From 52 things I learned in 2022
Percussionist Emil Richards played the finger clicks in The Addams Family theme, the bongos in Mission Impossible and the xylophone in the theme for The Simpsons.
While re-reading what I wrote two years ago about Republican’s addiction to scapegoating, a question occurred to me. I think it was widely expected that the 2022 midterm elections would be highly influenced by inflation and the state of the economy that we are now experiencing, but yet it was abortion and election denial that influenced the election even more. I wonder though, is the fact that these topics were the main influencers good? Or was the result of the election that those who are profiting significantly from our current state given a free pass?
It seems that at least once a year something happens with Evernote, the company, that results in a number of people deciding to ditch Evernote, the app. I am a long time, paying customer of Evernote and for the moment I don’t intend to change unless I need to. However, Evernote for me is more of a repository than a notetaking application. I particularly like it’s web clipping, but I also forward particular emails such as emailed receipts.
A while back I decided it was worth trying export some or all of my Evernote notebooks and import them to another app, just in case something were to happen. I found that the best import was to DEVONthink and the second best was OneNote. I tested with an eval copy of DEVONthink but decided to not buy it as what I got in to OneNote was good enough.
I have found that the Microsoft Surface Duo is the perfect device for following fantasy football. I can monitor my score on one screen while surfing the web or checking my feed on another, and I can have the apps for both of my leagues loaded at the same time.
User Hostile Apps
I play in two fantasy football leagues, one that uses the ESPN app and the other that uses Yahoo. I find it interesting how opinionated both apps are in terms of how they are used on tablets and phones. On iPads the apps only work in landscape orientation no matter which way one is holding the iPad, which I find frustrating because they are literally the only apps on my iPad that does this. On my smartphones the apps only work in portrait, again no matter how you actually hold the phone.
The smartphone behavior is even more interesting on the Microsoft Surface Duo. I have the two apps in a group so they both launched, one on each screen, and they look fine when I am holding the Duo in “book” or landscape orientation, but when I rotate the Duo into portrait orientation the apps rotate to maintain portrait while the individual screens are landscape.
Regardless of the platform, I find it very hostile to me as a user that the app only works in one way as this is completely unlike any other app. It’s as if the developers don’t actually use the platforms for which they are developing.
Read The Whiteness of Mastodon
Does the “digital commons,” which is owned by capitalists, really exist? One of the problems in the United States is that their is a decreasing understanding of “public” and “common good” because everything is seen as a opportunity for someone’s wealth.
Yesterday we saw Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and while I thought it was very good it also felt like the storyline was forced in a direction not originally intended, for obvious reasons. Was I watching a tribute or a part of the MCU storyline?
Reading through the micro.blog Discover feed this morning, thinking to myself, what’s up with all these posts about grazing? Oh, Microblogvember.
Having read this article, I am looking forward to seeing how the new rule changes will affect MLB next year. Last year I watched a few minor league games that have the pitch clock and was impressed by the improvement in pace of play.
I ran the Fedifinder app to see how many of the people who I follow on Twitter have accounts on Mastodon. I follow around 500 users and only 25 of them are on Mastodon. I really like the app, including the link it provides to Revoke Permissions.
One thing that sets micro.blog apart from Twitter and Mastodon is the Discover feed. Manually curated and no replies, “retweets” or “retoots” just a curated list of new items shared by the micro.blog community. Not sure whether Discover will scale if many more new users join, but i hope it always remains.
Two years ago a buck stopped to look in to our window and this morning a larger buck trotted past our window while I was eating breakfast.
Samsung promises Matter support for SmartThings hubs, Galaxy devices, TVs, and fridges
Regarding which SmartThings products will be Matter-enabled, Samantha Fein, Vice President of Business Development and Marketing at SmartThings, said the SmartThings app would be fully Matter-enabled, and all existing SmartThings hubs will adopt the standard, including those now being made by Aeotec.
I find the above confusing because I could have swore I read somewhere that only the version 3 of the SmartThings Hub is Matter compliant, which I took to mean my version 2 hub is not. Perhaps it’s a matter of waiting or perhaps will only work via WiFi?
Last night I updated the Surface Duo to Android 12L. So far it seems to be stable, although I have noticed some different behavior that could be by design.
The weather app on my phone says that it is 22 degrees outside and the real feel is 8. Check the date of this post and note that this is in southeast Michigan and not the Upper Peninsula. Still have not felt motivation to go outside for a walk.
This is the earliest that I have had to put on full winter gear to walk outside in many years. Light snow with wind chills in the 20s.
A good article in the Atlantic by Arthur C. Brooks, America Is Pursuing Happiness in All the Wrong Places. It makes good points, but in my opinion does not go deep enough. To truly grow, learn the difference between joy and happiness. Happiness is dependent on externalities, whereas joy is a state of being. Said differently, joy is a conscious choice, a practice if you, for how to see everything. Happiness will not help you love your opponent, but joy will.
Finished reading: Jesus' Alternative Plan by Richard Rohr 📚 If your answer to the question, “Do I stay Christian?” or “Why are you Christian?” is, because of Jesus, then it makes sense to dig further into what is it that Jesus taught. Richard Rohr walks the reader through the core of Jesus' teaching presented in the Sermon On The Mount.
Four years ago, ActivityPub support in micro.blog was released. In context of the current state of the “social network” affairs, a rather prescient milestone.
How I Use RSS
We tend to think about RSS in terms of web sites and web applications and what gets over looked is how you can use it personally. For example, I send items from FeedLand to Radio3 to add to my linkblog. I have an IFTTT applet monitoring the linkblog RSS file that takes new items and adds them to Pocket, which retrieves and stores the full article content that I read later.
As I read articles in Pocket I might highlight parts that I want to remember. The highlights in Pocket are grabbed by Readwise, where I can read through them and have them presented to me daily. Finally, Readwise exports the article highlights to Roam and Evernote.
In this example RSS is the backbone to my personal knowledge collection and refinement. It glues together for me hundreds of web sites and six applications.