I've decided I am going to try to do something roughly in the vein of The Installer Newsletter, which I look forward to every Saturday. Many browser tabs are opened.
I've been recovering from having lumbar spinal fusion surgery over the last few weeks, and have been limited in terms of what I'm able to do. I returned to work this week, but my energy level is nowhere near as robust as it normally is, yet.
This week, I finished On Photography by Susan Sontag. She passed away 20 years ago, but many of the thoughts about the art of photography in this book endure. With the emergence of digital photography and now ai applied to photography, someone could easily write a thoughtful sequel to this book.
I also finished In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larsen. This non-fiction book about William E. Dodd, who was the US Ambassador to Hitler's Germany in 1933, was actually a pretty quick read. I am going to read more Erik Larsen in the short future. Lots of really interesting pre-war context in this book. Shout out to Libby for making it easy to borrow these Kindle books from our Public Library.
I watched Godzilla Minus One the moment it was up on Netflix, and have been re-consuming it in bits and pieces in my home office while doing glamorous CTO tasks like my expense report. It's excellent, not just the best Godzilla movie, but a really good movie in it's on right.
I've also been watching a lot of music on YouTube while spending my doctor mandated times on the couch here at home. Lots and lots of OMA, who do instrumental covers of hip-hop songs, this video is a good jumping off point for them, but you can't go wrong with anything on their channel. Perfect background music for your day. If you want something a tad more aggressive, this live performance by DJ Z-Trip is a classic.
I've been enjoying the new multi-column layout that Threads has released on the web. It works pretty well on iPad as well. I do wish they had lists, like vintage Twitter did, that's how I consumed so much of my Twitter content over the years.
I'm (still) playing a ton of World of Warcraft Remix: Mists of Pandaria. I'm enjoying it so much that I didn't even start playing the new Destiny 2 expansion as planned this week. My gaming time is limited as I am only allowed to sit up for 30-45 minutes at a time. Still also doing Wordle and Spelling Bee almost every day too.
I listened to a lot of podcasts this week, catching up on the ones I missed. The State of the Hardware 2024 Episode of Cortex is the one that had me buying a new microphone for future audio pursuits. Really enjoy all the "State of the" episodes of Cortex.
After discovering it via Colossal a couple of days ago, I have become completely enchanted by Alphaputt, which is a quirky mini-golf game for iOS that is superbly designed. You can find it, of course, on the App Store.
Instant message system to debut .(SiliconValley.com) Microsoft is entering the fray with their own Instant Messenging software. No doubt it will be a bundled part of Windows and promptly create all sorts of problems for ICQ and AOL.
The iBook Design FAQ . It reveals that the iBook has no fan. Which means it should be a fairly quiet machine. The iBook Keyboard FAQ reveals that the Function keys are easily programmable for every day tasks(launching software) which sounds really cool to me.
I've thought more about the concept of the wireless machine, and the iBook. How about using it as a low flow web server? That could be interesting. I'll have to give it a try when I get it.
After getting a fair amount of negative feedback about the size of the type on the main log page, I've switched it back to the default size. I liked reading it the other way, but I guess I don't read my own site on a regular basis so that point is moot.
If you have any other design or content suggestions, please forward them to me. the redesign of these pages is not far away, and I'm looking to automate the back end of this site in the process, making changes going forward far easier to make. Do you like the new design of the links page?
So I broke down and ordered myself an iBook . If it were going to be my only computer, or even my only portable, I don't think I would have. I now picture myself roaming about my apartment and having access to the net everywhere without cabling. Of course, I won't be getting the thing for a couple of months so I have a lot of anticipation ahead of me. I'll share whatever experiences I have with it on this page when it arrives.
I don't think I mentioned Halo which is Bungie's newest game. They announced it yesterday, and it will be shipping early next year. They also showed it off at the MacWorld keynote yesterday. It has to be the most amazing looking game I have seen yet.(The site's not bad either.) There is a screenshot up on the site, but I don't think that it even begins to do the game itself justice. There are already fan sites for halo too. This one seems to be the most complete, and it contains more screenshots and a movie that can be downloaded. The gray text on a white background is a little annoying.
Bungie has posted some MP3's from their Myth II and Oni game soundtracks at MP3.com .
All kinds of good game related Macintosh news today. The place to go for this kind of news is Mac Gamers Ledge . While I might not check it every day, I do check it a couple of times a week to see what is going on. One of today's announcements is that Aspyr Media is bringing EA Sport's Madden NFL 2000 to the Macintosh. Mac Users have suffered without good sports games for a long time so this is good news.(I usually buy these kind of games for either PlayStation or N64.)
Starbucks is reportedly going to invest big bucks in a new online venture that is not related to its core coffee business. My curiousity is running rampant.
