I am now curious enough to want to create an account on Bluesky, does anyone have an invite code?
As the Chicago Cubs prepare to play the St. Louis Cardinals today, I reflect on my comments during the winter on how much the Cardinals improved during the off-season in comparison to the Cubs. I did not expect the Cardinals to go 13 below .500 and sit in the cellar looking up at the Cubs. Shows the importance of playing the game. The Cubs need to at least split in London, but really should sweep.
Generational Expectations On Time For Change
Lately I have been ruminating on generational differences in relationship to technology. Like all things, technology changes over time. I remember a time before cell phones, when the only way to make a phone call was to by using a handset in our home, but I don’t remember a time when there were no phones. Generations younger than mine do not know of a time when cell phones did not exist. Today Dave Winer writes of a similar technology change, between black and white and color television.
The differences between those who lived during “before and after” periods and “never knew anything else” periods of technology can have significant societal consequences. I think the Internet is one such case, with those who have never lived without the Internet expecting all matters related to time happening much faster than my generation and older who grew up without the Internet. The “Internet” generation will not tolerate society changes needing to take tens or hundreds of years of time (civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, etc..) to complete, they expect such change to happen in months if not days!
Finished reading: See No Stranger by Valarie Kaur 📚
I led a group discussion of this book with friends from church. Christians know of Jesus commandment to love our neighbor and his teaching to love our enemies, but what does that really mean? Jesus is not taking about feelings or emotions but rather the work of revolution love that Valarie Kaur describes in this book.
Fitbit/Google has enabled the blood oxygen saturation reading of the Pixel Watch, but it only works at night! I don’t understand why Fitbit has not included an app to let users get a reading on-demand, like like we can do with ECG. I thought SpO2 is valuable info while working out, so I don’t understand why the reading is only at night. Consequently, I don’t benefit because I am not wearing my watch while I sleep.
I spend every work day in my home office that is located in the basement of our house, which can be 2 to 5 degrees cooler than the main floor, therefore I usually wear sweats rather than shorts. I also try to take four walks during the day, usually after each meal. When I walk I carry my phone and house key. I recently switched to the Pixel 7a that is heavier than the Pixel 4a I used previously, and I find it too heavy to carry comfortably in the pocket of my sweats. Consequently, I’ve started to carry the phone and keys in a sling pouch that I am wearing while on my walk but it is a tad larger than I prefer, so I have ordered a smaller phone sling from Alpaka that I hope will be better to wear on my walks.
After reading this article about RFK Jr. and his candidacy for President, it occurs to me that what should be most important is how a person works and interacts with those with whom they disagree. It seems most people believe that a President can and should be able to simply make changes and that would make that person a king against which we declared our independence. Consequently, any person in power is going to encounter oppositional power and how that person handles it is an important skill. So, RFK Jr. has some opinions about affects of vaccines on autism, which he is certainly allowed to have, but what will he do with them? How does he view those who disagree with his opinions, with contempt or as an opponent? Too many people treat others with contempt and that is counter productive.
It’s the first official day of summer, which means we are now at peak amount of daylight for the year. According to an app I have that is 15 hours and 18 minutes of daylight where I live in southeast Michigan. Sunset here is 9:15 PM. During my college years I lived in Houghton, Michigan during two summers. Houghton is also in the eastern time zone but if you look for it on a map you will find it north of Wisconsin and if you draw a straight line down from it you will end up at the middle of Wisconsin. Why that matters is that Wisconsin is in the central time zone. Sunset in Houghton is at 9:54 PM tonight, which means dusk extends well past 10 PM, making for much longer evenings with daylight than anywhere else I have ever lived.
Nice weather here at Pebble Creek
The blog post titled “How technology has changed the world since I was young” by Noah Smith lacks a very significant impact of the Internet on the world, which is our expectation of and thus perception on time. People who never lived in a time before the Internet have no concept of not knowing what is happening in the world in near real time. Such people have never lived in a time when it was not possible to buy something and have it delivered the next day… and in many cases that day! Consequently, such people expect change to happen much faster than those of us who lived before the Internet. I think the source of much tension in our society today is the battle between those who expect immediate change and those who are used to change taking years if not decades. Every battle over rights in the United States comes down to those demanding immediate change and those who either don’t want change or want to at least slow down change.
I am grateful for mornings like today, when the temperature is mild and there is a nice breeze with the birds chirping and fluttering about. I might sit here all day.
Yesterday the Chicago Cubs swept the NL Central leading Pittsburgh Pirates. The Cubs are currently 3.5 games behind the Pirates with a 31-37 record, the Pirates record is 34-33. The strategy for the NL Central should be to maintain at least a .500 record and you will have a chance to win the division come September, and based on that the Cubs being 6 games below .500 is a concern, but plenty of time to make it up as long as they keep winning series. Unfortunately, today the Cubs start a series against the Baltimore Orioles who are a better team with a 43-25 record. If the Cubs can win this series, they then travel to Pittsburgh for another three game series and an opportunity to make up ground. It’s not too early to emphasize the importance of winning a series, and I think this one with the Orioles is an important one.
Yesterday I experienced something for the first time, a strong downpour of pea sized hail. I was in the basement and yet it sounded like the roof was caving in. I did not see any damage after other than a lot of leaves on the ground.
Is the Vision Pro an iPhone or a Newton?
I like sharing pictures on this blog and I wish that micro.blog had a simple way for creating photo albums. I just returned from a trip and I would love to be able to upload pictures that I took during the trip to a separate page that I can just link to rather than post all the pictures to the main blog page. What I desire is to batch upload a bunch of photos, be prompted for a date and place and have the software automatically make a photo page. The only photos plug-ins involve changes to the “default” photos page or converting a blog to something like Instagram.
I am not very sophisticated in managing my photos, they upload automatically to Google Photos and I use Syncthing to make a local backup. I can, and do, make albums in Google Photos, which used to be made automatically but no longer do.
In the butterfly exhibit of the Milwaukee Public Museum. Google says this is a Heliconius.
I am experimenting with and learning about the wide angle lense of my Google Pixel 7a. I like how this picture turned out.
Railhouse Brewery Outta The Blue
Vision Pro might be the ultimate test of the Apple cult. Could be a John Sculley / Apple Newton moment.
Apple mythology states they enter a market when they have a better take on it. In what way is Vision Pro a better take on prior AR / VR solutions? Definitely not with the hardware, looks like Apple is putting all their eggs in the software basket, which is interesting for a hardware company.