Routine Revelations

Epilogue is a new entry in the micro.blog suite of apps, currently in beta, that can be used to manage your micro.blog book shelves. You can also write blog posts to your site from within the app. I am not sure a separate app is the way to go here, but I think I will find it useful all the same. Shortcut support (or share sheet support) to provide some integration between the Kindle app and Epilogue would be great. Since bookshelves are lists, export to OPML format would also be great. I managed my 2020 reading list in Little Outliner and I like the end of year result.

I am so tired of advertising bombarding everything, particularly YouTube. For me, YouTube is becoming less and less usable. Not only are there advertising cuts every three minutes but also banner ads placed over a good amount of the video display.

Does anyone know of where one can legally buy a Windows 11 license (product key) to use for a virtual machine? Please reply with links if possible.

Zavala is an outliner that runs in iOS and iPadOS that exports to OPML. The developer is working on integration with micro.blog using Shortcuts.

Android 12L reads to me to be a bit like iPadOS. Interesting how Google and Apple interact, although foldables don’t appear to be on Apple’s radar.

In my opinion, obsessing over Facebook from either a journalistic or free speech point of view is wrong. Facebook is operating within a system that incentivizes its behavior, so you really can’t address the root cause without looking past Facebook and to the system. Ever since the New Deal capitalists have been working to dismantle any constraints put on them by the New Deal laws. For capitalists life is all about wealth, wealth, and more wealth. They think they can to use their wealth to escape to some far away island or Mars when the world as they know it ends, and it will end.

Regarding writing posts for micro.blog using Drummer. If you create a post in Drummer and publish it do not edit that post in micro.blog because you will lose those edits whenever you publish again from Drummer.

I really enjoy watching the Manning brothers version of Monday Night Football on ESPN2. It might be a sign that I watch too much football that I appreciate a different broadcast style for one of the games.

All of a sudden all of what I have written and published today on my Old School blog today has disappeared. Not good. Looks like any new post created with the plus sign after 8 PM EST will have a created day that is in the future and the Old School publisher then doesn’t publish any other entries.

I was having a problem with my iPad Mini in that links to web sites that should load from other apps like email do not load. The problem also affects the ability to load hotel captive portal pages, which means I couldn’t connect this iPad to the Internet in some hotels. The problem appears to be NextDNS, which while I had disabled it in the app the DNS settings were still pointing to it. After I changed the DNS setting to automatic I could open the captive portal page.

Something is not right in Drummerland, my Old School blog is refusing to build. Posted an issue. Writing this here via Drummer to confirm integration with micro.blog is still working.

Morning walk in the motherland.

Last year the Earth spacecraft OSIRIS-REX touched asteroid Bennu and collected rocks. As of last June the spacecraft was 328,000 miles away from Bennu on its return flight to Earth. She is due to deliver the asteroid sample to Earth on September 23, 2023.

When I compare the Pixel 6 to my Pixel 4a the differences in the camera really jump out. I confess that given the price and the features that if I were in the market for a new phone I would be buying the Pixel 6. BTW, I really like that Google provides a way to compare the current and new Pixel phones with the old Pixels, all the way back to the first Pixel. Wish they would include the Nexus phones for comparison. I wasn’t expecting to find the Pixel 6 so attractive.

My main beef with the Pixel 6 is that it is a tad too large. The largest phone I have carried is the Nexus 6P, which was 6.27 inches tall and a little over 3 inches wide, and while I got used to it I always felt it too large. When Google released the Pixel 2 I frankly couldn’t switch fast enough because it was 5.74 inches tall and a little skinnier at 2.74 inches wide. The Pixel 4a I now carry has the same physical size with a larger screen that I find perfect. Sadly, the Pixel 5a is now the smallest Google phone at 6.1 inches and the new Pixel 6 is at 6.2 inches. I have never carried a phone as large as the new Pixel 6 Pro that is 6.5 inches tall. I fear we may never see a sub 6 inch Pixel phone again, but at least the larger phones have larger batteries.

My first impression having watched the ending of the presentation is that Google has hit it out of the park with this release of Android 12 and the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro. I’ve been running Android 12 for several weeks and I really like all of the UI improvements. The Pixel 6 and 6 Pro are priced very favorably and is going to put to test the question of whether a well designed Android phone can seriously compete with the iPhone. It looks like Google is all-in on marketing the Pixel 6. The question is, when one walks in to a Best Buy or a AT&T store which phone do people in those stores steer customers toward? Another question is going to be build quality. Google has suffered in the past with defective devices that leave bad impressions so they must step up their quality control game. Only time will tell.

Just clicked System Update on my Pixel 4, and an update is available to Download and install. I expect this to be the production update. It’s a 3.84 MB download because I already have the Android 12 release candidate, which was the final beta, installed. Update is in progress with optimizing apps, which is the longest part of the process.