I was listening to CKOI out of Montréal while working this morning and a new song came on that impressed me very much, especially when I realized it was Miley Cyrus singing.
I’m not a huge fan of today’s pop music, by “Midnight Sky” really caught my ear. I took a look at the video and it has an old school Madonna vibe to it.
Here’s “Midnight Sky” by Miley Cyrus.
Airplanes require navigational data. Sometimes that data comes from the pilot, but in today’s modern airplanes there’s GPS systems that help. Back when I was a member of the flying club that owned two 1966 Piper Cherokees, it was my job to update the Garmin 530W GPS unit every 28 days with charts and other waypoint data. We purchased this via subscription to a company that provided that sort of thing, and I downloaded it to a proprietary card that was updated on the 28-day schedule. The file wasn’t very big but it was a bit of a hassle downloading it on a Mac. I’m not sure I would be able to accomplish the task on an iPad today.
Recently, a team of security engineers were allowed to look at the systems on a Boeing 747. While they found a clear delineation between the passenger entertainment systems and the aircraft’s control systems, no one is going to be able to hack into the cockpit from the monitor in the seat back in front of them, they also found that navigational data is still loaded into the avionics via floppy disk.
Hey, if it works and is reliable, why change it?
Of course, there are plenty of online “reporting” sites that are hyping this up as some sort of grave danger to the safety of the Boeing 747. Hyped up headlines generate ad clicks and everyone wants to get rich by belching out a few words on a website and raking in the bucks via advertising.
In that regard, we live in such despicable times.
The truth of the matter is, a floppy disk in 2020 is just as functional and safe to use as a floppy disk in 2000. Navigational chart data from 1995 is about the same size as navigational chart data in 2020. Honestly, I’d rather this data was loaded in a tried and true method rather than trying to connect a 747 to the airport wifi and downloading the data. That’s where you have problems; wifi signals are much more prone to errors or even “hacking”.
If a tried and true method has worked for decades without incident, there’s no reason to move to newer technology simply for the sake of change.
I think it’s quite nifty that floppy disks are still used today. It’s a critical part of what we’d call “sneaker net” back in the day, physically copying files from one computer to another.
Sometimes you just have to get the job done.
Monday’s storm definitely followed a marked path through our neighborhood. Walking the blocks to the north of our building, there wasn’t a lot of damage to be found. Small branches here and there, leaves everywhere, but not much beyond that.
South of our building, I’m finding more and more fallen trees, some resting on cars and houses. Power and other lines are still down. Cleanup is well underway, but there are still several streets blocked from fallen trees.
I guess a derecho can follow a defined path much in the manner of a tornado doing the same, though the National Weather Service reported and EF1 tornado touched down just to the east of us.
Perhaps our neighborhood was part of the approach.
Writing a blog post on the iPad:
Writing a blog post on the Linux desktop:
One of these approaches has less “user friction” than the other. Why is it that I occasionally lean toward the process that takes more steps? A desire to set myself apart to show that I’m different. I have a driving urge to prove I’m different.
You already know that. I already know that. At age 52, I probably don’t need to demonstrate this as often as I did as a kid.
This is not the way to demonstrate this. The end result for the reader and/or viewer is the same; they have no way of knowing which method I used to compose this blog entry.
Thank you for attending my therapy session.
So yesterday’s storm was quite feisty. O’Hare showed winds gusting over 80 MPH. An EF1 tornado touched down just to the east of us. I thought the clouds coming over the condo looked quite “swirly” as we watched the storm pass through yesterday.
I was surprised to see exactly how much damage was on streets in our neighborhood when I went for my morning walk. As of this evening there are still areas without power; ComEd is working around the clock to restore electricity to those areas. Luckily we never lost power.
So a very impressive storm blew through. All of our devices were alerting us to a tornado warning and to take shelter immediately. We had secured all the furniture on the balcony and made an exit plan. If it looked like it was going to overwhelm us, we’d go into my office, which is the furthest room from the windows and has a concrete wall.
We spent most of the storm on the balcony with our backs to the upwind wall, though at one point we came inside due to the force of the wind. We watched patio furniture fly off the roof deck next to the clock you see in one of the photos. The trees around us bent over in ways we’d never seen before. It was a very impressive site.
Then, in less than an hour, it was over and by evening the winds had completely died down and the sun was out.
It was probably the strongest wind I have encountered and part of me wishes I was out on the prairie chasing the storm.
So I focused on relaxing this entire weekend. We didn’t go flying, I didn’t embark on some sort of weekend project, we didn’t try to go out and have a drink or eat and end up dealing with the stress of maintaining distancing and the like, we just had a weekend of downtime.
It’s just what we needed.
I’ve had this habit of trying to maintain a certain level of productivity as well as not missing out on life (something I’m more aware of as I get older) during the weekend and I feel like I haven’t given myself a chance to relax. The world is stressful enough these days, why add extra stress when we don’t have to?
Hence, a weekend of doing very little. It was quite nice.
So I went ahead and installed Mac OS Big Sur on my mid-2015, 15-inch MacBook Pro. I’ve been messing around with it a bit here and there and while the new UI elements taking some getting used to, it feels more stable than I thought it would. I’m also surprised at the responsiveness, this beta version is running faster than the latest production version on Mac OS Catalina.
I’ve run across a couple of bugs here and there; the label for my clock widget says “City” instead of “Chicago” and the weather widget keeps defaulting back to Cupertino. I was able to reproduce an issue another blogger is seeing, but otherwise it’s a new coat of paint on the status quo. While users will instantly notice the new look and feel, they should still feel comfortable and confident when Big Sur is realized in the Fall.
I sold the Mac Mini I was using as a “BYOD”, or “Bring Your Own Device”, machine at work. Work has completely gone down the Microsoft path and have done their best to lock non-Windows machines out of the network. While my work as a developer that uses Linux (or other Unix platforms) all day long is still entrenched in a decidedly non-Windows environment, the work desktop team feels everyone in the company should be using Windows laptops. So I make do. I can deal and it’ll be nice to use the money from the sale of the Mac mini toward my next computer. I’m trying to decide if I want to try the full-time Linux leap or just embrace this aging MacBook Pro and iPad Pro combo I currently have going on.
Oh well, there’s no need to rush while everything is working just fine.
In the meanwhile, I’ll see what other bugs in Big Sur I can find and provide feedback to Apple. If you’re not filling out bug reports, you’re doing the whole “beta software” thing wrong.
Today is International Cat Day. Truman poses in front of his food dish because even though he’s well over the vet’s recommended weight, he feels he does not get enough food. Normally he’s banging on the entire device with his left paw, trying to get kibble to fall down like a kid shaking a gum ball machine. Nevertheless, he wishes everyone a Happy International Cat Day.
Earl and I finally finished season one of “The Politician”. We started it way back in October and kind of lost interest, but with this whole pandemic thing going on, and the two of us really trying not to mingle with the masses to avoid contracting COVID-19, we’re cleaning out the streaming lists on our streaming services.
By the way, can I just say right here and now we have too many streaming services to choose from. We have the standard fare: Netflix, Hulu, Apple TV+, and Disney+, but now there’s CBS All Access, Peacock! (I don’t know if it’s suppose to have an exclamation point or not but it seems appropriate), a Comcast exclusive channel that we can’t get, something called Bufu, and probably a whole bunch of others I know nothing about. Oh! And Amazon Prime. Without Amazon Prime we wouldn’t be able to watch “The Mothers-In-Law”. Who would be left to chew the scenery? Anyway, too many streaming services; it turns out cable will probably be cheaper.
So we finished season one of “The Politician”. It was quirky. There were a couple of twists and turns that I did not anticipate but overall it wasn’t a waste of time. Speaking of Kaye Ballard chewing scenery, I see Bette Midler is coming along for season two of “The Politician”. Apparently the leader character is now going to run for something bigger than student body president.
Did I give something away? I hope not. After all, it is called “The Politician”.
The thing about programs that Ryan Murphy creates or co-creates or whatever is that he starts to get weird with them. And this feels like it’s getting weird. Will we enjoy Season Two? Only time will tell and for some reason there’s only seven episodes instead of eight.
But Ryan Murphy’s story direction always seems to go in wild directions and there will undoubtedly be a variety of sexual orientations and couplings because that’s what Ryan Murphy does. There’s nothing wrong with it; it makes me wonder if there are more people out there enjoying something other than the standard flavors of coupling and sexuality than what we see portrayed in real life.
With Earl and I watching more television these days, we’ll probably finish up season two of “The Politician” within a week. I don’t think it’ll be a waste of time.
Just a guy with a husband. We’ve been together 28 years and he still makes me see fireworks on a daily basis. Hiker. Storm Chaser. Private Pilot. Tech Guy. Hackerish.
Weird? Eccentric!