The new iPad Air looks very, very compelling. It leaves me with no reason to want an iPad Pro anymore, other than if I want to keep the 12.9" screen size.

Apple’s iPhone 12 lineup won’t have high-refresh 120Hz displays, says analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. People are so bored with smartphones they feign disappointment at things like this. 🙄

🎵 I am very late to the “lofi hip hop radio - beats to relax/study to” craze, but I am enjoying it. For convenience, rather than than streaming YouTube all day, I am just plugging that phrase into this search box in Apple Music, which has numerous playlists (like this one) in that genre.

Feds proudly announce seizure of ‘counterfeit Apple AirPods’ that are actually OnePlus Buds. Well, they’re not right…but they’re not wrong, too.

The turkey chili I made to repay my father-in-law for fixing our kitchen sink today was a really big hit!

I am trying to find ways to make PowerShell/Windows Terminal more useful. I’m not an admin, so it isn’t immediately obvious what I can do. I want to use it to launch things (maybe groups of apps) and automate folder tree setups for new projects. That can’t be too hard.

Holmdel Park

Holmdel Park

My mantra for today is “I have been overthinking things.”

Zoom completely failed today for my daughter’s classroom. The teachers' stream had distorted audio and frozen video much of the morning. I think the school lacks sufficient upload bandwidth, because the other students' video feeds were smooth. It’s frustrating.

My favorite internet search thus far today was: “calming music that is not annoying.” All it turned up was YouTube videos, which I wasn’t really after.

Silly me. I thought my (real) work was a basically done for the week and I would have an easy day today.

I am trying to find ways to make PowerShell/Windows Terminal more useful. I’m not an admin, so it isn’t immediately obvious. I want to use it to launch things (maybe groups of apps) and automate folder tree setups for new projects.

The stress level at my house is extremely high. The first week back at school sure is fun. 😳 It’s even weirder when it takes place at home.

I am grateful that I don’t have to experience directly the California wildfires. If things had turned out differently for me, it’s feasible I would be in the San Francisco area, in the thick of things.

☕️ I am enjoying a freshly steeped cup of Yorkshire Gold (loose leaf) tea.

I slept through a little earthquake this morning that was centered only a mile or two from hy house.

I should take photos of my kids every day. I don’t know why I don’t, but I should.

Because it is back to school time, my mind has once again turned to collecting new recipes to try for easier fall cooking. Vegetable soups are the top priority today.

Thompson Park

📚 I am enjoying Dan Moren’s latest book, The Aleph Extraction.

I decided I wanted a universal snippet on my Mac to use to insert the date in the format I want it in. To my surprise, Dash, my code reference tool, can do that. If I want something more focused, it looks like aText might be the best, cheap app to do it on the Mac (and there’s a Windows version, too). (I used to run TextExpander, but that’s too expensive and way more feature filled than I need.)

There are thousands of COVID-19 cases at colleges and universities in the news this week. What happened to the elementary, middle, and high schools that have opened already? What’s going to happen in a week or two when students around where I live start going back to school? All the news articles I came across about them were about parents' anxiety rather than the actual consequences in schools that opened up in August. Has nothing much happened? That seems impossible, based on what young adults (not that different than high school students) are facing.

I gave myself a haircut today. It seems that it takes longer to do the less often I do it. It has been hard for me to keep to a once-per-week schedule, but I like the idea of having that kind of discipline.

How can it be that the teapot emoji hasn’t existed until this year and that Apple doesn’t support it yet, even on the iOS 14 beta?