The Right to Peaceably Accessorize

OR: 

Petition for an Undressing of Grievances.

The upcoming iPhone 12 will supposedly not come with a charger, referring specifically to the little white wall wart that converts AC power down to 5V at around 1A. Some people are a little troubled by this. I wouldn't expect anything else, but I have to wonder if it's just change in general that bugs these people so much and not the specific changes themselves. As a wise one once said, some people simply love to complain, even if they get exactly what they want. 

I had an iMac. My family bought it in 1999 and it went with me through college. There was a hullabaloo around its release over the lack of a floppy disk drive. I may have even been laughed at a little for having an external floppy disk drive, like I'd been suckered into buying extra what should have been included. The irony is that I don't think I ever once used that floppy drive. I didn't have a flash drive yet and wouldn't until about 2005. Given I was in film, floppy disks were useless to me; nearly all the games I played (all 2 of them) were either downloaded from a website (imagine that) or came on CD-ROM. The only "disk" media I ever used during those 5 years was the Zip disk from Iomega. Each chunky cartridge took 100MB and were fairly inexpensive compared to what I was spending on video tapes. The most awkward using the damn thing got was when I had to leave my Zip drive with one of my professors because she didn't have one of her own to see my project. I call it awkward because I gave her one that needed an external power source so I could briefly declutter my desk and use the other Zip drive that was USB powered. Yes, I had 2 Zip drives while the floppy drive gathered dust. Speaking of awkward cable management and third party accessories... 

1. Wireless Charging

I have an iPhone 7. It does not have wireless charging capabilities. That came along with the 8. I'm not bothered by this. I do sometimes worry about the cable port wearing out from repeated un/pluggings, but in my experience, that happens around the exact same time the phone is ready to be retired and I'm eligible for an upgrade regardless. If I absolutely get desperate for a wireless charging solution, I have a battery case that charges through a Qi pad. Speaking of Qi chargers, Apple still does not produce their own version of it, with their website listing third party companies like Mophie or Belkin. It's rather odd when you think about it that Apple wouldn't offer you their won't take on something from the word go. People accused them of trying to corner you into buying their wireless earbuds when they took the headphone jack off of the iPhone 7 and beyond, yet wireless headphones and earbuds had been out for long before then and were perfectly capable of working with your iPhone. As nefarious deeds and Machiavellian machinations go, there's more malice behind leaving grocery carts out in the middle of the parking lot. 

2. Pack-in Accessories 

All the complaints over the years about the included earbuds with iPhones, but now that an equally overpriced accessory is being axed, it's a problem? The wall adapter on its own typically runs around 20USD, with the bulkier iPad version going for more (and all to deliver an extra amp or two). Here's the dirty little secret nobody at Apple likes to talk about: you do not have to use their charge adapters. The reason they recommend them, or the reason why any company will recommend a certain brand (their own or not) of batteries or cables or chargers or whatever other accessory you can think of, is because of their Quality Assurance as much as their desire to keep you in their little circle of corporate synergy. When their products are tested, it's not worth the effort to seek out and try every single third party version of something. It's more efficient to try what they know will work and slap a "for best results" addendum on their literature or support articles. If this sounds scuzzy or scummy, I won't disagree, though I would offer that they could just as easily keep their connections and hardware specs to themselves and actively go around shutting down every third party enterprise under the sun. This is why we get a "for best results" rather than "One of us! One of us!" It's not about taking the lesser of two evils, but rather a deep understanding on the part of Apple, Samsung, and whoever else is still in business regarding the customer/manufacturer relationship. 

Here's another dirty little secret about electronics manufacturing: Many of the devices you own contain components made by only a handful of companies. Like the accessory paradigm we just talked about, there's nothing overtly shadowy or sketchy about this arrangement; it's very efficient and keeps the price of these devices down. Can you imagine if Microsoft's Surface team had to mine and smelt their own iron, gold, copper, tin, neodymium, and a whole host of other raw materials to get that magnesium-shelled slab into your lap? We passed the point when aluminum was more valuable than gold decades ago, and I doubt anyone has a desire to go back to that way of life. 

3. First Rodeos

Carrying on from the second point, when you do a trade-in for a new device (which you should do, or consider donating to a charity such as Music & Memory), you're rarely if ever asked to hand in your cables, charge adapters, and other accessories. This is because there's virtually nothing of value to salvage out of what essentially amount to strands of rubber-encased copper and possibly a few magnets. Even in terms of value as scrap, that device you're turning back in is worth far more than that cable you plugged into it every night. For starters, if you took even semi-decent care of that device and it maybe only has a few scratches or at worst a cracked screen, that device can be refurbished and sold again to users who maybe don't need all those hot new features. Music & Memory, for example, use these devices as music players for Alzheimer's patients. Many of those older "dumb phones" are repurposed as emergency call devices for the elderly since you don't need a SIM card to call 911. Couple that with them being lighter and smaller than those glass slabs, they're practically set and forget until needed. 

As for those cables and adapters and such, let's have some fun. If you still have a drawer full of your old devices (Kindles, iPads, etc.) that you haven't yet donated or traded in, I'd like you to go to that drawer now and take out all the cables. In fact, go and gather all the USB and power cables you've got and put them in one place. Let's face it, you probably need to organize these things anyway. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you have more than one. I doubt the most mental minimalist has only the single USB cable and power adapter that came with their phone. At best, you may only have one of those little wall warts that take on the Herculean task of throttling 120 volts of alternating current into a direct 5. It's fascinating how well USB has lived up to the Universal part of its name in the last 10 years alone. Your local convenience store probably has a bin of adapters to let you plug your phone into the cigarette lighter socket of your car (another astonishingly universal standard). 

While the general consensus is that a wire is a wire is a wire, it's true that not all cables are created equal (those pesky third parties). Some are only capable of delivering a certain amount of power compared to others, others are absolutely rubbish at power but great for data transfer (and vice versa), and the overall length of the cable can affect how efficiently it charges your device. You likely have that one wire in that pile we've assembled that you keep around for reasons you don't remember if only because, despite being a USB cable like all the others, it only seems to work with certain devices. I'm sorry to say I don't have any better idea of what's going on there than you do. 

Fortunately, it's easy enough to do some simple bench tests to see which ones can cut the mustard and which ones belong in the bin (I mean, what else are you going to be doing today?). If you want to be extra super-especially doubly sure you're getting all the data you need to make these decisions, you can purchase a cable tester for a few dollars and put it next to that battery tester you never use (the one that's in the drawer with all the cables and Kindles and such). 

Here's one in action:

The tricky part of this test will be those wall adapters. We mentioned amperage before, and if you're not familiar with what that is, the important takeaway is it determines how quickly power is transferred over the cable. Bear in mind, though, that higher amps is not always best. For something like a tablet, it's essential, lest your charging times take longer than overnight. For phones, while it will charge them quickly, there's the added downside of degrading your phone's battery over time, shortening its operational lifespan. As for how to find out what amps your wall adapter is capable of outputting, they're typically printed on the casing. Most are legible enough, but others may give you some grief. 

Can you read that? Neither can I. 

The best course of action would be not to bother with them, or at best relegate them to charging those devices you don't need in any big hurry. It's also worth mentioning that while your computer's built-in USB ports are perfectly capable of charging your devices, they rarely output more than one amp. Again, that's good enough for a phone, but a tablet will take longer and may not actually reach the full 100% no matter how long you let it sit. 

For the record, I don't buy Apple's PR spin about environmental considerations when it comes to not including wall adapters with their devices. Put simply, it's one less thing for them to make en masse, you likely didn't need another one anyway, and if you don't already have a small accumulation of alternatives then now is the perfect time to change that. 

My work here is done. APPLE APOLOGIST... AWAY!

Hold Your Tongue While Saying Apple (an apology)

I haven’t owned an Apple-based desktop since at least 2005 when I abandoned the Bondi Blue iMac my parents bought in 1999 and went with me to college, shifting gears to a Compaq Presario as it was all I could afford. I knew of OSX and was thoroughly impressed by it, using it on occasion for some classes, but I felt that Windows XP had offered me the best of both worlds, a wider library of software (Windows) coupled with a streamlined and no-nonsense user interface (OSX). This was my standard for a few years until for reasons I don’t quite recall the full details of, I wanted to give Linux a try, namely Linux Mint. While impractical in practice and certainly a bad decision in the moment, the passage of time has healed those wounds and left me overall appreciative of the experience, scars and all. 

I briefly returned to Windows XP with a Toshiba laptop which got a fair bit of use out of before handing it off to a friend no stranger to computer troubles as a backup device. I didn’t miss it as Sony’s Xperia Z Ultra found its way into my heart as my daily driver. Its large, high resolution screen made for a thoroughly satisfying drawing experience, migrating me fully from traditional to digital art far more effectively than many previous gateways I gave a fair shot in the past. My favorite drawing app was Zenbrush, and when its major upgrade was going to become an iPad exclusive, I knew I was going to have to go back to Apple. While my impressions of the early iPads was far from positive, I’m happy to say I was proven wrong on most counts as it became a choice tool among a number of digital artists for its convenience and relatively affordable price point. As such, I’ve been drawing on iPads (a mini and a Pro) for some 4-5 years and I have practically no desire to draw on anything else. 

For the most part, this has worked out beautifully. Then, I tried my hand at vector artwork, and as I learned from Ash Vickers of Megacynics fame, vector art is done with a mouse. I also started doing more CAD and 3D work as part of my job and it began to creep over into my non-work workflow. This is another art form that benefits from a mouse rather than a stylus and touch gestures, though some prefer it to the bar of soap. 

A few of my art friends were in love with all things Microsoft Surface and I nearly joined in, seeing it as once again the best of both worlds, a touch screen drawing interface (iPad) with a full desktop environment to run a host of apps (Microsoft). In the end, I decided that it was the latter half of that equation I needed most of all, and therefore finally settled on a new Mac Mini. I’d wanted one for years and now presented itself as the best time to invest. 

It arrived within the week and within an hour, I was regretting my purchase, to the point of attempting to get a return going. Unfortunately, B&H’s normally very generous return policy stops at computers, which they only seem to sell through grit teeth and clenched fists given their primary business is photography, with all these “digital” stuff par for the course in keeping up with the almighty Amazon. The source of my frustration was with the performance of the two applications I’d intended to use most, Sketchup and Inkscape. The performance of Sketchup (particularly Sketchup Viewer) wasn’t that big of a deal as the CAD program proper worked just fine and as well as my desktop at work (which has largely similar specifications to my Mac Mini). It was still perfectly usable, simply not ideal. As for Inkscape, I was dumbfounded at how poorly it ran for such a lightweight drawing program. Whatever shape I wanted to draw was so far behind where my cursor was I could count a full Mississippi, and for something that’s not running “by wire” so to speak in a browser, that’s simply unacceptable. I was furious. I refused to believe this was as good as the machine worked given what I’d seen others use them for, including editing 4K video in Final Cut Pro. 

But that’s the rub. Final Cut Pro is made in-house by Apple. It’s developed from the ground up to work on their machines and their machines alone. For as demanding as it is in terms of hardware, it’s equally optimized to make the most of it. Inkscape is multi-platform and open source, giving its users the resources necessary to compile their own version for their particular favorite flavor of Linux. The team behind it is essentially working on the program out of the goodness of their hearts (and maybe to stick it to Adobe’s domination of the market with their Illustrator package). The point is just because a program is a lightweight in the system requirements market doesn’t mean it’s suited to the platform it’s ported to. I’d made an Instagram post showing Inkscape in relative inaction and intended to put this all in a blog entry to serve as an open letter to Apple in hopes they could give me some advice or offer some options to make the most out of my mistake. I slept on it and tried the next day to see if Inkscape was an inkling of what was in store for trying other apps. While I had no plans to use it, I downloaded Autodesk Sketchbook and performed the same basic test I did with Inkscape. 

The results were astonishing. 

Needless to say, I felt very silly. I had completely dismissed a perfectly capable of machine as near-useless on the power of testing two apps, one of which was simply not coded well in the first place. At the same time, I’m obviously relieved this computer is going to work out, albeit with a few different software options to make up for Inkscape running like molasses having an existential crisis in winter. Still, there was all the work I’d put into my write-up up until this point. I didn’t want that to simply end up in a bin, especially since most of what I had to say about the overall user experience is still valid. I definitely feel that OSX has fallen behind the times and is a branch of the Apple tree the kitchen of Cook would just as soon see wither away as their phone and tablet sales have been far more lucrative to them. For my money, there’s still plenty of gas in the tank until we swap out the old fossil fuel system for something more solar in nature. If you ask most Apple users their favorite part about being part of the full Jobs, Wozniak, Ive, & Cook experience is the ecosystem, the synergy shared across the range of devices. Microsoft tried to have this with their own mobile phone system before letting that dream fly out the window, and Google has made a good effort of it between their Chromebooks, Pixels, and dealings with Samsung’s Galaxy lineup. While I don’t think Apple’s approach to all-inclusivity is a paragon of perfection, it’s still leagues above its kin. The Surface line is catching up with their upcoming offers of a dual-screen phone, but I’m happy in camp Cook for the time being. 

Until then, maybe there’s an off-chance someone at Apple can look upon this long-winded journal of a former Mac user who came back to the fold having only spent serious quality time with OS 9 some 15 years ago. It’s not a typical blog entry, but a dedicated page that can only be accessed with the following link. 

Here it is, in all its mostly finished glory.

Make of its meanderings what you may. 

Mask. Copy.

During a business trip with my family to Washington state, I remember sitting through this documentary about Mt. Saint Helens, which had erupted only a few years prior. One image that stuck with me is one of people walking through smoggy streets all wearing surgical masks. There was also this one image from a science book about cities of the future that burned itself into my brain. 

This is the Usborne Book of the Future. It’s sadly out of print, but has been scanned and archived at various locations. It’s a little bit dated on the science side of things, but still a fascinating look into our past visions of the future. http://calameo.download/00081642432fc0bfded26

Fast-forward to several years later when I started watching anime and generally learning what I could about Japanese culture, and I noticed a recurring theme of some people wearing surgical masks in public. I never quite put together what was going on, though there was this correlation between wearing the mask and being sick, not unlike wearing a scarf or muffler. It was later explained to me that the mask is worn by the sick person to keep them from spreading it to others, which probably took my brain more time to process than I'd prefer to admit to because you always see the surgical mask of keeping things OUT rather than IN, hence being worn by surgeons. Like almost everything in Japan, something as practical as a paper fiber mask became an entire aesthetic unto itself. While there may be some connotations with gang activity, these are very much the exception and not the rule. 

Fast forward again to a few years ago when I read a post about someone with a severe tree nut allergy suffering through the holidays, and "suffering" is not being melodramatic or hyperbolic. This is someone with a tree nut allergy so severe that the mere smell of nuts can trigger a reaction requiring an epi-pen. Most of the time, this isn't a problem for her. However, when the holidays roll around, grocery stores suddenly become mine fields dotted with bushels of walnuts, almonds, and macadamias. The solution to this problem is a simple enough one, a neoprene mask with a few filters to allow better ventilation while also trapping the offending particles. Unfortunately, this solution invites more than a few stares and even full-blown suspicions from others in the grocery store. Age plays a small role in this, one might assume; someone sees an elderly person wearing one, they won't think twice, or maybe they'll put it together that they're trying to keep the bad stuff out. If it's a youngster, suddenly it becomes an issue of morals and criminal justice... never mind that if someone is going to rob a grocery store, they're not going to wander around the produce section pushing a cart and asking staff where the stuffed mushrooms are, all while wearing a mask. 

A few years later, we had a really bad flu season. I had missed my flu shot because we were unseasonably warm and I had assumed (incorrectly I learned later) that it was all the more unlikely I'd get the flu and that if I did get the shot, it may not be effective because I may well have gotten it too early. Well, I did get sick, and I probably don't have to tell you how horrible it was. Fortunately, I was put on some antibiotics which helped, along with getting some of my aforementioned misconceptions cleared up by my doctor. Since then, it's become a small tradition every Labor Day to take advantage of the time off work to beat any lines and get my flu shot. Around the same time, when my roommate was sick, she hit upon the idea of getting a box of those surgical masks from the local Walgreens. It wasn’t uncommon to see people in masks, though usually it was older folks who were likely using it to keep OUT rather than IN. 

Today, we’re glad we still have some left. I’ve got some reusable ones, but these served well in the time before those arrived. 

It's rather surreal that seeing someone wearing a mask has become so rapidly normalized. People will likely still be wearing them long after lockdown orders are fully relaxed. I'll certainly be wearing them when flu season comes around, novel viruses notwithstanding. All of this talk about when we’ll have normalcy or what-have-you is ignoring a lot of history. Just think of how air travel has been affected by the 9/11 terror attacks. The very fact that your bathroom has an abundance of tile and similarly slick and washable surfaces is a result of previous pandemics, including the Spanish Flu, Cholera, Tuberculosis, and Polio. 

When we go to buffets or cafeterias, we don’t give a second thought to the sneeze guards over the salad bar. We all know why they’re there, and I don’t know of anyone who’s raised a fit over it. Maybe that wasn’t the case when they were new, but any outrage today invites more eye-rolls than affirming or polite nods. I think about that when I go to grocery shopping and see the sneeze guards in front of the cashiers. At first, these were pretty ramshackled affairs, painter’s tarps draped over scrap wood or some PVC pipe. Now, many of them are plexiglass with some strips of particle board or metal brackets for reinforcements. Sure, it’s one more surface to clean up at the end of the day, and obviously they’re going to have to be replaced as they get scuffed, scratched, and cracked from general wear-and-tear, but as far as a regular operating expense goes, what exactly would be the harm in leaving them up? It’s no different than some convenience stores in rough neighborhoods putting their cashiers behind glass boxes that make my bank’s entrance look like a screen door on rusty hinges. If that expense can be justified, what’s a little Lexan at Lowes? What’s wrong with these handfuls of extra precautions no more onerous or intrusive on our daily lives than motion sensors on restroom sinks and hand dryers or anything being advertised as Lead-free? 

It's an amusing thought that for X number of people who simply see the mask and don't give it a second thought, there's at least 1 person out of that group who is silently screaming because of some hang-up or pet peeve yet doesn't want to say anything because it's simply not worth the effort to let the world know a piece of fabric can send you on a tirade? 

It’s not a new thing, it’s doing far more good than harm, and it’s not going away. No one’s trying to control you, no one’s trying to infringe on your rights, and no one is trampling on your deeply-held beliefs. It’s a practical solution to a legitimate real-world problem. It transcends politics and ideologies. Having personal freedom means taking personal responsibility for what you do with those freedoms as well as fail to do in spite of them. We are individuals, but we are singular as much as we are plural. 

My Open Letter of Protest to DeviantART

My primary objection to the recent overhaul known as Eclipse is the sheer ineptitude by the staff and owners to produce a unique user experience distinct from similar platforms. Not only is the site a pale imitation of ArtStation, but the months' worth of troubleshooting, delayed updates, and bug hunts both leading up to and following the launch further demonstrate a disconnect between DeviantART and its users. These technical issues are to be expected with any website that goes through a major update, but the scale and duration in this case, coupled with the development team essentially working from a cheat sheet, is unacceptable. This is not the site I signed up for all these years ago, and I have invested too much of my time and effort into it to abandon it completely over this matter. Many users are proposing a halt to using the site for the first 3 days of May to make their voices heard. I applaud this effort, as well as the numerous petitions seeking to get fundamental changes and fixes made. I may or may not participate in the upcoming boycott, and I have certainly signed a number of petitions, but I will offer my own mission statement moving forward in terms of my use of the site.

Put simply, I refuse to pay for something that has failed to imitate another site under the false premise of innovation.

• I will not renew my Core Membership, nor will I be gifting any to others.
• I will not be using the new Wix integration to make a portfolio. 
• I will not participate in any contests, events, giveaways, or promotions.
• I will not seek badges of any kind, and all llama badge trading is halted.
• I will not make any direct purchase from the platform, including prints.
• I will not use any media sharing options that will direct traffic to the site.

You will have to rely on advertising revenue exclusively to receive any cooperation and participation from me. Lest we forget, Patreon nearly imploded due to a policy change nobody asked for, which punished patrons for supporting multiple creators at once while pretending to be for the benefit of the creators when it only hindered their efforts to grow and prosper. Voices were raised, words were heeded, and Patreon reversed the decision. Please take note of this.

To any users reading this, I invite you to follow my example and/or those of others airing their grievances. 

Goodnight, and good luck. 

iSE What You Did There

My first iPhone was an iPhone 5C. I had to send in my Xperia Z Ultra to get fixed, and this was likely going to take a few weeks, so I needed a backup. For as few calls as I get and for as many things as I could have done on my tablet, I knew the moment I physically couldn't get to my phone for any length of time is likely to have become the peak of my popularity. 

I could probably spend a week telling you why I never bothered with iPhones up until this point, suffice to say it's mostly circumstances. I went with the 5C as it was the inexpensive one, and I found it interesting that Apple had designed it that way, with slightly cheaper materials than its 5 and 5S siblings. I have to say my first impression was not positive, and not simply from going to a 4-inch screen from a 6+-inch "phablet" but from a fairly versatile and accommodating operating system like Android to something that frankly felt like a toy. I warmed up to it well enough, and the camera was certainly an improvement over the Xperia's, which always felt a little off. Pictures simply never looked as good as they could have, no matter how much I tweaked the settings. Maybe I just wasn't as adept at photography as years of 35mm had led me to believe. Maybe Sony was trying to upsell me on their add-on camera accessory (which I nearly sprang for). Maybe it was simply out of date compared to the 5C. 
In any case, I switched back to the Xperia upon its return but kept the 5C as a camera. A few months later, I was going on a trip and didn't want to pack two different chargers (the other being my iPad), so I swapped SIM cards and never looked back. The Ultra was certainly worth it up until its internal battery finally bit it and Sony stopped supporting it; the larger screen made it a good gateway drug into digital art, but when Zenbrush's next iteration was going iPad exclusive, I decided to see what all the fuss was about. Anyway, the 5C served me well until I was eligible for an upgrade, and that was when Apple delivered what is easily to date my favorite iPhone, the SE. 
The SE was marketed almost as a kind of apology from Apple for the 6 and upcoming 7, as if to say, "Yeah, these are kinda chintzy and gimmicky, here's a not-Jitterbug model. KTHXBYE!" It reminded me of when I was a Linux user. Mint would release a new OS every year, with support typically overlapping by a few months or sometimes up to another year. If it seems laborious to reinstall an operating system on your PC every year, it is. You have to bear in mind Linux is generally targeted at people who probably spend more time with the access panels OFF their computers than ON. That said, there were plenty of more casual users who just wanted an OS that wasn't Windows or Mac. For these types, they offered "LTS" or long-term support versions of the OS. These were typically a previous year's version, usually one that was well-received, that offered support for 5 years instead of the typical 1-2ish.  
This was more or less Apple's promise with the SE, that it was outside of the typical naming/numbering convention of the iPhones and therefore was meant to have a longer "shelf life" than the other models. It's easy to forget that Apple is rather supportive of their older hardware, to the point that properly "retiring" a device is practically headline material. As for what was being supported, the nuts and bolts of the SE were the guts (processor, memory, etc.) of a 6S in the shell of a 5S. For my money, this was genius. As I said, I loved the 5C. I still think the 5's were the best iPhones ever got. Now, those wanting to upgrade could get a little better performance while keeping all those accessories they'd built up over the years. Also, manufacturers of those accessories weren't going to have to liquidate their stuff. You had a legitimately stable platform. Granted, said platform only ended up lasting about 2 years, but September 2018 was only when it was discontinued. Support carried on for some time later, and as I said, you had a backlog of accessories and add-ons that would still work for it. 

Rumors of an "SE2" abounded for years. Most of them were wishlists, along with some very detailed renders, but nearly all of them worked under the premise that Apple would start from scratch, designing from the ground up. It made sense, building on what already worked while fine-tuning certain shortcomings. It seemed as though people were missing the point of the SE, that it's not for following trends, that those hot, must-have gimmi--er, features are not for everyone. When it came time for Apple to unveil their next big lineup of flagship phones, the XR seemed to quash the majority of SE2 rumors. The XR seemed to fit the bill. It had the FaceID in lieu of a home button. It lacked the edge-to-edge display due to having a different type display than the others, but still made good use of the real estate. The camera was good, but kept the features list short enough to appease most casual photographers. Above all, it looked, for lack of a better term, like a toy. It looked, to the XS/Pro/Max, precisely what the 5C looked like to the 5 and 5S. 

Fast-forward to 15 April 2020:


Before getting a better look at it, my first thought was that this new, proper SE would be a rebadge of an original X, maybe with a few hardware tweaks to bring the phone up to speed with something like the XR. What we got instead was an iPhone 8 with the internals of an 11. I wasn't too far off; the original 8 had the same internals as the X.The 8 also shares a similar form factor to the 7, with many accessories being cross-compatible. So, there you have it; we've hit all the hallmarks of the original SE. 

• Not everyone likes "edge-to-edge" displays. 
• Some people like the home button. 
• FaceID isn't exactly reliable. 
• Not everyone needs a bigger screen. 
• Some people simply want a phone. 

Sadly, there's no rose gold option, but there's a Product (red) edition, and that suits me just fine. My Mophie battery case is certainly going to be a happy camper. 

My Not Quite Office Setup

When the Apple Pencil debuted, there was a quiet debate in the community as to how Steve Jobs would have felt about it. The starting point for this discussion was a talk he gave about the iPhone, in particular how frustrating he found the idea of a stylus. 

The counterpoint to this is that Jobs’ issue with the stylus was how it was used as a workaround for a bad user interface, that of a scaled-down desktop OS rather than something dedicated and befitting the medium. This is the reason for the whole tile-based, gesture-controlled philosophy of iOS and, by extension, Android. This was definitely a risk, and not a well-received one at the time. 

As a card-carrying member of that initial camp envisioning the iPad as an OSX-enabled touchscreen-enabled laptop akin to some of the tablet computers HP had out at the time, I remember being legitimately annoyed at how the iPad was just going to be a giant iPhone. I’ve spoken before about this disconnect between people like myself who seek more productivity-focused devices and the average consumer who simply want to watch videos and read emails. In my defense, I wasn’t totally wrong about the target market and the initial capabilities of the iPad. Between the price and the size of the app store on launch, it was an over-engineered e-reader, a digital picture frame with a battery, anything but a productivity-focused piece of hardware. It had creative potential, no doubt, but it felt like it had to be dragged kicking and screaming away from that casual market who saw it as having their toy taken away to be a mere tool. 

While I stand by my initial criticisms, I’m happy to have since been proven wrong. I’ve been drawing on an iPad for about 4 years now and I frankly don’t want to draw on anything else. As for other types of productivity, that’s been a little more trying. I recently purchased a new Bluetooth keyboard that’s gotten me writing more. I also recently learned that newer versions of iOS have added mouse support, allowing me to unbag my Lofree Maus and use it to... well, that’s still in a trial phase. 

Mouse support is actually something that’s been present in iOS for some time, as part of the accessibility setup for people with mobility issues. With the recent release, it’s now more discoverable to people who wouldn’t have otherwise given the accessibility part of the menu the time of day. The cursor appears as a dot which seamlessly morphs into the more familiar vertical line cursor we’re used to seeing in word processing apps, and if you’re not happy with only the single click nature of an Apple mouse, you can customize the buttons for other functions. Windows users know mice have a left and right click (as well as a center click and scroll, but we’ll get to that in a moment), one being for selecting, the other being for a kind of context-sensitive menu. Fortunately, iOS has this, though it’s not activated by default. It takes a little getting used to as it’s not quite the same as right click on Windows, but the added versatility is welcomed. The scroll wheel seems to be reversed depending on the application and has a bit of lag on it, but I think that’s just another session of rummaging in the menu away from working as it should. Then there’s middle click, and we hit a very big wall. 

Not every Windows mouse has this, typically the more gimmicky or stylized ones, and chances are even if you’re aware of it, you can count the instances in which you’ve needed it on one hand. If you work in 3D at all, whether it’s full modeling or simply viewing models, you know how essential middle click is to that workflow. If you’re going to do any kind of CAD work, you need that middle click. That’s why if I were going to do more CAD work at home, I’d likely spring for something in the Surface line. I can certainly do some 3D work on my iPad and even use my Pencil for some of the more complex features, but this is only good in a pinch. I’m certainly not going to be asking our IT department to take my desktop back. 

In the end, I think the “is it a computer yet?” approach to iPad functionality is the wrong mindset. The computers I grew up with are not the computers used today. The very fact that I use “computer” to refer to a desktop or notebook (remember when we called them laptops?) itself is an arbitrary choice, as even pocket calculators are computers, yet we don’t criticize them for not allowing us to read email. 

You Can't Go Home Row Again

If you've been following my written exploits and conquests for any length of time that approaches or even precedes the 2008 mark, you're aware I have an obsession with keyboards. It's not so much one of fascination so much as utter frustration and an insatiable urge to overcome various obstacles such as availability. I once described in great detail the process of using the virtual keyboard of a Playstation Portable (PSP), which is probably best described as a cross of T9 Predictive Text and the original arcade version of Missile Command that used a bowling ball instead of a cue ball to move its cursor. I also expressed an early love of Twitter, which is still my absolute favorite social media platform, warts and all. I love its immediacy and conciseness (for better or for worse), and I especially loved the fact that this whole operation existed before smartphones took off, and what few "smart" devices existed had itty-bitty physical keyboards that even hardcore console gamers found exhausting.

Sony Mylo (short for My Life Online) 2006-2010

I have to explain another strand of the slightly sinister origins of this obsession. When I was a kid, I marveled at watching people type, and all without looking at the keys. It was like a superpower to me. How could people possibly remember all those buttons? By the time I took a proper typing class in middle school, I ended up taking to it pretty quickly. I wasn't especially fast (that came later) 
Glossing over a few key details of what came next (because I'm very ashamed of this display of my more spiteful and condescending side), now that I was more adept at mastering the home row and even special keys of the typical typing interface, I became exceedingly frustrated when I'd watch people struggle to put together simple sentences. I even once had a job in a computer lab while at college, and nearly stormed out on my first day as I watched in agony as our department head (who insisted on being an IT expert) entered some of my personal information by HUNTING AND PECKING... SLOWLY... AND STILL NEEDING TO HIT BACKSPACE MORE THAN ANY OTHER KEY! GAH! 

via GIPHY

I said nothing since part of me thought it was some sort of empathy test, given this particular computer lab was reserved for disabled students who often have mobile or cognitive differences. Regardless and for lack of a better term, something in me broke. The Moonwatcher in my mind got sick of huddling in the dark wondering where the sun went at night and decided to take a tapir's thigh bone to the situation. I resolved to find the smallest, most uncooperative keyboard I could find, and find out how fast I could type on it, so nobody else would have any excuse. 

Speaking of supremely insensitive arrogance, here’s a fun fact for you about the late Harlan Ellison. He never wrote on a computer for the entirety of his career. In his later years, he practically hoarded manual typewriters (specifically Olympias), to the point of having a fridge full of ink ribbons. He said he taught himself how to type, and it does show. He hunts and pecks with his two pointers, insisting that putting literal foot-pounds of force behind his keystrokes was what gave his writing its edge. Given his body of work, who am I to call bullshit on his methodology? 

None of this in any way should excuse legitimately bad keyboard designs, and they are out there en masse. If I push a key and nothing happens, that's a bad keyboard design. It's why I've always hated laptop keyboards, often referred to as "chiclets" due to the shape the keys have to be in order to maximize space. You'll certainly find no shortage of blog entries and YouTube videos from computer enthusiasts ranking and ranting about their least favorite keyboards, especially those who were fresh on the scene of the "bedroom coder" era of microcomputers. Here's a few frequent entries:

By Bill Bertram - Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5

By Daniel Ryde, Skövde, CC BY-SA 3.0, 

By Tocchet22, CC BY-SA 4.0

By Evan-Amos - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0

You'd think with this back catalog that it wouldn't be anywhere near as easy to find similarly awful keyboards in this day and age, but sadly this is not the case. To be fair, computers like the ZX-Spectrum and Odyssey 2 never intended people to write on their keyboards. Their target demographic was novice programmers, who typically only have to write a few command phrases and maybe a full sentence here or there. Trying to use home row or touch type wasn't simply difficult, but almost counterproductive. That's what frustrates me about laptop keyboards as they are fundamentally meant for portable productivity. 

All this leads me to the last few weeks, during which time I've found myself using one of the most unlikely keyboards I'd ever consider and not only getting used to it, but legitimately questioning my whole approach to typing. 

Tactile feedback? Sounds like violent criticism.

My 10.5-inch iPad Pro isn't exactly the right size for full and proper touch-typing like the 12.9-inch version might allow, but in addition to the light touch technique I'll get into in a moment, there's the Swiftkey method, which a friend of mine likened to dancing (which is still one of the most beautiful descriptions I've heard for something as mundane as typing). 

This isn't available in the default keyboard of an iPad or iPhone, and which Android devices pack it in involves a fair bit of guesswork and even hearsay. Fortunately, Swiftkey is available across all platforms. The gimmick is to run your finger (or a stylus) from key to key, creating a kind of constellation the software decrypts into full words. It's a simple enough idea, and fans of Palm Pilots likely recognized it as the next logical step of graffiti. 

If this is starting to sound like comparing apples to oranges, it may well be. A synergistic mix of not-quite-hunt-and-peck (as you can’t rest your fingers on the keys which are already too close together for that) and finger skating hieroglyphic star charts seems like a convoluted solution to a simple problem, though I’d invite you take a pen and paper, put them next to your keyboard, and count the number of “pieces” in each kit. 
It’s rather like that ageless phenomenon of previous generations resenting the current ones for how much easier daily life can be in certain areas. I’ve never used a fully manual typewriter, only an electric. It would rattle my desk with each keystroke to the point where a full paragraph would send something on my upper shelf tumbling below and startling me. It was a beast, but I loved it. I don’t think I could go back to it anymore (paper is precious), and with a manual I’d probably complain about it hurting my hands and fingers. Even the keyboard on my Apple IIsi offered a serviceable typing experience. Since then, with the exception of the keyboard for the Sega Dreamcast classic Typing of the Dead (doubled my typing speed in 2 weeks), it’s been a succession of awful keyboards. The worst keyboard was the one built into an old HP Chromebook I set up in my kitchen. It already had an external monitor because the screen was horrendous, so plugging in a keyboard was a no-brainer. That’s when I found the Logitech G413 Carbon on sale at Target. 

Although part of Logitech’s G series of gamer-focused peripherals, the Carbon is by far the most understated of the bunch. On the whole, the only thing that gives it away as a keyboard targeted at PC gamers besides the red-and-black color scheme is its price tag, which is notably lower than its mechani-kin but eclipses your average office space offerings. Chances are, unless you’re a gamer or require a particular set of ergonomics or at most are a serious typing enthusiast, I’m going to speculate the most money you’ve ever spent on a computer keyboard was around 20USD. Against that, the Carbon’s 60-80ish appears more than a little exorbitant. Bear in mind that because these use mechanical switches instead of rubbery sheets of bubble wrap and are targeted at gamers, even this entry-level model is built like a tank. It’s an investment that pays for itself faster than you think. 

I tried for one of those USB-Lightning adapters meant for connecting digital cameras or external hard drives, but for the life of me I could not get it to work with the Carbon. I was all set to resign myself to using a different Logitech keyboard, one I’d been using for some years with my Xperia smartphone. It was a laptop-styled keyboard, but it was convenient, especially its case which folded out into a stand for a tablet. So, I stuck with it. It served me well for many years, but time hasn’t been kind to it. It’s actually warped slightly now, so the “n” and the adjacent keys (including the space bar) work intermittently. It doesn’t help the Carbon basically spoiled me and now I need to find a bluetooth mechanical keyboard that is mechanical but isn’t a Kickstarter which isn’t going to be ready right away if at all (backed out of one a few months ago and learned everyone’s still waiting), isn’t stupidly expensive, but... 

Oh, hello. 

A Long Overdue State of the Scroll

I think I'm experiencing a touch of the writer's block when it comes to my Blogger page. I've written plenty elsewhere, be it WordPress or Quora or even DeviantART and Instagram. Here, though, I have about a dozen or so drafts that I get very far in and then... well, it just sits there. I have my reasons for leaving various drafts in the bin, but I can't deny the possibility it simply boils down to a lack of motivation. It's got nothing to do with engagement or Search Engine Optimizations or whatever metrics people judge their online presence by. As a wise-ass man once said,

"I'm no leader. 

I do what I have to do. 

Sometimes, people come with me."

Gratitude is something I think about a lot, and let the record show I have no shortage of it. If you’ve been with me from the start, whether you’re new, or if even if you briefly visited but moved on to other things, please know I appreciate you. Though it’s only text and images on a screen, but you’re in more or less full control of what content you allow into your private headspace, the sanctity of your mind. So, my being part of that if only in a very cursory fashion is a legitimate honor.

I keep wrestling with the idea of posting my art here as I once did. Ultimately, I don’t think I’ll bother, not even with my Inktober posts. My overall goal is to get back to the once-monthly-at-minimum model, more akin to a magazine than anything more immediate and reactionary. I’ve mentioned my WordPress page, which I once regarded as a kind of aftershow, using entries here as jumping-off points for tangents. It’s changed from that and is now a wholly separate entity except for the name. There’s still some common DNA such as an emphasis on skepticism and critical thinking, but applies it to broader socio-political topics. Here, we generally like to have fun. I may get angry or passionate about something here, but with very few exceptions, it’s all in good fun.

I am fundamentally a humanist. Believe it or not, my occasional expression of cynicism, pessimism, or anything that could be regarded as misanthropic or anti-social (in the proper clinical sense, not in the “It sounds like introverted, therefore it must also mean the same thing” sense too many people make and need to stop), my reasoning and motivation behind it is that I want people to do better. I know people can do better, and we don’t need acts of terrorism, hurricanes, floods, and pandemics to drive us towards it. You’re not always going to get it right. You’re going to screw up. We all do, we all have, and we all will. What separates us is what we do afterwards.

I’ve messed up. I failed to keep up with my own schedule. It’s probably not even the first time I’ve done so for this site. So, what am I going to do? I’m going to keep going. I’m going to keep posting here. Thank you all for sticking with me.

Goodnight, and good luck.

The High Stakes Dinner Dare

A few weeks ago, my roommate decided to try a vegan diet for health reasons. I went along with the idea for moral support. The results of this diet were very, very mixed. In fact, more often than not, they were total busts. Let the record show I gave it a fair shake, and at least one of the dishes was rather pleasurable. As for the rest, I simply don't feel it's going to work out for me. The persistent problem with the majority of recipes we came across was one of blandness. To overcome this, the recipes insisted on a hefty spice regimen that did little more than give an all-heat-no-flavor aftertaste that often accompanies many sophomoric attempts at Mexican or Indian dishes. The other problem was these recipes' insistence on substitution. That is, instead of a fully vegan dish, we got "veganized" versions of otherwise omnivore-friendly offerings. The most egregious example of this was the mac & cheese. It called for a type of yeast that's meant to imitate cheese. 

It was bad. 

There's no kind way of putting it. It was awful. To be completely fair to it, I suppose I was a bit biased in favor of something that would fool me into thinking I was eating true and proper cheese. This set my bar likely higher than it should have been and netted the kind of result that Wolfgang Pauli would describe as "not even wrong." I'd rather go without cheese than settle for a pale imitation. That said, some imitations work better than others. 

I've already talked at length about the Impossible Whopper and touched on my newfound quest to try every "veggie" burger on offer by major restaurants and fast food chains (Red Robin is next on the agenda). In addition, we've been subscribing to HelloFresh for several weeks and have selected their vegetarian options almost exclusively. The sole exception was when we decided to go with a meat dish that would arrive in time for Thanksgiving. 

It was a sirloin steak dish with a heaping helping of roasted carrots and potatoes. My plan was simple. It had been well over a month since I last had any kind of meat dish. In fact, I think it was a pretzel burger that Burger King was offering at the time. I got one when my roommate's first ordered the Impossible Whopper so if it went bust I had a backup. The whole vegetarian thing was working out way better than I thought, and ordering sirloin steak was kind of a final test of sorts. My thinking was that once I got things going, once I ripped into the package, rubbed in the spices, laid the steaks on the skillet, cut into them, and got a few good whiffs in, I'd be wolfing down the whole thing with gusto and vigor. Ever have one of those cravings for something you haven't had in a very long time coming to you completely out of the blue and occupying your thoughts until you basically have no choice to go out and grab it? That's what I was expecting to preempt. 

No such thing happened. 

The more I cooked it, basted it, cut into it, and nibbled on it, the more unpleasant the whole experience was. I didn't feel ill or anything like I've heard some vegetarians get when they even think of eating meat. It was something more abstract. It was almost like I felt disappointed, as if the whole process from preparation to palate wasn't just anticlimactic, but detrimental and wasteful. It was all a great big "So what?" moment. I was unimpressed and unmoved, and the fact I could have been making something else I'd have enjoyed far more got me a little down to boot. 

So there you have it. Barring any spontaneous lusts for McNuggets at 1 in the morning, I'm  fully vegetarian now, though not especially strict. Dairy is still part of the equation, as are eggs (though I typically only use those when baking cookies or beer bread), and I'm sure there are certain dishes that employ broths or other similar byproducts that will catch me unawares. Plus, there's the whole "made in the vicinity of X" paradigm (i.e. the Impossible Whopper being made on the same grill as the "possible" patties), but these are generally unavoidable, and hardly objectionable. Should we move away from animal products? Maybe, but we're talking about literal centuries of undoing. Domestication of animals is as old as human civilization itself, if not a little older considering hunting dogs back when we sat huddled in caves wondering where the sun went at night. Speaking of animals and fear... 

My stance on not eating meat has nothing to do with ethics, much as I respect those who cite the treatment of farm animals as an impetus for their conviction. I can even say I had my own "meet the meat" situation. My roommate's brother had a pig on his farm he intended to slaughter. While visiting, I was asked to go and feed the pig. I had been hoping this wouldn't be asked of me, but I didn't refuse out of respect. With slop bucket in hand, I made my way to the pen, filled the trough, and promptly decided I lacked the resolve to eat anything that may possibly be made by the butchering of this beast. It wasn't even cute, like a lamb or a cow, or even little suckling pigs. It was a big, gross slab of bacon-to-be that could barely move. There was no lack of sympathy, mind. I'm not going to dismiss eating an animal I've literally met in person because I don't like its face. It was more of a big picture situation. Here was this animal, one specifically raised not only from its own birth to be slaughtered for its meat, but engineered through generations of selective breeding to be as good at possibly being a meal as it could be. We can talk about the role eating meat played in our evolution, making our brains bigger and allowing us to survive various environmental conditions because we didn't have to rely solely on the plant life for sustenance. This isn't saying it was all a mistake, only it makes the decision of abstaining from its consumption feel like moving on rather than taking a step back. 

It rather puts that scene from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in perspective (specifically, the second book, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe), wherein a large, pig-like creature is fully aware of its role in the food chain, and can not only vocalize its opinion about it, but is utterly welcoming of the prospect of becoming some diner's dish du jour. The punchline of the joke is that this degree of genetic engineering was necessitated by objections from plant-based creatures openly and vehemently vocalizing their disdain for being the stuff of salads and shakes. 

I don't begrudge anyone who still has both feet planted firmly in camp omnivore. You've got canines for a reason besides stubborn packaging when scissors aren't around. I do wish we'd all take a step back and look at how meat intensive our diets are, how much farmland we're devoting to cattle, pigs, and poultry when it could well be used for fruits and vegetables, grains and nuts, and how this wouldn't affect the farms' bottom lines one bit. Again, this isn't me preaching or shaming anyone. I'm a devout hedonist. I get it. If you've got it, flaunt it. You see food, you eat it. Obviously, going vegetarian isn't as easy for some people as others depending on where you live and what kind of lifestyle you've made for yourself. This is simply another perspective to consider. You never know what you may discover.

For instance, one of my favorite discoveries is truffle zest. Mix a dash of it with sour cream and either olive oil or water to get the right drizzling consistency, and it's a dandy dipping sauce. Best way to find truffles? Rent a hog.

No one eats the pig. We get truffles. Everybody wins. 

Impossible Meat

Gave the Impossible Whopper a go. 

... I am impressed. It won't fool anybody, though not in the way you may think. If I hadn't been told it was a plant-based burger patty, I would have simply thought it was a well-done, if slightly dry burger patty. Visually, the only thing that gave it away was the color; as I said, it looked well-done, not pink in the slightest. The texture was spot on and it smelled of the same char-broil as anything else on the menu. It didn't taste like meat, mostly because it wasn't juicy, but it didn't taste like a substitute, if that makes sense. 

The last time I had a "veggie" burger years ago, the thing was essentially a giant tater tot, as if someone tried to cook a hash brown like a burger patty. That's not a bad thing, mind, but when I eat a burger, never once do I think, "You know what this needs? Crispy potatoes." and not just because I've already got a plate of crispy, salty fries performing exactly that purpose with flying colors. I am curious about the Hula Burger. It's not technically available anywhere, but there are similar recipes out there. The Hula Burger was originally created by McDonald's as part of a competition to determine its new Lent-Friendly options. The other sandwich in this competition is the (in)famous Filet-O-Fish. The Hula Burger uses a slice of pineapple in place of the burger patty, the preparation typically involving gentle marination as well as light grilling. The Filet-O-Fish not only won the competition, but became a year-round staple of the Golden Arches' menu instead of some holdover for 40 days out of the year for a specific demographic. 



To put my thoughts on vegetarianism and veganism in perspective, there's a classic episode of Doctor Who I love called The Green Death. It focuses on this progressive hippie colony and their run-ins with an evil mega corporation run by a narcissistic supercomputer. One of the supporting characters, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, is enjoying a nice meal with the hippies and compliments them on the fine roast beef they've been eating. The head of the group chuckles and explains that they have not been eating beef. They've been developing a high-protein fungus. Essentially, they've been eating a giant mushroom. The Brigadier, a very rational man and no stranger to the regular combination of steak and red wine, is almost angry about it. He simply cannot accept that what they've been eating is anything but beef. Everyone has a good laugh at his being do dumbfounded and the scene moves on to the main plot. That's basically my stance on the whole "meat alternatives" business. Give me something that looks and tastes near as makes no difference to the real thing, add in making it more sustainable and easier to source, and I'm totally on board with literally thinning the herds for the sake of freeing up more farmland. 

I don't think I could ever go vegan; I love cheese too much, and I don't know of a way to make pretzel bread without egg wash, to say nothing of my legendary peanut butter cookies requiring an egg. I have occasionally thought about going vegetarian, mostly for health purposes as I rocket towards 40 at the speed of life. It's less of a logistical nightmare compared to going vegan, though I realized my transition to herbivore would involve a lot of tree nuts and a lot of potatoes... and cheese.