ava - Blog Questions

BearBlog

I didn't find out until yesterday that Ava challenged me to answer these questions in her initial post. I'd been kind of sad that no one had invited me to participate, so yeah, I'm a dunce. My apologies to Ava for taking so long.

Why Did You Make the Blog in the First Place?

I retired in 2020 and I spent most of 2021 and 2022 off the Internet and used very little technology. I went months without opening my computer and my phone usage was mostly doom-scrolling Reddit and never posting. To get out of that lethargy, I decided to go back to work at a low stress job at the university where my wife works. I spent my whole carer in IT, so I ended back in front of a computer and it eventually rekindled my interest in the tech I'd always loved. I started reading blogs again for the first time in five or six years. Through my reading, I discovered that Robb Knight had created a page where hundreds of people listed the apps they used in all areas of their lives. I really wanted to participate, but I didn't have a way to post anywhere. I did some looking around and decided to buy a domain for $1 and open an account at Micro.blog, just so I could make that single post and get featured on Robb's page.

Why Did You Choose Bearblog?

Choosing Bear Blog was 100% due to FOMO. I'd become Internet friends with several bloggers who moved to Bear and were singing its praises. I'd expanded my own blogging after a few months from just Micro.Blog to include Scribbles which hosted Living Out Loud and AppAddict. To make use of BearBlog, I transferred Living Out Loud in a marathon session of exporting and importing posts, so that I could join Robert and Jedda. It's funny that we are the very three people that Ava tagged in her original post

Have You Blogged on other Platforms Before?

Aside from Micro.blog and Scribbles, I also blogged at the late great Geo Cities back in the early days of the Internet. I used my own domain, wonderfulmonds.com, named after a minor league baseball player. In 2013, I blogged every one of the 156 days it took to thruhike the Appalachian Trail. That blog is still online at the Trail Journals website. Lefty and Hush's 2013 Appalachian Trail Journal : Part of Trail Journals' Backpacking and Hiking Journals

Do You Write Your Posts Directly in the Editor or in Another Software?

I never write directly in the editor at BearBlog or anywhere else. Almost all of my writing is done in Obsidian or in Drafts on my phone when I am traveling. I use a template in the editor to feature web mentions and for the header to write a meta_description and include a meta_image. I've tried hard over the years to preserve what I've written. I have documents I created in the late 90s on my computer along with the 800 or so posts I've written in the past year.

When Do You Feel Most Inspired to Write?

I usually want to write when I'm supposed to be doing something else. The whole ritual of sitting down at the computer, opening a new document and typing the title gives me a rush. I can write with the world going crazy around me. I like a good quiet early morning when it is still dark outside but I do my best writing later in the day when I have had time to chew on a few ideas. I write three posts a day, so writing is usually on my mind.

Do You Publish Immediately after Writing or Do You Let it Simmer a Bit as a Draft?

LOL - sometimes I don't even have the patience to proofread what I write. I don't use a system of drafts. What people read is what came out of head and onto my computer screen pretty much verbatim. Any rewriting is the "oh shit" variety when I spot typos in what I have already published or when some kind soul writes me and informs me of some egregious mistake.

Your Favorite post on Your Blog?

I wrote a piece in for September's IndieWeb Carnival on the last bottle of bourbon I drank. That was in 2008. I've been sober ever since after a long, long fight with addiction. When I published it, my oldest daughter who was obviously affected by all of that while growing up, sent me a simple "I love you" and it was meaningful in a deep and powerful way.

Any Future Plans for Your Blog? Maybe a Redesign, Changing the Tag System, Etc.?

Blog design is such a rabbit hole. I'm pretty happy with the way things look now, even though it's kind of bland and cookie cutter. I don't know CSS beyond what nice people give to me after I ask them a question. I tend to make small changes, usually leaning towards ease of use stuff for myself over time. I appreciate well-designed personal sites, but I'm more into writing than I am into colors, fonts and graphics.

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It occasionally gets pretty damn cold in NC as evidenced by this frozen fountain. It might even snow this weekend for the first time in four or five years.

A frozen fountain is illuminated by streetlights along a brick-paved pedestrian walkway lined with trees at night.

The Guinness Book of World Records

Guinness Book of World Records

During elementary school trips to the library, if all the books on Bigfoot and the Bermuda Triangle were already checked out by some other kid boning up on life's dangers, my go to source of reading material was the ever fascinating Guinness Book of World Records. I remember pictures of the world's heaviest twins riding motorcycles and the name of the tallest man who ever lived (Robert Wadlow). As it turns out, I am not alone in my appreciation for this unusual record book. Over 150 million copies have been sold in yearly editions. 2025 will mark the 70th time the book is issued.

In 1954, the managing director of the Guinness Brewing Company had the idea to create a book to settle arguments between pub patrons. He planned to give the books away to the owners of public house in the United Kingdon. He hired a pair of brothers to compile the book, sports journalists Norris and Ross McWhirter. The first edition contained about 4,000 records and was so popular that within months more copies were printed and this time for sale. It has been continuously in print ever since.

The Guinness World Records | Description, History, & Facts | Britannica

Our story | Guinness World Records

2025: Guinness World Records $13.98

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The Difference Between Journaling and Blogging

Hand_written_diary

When I look back at my blog, it reveals more about my feelings than any journal I've ever kept. I can tell when I was feeling light-hearted or when politics have had me riled up. When I write about my (grown) kids it is usually a reflection of when I'm missing them. My dear sweet Mom reads every post and I put little messages to her in here and try not to cuss. I'm honest about my mental health. Sometimes I vent my frustrations from work, or you know, people.

Every time I have ever tried to keep a journal, it's quickly devolved into nothing more than just a daily narrative - when I got up, what I did at work, what I did in the evening. I always start off thinking I'll inject some emotion into it, something that future me will read with admiration. It just never happens. I've used the great journaling app, Day One, since 2014, but it is more of a digital scrapbook into which I funnel photographs, social media posts, books, movies and TV shows watched and news stories. It's fun to maintain and look through, but I don't get much of a clue about how past me felt on all those days unless one of the photos conjures up a memory.

Before I started this blog, I'd had two stints of writing for other people behind me. One was back in the 90s before we had social media. I used to write essays and include them in our family email chain. I've republished a couple of them here and here. The email chain petered out and most of the writing I did for the next decade was technical in nature.

In 2013, my wife and I hiked the Appalachian Trail on a five-month honeymoon. I used an iPhone 5 to write a blog entry every night in our tent or whatever hostel we happened to be in with pictures and details from the day's journey. I thought about continuing it when we got home, but going back to work and a lack of spectacular views and adventure extinguished that flame.

These days. I average about 1,000 words a day. I write about anything I feel like for most of that, although I dedicate some time to my hobby of writing app reviews. I went through my first hundred days and created a list of blogging prompts, which several people have amazingly taken and completed 50 or more of their own posts from.

Last week, I celebrated the one-year anniversary of my first blog post in my re-entry into the world of personal bloggers. I didn't start the crazy post something every day thing until March. I've written for my blog during a hurricane. I kept it going through a camping trip with five of my grandchildren. More than a few posts have been pecked out on my phone during road trips and airplane flights. I am much more dedicated to talking to y'all than I ever was writing for myself. Thankfully, I have an open-book personality. I'm not guarded about much. My life has been messy and imperfect, but I've done some fun stuffand some hard stuff and ended up pretty happy for the most part. For me it would be harder not to write about my life than it would be to conceal every wart.

Thanks for reading.

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Lossless Cut - Save Time When Editing Videos

Lossless Cut
Lossless Cut


The command like application, FFmpeg is remarkably powerful but it is also overly complicated for people who don't use the terminal much or who don't have the headspace to memorize a bunch of esoteric commands. Thankfully, there are some good front ends. Lossless Cut is one whose main feature is specifically lossless trimming and cutting of video and audio files, which is great for saving space by rough-cutting your large video files taken from a video camera. It is extremely fast, allowing you to trim the video without having a loss of quality caused by having to do (slow) any encoding.

Some Example Lossless Use Cases

  • Remove commercials from recorded TV shows
  • Remove audio tracks from a file
  • Combine audio and video tracks from separate recordings
  • Split video into segments to meet social media length limits
  • Rotating phone videos that come out the wrong way without actually re-encoding the video

Features

  • Extract all tracks from a file (extract video, audio, subtitle, attachments and other tracks from one file into separate files)
  • Losslessly rearrange the order of video/audio segments
  • Take full-resolution snapshots from videos in JPEG/PNG format (low or high quality)
  • Import/export segments: MP4/MKV chapter marks, Text file, YouTube, CSV, CUE, XML (DaVinci, Final Cut Pro) and more
  • View FFmpeg last command log so you can modify and re-run recent commands on the command line

Many thanks to Scott Kingery from TechLifeWeb blog for pointing out this gem of a product. It's a good blog to add to your RSS reader for tech tips and leads to new software.

You can download Lossless Cut and get additional information on GitHub.

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Open Source Doesn't Mean What You Think It Means When It Comes To Safety

Open Source Security
Open Source Security
What about open-source software?" I hear you say. "I'll just review the source code and determine whether it's malicious".


"I would make several points in response to this. The first is: "LOL". Any nontrivial program consists of hundreds of thousands to millions of lines of code, and reviewing any fraction of that in a reasonable period of time is simply impractical. The way you can tell this is that people are constantly finding vulnerabilities in programs, and if it were straightforward to find those vulnerabilities, then we would have found them all"

From - Why it's hard to trust software, but you mostly have to anyway

I'd say more than 90% of the people who choose FOSS over everything else, don't have the chops to go to GitHub and look at code to really determine how safe a program is. I use a lot of FOSS and I have nothing but appreciation for the people who develop it, but I don't think for one minute that it is all somehow safer than any commercial software.

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When Something Isn't Broken, but Everyone thinks It Is

Teacher_and_student

It's ironic that I've worked in schools for the majority of my adult life. Except for a year here and there, I didn't enjoy the 12 years I spent in public education. It could have something to do with attending 13 schools during that time. The years I liked happened because of special teachers, the kind who know how to engage kids and who treat them like the little humans they are.

It's been popular in the press and in political circles for many years to claim that public education is failing. Standardized test scores are treated like the holy grail in this data-driven age. State legislatures pass laws to do things like mandate that students be taught their multiplication tables, implying that they are not learning that already, when of course they are. In a nod to tradition, people who don't know how to send an email pass laws that force instruction in things like cursive writing while eliminating jobs for people who teach art, music or who work in the library.

Conservatives aren't the only ones who denigrate education, but they're the people who want to take money from the school budget and give to shady for-profit and poorly supervised charter schools. They also favor giving to religious schools teaching that man and dinosaurs walked the earth together. In many southern states, segregation academies get public money for their mostly white student body, while the public schools in the same area are underfunded. Take a look at the study from Pro Publica that I've linked to.

Somehow the right-wingers have convinced people that there are teacher's unions everywhere that care nothing about children and that exist only to extort money from the government. In my home state of North Carolina, a law exists that forbids any public employee from joining a union. There are no negotiated contracts. There is no right to strike. Teachers and every other school employee takes what the state decides they should have, or they go work somewhere else. Many teachers already have a second job. I've seen them waiting tables, behind cash registers and at the plasma center. Our legislators even abolished higher pay grades for advanced degrees, while simultaneously complaining about teacher quality.

Of course, there is a bell curve when it comes to the competence of teachers, just like there is a bell curve in every other profession. Most teachers care a great deal about what their students are learning. I've listened to many, many excited explanations of new ways to teach first-graders addition or high schoolers chemistry. You can see the real passion in so many teachers and the work they put into their lessons. I've seen plenty of them stay at school long after they could have left for the day, just so they could provide extra help to kids who are behind.

The US as a whole is doing pretty damn well for a country that supposedly has a failing educational system. These days I work in higher ed at a private university and I don't hear our professors complaining about unprepared students in their classes. As someone who works in IT, I can also tell you that these young people are learning tech skills somewhere because keeping them on the straight and narrow path and out of places where they shouldn't go is a full-time job.

Next time you hear someone start the old "our schools are failing" routine, stop them and probe a little deeper. The chances are that they've bought into the big lie.

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Radarr - Movie collection manager for Legal Usenet and BitTorrent users

Radarr
Radarr


When I was a younger man, I'll admit to living the pirate life for music and movies. I was around for the original Napster and the birth of BitTorrent. That all came to a screeching halt one weekend when I sat down at my computer and couldn't connect to the internet. I called tech support, and the stern-sounding lady on the phone told me to go to my computer and read what was on the screen. It basically said, "If I ever download something illegally again, my Internet will be turned off forever." There was one checkbox, and it just said "OK." I had to check it to get my Internet back. That was the sudden and dramatic end to my life on the high seas. Since then, I have resisted using a VPN or other methods of accessing content illegally. For one thing it adds a lot of friction and for another, in the streaming age you can get just about anything you want without breaking the bank.

There are legal torrent sites, most notably Archive.org. You can find others with a simple search.

A useful automated too to aid in downloading torrents via an RSS feed is Radarr. It also works on Usenet. Radarr's features include:

  • Adding new movies with a variety of information, such as trailers, ratings, etc.
  • Support for major platforms: Windows, Linux, macOS, Raspberry Pi, etc.
  • Can watch for better quality of the movies you have and do an automatic upgrade. eg. from DVD to Blu-Ray
  • Automatic failed download handling will try another release if one fails
  • Manual search so you can pick any release or to see why a release was not downloaded automatically
  • Automatically searching for releases as well as RSS Sync
  • Automatically importing downloaded movies
  • Recognizing Special Editions, Director's Cut, etc.
  • Identifying releases with hardcoded subs
  • Identifying releases with AKA movie names
  • SABnzbd, NZBGet, QBittorrent, Deluge, rTorrent, Transmission, uTorrent, and other download clients are supported and integrated
  • Full integration with Kodi and Plex (notifications, library updates)
  • Adding metadata such as posters and information for Kodi and others to use
  • Advanced customization for profiles, such that Radarr will always download the copy you want

It takes some time and some skill to get Radarr set up correctly, but there are good instructions provided.. There is also extensive documentation..

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Cafe Bustelo - For the Coffee People

Prodigy_logo

Woah. There is definitely caffeine in here. I think I went overboard with that heaping tablespoon I dumped in my mug. It has flavor… AND THERE’S CAFFEINE. Goes down pretty smooth. Would be great if you needed to stay awake for a week straight and couldn’t afford cocaine.”

I'm not the kind of coffee person who knows the difference between beans or the correct time and temperature for roasting them. I'm the kind of coffee person who counts the first cup of the day as one of life's greatest pleasures. I know what I like. My favorite method for making a cup is the amazing Aeropress. If I have to, though, I'll even drink instant, and I'll enjoy it. Twenty years ago, I used to hang out with a schizophrenic poet who introduced me to the Latino style coffee, Cafe Bustelo. I've been drinking it ever since. It's a very dark, very strong brew that I think tastes exactly like coffee should. My Italian in-laws use it in a moka pot to make what they call "Black Coffee." You can get it in several varieties:

  • Original
  • Mexican
  • Peruvian
  • Brazilian
  • Decaf (but why?)

Cafe Bustelo is available in all the usual form factors:

  • Ground
  • K-cups
  • Original Nespresso pods
  • Instant
  • Pre-made cold brew

Cafe Bustelo- official website

Café Bustelo - Wikipedia

What's the deal with Cafe Bustelo?? : r/Coffee



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Secrets and Confessions

Two_Men_Talking

If you have any familiarity with 12 Steps groups or if you've seen movies like 28 Days or TV shows like The Wire, then you may be familiar with two of the steps that scare the hell out of newcomers. They are the 4th and 5th Steps of the recovery program first laid out in the 1930s and followed by millions since.

  1. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
  2. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

I'm not a believer in a supernatural God, and I've been sober a long time, so don't let the seemingly religious references throw you off. The principals behinds performing these two practices are beneficial. Rather than trying to forget the past, it's better to face up to it. People doing this take the opportunity to look at their resentments and to see what part they may have played in them. Every so often they find that they don't have any responsibility, such as in cases of abuse. Frequently with their beefs with exes, old bosses or family members, they find they did have a part to play. Even just figuring out the why of our relationship issues is helpful. Typically it comes down to fear. We are afraid we are not going to get something we want, or we are afraid we are going to lose something we already have. The most common way to manifest fear is through anger.

After we've taken the time to take a good look at ourselves, comes the next step, where we ask someone, maybe a trusted friend but more typically a respected person in the recovering community to hear us admit, out loud the list of things we've done wrong, that we feel guilty about and the part we have played in all the important difficult relationships in our life.

The first time I did this, I did it with an old-timer named Pete on a weekday afternoon. I was 22, but definitely an alcoholic in need of recovery. I was so scared I was shaking but over the course of an hour or so I laid it all out. Pete laughed at many of my confessions, giving examples from his life where he'd done the same thing, sometimes to a greater degree than I ever had.All my life I'd felt different from other people, terminally unique they call it.I found out that day that I wasn't all that different from I guy I really respected.

Since then, I've had more than one opportunity to hear other people admit their garbage. At the end, I always ask them "What is your deepest darkest secret?" You can see them struggle to let go of that secret, but they always do. It's always a relief not to ever have to carry that around with you anymore.

We are as sick as our secrets. They foster feelings of shame and guilt. They make us feel different and unworthy. People pay a lot of money for therapy to have someone hear them out. That's OK. Whatever it takes. I've been luck over the past 38 years to have a community of people who have listened to me without judgment when I've needed to get stuff off my chest.

I do the very best I can be today to live a life where I can be honest with the people around me. I don't lie to my wife or my boss or my children or my parents. I'd rather tell them something they would rather not hear than carry around a bunch of emotional baggage that secrets cause. You don't have to an alcoholic or an addict to use the principles behind this way of living. People have used this philosophy to get relief from all kinds of destructive behavior from gambling, to over eating to compulsive sexual behavior and co-dependent relationships. There is hope for everyone.

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What Happened on January 6th?

Riot

Many conservative Americans sport a decal on their vehicles of a black and white decal of the US flag with a single blue stripe running through it to symbolize that they "back the blue." That's the police. Despite that, on January 6th, 2021 a mob of Trump supporters attacked the officers guarding the US Capitol, spraying them with bear spray, ramming them with flag poles, hitting them with baseball bats and purposefully crushing them against the building. Approximately 150 officers were injured. One died the nest day. Two more committed suicide within a week. More than 1500 people have been convicted in court with sentences ranging up to 22 years. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Donald Trump has declared his belief that 1/6.2021 was a day of great love. He's said that he intends to pardon those convicted with minutes of being inaugurated.

January 6 U.S. Capitol Attack | Background, Events, Criminal Charges, & Facts | Britannica

Fact checking Donald Trump's statements about Jan. 6 : NPR

The GOP's collective amnesia on January 6th, four years later - YouTube

Office of Public Affairs | Attorney General Merrick B. Garland Statement on the Fourth Anniversary of the January 6 Attack on the Capitol | United States Department of Justice

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Resilio Sync - Secure, Private Peer-to-Peer File Sharing

Sync
Sync

The easiest way to share files between computers or with other users is through a commercial cloud service like iCloud, Dropbox or Google Drive. The problem with using those services is that your data passes through someone else's computer. If you are sharing apple pie recipes with your Aunt Sue, that's not a problem, but if your data is ultra-private documents like financial records, proprietary business information or the like, you should consider a product like Resilio Sync, formerly a commercial product, now free for personal use.

Resilio Sync allows you to sync data between computers and to selectively share files with others. There are clients for Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android and several NAS configurations. You can "easily send one or more files to multiple recipients without sharing the whole folder or creating a permanent sync connection. Send photos, videos, movies, or any other large file directly to friends. Cloud free.

You can make sure sensitive data stays in your control. Change access permissions at any time using the ‘Advanced Folders’ feature. You can assign ownership to another user, revoke access, or modify read and write permissions on the fly. Sync has built in encryption.

Automatically sync folders to all your devices. Sync photos, videos, music, PDFs, docs or any other file types to/from your mobile phone, laptop, or other storage devices.

Using ‘Selective Sync’ feature, Sync will create placeholder files in your file-system that can be searched locally. Click to download only the files that you need, when you need them, without having to replicate entire folders on every device.

If you have bandwidth issues, you can set limits on download and upload speeds

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Celebrities as Heroes

Bob Feller

When I was in junior high school, my family frequently went to minor league baseball games at an old brick stadium in Gastonia, NC where we lived at the time. At that age, I lived and breathed the game, memorizing stats, collecting baseball cards and counting down the days until the game of the week came on television. As a promotion, the local team had a Hall of Fame player named Bob Feller appear one night to sign autographs and meet the fans.

Feller was the greatest pitcher of his era. He entered the major leagues when he was 17. Before he turned 21 he already had a 24-win season under his belt. He played the game from 1936-1956, with a four-year break to serve in the navy aboard the USS Alabama where he saw combat and rose to the rank of chief petty officer. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility, receiving the highest percentage of votes than any player preceding him.

At the park that night, after he finished signing all the programs and talking to the fans, instead of leaving and going back to his hotel, he surprised me by going into the box seats to stay and watch the game. He was sitting all by himself and I just couldn't help myself. Even though I didn't have a ticket for that section, I went down there anyway and asked him if I could sit with him. He told me that I absolutely could. I talked his ear off. When I mentioned that I knew he was in the Navy, he really became animated, Despite all the accolades he'd gotten for his athletic career, he seemed to be more proud of being a sailor than for anything else. As the game progressed, he commented on the players and their skills, always complementing them. He was just a gem of a human being.

Defining someone as a hero is a curious practice when you think about it. The term gets used loosely. I usually consider a hero to be someone who has displayed some sort of bravery or overcome serious obstacles. In some cases, heroes are people who have gone above and beyond to help other people. There are many musicians, actors, and athletes whose talent I really admire, but I don't consider them to be heroic for that. In some cases, though, the people in the entertainment business have done other things that make them someone to look up to.

Pete Seeger worked to end segregation and performed for striking workers all over the country. When he was brought before Congress and accused of being a communist, he refused to name names when asked about the activities of others, unlike Ronald Reagan who squealed on his fellow actors.

Robin Williams made secret visits to hospitals to visit and entertain children, and was well known for using his connections to help other people. An avid cyclist, he once went out to help a stranger who had a flat on his bike in front of Williams home. When the problem turned out to be more complicated than that, Williams went and got one of his bikes and just gave it to the guy. I don't know if any of that rises to the level of heroism, but he was sure a nice person.

Other than Bob Feller, I haven't had many run-ins with celebrities. Maybe the closes I came was getting a call from Ron Kovic, a paralyzed Vietnam veteran who wrote a book called Born on the Fourth pf July about his post-war experiences. Tom Cruise played him in the movie by the same name. Kovic, who was 100% a hero for numerous reasons, called me to encourage me in the work I was doing to organize veterans and military families in the early days of the Iraq War. I was blown away by his kindness.

We're all entitled to consider anyone we want as a hero. Just choose wisely and put some though into it.

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Making App Wishlists

Wishlist
Wishlist


Because I like checking out new to me software and writing about it, I usually install something new just about every day. Reading r/MacApps and lots of other software discovery sites is how I find new apps. I've experimented with several different ways to keep lists of apps I want to check out and here are a few of my favorites.

  • Listy - A Private List Manager - this is good for both iOS apps and macOS apps. It tracks whether you've downloaded the app or not and gives you info on the app rating, category and developer as well as a link back to the app store.
  • App Wish List & Price Tracker - this free iOS only app hasn't been updated since 2018 but it still works well via the share sheet. It has widgets and notifications for price changes and updates.
  • AppRaven - Apps Gone Free (and more) - AppRaven lets you watch apps and developers and gives you notifications based on all kinds of criteria. There is a whole community of app fans using this app, writing reviews and giving folks a heads-up when apps have limited free offers. It has every app in the App Store for all Apple Platforms.
  • Things 3 - This popular task management app also has features that serve list making well, including share sheet access, deep links, space for notes and more. If you use it for other things, it makes a good place for an apps wishlist. Works on Mac and iOS.
  • App Wishlist Pro - An Apple shortcut that works on iOS and macOS
  • Various Notes Apps - The benefit to using a notes app is that it keeps your data centralized, has plenty of space to post multiple links regarding one app (e.g., reviews) and doesn't limit you to just the App Store like some other choices.

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HeyDingus! - Blogging as a Public Service

HeyDingus!

Before I ever bought a domain or opened an account on the modern social web, I discovered HeyDingus! while trying to find some information to solve a problem I was having. I spent the rest of the afternoon just browsing through the archives. When I was done I shot an email to the owner of the blog, Jarrod Blundy to let him know how much I appreciated his writing. Much to my surprise, I got a response. It turned out to be one of many exchanges I've had with Jarrod over the past year. He is a real role model for the ethos of what the IndieWeb should be IMHO - a mix of public service, autobiography and community building.

Here are a few Jarrod's helpful projects"

  • Shortcuts Library - HeyDingus - a collection of 36 hand-crafted shortcuts for macOS an iOS, some of which I use every single day. Jarrod also does freelance shortcuts if you need help.
  • One a Month Club - If you are a blogger seeking support from your readers, don't reinvent the wheel. The One a Month Club is convenient and easy. I'm supporting six different bloggers with a monthly contribution, including Jarrod.
  • 7 Things from HeyDingus - If you like link dumps as much as I do, be on the lookout for this weekly collection, many of which I have re-shared in my own links posts. Sometimes the collection is themed, sometimes it's not.
  • Lists - HeyDingus - Some interesting writing on topics including an Apple Wish List, a Blogroll, a Podroll and Favorite Quotes. This page is a fun rabbit hole to fall down.

Follow Jarrod

💌 Email: jarrod@heydingus.net

⭐ Micro.blog: @jarrod (RSS)

🦣 Mastodon: @jarrod@micro.blog

📷 Instagram: @heyjb.me

🧵 Threads: @heyjb.me

🦋 Bluesky: @heyjb.me

📺 Trakt: @heyjarrod

🍿 Letterboxd: @jblundy

🎵 Apple Music: @heyjarrod

📚 Goodreads: @heyjarrod

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What Constitutes Your Perfect Day?

carol2

I actually have quite a few days that are very close to perfect. I don't need to win the lottery or be gifted a new car to achieve perfection. All I want is a day filled with things that are already my favorites and I am a happy man.

My perfect day starts early, like 4:30 am. Easing downstairs in a silent house to turn on a single lamp for a little soft lighting before dawn is OK with me. I'll ease into the kitchen to brew a cup of coffee. The first one of the day is always the best. While I drink it, I'll catch up with my personal email and social media. On a perfect day, i'll have messages from a few Internet friends, and definitely have some new pictures of some of my grandkids in my messages. Wonder Woman generally wakes up in a good mood and I'm always happy to see her make her way to the living room where we do most of our hanging out.

She will have a cop of coffee and a small glass of juice or half a banana before she goes for her run. It will be a short one and when she gets back and grabs a shower, we will go to the diner at the end of the street where we are regulars. The waitresses all know us and haven't offered us menus in years. I'll take yet another picture of my wife from across the table. That's part of the ritual. I have a couple hundred from inside that very restaurant.

When we get back home, we will hang out together. She reads or watches something on her iPad. I've got three blog posts to write, so I'll start working on them. After I finish the first one, I'll probably set my computer down for a few minutes and grab a quick nap. We will forage for something to eat in a couple of hours. By then, I will have heard from one or more of the kids or maybe my Mom. I love my family dearly and staying in touch means a lot to me.

After lunch would be a good time to see the three closest grandchildren. It doesn't take much to make them happy. Just a trip to Dairy Queen or going for a walk at the park is enough to satisfy them. The kids are great huggers, both to say hello and goodbye. That makes me happy.

When we get home, Wonder Woman and I will probably watch a movie, which we do in our spare bedroom, reclined on the bed where she rests her head on my chest so I can kiss the top of her head every couple of minutes or so. She will generally watch anything I pick out. I keep a running list and I just pick whatever sounds good at the moment.

Tonight we had a perfect day conversation that went like this:

Lou: You know what would be awesome?
WW: What?
Lou: If you order us some pizza!
WW: That would be awesome!

I don't have to cook AND I get pizza. That's perfect.

After dinner, I'll finish my daily blogging, stopping to watch the videos she plays for me on her iPad from the other end of the couch. Her favorite genre are videos making fun of men for doing typical man things. Tonight it was a guy who answered multiple trivia questions in a row but could not remember the text his wife sent him just hours before with a grocery request that included a picture of what she needed.

We will go to bed early on the perfect day, because unless we are driving back from a trip, we always go to bed early. My preferred ritual is to read blog posts in my RSS reader until I can't keep my eyes open. I sleep pretty good. I have a lot of perfect days.

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"Ooh Boy, You Nasty!" - Five Facts About Bathing

Death of Marat

I've had some interesting bathing experiences in my life. In 1986, I spent a month in the Mojave Desert at Ft. Irwin while in the Army. I got one hot shower during the entire month and most of the cleaning I did was by pouring canteens of water over my head with its GI haircut. Some tankers that were there had a bucket shower they hung off the gun barrel of an M-1 Abrams. I though they were nuts standing under a slow drizzle of cold water buck naked for all the world to see.

In 2013, my wife and I spent five and half months hiking one of the US National Scenic trails. Showers were infrequent , averaging about once a week. No long distance hikers carry deodorant (too heavy) and the phrase "hiker stank" is no exaggeration. When hitch-hiking from the trail into town to buy food, we had more than one person suddenly roll down the windows "to let in some fresh air." Most daily cleaning was done standing beside a creek with a bandana and a few drops of Dr. Bonner's Pure Castile Soap - which some brave souls even used to brush their teeth.

Here are some facts about the history of bathing.

  1. The Romans were frequent bathers but they did it for social reasons rather than hygeine.
  2. The prevalence of the plague during the middle agescaused people to stop bathing for hundreds of yearsbecause they thought it opened up ones pores and let in disease.
  3. When bathing became popular in the US in the 1860s, baths were relegated to very quick dips in cold water
  4. In 2021 Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis made headlineswhen they admitted to being averse to soap and water and to only bathing their children when they were visibly dirty.
  5. The world's most expensive bathtubs are generally carved from a single piece of stone, with the record holder coming from a huge piece of petrified wood, valued at $1.9 million.

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