JB

I’ve seen quite a few smart people recommend using a VPN service in the wake of the U.S. government’s decision to repeal privacy rules for ISPs. Unfortunately, I find this advice to be a bit misguided, or at least ill-informed. You can move your risk around, but in the end this comes down to an issue of trust, and avenues of recourse.

A VPN is a Virtual Private Network. It creates an encrypted tunnel between your computer and a remote server, and then optionally routes all of your Internet traffic through that tunnel. The case for using one for security against your ISP is that if your traffic is encrypted, they can’t see what you are browsing to and your data becomes useless to them to sell. Once your traffic reaches the other side of the VPN, it’s aggregated with all of the service’s other customers. That’s fine, and mostly makes sense, but if you are going to use a VPN service it’s important to come to an honest conclusion about how much you trust the company.

If your VPN server is outside of the United States, you are effectively giving up any legal recourse against the provider, meaning they can do whatever they want with your data, regardless of what they advertise or what they tell their customers. A single gateway for all of your traffic has a tremendous amount of power. They can inject code into any (non-SSL encrypted) web page. They can read all of your email. They can see all of the URLs you visit. All of the power of your ISP, you are transferring to your VPN provider, but if you choose a company outside of the United States, you lose whatever protection or recourse you have now.

What the ISPs are doing is not right, but at least we know what they are doing. If you pick a fly-by-night VPN service and send them all your traffic, there’s no telling what they’ll do with that data. It doesn’t matter if they post good things on their website if you can’t verify their claims.

Apple is currently hard at work on a “completely rethought” Mac Pro, with a modular design that can accommodate high-end CPUs and big honking hot-running GPUs, and which should make it easier for Apple to update with new components on a regular basis. They’re also working on Apple-branded pro displays to go with them.

For those of us who make their living on their Mac, this is fantastic news. I might never buy a Mac Pro¹, but I’ll still reap the benefits of Apple’s development and focus on Mac hardware and software. This is a message to the community that Apple hasn’t lost it’s mind; the Mac is still going strong.

What I will plan on buying is a new Apple display. My current Dell 4K display is ok, but after being spoiled by the Thunderbolt Display I had on my desk at the previous gig, this Dell feels like a big step back. No built in iSight camera, no built in speakers, too many wires, and that ugly Dell logo on the front. It’s a beautiful screen, and I need that for the number of hours I spend looking at text every day, but it’s all the rest of it, that overall Apple experience, that I’m missing.

I’ll be interested to hear what Marco has to say this evening on ATP. He has, at least to my mind, been the biggest skeptic and nay-sayer within the community when it comes to future prospects for the Mac. Of course, that’s nothing new. Mac enthusiasts have been hearing that their favorite computer is just about to die for literally decades. Yet here we are.

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The book of Philippians is such a beautiful, and challenging book. This is what I needed to hear tonight:

Do all things without grumbling or questioning, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I may be proud that I did no run in vain or labor in vain.Philippians 2:14-16

I admit I’ve done quite a bit of grumbling and questioning the past few days. On the next page, I saw I had this passage marked:

Rejoice in the Lord always, again I say rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.* And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus*.Finally brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there his anything worthy of praise, think about these things. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me–practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.Philippians 4:4-9

• “… you shine as lights in the world…”
• “… And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus”
• “…and the God of peace will be with you.”

God of peace, guard my heart and my mind, and let me shine as your light in the world.

My daughter’s cheerleading coach passed away last night. What was first thought of as diabetes turned out to be an extremely aggressive cancer that took her after only a few months. She was only ten years older than my wife and I. Her family, and our community, will be grieving deeply for her loss.

I know my daughter loved her, and when those we love die they take a part of us with them. Our family has lost parents and grandparents, close friends and people we admire. The pain of their loss can hit any one of us at any time; triggered by a date, or an object, or a memory of how they used to enjoy one thing or another. Sometimes we long for the comforting sound of their voice so much it aches inside us. When they are gone we wish for what everyone wishes for, more time.

But, despite my skepticism, despite my scientific, rational mind that often cries out for reason, I have to believe that there must be something more than this, that when the shadow of reality shimmers away, as it will for all of us, our consciousness, our soul, lives on. While we are bound to our physical bodies in the physical world, we can’t see it, but it’s there, waiting for each of us. The Bible tells us that each of us is given a certain number of days, and no one knows what that number is.

Our life is so short here, and the human body so fragile. Every second that passes is a second we can never get back. No amount of work or bartering can earn us even a minute more of our life back. But… we can make the passing of our time more worthwhile.

The Bible says that to gain eternal life, you must believe that Jesus is who is says he is and did what he said he did. But after that, what does it say about the time between salvation and eternal life? It says to love God with all your heart, mind, and soul, and to love your neighbor as yourself. It says to love your enemy, and bless those that persecute you. It says that God is love.

If we fill our days with kindness and mercy, if we leave petty ambition and envy behind, if we forgive slights against us, and smile in the face of adversity, if we stand up for what’s right, if we are honest and true, if we leave laziness and sloth behind us, if we give ourselves over completely to the task at hand, leaving nothing behind, wouldn’t that be a life well lived?

How will you finish the race? How will I? When the end comes for me, will I be able to look back satisfied that I spent my precious seconds the best way I could? Or will I be filled with regrets for the things I did and didn’t do? Am I pushing myself to become what I was placed on Earth to be? Or am I stagnating, inventing excuses and becoming bitter about why I can’t do one thing or another.

There will always be things you’d like to do, but can’t. Hard decisions and tradeoffs for what you believe is best for yourself and your family. Make the decision, embrace it, believe it, and move on to the next right thing to make this one, beautiful, precious life worthwhile.

Learn, build, grow, love. Be kind, gentle, patient, and enduring. Find joy in the moments we have, because life is here for a moment, and then, gone.

tldr: If you have a Circle device and an Eero mesh network, plug the Circle into the Eero connected to your modem with an ethernet cable.

The router I bought last year just wasn’t cutting it anymore. Several times a day I’d have to turn off wifi and turn it back on again on my Mac, and I’d rarely see speeds over 12 Mbps, even though I’m paying for 100 Mbps from Mediacom. Part of it had to do with the placement of my desk relative to where the router sits, and part of it has to do with running my Mac in clamshell mode through most of the day. Whatever the reason, I was tired of it and splurged for a set of three Eero routers. Now I have one in the basement next to the modem, one in the office, and one in the kitchen, and I consistently get speeds around 70-80 Mbps from fast.com.

I was quite happy with my setup, until random devices on my home network suddenly stopped connecting to the Internet. First it was the Apple TV, then the Fire TV, then my daughters laptop, then my other daughters iPhone, then my iPhone, and when it got to my wife’s iPhone something had to change. Of course, I knew the culprit had to be our Circle from Disney.

The Circle is a little white box that sits on the network on controls access. It blocks content that we’d rather not have, and sets time limits, bed times, and reward systems for the kids. We have all the devices assigned to their owners and what we think are reasonable rules setup. For some reason when we hooked up the new routers I thought it’d be a good idea to move the circle out into the office; I guess I wanted to be able to see it. I sat the Circle next to the office Eero and assumed everything would be fine. It was not.

As I understand it, the Eero works by creating a subnetwork underneath your home network that is dedicated to the routers staying in contact with each other. Eero calls the software that manages the the system “TrueMesh™”, and it lets a device float between routers in the house without slowing down network speeds. The Circle works by using a technique called “ARP poisoning”, where the Circle becomes the default gateway on the network, allowing it to manage the traffic.

So, my theory is that when I set the Circle next to one of the satellite Eero routers, the Circle connected to the closest router and spoofed the default routers ARP address, which caused the router to not be able to communicate with the real default router, breaking the mesh network. Moving the Circle back to the basement and physically connecting¹ it to the primary router solved the problem.

I should mention that the Eero also has parental controls similar to Circle’s built in. I haven’t fully explored them yet, but from what I can tell they don’t quite have the feature set of the Circle. Future software updates might change that, I’ll be keeping an eye on it.

Overall I’m quite happy with both the Eero and the Circle. While expensive, the combination of the two gives me a fast, robust home network with detailed controls over who and what connects, what they have access to, and for how long. ²

In Nineteen Ninety-One, I was a freshman in high school, living in a tiny house in small town Montana. Just me and my mom. My family, like so many at the time, had fallen apart. We had moved around a lot, I felt odd and out of place. I was angry, full of teenage angst, and generally pissed off at the world for the hand it dealt me.

Somehow I had talked my mom into letting me have a TV in my room, and I used to stay up late at night to watch MTV broadcast the videos they deemed too weird for the standard days fare. It was one of those nights I saw and heard something new, something fresh and raw,Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit. It blew me away. Apparently I wasn’t the only one either, because soon after I first saw it the rest of the world discovered Nirvana as well.

It’s hard to overstate the impact Nirvana had. They really were something different, at least to me. A melding of punk and pure rock-n-roll, three guys in a garage belting their rage into the abyss. To me, the kid that I was, Nirvana was the complete opposite of the popular butt-rock of the time. I mean seriously, look at these guys.

I remember offroading in the backwoods of Montana, my friend driving way too fast in his S10 pickup, playing Lithium as loud as it would go, and the both of us howling with delight as we launched the pickup over another hill.

Nirvana led me to Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Screaming Trees, Smashing Pumpkins, Blind Melon and so many more. They opened up the world of music to me by channeling what they felt through what they created, and I got it, because I felt that way too. Of course the lyrics of Smells Like Teen Spirit didn’t make any sense, but they didn’t have to, the world we were awakening to didn’t make any sense either. All we could to do was rage, rage, rage.

But not all the time. There were times of reflective introspection, easy, hopeful times of mindless joy, quiet times with the best of friends. A few years later, after the candle had burned so brightly, the light was put out.

Nirvana spoke to me in a way that nothing else did at the time. Nowadays I never listen to grunge, I mostly prefer jazz and classical. I also can’t say that the bands message is something I believe in now. I’ve moved on.

I’ve been thinking more about my defense of the Mac as a long-term computing platform, and I’m slowly coming around to understanding that at the base of my ideas is a type of willful ignorance that I should know better than to indulge in. The world is changing, computers are changing, and how we work and interact with them is changing drastically. To get to the root of this, let’s follow the five “whys” of why I need a Mac to work.

I need a Mac to get my work done. Why?

Because the Mac is a Unix based computer that includes the standard set of tools I use day to day, and it’s solid and reliable enough for me to depend on to work well when I need it.

Why do I need a Unix computer to work?

Because I’m a devops engineer, or automation engineer, or advanced sysadmin, whatever you’d care to call this job at the moment. I work primarily with AWS, and the best tools for building the automation systems for deploying our applications use the command line. Not to mention I often need to ssh into a server to troubleshoot it.

Why does the AWS environment use the command line?

Well, technically the command line is just one of the tools available, the awscli tools talk back to the AWS API, and AWS has SDKs available for popular languages. I could, and often do, write python code to accomplish what I need done. I suppose the real answer to this question is that there is currently no better interface for doing what I do.

Why is there no better interface for doing what you need to do?

Because designing human interfaces that make sense is difficult, especially with complex concepts. We need to be able to express logically that one bit of code needs to pull data from another bit of code which is pulling data from a database, all the while ensuring that the customer is getting the information they need quickly and easily.

Why are the systems you work with so complicated?

That’s a good question. Maybe they don’t need to be, or maybe in the near future they won’t be anymore. My work involves manipulating data, building websites that allow people access to upload and download data, and ensuring that the infrastructure these systems run on remains fast and available. How much of this is now being built into platforms like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform? How much of what I do each day could soon be accomplished by machine learning?

What if you could ask your phone to generate a graph of Apple’s annual profit and loss, and be sure that the visuals it returned were accurate and reliable? What if I could tell an iPad to build a highly available, auto-scaling infrastructure for hosting the Python code in my git repository, and the iPad would just go out and build everything I needed? How far are we from AI being able to tell from looking at a git repo the details of the infrastructure it needs? In that scenario, what use is “devops” when the engineer is AWS? For that matter, how far away are we from telling the computer the logic of what we need and having it develop the code for us?

Possibly not far. A recent article in Wiredexplores this very possibility:

Traditional coding won’t disappear completely—indeed, O’Reilly predicts that we’ll still need coders for a long time yet—but there will likely be less of it, and it will become a meta skill, a way of creating what Oren Etzioni, CEO of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, calls the “scaffolding” within which machine learning can operate.

That scaffolding is where I’ve been aiming my career for quite a while now, but, it may not be enough.

In the long run, Thrun says, machine learning will have a democratizing influence. In the same way that you don’t need to know HTML to build a website these days, you eventually won’t need a PhD to tap into the insane power of deep learning. Programming won’t be the sole domain of trained coders who have learned a series of arcane languages. It’ll be accessible to anyone who has ever taught a dog to roll over. “For me, it’s the coolest thing ever in programming,” Thrun says, “because now anyone can program.”

Basic economics says that scarcity creates value, in a world where anyone can program the skill currently required would be drastically devalued. This predicts a move from “infrastructure as code” to “infrastructure as algorithmically determined”.

I need a Mac for what I do now, but if current trends continue I might not need a Mac for much longer to do my job. In fact, as the tech industry continues to evolve, it’s entirely possible that it will evolve to the point where it no longer needs me. When that happens, maybe I’ll finally open up that coffee shop I’ve been dreaming about for decades.

Link

Sal Soghoian, writing for MacStories:

Here’s a thought experiment. Let’s imagine that Apple decided to combine their engineering resources to form app teams that delivered both iOS and macOS versions of applications.

In such a scenario it may seem logical to retain application features common to both platforms and to remove those that were perceived to require extra resources. Certainly Automation would be something examined in that regard, and the idea might be posited that: “App Extensions are equivalent to, or could be a replacement for, User Automation in macOS.” And by User Automation, I’m referring to Apple Event scripting, Automator, Services, the UNIX command line utilities, etc.

I’ve said many times that one of the main reasons I came to OS X is the underlying Unix utilities. I literally can’t do my job without the command line. It’s always in my dock, it’s always open, and I’ve got it customized just the way I like it. There is no replacement for the terminal, and no App Extension can provide a way for me to string together the tools I use to get done what needs to get done.

In such a world like Sal is imagining, I would have to find an SSH app like Prompt and setup my entire development environment on a Linux server somewhere. While possible, it’s not economical and it’s certainly not how I’ve become accustomed to working. I don’t think I’m alone in this either, anyone who does web development relies on command line versions of Python, Ruby, PHP, or Perl, along with a host of other small utilities to do things like syntax checking or unit tests.

I think it’s possible that Apple could remove the Terminal from OS X, along with the Unix utilities, similar to what they’ve done with iOS, but I don’t think they will. Apple uses OS X to develop their own software, so they know what the developers need to be efficient and productive. However I could see a world where you had to install Xcode and enable “developer mode” to get to the Unix utilities. We may not be far away from a day when OS X no longer ships with Terminal.app, but I think we’ll always have a way to install it when there’s real work that needs done.

I think Apple may be heading in the wrong direction, and it’s sad to see Sal be let go, but I’m glad to see him carrying on fighting for the users.

Despite aspirations of expanding my fields of interest and adopting new hobbies outside of technology, my day-to-day work gets done on a Mac. I’ve got a vested interest in the Macs continued survival, I’m one of those “truck drivers” that uses their machine for all it’s worth, and would have a difficult time transitioning to anything else. In my job I need to run shell scripts and build Docker containers, I need to ssh to Linux servers and RDP into Windows instances. I need to write, edit, and run Python code that connects to a database through a ssh tunnel. I need to do things that are either difficult or simply impossible with iOS, but are dead simple¹ with a Mac.

That’s why I switched to a Mac in the first place, someone had finally put a useable interface on top of a solid Unix core. The Mac community, especially the third-party developers, is why I stay on the Mac. I could get my work done on Linux, but my Lord, why would I want to? My degree is in human-computer interaction, I’d spend half my time ranting about the thousands of paper cuts in the user interface until I abandoned the GUI and ran everything from the command line, or a stripped down paneling interface. I’ve been there before. The Mac is a comfortable work environment that doesn’t skimp on capability like iOS does. Look deep enough into any of the iOS only workflows and nearly all of them are relying on outside computing devices of some type to get around what iOS can’t do.

But today we are once again hearing the death knell being rung for the Mac. This time it’s not because of an outside source taking over, but Apple itself who might simply decide that the Mac isn’t worth keeping around anymore. This is despite it being a profitable business, and being the sole source of development for iOS apps, and despite it being an industry leader in features and design, the tech media have decided that Apple is only a breath away from blowing out the Mac candle forever.

Well, we’ve been here before, right? It was before my time as an Apple user, but it’s my understanding that in the late ‘90s you couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting on an industry “think piece” about the death of the Mac. Yet, here we are at the dawn of 2017 and the Mac is still here.

That’s not to say that it isn’t entirely possible that Apple might kill off the Mac Pro, or the Mac Mini. I wouldn’t be too surprised if neither of those products existed by the end of the year. But a new macOS-running computer of some sort is something I expect to be able to buy for the next three years, at least.²

Assuming the current Mac I’m typing this on lasts for the next three years, which it should unless I break it somehow, my next Mac should last for another estimated three to five years. Let’s just say I draw this out as far as I can and say five, that means I’ve got at least eight years of Mac use easily planned for the future. Which of us can look that far into the future and see what the computing industry or our lives will look like by then? Perhaps the iPad and iOS will finally have matured enough to make Macs truly obsolete, or perhaps my work requirements will have changed sufficiently to make adopting iOS full-time relatively painless. Who knows?

The point is, all this handwringing over the future of the Mac is overblown. We have years of macOS ahead of us. Apple is selling some fantastic Macs right now³, and I expect they will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Until iOS actually is better than the Mac, there’s no reason to think that any of us will have to adopt our toolset to another platform. The Mac is here, has been here, and from what I can see, will continue to be here for many years to come.

From time to time I wonder if I could get by without any 3rd party software installed on my Mac. What would I have to do to adopt to not using the software I’ve become accustomed to? In no particular order, as of this moment I’ve got:

• Ulysses (For long-form writing)
• Byword (For blogging or shorter articles)
• MindNode
• Day One
• OmniFocus
• OmniGraffle
• OmniOutliner
• Transmit
• BBEdit
• Alfred
• Magnet
• Bear
• Reeder
• BackBlaze
• 1Blocker
• ScanSnap
• Debit & Credit

I also have a few apps for work:

• Cisco AnyConnect
• Docker
• Chrome
• HipChat
• Skype
• Microsoft Remote Desktop
• Sequel Pro
• SelfControl

Why would I want to do this? The idea of opening up any Mac and being able to get right to work without any setup is appealing, but honestly, how often do I move to a new Mac? Not very. And the apps that I do use are pretty easy to set up.

Some apps, like MindNode or OmniGraffle are almost impossible to replicate. And others, like Day One, offer so much more than built in apps that I wouldn’t want to move away from them. It’s possible that any third-party app might go out of business or be abandoned, but if I’m careful about what I choose I think I can be reasonably safe in trusting them.

Both the 3rd party apps and the built in apps are playing in a fairly level playing field. They use the same APIs (although the Apple apps get to use some private APIs), the same underpinnings, the same frameworks. The 3rd party apps are, for the most part, simply better done. Like Bear vs Notes for example. Bear is absolutely the better application. Beautiful, well thought out, and has useful features that Notes misses. And, Notes insists on using that ridiculous faux-paper background, and makes it difficult to change the font or font-size of the text. Bear is better, but Notes is built in. But Bear is just a quick trip to the App Store away, but sync costs $15 per year. But at least it’s a good business model that should keep them around. If not, Bear exports my notes easily, so I think it’s safe.

I think the unique mix of applications that are installed on each persons Mac or iOS device is interesting. It’s like a recipe for a good soup, some ingredients have more flavor than others. Some are fresh, some may have grown a bit stale. Some you can grow yourself. Everyone has their own recipe that works best for them, and by sharing we can learn from each other. Using only the built-in apps is like buying pre-made soup off the shelf from WalMart. You can live off it, but the good stuff is found elsewhere.

What could an organization comprised of some of the smartest, most driven people on the planet do with ten billion dollars in a year? Apple increasing their R&D budget five-fold over the past decade is interesting, but the numbers they are talking about are not uncommon in the rest of the tech industry. What I find noteworthy is the comparison with NASA.

It reminds me of the meager resources NASA had when they sent a man to the moon for the first time. We can accomplish amazing things when we put our collective minds to it. And what are Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft doing with their collective billions and billions of dollars in research and development? Building ever more immersive ways for us to share funny cat videos.

It bothers me in a way that so much money is spent on such frivolous things when there are real challenges in the world that our smartest people could be putting their minds to. Could a portion of those billions of dollars be spent figuring out how to get clean water to every person in the world? Or how to overcome drought by filtering seawater?

There are pursuits that are worthwhile and pursuits that are noble, and they are so often not the same thing. Every now and then though, they are. I think what Tesla is doing is both worthwhile from a financial perspective and noble in that by creating technology that relies on clean power they are benefiting everyone. It’s possible that a good sum of Apple’s ten billion is also going towards electric, self-driving cars, but we haven’t seen the fruit of that research yet. Meanwhile, NASA landed a probe on a comet.

This is fantastic, pure Phish. I’m so glad that they’ve just been getting better over the years.

Vibrating with love and light, pulsating with love and light, in a world gone mad, a world gone mad, there must be something more than this!

Perfect.

We humans are complicated creatures. I run for miles at a time, even though I’ve got nowhere to go, and nothing is chasing me, nothing but time and old age. Some people collect stamps, others watch birds; there’s no end to the ways that we occupy our time. Some people write stories, or draw, or paint, or make pottery out of clay. Some people write poetry. My daughter, my oldest, spends her time practicing the ancient art of dance.

Over the years that I’ve been taking her to dance practice and recitals, I’ve spent quite a bit of time pondering the significance of dance. Why do we do it? What sort of purpose does it serve? I’m reminded of Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society on why we read and write poetry.

We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.

Poetry, beauty, romance, love… and dance.

Dance, a physical expression of emotion, the rhythmic movement of the human body. The endless, impossible pursuit of perfection.

To dance takes dedication and courage. It takes practicing before the sun comes up and finishing after everyone else has long gone to bed. It takes a willingness to incur injury in pursuit of your art. It takes being able to forget all that and have fun. To lose yourself in the moment, to revel in your ability, gliding from one motion to the next, emotions coming to form like firecrackers on the stage. Body and mind working together in unity.

As I’ve watched my daughter grow up over the years and explore her chosen pastime, I’ve thought deeply on the purpose of dance, and how easy it is for those of us with highly analytical and logical minds to discard or ignore the pure joy of artistic expression. I’ve seen reference to a debate over whether dance is an art or a sport. The question is wrongheaded, dance is both, of course. My daughter has grown to show poise and grace while on the lighted stage, performing before crowds that would freeze lesser individuals with stage fright. After every single performance I’ve seen I come away feeling more proud of her than ever.

This is her senior year of high school, which, one, means I’m officially old now, and two, in a few months she’s going to set out on her own big adventure. I know that with the dedication, courage, and ability she’s developed over the years she is going to be fantastic. While it will be bittersweet to see her leave home, I can’t wait to watch her start to fly. There will be hard times to come, as in anyone’s life, but through it all I hope she never stops dancing.

“Carpe, carpe diem, seize the day boys, make your lives extraordinary.”

One of the surest ways I know I’m well on my way to crotchety old man status is not the grey in my hair, but my gut reaction to a certain tradition in our small town. To celebrate homecoming, our high school cheerleaders and dance team spends the night covering the high school football players houses, cars, and possibly yards with toilet paper, saran wrap, and plastic forks. They call it tradition, I call it vandalism, but, like so many other things in this tiny Iowa town, I’m simply outvoted.

One of the oddest aspects of this annual event is that it’s completely legitimized by the adults in town. Some of them even drive the kids around to the different houses. I know TP’ing happened when I was a kid too, but at the time it was done by kids who snuck out at night and did it knowing full well it was illegal and that if caught, they would be in somewhat serious trouble. Last year, one of the local cops helped the cheerleaders throw a roll of toilet paper at a house. It’s like the kids who used to do this on their own grew up and wanted to make sure their kids had the same experience, but in a safe, supervised way.

So tonight teams of cheerleaders and dancers will drive around the area, chauffeured by a few parents, and visit 28 homes. At each of the homes various acts of light-hearted vandalism will occur, throwing toilet paper over the house and trees, wrapping the cars in saran wrap, and maybe even filling up the front yard with plastic forks, known, I’m told, as forking the yard. The kids and parents involved say it’s all in good fun, and I understand that, what I don’t understand is who cleans up the mess after the night is over. TP makes a heck of a mess when it gets wet, and if it rains in the next few days some folks are going to have a heck of a time getting it off their homes and property.

Speaking of it raining, another prank that I’ve been told is reserved for those that really deserve it is to fill the front yard with a few boxes of instant mashed potatoes. After it rains, as I understand it, I’ve never seen this done, the potatoes absorb the water and cover the yard. I imagine the owner would have to shovel it out.

The kids have a great time and get to feel like they are breaking the rules, even though the rules have been temporarily adjusted, so they aren’t actually rebelling at all. I think that’s really where the crux of my issue with this tradition lays. It’s become phony, fake. Like mandatory corporate shuffleboard or trust falls. The kids aren’t really being rebellious; this is all pre-planned, packaged and vacuum wrapped like a lunchable. Sometimes I wonder if we are doing the next generation any favors by protecting them so much. There can be no bravery without danger.

But, it is all in good fun. No one gets hurt, no one is in trouble. No one complains about cleaning up the mess, at least no one I’ve talked to has. Maybe some of the kids from the teams have to clean it up, I don’t know. I’m just the grouchy old man who really wants the kids to stay off my lawn.

My favorite new-to-me site is Farnam Street by Shane Parrish. I’ve been experiencing a slow change of interests over the past several months as Apple and tech related news fails to grab my attention. The last time this happened I lost more than a professional interest in the open source community, an area I left years ago and haven’t looked back. I can’t find it in me to care enough about iOS 10 to read the book-length treaties on it at MacStories, in fact the latest iPhone or iOS barely interests me enough to learn what’s in it and if it is anything of use to me.

I just don’t care anymore. My tools of choice work well, and I’m comfortable knowing that there’s nothing better. Instead, I’m turning my attention to a topic that I’ve been dancing around for the past few years, but haven’t put a concerted effort into, something Cal Newport calls Deep Work. I’ve always been fascinated with how the mind works, and exploring the outer boundaries of the human brain. The psychology courses I took in grad school were among my favorites, and how we think about the world around us is endlessly fascinating.

Farnam Street is chock-full of insight into the human condition, where we fail, and how we can be better. Being a little better every day is exactly what I want to pursue, To that end, I’m in the middle of an experiment right now, once it’s over I’ll report my findings, but my thought is that after 30 days I’ll be more focused, happier, and more productive than when I started. Better.

I’m giving up a few things, and putting my energy into other things, but let’s leave that alone for now and return to this idea of areas of focus. I once considered myself a part of the Apple community. I was a developer for a short time, and a writer for a popular blog. I followed all the right people on Twitter, subscribed to all the right podcasts, and generally knew what was going on in the community of internet famous folks in the Apple community. I still do, to a point, but as I’ve stated earlier, I just don’t care about it anymore. One of the things I’ve given up is the thought that I’m going to be any more of a part of this community than someone on the outside looking in. I don’t have time for such juvenile pastimes, and this hobby was not actually making my life better.

I’ll dip my toes in from time to time to see what’s going on and see if any new developments are coming down that pipes that might make my tools better, but I’m not diving in and swimming in it anymore. Perhaps one day some online technical community will interest me again. Instead I’m taking a more realistic approach to my time, and turning my attention to those things that actually do make me a better person. My plan is to write about those things here.

I just started reading Cal Newport’s Deep Work and I’ve found myself nodding along in agreement through the introduction and first two chapters. His description of the environment needed for intense, concentrated study reminded me of a time I went through a period of deep work, one that is unfortunately difficult to replicate.

Eighteen years ago I was on my second six-month deployment to the Mediterranean on the USS Platte, an auxiliary oiler. It took us two weeks to cross the Atlantic back then, and once in the Med we would spend anywhere from one to three weeks underway between port visits. Everyone in the Navy has a job, and for the first three years I was in the Navy my job was Machinery Repairman, abbreviated “MR”. Along with your job designation, everyone in the Navy has a rate, and my rate at the time was E3, also called “Fireman”, so my title at the time was MRFN Buys.¹

I desperately wanted to make Petty Officer Third Class (E4), the next promotion level. The first three promotions (E1 through E3) are given as soon as you serve the requisite amount of time. The subsequent promotions require testing and a complex scoring system that ranks your performance through reviews. The Navy will have only a certain number of slots open for E4 in each rate (job), so sometimes even if you ace the test, you won’t be promoted because of the “needs of the Navy”. Machinery Repairman was one of those jobs that was saturated at the time. I had taken the semiannual test twice, and twice had not made petty officer third class.

I really wanted to make third. Higher rate meant better pay, and I was newly married with a baby on the way. Working in engineering meant that I spent a lot of my time working in the fire room, where the boilers and other high-pressure steam system equipment lived. It was always hot, I mean really hot, and there was no natural light. We worked in blue overalls with the sleeves rolled up, we took readings on the equipment on a regular schedule, smoked and hoped nothing would break. Sometimes, depending on what else was going on around the ship, we might have to split our shifts on watch down to six and six; six hours on watch, six hours off, and one of those six hours off we had to spend doing our main jobs. So for up to eighteen hours a day I was hot, sweaty, and covered in grease. To be honest, most of the time the rotation wasn’t quite that bad, but from time to time it would be.

When I’d wash my hands and face and head up to the mess decks for lunch or dinner, I’d meet up with some of the guys who had been on the ship for as long as I had who had made rate already and worked in Radio. They’d come down in their crisp, clean dungarees, shiny boondockers with a mirror polish, and complain about how cold it was in Radio. During one of these lunches I decided to cross-rate. The Navy has a system where you can apply to take the E4 test of a different rate. I made up my mind to cross-rate to Radioman, then, I reasoned, I could make rate and get out of the pit.

Cross-rating isn’t easy though. I had to learn an entirely new field of work, and I had to keep up with my existing responsibilities. I filled out all the requisite paperwork, got approval, and started to study. I got ahold of the Radioman 3 & 2 and a thick spiral-ringed notebook and started carrying them with me on watch in the pit. Between times when I had to take readings on the equipment, I focused all of my energy into learning everything I could about the rate, devouring the book while learning about wave propagation and transmitter and receiver theory. I talked some of the senior petty officers into letting me spend some of the time between watches or after my regular job was over up in Radio getting hands-on experience. I had two sets of uniforms in my rack, one for the pit, and one for Radio. I kept this up for weeks.

By the time the test came around, I not only scored high enough to make RM3 (Radioman, Petty Officer Third Class), I blew the test out of the water. The period of intense, focused effort resulted in a major change in my life. After I made RM3 the Navy combined the RM and DP (data processing) rates, creating the new Information Technician rate, who dealt with all of the ship and shore based communications and computer systems. Becoming a Radioman changed my career path from a machinist to what has evolved into devops. It was hard, but my life is immeasurably better because of the work I put in.

After making E4, I turned my attention to the Enlisted Surface Warfare Specialist. I spent the rest of the deployment learning about every facet of the ships operation, from the bridge to the engine room, from the main steam cycle to semaphores. I absolutely loved it. My last few months on the ship were the best. Learning how to apply myself diligently to achieve goals is a skill I wish I would have learned earlier in life, but once I did learn it I’ve been able to call on it when I need to. It can be difficult to isolate myself from distractions and focus as a remote knowledge worker in 2016, but I’ve never forgot the lessons of the pit. Hard work, sweat, and diligent, concentrated effort are the keys to success.

Overcast is moving to an ad-supported business model.

Ads are the great compromise: money needs to come from somewhere, and the vast majority of people choose free-with-ads over direct payment. Ads need not be a bad thing: when implemented respectfully, all parties can get what they want.

Overcast is the best podcast client I’ve used. Smart Speed and Voice Boost are fantastic features that Marco clearly put a lot of work into, so I hope he finds a business model that is sustainable enough to convince him to keep working on the app. Being able to say that though has taken some thought and introspection.

I’m envious of Marco’s success. He’s played all his cards right and he’s designed the life he wants to lead; he deserves the success he’s gained. ATP is my favorite podcast, and I used Instapaper almost religiously for years. He’s very good at what he decides to do, so I don’t think it’s any mystery at all that he is where he is.

And yet… and yet… like so many others in this community, I’ve struggled to come up with even one idea with staying power. I’ve released too soon, my ideas weren’t very good, or my execution flawed. As I look at turning 40 in a few short months, I’m finding it harder than ever not to grow bitter at how some make it, but most do not. It’s an unfair, harsh, and unforgiving world out there, and if you weren’t born with a silver spoon in your mouth it’s unlikely you’ll ever know life without struggle.

Unlikely, but not impossible. That’s what I keep telling myself anyway.

I’ve watched Shawn Blanc grow from a part-time blogger¹ to a self-help coach, running three separate sites and recording online courses. Making enough money in a week to last for a year. Again, he’s smart, he’s found his niche, and he’s worked hard. It’s just not the natural human emotion to feel good about others succeeding where you have not. It takes effort.

Manton Reece talked about this a bit in his post “A great developer can come from anywhere”:

Daniel Jalkut and I had Marco as a special guest on Core Intuition 200 not just because he’s a friend but also because he so well represents the goal that many of us have and our listeners have — to start our own company, to find success not just one time but again and again, and to have as thoughtful an approach as possible in the craft of software development.

I’m tempted to quote the entire article. Manton makes the case that while some people dismiss Marco’s approach to testing as a privilege he enjoys as a byproduct of his success, this concept is poison to the community. Saying “that’s fine for Marco, but it wouldn’t work for the average guy” is giving yourself an excuse not to work as hard or push as hard as needed to make it. It’s important to remember that Marco’s success came after years of mostly anonymous work. And of course, success breeds success, he’s been able to build off of one to make a success of the next.

Manton ends his post by saying:

I’ll never accept the implied negativity in the “that’s fine for Marco” argument. I’ll never accept that we should be jealous of another developer’s success instead of inspired by it to do our best work.

My first reaction to the Overcast announcement was to post a quick tweet about not wanting to help finance Marco’s next Tesla, but that would have come from a place of jealousy and bitterness, not inspiration. Instead, I’m going to go back to my notebook, my collection of ideas, and look over it again.

Another keynote came and went yesterday, and there was nothing I could do after it was over. I couldn’t order the new iPhone 7, or upgrade my current iPhone to iOS 10. I couldn’t buy the new Apple Watch, and even the new iWork collaborative editing features are in new versions “coming soon”. When I tried to download the new Mario game, the App Store let me know I’d be notified when it was available. After everything was announced yesterday, today I’m wondering what the point of having the event when they did was.

There was once a time when you could download new apps or operating systems as soon as the keynote was over. I specifically remember Steve saying more than once “… and it’s available today”. For the past few years we haven’t been getting that. At best the new features are coming in a couple of weeks, or at worst at some undefined time, presumably so far in the future that they can’t nail down a specific date.

It’s good to ship products when they are ready and not at an arbitrary keynote date, but Apple used to be better at coordinating those times to all coincide. By not having anything available on day one, Apple misses out on the consumer excitement it generates by having these events in the first place. At least, I’m not as excited today as I was yesterday. After they keynote was over if I had the ability to order a new Series Two Apple Watch, I almost certainly would have. After giving it a day to think it over, now I’m not as convinced that I need one. I’ll probably wait for the first few reviews to come in and see how much of an upgrade it is.

Perhaps this is another sign of Apple’s confidence and maturity as a massive global corporation. It’s possible that the internal workings of scheduling all the moving parts is impossible to line up correctly. It used to be we only had the one platform and one operating system, the Mac and OS X.¹ Now we have the Mac, iPad, iPhone, Apple Watch, and Apple TV; macOS, iOS, tvOS, and watchOS, as well as iCloud to tie everything together, and the multiple services Apple provides. Now add the complexities of global shipping and coordinating their retail stores around the world, and I can start to make out why it might not all line up the same as it used to.

However, it doesn’t change the fact that the event came and went, and after it was over there was nothing I could do but read about what’s coming.

iPhone 7

I upgrade every two years on the “S” cycle, so on the off years, like this one, I get a glimpse of what’s coming when I do decide to upgrade. Overall the new iPhone seems like a great upgrade. I think they’ve taken appropriate steps to mitigate the uproar over removing the headphone jack by both including an adapter and setting a reasonable price for replacements. I’ve got at least another year with my current iPhone 6S, so by the time I’m ready to upgrade the story won’t be a story anymore.

More concerning is removing the physical home button and replacing it with a 3D Touch area. This is one of those things that I really hope works well, but since I haven’t been impressed with 3D Touch on the 6S, I’m skeptical of how well it’ll work for the most-used button on the phone. How fast will it respond to double-clicking for the app switcher? The exiting 3D Touch app switcher, where you press on the side of the phone is terrible, I never know if I’m about to damage my phone or what amount of pressure to apply. I find it unreliable enough that I don’t use it. Again, hopefully by the 7S model this will be resolved. Better camera, better color, faster CPU, all good things.

AirPods

I already lost them in the couch. Then another pair went through the wash. I’ll probably not be getting these.

Apple Watch Series 2

I wear a fitbit most days, but I run with my phone strapped to my arm, tracking my runs with the Nike+ Run Club app. When the Apple Watch was first announced being able to run without my phone was the first thing that came to mind, but the hardware wasn’t ready yet. The Watch didn’t have the ability to accurately track distance without GPS, so it still needed to be paired with the phone, which defeated the purpose for what I wanted it for. Now that GPS has finally been added I’m seriously thinking about getting one to replace my fitbit as a personal fitness coach and tracker, but I’m going to want to hear how it works for a few other people first.

That the watch is waterproof now is nice, but not a big deal for me. Sometimes I run in the rain, and not having to worry about my phone getting wet would be nice, but I haven’t swam for a few years. I suppose if I ever start training for a triathlon it’ll come in handy.

I use Nike’s apps, and have for about 1640 miles, but that Nike-branded Apple Watch was just plain ugly. No way I’m putting down any money for that band. The pure white Nike band looks acceptable, but still not as nice as the black sport band.

Assorted Nuts

The enhancements to iWork would have been more interesting to me a few years ago when I was in grad school. I had to write a few collaborative papers, and the only way to do it at the time was Google Docs, but I would have much rather worked in Pages. Of course, I still probably would have had to use Google Docs because the other students I worked with weren’t on Macs.

The Mario game looks like fun, I’ll buy it when it comes out, but what I’m really looking forward to is a proper Zelda adventure. We’ll see how far Nintendo’s commitment to iOS goes.

I could have done without Tim Cook singing, but the skit was fine. Better than previous attempts have been.

I quipped on Twitter that Phil Schiller reminded me of the Cowardly Lion from the Wizard of Oz when he started talking about courage. It does take some amount of courage to “push the human race forward”, and if Apple has to do it one port at a time, then I’m on board for the ride. I just think they could have found a better way to come across, a better way to convey their reasoning and the purpose behind the change. I’m not going to miss the port, as long as I’ve got headphones I’m fine, but I use either a bluetooth speaker or the built in speakers more often than the headphones, especially now that I’m not driving to work every day and listening to podcasts in the car.

Yesterday’s announcements were about what was expected, Mario being the notable exception. There was not a lot for me, personally, to get excited about. I’m in the market for a new Mac, so I’m hoping for a refresh next month. Then maybe I’ll get excited.

If you really want to remember something, write it down. By hand.

There is a growing body of knowledge that shows the benefits of writing things down, and how handwriting is better for learning than typing on a keyboard. It’s unfortunate that these studies come after years of schools pushing to get a computer in the hands of every student, moving quickly to replace pen and paper with bits and bytes.

A 2014 article in the New York Times draws a connection between increased brain activity and handwriting.

When children had drawn a letter freehand, they exhibited increased activity in three areas of the brain that are activated in adults when they read and write: the left fusiform gyrus, the inferior frontal gyrus and the posterior parietal cortex.

By contrast, children who typed or traced the letter or shape showed no such effect.

Another article in Science Daily from 2011 reports similar results in a separate study:

Mangen refers to an experiment involving two groups of adults, in which the participants were assigned the task of having to learn to write in an unknown alphabet, consisting of approximately twenty letters. One group was taught to write by hand, while the other was using a keyboard. Three and six weeks into the experiment, the participants’ recollection of these letters, as well as their rapidity in distinguishing right and reversed letters, were tested. Those who had learned the letters by handwriting came out best in all tests. Furthermore, fMRI brain scans indicated an activation of the Broca’s area within this group. Among those who had learned by typing on keyboards, there was little or no activation of this area.

This article in Psychology Today references several studies, focusing mainly on the benefits of cursive writing.

Much of the benefit of handwriting in general comes simply from the self-generated mechanics of drawing letters. In one Indiana University study, researchers conducted brain scans on pre-literate 5-year olds before and after receiving different letter-learning instruction. In children who had practiced self-generated printing by hand, the neural activity was far more enhanced and “adult-like” than in those who had simply looked at letters. The brain’s “reading circuit” of linked regions that are activated during reading was activated during hand writing, but not during typing.

One of the focuses of my writing here is about the appropriate use of technology to enhance our lives. There are so many things that a computer can do, it’s difficult to know where to draw the line on what we should do. Can we give kids computers and have them type notes in class instead of writing them down? Sure. Should we? It’s looking like the increasingly obvious answer from the scientific community is no. Just because it’s faster doesn’t mean it’s more efficient.

There continues to be no shortcut to deep learning. To know a subject, you must study it closely. To learn math, you must practice, especially the fundamentals. The best way to take notes during a lecture is by hand, forcing yourself to synthesize the information you are absorbing into a compressed form that captures the essential ideas, pushing your mind to concentrate intently. Then, at night, when it’s time to study the information further, transcribe the notes into your computer, rewording and exploring the topic as you go. Maybe even speak your notes out loud to yourself, engaging more of your senses.

My favorite quote I’ve read in the past few days is from the Science Daily article, where associate professor Anne Mangen says:

“Our bodies are designed to interact with the world which surrounds us. We are living creatures, geared toward using physical objects – be it a book, a keyboard or a pen – to perform certain tasks,”

We don’t fully understand the effect widespread use of computers from an early age is going to have on us. It’s important not to lose sight of the real world as we continue to explore the virtual one we’ve created.

I’ve always been curious. I remember having coffee with my cousin and her boyfriend as a teenager and saying, in my naïvety, that I wanted to know everything about everything, to know all that was knowable. Even then I knew that was impossible, but that didn’t stop me from wanting to know as much about the world as I could. As time went on I started to dive deeply into different subjects, and put off others till I had more time. Now that I’m looking at forty and an ever growing list of things to learn and do, I’m experiencing something new… panic at the thought of running out of time.

I always assumed that I’d have more time later to learn the things that I want to learn. How to play guitar and piano. Ride a horse. Play chess.¹ Paint like Bob Ross. Woodworking. Gardening. Scuba diving. The list goes on. I’ve started wondering about prioritizing these pursuits according to season, time, and, eventually, health. I run today because I want to be healthy enough to keep learning and doing as I get older.

I was thinking about these things over the weekend when I bought new strings for my guitar. I bought the guitar ten years ago with the intention of learning to play, but one thing or another has always come up, and I figured that later was always a better time than now. Last night I was tuning the guitar² and mentioned to my daughter that “someday” I was going to learn how to play it.

“No time like the present!” she said as she left the room.

She’s right. The finger tips of my left hand are sore this morning, because last night I pulled up a YouTube video and started learning how to play. I may not be able to do it, I might not be able to learn everything I want to know or be able to do. I will fail from time to time. But… “if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”³

After all, “life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.”