Last month’s utility (water) bill was over $200. It was $222.13, to be exact. It went up because rains had stopped, and we had to turn on the schedule for the sprinklers.
If it continues this way the decision will be whether the lawn survives, or we do. We will have to make a choice then. Poor lawn, we barely knew you!
finances lawn weather“Your NFT are actually—finally—totally worthless”, RollingStone. Don’t you say! Just one more to add to the Human Stupidity museum, right?
rants techJust as I am in love with the Japanese woodblock prints, I also love the simplicity and beauty of Japanese (and Chinese, and Korean) Sumi-e (ink wash painting).
This one above is a relatively big mural. If you look at a bigger, fuller, version (really big image!) you will see the strokes, made with a—probably huge—straw brush.
art japan“What’s going on with the WiFi? I can’t connect the iPad to it.” — “Nothing that I know off. Do you think the boy would be so happy playing a video game with friends, if there was a problem?” — “It isn’t working!” A minute later, “never mind”.
If at first you don’t succeed, you mustn’t quit! LOL.
family life techDaylight “Savings” Time sucks, and it should be abolished. For the last five days I have noticed my mornings getting darker, to the point of having to turn on the light to start the working day. It hasn’t been an easy in at all but, I would say, rather dramatic. Then early November, bam! Back one hour. Ugh!
Just LEAVE THE CLOCK ALONE!
life rantsFilm director Rian Johnson has lifted the lid on a secret in the world of product placement – Apple will not allow its kit to be used by a villainous character on screen.
“Apple, they let you use iPhones in movies, but – and this is very pivotal – if you’re ever watching a mystery movie, bad guys cannot have iPhones on camera,” Johnson, whose credits include Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Looper and Knives Out, revealed in a video recorded for Vanity Fair.
Thank you, George, for spoiling a few shows and movies for me. This is something I hadn’t correlated, but now cannot miss. Ha!
apple friends george interestingIn my experience, the easiest and most difficult people to work with are those on a short countdown to retirement. Easiest because they become really agreeable, or disagreeable—but they don’t masquerade it. Difficult because they become almost impossible to get a hold of—they stop giving a duck about things.
thoughts workIt is past 22:00, and I am still awake. For reasons I can’t explain, I don’t feel sleepy at all—which is odd for a weekday. I am going to pay for this tomorrow, I am sure.
Meanwhile I have been following links up and down at wonger.dev, especially these. Lots of interesting stuff there!
random tubesI was having a weird issue in which blue heart next to the timestamp would appear off place, and quickly jump into place on page load/refresh. Took the problem over IRC (Libera.Chat) #css channel and, sure enough, hassoon and DPA found the issue, and provided a solution, in no time.
Suffice it to say, very, very grateful.
css socialI have decided to move from 1Password (for which I pay a yearly subscription) to iOS native Passwords before the year is over. The ability to share passwords with family tilted me over. I will not wait for Passwords to become an app of its own—though I am sure that’s coming—because I don’t think that should hold me back now.
apple cryptographyI might be getting old and, as such, be “old school” now, but a company like Unity shouldn’t be apologising on X. They have a company’s website, they should put their apology there.
Ah, crap, as soon as I hit send I found their blog with an “Editor’s note (Sept. 17, 2023)”, that is a verbatim of what they posted on X.
We have heard you. We apologize for the confusion and angst the runtime fee policy we announced on Tuesday caused. We are listening, talking to our team members, community, customers, and partners, and will be making changes to the policy. We will share an update in a couple of days. Thank you for your honest and critical feedback.
I don’t know why news outlets did not link there instead of referring to the X “xeet” (how do they call those things these days?).
Another update, this time from Marc Whitten, lead of Unity Create:
I want to start with this: I am sorry.
And he goes on, yet, it seems to me it’s too little, too late. I think this was a costly mistake for Unity. Talk about a backfire!
techMoscow said last year it planned to spend almost $30 billion by 2035 on developing the northern sea route, which has become more viable as climate change has reduced sea ice in the Arctic.
Emphasis mine. Russia is benefiting from global warming, and now more pollution is on its way. Well, that’s great </s>!
humans randomSending the true spam to “Junk Email” at work has gotten so bad, that it is, precisely, “Junk Email” the first folder I check each morning, and the last at the end of the day. Granted, it is a relatively quick glimpse, but nevertheless a task that most be done. False positives are aplenty.
rants workThe mishaps of X triggered the spawn of new services like Threads, Bluesky. It also exacerbated the adoption of the Fediverse (often simply called Mastodon). Now there is Pebble, but this one has a problem of it’s own. To sign up you need to connect with X/Twitter, “to confirm you’re a good fit for Pebble”. Oh dear god!
social techToday’s News Minimalist email reads, and I am not paraphrasing:
Today ChatGPT read 1003 top news stories. After removing previously covered events, there are 2 articles with a significance score over 7.
That is, according to ChatGPT, there are only two significant news today. We are beating yesterday, thought. Yesterday there were none.
llm tech thoughtsKim loves to buy plants, or she will gladly take them from people giving them away for various reasons. That’s the extent of her “green thumb”. Plants commonly perish under her “care”. She tries, though, but often is not to be. It’s rather sad.
Then she makes me feel guilty when she asks, “Have you watered my plants?” Like, really?! 😅
family lifeWith so many disasters around the globe, so many conflicts, every little bit helps to bring sustainment to those in need. Anyone can do that, through Red Cross, for as little as $10.
The American Red Cross shelters, feeds and provides comfort to victims of disasters; supplies about 40% of the nation’s blood; teaches skills that save lives; distributes international humanitarian aid; and supports veterans, military members and their families. The Red Cross is a nonprofit organization that depends on volunteers and the generosity of the American public to deliver its mission.
Please, considering donating to the Red Cross, and/or the International Committee of the Red Cross.
help life
I am totally in love with Japanese woodblock prints. If it weren’t because my taste and Kim’s collide, I would have them framed around the house, and I would collect them.
art japan woodblockLast week I spent 11h 21m screen time on all my devices (a Mac, and an iPhone). The tally goes: 6h 57m on iPhone, 6h 38m on Mac. That’s just macOS and iOS “vanilla” apps almost exclusively. Most macOS apps do not get recorded—perhaps because my Mac runs macOS Monterey. For example, I spend a lot of time on Teams, Chrome, and iTerm2 under macOS during work days, but none of it gets recorded.
apple life techA gas station offering a receipt after pumping, and then never providing it and showing a “Please see attendant” message drives me nuts. JUST STOP OFFERING RECEIPTS!
This specific one I use, because it is closer to home, does the same in all pumps—yes, I tried them all to see, on different occasions, of course. Ugh!
life rantsI have added a subtle way to provide feedback here, using the very easy to setup, simple, and awesome Tinylytics. Now that I have done it, I am having second thoughts. Do I really want it? I sure don’t know, so they (blue hearts) are here now, but they might not be tomorrow. Yeah, true ambivalence.
Update: 09 Jun 2026 @ 17:26:21
Feedback is anonymous. I see the same as you see: a number next to the emoji, nothing else. If you have JavaScript disabled you see nothing, and so do I.
hugo techBy now it is settled that I love fonts. My thoughts have rambled around the topic more than once; my font collection is now at 1102. It might be surprising and, perhaps, inaccurate to say—because I am always discovering new ones that I like—but as of today, my first favourite (and the one currently in use here until further notice) is “IBM Plex Sans”, followed by “Inter”.
design fontsCame back from riding the bike with dad. Told Kim we rode around 5 kilometres. “Riding on the road is dangerous!”—she says. “We rode on sidewalks.” “It is dangerous”—she repeats, “Please, don’t do it again.”
Yet, if I don’t do it, she will say “You are too sedentary, need to move more.” Damned if I do, damned if I don’t. 😂
family health horsie lifeI truly don’t like Outlook, the program that runs on your computer, which started as a mail client, and now wants to do everything, and does it badly. I use it in a Windows VDI for work purposes, because there is no other practical choice. One of the things—amongst the many—that irks me about it is the “Remove extra line breaks in plain text messages” option enabled by default. That’s because—yes, you guessed it—I compose my emails in plain text.
rants tech workIt is simply amazing the amount of high quality, instructive videos, available on YouTube. Most are curiosities, to see how things are made, or to experience how someone else does it. And that’s just scratching the surface just a millimetre—which, in inches, is some other number.
interesting videos youtubeAbout iOS 17 relase on 18 September, make sure to turn off the betas (thanks George!) if you participated. Simply go to “Settings → General → Software Update → Beta Updates”. and turn it off.
apple friends george techI found Webgbcam while browsing Javier’s posts, and I am in love with it! The good thing about pixels is they stretch nicely, and they conceal. A lot! LOL.
As Javier says it (translating it from Spanish), “a website to take selfies in the traditional way: with a Game Boy Camera”.
➝ Via Javier.computer.
art tech via
