Apple has finally released its app designed specifically for classical music, though I haven’t really had much of a chance to try it out yet, partly because it’s currently only available for iPhone and iPad (with Android yet to come), and I do more listening on my iMac. I do want to briefly mention two … Continue reading Apple Music Classical
Tech
Dumb Password Rules
In the later years of my career at the Defense Supply Center Philadelphia, whose parent is the Defense Logistics Agency, the requirement came down (from where, I do not remember) that we had to change our passwords every few months. This was stupid, as it did nothing to make our systems more secure, but try … Continue reading Dumb Password Rules
More Frustration
And today I received my confirmation that my federal tax return had been accepted, so I went to file my Pennsylvania income tax. This year the commonwealth has something called MyPath and I think it may very well be a bit easier than their previous web sites were. At least I didn’t have some of … Continue reading More Frustration
An Exercise in Frustration
As I had all my tax forms, I decided to get my income tax out of the way for another year. The IRS has a program where one can file for free with one of its partner sites, so that’s what I opted to do. I selected EZTaxReturn but it turned out to be something … Continue reading An Exercise in Frustration
Lift the Subject
Since I’ve recently complained a bit about Apple products, I thought I’d mention one of my favorite new features of its latest iOS and iPadOS systems, the ability to lift the subject of a photo. I’ve been finding it quite useful for creating photos for this fine blog. All you have to do is find … Continue reading Lift the Subject
Stand!
Seven years ago I made a video about the inability of the Apple Watch to correctly track when one was standing, even though that’s one of the three things that it claims to track. Well, it hasn’t improved. I realize that it can’t really track whether one is standing or not, but what it does … Continue reading Stand!
It Just Works
A few days ago Atrios was complaining about Apple products, in that while it was once true that they “just worked”, at least for the most part, it was no longer true. He has a point, but what he neglected to mention is that the computing environment has gotten extremely more complex in the intervening … Continue reading It Just Works
The Narcissistic Psychopath Has It Now
Well, that narcissistic psychopathic idiot now owns Twitter. John Gruber is optimistic: “I’m more optimistic about Twitter’s future than I have been in years.” PZ Myers is not: “The one thing I know for sure is that the new ownership is not going to lead to improvements in Twitter. It’s all going to go to shit, … Continue reading The Narcissistic Psychopath Has It Now
The Birds
One of my favorite tech oriented podcasts is the Accidental Tech Podcast or ATP. It’s just three guys talking about tech-related topics or whatever comes into their minds that week. In their latest episode, they talk a bit about their recent vacations, and John Siracusa describes a series of incidents with some very aggressive birds. … Continue reading The Birds
Western Union Sucks
One thing that really gets my goat is badly designed or implemented software, and that includes web sites. Having had a little bit of experience in developing software myself in the years when I was gainfully employed, this is a subject that I know something about. One thing that I always strived for (though I … Continue reading Western Union Sucks