musings

So Much for That Idea

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Almost the entirety of 2021 almost passed without me throwing another post up. There went my hopes for consist posting. What can I say except

But at the same time, my life has changed greatly.

My daughter is a main focus of my life now. I guess that means I really am a parent. My daily goal is making sure she’s happy, well fed, and learning a little more each and every day. Night is for catching up on work and errands. She’s used to us being around all the time now so on one hand, the pandemic was amazing for our family. But on the other hand, I do worry if she has enough social interaction for a child of her age. She has some interactions with kids in the playground, and we’ve had success with her in a small play group. But it isn’t the same as before the pandemic certainly. And we’re still being very cautious about introducing her to daycare until we have more certainty about the availability of vaccines for children of her age.

My photography has switched over to documenting my daughter’s life largely. She’s a very difficult subject but over time has become accustomed to the cameras in her life. She even sometimes reviews the pictures on the screen after a shot and laughs! I just hope when she grows up she can appreciate some of these pictures. Not that she’ll remember anything of course.

I’m still with the job I started at the beginning of the year. Work life on a Mac is not bad at all. Using Dropbox as our main document archive is usually quite good, but there are times I miss the exclusive locking capability of the various document management systems I’ve used over the years. That way the one true copy is always available. With Dropbox, you have to hope your coworkers don’t overwrite your work. Or that your coworkers don’t save a new copy right over yours, overwriting your changes. One thing I didn’t expect from the pandemic is meeting coworkers for the first time and being surprised by their height. Because no one sees how tall everyone is when we’re all just boxes on the screen.

Life has otherwise slowly started to return to some form of normalcy. Last weekend there was a raucous party down the hall that reminded me of house parties of days long past. This time, I was the one just hoping the next crowd entering/leaving wouldn’t slam the door too loud to wake up my daughter. What a change from just a few years ago.

Soon I’ll take my small little family down for the holidays. For the first time, there’ll be someone new who will be amazed. I hope we can give her a nice holiday tradition to grow up with.

Life is an adventure to say the least. Let’s see if I can post more consistently for the remainder of the year, and into the next.

Drinking the M1 Kool-Aid

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So I started a new job at the turn of the new year. For the first time, I get the chance to use a Mac as my main daily driver. This is in stark contrast to the entirety of my professional life which has always revolved around some sort of a Windows based system. Even when I was the weirdo running Linux on my laptop, my main system was a Windows system. From Windows 2000, XP, 7, and ultimately 10, it all revolved around Windows.

Suffice it to say, converting to a Mac dominated workflow was pretty different. Granted, for the last 7-8 years, I have had a Mac for personal use, and for occasional light work. So I am certainly familiar with the system. But using it on a daily basis is a very different prospect.

I was fortunate enough to receive one of the new MacBook Air systems with the Apple M1 processor. This is the direct successor to my Intel based MacBook Air that is from the earlier half of the 2010s. The long and the short of it is that the new M1 MacBook Air is absolutely amazing. From the effortless performance to the snappiness of all the applications to the seamless translation of Intel-complied applications using Rosetta 2, it is an amazing system. Although I’m not naive enough to believe that Macs don’t get viruses (e.g., new M1 compatible Mac malware), it certainly is a nice and seamless system. This, combined with a workflow centered around Dropbox Business, is bringing a fresh look to my daily work.

And fortunately, the M1 does not seem to have any of the issues I mentioned in an earlier post about my Dell U3818DW monitor. Except for some minor glitches when the Air wakes up from sleep, the monitor and the laptop play together perfectly using the USB-C cable to charge the laptop, transfer the video signal, and transfer the keyboard and mouse signals. Just one cable to make it all work. Admittedly, it is a slick solution. I sometimes hook in an additional cable (line-out to the integrated amplifier) for audio, but more often than not I simply AirPlay music from the phone or the Music app, or simply stream music from one of several Internet radio stations. Seamless and reliable, the perfect combination.

Unfortunately, we still work primarily in Microsoft Word. A serviceable software package but it would be nice to have iterated on the modern word processor somewhat. Maybe sometime soon there’ll be innovation in this end of the daily work software/hardware stack in the near future.

Rediscovering Internet Radio

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Being old enough to have run my computer all night to rip a CD into MP3 format, I remember the genesis of Internet radio. When iwas first released onto the world, now anyone could be a radio host.

And holy shit do a lot of people have terrible music taste.

But this was also the genesis of the live stream. Of the democratization of content. And helped emphasize how sometimes, a curated feed is exactly what we want. Sorta like how Netflix is in fact a paradox of choice.

Similarly, with music, especially if you have a streaming package like Apple Music, you have at your fingertips a library of music that you will likely never be able to finish in its entirety.

But what do you listen to? At least Apple provides some guidance and recommendations. Along with radio shows where someone curates the content for you.

But sometimes, an aimless radio station is exactly what’s needed.

I’m glad to see that SomaFM continues to be a thing. The local NPR station, WAMU, is often streaming as well in the household. But I’m slowly poking around, seeing what is out there still. With a fairly decent sound system sitting with me at my desk now, what better time to rediscover serendipity in music?

For my setup, I’m using my trusty Airplay Express with my NAD C350 integrated amplifier which are driving two Klipsch R-15Ms that I picked up on a whim at Best Buy. Driving audio to this setup, I have forked-daapd running in a docker container (courtesy of the fine people at linuxserver.io). I’ve created a custom playlist that links directly to my favorite streams, including:

Because it is forked-daapd, it works well with the Apple Remote app on the phone and is therefore wife approved. And works well with Apple Music on our individual devices. The Marantz receiver in the living room purportedly supports Airplay as well, and usually performs well. But for reliability, you cannot beat the Airplay Express even though it was released in 2012. With a firmware update from 2018, it supports Airplay 2 and is more than sufficient for my needs for the time being.

Microsoft is the … good guy?

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Once upon a time, Microsoft was the bad guy. Steve Ballmer once called the Linux kernel “communism” and Linux a “cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches.” (Wikipedia citation) This is from the guy who once trounced across a stage yelling “Developers developers developers” In this era, Microsoft would do whatever was needed to maintain market share and keep open source software licensed under the GNU Public License or similar licenses from making the inroads at companies and municipalities.

My how times have changed. Ballmer has left and now regrets his statements on Linux. Satya Nadella has changed Microsoft’s stance and now embraces Linux. For example, Windows 10 now includes OpenSSH. There’s a Windows Subsystem for Linux on Windows 10 that is a compatibility layer for running Linux binary executables natively. In other words, you can install Ubuntu (or Debian) in Windows 10. Talk about a crazy change in posture.

The new Microsoft even tries to help individual developers. Visual Studio now has a Community version licensed and free for individuals and small teams. Although the Enterprise version is still superior in some ways, the Community version is more than enough for small projects.

If you had predicted this in the early 2000s, you’d have been laughed out of the room. But here we are. Amazing.

Pandemic Life

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It has been a few weeks now since the coronavirus arrived in the United States and spread across the nation. Although I was apparently in the proximity of someone that tested positive for the virus in mid-March, I didn’t have any of the requisite symptoms. Not sure if I was just one of those with mild or few symptoms, or if I was just lucky enough to not contract the virus.

I wish I could say I could go get tested to confirm whether or not I contracted the disease. But alas, even though our Fearless Leader said that millions of tests would be available. Fortunately, local leaders including Mayor Bowser have stepped into the gap and led competently and compassionately.

Life is now full of working from home, stockpiling of groceries, and gathering of masks and sanitizing wipes. All while watching Fearless Leader transform what should be daily informational sessions into hubs of hubris and misinformation. We chose this and we are getting what we deserve. Even though he claims he isn’t responsible for this, it is us who will pay the price for what we as a country chose as our leader. Instead of competence, we chose someone whose main skill is ridiculing others. That was entertaining once upon a time, but now we need leadership, not bluster.

In the meantime, millions of Americans have lost their jobs, and millions more will in the near future. This may make the 2008-2009 recession seem small in comparison. Hopefully this won’t be the case, but to be fair, we were overdue for a recession. This time, the cost to small businesses may be extreme. Only time will tell.

Welcome to the Pandemic

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Unlike the swine flu pandemic, coronavirus seems to be much more serious. Schools, stores, companies, all shutting down. The Democratic debate: audience free. March Madness and the NBA season: canceled. MLB Opening Day: canceled. This is going to be a wild ride.