This pretty much sums up my attitude today. Do things the Janeway.
J.P.
Ommwriter.
I have rediscovered the Ommwriter app, something I used to use on my very first iPad so many years ago. Curiously, I can’t find Ommwriter on the iOS app store anymore, but I did find a new version for Mac, so I’m using this on my 2015 MacBook Pro. It runs just fine under the latest public beta of Mac OS Big Sur.
There’s a number of things I really like about this app. First of all, as you can see in the screenshot above, it takes up the entire screen by default. This allows me to focus only on what I’m writing and nothing more. I don’t know if notifications are muted or not; I don’t generally receive that many notifications. I’m not really that popular.
Secondly, I really like the default color scheme the app uses. It’s relaxing. It’s engaging. But most importantly, it’s not distracting. And that’s very important to me. I think part of my inclination for this type of focused color scheme is from growing up in the days of CRT terminals that were one color with a black background. There were three choices: green (the most common), amber, and white. When I worked for Digital in the late 1980s, we were given these choices and nothing more. I didn’t work in a department that warranted full-color (which was a total of 16 colors I believe) displays. I knew of only one person on the entire floor where my cube resided that opted to go with the “dark letters on a light background” setting on her terminal. It was freakishly awful to look at.
Back to Ommwriter. While I’m writing this entry, I have my really good, and quite old, Bose over-the-ear headphones on. These headphones are not actively performing noise canceling but they do a decent job at the task in a passive manner. There’s a number of music tracks built into Ommwriter. Each key press generates a soft click noise in the background, so I know I’m doing something productive. The approach is subtle but effective.
Addressing the color scheme, I’m reminded of the proposal for a new operating system called Mercury OS. I believe they called the color scheme “Fog”. The aesthetics grab my attention and keep me focused. That’s not an easy task to do with all the things going through my head at any given moment.
If you’re looking to write beautiful prose from your own little world, I recommend this Ommwriter app for Mac OS. I’m really hopeful I can find the iPadOS version again. It would be great to have this on the iPad Pro.
Neighborhood.
If one were to subscribe to the propaganda coming out of D.C. about The Windy City, one would think my husband and I risk being gunned down while shopping at the Jewel for our weekly grocery shopping.
Honestly, this is not how Chicago works. My husband and I have lived here over three years and we’ve never felt unsafe in our adopted city.
We live on the North Side. Our neighborhood is vibrant, eclectic, and exciting. We hear a smattering of languages while we walk the sidewalks. We can have anything we want at any time. There’s culture, there’s excitement, and there’s a certain amount of Midwestern friendliness and charm.
I will always defend Chicago. I always tell anyone who will listen what a beautiful city it is. Many American cities have their problems; Chicago is no different in this regard. But those that decide to call this city the derogatory “Chi-raq” have no idea what they’re talking about.
I am proud to call Chicago home.
Money.
Apple reached two trillion dollars in valuation this week. The company is the first U.S. company to achieve this feat; and it achieved this, doubling its one trillion dollars in valuation in just two years.
Honestly, I don’t know a lot about what this means other than the fact that Apple has a metric ton of money.
Yet, the company continues to strong-arm developers and the like into following their “30% cut” of generated revenue from developer apps in their App Store. As a developer that has never developed an iOS app, I’m really not sure how I feel about this, as I’ve never developed anything where Apple had to take a 30% cut of the revenue simply for having the app available for iPhones and iPads.
As consumers we are stuck in a tricky place; Apple charges an exorbitant prices for their hardware and dings developers 30% of their revenue from the apps that are distributed through the Apple app store. Kinda sucky. At the same time, Google offers the Android ecosystem with their Android phones, but vacuum every scrap of data they can from the consumer and use the data to sell ads and share the information with god know who on the other end, disrupting any shred of privacy a user may expect.
Honestly, as consumers we have no great choice. Spend an unreasonable amount of money or whore out our privacy to god knows who.
This is not how technology was suppose to evolve. Devices were suppose to get cheaper and we weren’t suppose to give up our privacy. Why does a company need a two trillion dollar valuation? What purpose does that serve?
Masked.
I figure if we’re going to be wearing masks for a while I might as well make the most of it. I’ve shown off my Star Trek mask before. This week I purchased a couple of the masks shown in the photo. If you’re not familiar with the design, the graphic is a part of a “sectional”, or the maps pilots use to navigate the skies. Actually, most pilots have moved to GPS and all sorts of electronic wizardry for navigation, but all of that data is based on a Sectional. It’s called that because you buy charts for the “section” you’re flying in.
The company I purchased my masks from gives the opportunity to get the sectional of your home airport as your design. If you look at the graphic on my mask, you’ll see KUGN, Waukegan Airport. The blue arc denotes O’Hare’s airspace. The “13” you see denotes the highest elevation, in this case 1300 feet, of an obstacle in that particular quadrant of the sectional.
There’s a bunch of other notation visible. If you want to learn more about a Sectional Chart, take a gander at this Wikipedia article.
And wear your mask!
Urgency.
If you haven’t seen it yet, please take 20 minutes and watch President Obama’s speech at the Democratic National Convention. Many of the speeches brought me to tears, especially Gabby Gifford’s speech near the beginning of the night’s lineup. It was good to hear a President speech coherently, with complete sentences, and cohesive thoughts. In many ways it boggles my mind how we went for President Obama to the idiot we have in the White House today.
Disappointing.
Apple has been in the tech news quite a bit this week (and it’s only Tuesday). Coverage has included:
- App Store issues with the developer of the wildly popular “Fortnite”
- Issue with a recipe company using artwork resembling a piece of fruit as their logo
- And now I’ve stumbled across this (Dear Apple: Your Services Are No Longer Required [offsite link]).
Truth.
When people share their politics: whom they’re voting for and whom they support, believe them when they share their truth with you. When they beat their chest and scream MAGA and call people childish names and casually put aside heinous acts by saying, “well I’m not like that”, believe their actions. Believe their truth. Actions speak louder than words.
I am using vacation time on Election Day to do my part to make sure that everyone that wants to vote is able to vote, and to make sure those who aren’t sure they want to vote are encouraged to vote.
Deficiency.
If the Trump administration has showed me anything it’s that I am apparently a terrible judge of character. A few family and friends, that I may not see eye to eye on a few subjects on, have turned out to be rabid, heels dug in Trump supporters. If I was a smart person I would have seen that coming. But I look for the good in people. I really try to find the positive.
Sometimes there’s just not that much positivity to find.
A sly joke here, a remark there, these are things I would let roll off my back. Shame on me.
I’m reminded of Maya Angelou. “When a person shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”
Why.
I’m still on Facebook. Now look it, before you throw red paint at me or point at me and scream “shame!”, I will say that I have no idea why I’m still on Facebook. It’s not particularly innovative. It’s a gross perversion of development skills. It’s an abuse of network connectivity and it’s an abomination of technology, essentially raping society of all its useful resources.
But it’s how people keep in touch. I hang my head in shame.
For the past 48 hours the big kick on Facebook has been to show your support for the United States Postal Service. People are posting avatars and photos and showing other signs of support by saying things like, “if you live in a very blue neighborhood, drive to a red leaning neighborhood post office to mail you ballot!”.
Oh golly gee isn’t that a great idea.
Here’s the thing, how about we convince the elected officials we’ve put in office to do their job and get the postal service working the way it was intended to work.
I have a package coming to me from Cincinnati, Ohio. I have no idea what this package is but I got some email with a tracking number proclaiming the arrival of this Priority Mail package from Cincinnati, Ohio last Monday.
Cincinnati, Ohio is 295 miles from where I sit right now. We are on day 10 and the damn package still hasn’t arrived. I don’t know what the package is, I don’t care what the package is, but quite frankly it was sent by Priority Mail and it basically hasn’t found its way across the state of Indiana in 10 days.
The folks at the Post Office know nothing. I know nothing. The tracking number app knows nothing. No one knows anything.
This is what makes America Great. Right? Susan Sarandon and her friends say there was no difference between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton so you might as well vote for the woman that sat on crystals. What was her name? Jill Stein? Yeah, it took a Google search for me to remember that. And I have a memory like a steel trap.
Susan Sarandon can go rotate on a lawn sprinkler shooting out boiling water for all I care.
It’s 2020 and we don’t even have a functional post office. Yet I have friends and families declaring that things are wonderful under Trump and life is great again in America. What the hell is wrong with these people?
Things are not great. When we need to publish guides for voters to drive to “more white” areas of the country to reliably mail their ballots we have something seriously wrong with these “United” States. Small wonder Angela Merkel is now considered the most powerful world leader.
But people post things on Facebook like it’s going to make a difference. Wreath wrappers on their picture. Ribbons. Rainbow colors. Postage stamp graphics. It doesn’t make a difference. Posting your protest on Facebook is a feel good maneuver and nothing more.
You know what makes a difference? Making phone calls. Screaming at switchboard operators that don’t want to forward you to voicemail. Voting. Putting up signs. Going to protests. Making your voice heard.
Facebook? It’s a waste of time. Your update is like screaming into an echo chamber. It’ll generate ad revenue and nothing more.
Do something. Make a phone call. Make someone cry. Make a difference.
