Keeping Watch in the Walled Garden

Full disclosure: I'm writing this on a Mac mini while my iPhone 12 mini charges and before I do a little drawing on my iPad Pro later. 

Officially, I identify as platform agnostic. I don't care what operating system I have to use; I will make it work. I grew up on classic MacOS, I switched over to Windows XP shortly after college, I was a Linux user for a while, and my phone choices have been equally all over the map. I'm far from an early adopter, but you name it, I've probably tried it. Ever heard of Maemo? Symbian? 

For my money, Apple makes exactly two good products, the Mac mini and the iPad Pro. I often joke to people, "I don't have an iPhone. I have an iPad... Oh, by the way, did you know Apple makes a camera? It takes calls too for some reason." Also in the interest of full disclosure, I have a smartwatch from Fossil that works well enough with my iPhone. I have no desire to buy an Apple Watch. For perspective, my favorite feature about my Fossil is that it doesn't have a screen. It's got a plain, ordinary watch face (which I think is called a complication if you're in the know) and the hands occasionally move to different positions based on what notifications I've set it to. In recent months, however, this has stopped working. It's a little irritating, but I don't miss it. It certainly doesn't make me want to buy an Apple Watch. Those could well be famous last words, but on the whole, the only Watch feature that had my attention was using it as a painter's palette for Procreate, and I don't even think that feature is supported anymore. As for my Fossil, I've actually stopped wearing it altogether. I simply don't need a watch that much, and its use as a pedometer and sleep tracker are simply no longer part of my daily habit. 

As of this writing, the Department of Justice has taken Apple to court over its monopolistic practices, particularly in the smartphone market. Among its talking points was the fact the Apple Watch currently only works with iPhones. Android users are simply out of luck and have to settle for a Garmin, a Fossil, a Fitbit.... 

I'm not saying the DOJ doesn't have some kind of a case against Apple. What I am saying is that their angle of attack speaks more to their lack of knowledge not only of the technology, but of the market itself. This isn't like 20 years ago when Microsoft was under the microscope for their own monopolistic practices, but this is far from apples to apples (no pun intended). That's why I brought up all the other smartwatch brands, smartwatch brands that work with both Apple and Android devices. Moreover, I'm a little confused by this talking point. The DOJ is saying Apple has too much of the smartwatch marketshare with their watch which is exclusive to Apple products. So, what happens if they add Android support? Wouldn't that give them a bigger piece of the pie they allegedly already have too much of? Won't that just land them back in court for the exact same offense but now with slightly different wording? Wouldn't that make any ruling on the matter tantamount to self-incrimination? 

Personally, I don't know anyone who wants an Apple Watch so badly they're willing to give up their Android phone to get one. That's simply not the market we live in. Once upon a time, I worked for a cell carrier that did not earn the iPhone's exclusivity contract with AT&T. Needless to say, this led to a deluge of calls about when the iPhone was coming to our neck of the woods and what hoops would have to be jumped through to make it happen. A workaround did emerge at one point. The iPhone's exclusivity was limited to the United States, so it was possible to use the phone on our network... in Germany. That means you'd have to import a German iPhone, and use a German SIM card, which meant all of your calls would be international ones. Would you believe someone I spoke with still wanted one after all that was explained to them, that it would literally cost them more to use the phone in a month than to buy the thing outright because all of their calls would be for a German number on a North American network? I have no idea if this person went through with their plan, though I like to think he got as far as putting in a bid on an eBay listing before losing it and taking it as a sign to simply wait for the iPhone to be available on other networks. He didn't have to wait long and, frankly, those early iterations of the iPhone are among the many reasons I'm not an early adopter. My first iPhone was a 5c, which was only supposed to be a temporary device while my Sony Xperia phone was getting its battery replaced. None of my iPhones have been the newest model. 

There was likely a certain time in my life when I suffered from the dreaded Fear of Missing Out, but I was a kid, and like all kids, I grew up. So, when I see people lining up to buy a phone or a game console on launch day, I don't envy them. In fact, I only sort of feel bad for them. Do you know who was the first person in North America to own a Nintendo 64? Neither do I. I don't think anyone knows. Even with social media, I don't think we could ever know for certain the name and face of the first person to own a Playstation 5. I'm sure it was a big deal to them, whoever they are, but let's not pretend that this FOMO business is anything to give in to or follow like a cartoon character floating toward a pie cooling on a windowsill. 

I think the DOJ is misunderstanding FOMO, treating it like some perfectly rational mindset in a consumer-driven economy regulated (loosely) by a democratic republic. Someone really wanting an Apple Watch does not make the niche Apple has carved out for itself a monopoly, even if that niche is worth several billion dollars. 

"What do you mean this person has to get a new phone for their watch to work!? This is an injustice!" 

Seriously, where is this attitude when it comes to big Pharma or the oil companies? 

That'$ only a $lightly rhetorical que$tion. 

My point is that the monopoly Apple has allegedly made for itself is nothing like the one that Microsoft got called out on 20-some years ago or the one AT&T was broken up over however long before that. I can't run MacOS on a Microsoft Surface tablet. I can't play Nintendo Switch games on my iPhone. I can't use a BMW part in my Honda. The list goes on. If Apple wants to paint themselves into a corner by playing their cards close to the chest, let them and most importantly let the market decide whether that's playing fair in the game of capitalism. 

A Little Tipsy

Let me start by admitting that I am by no means an expert on aerospace engineering and could most certainly not land anything on the moon or Mars or anywhere else in our solar system. I don't think I ever even succeeded at that egg drop challenge everyone did in elementary school (not even sure I participated). The point is that my opinion on the Odysseus Lander is only that, one of 10,000 opinions by someone with no expertise on the subject. 

Remember that email chain letter from a few years ago about how the booster rockets on the space shuttle are based on the width of a horse's ass? It's got to do with train tracks being based on old wagon trails, which in turn owe their dimensions to Roman chariots, and you see where this is going. The credibility of the story is debatable, but the point is that for anything we construct, eventually some part of the process is going to be arbitrary or born of a necessity that's no longer a problem to overcome. 

I was thinking about this when I saw the Odysseus lander. I wondered if it had to be designed the way it is to properly fit in the payload space of the rocket, hence it effectively being taller than it is wide. 

From what I can find, the Falcon 9 rocket is about 3.66m (12 feet) wide. I don't know what that is in horse asses, but let's leave that rabbit hole be. I don't feel like researching what other landing craft it housed or exactly how much of that diameter is usable cargo space and not insulation or whatever else it takes to get that phone booth into space. All I want to know is why it was designed that way when so many other craft understand the importance of placing your center of gravity as low as possible. 

This is the Philae Lander, part of the Rosetta mission to Comet 67 P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko back in 2014 (launched in 2004, by the way). It had a rough landing of its own. One missed harpoon and a failed thruster caused it to bounce twice before finally landing and resuming its mission. You'll notice it only has 3 legs and is overall fairly low to the ground.

This is the Viking lander. It landed on Mars in 1976. It also only has 3 legs and is overall wider than it is tall. Are you noticing a pattern yet?

The Odysseus lander has six legs, but according to reports, one leg may have snapped, sending it on its side and possibly leaning against a rock. I don't want to diminish their accomplishment, but ignoring decades of sensible design doesn't endear me to their cause.

This is a tensegrity robot, designed by the Creative Machines Lab out of New York City. It uses tensioning rods to maintain its shape and can even roll by telescoping and expanding its legs in a sequence. Theoretically, a science payload could be suspended in the center of this "skeletal ball" and with no obvious up or down could land in any orientation and be able to correct itself. Also, depending on where we drop it, it may not even need a chute or booster to slow it down. As stated, though, this is all theoretical as only various field tests have been conducted to prove the concept of rolling as a viable means of locomotion on uneven terrain. 

It makes me wonder if Intuitive Machines, creators of the Odysseus lander, maybe had to answer to some higher-ups who weren't too keen on any unproven technologies, instead opting for something that at least resembled a more conventional design. 

The Death of Drafts

Something I need to get in the habit of is using Evernote to write my rough drafts before bringing them into Blogger, rather than my usual method of writing into Blogger directly. The interface is fine when I need to insert things like links or videos, but as far as the core activity of writing the entry, it's not always as smooth and pleasant a user experience as it should be. I feel the same way about WordPress, though to a lesser degree because the block system it uses is relatively intuitive. Blogger is too much like a word processor; it's very much about the WYSIWYG philosophy.

To better illustrate what I mean, we have to talk about 2001: A Space Odyssey. A lot of people don't understand the relationship between the movie and the book, specifically which came first. Technically, the book was written first, but it was meant to serve as something of a wiki for the screenplay. As Arthur C. Clarke put it, "Before you can make a movie, you need a script. Before you write a script, you need a story." Screenplays, by their very nature, aren't really meant for embellishing details or offering backstory to a spotlighted item. There's an unwritten rule in screenwriting of no paragraph of more than 3 lines. They're designed to be concise and quick to read, each page amounting to roughly one minute of screen time. Novels can play with time and structure in ways screenplays can't, hence why some novels are deemed "unfilmable."

There's another rule about screenplays, that the first version of your screenplay submitted is always your first draft, no matter how many rewrites it went through up until that point. When I was in school, we made these things called rough drafts. They were handwritten on paper, and your teacher would eventually hand it back to you with red marks all over it, pointing out every little mistake you made (sometimes with helpful suggestions on what to do next). You would then completely start over and write out another paper taking the edits to heart. I'm sure this is still technically done, only with digital files instead of sheets of notebook paper. My point is that word processing created a convenience in terms of editing your written work. Some writers forgo "drafts" altogether and edit as they go along, never even bothering with the "version history" feature some word processors and notetaking applications provide. There's no more starting over, barring any serious fundamental hiccup like finding out a source is inaccurate or an entire premise is off the mark. It's overall a more nebulous process. You can still number your drafts, but those can be reserved for page one rewrites rather than little typos or moving a sentence from the end of a paragraph to the start of one. 

This concludes the experiment. Draft was successfully transferred from Evernote to Blogger. 

I Am The Alphabet And The Omega

Google has declared my site unfit for advertising. I imagine it's due to a low level of traffic. I'm far from an influencer, and if I had to guess, my WordPress blog probably gets more views than anything I've written here in the past year.

And that's fine. 

The upshot to all of this is it means there are no ads on my site, which is how it should be. Contrast this with YouTube, where a channel can be demonetized, but still have ads all over it. The channel in question simply does not get the money. Maybe that's how it should be, though. After all, what advertisers were most afraid of when it came to YouTube was their money going to content creators who they disagreed with or otherwise didn't want to be associated with. The platform still got the support it needed, and users were free to share what they wanted to (within reason). 

Of course, I'm sure Blogger takes a lot fewer resource to maintain than a data hog like YouTube, so Google didn't have much of a choice when it came to their "advertiser friendly" policies. It's what makes Elon Musk's recent middle finger to advertisers so frustrating. He's both right and wrong for more or less the same reason. Businesses have a right to decide who they will and won't do business with, just as consumers have a choice with where they spend their money. That's called the free market. However, just like George Carlin said about the American Dream, you have to be asleep to believe it. Right now, big businesses hold more power than they deserve and the average consumer is in no position to do anything to their bottom line and therefore effect change in an unfair market. 

When consumers boycott, it takes a town, so to speak. When businesses boycott, it's usually a handful of guys in suits sitting around a table, never mind the hundreds or thousands of employees who may feel otherwise. This is the fundamental flaw with voting with your wallet, something I used to advocate for quite vehemently. When people vote, it's one vote per person. When dollars vote... well, they can't actually vote. The people holding the dollars do. As Douglas Adams said, "On the whole, it was not the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy." 

As for Blogger, I intend to stay; monetization wasn't the goal... not really, anyway. I've been comparing WordPress with Blogger for a few weeks now as the former keeps sending discount codes my way. Blogger technically offers a lot while asking for "nothing" (besides your data) in return. The only real paid feature on Blogger is registering a domain name. WordPress, meanwhile, offers a more streamlined user experience, but only if you play their paywall game. Automattic is not Alphabet; they can't afford to give WordPress away for free. They want money, not data. 

As of now, WordPress is my after show for Blogger. Anything I don't feel like posting here usually ends up over there. At most, WordPress is my back up if Google decides they don't like keeping Blogger around. It wouldn't be the first time I've had to migrate from a blogging service, and if the Muskrat's acquisition of Twitter has affirmed anything for me, it's that no platform is permanent. 

Lowest Resolution

Roughly this time last year, I gave myself a project with a year's deadline. I thought it was enough time, only for it to fall by the wayside because of life happenings and a host of other factors. 

I was going to program a rock, paper, scissors game, start to finish and from the ground up. I didn't think a year's deadline would be too onerous. I looked into some programming courses and tried a few small projects, as I've done in the past. Unfortunately, nothing quite worked out. The same problem I always have when I learn to program came up again. There's this method in the way coding is taught where it always feels like there's a step missing. The best analogy I can think of is learning an alphabet, then being asked to write a paragraph. 

At one point, I made a second Twitter account just to chronicle my journey into learning to code. Now, that's sitting abandoned along with my primary X account as I've migrated over to places like Threads, Post, and even Bluesky. 

I'm mad at myself, but I suppose I should have expected it. I need a new approach, but I have no idea what that could be. Most coding schools I've seen advertised are brick and mortar campuses, cost a lot of money, and are nowhere near me, so I'd have to move to New York for 3 months, which I am in no position to do. I was hoping my local college literally down the road from me offered coding courses, but strangely that's notably absent from their curriculum. 

I suppose I could simply make the same resolution this year and see how far that goes, make a full-fledged application, from the basic, under the bonnet coding all the way up to the graphical assets and... any other technical jargon I'm forgetting. Essentially, I want something to put on a resume or in a portfolio. 

Happy 2024, everyone. Hopefully you have better luck with your resolutions this year than I did with mine last year.