Essays
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Continue to support older Pixel phones for several more future releases of Android. Google forced me to by a Pixel 2 because it announced Android 9 will not support the Nexus 6P, which I previously owned. In short Google should not continue only providing two operating system upgrades for their Pixel phones. The latest version of iOS supports five generations of iPhones and Android needs to do the same for Pixel phones.
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Keep selling at least two generations of Pixel phones and lower the price of the older generation. Right now the Pixel 2 is still available at the Google Store, but for how long? I think Google needs to keep selling the Pixel 2 until it announces the Pixel 4, which then builds in a lower priced Pixel.
Definition of Insanity
Home Run hitting is vulnerable to breaking down. Combine that fact with an aging starting rotation and an inconsistent bullpen and you have a summary of the Chicago Cub’s last two seasons.
The Cubs currently have 5 batters with 20 or more home runs, and one more, Jason Heyward at 19. No Cubs hitter has a batting average of .300 or better, Anthony Rizzo is hitting .286. Even if you add Ben Zobrist to the mix, the Cubs lineup is too much the same making it easy to defend.
I understand the resistance in parting ways with the talent that got you the World Series three years ago, but I think it should be clear now that unless there are some diferent players in the lineup next year, you are going to end up with the same result.
Many will put blame on the manager, but he is not the person responsible for the roster, that lies with the front office. You clearly see a bias towards a single style of player that is good but not diverse enough, and that really doesn’t give Madden many options to change things up.
Ownership has some hard decisions to make during the off season. It’s easy to decide whether or not to spend money, it is much harder to decide whether the people running your team know how to change and if you do replace them, with whom?
I expect the Cubs to replace Madden because that is the easy choice that just about every team makes at this point. A different leadership style might spark a different emotional result, but it won’t change how teams pitch to the Cubs.
Chromecast Overheating
I’ve been using Chromecast ever since Google first started selling them, and upgraded to the Ultras when they became available. One is attached to each of our two TVs, however I also have an Apple TV connected to the basement TV. I primarily use the Apple TV because I find the apps are better, for example the MLB app has a catch up feature only available on Apple TV.
I do occasionally stream ball games using the Chromecast on the Living Room TV but it has he annoying behavior of performance degrading after a couple hours of streaming. All of a sudden what I am watching starts stuttering and becomes unwatchable.
I don’t have solid evidence, but I suspect the Chromecast is overheating to the point after a few hours the performance suffers. The OS on the device might be throttling down performance to protect the CPU. The Chromecast is very hot when I touch it. I probably should get an HDMI extension to move it further away from the back of the TV.
Given my experience, if someone is in the market for a streaming video device I recommend the Apple TV unless you find the price prohibitive. I think the UI is good and it has had solid performance.
Go Cubs Go
The Chicago Cubs have one of the best home records and one of the worst road records, and they have the best run differential in their division. People seem to be scratching their head over how the same team can be so good at home and so bad on the road. The problem is not the hitting, although they could be more consistent. To me the problem is the bullpen, they are giving up too many runs in the 6 thru 9th innings. Nobody in the pen is reliable.
Twenty years ago the bullpen wasn’t so important because starting pitchers pitched more innings and more often completed games. Now, starting pitchers are only expected to pitch six innings and that means you got have more pitching than ever before.
The Cubs overall pitching staff is not good enough. You might see an uptick in performance if they make the playoffs because the starters tend to go longer and you tend to narrow the pen down to a handful of pitchers, but I don’t expect the Cubs to get beyond be first round if they do make the playoffs.
I don’t know what specific things the Cubs need to do for next year. I don’t think the problem is with the managing or coaching, it seems to point to the talent in pitching. Lester and Hamel will be a year older and there doesn’t appear to be any replacements coming from the minors. The window on the talent the Cubs do have is getting smaller and it will be a shame if they only make it to one World Series.
On Our Twenty Third Wedding Anniversary
Each year we try to celebrate our wedding anniversary on vacation to spend time together. This year we traveled to Marquette, Michigan, stayed at the Landmark Inn, took a tour of Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore in Munising, and then on our way back spent an evening at Headlands International Dark Sky Park near Mackinaw City.
Here are pictures that we took during the trip:
I defintely recommend all three venues. Pictured Rocks might be the closest thing I’ve seen to the Grand Canyon east of the Mississippi. The Dark Sky Park is a great place for star gazing, just be sure the moon isn’t too bright and you have clear skies.
The Risk Of Identifying As A Platform
In a YouTube video recently posted, Bill Gates said something along the line of his greatest failure was to not lead Microsoft to produce a mobile operating system that would have been as successful as Android.
I had an up front view of Microsoft’s mobile operating systems in the early 2000s and for Microsoft to create an Android would have required something akin to a labotomy. The Microsoft of the early 2000s saw itself as a platform company, that platform being Windows, and as a consequence, its prime objective was to protect the platform because to do so was to protect its existence.
To make something like Android Microsoft would have had to be willing to create a new platform rather than try to extend a desktop platform to mobile, which was doomed for failure. Microsoft could not fathom creating a second platform because to do so, in their mind, was to put Windows at risk. (Microsoft also applied the same thinking to the Internet.)
In my opinion the most important thing Satya Nadella did when we took over Microsoft is return to Microsoft’s roots as a software developer and move away from identifying itself as a platform company. As a software developer Microsoft does not see it’s entire existence depending on Windows, which allows it to embrace other platforms such a making a robust version of Microsoft Office for iOS and Android and even to integrate Linux with Windows.
Had Microsoft not got drunk on the Windows platform, starting with Windows 95, it might have been willing to embrace the Internet and mobile more fully and maintained itself as, in Bill Gate’s words, “the” leading software company rather than “a” leading software company. It’s easy to get drunk on the amount of money successful platforms provide and appear to provide forever.
Platforms are an institution, and most institutions naturally expend tremendous effort on self preservation. In my opinion the only way a platform company can truly exist over time is by being willing to put it’s current platforms at risk of extinction through the creation of more viable future platforms. In my opinion some people in Google know this and that appears to be the reason why they are quiently working on Fuchsia but only time will tell whether this insight is fully embraced by those who are running the company.
For A President, Congress Is The Law
I wonder, if the Republicans controlled the House, whether there would already be an impreachment inquiry open. Mueller served the role as investigator, collecting evidence and documenting his findings. The Constitution gives the House the job of prosecuting attorney (not the Attorney General) in determining whether to charge the President with a crime, which for the President has the unique label of impreachment.
A Republican inquiry would review the evidence, formally declare there is none to bring charges, and then the case is closed. Until the House says it is closed, the case is not closed no matter what Trump or Barr says. That is the Constitution.
To uphold their oath to the Constitution, Democrats in the House must open the impeachment inquiry and determine whether or not to vote articles of impeachment. They must be willing to take the political risk, if that exists, to fulfill their role in our government. It’s not about politics, it’s about the rule of law.
In fact, I think Congress should produce new presidential special consule legislation that states that all presidential special consule investigations require an impeachment inquiry to formalize the conclusions of the investigation.
If the criminal justice system cannot bring charges against a sitting president then Congress has to take serious this responsibility. That is unless Congress thinks the President really is above the law.
A Crostini Meltdown
The Crostini Linux containers on my Google Pixelbook melted down after I upgraded the Pixelbook to the stable release of Chrome OS 74, a reminder that Linux Apps (Crostini) is very much in beta.
I’ve written the details of what occurred, the trigger seems to be that I had two containers. After Chrome OS 74 installs and you launch a container, such as by starting the Terminal app, you see a message telling you that the Linux apps is being upgraded and the app you wish to run will load after the upgrade completes.
I saw the message for the primary container, named penguin, and everything worked as planned. The meltdown began when I started Gnome Terminal, which was in the second container, the one in which I was running Docker. The upgrade message appeared but the upgrade did not seem to complete. After letting it run for an hour, which was much longer than the prior upgrade, I restarted the Pixelbook, and either that or the upgrade rendered the container usable.
From here a few attempts to fix the problem cascaded the meltdown to primary container too. My attempts to re-build and restore the primary container from a backup failed and I am left to re-building from scratch. Not totally awful given that I had no real data in either container, just apps with a bit of data synced to a cloud or github.
I am not entirely sure what happened. I might have been too impatient and the second container may have upgraded had I just let it run. Or, it might be that running Docker in the second container created problems.
The moral of this blog post is that even if you are sticking to the Chrome OS stable channel, Linux Apps (Crostini) is still in beta and thus breakage can and will occur.
Migrating To A New iPad
I got a new iPad Mini for my birthday. It is noticeably faster than the Mini 4 and I am happy to be able to use the Apple Pencil with it. I have found that GoodNotes can be configured for vertical scrolling rather than horizontal so it best approximates the Newton notepad.
The setup process for moving from one iPad to another is pretty neat. It automatically detects the old nearby iPad and establishes a connection to it by scanning a barcode with the camera. All the settings transfer and apps restore from a recent backup. Not all app settings, particularly logins, restore so I am finding that I have to check each app individually.
Breaking And Fixing Things
I have been having fun breaking and fixing my wiki over the last several days, and in the process learned more about wiki. Wiki is written in nodejs and there is a wiki-server and a wiki-client along with several plugins. My adventures began when an update was made to wiki-client that broke the ability to use HTML forms in a wiki page. A fix was made to wiki-client that resolved the problem but my server was not getting the update.
It appears that somewhere along the line I managed to install wiki in two different directories on my server. The install from which I was running wiki was not updating when I ran npm install -g wiki and it took me a while to figure out how to run the global install instance of wiki that I was updating.
Today I removed the “second” installation but now I have to provide the full path to the correct, current, installation of wiki. When I just run wiki it tries to run it from a directory in which it is no longer located. I must have an alias or script pointing it in that direction but for now I haven’t figured it out.
Anyway, I now have the current verison of wiki-client so I can now fill in html forms, one of which is for a search plugin that now appears to be broken. Oy vey! Search works on a older installation on my Pixelbook, but the new version/current version is not working.
At least I did manage to get the graphviz plugin installed (you can see it in action on this page), figuring out how to set up myself as an admin user to do the installation took time to suss out.
Breaking and fixing things is a important part of the learning process when learning software.
Journalism Yes, Media No
I have been reading Dave Winer’s writing for a long time, and a common theme of his writing is journalism. My translation of what he has been saying is that news has become a platform, and as such anyone can do it, and those who are employed as journalists need to shift from being gatekeepers to being participants. True platforms route around gatekeepers.
The reason why this message is not well received by journalists is obvious, it’s because what they hear is that you no longer have a job. Staying employed is important to these people and you cannot blame them because it is how they support their families.
When the constitution was written people like Benjamin Franklin viewed journalism as a vocation because frankly the idea of a “job” didn’t really exist. When vocations became professions, a shift in priorities took place, with maintaining employment moving to the top. When journalism transformed to media thanks to corporate consolidation, the move to journalism being about money became complete.
The honest question that has been avoided ever since is, is what we have, journalism as media to make profits, consistent with the “fourth estate” established by the First Amendment? If the prime objective of the Consitution, of which the First Amendment is a part, is to be the United in the United States of America, then today’s media is not that which the first amendment refers to because there is more profits generated from disunity than unity.
Citizens instinctively know that the profits that corporate ownership demands is corupting, and therefore they do not trust media because they know there is a bias towards making money over telling truth.
Of course Fox News is giving their viewers what they want to hear, that is how they make money! Of course MSNBC is giving their viewers what they want to hear, that is how they make money! Of course the New York Times is giving their readers what they want to red, that is how they make money!
On and on it goes. It is another example of how hyper capitalism is destroying republican democracy and thus destroying our country.
Testing Micro.blog Wordpress Export
In December micro.blog stopped exporting my site to Github, a consequence of their change from jekyll to hugo as the CMS. We do have manual ways to export a site, one is to download an export file as a Wordpress export and the other is to generate an archive in a “blog archive format” that doesn’t appear to be well documented. Manton wrote a post proposing the format in 2017, but I have not found anything else so it doesn’t appear that format is useful to anyone other than programmers.
An export is only as good as the ability to import, so I decided to create a local install of Wordpress on my Pixelbook using Docker and then try importing the Wordpress export. The good news is that the import was successful. The bad news is that the export file retains markdown that is not converted to HTML so none of the links in the posts appear correctly. We either need the micro.blog export process to convert to HTML or some way for the import process to convert markdown to HTML.
Update: I was directed to install the JP Markdown plug in to my site, which I did and then did a wipe and re-import and the good news is that with it installed all the markdown formating is appearing on the local Wordpress site.
Living The Dream
I’ve had the same reaction to Howard Schultz’s comment about the American Dream as Dave. When I was growing up the American Dream was equated to the Middle Class, by which I mean adults aspired to having a comfortable life and dreamt of a better life for their children.
While I do agree with Schultz in that another way to describe the American Dream is to be successful, I think the biggest problem is measuring success by wealth. The focus on wealth in America is allowing us to accept the huge income inequality that exists in our country.
For me, Schultz implying that Elizabeth Warren and others want to punish him and others for being successful is totally wrong. What we want is for the very wealthy people to contribute a share to society commensurate with their ability.
Schultz might want to put on an indepedent label, but his ideology is conservative Republican selling himself as a Democrat Ross Perot.
Progress Requires Wrong AND Right
Progress cannot happen amongst people who are unwilling to accept they could be wrong. The scientific method is based on the truth that ideas, hypothesis, can be wrong and hence requires proof of hypothesis that is peer reviewed and consensed as being right or most likely right. Proofs are not only facts but also consensed arguments of what is most likely right. Built in to science is acceptance that what may be considered a proven correct hypothesis today could be proven incorrect hypothesis tomorrow and that is considered to be progress.
Milestone Achieved
Something momentus has happened. If you click On This Day up above you will see posts that were not written today but on this day, last year, when I flipped the bit and started blogging mostly here rather than over there.
I am excited to have On This Day finally fulfill its purpose.
Planting A Garden
A few weeks ago I read The Garden and the Stream: A Technopastoral by Mike Caulfield and it really resonated with me. In my mind almost all of what I write on the web is part of my own garden, even though I do that writing using blogging tools that are more stream than garden.
One thing that I would add to idea of a garden or stream is structure. I personally like drilling down into a topic, which is why ever since I first experienced hyperlinks and the web it clicked. My affinity toward structure is also why I find outlines appealing.
Chronology (reverse), archives, and permalinks are structures of blogs that I think distinguish it technologically from “regular” web sites. The informal personal voice of blogs is what distinguishes the blog writing style from other writing styles you see on the web.
And yet, blogs writing is also point in time. One writes a blog post, it enters the stream, and beyond perhaps that first day one rarely, if ever, edits or adds to a blog post.
The ongoing revision of a piece of writing is fundamentally what I think Caulfield means by “the garden.” With that paradigm, I created two “projects”, the first being a web page in which I originally wrote about which Chromebook I was going to buy and then continually revised that page as I learned more up until I made my decision. The second project is a new page in which I am recording my experience with using the Pixelbook.
In both instances I created and maintained those pages using jekyll and offline tools like Drafts and Typora, which I find works very well. However, it feels that a wiki is more in tune with the garden concept which is why I have been dabbling with wikis.
Right now, this whole thing is work in progress. I think I favor the offline ability I have with my jekyll and Netlify set up versus in browser editing required by DokuWiki.
Traveling Light
I’ve been traveling over the past week, visiting family and friends throughout Michigan and Wisconsin. This morning I am packing up to depart on the next leg of my trip and struck by how few bags I have on this trip.
Ten years ago when I made this trip I packed one or two plastic bins for power cords, surge protectors, WiFi access points and more. I may have had a few bags for computers and then my regular luggage.
Now, all of my electronics that includes one notebook computer, two tablets, and their associated cords all fit in to one backpack. I have on suitecase and that is it. Obviously, the electronics that I carry is much smaller than ten years ago, but I am also helped by updated hotels with plenty of power outlets and WiFi. No more hunting around and moving furniture to find an available outlet.
Still Standing
We saw Elton John last night for the first and last time, as this is his farewell tour and I believe it to be true. The show was fantastic, particularly when you consider that Elton is 71 years old. He played for a little over two and a half hours, with no intermission. After each song he would stand up, acknowledge the crowd as he did a circle around the piano seat, take a drink of water, sit down and launch into another song.
I’ve never seen a musical act with so much percussion. Two full drum sets, three drummers, including tympani, bells, and tambourine. The dude playing the tambourine, which was well miced, got more video time than the guitars. The act, however, had no cowbell.
Finally, a couple notes on Little Caesar’s Arena. It was the first concert that we attended at LCA. In an email the day before we were told the arena would open at 6:30 PM and encouraged people to come early, Elton was starting promptly at 8 PM. The arena didn’t open until 7 PM, which was very annoying.
We had seats in the upper bowl, which frankly were the cheapest seats. The climb to the seats in the upper bowl is pretty steep, and I felt bad for some of thr elderly and disabled who made the climb.
More Thoughts About The Google Pixel Slate
Google classifies the Pixel Slate as a Tablet with Google Assistant. Based on my definition of tablets, the Slate is not a tablet, it is a 2-in-1. If you stick to Google’s view of it as a tablet then I stand by my initial impression that the Slate could be DOA.
My concerns about it are driven by the total cost of ownership. I start with the 8 GB, 64 GB, Intel Core M model that costs $799, and then add a keyboard, either the Google keyboard that costs $199 or the Brydge G-Type that costs $159, making the minimum total cost $958; throw in the pen and that is just north of $1,000. For my money I much rather buy the Pixelbook or any one of the newer Chromebooks than pay $1000 for the Slate 2-in-1. Arguably the Surface Pro 6 is a better option, and it would definitely be better for me because I know I can use a pen with OneNote.
The Slate does look like a nice piece of hardware, and if you want Android and Linux apps on a 2-in-1 it’s your only viable option, but is that option more appealing than an iPad Pro? Particularly a newer, larger screen, same form factor, smaller bezel iPad Pro? I am skeptical.
My Definition Of A Tablet
I do not think we should define a tablet as a screen without a keyboard, instead a tablet ought to be defined by how it is most commonly used, by which I mean you mostly use it in portrait orientation like one would a notepad of paper or a book.
In my opinion, a tablet has at least a 7-inch screen and is comfortable to hold and use for long periods of time with the device in a portriat orientation. Consequently devices that claim to be a tablet that have a 12-inch or larger screen are not really tablets, they really fall into a tweener (with notebooks), 2-in-1 category.
Based on how I use my iPad Pro 10.5, it is more a 2-in-1 because it is mostly used in landscape or when in portraint lying on a desk. By my defintion the only true tablets that I own are the iPad Mini 4 and the Nexus 9. The iPad and it’s 9.7-inch screen is probably the largest screen size for a tablet.
My tablet use case definition might account for why tablets have not really overwhelmed the market. Apple had great initial success with the iPad, but sales started to taper off until the introduced the Pro line and significantly decreased the price of the regular iPad. The Pro line really fills the 2-in-1 market, while the lower price iPad has gained sales from holdouts who have wanted one the past but found them too expensive.
Further, by my defintion, the most successful tablet maker is likely Amazon with their cheap 7-inch and 8-inch tablets.
Changes Google Needs To Make
I have a hard time swallowing the $150 price increase between the Google Pixel 2 and the Pixel 3. I know Google can set prices the market will bear, but when I look at the difference I ask myself is the price increase due to higher costs or a desire for a higher profit margin?
Just about every Android phone that I have owned, from the original T-Mobile G1 to my current Pixel 2, has been either a Nexus or Made by Google phone because I value having the pure version of Android that is directly and quickly updated by Google. Having suffered during my Windows Mobile days of delayed software updates due to OEM timelines, I have tried to avoid such situations.
I want to keep using Pixel phones, Google seems to want to be in the premium priced smartphone market. What can be done? Google can follow Apple’s lead into that premium market by doing the following:
It seems clear to me that smartphone prices have gone up across the board because Apple increased the price of the iPhone. I don’t like the iPhone prices either, but there is one big difference today between iPhone and Pixel. The iPhone you buy today will very likely be able to run the version of iOS released four years from now, so you don’t need to buy a new iPhone in two years, you cannot say the same thing about Pixel.
The combination of the $150 price increase, Apple’s practice to support older models of iPhones and selling older models at lower prices has me considering for the first time a switch to iPhone. I value the ability to receive updates direct from the source of the operating system.
I prefer Android smartphones and I don’t want to switch, so I hope Google will make the changes I describe above. I also need to take a closer look at Android One, which may clean Android with updates from Google at a lower price. The bottom line is that Googe needs to know there is more to providing a premium phone than a price increase, and paying $800 for a phone that will only get operating system upgrades for two years makes no sense.