Quoth the Elephant, Evernote

Something I forgot to bring up in my last entry about Amazon Prime was a little addendum about how Evernote is increasing its price by nearly twofold. It's gone from around 70 per year to 130. I was a little stunned by this. It's one thing for Amazon to want 3 extra dollars to take away ads on their streaming service, but this is a pretty big fundamental shift in the business model. I don't pretend to know all the goings-on at Evernote, but they do promise some major upgrades to the newer versions of their application. Most of these had to do with AI, which made me roll my eyes a bit. To be fair to them, they also offered better synchronization among devices, which is definitely something I've felt has been lacking. There was a glitch for some time with the scratch pad where it would "double" itself when I went from typing it out on the desktop to checking it on my phone. Rather than simply double post whatever I'd written, it would insert the copy in the middle of the text, which made copy and paste rather tedious. 

So, I'd write out what I wanted to say in the scratch pad on the desktop versi So, I'd write out what I wanted to say in the scratch pad on the desktop version, and then when I'd check it on my iPhone to copy and paste into something like Threads... on, and then when I'd check it on my iPhone to copy and paste into something like Threads... 

Irksome, isn't it? In any case, despite the sticker shock, keeping Evernote running is kind of a no-brainer. I've been using the application for years, though most of that time was in using the free version, and I still use it virtually everyday. It's where I keep track of my medications, probably the longest journal I've ever kept outside of Blogger. It's also my address book for when I send out my holiday cards. The point is I don't mind this increase. I just hope the synchronization is all it's cracked up to be. 

A Prime Example

In the interest of full disclosure, I am an Amazon slave. I've been a Prime Member for years, I have several Alexa smart speakers, I use Subscribe & Save, I use Kindle and Audible, and I even watch Prime Video (mostly for the Grand Tour or anything the old Top Gear crew is attached to). I know the company is evil, they treat their workers (especially their drivers) like garbage, their returns are a joke, and Jeff Bezos is dumping tons of methane into the atmosphere with his phallus rockets, to say nothing of that stupid yacht he tried to have a bridge disassembled over. 

Yet... I'm still paying. I can only offer so much in my defense. There's still plenty of small and local businesses I support, and there's certain items that I simply will not buy from Amazon if I can avoid it. If I can get it straight from the manufacturer, I'll go that route (especially if they let me check out with PayPal because that's just as convenient as Amazon). To me, Amazon offers a way to eliminate tedium. I don't have to haul bags of cat food, kitty litter, and sparkling water around in a cart, into my car, out of my car, and into my house. Now, all but that last step has been eliminated. It's one less thing I have to deal with. It's cruise control, not fully autonomous driving, if you follow. The point is if it all went away tomorrow, I'd be only a little bit bummed... for about five minutes, and then I'd move on to something else. 

Is it really an addiction if you're in control of it? 

Anyway, there's still the dilemma of supporting a terrible company, but the awful truth to that matter is that voting with your wallet is kind of a hollow promise. After all, there's no "vote against" just voting for something, and not voting at all. Moreover, if you know anything about how the company is structured, their main money maker is not their retail branch. It's all their web hosting. That's where this gets really scary. I heard once that all of Netflix's servers are owned by Amazon. That may seem like a massive conflict of interest, but it's actually good business. There's a similar sort of relationship between Apple and Samsung. Yes, they're rivals in the smartphone space, but if you were to open up your iPhone, you'd find Samsung's name on more than a few components. In fact, the iPhone camera is actually a Sony component. I find that funny because the camera on my old Xperia phone wasn't all that great, but the little iPhone 5c I got to replace it took damn fine pictures right out of the box. 

I decided to write this entry after receiving an email from Amazon that some of you may have read yourselves or at least heard about on social media. Ads are coming to Prime Video. Although they insist there will be overall fewer ads than television, it's more than a little disheartening that this is what they resorted to in terms of expanding their market share in the streaming space. 

Rather than create a new, lower-priced, ad-supported tier and bring in new customers, they'd rather punish loyal customers who have been paying for Prime for years (seriously, whatever happened to grandfathering?). Instead, they now offer an ad-free version of Prime for an additional fee. Obviously, this is about Amazon making more money. They chose this strategy because simply raising the rates would have deterred many from renewing, so they decide to raise the proverbial temperature of the pot of water instead of dunking us in straight away. As I said, I think they could have done more to draw in new customers than try to tiptoe around existing ones. 

As for what I'm going to do about it... very little. Ironically, most of what I've been watching on Prime Video of late has been through their subsidiary FreeVee, which is ad-supported anyway. There's also that practice of advertising their other shows before the ones I'm already watching. It's frustrating that this is happening, but I'm more mad at myself for not being more bothered. I feel like I should be cancelling my Prime membership as a statement, but I know it's not going to change anything and despite what I said about what I'd do if this all went away, I don't want to be the one to pull the plug. Given the scale, it would be cutting off my nose to spite my face. Then again, we're also living in a time when a comedy about Wile E. Coyote suing Acme was brought back from a fate worse than death for media. 

Maybe we're reaching a point where it's more than just the bottom line that a business can pay attention to. Yes, Coyote Vs. Acme got a big boost from a number of meetings being canceled, as well as the potential threat of Capitol Hill getting involved (one congressman compared the move to committing arson and insurance fraud), but it's still notable how much of a public outcry got heard. Hell, remember when the first Sonic the Hedgehog movie got delayed because of backlash against the early trailer? No calls for boycotts there, just plain, "Dear God, what is that thing!?" from a few thousand voices on Twitter. Yes, there was still a bottom line ultimately being threatened, but we didn't have to wait until opening weekend for the change to occur. 

I'm The Type to Block Things Out

I realized I've been lying to myself the past few months. I've been writing a lot about my keyboard of choice and my potential efforts to preserve the typing experience by buying a backup (made difficult by it being constantly out of stock at Logitech). What I haven't been very honest about is my alleged love affair with the sound and feel of the keys. 

I'm wearing headphones right now. 

There's even a dark ambient mix playing in a YouTube tab as we speak. It hasn't completely blocked out the G413 Carbon's Romer G tactile switches, but it has taken the edge off of them. I'm reminded of something Sir Alec Guinness once said about writing, how amateurs will go in full of enthusiasm only to get bogged down. The idea of a clicky, tactile keyboard always seems delightful... for about five or ten minutes, then you've got to get some real work done. 

There is an upside to this. As being clicky goes, the switches in this keyboard are something of a worst offender. Logitech's site has a comparison of the various key switches, including those in the G413's. Put simply, you can do a lot better for not very much in the realm of pricing. 

Speaking of blocking things out, I've learned something about WordPress that I feel rather embarrassed about. I had thought for the longest time that embedding videos was behind a paywall. In a way, it kind of is, but not to the extent I'd previously thought. If you want to upload a video file directly to the entry you're writing, that requires a plan. If, however, you're simply embedding a video from YouTube or Vimeo, there's a block for that. Maybe it's a newish feature, but I wasn't aware of it until a few days ago when I was trying to see what I could do with my current WordPress theme. It's not bad, but I'm not sure I like the way it's structured. It was chosen because it closely resembled the one I use for Blogger. You've got your main body of text, next to which is a sidebar with a few widgets and an index of all previous entries. My Wordpress theme is technically set up the same way, only there's a wall in front of it, so to speak. Instead of showing you the most recent entry in full and with the sidebar and widgets fully visible, it shows you a "highlight" reel of sorts. You see excerpts of the entries in chronological order, but with no sidebar and widgets. You have to click on an entry in order to get to a place that's closer to what I've got going here on Blogger. I don't know if there's a way to restructure that, but it's only really a minor annoyance. 

Speaking of mild annoyances, there's one thing I think WordPress does better than Blogger, and that's inserting images. Here, it's kind of a hassle to upload (I had quite a time with an entry from some months ago about old videogames) and once you've inserted it, it's another struggle to get it to fit in with what you're already writing. on WordPress, everything is separated into blocks. I don't have to worry about infringing on the caption of the photo I've uploaded. I don't have to worry about empty space above or below the image. I don't have to readjust the alignment of the text. Best of all, I don't have to adjust the size of the image based on some arbitrary "small, medium, large, or original" selection like I do here. It justifies it to the width of the text column. 

None of this means I'll be leaving Blogger for WordPress. There's still plenty of things I don't like about the latter. It also wouldn't feel right to simply migrate this site over there. Granted, it's not like I've built up some large, loyal following that I'd have to impose upon. I'm sure I have a few regulars and a few curious passers-by. Of course, when comparing WordPress and Blogger, one must consider who's footing the bills. Blogger is owned by Google, after all, and they don't have much vested interest in upgrading or overhauling it. In fact, I'm convinced the only reason they keep it around is it doesn't cost them very much to keep the servers running and it would probably be a small headache in and of itself to shut it all down. WordPress doesn't have such a sugar daddy. Automattic isn't the tech giant like Google is. It's not even close. Sure, a number of websites are powered by WordPress, but that still doesn't translate to the kind of figures that Google deals in. 

That's the dynamic. Blogger is a little clunky and outdated, but it's more or less completely free and full-featured for it (there are some paid features, but you've really got to dig for them). WordPress is a far smoother and more straightforward user experience (theme customization notwithstanding), but they try to nickel and dime you every step of the way. It's a little like with my keyboard; it's familiar, but clunky and not entirely pleasant. Other keyboards are more expensive, but they offer a smoother and more engaging typing experience. 

Not My Carbon

Logitech lied to me. I asked to be put on a waiting list to be notified when the G413 Carbon is back in stock. I recently received the notification and was all set to buy up my backup. When I clicked the link, however, I found it was only the G413 silver version. Similarly, they've made another G413 called the SE, which splits the difference between the silver and the Carbon in the worst possible way. 

The silver is the same keyboard as the Carbon under the bonnet, only with an aluminum faceplate and white backlighting. By no means an ugly keyboard, just not what I'm looking for. Also, I refuse to believe more people prefer white-lit keys to red. 

The SE is black like the Carbon, but uses white backlighting. There's also a TKL version that's still white-lit. As I said, I can't believe some people would prefer white to red when it comes to ambient lighting on their desktops. 

I only wish I could turn the LEDs on the Mac mini and SpaceMouse red. Guess I'm going for that 8BitDo keyboard sooner rather than later. That's not backlit at all, nor is there a number pad, but it will give my setup more of a vintage vibe rather than a Batmobile interior sort of look. I'll consider that a fair trade. 

I've never participated in NaNoWriMo. At least not in any official capacity. Frankly, the workload terrifies me. I once used it as a jumping off point for a shorter novella project I wrote some years ago from October until around mid December. It was released as an eBook for the exorbitant price of a whole dollar. I later made it free and even posted the first chapter to my DeviantART. It's probably aged far better than anything else I've written, though I'm sure if I took a good, long look at it, I'd end up sitting down and rewriting it from page one. 

There is another story of mine I thought of a few weeks ago that I might want to take another swing at. It was about someone checking themselves into triage by way of a robotic receptionist. It didn't have much meat on it in narrative terms, a quick jab at the bureaucracy of the healthcare system, the dehumanization of automation, and a cozy, wholesome interaction between a nurse and a patient. Now, years later, I want to make it a horror story, the robot now going haywire and posing a threat to everyone in the wing. I doubt I'll go through with it. My days of writing about monsters tearing people apart left me in around the end of middle school. We were learning a writing technique called "sensory imagery" which is best described as "Tell, don't show." Being the age I was, this meant an awful lot of gore and bizarre creature designs. 

Although November is now 2 days behind us, I do hope some of you consider continuing work on whatever writing projects you were thinking about during National Novel Writers' Month, even if it's only al sort of catch-and-release approach and it never moves far beyond a file on your desktop. 

A Gigabyte of RAM Should Do the Trick

I am forever fascinated by the craft of writing. I always have been. Even merely looking at photos of old typewriters is inspiring to me. I read that William Gibson wrote Neuromancer on a Hermes portable typewriter. In his words, it's "the kind of thing Hemingway would have used in the field." By contrast, I heard an interview with Robert Ludlum where he explained that he used to type out his books, but resorted to writing on legal pads to hand off to a typist because he didn't want anything between him and his work. 

Here's a fun fact about typography. Once upon a time, it was customary to follow each period with two spaces. The reason for this has to do with typewriters not always striking the ribbon properly, potentially making a comma look like a full stop. The extra space is supposed to signal to the reader that the mark they've just read is in fact a period and not a comma. Nowadays, with the state of word processing being what it is, this is unnecessary. Now we've adopted this behavior in texting where ending a sentence with a period is seen as cold and unfeeling. Meanwhile, leaving the sentence hanging, so to speak, is taken as warm and inviting, encouraging the conversation to continue. 

As for my weapon of choice, I'm using a Logitech G413 Carbon mechanical keyboard hooked up to an Intel-based Mac mini with a mere 8 gigabytes of RAM. I don't know remember how big the hard drive is, maybe 256 gigabytes, but the most data intensive thing I even do on the Mac is SketchUp, and I haven't opened that program more than a half-dozen times since my job finally agreed to reimburse me for using it out of pocket all these years. I think the largest file I've ever created in SketchUp was about 20 megabytes, and that was because it used a custom texture I painted in Procreate on my iPad. Speaking of my iPad, keyboards are the primary reason I don't ever want a laptop again. I utterly despise their keyboards. They just don't feel right and they hurt my fingers after a while. It doesn't help that many are also exceedingly fragile, a problem I seem to recall Apple having with one of its MacBooks. I have a portable, bluetooth keyboard for my iPad I sometimes take with me when I go out. It has a kind of low-profile version of a mechanical switch. It marries the solid, tactile feedback of a mechanical keyboard while also keeping a low profile in terms of its ergonomics. It's still no match for my G413, but it does well enough on its own. I have considered upgrading to something a little closer to my G413 in a portable package, but that may end up having to wait. Besides, I've written at length about it in a previous entry, so I'll try not repeating myself here. 

Really, I simply felt like typing something today. I wrote up a long Wordpress article a few days earlier, but there was a fair bit of copy and pasting there. For as long as it ended up being, I was able to write it up fairly quickly, since most of the counterpoints I was offering to the diatribe it was dissecting were old hat. It was practically instinctual, like when your predictive text is making all the right suggestions because its well-worn territory for your earlier discourses. 

It does give me quite a charge when I get into a good groove and can almost space out a little while I'm writing. The only issue is I tend to make a lot of mistakes. Auto-correct catches most of them, but it always makes me feel a little guilty when I lean on it too much. Once upon a time, unless you shelled out for some especially fancy typewriter, your options were limited in the backspace department. Your speed suffered, but your accuracy went up, and vice versa. Makes me wish there was still a good typing game out there I could drop into and hone my craft with. That one typing game I was eyeing some time ago has been delisted from the App Store, and Facebook games aren't exactly a thing anymore. I mean, they exist, but it's a very different landscape than when I played Bejeweled or something like that. It's more cluttered and overall has less variety than it appears. It's over-saturated and spread too thin is what's wrong with it. Searching for "typing" returns zero results. It's a shame, really.

Maybe it's all this internet discourse that's reduced our need for typing games. Now, we have keyboard warriors training themselves via online spats over various socio-political discussions and hot takes gone awry. I'm sure the rising of mobile platforms hasn't helped things much, either. More people interact using their smartphones than laptops or especially desktops, where that's more the realm of online gaming, MMO's and shooters and such. 

My Mac isn't exactly a gaming machine, but that's not why I got it. I needed something for SketchUp and Inkscape. It's more than adequate for that, though I'm wondering more recently if it's worth getting an upgraded Mac mini or simply going in whole hog on a new iPad. I wouldn't be able to bring my G413 with me, but I'd still have plenty of options for keyboards. The fact is I don't use Inkscape that much here as Affinity Designer is a very good vector drawing program. As for SketchUp, like I said, I don't use it very much at this point for my artwork. Of course, I'm making it sound like this is all going to be a decision I have to make soon. My Mac is holding up beautifully and my keyboard is great. I may get a new monitor, such as an ultra wide so I can have reference images off to the side while I work in Affinity Designer. 

Ideally, my monitor would be some kind of split-level affair, a normal-sized monitor up top for most conventional tasks, and a small, narrow, lower-res one just below it, about where I'd be looking at a sheet of paper in a typewriter. There are some "cyber deck" projects out there that are close to what I'm looking for, but I don't have the patience for such a project. I feel I would get too absorbed in the process and lose sight of the end goal. It would be the Ferrari Cameron's dad wipes down with a cloth diaper in his glass house. 

My keyboard at work is wearing down, certain letters completely worn away revealing the colored backlight. It certainly doesn't get used to anywhere near the extent as this one, but it isn't exactly a high end model anyway. There isn't any noticeable wear on the G413, not even a fuzzy edge on any of the letters. I think it's due to how the keycaps are made. Logitech recently got more back in stock, according to an e-mail alert I got some time ago. Maybe it's time to buy that backup I mentioned in a previous entry. 

My roommate is upset that she doesn't know what to get me for Christmas. My answer is always nothing, which flusters her. Maybe I'll move that one keyboard I added to my wishlist up a few tiers and start dropping some hints her way. 

If you made it this far, thank you for joining me on this little typing session/stream of consciousness. 

Batflash: a 90's Shared Universe?

 Unpopular opinion time.... 

I actually kind of like The Flash movie. Don't get me wrong, it is a bit of a mess, but it's nowhere near the mess that is the original Suicide Squad. As the DC movies go, I do feel it's one of the stronger entries. It took some legitimately creative risks. Whether or not those risks paid off is up to you. For my money, it hit more than it missed, but there is something about it that's been bugging me for some time. 

Why exactly is Batman the one to explain the time travel problem Flash created? 

Backing up, if you haven't seen the film, here's the fastest rundown/summary you will ever need. Flash (real name Barry Allen, portrayed by Ezra Miller) uses his speed to go back in time to undo a personal tragedy to make a better future for himself, his friends, and his family. However, instead of merely changing the future, he changes the past as well. This is known as retrocausality. 

While the movie's explanation of this phenomenon is adequate, I prefer the explanation offered in the animated film Flashpoint Paradox (itself based on a similarly named crossover event in the comics). The briefest rundown of that is as follows: When a speedster uses their power to travel in time, they're essentially outrunning time itself. Going faster than time creates the temporal equivalent of a sonic boom. 

In the film, what Barry creates in his time travel endeavor is a kind of mash-up universe, bits and pieces of alternate timelines playing mix and match into some sort of cohesive whole. In this case, it's comprised primarily of the Batman from the 1989 Tim Burton film and a minor variation of the plot from Man of Steel, namely General Zod's invasion of earth. Other details include Eric Stoltz playing Marty McFly in Back to the Future instead of Michael J. Fox. However, it's what ISN'T spelled out that makes this crossover interesting. After all, Back to the Future is never mentioned in Batman, so who's to say Eric Stoltz isn't the lead in that film and Michael J. Fox is known only as that kid from Teen Wolf? There's also no mention of Superman (Batman & Robin's throwaway line doesn't count as that was a different actor and director, we're focusing on Batman & Batman Returns). While there's also no mention of the Flash, Bruce Wayne (as portrayed by Michael Keaton) doesn't seem all that surprised by his arrival. Sure, there's a little scuffle between them, but it settles down relatively quickly and, as we've said, Bruce is the one who explains the situation rather than Barry. It's almost as if he expected this. Speaking of the past... 

We haven't forgotten this version of the Flash, have we?

This was a series that ran for one season in 1990, 22 1-hour episodes featuring John Wesley Shipp as Barry Allen. Production began in 1988, but picked up speed (ha) after the success of Tim Burton's Batman the year earlier. My memory of the series is overall positive, if a tad faded with the passage of time. It was a very well-made show, with exceptional production values despite being spread a little thin over 22 episodes. Of particular note is the costume itself, which ran a pretty penny for the time. It was decided that audiences wouldn't accept a spandex bodysuit, even in a modest television outing of a well-regarded superhero. In fact, it was because of Batman that the sculpted rubber suit was accepted as a justifiable expense. After all, it's in every episode. That makes it an investment. 

My point is that, in terms of overall aesthetics, who's to say these two different properties aren't sharing a setting? Who's to say Shipp's Flash and Keaton's Batman haven't met in the time following Batman Returns? Maybe this Flash isn't around anymore because of his own time travel shenanigans. Maybe he's the one who explained retrocausality to Bruce. 

I'm not pretending this is a perfect solution to what may not even be a problem. In fact, it might even create more problems by bringing another Flash into a film with 3 different Batmen. It could simply be a matter of plot convenience. Perhaps Bruce spent his post-Batman days reading up on Quantum physics. After all, in Flashpoint, it's Flash's nemesis who explains the problems with causality, and since he's not in this new movie, someone else had to take on the role of exposition dump. Like I said, despite some problems with the scene, I think it's one of the best, and Michael Keaton is clearly having fun with every last minute of it. He's still got it. 

Stockpile: I Won't Stand For It

My Mac mini was a housewarming gift to myself back in 2020. I'd always wanted one, but the timing never quite worked out. I set it up in a room that was going to be my home office, on an old kitchen table with a monitor stand I made from some old desk parts, some scrap aluminum, and 3d printed joinery I designed. I set about designing a whole new desk only to give up on the process when I found this "music station" desk from Monoprice on clearance. It's a little wobbly, but it's a good height for me and has a very small overall footprint that works well with the mini. 

At first I was using an old dining room chair that came with the table. I still have those chairs as they became a favorite bed spot for the cats, especially our late Holst. They weren't the best chair option, but I was content with making the most of what I had until something better came along. Some time later, I decided to spring for a Hag Capisco chair. This was a big investment; technically, it cost more than the Mac. I got it through a company called Fully and after waiting for a different height cylinder to work with my desk, I was up and running... until I realized this chair wasn't going to work on the carpet in the front office. This was especially the case when my rollerblade style casters arrived. I moved the whole operation into my dining room where there's a wood floor. It's a better space in the grand scheme of things, right next to my bedroom and within earshot of the upstairs, provided I'm not wearing headphones. 

I found out yesterday that Fully is no longer in business. Their site instead directs you to two other websites, neither of which offers Hag chairs. There's still a company called Flokk that distributes them, and they don't seem to be going anywhere anytime soon. In any case, should the need arise, I don't know if I'd go with another Capisco chair or go for something else. 

The ergonomics are good, with the notable exception of the posterior area. At the risk of TMI, this is a problem with all chairs I've owned for I am an assless chap. My chair at work has a cushion and I've considered upgrading that to something from the mattress company Purple. Sadly, cushions aren't going to be a possibility with my Capisco because of the height of the chair and the saddle styling of the seat. As I said, this is a problem with all chairs for me, and what I told myself when I got the chair was this was all part of the plan. I wanted the chair to be comfortable, but not so comfortable that I could spend several hours in it at once like so many gaming chairs seem to be moving towards. I wanted to sit down, do my work, and then get up every now and again to take necessary breaks. If I'm sitting down to watch YouTube or whatever, I'm doing so on the couch. I've got YouTube open right now, but only in another tab for music while I work. 

Speaking of breaks, one of the best pieces of writing advice I ever heard was from the one and only Sir Alec Guinness. When he was writing his memoir, he had a rule: don't get up or stop unless you know exactly what you're going to put down when you get back. That's not to say don't get up or do something different if you get stuck or something, but try to make it a rule to have something to come back to. It helps it stay in your memory while also giving you an incentive to get back to work sooner rather than later. 

Stockpile

I've been on something of a typing spree today. Not only have I written two entries for this blog today (one very short, mind), but I've written an entry over on my WordPress site. It's been some time since I sat down at my Mac and belted out a few paragraphs on my Logitech G413 Carbon. It's still one of the best mechanical keyboards I've ever used. After dealing with replacing a keyboard for my roommate's PC, I debated getting a backup just in case anything happened to this one, but it's temporarily sold out at Logitech's website. I've even put my name in to be notified once it comes back. 

It's not even Logitech's most premium keyboard. Rather, it's probably the cheapest mechanical keyboard you can get that's worth a damn. There's plenty of others, but they're either double the price of the G413, or they're from small brands of, shall we say, a suspicious nature. There also seems to be this move away from having the number pad, which I like having for when I use SketchUp. 

I could probably do a lot better. In fact, if and when the time comes, I've got a few alternatives picked out should the Carbon not come back in time. One of them is from 8BitDo, who make lovely game controllers for the Nintendo Switch and other platforms. Likewise, its color scheme is based on the original NES console (both the US and Japanese versions). The switches for its keys are notably different than those in the Carbon. They're far less clicky, but just as responsive. 

With a typical membrane keyboard that most of you are probably used to, you have to push the keys all the way down before the letters appear on the page. With a mechanical keyboard, you don't have to do that. It's difficult to explain the sensation. The way I like to think of it is that the keyboard better reflects your mood. I can go fairly quiet on this keyboard, but if things start getting intense and I get into a fast groove, it can fill the whole house with a satisfying cacophony of clicks. I say "quiet" but the G413 Carbon is one of the louder mechanical keyboards out there even at my most delicate. I suppose it's still quieter than an electric typewriter of old, but that's a low bar to clear.

My mouse situation is a little more well-prepped. I have a Steelseries Sensei 310, one of the best truly ambidextrous mice I've ever used. In fact, it's so good that Steelseries discontinued it and its closest cousin is currently sold out. On the little shelf below my keyboard is a Corsair M55 which is something of a backup, though I'm more likely to bring my Razer Viper home from work. There, it's a backup to my Razer Naga (left-handed version). Then again, I'm more likely to just get another one of those in a few weeks in case they get discontinued out of nowhere for a second time. There's really no comparing all the keypad shortcuts on a Naga with only two buttons on my other mice, at least when it comes to my workflow in SketchUp. My vector art doesn't rely on so many keyboard shortcuts, not to where I'd like them mapped to my left thumb, anyway.

In the documentary Dreams with Sharp Teeth, writer Harlan Ellison shared his stockpile of Olympia manual typewriters with his friend, Robin Williams. Williams laughed at the sheer number of them while Ellison explained he also had a refrigerator full of ink ribbons. 

Conservative writer and intellectual William F. Buckley, Jr. was such an avid fan of the 1978 word processing program WordStar that he used it up until his death in 2008, working through the hurdles of getting it to run on newer platforms. He said of his dedication, "I'm told there are better programs, but I'm also told there are better alphabets."

These are things I think about when I sit down at my Mac mini and write away a few hours on occasion. 

Gex Got Going

In August of 2022, I wrote about the short-lived Gex franchise and how it tried to go toe-to-toe with the likes of Mario and Sonic, only to fall into obscurity. 

Well, Limited Run Games dropped this trailer, and I couldn't be happier:

There's no release date as of this writing, but it almost doesn't matter. I'm just happy that Gex has a home with Square-Enix rather than getting sold off to a crypto scheme. 

Inktober2023: Proactive Procrastination

 OR:

Pick It Up and Phone It In

I've been dealing with some motivation problems of late, evidenced in part by my absence from this blog. I participated in a drawing challenge early last year and I really liked how it went... until I didn't. Inktober of that year was rather anemic. I was only doing a few drawings, mostly leftovers from other projects or miscellaneous challenges that were only Inktober-adjacent. Overall, though, my motivation was shot. I just about got through the winter in terms of making my annual holiday card, but I felt totally spent after that. 

It's not because of the onset of AI-based art programs like MidJourney and Stable Diffusion, though it certainly doesn't help. DeviantART has become a bit of a minefield. I'll think I've discovered a new artist and fervently peruse their catalog only to find they're using AI on basically their entire portfolio. That can be very disheartening. 

Fast forward to the first of September when the Inktober 2023 official prompt list drops. Leading up to the day, I was thinking about how I would explain to everyone that I wasn't going to participate in the event this year, that I really needed some time away to think about things. Seeing the list at first didn't inspire anything in me. Actually, that's a lie. It inspired despair. My motivation issues got put on full blast when I saw that list and felt absolutely no drive of any sort to make anything of it. I'd been making some vector pieces off and on in the months before, mostly text-based pieces, puns and turns of phrase, things like that. About 2 weeks later, I took a look at the list again and focused on a single word from the dead center of the list, halfway through the month. 

I got an idea. 

It was the word "demon." I was looking at the shape of the letters and got an idea to write out the word but with a pitchfork taking the place of the "m." I'd been watching some tutorials for Inkscape and all the various text-based effects one can do with a little pre-planning and some basic tools. So, on a lunch break from work, I opened Inkscape, and made my little bit of word art, Demon with both the "m" and the "n" being replaced by barbed pitchforks. 

3 days later, I had all 31 prompts done. 

Actually, it was more like 4 because I took a break after the second day. Some were straightforward, some were a little more elaborate, but all 31 were effectively in the can. I had even thought of going back a few days later and sprucing up a few, but I decided against it. I was pretty damn impressed with myself though I do say so my... self. There was no pre-planning, no juggling of work and play throughout the month of October. My only real responsibility would be posting the illustrations on a schedule. 

In years past, my rule was that I could come up with ideas and sketches the moment the prompt list dropped. I could start actual work on the illustration as soon as the weekend before the 1st, so I'd have something to post that morning at the very least. This year, I threw that workflow completely out the window and more or less by complete accident. I even thought to take it a step further and try to automate the posting process. 

Instagram has an option available to all its users to toggle between a personal account and a professional account. There's no cost or anything, and you can cancel at any time. One of the biggest perks is the ability to schedule posts up to 75 days in advance, descriptions and tags and all. I thought I had it all figured out... until I didn't. When I post to Instagram, I'll also have it post to Facebook, where most of my family spends their social media time. Many of my relatives look forward to my Inktober posts, so I was more than a little disappointed when I found that scheduling an Instagram post did not include the option to mirror the post on Facebook. 

So, I'm still posting the images on the day, though some may end up getting scheduled anyway depending on how busy I may get on a given day, if I have a rushed morning or something like that. Like I said, it's disappointing, but hardly the worst thing in the world. The first full week of Inktober is done as I write this, and the response has been so-so compared to years past. I'm not bothered by this. I expected it in a way; word art doesn't exactly set the world on fire. It may get a good chuckle here and there, but it's just visual metaphors through text, like concrete poetry. 

And that is how I told myself no, and got the job done anyway and with time to spare. 

I once saw a SKP file THIIIIIIS big

 (Originally posted to the "Corner Bar" of the SketchUp forums)

I've seen about a half-dozen posts this morning from users making SketchUp files in sizes I frankly never would have dreamed possible in a thousand years. I think the largest file I've ever made in SketchUp was maybe 10MB. 90% of my work is for 3D printing, so I don't really need a lot of components, textures, or assets from the 3D Warehouse, and geolocation is only handy for a few practical demonstrations of scale.  

One of the files I saw someone have difficulty opening was almost 300MB. A lot of it turned out to be some unused components, and a quick purge from my fellow users with Enlightenment levels of patience brought it down to a somewhat more manageable 100MB. 

Moments later, I happened upon another forum post from someone else having difficulty opening a file. I get a bit worried; maybe there's something wrong with 2023 that's emerging or some compatibility issue with Apple Silicon nobody's worked out just yet. I click on the provided Google Drive link and almost fell out of my chair. 

It was nearly a full gigabyte. I mean... how? I'm frankly surprised it took getting to that size for them to start having issues. It's as if they made everything in one single session and only reopened it the next day. 

This isn't me knocking these folks for not being efficient. I recently spent a fair chunk of time re-uploading the same model file to the 3D Warehouse because I could not for the life of me figure out how a shipping pallet with a default texture was a full megabyte. It was literally made from a single component (a plank) arranged in the overall shape of a pallet. Even with the default scale figures (of which there were two for some reason) successfully purged, it was showing up as a full MB. It finally dawned on me that I had saved the geolocation in the file, complete with satellite image and topography. Obviously, that's not going to be much use to someone who just wants something for their forklift to pick up and set down, so it had to go. The final tally sits at 89KB. 

I was an early adopter of the browser-based version of SketchUp (I've still got files that have the "my SketchUp beta" watermark on them), so I've been at this for a while, and even I can still lose sight of the bigger picture and bog down a file with unnecessary guff. I think we're also all spoiled on larger hard drive sizes and file transfer services like WeTransfer and Drive that we don't see a large SKP as any big deal. I scoffed once at a YouTube video of someone proudly bringing the size of their file down to a few hundred kilobytes. Now, I understand. 

It's important that, when we pass on our knowledge to others, be it at work or through these forums or YouTube comments or wherever, that we emphasize simplicity and efficiency. Space-saving tricks like components should be introduced as early as possible, even if the other person doesn't grasp it right away. It will plant a seed in their mind that they don't have to model multiple identical versions of an object. It will teach them to think more laterally and embrace "creative laziness." 

Thanks for coming to my corner of the corner bar. 

Goodnight, and good luck.

Penny Gadget

It's the last day of February and I've written more this month than I had in any month last year. Of course, I'd like to think I put more effort into my writing last year, favoring quality over quantity, whereas these last few entries have been an exercise in trying a sort of stream of consciousness approach, hence no real paragraphs (and only bold for the sake of tracking). I decided to splurge on some quality of life upgrades for my home setup. I decided to finally get that USB hub from Satechi, the one that goes under the Mac Mini so it looks just a little bit closer to the Mac Studio. This style of hub is technically older than the Mac Studio, so it's likely Apple took note of all the extra ports and SD card slot. I'm getting the hub because I want to free up some USB ports. My keyboard and mouse occupy the only two old school USB-A ports on the back, leaving me with only 4 USB-C ports and barely any devices that use USB-C. I got a special cable for my microphone and I've got a USB-C to lightning cable for when I need to charge the iPad or my phone. I need the extra USB-A ports from the hub because I also got a 3D mouse. It's the smaller, portable version of the one I've got at work, so I can work more efficiently in SketchUp. I won't get as many shortcut keys, but the important thing is smoother camera controls. I'll also get the benefit of a SD card slot rather than unplugging my keyboard and using the mouse to transfer files. Satechi also makes a small standalone adapter so I could use one of the free USB-C ports, but it's rather big and the ports are spaced relatively close together, so I'm not sure if it would fit properly. In any case, the hub looks pretty cool and I'll still have one USB-C port free in the back. It's kind of funny how much this reminds me of when I had my iMac. It only had two USB ports, but you could daisy chain the keyboard and mouse to leave one free, and that was typically used for the Zip drive. It was a solid little machine for how underpowered it was. Sometimes I wish I hadn't bought that Compaq Presario shortly after college. I wanted to play games and I wasn't sure how well the iMac would run OSX. Plus, Windows XP had come along and singlehandedly fixed pretty much every single complaint I ever had about Windows 98, so migrating made perfect sense at the time. I later tried out Linux (specifically, Linux Mint) until I found a Toshiba laptop at a decent price that brought me back to Windows. I later gave that laptop away to a friend because my Android phone became my daily driver. That phone stayed with me for a few years until I got my iPad. An iPhone followed that, and a short time later I got this Mac mini. I'd always wanted one, but the timing was never quite right. Now, it's 2 generations behind the current models, new processors and everything. I don't particularly care. I'll keep using it until I can't. Much like my iMac, even if it was underpowered, it was more than adequate enough as a word processor. My screen flicker hasn't cropped back up, so I can rule out some issue with the video output. That makes me happy. My keyboard makes me happy because of how it feels to type on. The iMac's keyboard was pretty good too. It wasn't mechanical, but at least it's not one of these damned chiclet keyboards that everything seems to be moving towards. It's why I don't really care much for laptops anymore; their keyboards are such inferior experiences. I watched some videos about the old Sinclair ZX81, and noticed for the first time it didn't have a proper space bar. It was essentially where the right shift key is. This is because the machine was never intended as a word processor. It was meant to be a gateway drug to introduce youngsters to programming and computer science. Code, as a rule, doesn't lend itself to the kind of writing I'm doing right now. It's more slow and methodical, with arguably more punctuation than spaces. Coding languages often using something called camel case. It's where there are no spaces between the words, but the first letter of each word is capitalized. There's also one called snake case. It's all lower case letters and uses underscores instead of spaces. The reason camel case tends to be preferred is because space can be at a premium, and it's more efficient to rely on capitalization to be readable. I didn't say it the last few times I wrote these, but in case you've been reading these, you have my thanks. Hopefully, you learned something, or maybe it at least briefly took your mind off of something you didn't want to think about. 

Goodnight, and good luck. 

Take a Penny

 I need to get new tires for my car. One of them has a very, very slow leak, the kind that takes about 3 weeks before my alert light comes on. I learned something interesting about tires. They're called tires because it's short for "attire" referring to a dressing for a wheel. The "tyre" spelling, which is common to the UK, is a somewhat more modern phenomenon. Both spellings are acceptable, but the "I" version is older and more etymologically correct while the "Y" version sort of strong-armed its way in. I think the treads are wearing down as well. My caliper pen has a tire gauge, but I'm not sure how to use it. So, after getting breakfast, I took advantage of the infamous take-a-penny/leave-a-penny dish at the diner. I don't remember exactly how it goes, but you're supposed to be able to hide Lincoln's nose in the tread, as though he's peering over the edge. 

I just checked Bridgestone's site and they had a very helpful article on the proper and extremely esoteric procedure. It's also dated 1 APR 21 THU, so now I'm questioning everything. 

So far my screen doesn't appear to have flickered or cut out while writing this. That makes me happy. It's probably going to be the highlight of today. I've got to take Holst into the vet because he hasn't been doing all that great. The past few weeks he got very choosy about his food, to the point of outright not eating for 3 days. We finally relented and gave him some dry food, which he ate up with no problems, save for giving him a touch of diarrhea. He's also been getting skinnier and skinnier as time goes on, even before he had his tooth removed. We thought maybe it was because he wasn't eating because of his tooth. When the tooth was removed back in November, he seemed back his old self. This recent development has only spanned about 2-3 weeks. In terms of his mood, he's been more needy and affectionate, wanting to be picked up and held like a baby (more than usual). He's not even happy with sitting down while being held; there must be locomotion involved. Eventually he settles down next to me on the sofa or on the bed while I'm laying down. He goes back and forth on sitting in my lap while at my Mac.

Knock Knock Knock Penny

I put off doing these for a few days because I felt like they had run their course, but I'm in a bit of a typing mood again, so here we are. 

 My monitor has been cutting out lately and I need to figure out if it's the monitor of if it's the Mac mini. If it's the former, then I'll take it as a sign to upgrade to an ultra wide. If it's the latter, then that puts me in a rough spot. I suppose I can try to have it fixed, but I'm not sure what that's going to involve. I thin it if it was the Mac mini that was cutting out, there would be other issues. I'm wearing headphones right now and listening to music while I write. Of course, that's coming out of the headphone jack on the Mac rather than out of the monitor. The only true test would be to plug another device into the monitor and wait and see if it will cut out again. It's reminding me a little bit of when I would look down at the keyboard while writing (getting into a frantic groove), only to look up and see that my app locked up and the last two or even three paragraphs are basically gone. That happened back on a Macintosh IIsi, though I don't remember if the app in question was MacWrite II or Corel WordPerfect. I learned to type in either the 7th or 8th grade. It was sort of an odd arrangement; there were very few classes that were only half a year. In fact, the only ones I knew about were the computer classes, one general knowledge and one specifically for typing. I tried to talk my parents out of putting me in the typing class because I was anxious about how well I would do. Some kids could get waivers from their parents. I suppose the thinking was they already knew well enough to not need the class. My parents insisted, however. So, first was the computer class, which I still think was unnecessary (and my parents probably did, too), but like I said, it was a weird arrangement with the half-year classes. I had a bit of fun in it. The curriculum was concerned mostly with general knowledge. We literally played 3D Tic Tac Toe and DinoPark Tycoon throughout the entire class for weeks on end in order to demonstrate we knew how to use the mouse and navigate menus. We even had a section on typing, which was awkward because I was supposed to take that class in a few months. It wasn't graded as harshly or anything, but it still gave me a little anxiety. What was funny was that we learned on Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing on Macintosh LC III's while the typing class learned on what I believe were Apple IIe's or at least something similar in form factor. This was the early to mid 1990's, so CD-ROMs were fairly new. I don't even think I was playing Myst by then. The IIsi only had a SCSI input for the CD-ROM drive, and clicking between any two locations in the game took several seconds. You'd know an animated sequence was coming up because you'd hear the drive get louder just before the scene change. I just reached up and behind the monitor to see if the HDMI cable was loose or something like that. I barely touched the power cord and the screen got some horizontal black lines for a moment. I unplugged the HDMI cable and plugged it back in. I'll keep typing to see if it cuts out again. It doesn't seem to cut out long enough to get the "no signal" warning on the monitor, which leads me to believe the issue may well be with the Mac, which I'm calling the worst case scenario. If I have to send it in to get fixed, it's not like getting my phone fixed where I'd have to find a replacement device while it's away. Still, it would be an inconvenience. According to Apple's website, it looks like I'd have to call in to even find out if I can send my product in for repairs. It's showing an Apple Care icon, which I thought would have given out by now since I've had the device for close to 2 years by now. The only difference really is whether it's covered by the Care package or if I'd have to pay something out of pocket. Since it's likely something with the HDMI output, I doubt it would come to very much. Most of the cost would likely be shipping it back and forth. Maybe while it's away I'll get one of those Pi-based computers. There's one directly from Raspberry Pi, and the other is called an Orange Pi. They're very similar devices, essentially thin keyboards that house full single board computers. They evoke the old microcomputers like the Commodore 64 or the ZX81. They run and ARM-based version of Linux and can supposedly run some Android apps. I'd essentially treat them like that old Chromebook I used to use once upon a time before the Mac mini. I plugged a mouse and keyboard into it and used its display output on an external monitor. Both its internal display and built-in keyboard were atrocious to use. There was no contrast control for the screen, only a display setting that might as well have been a toggled labeled either "eye strain" or "way too bright." I suppose if the worst case scenario were to happen and I'd have to replace the Mac mini, I would finally get to try out one of the new M1 or M2-based versions and see how they stack up. I know there's some apps I wouldn't be able to use anymore, but the majority of them haven't been used in some time, so I'd hardly miss them. I never had one of those microcomputers. My first was an Apple IIgs. I guess I was spoiled, given how pricey those things were. Now that I'm confronted with the possibility of being without my Mac mini, I'm looking at cheap alternatives rather than making the investment. That the cheap alternatives would be a stop gap rather than a final solution is what makes it worse. Apple no longer sells an Intel-based Mac mini like I've got. There are two in their clearance and refurbished section. One's decently spec'd out with a larger hard drive than mine, and the other has got 4 times the RAM and a full terabyte of storage. It's also about 3 times the price of my mini, which tracks with Apple's pricing scheme. In my experience, though, I've never had serious hardware issues with my past devices. At worst, they were just a little underpowered. If there's a problem with my Mac mini's display output, it would be the first serious issue I've had with an Apple product. I've been lucky.

Goodnight, and good luck. 

A Ha'Penny Will Do

I wonder if I can repeat what I did yesterday. 

Keychron has a keyboard with the number pad on the left hand side rather than the right. I like this idea. The problem I have with the way most people set up their keyboards and mice is to start with your keyboard, have the number pad on the right, and then also have their mouse on the right. This means you either have to reach far to the right to operate the mouse, or you have to lean to the left to center the home row and type. For years, my solution to this has been to have the mouse on the left, leaving home row in the center where it belongs. Of course, one has to consider the overall application of the space when discussing ergonomics. Put simply, if you spend more time writing than using the mouse, then he occasional reach over to the right isn't too taxing. If you spend more time using your mouse than writing, leaning over to type up the occasional piece of text isn't that big of a deal. Moreover, if you spend more time using the mouse than your keyboard, splurging on a fully mechanical keyboard is more than a little excessive. I'm using a mechanical keyboard right now, a Logitech G413 Carbon. It's probably the cheapest mechanical keyboard you can get that's really worth the price. I don't remember what I paid, but it was not full price, and it frequently goes on sale. At work, I have an old Corsair keyboard that used to belong to Tabi before we got her another mechanical keyboard. The Corsair is actually a membrane keyboard, the more common type of keyboard out in the wild. As far as whether I use my keyboard or mouse more, I'd have to say it's a fairly even mix, maybe leaning toward using the mouse more. When I have to use my keyboard, apart from brief e-mails and Teams messages, it's for the shortcuts in Sketchup. That hardly warrants using the satisfyingly tactile qualities of a mechanical keyboard. I've been shopping around for a keyboard to use at work instead of the Corsair, though it's also not a mechanical keyboard. My mouse is a Razer Naga (lefty version, which was not one, but two separate hassles to get ahold of, but that's another story I won't bother with now). It has an onboard memory to hold all of the keyboard shortcuts I've programmed into its thumb pad. Changing those macros requires a software download, Razer Synapse. Any software we want on our machines has to be installed under our IT department's supervision for security reasons. This usually isn't any big deal; it's merely tedious. I don't have the software for the Corsair installed, so if I want to change the keyboard's lights to match my mouse's red, I've got to go through IT. Meanwhile, if I get a Razer keyboard, I've already got the software installed, and therefore can have a matching keyboard and mouse. Specifically, I'm looking at their Ornata V3 X, easily their cheapest keyboard. I haven't decided yet because I've essentially got a perfectly good keyboard right now and matching the lighting and branding is mere vanity. As I said last time, there's a difference between a purchase and an investment as much as there's a difference between a want and a need. There's something called the Boots Theory of Socioeconomic Unfairness. Named for a passage from a Terry Pratchett novel, the long and short of the story is that more expensive items lasted longer while cheaper ones wore out sooner and therefore the more frugally-minded wound up spending more money due to replacements following general wear and tear. You wouldn't expect wear and tear to apply to a desktop and monitor, but as I say this (as off and on while writing this), my monitor will cut out for a few seconds. Its LED is still blue, which means the issue may rest with my Mac mini. That's troublesome as I don't know how to use any of the USB-C outputs for a display. It may simply need a cable and the Mac will simply figure out the rest on its own. I know it's not the sleep mode because it happens while I type and move my mouse around. My TV started doing the same thing some months ago. I worked out it's the TV and not the PS4 because it does it with the PS3 as well. It could well be a software problem because whenever it comes back on, the clock will show one time, then skip ahead about an hour and a few minutes. I've gone through the update process and it says it's the most current version of the firmware. Then again, a bad component can likely cause a software malfunction, maybe a small battery somewhere that keeps the clock synched when it's not connected to the wi-fi. It's the intermittent aspect that's the most irritating. If it would simply cut out and stay cut out, that would be one thing, but for it to work properly 90% of the time makes it much harder to justify an upgrade. It's an annoyance, not a deal breaker. I also don't like the idea of passing the TV on to someone else through a thrift store, knowing full well they may be every bit as annoyed at the blackout as I am. Yes, buyer beware, but I'd still feel guilty about passing off my problem. 

Goodnight, and good luck. 

A Penny For A Word

Let's go with the courier font today since I'm in such a good typing mood. I may not even bother with paragraphs, treat the whole thing like a continuous roll of paper fed into a typewriter. Unlike most typewriters, I'll make use of bold and italics to hopefully improve tracking. 

My motivation problems continue. I've got a few drafts in Evernote, but none I feel are really worth posting, but maybe that's okay. I saw a short on YouTube asking, "What is a sketchbook?" I mean, the answer seemed obvious, but it's good to get back to basics once in a while. Yes, it went over the fundamentals, but it also added some solid advice. Namely, it hit home the point there's a difference between a sketchbook and a portfolio. Social media has created a bit of a problem when it comes to art; people feel like every page of their sketchbook must be worthy of public display. In reality, it's a place to practice, practice, practice. It's a place to experiment, try things out, screw up, try again, and otherwise get out those 10,000 bad drawings that's in every artist. One of the best pieces of advice I've ever heard about art came from YouTube animator Tabbes, that you have to be willing to destroy your art supplies. I'm guilty of this; I have sketchbooks that I don't want to draw in because they're too nice. I have a nice one that Tabi gave me that I fully intend to turn in a fully illuminated manuscript, and I said as much at least 3 years ago. The last 2-3 years have really affected my sense of time and progression. Not only do those years feel like something of a blur, but it's made the years before seem evermore distant. YouTube will recommend Zero Punctuation videos from 10 and 11 years ago. Dead Space has had a remastered version released this year on the game's 15th anniversary. I think back to what was going on in my life back in those days. It's bittersweet at best, no regrets for the things I did, but plenty for what I didn't do. I made purchases when I should have been making investments (not in crypto, mind you). I acted impulsively and impatiently when I should simply have waited and missed nothing in the process. I was wrong about plenty of things and remain glad to be proven as such. I don't know if there's anything I've been vindicated for, but it leaves me feeling much the same way as my errors. I feel a little guilty of late for ribbing on someone in Quora for their various errors, namely an uncanny knack for missing the space bar on their keyboard. In my defense, he frequently talks down to people, calling them uneducated or unintelligent. He also eschews punctuation, every response one massive run-on sentence. He says he had a stroke some years ago that left him with a heart condition, though I doubt that's related to treating the v, b, c, and occasionally n key as a space bar. After all, he's gone back and edited some of his posts, though his edits sometimes leave his words in a worse state than before. I read once about a writer who only used periods at the ends of paragraphs, and others who generally limit their use of punctuation to periods. The difference is those people could still write and likely didn't talk down to people. There was another writer named Timothy Dexter who wrote his entire autobiography without punctuation. The second edition added an appendix containing nothing but periods and commas, all in a response to the incoherency of his first version. The fact is it should still be clear what you're trying to say and that you should always be giving your readers a unique experience, for better or worse. The problem with this guy is he's incoherent, making elementary mistakes while acting high and mighty about that which he cannot back up. I can forgive an ego if there's a redeeming talent. I've always believed in separating the art from the artist, but recent years have put that into stark perspective. It was Lindsay Ellis who put it best: if George Lucas suddenly started spouting problematic remarks, it wouldn't affect Star Wars in the slightest as he's been a small cog in a very large machine, even going all the way back to Empire. J.K. Rowling, by contrast, is very much at the heart of the Wizarding World. Then there's writers like H.P. Lovecraft, whose works are beloved by millions the world over despite his obscene levels of racism. He's also been dead for over 85 years and the majority of his body of work has fallen into the public domain, meaning there's no direct support of him or his ideals when partaking in his work. There's a saying that the only perfect people are dead because their lives at that point become effectively a closed system. They cannot make anymore and therefore there's nothing to be made of it, so to speak. Ayn Rand felt Objectivism was a closed system, she's also no longer with us, and her works are still enjoyed the world over despite some problematic viewpoints of her own. I've also learned recently about a conservative pundit named William F. Buckley Jr., who was an avid fan of the DOS-based word processor Wordstar. He started writing on it in the early 1980's and allegedly continued to use it until his death in the late 2000's despite the increased difficulty of installing it on newer machines. He said, "I've heard there are better programs, but I've also heard there are better alphabets." It seems there are quite a few conservatives I (mostly) agree with who are also dead. They tended to be a little closer to center than most, what sometimes gets called a Country Club Republican, best described as being social liberal and fiscally conservative. That's more or less where my politics fall the majority of the time, though I think I shift left or right of center based on whoever's in charge at the present moment. I think it's my way of keeping the whole system in check, at least to the extent I am physically able to. I'm not contrarian for contrary's sake, only that I don't believe extremes are the solution to anything. Were that the case, there would be fewer problems in the world. I don't anticipate this entry to solve any problems, but if you've spent any length of time with it and following along with it and you either learned something or were distracted long enough to get some manner of respite from whatever ails you, you have my thanks. 

Goodnight, and good luck.