Monsoon season has arrived. Mother Nature is a little feisty tonight.
Here’s some of the show over the city of Tucson.
One of the things I love about the storms here in the desert is the spectacular lightning display. There’s a lot of cloud to ground lightning in these storms, something I haven’t seen nearly as much when chasing storms in Tornado Alley.
Nick at “The Linux Experiment” talks about why he thinks the ad-based Internet is dying.
God, I hope so.
We’ve been trying to eat healthier over the past month or so. Having good cooks in the family certainly helps the situation.
Earl, Marshall, and I went camping this weekend at a Men’s Retreat a couple of hours from here. We had a very relaxing time, made some new friends, and a good time was had by all.
Camping is a generous term; we actually stayed in the ranch lodge in a comfortable room. Camping facilities are available. Tents, RVs, and sheds converted to sleeping quarters, all outfitted with air conditioning, are scattered about the property. There were about 40 men in attendance this weekend.
We look forward to going back when the temperature is a little more moderate.
Truman enjoys standing on the back stairs, just out of reach of his canine friends Lucky and Jinx. When we hear a scurry and the dogs go running down the back hallway, we know Truman has made an appearance and a graceful leap, calling “safe” but standing on one of the lower stairs, staring at his friends.
There are times when everyone can enjoy a social experience, and that often involves Truman standing at one of the kitchen doors, enjoying the wonders of flight from his bird friends on the other side of his natural television glass.
Meta (the company that owns Facebook and Instagram) released a Twitter clone called Threads. Based on your Instagram account, Threads is another social media platform design to bring people closer together through a “global town square” type conversation experience.
Meta also really wants your data. Take a look at the screen shot above at all the data points their app is monitoring on your phone.
While I really want to see Twitter fail under Elon Musk’s leadership, as he’s done everything he can to make it a creep cesspool of awfulness, there are better options out there. Meta’s Threads is cool and millions and millions of people are already using it. People are looking for an alternative to Twitter.
But the data scraping is so cringey.
Earlier this week I mentioned that I was rebuilding my keyboard on the gaming computer with some new keycaps that would provide a more retro feel. Here’s the end result:
I’m quite pleased with the result and the overall feel of typing on this keyboard.
I also mentioned that I have a similar keyboard setup on my work computer. This makes for writing prose and code a delight, except when I’m on conference calls. During these moments I use a Microsoft bluetooth keyboard that tries to mimic the Apple Magic Keyboard experience. It’s close, but not quite there. I still find it enjoyable for the limits runs it provides.
Chris and Mike have done a fantastic job sprucing up the guest suite here at the Desert Compound. The room is officially known as the Solarium on the blueprints, and the space offers a private bath, a king sized bed, and wonderful views of the mountains and Saguaro National Park East.
Curious, I decided to watch a suggested video on YouTube the other. I’m not going to post a link to the video because I don’t want to tempt the algorithms any more than they’ve already been tempted, but the video was from a conservative commentator on why Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law isn’t really that bad.
Now, as a quick sidebar, I did learn that the bill isn’t actually called “Don’t Say Gay” and in no place does it even mention the word gay. The media’s nomenclature appears to be based on the intent of the law, not the actual wording of the law. I’m not here to debate whether this makes a difference and if this entire law is a good thing or a bad thing, I’m just pointing out some things I learned around the law.
So after watching this video YouTube apparently discerned I had completely changed my political stances or something because now the algorithm is pushing conservative viewpoints in my suggested feed. It’s been two days since I looked at that first video and this morning my “suggested” feed looked like this.
I try to use my iPad Pro for media consumption such as videos on YouTube, but because of the way the iPad works, and its app based ecosystem, the best way to watch YouTube videos is to use the YouTube app. Using the YouTube app doesn’t allow for plugins that squash things like suggestions and ads and the like, something I very much enjoy on my laptop when watching YouTube through a browser.
This little discovery points out several things to me.
1. Closed ecosystems forcing you to consume Internet content a certain way is not always the best way, and in fact, is frequently not the best way.
2. Algorithmic services like YouTube and Twitter and Facebook want you, the user, to be outraged. Not only are they relying on scooping up as much information as possible from your device, they’re trying to engage you by apparently getting you incensed. I can’t help but think this is a contributor as to why people out in the real world are always so damn cranky. Algorithms have changed societal behavior in an unfortunate way.
I decided that I will no longer consume YouTube videos without the safeguards of the plugins I have installed on Firefox and Safari, plugins that are only available on laptops. If I feel like I want to watch YouTube and I don’t have a laptop nearby, I’ll read a book or play Solitaire or something.
This is one of my favorite songs from the 1980s. The funky bass line, the instrumentation, and the vocals are just wonderful. We didn’t hear this much on Top 40 radio in Upstate New York, it was a little too funky for the bland approach to Top 40 back then. I discovered the track on “Soul Train” (it might have been the performance in this video) and I bought the 45 back in the day.
When I was Program Director of the Rhythm/Dance Top 40 in the 90s, this track was prominently rotated in the back catalog. We made our own radio edit from the original 12-inch version; I should recreate that using modern methods and share it someday.
From 1983, here’s the S.O.S. Band and “Just Be Good To Me”.
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!