Reminiscing about The Great Satanic Scare of the 80s, when everything from the rock group KISS to the kid’s TV show The Smurfs was supposedly under the control of the Dark lord.
Today on AppAddict - Bebop Quick Notes is a new app designed for the quick capture of text notes. Its killer feature is the ability to save notes in Markdown format directly into an Obsidian vault, but it can save in other formats to other locations, like Dropbox, too.
From my 100 Strangers Project - Rusty was at the West Columbia Riverwalk Park in Columbia, SC walking his dog when I asked if I could get his picture. Despite his punk rock appearance, he was a seemingly shy, soft-spoken man with a very friendly labrador for a companion.
Charles Babbage’s Analytic Engine was never fully designed because he had to keep tinkering with the Difference Engine (a more limited version) which he could never finish (nowadays several computer history museums have working models from his original specs) because the printer would never work properly. We commemorate this early milestone in computing today by having our printers never work also.
Small Robot Army
My obsessive pursuit of 10,000 cycling miles in a calendar year, what it took and what it cost - The 10,000th Mile for WeblogPoMo2024
Today on AppAddict - Two recommendations for File Sync Utilities Free File Sync and Sync Folders Pro. They’ll meet all your needs including scheduled syncs and full disk bootable clones.
From my 100 Strangers Project - DJ was fishing off the pier at Sunset Beach in Brunswick County, NC during the annual blue fish run when I interrupted him long enough to take this portrait.
Just a slice of life, a road trip with Wonder Woman. My WeblogPoMo2024 post for Saturday.
This Week's Bookmarks - Your musical taste, Habits, Reverse Dictionary, Floppy Disks, Random entertainment, No car vacations, Subplots cut from movies
How alternative is your music taste? Find out with this tool. Obscurify Music
30 Small Habits To Lead A More Peaceful Life (lifehack.org)
Reverse Dictionary – Find words that fit your description (virock.org)
Obsolete, but not gone: The people who won’t give up floppy disks (bbc.com)
Project Random (0xbeef.co.uk) - See a random video, listen to a random song, play a random game
10 places where you can ditch your car this summer (nationalgeographic.com)
Saturday and time for an update to my /now page, featuring a great novel/audiobook, three TV shows, links to 16 blog posts, the best work pants and the crazy websites I added to my personal bookmarks this week. Enjoy!
Today on AppAddict - Velja Browser Picker - a free and open-source app that opens URLS in the correct app (Discord, App Store Teams, Zoom etc.) or in the browser of your choice. Easy to configure and use.
From my 100 Strangers Project - Meg was sitting at a table on the sidewalk outside a bar, doing a little day drinking and having a smoke on a crisp December afternoon. Her comment when I explained my project - “How fun!”. And, she said it with a big smile. I love the reflection in the window.
What's Your Browser Setup? Hundreds of Tabs? Multiple Windows? Something in Between?
Recently, I posted on Mastodon, “I do not understand the 100+ tabs open at the time people. Not saying you’re wrong, I just don’t get it. Did you get attacked by a bookmarks.html file as a young child? Is yours the laptop with a petabyte of RAM? What gives?” Surprisingly, I got a lot of feedback from had been no more than a wisecrack. I’m interested in the way people do everything on their computers, from what apps they use, to, yes, how many tabs they work with. Please reach out and describe your browser setup if you’re up to it.
At work, I normally have two or three windows open in Edge, my browser of choice (because it really doesn’t suck). At home, I only run two windows.
Work Setup
Edge has both profiles and workspaces. Profiles have separate settings, bookmarks and extensions. Workspaces have separate bookmarks bars and tabs. At work, I sign into a separate profile to access my university Microsoft 365 account. Group policies don’t allow the installation of any extensions, so it’s pretty bare bones. I normally have the following tabs open:
- Company directory
- Outlook email
- Microsoft Admin Center (plus a tab each for Entra, Defender, Intune)
- Asset management app
- CBT Nuggets (for training)
- Student Database
- Six different Excel spreadsheets from Office 365 online
Total work tabs = 15
Personal Setup
At work, I also run a window logged in to my personal profile with at least one of my personal workspaces. I do this to have access to extensions (like my password manager) and bookmarks. I have two personal workspaces: one for social media and blogging and another general workspace.
My social and blogging workspace has tabs open for:
- Lou Plummer (@amerpie@social.lol) - social.lol - my primary Mastodon account
- Lou Plummer (@amerpie@onephoto.club) - One Photo Club - a second Mastodon account for travel photos
- Lou Plummer (@amerpie.lol) — Bluesky (bsky.app)
- Lou Plummer (@CycleLou) / X
- Pxlmo
- Lou Plummer | LinkedIn
- Lou Plummer (@amerpie) on Farcaster (warpcast.com)
- Lou Plummer — Refrakt
- Micro.blog
- Sites | tinylytics
- Explore Posts | Scribbles.
- OMG.LOL
Total social and blogging tags = 13
My general browsing workspace has tabs for:
- Gmail (personal email)
- Yahoo mail (used only for newsletters)
- Google Drive
- Raindrop.io bookmarks
- Gemini (google.com)
- Reddit - Dive into anything
- Plus whatever I happen to be interested in at any given moment, usually about a half-dozen tabs
Total general browsing tabs = 12
Total Tabs = 40
Other Considerations
I use the great Mac app, Velja, to let me pick what browser or app opens links. I have five browsers installed, Edge, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Orion and Arc. I prefer to open YouTube links in Freetube. And though I usually use the default web interface for Mastodon, I also use Ivory for its notification center actions. Inoreader is my RSS provider and I use an Edge PWA to access my feed.
Taken at the FiveBoroBikeTour in NYC, this cyclist was channeling his inner Elton John #photography
I wrote an old fashioned #FollowFriday post but I gave some reasons why these 10 people from Mastodon are worthy of being added to your list. The Fediverse has been such a positive experience!
Today on AppAddict - Zavala, a free, open source, minimalist outliner with iCloud syncing. It’s a universal app for Mac, iPhone and iPad with some features (like font selection) that even the big boys lack.
From my 100 Strangers Project - I met Shawn and Erica at a demonstration jump by the Army’s Golden Knights parachute team who are stationed at Ft. Liberty adjacent to the town where we live. Erica was happy to pose for me. Shawn was a little reticent and reserved, but a good sport, nonetheless.
BREAKING: Gov Abbot pardons Daniel Perry despite Perry’s plan to kill Muslims & Black people—then succeeding in killing a BLM protestor (who was a Veteran). “All lives matter” crowd proudly celebrates killing Muslims & Black people.
A reminder once more that a system cannot fail those it was never meant to protect.
Qasim Rashid
The phones of normal people do not look like your phone and the needs of normal people do not match the wants of the content generation conglomerate. The masses aren’t outraged, and they really don’t want things to change. For WeblogPoMo2024
From my 100 Strangers Project - Stone (his name) manages this tattoo business. A few days after I shot this, I saw him again and we had a conversation. Turns out he is a photographer too. We talked about it for a while. He looked me up on Facebook and we’ve now been friends for 10 years.
