Posts

Jim Vorel writing at Paste: If you’re a drinker whose induction into the world of craft beer came fairly recently—say, in the last few years, or in what we’ll surely still be calling the “pandemic era” decades from now—then it’s entirely possible you’ll have no conception at all of the concept of the “beer growler.” Great read. Good to revisit that history. I never owned one of the fancy CO2 pressurized growlers, but I did own some double-wall insulated ones and plenty of glass ones. Someday I’m going to gaze back in time and wonder when I first came to craft beer. As best I can recall today, which is probably as best I’ll ever be able to recall it, this happened at some point during my college career at Rutgers University. Campus life had plenty of beer pong and while we weren’t filling cups with 8% IPA’s the not-crap you drank between games was closer to craft beer than to the commercial swill you see advertised during American football games today. ...

About doubled the mileage from June. Not much traveling in July, and the trip to Asheville involved a lot of bike riding. All good news to help bump up these stats. Quite a bit of variety, too, with rides and hikes across many parts of NJ and PA. I’m already a week into August and I do not think I’m on track to beat the month of July. Oh well. Bike riding is about enjoying the time you spend doing it, and not worrying about spending more and more time out on the bike! ...

To upstate New York, that is! Kristin had a bachelorette party to attend over the weekend, leaving me free to my own devices. I had been noodling on a motorcycle camping trip since getting the bikes last fall, and following a handful of misfires earlier this summer the independence I would have it seemed like a fine time to load up the saddlebags with a tent and sleeping bag. This would not be the first trip camping off the back of my bike, but it would be the first one where I would be entirely detached from the world and making my own way as I saw fit. ...

Today I took delivery of a new MacBook Pro, with M1 Pro processor1. In order to move all of my data over to the new machine, I decided to give Apple’s Migration Assistant tool a try based on the recommendation of John Gruber. Migration Assistant does what it says on the tin; it migrates data from one machine to another. Similar to restoring an iPhone or iPad from an iCloud backup, but there are certain advantages which really blew me away! ...

Posting a few days late, considering we were traveling in Asheville for the 4th of July. The month of June came in like a lion, and went out like a lamb. I think this should have been the wheel for March? Lots of big rides up front and then a bunch of smaller ones towards the end. I suppose getting sick in the last two weeks of June contributed to that poor performance, plus a wedding, plus a motorcycle trip, plus Hamilton passing away. Amazing I got as much done as I did! ...

A short story told in four parts. Crypto Exchange Finds a New Source of Revenue: ‘Inactivity Fee’, says Bloomberg just yesterday. Crypto Exchange Bitstamp Cancels Plans for ‘Inactivity Fee’, Bloomberg corrects us today. Bank of America plans $5 debit card fee, CBS News reveals back in 2011. Bank of America axes $5 debit card fee, CNN Money trumpets only months later. Heck, even the reasoning for the reversal is similar! Then: “We have listened to our customers very closely over the last few weeks and recognize their concern with our proposed debit usage fee,” said David Darnell, Bank of America’s co-chief operating officer. “Our customers’ voices are most important to us. As a result, we are not currently charging the fee and will not be moving forward with any additional plans to do so.” ...

Adam Engst over at TidBITS has covered a topic I found myself struggling with earlier this year. Complaints about website loading have been trickling in of late, and while the details vary, the commonality has been that the problems started with macOS 12.4 Monterey. Sometimes the problem was just with Safari; other times, it affected Chrome and other browsers too. In some cases, the entire page would refuse to load; in others, only portions of the page would fail. ...

Lots of new features this year. iOS 16 iPadOS 16 watchOS 9 macOS 13 And also a new Macbook Air using an M2 chip, the next iteration on their M-series processors. A list of thoughts: Lock Screen widgets look awesome. The ability to have a time-bound, floating widget sitting on the bottom of the lock screen showing you sports scores or when your Uber/Lyft arrives could be a killer feature; but I hope it becomes more widespread and successful than App Clips. iCloud Shared Family Photo Library could be a solution to the problem of having to share all family photos manually, through specific albums! Depends how it works in practice, but the fact you can toggle it from the Camera app does make it more discoverable and likely to be used. The killer part of this feature is that the Camera toggle can enable when you’re in close proximity to this in your family? If that works as advertised it is very discoverable and should be convenient to use. Apple Pay Later competes with Klarna, Affirm, and other “buy now, pay later” (BNPL) services. Hmm. This feels like an area where consumer protections/regulation will be landing with a thud, soon. Hello, CFPB? (Update 9 June 2022: high-level explainer coverage on BNPL from The Verge.) Dictation finally has some improvements! I use this a lot when drafting a longer email or text message string on my phone. Very nice to see. watchOS adds heart rate zones. Finally? Also good to see improvements to sleep tracking. I’m not sure if this silent, long-lived collection of health data will ever both worth anything to me in the future, but good to know it’s there, I guess. On the other hand, the privacy implications of having so much health data stored about yourself are…chilling. Medication tracking and reminders, on top of fall detection, irregular heart rhythm detection, medical alerts, etc will make the Apple Watch a good gift from kids to aging parents. The MacBook Air regains MagSafe! The new MacBook Air design looks sick. I’m torn between impulse ordering one (since supply chain delays are rumored), waiting to actually hold one in a store, and just getting a MacBook Pro 14" as I edit more GoPro video footage. Hmm. Please kill the 13" MacBook Pro. They did kill the Series 3 Apple Watch! Finally. Continuity Camera is going to be excellent. I’ve been using an old iPhone 6S with Camo and it has been amazing to make a powerful webcam out of an old and otherwise unused device. Having the ability to do the same thing with my primary iPhone has always been a struggle - I don’t want to have to connect it via wire to my machine, unlock it, put it in the stand, and also use that same phone for taking the call. Apple solved this by allowing the phone to mount magnetically (iPhone 12+) and using no wires to connect it to the machine. That enhanced convenience makes it much more likely I would use it day-to-day. Improvements to Mail on macOS? I use snooze a lot. If these same improvements come to iOS I might be able to stop using the (kinda ugly) Gmail app there. On desktop I use Mimestream, which is frankly fantastic. Not sure Apple’s Mail app is going to win me over from it this year, but I will give it a try. Passkeys! Improving security on the web and killing off passwords are some noble goals. If this implementation of Passkeys can work in a cross-platform, don’t lock me in sort of way, I’ll be happy to embrace it. iPadOS gains external display support! And it’s not just mirroring; it’s a whole separate desktop scaled to the screen you are using. Finally, finally, finally the iPad might become the nifty “naked robotic core” so many power users have been asking for. Some neat-looking features for collaboration on iPad, including the white-boarding tool Freeform. Great for collaboration. Doubt I’ll ever see a mammoth company adopt it, though. Weather on iPad! Guess that SwiftUI stuff is starting to produce fruit. (Apple? Fruit? end bad puns here) Stage Manager for multitasking on iPad and (hopefully optional on) macOS looks…meh? Need to see it more and watch more people react to it before I figure out if this is good (yay external display support!) or bad (they’re killing good multi-window and replacing it with this less powerful alternative). Many things changing in software this year. I wonder how many I will remember come next year? ...

A trip to Key West and riding on the Overseas Highway (US Rt. 1) always makes for a good month in biking! Despite the time off for that vacation, I managed to just barely eclipse my 2021 mileage at this same point last year - 1,005 miles for this year versus 994 for last. Certainly an improvement against where I was in February or March. No video yet from Key West; I am being exceptionally lazy editing that footage. You can find a few photos of the trip and various bike-related activities over on my Pixelfed account. ...

As reported by Bruce Schneier and The Verge: The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), a controversial anti-hacking law which bans “exceeding authorized access” on a computer system, was narrowed by the Supreme Court on Thursday in a 6-3 ruling. The court said the law shouldn’t cover people misusing systems they’re allowed to access — and that claiming otherwise would criminalize a “breathtaking amount” of everyday computer use. Great news here on a couple fronts: ...