Haven’t posted there since November 25, 2023 (and I don’t read the feed as much as Mastodon), but with the service opening up to everyone now, decided to switch my Bluesky handle to my domain. Logged into my Route 53 DNS panel, added one new TXT record with an _atproto string and voilà! You can find my Bluesky profile here – hoping the Tapbots people will integrate it with Ivory eventually…

Started a project this weekend to move all of my posted concert videos from YouTube here (and close the YouTube channel). Decided to use the 720p versions, which seem to upscale nicely on most screens. Also installed a new plugin called HTML5 Video Player that is supposed to be responsive and customizable.

Server is now at 90.7% of 77.48GB – might have to bump that up soon, as I’d like to add more old videos from my local storage…

macOS Sonoma 14.3.1 ✅, iOS 17.3.1 ✅, watchOS 10.3.1 ✅, iPadOS 17.3.1 ✅

So the creator of Nitter said it’s dead, which would explain why all of my saved links stopped loading a few days ago. Saw a thread that had a few working mirrors on other domains, but it sounds like the process being used will eventually time out on all of those too, unfortunately. So my last portal into a handful of Twitter people still posting regularly there has closed: @RossRaihala, @peril_in_pink, @linebackrbarbie and @rstanzel. Sigh.

• Wear my Apple Watch all the time
• Posting to social media
• Read online comments
• Click on any links about politics
• Subscribe to Amazon Prime & Creative Cloud
• Allow notifications on my iPhone
• Answer calls from unknown callers

Everyone on my Mastodon feed is talking about the 40th anniversary of the Mac today and which machine was their first. My first direct experience with one was the original form factor version (not sure the specific model – probably an SE) that was owned by my college hockey player roommate at the University of North Dakota in 1987.

The first one I actually owned personally was a Performa 405 from 1993 that I’m pretty sure my parents bought at Sears, of all places (also weird to think my first Apple IIc was purchased at Daytons). The fuel department at Northwest Airlines was my first professional job working with Macs, which included a lot of Quadra 700s and PowerBooks. Many, many more from this list in the years since then…

It’s been a fun ride – thanks, Cupertino!

P.S. – still looking for a good promotional photo of that 405…

macOS Sonoma 14.3 ✅, macOS Ventura 13.6.4 ✅, iOS 17.3 ✅, watchOS 10.3 ✅, iPadOS 17.3 ✅, tvOS 17.3 ✅

It’s been three weeks now since I stopped wearing my Apple Watch daily. My physical health is holding steady, as I still try to get on the treadmill to walk semi-regularly in this cold weather. My mental health, however, is vastly improved without the stress and anxiety of closing the damn rings. I still use the watch during workouts, but otherwise happy to leave it on the charger for the time being…

Not that it was noticed by anyone but me, but I got caught tonight with a server outage after a system update that I decided to run after the game ended (and I was waiting for traffic in the ramp to clear). Since moving to AWS, my server updates are usually quick and painless, with a few quick Ubuntu commands (and sometimes a restart):

sudo apt update
sudo apt list --upgradable
sudo apt upgrade -y

Tonight, an upgrade to PHP 8.2 removed my MySQL database extension. Googling things like this (and many other things, unfortunately) has gotten pretty bad these days, so it took me a little longer than normal to get back up and running. Thankfully I had some saved notes that helped lead me to the command that fixed it:

sudo apt install php8.2-mysql

It was nice to see my two monitoring tools send me alerts immediately (old standby Uptime Robot and newcomer Jetpack Monitor). Total downtime was just under 20 minutes…

It’s not a secret I’ve been a skeptic of many technologies, especially everything in the crypto/NFT/Web3 realm. Also not a fan of AI tools like ChatGPT and DALL·E (for a variety of reasons). And just in case you think I support everything Apple does, I won’t be in line to purchase a Vision Pro next month (pictured above). I thought all the previous virtual reality “goggle” products were silly. And while I’m sure visionOS will have some swell applications and the hardware will be well built, it’s not worth $3500 to me (never say never, though).

So what technologies have been my favorites?

• Electricity and batteries – as we experienced during our last power outage, electricity is a modern miracle. And while it seems like batteries could always be better, it’s amazing how often you can use things without a power cord or outlet in sight.
• Heating and cooling systems – let’s face it, living in Minnesota is probably just as bad for the planet as living in the desert, since you need heat in the winter and cooling in the summer to not have the weather literally kill you here. Thankful for these reliable systems daily.
• Food production and distribution – I wish we didn’t need food shelves in our society, but Minnesota’s agriculture sector is still awe-inspiring. Modern grocery stores are a marvel – even with the recent surge in prices, the ability to get fresh, abundant food in the middle of winter is extraordinary.
• Planes, trains and automobiles – also not great for the planet, but these forms of human transportation (and the engineering behind them) would all be considered magic by earlier generations.
• Television – as my post earlier this month showcased, I have watched entirely too much TV in my lifetime. The progression of the tech behind TV, though, is really something. Think back to the popular over-the-air black and white broadcasts of the 1950s and compare that to what hangs on my wall now. Wizardry.
• Networking, fiber optics, wireless and the Internet – there’s a reason there are still case studies about Cisco in business schools. This interconnectedness wouldn’t be possible without the thin strands of glass that that now run all the way to my house. That these paths help connect the device I’m currently typing on to the rest of the world (quickly and wirelessly) is frankly, unbelievable. It’s a shame so much junk has accumulated on the Internet, but don’t let that spoil all the good stuff.
• Microprocessors – I really don’t understand how these things keep getting smaller, faster and cooler, but good on those engineers for keeping the wheels of progress turning. I mean, a lot of people now think there is no innovation in mobile phones because the new models look just like the old models. But honestly, the latest iPhone in my pocket is usually the most impressive technology in our house at any given point in time. Hello, indeed.

Here’s hoping that the technologies of the future can help solve the issues facing our lovely little planet in smart, efficient ways…

It’s been almost a year already since I launched the latest design of this website. I wanted a dark, responsive design with larger fonts and for the most part, I’ve been very happy with the result. This week I made a few more tweaks to the font sizes and padding, as I thought the headlines on mobile devices were a little too big. I’m also not sure my viewport settings are 100% correct, so I need to spend a little more time on the mobile validation sites.

One of the things that I love about personal web publishing is that you can generally code pages to the exact standard you want. I’m not a professional designer by any stretch, but I generally know what I like (and there are a million examples online of what not to do). I also love reading brand guidelines from big companies that aim to preserve their look and feel. Here are some of mine:

• Colors: black (#000), white (#fff), red (#f00) and gray (#ccc)
• Fonts: Futura, Verdana and sans-serif
• Photo captions: italicized
• Image width: 1000px (was 850px)
• Image styling: 25px white borders, film frame for concerts and movies

I still support five primary post types on this site: standard, image, link, quote and status. Each of these have their own sections in my style sheet and the home page template has if/then loops to lay each one out differently. Made a few tweaks this week to the quote and link styles (and don’t really use status now).

Comments have been off here for a long time now and I still feel that most public websites are better without them (hope the Star Tribune will eventually turn them off, along with their annoying auto-refresh tag). I do wish there was a better way for people to communicate with me here – perhaps there are some creative plugins I’ve yet to discover. A few other editorial choices at 7 Minute Miles: no ads of any kind and (starting this week) no more jumps on longer posts (i.e. – “click to read more” links).

At some point, I may go back and try to re-style some of the images for the current design standard. When I used to have a white background, I’d often use black drop shadows in Photoshop and now those images just don’t work right. My CSS file still has a bunch of entries that I could probably remove without breaking anything. Also thinking about adding back an RSS icon (with a link to the feed) and creating some personal business cards with the site design elements.

The annual site anniversary post isn’t scheduled until March, but I did take a look at the WordPress Jetpack stats for this site in 2023: 6,406 visitors, 19,074 views and 822 likes. Two very old golf posts still are the most popular: past champion “Reflections on Spring Hill Golf Club” with 238 views and the new #1, “Somerby Golf Club Notes” with 326 views.

Thanks for visiting!

Edit (2/2/24): changed the image styling standard to a 10px white border