In one day of work I wrote professional correspondence, finalised a contract, played basketball with at-risk kids and a player from the Perth Lynx and Perth Redbacks, then spoke with two Federal politicians, including Australia’s Attorney-General. My job can be kind of unique.
Finished reading: Put Your Feet in the Dirt, Girl by Sonia Henry 📚
Lou Plummer blogged his favourite TV shows from each decade in which he has lived.
I thought it was a fun idea, so here are mine.
The Brady Bunch
I only lived three years in the 1970s but I sure watched a lot of this show in the 1980s. I wanted a house with a giant staircase and a housemaid. I still don’t understand the economics of how that family afforded to care for 6 kids. Mike must have been an incredibly well paid architect.
The A-Team & Knight Rider
I can’t split these two. 80s TV was a boy’s dream. So much action. So much technology. So many shows that had entirely standalone episodes. Story arcs were not a thing. Both these shows had bad guys that could only ever shoot behind the hero’s feet.
Stargate SG-1
This TV show took a middling movie and made it fun for TV. Elements of it brought back memories of MacGyver. It was a juiced-up sci-fi show with militaristic scenes combined with Egyptology. I loved it.
The Wire
Things get a little darker in my taste from the 2000s onwards. Everybody loves The Wire. Subtitles help because the slang can be hard to understand. To this day, I still think about the times that Omar be strollin'. This show highlighted how basically everybody is in a gang/tribe/collective, and criminality can appear in any of them. Everybody is really playing the same game, just in different clothes.
Breaking Bad
What can be said about Breaking Bad, bitch? Incredible storytelling achieved by an incredible cast of actors. How a sunny State was made to be so dark and foreboding is very impressive.
Severance
I have invested so much time thinking about this show, that even though we’re now only halfway through its second season, it has to win the 2020s for me. An honourable mention to Ted Lasso.
I don’t understand the iPhone 16e
But if there’s a device that best encapsulates the overall state of Apple today, it is, without doubt, this iPhone 16e.
This phone is too expensive. It’s a Tim Cook fever dream of recycled parts for a market they presume exists.
Give me a 13 mini SE any day over this confused mess.
I’ve given up trying to make my home Eero network useful with wifi backhaul. Tonight I’ve run Ethernet around. It looks ugly. I need proper drops installed. But my internet is now maximising its performance capacity.
I used to buy Amiga Format every month. Loved this video retrospective of the magazine.
Appreciate who you are. You’re beautiful. You got you to where you are.
Exciting to hear @hemisphericviews get a shoutout on the latest episode of Connected from Relay.
Trying out the new Micro Social app from @gregmorris
I read this comic. Other than Archie, Garfield, Mad and The Far Side I’ve never read comics! I kind of enjoyed it. Now I need issue #2 to find out what happens. 😱
I was thinking about the Amiga game Wings today. I loved that game. Loved it so much that I played it without an externally disk drive. If you know, you understand my level of commitment to the game. 🕹️
Apple Invites seems incredibly middle-aged. It also seems like a desperate attempt to find a use case for AI. The dagginess of this app is a long way from the days of edgy iPod silhouette ads.
Finished Masters of the Air. A wonderful treatment of the US Air Force story of WWII. Those men would hardly believe what has become of their nation more recently. 📺
Have installed a couple of Thermacells on the balcony. Let’s see how they do! Mozzies be gone. 🚫🦟
MOS brings macOS' smooth scrolling to any mouse:
The biggest (only?) issue with using a non-Apple mouse on macOS is losing that smooth scrolling, also known as kinetic scrolling.It might seem like a silly detail, but it’s such a nice feature that I really miss when it’s not there.
A few years back, when I swapped out my MacBook’s trackpad for a cheap mouse, I found a solution in this quirky, free, open-source app called MOS.
I’m a user of SteerMouse to provide full functionality to my Logitech MX Master mouse, but it doesn’t help with smooth scrolling. MOS does it! Game changer!
Binge watched Behind Her Eyes. What a great show! 📺
This cold/flu whatever it is came out of nowhere. Sore throat yesterday, total blech this morning. Better not be COVID.
My mac mini server with Thunderbay drive array is back in a cupboard, as God intended servers to be located.
There has been a disturbance in the indie blog force this week.
Typically, I stay out of online arguments. This is something I learned when I was a mere youngster toying around on BBSs and Usenet. Arguing didn’t amount to much. Even when you “win”, do you really? Trophies are yet to be presented.
So when this week’s ruckus broke out, my standard rules applied. Stay out of it. Don’t pile on.
Writing this now is challenging, because I worry that it won’t help, it will create more confusion, and, selfishly, perhaps sticking my head above the parapet will lead to it being blasted off. Or even just caught in a ricochet.
I’m not even certain I am fully understanding all aspects of the argument at hand. Yet more reason to stay quiet.
So why write something now? Why get involved? Because I have skin in the game. I’m a user of all three platforms/services in question: micro.blog, omg.lol and Tinylytics/Shoutouts. Beyond that, I have connections with all three of the owners. I have corresponded with Manton over many years, I have semi-regular chats with Adam, and I’ve had online chats with Vincent and he helped me with some coding challenges.
So all of this feels more personal than it typically might. I feel like a friend watching his other friends have a fight, and as the friend I don’t know whether I should let them work it out, or if I should step in and shout at everyone to “break it up!”. In a friendship circle, disagreements happen. Arguments can be cathartic and educational. Growth can come from finding middle ground and seeing different perspectives. We can improve our own selves by seeing the perspective of others.
I have reached out to be both Adam and Manton privately, as a friend should. Now I’m writing this piece.
I wasn’t going to post anything public.
I wonder if this will be a mistake.
Words are hard. What I’ve written in the paragraphs above isn’t perfect. I don’t think it’s expressing the nuance of what is actually in my head.
Laid over the top of the challenges of the back and forth this week are cultural differences. I have an Australian perspective. This disagreement is between Americans. Australians are renowned for being “laid back”. Traditionally, we aim to find the middle ground and leave each to their own if that fails. That culture is being challenged in the internet age.
I’m a 47 year old man that grew up in the 1980s where societal norms were different. I was raised in a religious environment. I was taught what was right and wrong according to the values of God as they were presented in that setting.
I feel generationally split as I see a younger cohort grow up beneath me with completely different mindsets and societal norms. I live and grow and work hard to avoid becoming calcified and conservative. Background, culture, upbringing, and the ability to accept and consider new thinking all affects how we adapt to the reality of now. None of this is easy.
As I was growing up, a societal challenge was for gay and lesbian people to be accepted. With my upbringing noted earlier, that was a challenge for me. It took time. It was a journey of mine that required consideration, introspection and an assessment of values in my own life against those I was taught as a child.
Now we are onto the next era, which is about progression of the broader LGBTQI+ community. I’m not an expert in the experiences of that collective. It’s not something that has directly affected my personal life, so in a sense, I’ve had the option to keep it all at arm’s length. However, I approach it in the same way I did with the LG era; by listening, thinking, and not judging.
I imagine younger generations might also be open to their own journey of growth through this LGBTQI+ era, in the same way that I had my journey through the LG era. It may take them time, experience, and communication. And it may result in a few missteps and miscommunications along the way.
Ultimately, what I hope for is that we keep our lines of communication open, and take a compassionate view as people learn and grow.
This post has turned into a bit of a random walk of thoughts. At this point I should probably end.
I hope this somewhat confused post doesn’t lead to more anger, frustration, or cancellation.
I hope we can find a path forward, even if that path is zigzagged.
Strong start, faded in the third act.