I miss my childhood. It was such a different era; it’s hard to recognise my childhood as an experience compared with those of my kids.
The memories of my childhood seem like something that should be written off as me looking back through rose-coloured glasses. But I contest that not everything was great and nice, but it really was what retro throwbacks show the 1980s to be.
Some of my key memories across a relatively wide age range include:
Leaving the house to ride my bike around the streets without saying where I was going. I didn’t know where I was going - how could I tell others?
Staying out until dusk then going home to either my own home, or my friend’s house for dinner. I think I almost split my time 50:50.
Riding our BMX bikes through citrus orchards where dirt bike jumps had been constructed, and getting mega air.
Playing pick-up basketball all day, and sweating litres.
Playing multi-day games of Monopoly. Leaving it set up to pick up the next day.
Climbing trees - but never as well as my friend.
Spending hours throwing a ball against a wall, then playing a solid cricket stroke when it bounced back to me.
Backyard camping for days (maybe even weeks?) on end. We had a big block, so we could pitch the tent in the back yard and be invisible from the house.
Playing a season of Under 13’s cricket and being completely isolated by the other boys - and the coach. (Things are much better in this regard now, it seems.)
Abseiling, rock climbing and other cool activities at school that probably wouldn’t be allowed anymore.
I’m proud of my childhood. I had enough freedom to be adventurous and I managed to avoid any major dangers. I learnt to know my limits and stay within them. I had a sense of place in my suburb.
If I had a time machine, I would happily go back to the early 1980s and do it all again.
Microblogvember: I used to touch a basketball every single day. It’s now been months since I held one.
I’ve made a concerted effort this year to increase my volume of book reading.
In recent years my reading has been dominated by web pages, articles and RSS feeds. This resulted in a decline in my book reading - something I used to do a lot of.
To track my reading and add some motivation I set a target on Goodreads.. This has worked because I’ve read 23 books against my target of 20 - a target I revised upwards mid-year.
Another thing that has helped has been an Audible subscription. I think it’s fair enough to consider listening to audiobooks as reading. I’m still consuming the story; it actually takes longer than reading the printed version, and it allows me to read in ‘gaps’ of time, notably driving.
I’ve enjoyed my return to reading. Once more I feel like my mind is being stretched and my imagination activated.
I’ve got problems with my Catalina install. I have wifidiagnostics files multiplying like tribbles in my private/var/tmp/ folder. With each of these files weighing in between 200Mb and 400Mb, my entire SSD is being swamped with these files, to the point of the operating system being crippled for lack of disk space.
I thought a short-term interim solution would be to set up a Hazel watch script to automatically trash these files as they are created. I’ve hit a problem with this as well, because they are system files the user doesn’t have adequate permissions to delete them, so Hazel isn’t able to do it. I haven’t yet figured out how to combine some kind of chmod or chown command within Hazel to get it to change permissions and then delete the files.
I have deleted all my wifi settings and rebuilt them. I have deleted a security profile I had. I have toggled the enable/disable diagnostics by option-clicking the wifi menubar icon to see if that might rewrite a .plist file. Nothing has resolved it to date.
I think this must be an underlying bug in the wifi networking frameworks of Catalina, but that’s above my pay grade.
I hope it’s resolved in a future update. For now, it’s an annoying bug, and another indicator that Apple’s software quality is not where it should be.
Microblogvember: My son is building a Lego craft at the moment that is designed to go into space.
There is so much high-quality television programming available now. We have Netflix, Amazon Prime, Apple TV+, Free to Air, etc. There was a time when it was necessary to find things off the back of a truck. I think those days are almost gone.
This overwhelming choice has led to a strange outcome, in that I’m actually watching less TV than I probably ever have. I feel like the onslaught is overwhelming so I’m just going to close my eyes and block my ears and hum to myself.
The competition now is for attention. As all the streaming services vie for our television attention budget, the television budget is being attacked by gaming, web browsing, reading, exercise and whatever else there is to do in recreation time.
My sacred cow of TV shows over many years has been Survivor. I would always find time for this show. My wife and I would watch it together. Now, we are 2 seasons behind in that. If we can’t keep up with that show, what hope have I got of ever finishing Season 3 of Stranger Things?
Microblogvember: Today’s temperature is forecast to hit 38 degrees Celsius. That is the opposite of cold.
This week I’ve had a massive technology upgrade. I’ve moved from a 2013 MacBook Pro (the generation of MacBooks which had great keyboards), to a 2019 27" iMac. I had been deferring this computer upgrade for ages, as I dithered between getting a new MacBook (and which variant?), an iMac or even a mac mini. I was hoping the iMac would gain the T2 security chip and possibly a new display with reduced bezels. I was waiting for Apple to return to manufacturing laptops with scissor mechanisms in their keyboards. By the end of October, none of those had come to pass. All the while I was becoming more frustrated with the slowness of my MacBook Pro.
I bit the bullet and bought the iMac. I’ve had a 27" Apple Cinema Display for years, so I’m used to a big screen. Yet this is the first time I’ve had retina resolution at this size. For my ageing eyes it is incredible. In use the iMac feels much faster with my old machine. I know it’s not near the processing grunt of an iMac Pro - but I don’t do video, podcasting or programming. For my productivity app usage and a bit of photo editing (and less than I used to do) this is plenty powerful enough for me.
A quick run of Geekbench on this Mac, compared with what I found in the Geekbench browser for my old laptop, highlights the difference:
iMac
MacBook Pro
Single Core
1053
710
Multi Core
4875
1565
It’s not all speeds and feeds, though. This new iMac feels nicer, supports newer features such as Sidecar, and has cleared clutter on my desk!
Technology upgrade cycle
All technology needs a regular upgrade cycle. Technology ages out and the industry moves forward. Inevitably devices need to be changed out. Obsolescence generally occurs before devices fail.
Over my most recent technology cycle, I’ve been depreciating my devices over a longer period. I’ve accepted not having the latest and greatest and have upgraded only when there has been a compelling reason.
For interest’s sake I maintain a spreadsheet to track how long I’ve owned major technology assets, and compute ‘life of service’ and ‘cost per week’. Two of our TVs, however, pre-date this spreadsheet, so they are definitely ready for replacement!
Letting the equipment age was fine in itself. Now though, we have a backlog of technology all set for replacement at the same time. The problem is I haven’t been reserving cash to replace the depreciated items. I responsibly saved up for the iMac, but other technology has not had a regular savings pattern applied to it.
Writing this post has prompted me to create a new line item for technology upgrades in my YNAB budget. I’ve set a monthly savings goal. This way I’ll be able to build my savings to facilitate a household technology refresh. I will keep ploughing money into this category on a monthly basis so that when the next device needs replacing, I’ll have the money sitting there waiting to be used. That beats going into debt - and don’t even get me started on the scourge of Afterpay! That’s a post for another day.
I’ve excluded the brand-new iMac from this calculation. ↩︎
Kids cricket is winding down as the sun sets. Yay summer! 🏏
Microblogvember: A pet peeve of mine is when people describe an asterisk as either an asterix or a star.
Watched Episode 1 of For All Mankind and enjoyed it. It brings to mind how fragile the success of the Apollo missions were, despite how much we take it for granted now. 📺
Over the last 24 hours I’ve been running on a brand new 27" iMac 3.1GHz 6-core i5. Compared with my old 2013 MacBook Pro this thing screams. I know it’s not an iMac Pro but this is plenty enough for my needs. Also glad that I swapped out the default Fusion drive for SSD only.
All in all I have a pretty great job. I’ve been doing it for long enough that I feel I have well and truly mastered the fundamentals.
With my interest in personal productivity I have constructed a range of efficiencies into my process flow to make things easier for me. This enables me to increase my overall productivity, do more with no more effort.
Despite all of this I am still working with people, and they can’t be automated, and the margin for error is greater than that of machines and systems. As a result, sometimes I have days where I turn up for a scheduled meeting only to find out that they are no longer available or that there was a ‘diary mix-up’.
When this happens, I don’t get upset. I see it as an opportunity to either recover some bonus free time, or it unlocks the ability to get ahead on some other piece of work.
I enjoy the responsibility of self-management like this. I think I would struggle having to return to a job that was micro-managed, or doing something that was a small cog in a larger wheel. I like owning the process soup to nuts, and making things work the way I think is best.
Microblogvember: We tend to think that we always have complete agency over our lives. If you stop and think how much is actually left to random chance, it can be a bit frightening.
Adobe Technical Support chat was so slow in linking me with somebody, that I was able to trawl forums and test random solutions. Just when somebody got to me, I had solved the problem. Great work, Adobe. 🤔
Microblogvember: I take my kids to the park and inevitably they find a stick to play with. Trees make the most versatile toys ever known to man. A stick can be a proxy for any number of imaginary things.
I am most comfortable within a nuclear family. I grew up in a family with my Mom and 3 siblings. We had a few extended family members, but most lived in different parts of the country or overseas.
As an adult the nuclear family is again the structure we are living in, except now I’m the Dad. My two sisters live in the same city, while my brother has recently moved to Switzerland. There’s no animosity between any of us, but we simply don’t see each other that much.
My wife has some family on her side, and those are the people we see the most.
In reality, we live our life as a small nuclear family of four. This is generally fine, except for when we would like to have a grown-up night out, or have some respite from children. Without the babysitting potential that comes from an extended family, we have to go to the open market and find a babysitter. That added cost and inconvenience does mean that we don’t get out as much as we might like.
While that’s not ideal, I also know that we are creating a strong and safe environment for our kids. They don’t have any fears of violence, abuse, drunkenness or any of the other things that occur behind closed doors that can lead to the destruction of a loving and peaceful childhood. That is a wonderful gift we are giving them, and I’m sure, as adults, they will appreciate that more than not having enough uncles and aunties to visit.
At the checkout of the IGA grocery store three employees and I each claimed our childhood James Bond. We had Brosnan, Moore and Connery. Plus one, “no idea”. Friendly staff for the win!
