What Do You Miss?
I am not one of those people who longs for the good old days. For big groups of people, the progress made in gender equity, civil rights, LGBT rights and other areas was much too hard fought to ever consider going back. I am very fond of progress, technology and medical advances. I'm happy to live in a time when HIV is no longer a death sentence. Likewise, I resent the hell out of the empty-headed RFK's of the world who poison people's minds with their anti-vax rhetoric. Having said all of that, I will admit to missing little pieces of the past.
I miss affordable prices a lot. Getting any beverage in a restaurant costs several dollars. I saw an app today that does one simple thing for Mac users. It toggles a feature (the FN key) on and off. The developer was asking a modest twenty-five dollars for the privilege of using it. As someone who has owned several thousand-dollar cars and who currently drives a 2005 Camry, I am outraged at the people who think a $30K car is cheap. The margin on simple things like shoes and eyeglass frames is robbery by another name. Going to the movies, a concert or a ball game is outrageous. I know, I know. Get off my lawn.
I miss the time when our society wasn't polarized about politics the way it is today. Sorry, Obama, there definitely is a red America and a blue America. I can't even.
I miss the time when people could live off a single income earned by a high school graduate. I supported my wife and son in the 80s by framing houses and serving in the National Guard. Twenty-five years later, my youngest daughter and her husband both worked full-time and had a lower standard of living than we did back in the day.
Oddly enough, in my own experience, racial self-segregation was less pronounced in the 80s than it is now. At my high school, the sports teams, student government and clubs were all diverse. Over the past forty years, I've watched the younger generation choose to have white and black clubs and white and black activities. Other POC just try to get in where they fit in. By the time my kids got to high school, the football team was almost all POC, while the cheerleading squad was lily-white.
I miss the days when security wasn't the overarching, ever present concern in tech. The impediment to efficiency at work because of security is huge. We can't put local admin accounts with static passwords on workstations to facilitate getting access to them. They have to use a server generated rotating password that I have to look up whenever I need to do something. I can't even use an admin account to log in on my own computer (on the PC side). I have to elevate privileges using my super-extra long admin password to each app I need. Two-factor authentication is neat, as long as it works. The aggravation of dealing with people who get new phones or have other hardware issues is just another wrinkle. Passkeys seem neat until you try to use them when you work on multiple devices.
Like I said initially, I don't want to go back. I don't think life was better 40 years ago, but that doesn't mean every change has been positive.
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The Resistance to the Nazis - Lessons from the Past
For some reason, resisting fascism and the historical lessons from courageous Germans in World War Two has been on my mind lately. Having been involved with social movements and protests over the last quarter of a century, I'm aware of the conservative attitude towards any group of people who don't wrap themselves in the flag. Modern police forces are terrified of ANTIFA and anarchists while they simultaneously ignore or tacitly support right-wing groups. Republican led legislatures across the country have passed laws designed to crack down on protests and those laws are always enforced selectively against POC, the poor, young people and anyone who opposes the power structure. Some states have made it legal for drivers to run over protesters who block traffic, essentially creating a de facto death penalty. Such is the morality of the "all lives matter" crowd.
For information about role models from the past, see these links.
German resistance to Nazism - Wikipedia
German Resistance to Hitler | Holocaust Encyclopedia
A Brief History of Anti-Fascism | Smithsonian
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Four Single Purpose Apps - Cheap/Free
There's something to be said for apps that do one thing well. Here
are a few that I've found lately.
FNable - If you use your function keys much, you may grow tired of having to toggle them with the FN key. Be default, macOS treats function keys as system controls. This little app allows you to toggle the behavior simply be pressing and holding the FN key for three seconds. You definitely want to find this app on sale though. It is regularly priced at a whopping $25 . It is currently available at Bundlehunt for $1.50.
Quill - Quill is a menu bar notes app similar to Scrap Paperand Scratchpad with one big difference, you can use images in Quill notes. The notes sync across Macs, but there isn't an iOS app. You can, however, export your Quill notes easily enough if you want to view them on your phone. It is $.99 in the App Store.
Trace - Trace is a minimalist time tracking app. When you manually start a session of, it records the apps you work on and the time you spend in them. You can pause and resume sessions. It reports the amount of time you spend in each app and other facts, like your most used app. It is a free app. For more detailed automatic reports, try Activity Watch, also free.
SpaceSaver - With SpaceSaver, you can save the state of your open applications and windows, and easily restore them later. You can have multiple sessions and switch between them with ease. It doesn't have the prettiest interface but what it lacks in aesthetics, it makes up for in function and price - free!
This Is What I Believe - December IndieWeb Carnival
This month's IndieWeb Carnival is hosted by Zinzy and the topic is belief.
This is what I believe:
The Universe is Neutral. It Neither Loves Nor Hates You - I am all for the power of positive thinking. I tend to act as if things are going to turn out my way most of the time. Pessimistic people, and you surely know a Debbie Downer or two, are a drag to be around, and they grate on my nerves after a while. I am not a Pollyanna, though. I do not believe that "everything will be all right" because I am fully aware that I could be in a car accident on the way home or that my house could burn down tonight. Bad things happen to good people every day. What I believe, based on evidence, is my absolute ability to deal with whatever happens. I have a proven track record of living through everything that has ever happened to me. Everything can be overcome. If you don't believe that, read Mans Search for Meaning about how concentration camp inmates survived.
People Are the Most Powerful When They Are Organized - Most of the rights and privileges we enjoy today, our freedoms, if you will, were not won on the battlefield. They were won on picket lines and in mass movements against the entrenched power structure. The rights of women, people of color, children, workers and the 99% were won by organized groups of people who strategized, struggled and fought and sometimes died to demand rights we take for granted today. The powerful know this and do their best to keep us divided along racial, cultural and class lines so that we won't do it again.
It Is Possible to Overcome Nature and Nurture - We are not locked into an immutable set of values instilled in us by our genetics or our environment. Free will is a hell of a drug, to paraphrase Rick James. I am a son of the South. I have been surrounded by conservative Christianity, institutional white supremacy, patriarchal behavior patterns and unquestioning nationalism my entire life, but I am not an adherent to any of it. The easier and softer way is to go with the flow. Don't make waves. Accept the status quo. Countless people can't even define their belief system because they are too damned busy getting ready for the next MCU movie or the coming weekend's football games. I'm sure there are areas where I need to increase my awareness too, but I try as best I can to be a part of the solution to society's problems. I am not neutral about much.
Curiosity and Sense of Humor are The Most Attractive Human Traits - I'm not an education major. I haven't studied learning styles, but I know there are plenty of ways to add to one's personal knowledge base. Whether it's reading books, surfing the Internet, interrogating the people in your life, or something else, there are an infinite number of things to learn. People who have a sense of wonder and a thirst for knowledge are my favorites. When that is coupled with the ability to laugh, to see the absurd, and to enjoy little moments of serendipity, it's hard for me not to be drawn towards a person.
When You Live a Fearful Life, You're Living Like All the Bad Things Have Already Happened to You - I am firmly in the camp with those who believe that asking for forgiveness is easier than asking for permission. I do not have on ongoing CYA strategy at work or in my private life. There is something inauthentic and sad about people who constantly self-censor or wait for others to make decisions for them. Granted, I am not rich nor am I a CIO. What I am is generally happy and productive, with plenty of room in my mind for things that I enjoy. I believe in acting in good faith. My experience has shown me that doing so is what works for me, more so than endless plotting to get ahead and avoid ruffling feathers. I feel confident that I can defend most of what I do to anyone who questions it.
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Police Misconduct and The Promised Immunity
After the Ohio State vs. Michigan football game this past weekend, the players (ages 18-22) got into a scuffle on the field when Michigan players attempted to plant their team flag in on the Ohio State logo at midfield after winning. Within moments there was a massive police presence on the field. The police tried to separate the players, and when they didn't immediately comply, some of the officers deployed pepper spray - against student-athletes on national television. It wasn't a good look.
I've never been a police officer, but I worked within the criminal justice system for seven years as a correctional officer, spending eight hours a day with convicted criminals so I have some understanding of the stress of the job. Not everyone is cut out to be a cop. If you are easily frightened, angered or slow to make important decisions, being a police officer is probably not the job for you. There is no shame in that. Unfortunately, the US court system is set up in a way that allows police to assert that they fear for the safety to justify just about any action up to murdering children holding play toys.
Nationwide there is an issue with sub-standard police officers moving from one agency to another as they get fired for incompetence or misconduct. President Trump has promised to give police blanket immunity for crimes they commit, regardless of the circumstances. Under his policies, police will be free to choke people to death whenever they feel like it without ever facing justice. The evidence proves that they will do exactly that.
National Police Misconduct Database - Center for Justice Research
10 Outrageous Police Misconduct: A Compilation of Videos - YouTube
"The Wandering Officer" by Ben Grunwald and John Rappaport
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Browser Deputy from the Folks at Anybox
These days, it is not uncommon for someone to have hundreds of
open tabs in as browser. I usually run about 40-50 myself. I've tried
several solutions to quickly find the tab I'm looking for without much
success. Since installing Browser Deputy, I've been
pleased with the way it incorporates into my workflow. I can summon the
app with a hotkey and quickly find a tab, a bookmark or an item from my
browser history, no matter what app I am in.
Browser Deputy works with the following browsers:
- Safari
- Chrome
- Edge
- Brave
- Firefox
- Vivaldi
- Opera
- Arc
Aside from providing a quick search for browsers, Browser Deputy also lets you perform web searches with various built-in engines or custom ones that you add yourself. I use a custom Google search that removes all the AI crud and provides the good old ten blue links that we once took for granted. It was easy to add to the list.
The other useful feature in Browser Deputy is the ability to search menu commands in whatever open app you happen to be in, not just browsers. It doesn't give you a heads-up display of the commands like KeyClu, but it will activate any command you search for.
Browser Deputy is available for download from the dev's website. A three machine license is $11.99.
The Worst Thing You've Ever Done, Grace and Forgiveness
A few years ago, a man in his 60s here in NC, an amateur cyclist of some renown, won a race against a field of mostly younger riders. He was selected for a random drug test, which he failed. In his quest to remain competitive, the man, who was already legendary in the local racing community, a mentor to many and a man held in high esteem, resorted to cheating to increase his chances of winning a relatively meaningless bicycle race. In the process, he made the news, was banned from racing and severely damaged a hard-earned reputation. When I heard about it, I was livid. I didn't know the man. I knew of him. Some of my friends frequently made the one-hour trip to his hometown to train with him. Everyone called him The Old Man. My attempt to carry on a lifelong love affair with sports was already severely damaged by the steroid era in baseball. I adopted pro cycling as my new favorite, only to discover that almost every famous racer of the era was a cheat. It deeply affected me then and now.
I took to social media to vent, as one does. I guy who knows me and The Old Man asked me a question that stuck with me about the whole situation. Is it fair to judge someone solely for the worst thing they have ever done? Is it? Society does it routinely in criminal justice cases. Sure, they take some mitigating circumstances into account, but if you mess up bad enough, you are going to prison despite your otherwise saintly life. I knew more than one person serving a life sentence when I worked in the correctional system who had but a single yet horrible conviction.
In the army, a well-worn but true statement is that one “oh shit” wipes out one hundred “attaboys.” People remember Bill Buckner a lot more for making an error in the World Series than they do for his otherwise illustrious career. In my own tiny little personal Internet, one developer's failure to adequately address a mistake is still reverberating in our community months after the fact.
I suspect that in moments of absolute honesty, most of us could make a confession that could potentially turn large swaths of our acquaintances against us. Maybe we bullied someone or we were needlessly unkind when we didn't have to be. Perhaps as ignorant and uninformed youngsters, we indulged in behavior that we are ashamed of now, like listening to Rush Limbaugh or voting for Reagan.
I believe in extending grace to my fellow humans these days to the extent that I am able. I believe, as I said, that everyone has that one worst thing, and I try not to define people by that. If they are serial assholes, I let them go on their way, but in most cases, people aren't that way. I learned in 12-Step recovery that resentments against other people are the number one offenders in a person's life who is trying to stay sober. I was a miserable person with a whole pile of grievances 16 years ago. In the intervening time, I've worked hard to become forgiving, not for anyone's sake but my own. It's liberating and a heartily recommend it. You aren't letting your ex off the hook when you stop centering on your grievances, You are letting yourself off.
I'm not one who preaches against being judgmental. Frankly, I think using your judgment is a survival skill, and it is impossible not to exercise it. You can't stick with the winners if you don't decide who they are. So judge away, but be careful what you do with your decisions. Don't write people off as a matter of course. Offer them a silent chance at redemption if you can. Put yourself in their shoes and treat them like you would want to be treated. In the long run, you will benefit. They will benefit, and we will be one step closer to a better world.
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This Week's Bookmarks - Nazis in Paris, Fiction Disclaimer, Ancient Dinners, Apple Award Nominees, Microwave Tips, Colosseum Facts, The Kakistocracy
Mystery uncovered of photographer and forbidden photos of Nazi-occupied France : NPR
The bizarre true story behind the “this is a work of fiction” disclaimer.
What the Mesopotamians had for dinner
Apple reveals 45 app and game finalists for the 2024 App Store Awards - Apple
7 Tips From Our Microwave Expert | Reviews by Wirecutter
Everyone but You Sucks, and I Hate Them
One of the least fun parts of having bipolar disorder is unexplainable irritability. Sometimes there are a few identifiable causes, but I know that on better days, they would not bother me. Today I woke up to find that a carefully curated collection of newsletters and online subscriptions was somehow decimated by technical snafus beyond my understanding. As I went through my habitual morning reading on my favorite websites, I could tell it was going to be one of those days.
The people of Reddit are engaged in the usual paranoia and security theater they indulge in regularly over app privacy policies. Two of the most hated apps by the little uninformed Russian trolls over there happen to be two I like just fine, Bartender and Clean My Mac. Someone called me disrespectful for not agreeing with them.
Bluesky is full of people taking sides in the PC vs, Mac wars like we are all living in 2001 again. It seems like the only people not participating are the Linux people who could solve all our problems if we would just install Arch/Mint/Ubuntu/Gnome etc.
On top of the technology drama, I also had to leave home, not something I always enjoy, accompanying Wonder Woman to the supermarket. To top it all off, instead of feeling grateful for a paid five-day break from work, I'm mad because I have to go back tomorrow.
I needed some advice, so I did some research.
What to Do When You’re Super Cranky and Hate Everyone | SELF
5 Scientific Reasons (and Solutions) for Your Crankiness
How to Be Grumpy: A Guide to Managing Grumpiness Well
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Language Tool - Free is Good, Paid is Better, but Expensive
Mac apps have had rudimentary built-in grammar checkers for a
while. Grammarly was the first
well-know commercial product to elevate the capabilities of that tool
genre, becoming extremely popular with students in particular. Lately,
LanguageTool has surged in
popularity. It is integrated into many well-known writing apps across
multiple platforms, including macOS and iOS.
Professionally, I am tasked with composing Confluence (knowledge base) documents for Jira, the ticketing system my job uses. Personally, I maintain three blogs as a non-monetized blogs as a hobby. I write a lot as a result. I have been using the free version of LanguageTool for a couple of months. It does a better job than the native spell checkers I previously used, and it helps with things like missing commas and omitted words. I took advantage of a Black Friday sale to sign up for a year on the Pro Plan. As a result, the app now has a much larger range of tools for me to use.
LanguageTool has a plugin for Safari, Firefox and Chromium browsers. It has a tool specifically built for Microsoft Office, Google Docs, Apple's Pages and LibreOffice. For email users, it works with Apple Mail, Outlook, Thunderbird and Gmail. It even has a plugin for Obsidian, where I do most of my writing. On a Mac, it is also optimized for uses in other apps like Messages and Notes. There is a native editor app for Mac users.
Language Tools's capabilities are sizable.
-
Grammar
- Word order
- Verb tenses
- Subject/verb agreement
- Commas and in-depth punctuation
-
Style
- Repetition
- Over-used words and phrases
- Wordiness
- Foreign terms
-
Semantics
- Lack of clarity
- Word confusion
- Double negatives
-
Format and Typography
- Consistency for numbers and letters
- Spacing
- Time and date formats
-
Spelling
- Misspelled names and acronyms
- Casing errors
- Easy to import your Mac's personal dictionary
LanguageTool works not just with English, but with many other languages as well. It provides detailed stats on what it has done to aid you in writing. You can use a limited feature set or turn on what it calls "picky mode" for more frequent suggestions to strengthen your writing. It does not duplicate what macOS and ChatGPT offer in so far as it does not change the tone of your writing, but it will paraphrase sentences for you.
I am pleased so far with the suggestions I receive from LanguageTool. It definitely makes what I write more polished. It is not a cheap tool. Without the Black Friday discount, it is $5.83 a month, or $70 a year. Casual users can get plenty of benefits from the free plan, while students or more serious writers can benefit from deciding to go pro.
On Collecting Quotes
In an early morning fog, I posted this to the wrong blog today. I am reposting it here for the people who follow Linkage via RSS so they will have today's links.
More than a decade ago, a discovered a fun little app called Quotebook the app was deprecated within a couple of years of my discovery. By some miracle, it has continued to work. I have transferred from phone to phone and continued to use it for its intended purpose, collecting quotes from news stories, books and memes. As a backup, I also use individual text files named after the speaker/writer. Once that folder contained over 500 individuals. I created a GitHub repository to make it easy to share with others. Available as a ZIP archive or as single files you can find it here.
I prefer finding my quotes organically rather than harvesting tons of them at a time, but I will occasionally go looking for a quote on a specific topic. A good place to do that is here -
If you use IFTTT, you can get quotes emailed to you daily. I've been doing it for years. The day's choice goes out shortly after midnight, so it's always waiting for me when I wake up. You can get the same service with a free account.
Email me a famous quote every day - IFTTT
There are a few other quotes collecting apps available for iOS and Mac. I've tried them all.
The Old Technology Debate
I don't want to stir up any trouble. I really don't. I am here to be as helpful as possible for people who are trying to make purchasing decisions about the technology they are going to acquire during this holiday season. Not only that, but I was perusing social media during lunch and lo and behold, I saw the decades old debate about the suitability of Apple computers and computers running Windows, raging on the same as ever. I thought folks were over this, but evidently, they are not.
I started using personal computers in 1993. My first computer was an IBM 486 with Windows 3.1 installed. Over the next six years, I went from a novice to someone working in the support industry. The first time I received a call from a person who owned a Macintosh computer and wanted my assistance, I was incredulous. I couldn't believe that someone spent their money on something so expensive and so incompatible with everything with which I was familiar. In 2000, I was hired by a local school system, issued an Apple laptop, and immediately put to work servicing thousands of Apple computers across 21 schools. Within six months, my ability to configure and maintain Macs surpassed what I had learned in six years as a Windows user. Because I had to support both platforms, my knowledge of Windows and how to maintain it has never faltered. Although I haven't purchased a Windows machine for personal use in over a quarter of a century, I have been issued a few at work and touched literally thousands of them in my job.
For a while, purchasing a Mac was a considerable investment when compared to obtaining an entry-level PC. I will admit to buying inexpensive Dell laptops for my daughters when they were in college. My mother, on the other hand, who is more financially secure, is the one person I recommended buying a Mac. The Dell PC she previously had during the early part of the 21st century was repeatedly infected with different forms of malware and hard for her to maintain. Since she entered the Apple ecosystem with an iPhone, an iMac, and an iPad, she's had very little problems, and like many users, has actually moved away from a desktop machine to using only handheld devices. Some tech snobs think that Apple locks you into their ecosystem by tying the devices together, but I can assure you that most regular people appreciate rather than resent that feature.
These days, you can get an entry-level MacBook Air or a Mac Mini for under a thousand dollars, and the days of them being prohibitively expensive are over. Most people find that an entry-level PC purchased at Best Buy or Walmart will disintegrate within three or four years, whereas most Macs last up to a decade before they need to be replaced. Sometimes people that have never used anything but Windows will accuse Max of not being user-friendly, but the problem there lies with the user and not with the device. For 20 years, I watched five-year-old kindergarteners sit down at iMacs in a computer lab and begin to do things immediately. One little known fact is that low-end computers purchased in big box stores do not have the same components that other computers made by the same manufacturer enjoy. Period. There is definitely a trend towards awarding parts contracts to the lowest bidders, and certainly not to the ones who provide the most quality outside the gaming machines that some PC users purchase. Apple computers, on the other hand, enjoy the same quality components regardless of where they are sold.
There are still people who believe that Macs are only good for graphic designers and creators. These same people believe that you must purchase a Windows machine to get real work done. I have news for them. I work at a small private university in the IT department. My job consists primarily of supporting Windows users and maintaining the computers on the university network. I use various Microsoft tools to do this. All of my IT related work is done on an iMac. If I need to use Windows, I simply log in via a virtual machine on the network to get access to the tools I need. The big graphics companies like Adobe have long made versions of their software for both Mac and PCs. Most of the time, outside specialized enterprise applications, users can get their work done regardless of the platform that they are on. Our university requires every student to purchase a computer, but we do not specify whether they must buy a Microsoft product or an Apple product.
I am long past considering the type of computer one uses as criteria for evaluating their worthiness as a human being. It's just a machine. People who are fighting religious wars over computing platforms need to get a life. They are stuck in another decade. Having said that, I don't see a compelling reason to use Windows outside the specialty enterprise applications I mentioned earlier or just because one is familiar with the platform. I think a legitimate argument can be made for the superiority of Apple's operating systems and the apps that run on them by most knowledgeable people.
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On Collecting Quotes
More than a decade ago, a discovered a fun little app called Quotebook the app was deprecated within a couple of years of my discovery. By some miracle, it has continued to work. I have transferred from phone to phone and continued to use it for its intended purpose, collecting quotes from news stories, books and memes. As a backup, I also use individual text files named after the speaker/writer. Once that folder contained over 500 individuals. I created a GitHub repository to make it easy to share with others. Available as a ZIP archive or as single files you can find it here.
I prefer finding my quotes organically rather than harvesting tons of them at a time, but I will occasionally go looking for a quote on a specific topic. A good place to do that is here -
If you use IFTTT, you can get quotes emailed to you daily. I've been doing it for years. The day's choice goes out shortly after midnight, so it's always waiting for me when I wake up. You can get the same service with a free account.
Email me a famous quote every day - IFTTT
There are a few other quotes collecting apps available for iOS and Mac. I've tried them all.
Folder Tidy - On Demand Fast Power
Folder
Tidy by Tunabelly Software is a tool anyone can use to perform quick
sorts on any giant directories of files that seem overwhelming to tackle
manually. It has built in sorting rules for 19 different types of files,
including folders. These rules can be toggled on or off, but you cannot
edit them. In addition, you can make your own very granular rules. The
example they give is representative of the power of the app. "Move all
files with the extension “DOCX” that contain the word “invoice” and were
last modified in the past year to a folder labeled “Invoices."
What's remarkable is the speed at which Folder Tidy operates. It uses macOS technology called Grand Central Dispatch to use all available cores to accomplish the tasks you assign it. In my case, it took about a second to sort and move directories with hundreds of different media files to subfolders on a different drive. I had to do some troubleshooting after it failed to move all the files on the first try. It turns out that my Spotlight database needed to be rebuilt, a problem I've had before which also affects some search utilities, like Houdah Spot, that rely on it.
Folder Tidy is not a replacement for Hazel. While it does what it sets out to do quickly and well, it is a file sorting utility that doesn't have the depth of actions that Hazel does. If you already own Hazel, there is no reason to add Folder Tidy. One other important thing to know is that Folder Tidy is a manual app. It doesn't watch folders and run action on the enclosed items automatically.
I paid $2.49 for the app on Black Friday. It is ordinarily $9.99.
Are There Ethics to Blogging?
When I began to publish my writing online a year ago, I had no idea whether I would make it a habit or whether people would read anything I wrote. I hoped they would, but I had very little idea however all of this works. Blogging challenges were a mystery to me. My knowledge about how the whole community of personal bloggers from various platforms coalesces within social media circles was scant. The more I wrote and the more consistently I shared, the more learned about the unwritten expectations I would begin to place on myself. I also saw the constraints other people operated under, by choice, and how they differed from mine. Instinctively, I understood that being true to myself was the most important rule to follow. The other unwritten rules of blogging are just things I intuited along the way.
To my delight, I learned that writing my own version of someone else's idea is totally fine, as long as I give them a shout-out for the inspiration. Having someone do the reverse for me is high praise. Any time I've written something and then been able to read someone else's experiences in the same set of circumstances, it's been enjoyable. I end up feeling a particular closeness to the writer. I like it best when there are other significant differences in our lives, so I can see that my feelings of being unique aren't particularly valid. People tend to be more alike than they are different, in my experience. I wrote a post on what it was like to attend 13 schools over a 12-year period, only to read accounts from an English-Canadian woman a couple of years older than me who had done something similar. I also discovered a fellow who lives a continent away who is similar to me in many other ways besides our schooling history. Taking inspiration from others writing is a way of relating in a more deep and connected way than social media could ever offer.
Another ethical issue I and others have to deal with is the prevalence of AI writing tools and easily accessible they are. Things like grammar and spell checkers have been around for decades, but tools that can create an entire post from a mere prompt are new. I don't see myself letting some company's plagiarism machine create something that I would stick my name to. I don't have a problem having my spelling, grammar and punctuation checked by a computer because I'm used to that. Using a service that significantly changes my words, the tone and the structure just seems dishonest. There is a place for that in business, that being a cold and heartless environment. Blogging should have a soul. It should have a heart, and it should have an ethical code that the text you put under your byline is real and created by a human.
On the honesty scale, I'd say I come in around 90% to 95% honest. Sometimes one has to stretch the truth a bit to protect the innocent or make a story worth telling. My style of writing is autobiographical. There are times when I just can't remember the exact order of events, where I was living or who I was married to (just kidding). I do the best I can. I aim to be entertaining and interesting, not to please a professional fact-checker. Of course, there are some things about which I always try to be scrupulously honest. When I write about sobriety and recovery, you can take it to the bank. If I convey a particularly funny story about something that happened while I was in the army, there may be a detail or two where I take a literary license. Most of military life is dull and boring, so if something sounds interesting, it's probably just in the way I'm writing it.
I also tend to stick to just the facts when I write tech related posts. I want nothing more than to help someone find a real solution to a software issue. I'd feel horrible if I misled them about an app's suitability for a task, or if I wasn't diligent about pointing out a show stopping flaw. To the regular people in the world, a detailed explanation of menus, buttons, submenus and other user interface trivia is pure textual sleeping pills. For my fellow nerds and software geeks, it's vital information.
At some point, my goal is to have more time to write more polished and detailed work, to spend more time fine-tuning what I put out there for folks to read. I want to work through more than one draft, like what I envision a real writer does, Meanwhile, I will continue to be a happy hack making stuff that's good enough to share even if it won't win any rewards.
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Black Friday - Alternatives to Shopping
Any shopping I do on Black Friday will be of the online variety. There aren't enough bargains in the world to get me into a store with crazed bargain hunters today. I've seen the videos of shoppers being trampled so someone could save $50 on a big screen T. I plan to spend the day in the company ot my kids, grandkids and my Mom. We will hang out, telling stories and snacking. Our one trip away from home is a planned excursion for lunch to get some pho from the very appropriately named Vietnamese Restaurant. That's its name. The even funnier part is that all the people who work there are Korean.
Black Friday Alternatives: Things To Do Instead of Shopping - Parade
What To Do On Black Friday Instead Of Shopping
12 Things To Do On Black Friday Besides Shopping - It's My Favorite Day
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Black Friday Software Sales
It's time for all the AppAddicts out there to load up during the
yearly bargain day called Black Friday. The sites listed below have some
repetition, but take a quick look through all of them. Some contain
software for specialty roles, like devs, creators and designers.
So far this year, I've purchased:
Sales
- Rare Deals and Discounts on Software, Apps & SaaS
- Black Friday - Indie Goodies
- Black Friday WordPress Deals 2024 - wpbfdeals
- Awesome-Black-Friday-Cyber-Monday: Awesome deals on Black Friday: Apps, SaaS, Books, Courses, etc.
- Best Black Friday & Cyber Monday 2024 Deals for Developers & Designers
- SaaS Black Friday 2024
- Awesome-Black-Friday-Cyber-Monday-deals: 🟢 2024 Deals Live - Black Friday & Cyber Monday, Christmas & Holidays Deals for Developers, Techies, & Entrepreneurs,
- Black-Friday-Deals: Black Friday Deals for macOS / iOS Software & Books
- Indie App Sales!
- Discover Launch Deals on Indie Products
- DealHunt - Free Curated Deals with Savings up to 80%
- Black Friday Times, unmissable deals on software, services and more.
- Creator Black Friday Deals
Thanksgiving 2024
This year's Thanksgiving has a special flavor. My son, who lives far away in Austin, Texas, is here for a visit. I still live in the house where he grew up, and he enjoys these nostalgic returns. After we got home from the airport yesterday, he went for a run. He came home to report that he'd passed the homes of old friends, the middle school he attended, and various spots where he's committed various teenage sins in his wayward youth.
A little later, we went to the train station to pick up his daughter, our granddaughter, who was traveling to meet us from Virginia, where she attends school. We all went out for a sushi feast before coming home to hang out, telling stories, and making each other laugh.
I get up early, and as I sit here writing, I have that wonderful protective parental feeling that reminds me of my younger days when I'd wait for the kids to get up so I could make them breakfast and start the day. Later on, we will all be traveling across town to attend the annual family gathering at the remnants of my uncle's farm, where I lived during my high school years. My daughter and two of our other grandchildren will be there, along with other relatives ranging in age from nearly 80 down to a six-year-old.
Luckily, no one will talk politics in mixed company. If the coast is clear, the progressive wing of the family may console each other under our breaths, but no one will be wearing a MAGA hat or thanking the Good Lord for the election of Donald Trump. We will be asked to give reports on anyone who is missing. One of the best parts of these rare family conclaves is the chance to catch up on family news.
Wonder Woman is sitting across from me, already beginning our holiday shopping. With five children and 13 grandchildren, she has a lot of gifts to buy. I send her ideas and give her feedback, but all the real work, including wrapping the gifts when they get here, falls to her. My Black Friday shopping is relegated to taking advantage of software sales, a relatively selfish pursuit that I thoroughly enjoy. I probably won't be getting many new apps this year because, quite frankly, I have so many already that it's hard to even find things on sale that I don't already have installed!
I make a gratitude list every day as part of my journaling practice. It helps me stay in tune with how fortunate I am in so many ways. Since last Thanksgiving, a lot has happened that has given me new reasons to be thankful. After a long pause, I started blogging again, giving myself a creative outlet that is enjoyable and therapeutic. I've enjoyed a marked resurgence in my interest in technology and married that to my writing to produce content that's been viewed over 400,000 times by people all around the world.
If you are reading this, know that I appreciate you. Thanks for being interested in my world. Feel free to leave a comment or to reach out on social media. Have a happy Thanksgiving, whether you live in the US or not. Let's make a better world in the year ahead.
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Weird Thanksgiving Traditions
Here in the United States we traditionally celebrate Thanksgiving on the last Thursday of November to celebrate the supposed feast celebrated by New England Pilgrims and Native Americans in 1621. President Lincoln created the holiday in 1863 in the midst of the American Civil War.
My family's traditions are pretty normal. Wonder Woman and I alternate each year between her family and mine. Both families have all the expected Thanksgiving foods, turkey, dressing, cranberry sauce and various vegetables and deserts. No one person has to cook it all. We do it potluck style, where everyone attending brings a dish or two. The only slightly out of the ordinary offering is the occasional bushel of oysters we may have on hand, since we all live relatively close to the Atlantic coast.
Doing a little research, I discovered there are some definitely strange customs followed by different people in the US. Here are a few for you to peruse.
Weird Thanksgiving Traditions: Turduckens, Cap'n Crunch Stuffing & More
These Are The Weirdest Thanksgiving Traditions Ever
These Unusual Thanksgiving Traditions Are Common in the U.S. - Immihelp
What’s your “unusual” Thanksgiving tradition? : r/thanksgiving
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MacWhisper - Transcription Powerhouse
I made my first purchase of the 2024 Black Friday season by
purchasing the transcription app, MacWhisper by
indy developer Jordi Bruin for 40% off of the usual price of €49.99.
This app uses OpenAI's Whisper technology to transcribe all types of
audio files with quickness and accuracy into text.
It requires macOS 14 or higher and works best on Apple Silicon, although it is functional on Intel processors. You can use any type of input device, including your Mac's built-in microphone. MacWhisper can, if you choose, replace the built-in dictation on your computer. Transcription is done on your device, not on a remote computer. The default output is a .whisper file containing the original audio and the transcribed text, however it has numerous export choices:
- SRT and VTT subtitles
- CSV
- DOTE
- DOCX
- Markdown
- HTML
The transcription speed is remarkable, happening up to 30X over real time using metal and GPU technology. Transcripts may be easily searched. Filler words (um, ah, etc.) are automatically removed. You can edit the transcripts to correct spelling of names or other words.
With the Pro version of the program, I get batch transcriptions of multiple files. I can transcribe YouTube video and use my OpenAI key to take advantage of Cloud Transcription and ChatGPT integration. I can take advantage of translation services to convert text into other languages. It also adds a menu bar interface for global transcription and the ability to paste text into other apps.
Students, non-profits and journalists always get 50% off the price by contacting the developer. There is a free version of the app that lacks the AI integration of the Pro version. It is available on Gumroad.