My wife and I recently discovered the Apple TV+ show “Little Voice” and very much enjoy it.

It is different in pace and tone from other shows (like “Curb Your Enthusiasm”) that we have been watching lately. While there is a lot going on in each episode, the pace feels slow and thoughtful, as if the show is focused mainly on the growth of its characters and on illustrating (a version of) the New York City music scene. I would not recommend watching “Little Voice” for its main plot, because it appears to follow the well-worn path of “talented-but-unknown artist slowly becomes successful.” That said, there are a ton of great character moments throughout.

The main draw of the show is the music, most of which are songs written by series co-creator Sara Bareilles. There is a lot of music performance in each episode. All these sections look great, sound great, and are integrated completely naturally into the story. However, they serve as the primary reason why the pace is slow. If you don’t like the music, then the show will not be for you.

Overall, I think that “Little Voice” is under-rated. It didn’t blow up like “Ted Lasso” (which is, indeed, great) or “Central Park” (which is also great), but is my third-favorite Apple TV+ series thus far.

I have been super, super, super busy today, and it just won’t stop. It looks like I’ll be working a lot of overtime…like right now. At least, once the kids go to bed, I can put my headphones back on and enjoy some music while I work.

I found this fairly long interview on The Verge with Marques Brownlee (MKBHD on YouTube) to be very interesting:

But what looks effortless and fun to the viewer is often the result of careful planning and investment. YouTubers are entrepreneurs, and Brownlee — my guest on today’s episode of Decoder — talks that talk with the best of them.

Marques Brownlee could be described as “tech reviewer” or a “social media influencer” or a “YouTuber.” I don’t watch all his videos, but I have checked in with his YouTube channel periodically since I first saw him (as a college student!) on an episode of TWiT. While he is telegenic and charismatic, he also presents himself as someone with a strong sense of ethics who is very smart and thoughtful about he approaches his business. This interview gives a pretty long look into Marques Brownlee’s professional world.

My wife, who is a high school teacher, recently reported to me that one of the top “professions” that teens want to go into is “social media influencer.” That is kind of eyeroll-inducing to me, but I suppose it is as realistic and as meaningful an aspiration as “famous writer” was to me. It is important to know how much work goes into that sort of job, and how much time, investment, and infrastructure goes into keeping up with the competition.

My name got mentioned three times on the all-team call at work today, which is three times more than usual. 😎

I don’t really want to criticize TapBots for making TweetBot version 6 a subscription app. I would like to highlight that $6.99/yr is a reasonable price to pay every year if you use an app every day. I wish more annual app subscriptions were below the $9.99 level.

Jason Kottke’s blog post offers some great advice that we all should heed:

So what can you do about this right now? 1. Stop worrying about the variants until the experts let us know we have something to worry about. 2. If you are eligible for the vaccine, get it! 3. Spread the word about vaccine availability in your area. Yesterday Vermont opened signups for vaccination appointments for all Vermonters 75 and older, and I texted/emailed everyone I could think of who was over 75 or who had parents/relatives/friends who are over 75 to urge them to sign up or spread the word. 4. Continue to wear a mask (a better one if possible), wash your hands, social distance, stay home when possible, don’t spend time indoors w/ strangers, etc. Thanks to these remarkable vaccines, real relief is in sight — let’s keep on track and see this thing through.

My family is now obsessed with wearing two layers of masks, which I tried but couldn’t get to work with my glasses on. I am more interested in finally being able to buy and wear N95, KN95, and KN94 (my favorite) masks, which are more effective than the cloth masks and surgical masks I have been stuck with since February.

In New Jersey, vaccine distribution is both successful (my wife, who is a teacher, got her first dose yesterday) and a total mess (it is very hard to get an appointment, there is no central coordination of virus distribution, and any effective effort on prioritizing inoculations for higher-risk groups is effective gone). If my family is a good indicator of people’s behavior, then lots of us New Jerseyans keep hammering away at the appointment systems, trying to get a better appointment slot, which further jams up the system.

I wrote a support email to Ulysses last week inquiring about micro.blog support. I got a response that said that it was on their “immediate roadmap” which is pretty exciting and still slightly mysterious.🤞

I can’t believe that Tom Brady is going back to the Super Bowl. Then again, it seems like the most normal thing.

After dithering on it for several weeks, I finally ordered a blue iPhone 12 mini late Friday night. I plan to keep it for the next four years, and also plan to keep using my iPhone 7 Plus as an occasional video player/video game player around the house.

It was supposed to be delivered here on Tuesday, but it came late this morning—a couple days early. Strangely, I find myself not ready for it! I have too many things to do today, and will have to wait to open up my new toy until after the kids go to bed.

The following children’s books are on the docket for me to read aloud to my daughter:

1. A Wrinkle in Time
2. The Secret Garden
3. Little Lord Fountleroy
4. Pollyanna
5. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

That should keep me busy for the next few months or so. I wonder if the sequels to A Wrinkle in Time will be demanded immediately.

I have never watched an inauguration before, and don’t plan to today, though the rest of my family is very interested. My wife’s school has disallowed live-streaming it over Zoom due to its political nature. My employer sent an email warning people in the NYC office of potential demonstrations and unrest over it. What a messed up country and time to be alive.

This is old news, but I just discovered it this week. If you use Arq for backup on the Mac, you can email their support team for access to the next version, Arq 7, which (among other things) ditches the non-native interface in favor of a much simpler and much quicker native UI.

Note to self: just use rsync to sync files. Stop avoiding the terminal!

I’m doing the usual Monday morning brain boot-up sequence right now. I hear the hard drive platters grinding in my head. 😅

Today, I read the second-to-last chapter of A Little Princess to my daughter, and chose the next book I will read to her: A Wrinkle in Time. She is very excited.

2021 MacBook Pro will ditch the Touch Bar and bring back MagSafe, say reports. I don’t know about the Touch Bar disappearing, but I expect it to look a lot more like the iPad Pro, have 4 USB-C ports, and thinner bezels than the current models do.

COVID vaccine rollout in New Jersey is disorganized and haphazard. After a few days of nail-biting stress and uncertainty about it, I, and the other adults in my family, finally got appointments for our first dose, for about three weeks from now.

My cheap plastic iPhone 7 Plus case broke and now I want a new phone. 😠😳😢😅

I spent about two hours last night trying to figure out if I can move my FreeNAS server, which constantly generates about 40 dB of fan noise white noise in my home office, to the basement, so that I can escape the noise. The problem I have is that there is nowhere else in my house where I can get a wired connection. I tried a wireless-to-ethernet bridging solution, and was super disappointed with how slow it was (40 mbps up/down).

Then I thought about scrapping the FreeNAS server, because I don’t need such a robust platform for my backups. I started looking into buying a Synology or something and loading it with larger hard drives so I don’t lose capacity.

While I was doing that, I started moving files off my FreeNAS server to prepare for retiring it. Of course, in doing so, I fell in love with the dang thing all over again, because I released how many services I am running and how flexible and reliable it is. I would like to get rid of the fan noise, though, but if I do, I will then be bothered by the 25 dB of fan noise from my work laptop.

Impeached twice. Not a good look. Let’s hope for the sake of the country that this is a one-time thing.

I haven’t had my M1 Mac mini for very long, and have only done a little Xcode work on it thus far, but I already love having a silent desktop that has tons of power. Since yesterday, I have mostly used that power merely to move tons and tons of gigabytes of data around my home network and to cloud storage, and everything has been rock solid and unnoticeable.

I have been very busy automating processes at work. I just got access to Automation Anywhere, which is a cool platform to build bots with. My practice with iOS Shortcuts in the past couple weeks is serving me well with its click, drag, and customize programming steps interface.

The House of Representatives is voting for impeachment along party lines so far, which is disappointing but not unexpected. Republicans don’t get it. It’s shameful.

On my M1 Mac mini, KensingtonWorks software somehow disables double-clicking on my Kensington Slimblade trackball. I can assign another button to perform a double-click, but it is hard not to double-click anyway, after doing so since the late 1980s.

I found a third party mouse utility called SteerMouse that does a much better job than KensingtonWorks, and offers a lot more options. I’m not sure I want to spend $20 on it, but I do like all my mouse buttons to do something.

This article in USA Today confirms my suspicions that all the anti-COVID measures would drastically reduce the prevalence of seasonal flu in the U.S.:

During the 2019 flu season from Sept. 29 to Dec. 28, the CDC reported more than 65,000 cases of influenza nationwide. During the same period last year, the agency reported 1,016 cases.

I get a vaccine every year for the flu—and luckily have not caught it since I was in elementary school—but other than that, I never think about it. My dream right now is that the COVID vaccine be the same kind of thing: a prick on the arm once a year, and otherwise nothing much to think about.