So Many Rabbit Holes
10:31 Monday, 27 February 2023
Current Wx: Temp: 54.81°F Pressure: 1008hPa Humidity: 87% Wind: 8.05mph
Words: 999
I can't say I've ever been diagnosed as having attention deficit disorder, but I do have a short attention span. Novelty seeking behavior, which the internet affords seemingly limitless rewards.
The Monarch RE-760 arrived and it cleaned up very nicely. Love the way it looks. I'll take a pic one of these days.
It works, but it's pretty deaf on the low end of the AM (or MW for "medium wave" for the radio geeks) band. I've got my eye on another one. If I'm successful, I'll pull the chassis out of one and see if I can restore its hearing.
Goodwill's online auction site is another rabbit hole. I've got two little nonsense radios inbound. One is one of those hand-cranked "emergency" radios. The other is an old general purpose, large portable with AM, FM and weather band coverage, which, frankly, I didn't need. Reasonable price though, comparing it to eBay.
Typing random search terms into Goodwill's site can provide endless hours of entertainment. I missed an opportunity to get a Tivoli Model One for about $50 last night; because one thing led to another ("Ohh! What's that???"), and I forgot about it because I didn't set up a reminder.
Snipers exist on Goodwill. The interface isn't as responsive as ebay, so it's tricky to time it well. And for some reason, most of their auctions end after my bedtime. So I slept on the Model One. It went for $36, which seems like a great price, but that can be deceptive with Goodwill. You always have to estimate the shipping cost before you bid. It varies widely. That particular store was reasonable, so the radio would have cost, with shipping and "handling," about $50, which I think was reasonable for that specimen. The finish on the cabinet was near perfect for a radio that was about 18 years old. There's a nearly identical one on eBay listed for $50, with $15 shipping, with a scratched up top. It's a local seller, so I might be able to arrange local pickup. We'll see.
There was a $45 Model One on eBay with $15 shipping, also in very good shape. Listing said it accepted offers. Seller had zero feedback and no other items listed. I submitted an offer for $40, and the item was taken down.
The cause of my distraction was part of an Elegoo robot car kit. I didn't know what that was, so I had to do some "research." It's an incomplete kit, but it includes the cpu. A newer version, complete, is $55.00 an Amazon, so once you factor in shipping on it, as a "spares" purchase, it's not a remarkable deal.
But I did end up buying a new one on Amazon. Why? I don't know.
I spent some time studying the manuals of my two Sangean HD radios. I have the tiny portable HDR-14 and a table top HDR-18. The smaller one has memory for 20 preset stations, while the HDR-18 only has 10. The 18 is much easier to program than the 14. It wasn't clear from either manual if you could store individual HD channels for a given station. It turns out you can. It can take several seconds for the digital channel to decode though, so give it some time.
I mostly use the digital channels with the local public radio station, WJCT. They offer three digital channels, one of which is the Electro Lounge, which I like to listen to.
The RF-2200 went off to be re-capped on Wednesday, should arrive at the service today, I'll check the tracking on that. Good communication with the guy who's going to do the work, so I'm optimistic.
Inside Saul Hall (our house) isn't a very friendly radio environment. There's a lot of electronic noise from the LED lighting, and the roof decking has an aluminum foil backing to help lower the temperature in the attic. It does better as a faraday cage than an IR barrier, in my opinion. But Mitzi's recently completed screened addition, with comfortably upholstered chairs, has made a nice space to play around with radios outside. Antennas will remain a challenge due to HOA rules and penetrations, but it's better than being inside the house.
Mitzi told me that a member of the women's club that she serves with on a committee is an amateur radio operator. That surprised me a bit. If so, and if she's active, it may facilitate making arrangements for taking a license exam. We'll see.
I've been keeping up with mailing a card to mom every day. I need to start paying attention to which photos I've sent her. I don't keep individual files of every card, just replace the image in the same file for a given card size. Feels pretty good getting some use out of these expensive photo printers I've had for many years.
In other news, I'm reading Aftermath: Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich , by Harald Jähner and Shaun Whiteside. It's less sensational than Savage Continent, which I stopped reading about halfway through, but equally depressing.
There must be a whole area of academic study on the matter of "truth and reconciliation," for lack of a better term. How human beings come to terms with their inhumanity to one another, even if those terms are largely unsatisfactory. We have our colonial past, killing and displacing indigenous people, and slavery, which we seem largely incapable of confronting. The Balkans, Rwanda, Cambodia, South Africa, Armenia, the list goes on.
It feels like the general response by those responsible is to ignore it, bury it, suppress it.
Perhaps thereby, inevitably, to repeat it.
"Never again?"
Germany, publicly at least, appears to be the exception. But I'm not sure how genuine it is.
A post for another day I think.
I'll close on that happy note, and go take a walk. I think I'll need pants. It's a little chilly this morning.
✍️ Reply by emailA Quick Test For Mark
16:29 Monday, 27 February 2023
Current Wx: Temp: 67.73°F Pressure: 1010hPa Humidity: 49% Wind: 8.05mph
Words: 9
Just checking some export behavior here. Nothing to see.
✍️ Reply by emailThis Morning's Moon 2-26
11:30 Tuesday, 27 February 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 73.72°F Pressure: 1021hPa Humidity: 45% Wind: 9.22mphWords: 95
Although I'd intended to do some work on the marmot, I got distracted by the moon. I had tried a different method of editing the moon recently, and I liked the result. I'd followed some guidance in a YouTube video, and naturally I can't recall what the process was, or which video I watched. Shame on me! Take notes!
Anyway, I also have to fix the Automator action that moves images after export, so I figured I'd first verify it was broken on the iMac as well. It is.
So, off to play with Automator!
✍️ Reply by emailFountain
12:46 Tuesday, 27 February 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 76.12°F Pressure: 1017hPa Humidity: 45% Wind: 16.11mphWords: 210
Ok, looks like the Automator application works again. It's not optimal, because I'm just pointing it to the Images folder in the 2024 archive. This means that in 2025, I'll have to point it to another Images folder.
There's a "variable" I can use, and I'll be exploring that as I go on. For now, I just wanted the overall automation to work so I can post pics while I continue to update and modify the workflow.
It's perhaps a "nothing" image, but I've been playing with the Live Neutral Density Filter option on the OM-5. I've used it before on my other Olympus/OMDS cameras, so I basically know how it works. But I want to get more familiar with it, so the fountain is just a target of opportunity. We don't have much in the way of dynamic water here in the neighborhood. I could go to the beach, but then I lack any foreground interest.
I feel as though I have to point out that if we had any conception of what was coming, we'd turn all these things off. There are many things we can't turn off, but continuing to consume energy for utterly superfluous reasons ought to be criminal.
One day, it might be.
✍️ Reply by emailBlogging After Dark
20:34 Tuesday, 27 February 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 65.34°F Pressure: 1015hPa Humidity: 74% Wind: 18.41mph
Words: 655
Not watching a movie tonight, so I was scrolling through my Mastodon timeline. I don't spend a lot of time on Mastodon. Certainly nowhere near the hours I spent on Twitter each day. I think I visit my timeline every couple of days or so, and since I don't follow as many people as I did on Twitter, I don't feel as though I'm missing out on much.
There was a poll toot recently that just concluded, which asked something along the lines, "How toxic is your timeline?" I think the majority response was, "Not toxic at all."
I responded to the poll before it closed with that answer, because I don't experience the same level of vitriol that I did on Twitter, which is what I associated with "toxicity."
That said, my impression this evening is one of disappointment. I liked one of the things Jack Baty said about "comments" on many sites, that most of them are "performative." Too much of what I read on Mastodon is, I think, also performative.
Sometimes that's fine. If it's a part of an online persona that's offered in a light-hearted, sort of self-deprecating or unpretentious way, I enjoy that. I mean, I don't feel as though I'm getting to know much about you as a person. But I can appreciate the performance. And for some folks, maybe that's the safest way they can engage on social media, which raises questions of its own.
But then there are the ones that just come across as very condescending. Their Mastodon account isn't a "micro-instance" of chatting over the back fence, it's a way to puff themselves up. A vehicle to promote themselves before a very tiny audience. Their many years of deep, deep experience with a particular issue that may be something of a topic de jour, compels them to wave all that froth away, dismissing the excitement and enthusiasm, while citing some admired, deceased pillar of "the community," whose work they still refer to "often."
Please...
Now, shame on me, I should just unfollow those accounts.
But I think it's just an aspect of that medium.
It's almost like a live audience, depending on how often you post, how many followers you have. It invites that sort of "performative" post. If you think of yourself as some sort of sage, and you want to be perceived as a sage, respected as a sage, then it practically demands that you be condescending.
And nobody's going to call you on it. If you've got a relatively high follower account, if you're a high attention-earner, then those lower in the hierarchy are more likely to reply with "likes" or favorable comments. Partly because that's "more civil," or "less toxic" than calling someone out. It's also less risky. There's probably more upside to being nice to a pompous blow-hard than piercing their pretension. So they never experience negative feedback, and it just reinforces the behavior. They get more pompous.
I think these social media platforms that quantify things like "followers" and "likes" and other "metrics" distort the "social" aspect of the medium. I think Mastodon would be improved if you and I didn't know how many "followers" we had, or who "followed" us. What are we supposed to do with that information?
I think it only serves the platform, by making it more appealing to users who look to social media for validation or approval, for some measure of their "popularity" or "authority." People looking for those things will go to a platform that provides it. People who are missing something in their lives, seeking to fill it with, I don't know, metrics.
I'm going be thinking about my Mastodon account. I was entertaining the idea of joining Bluesky, but now I'm not.
"We shape our tools, and then our tools shape us." Somebody.
We ought to be getting a clue by now, don't you think?
✍️ Reply by emailTaking My Own Advice
21:42 Tuesday, 27 February 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 63.34°F Pressure: 1016hPa Humidity: 78% Wind: 13.8mph
Words: 60
I deleted my account on Mastodon. Right after Mark Bernstein followed me.
Damn.
I don't think I have a problem with Flickr. Yet, anyway. I'm happy that my pics get some views. I'm not chasing "likes" or "faves" or some number of followers. I just like knowing that they get seen from time to time.
I suppose that could change.
✍️ Reply by emailCory Doctorow on Democracy Now
07:22 Thursday, 27 February 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 52.84°F Pressure: 1018hPa Humidity: 84% Wind: 0mph
Words: 101
I'm not a fan of Doctorow's sf. That's no shade, I just haven't read him. Most of the time I see his name, it's in relation to something to do with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, or "enshittification," or some criticism of corporate America.
He's always kind of struck me as something a hectoring scold. But it's interesting how changing circumstances can change how you perceive someone.
This may be nothing new to people who've been more sympathetic to him before now, but this interview has been somewhat revelatory to me, and I found myself nodding along as I listened to it.
✍️ Reply by emailHomebrew SAR Drone
07:46 Thursday, 27 February 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 52.68°F Pressure: 1019hPa Humidity: 82% Wind: 0mph
Words: 157
I guess I shouldn't be amazed by this, but I am. I wonder to what extent obscurants have been used on the battlefield in Ukraine? I don't know if many of you recall what a revolution J-STARS was in the Gulf War. This is like a tiny J-STARS built at home for not very many dollars. (The comparison is one of kind, not overall capability.)
I skimmed the article because of my short attention span. I got the impression that the data is processed in non-realtime, so it's uncertain how practical it might be as a tactical asset. But that may simply be a matter of throwing more compute power at it.
I'm also uncertain about the relative value of synthetic aperture radar as a sensor compared to infrared or low-light, but it is another part of the electromagnetic spectrum that might overcome weaknesses or countermeasures in the IR and visible light range.
✍️ Reply by emailTrae Crowder
08:17 Thursday, 27 February 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 55.99°F Pressure: 1019hPa Humidity: 88% Wind: 1.01mph
Words: 36
If you haven't seen Trae Crowder's YouTube channel, I think you'd enjoy it. Why this guy doesn't have over a million followers yet is beyond me. (There's a paid promotion in the middle. Scrub through it.)
✍️ Reply by emailYou Don't Control Your Mac
09:14 Thursday, 27 February 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 62.15°F Pressure: 1019hPa Humidity: 71% Wind: 4mph
Words: 147
Or any of your Apple devices.
Howard Oakley is a wealth of knowledge about Macs, their cpus and MacOS. If you're interested in Macs on anything other than the most superficial level, it's worth your time to subscribe to Howard's feed, although it also includes his essays on art.
Anyway, as if another reminder was necessary, Howard documented how his Mac installed an OS update he specifically didn't want to install.
Yeah, I'm not switching to Linux. I'm old and there are better things I want to spend my time on.
But if you're anywhere south of 50, say, it's probably worth your time to figure out how to get onto Linux and live there. We don't control our computers. Their corporate parents do. And the software vendors, and the bad actors that make so much "security" inconvenience necessary.
It's their world. We just blog in it.
✍️ Reply by emailHandwriting. Wall. You connect the dots...
13:18 Thursday, 27 February 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 76.75°F Pressure: 1016hPa Humidity: 48% Wind: 9.22mph
Words: 430
“Older people with more social vulnerability — such as low income or poor health — have a tendency to move to worse places,” said Yan Wang, Ph.D., a professor of urban and regional planning in the UF College of Design, Construction and Planning. “They are more likely to move to places with less economic stability, with less access to health care and with more exposure to extreme weather.”
I offer this with somewhat greater humility than I normally do, because the region we're moving to isn't exactly known for its "economic stability." That said, I think it's still less vulnerable to economic instability than Florida. Florida is a house of cards right now, and I want us to get out of here before it collapses.
The measures the article outlines in Florida are welcome and appropriate, but don't address the root vulnerability. Florida is getting ridiculously hot in the summer. It's not safe being old in Florida. It's downright dangerous to be old and poor.
The Florida legislature, its governance model, prioritizes partisan power plays, not serving vulnerable citizens. For decades, there have been two Floridas. One is for the privileged, and it treats them very well. The other has historically been ignored. Today it is targeted. There's a reason why Florida never expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, leaving billions of federal dollars on the table. At least at first, Florida Republicans will welcome slashing Medicaid, or turning it into block grants that Republicans can dole out like patronage, or extract concessions for it. When the health care industry collapses under the weight of its aging population and lack of resources, they may not be so happy.
I know New York is less vulnerable to extreme weather events. Not invulnerable, less vulnerable. One uncertainty I have is on the issue of mudslides. We're on a hillside, but I'm not sure the gradient is one I have to worry about. I'll figure that out before we build another place on the property.
Health care will be a challenge or us, but one I'm reasonably confident we can meet. A rural setting means emergency services are more distant, so we'll have to design the home to minimize risks as we age. At some point we won't be able to drive anymore, so we'll have to pay for transportation for more specialized care when we need it. But who knows? By then, maybe one of our kids will want to live with us.
No matter how you look at it, New York is safer than Florida. More expensive, sure. But worth it.
✍️ Reply by emailFlorida and Measles
16:58 Thursday, 27 February 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 78.51°F Pressure: 1014hPa Humidity: 48% Wind: 14.97mph
Words: 40
Kevin Drum is feeling better. He's blogging again and posting "the charts and graphs to prove it!"
And yeah, Florida is near the bottom of states for measles vaccination.
Gosh it's exciting to live in "the Free State of Florida!"
✍️ Reply by emailAlarmists
17:02 Thursday, 27 February 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 78.51°F Pressure: 1014hPa Humidity: 48% Wind: 14.97mph
Words: 64
Like Panasonic, "Just slightly ahead of our time."
Kottke shares a link to a NY Times piece by David Wallace-Wells.
From David Wallace-Wells, a reminder that those who were considered alarmists at the beginning of the pandemic were ultimately proved right — it actually was an alarming situation.
The same can be said for climate "alarmists." Or will be said, one day.
Soon.
✍️ Reply by emailSo Say We All
11:31 Friday, 27 February 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 38.98°F Pressure: 1018hPa Humidity: 52% Wind: 7mph
Words: 10
Pretty sure Pope Leo never watched Battlestar Galactica.
Just sayin'.
✍️ Reply by emailBetween Here and Gone
11:37 Friday, 27 February 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 39.36°F Pressure: 1017hPa Humidity: 52% Wind: 7.94mphWords: 597
Great song by Mary Chapin Carpenter, but also kind of a description of this winter landscape vis-à-vis snow.
It's payday, my favorite day of the month. Normally it's the first of the month, but when that falls on a weekend, it gets deposited on the preceding Friday. The bad news is that it extends the time before the next payday, especially with March having 31 days. Oh, well.
I'm doing my best to save money because the new house is going to require a lot of it. I may end up taking a small mortgage, but that won't be until we have a much better handle on the cost, which is largely unknown at the moment, except for some very rough estimates based on a "typical" per-square-foot estimate. So far, we only have two fairly firm numbers, the price of the plans and engineering, and the cost of a driveway extension and new turnaround area.
So it's probably time to start making a spreadsheet.
I'm also putting money aside for Mom, anticipating her resources becoming exhausted this summer sometime.
Looks like I picked a good time to boycott Amazon!
We have our first meeting with the design firm this Monday, and our contractor will be present with us. I'm pretty excited, but also somewhat anxious. This will be the first house where I've had any significant input into its design, even though I think Mitzi's input will likely be greater than my own. I don't want to do something that we'll regret later.
When we remodeled my condo, I had the majority input on the renovations, but few of them were genuinely structural. The biggest physical change was creating a large walk-in shower in place of a tub/shower arrangement. It required moving the toilet a few inches over to make room for a partial wall near the shower head/drain. My goal was to have no glass in the shower, so it was mostly open. We used tile, and it was beautiful when it was done, but kind of a pain in the ass to clean.
The Nocatee house was already specified by the developer as it was build as a "spec house." "Spec" meaning "speculation" that it would be a desirable design for a lot that hadn't sold yet. And as it turned out, it was exactly the model we were looking for. We only had input on finishes and some upgrades like taller door openings, six-inch baseboards and rounded drywall corners. Most of that was Mitzi's area of interest.
This house will be designed by us from the ground up, with the idea that it will be affordable, attractive, and built to age into. So we know we want all of the "activities of daily living" facilities on the main floor. It's going to be built over a walk-out basement, where the mechanical room will be located. So there will be a mobility requirement from the standpoint of maintenance of utility services. Of those, I think the breaker panel is one I'd prefer to have on the main floor, but I'm also planning to be able to use the space in the basement, so it's not exactly a deal-breaker.
Anyway, I'm spending a lot of time watching YouTube videos about home construction and design and so on, which is a welcome distraction from wanton vandalism of my country's government and democracy.
Anyway, it's a beautiful sunny day, and I have work to do to prepare for this meeting. So this is it for today, I think.
✍️ Reply by email