The script was written by Steve Hayden, who died in August 2025. Shortly before his death, he had reflected on how the "1984" message of technology setting us free has not come true. "Yet the exact opposite happened," he said. "I don't think we've had weirder beliefs since the Salem witch trials or the Middle Ages."#
Just enabled themed icons on the Pixel 10. Only the MLB At Bat icon is not themed, for some reason. I thought I had the latest QPR installed that forced themed icons even if for apps that don't support it, so I am wondering what is going on. I am going to keep themed icons enabled for now to see how I like it.#
Received notification on the Viwoods AI Paper Mini that update V3.11.2 is available, and so that is in process of downloading and installing now. Amongst the new items is To-Do feature that replaces the barebones Tasks that has been previously available. To-Dos are text and not stored as digital ink whereas Tasks is purely digital ink. The two appear to co-exist in Daily, I think the main benefit will be for incomplete To-Dos entered today to carry over to tomorrow and I have created one as a test. To-Dos that are due on future dates only appear in the list on that date.#
Today is Day 3 of using the Pixel 10, and today I've taken notice of the battery life. When I went to bed last night there was 68% of life left and when I woke up about nine hours later there was 58%. With the Pixel 7a when I went to bed and woke up after that duration about 20% of the battery would be gone. #
9to5Google has an article about Pixel 10 accessories, including cases and Qi2 chargers. I've been using a Latercase on the Pixel 7a that I really like, so I went with their Pixel 10 Willy Blue version. I like how light yet durable these cases are, and after nearly three years of use the Pixel 7a case shows no wear. The cost for the case is at the high end of what most people prefer paying, but I think it worth investing in one that doesn't add bulk, weight, and yet provides good protection.#
The Latercase does not hinder the magnetic attachment to the Belkin Qi charging stand that I bought. I bought the magsafe atttachments in case there were problems, but looks look I won't need it. The Belkin charger is in 9to5Google's recommendations, it has two wireless charging pads and a USB-C power distribution port so I can charge the phone, Pixelbuds and Pixel Watch via the included 45W power adapter. Many companies no longer include the power adapter, so I think Belkin's inclusion of one makes this a good purchase.#
I wondering about what other Magsafe/Pixelsnap accessories may be worthwhile? Wallets seem to be particularly attractive, my bet is they are popular with women who clothing that is usually sans pockets. I am old enough to think wallets are for carrying money, so all the slim, card and ID only wallets, don't usually seem enough except for when making a quick run to pickup carryout. I wonder how many people always keep the wallet attached? #
I also frequently see adds for these magnetic "pop socket" like holders, my wife uses one of these on her phones but I have never seen the value.#
I got the Pixel 10 for Christmas and I am in the process of copying data from the Pixel 7a to the 10. The first thing I noticed about the Pixel 10 is how heavy it is and I don't know why I didn't think to compare the weight. I like the physical size of the Pixel 10 and how it feels in my hand. The indigo blue is very pretty, it almost makes me not want to put a case on. #
The transfer between the two phones includes moving from a physical SIM to an eSIM, which I am not thrilled about but I don't swap my SIM between phones so beyond this set up process it won't be a problem. However, I am most worried about whether the transfer will succeed. Right now I don't know for certain yet if it did.#
The Pixel out of box setup includes a step that transfers a physical SIM to the eSIM. It didn't work for me at first because I had AT&T wireless lock turned on, after I turned that off the transfer worked. I was afraid that I would either have to use the AT&T portal or call them, neither were things I looked forward do because of past bad experiences with AT&T. As a test I sent a text message to my wife and received a response.#
This is the first time that I have transferred my Pixel Watch to a new phone since Google made the transfer process easier, and it worked as advertised. In the past I had to wipe the watch and re-execute the first time setup process. Connection to Fitbit also worked as expected. It took Google long enough to finally get this right!#
I just by accident discovered how to create split view tabs in Arc, which I have done with Drummer and my now page. #
While technically I am not retired, I am thinking of myself as retired because I no longer have any work responsibilities. I think this is a mindset change more than anything. For example, normally when I start the Christmas vacation/holiday, I see the amount of unscheduled/committed time I have as finite because I know that it ends on New Years day. Not this year, this morning I am thinking more in terms of new routines. When do I want to get up? How do I want to start my mornings? Etc... #
I use Arc on my Macbook and one of it's cool features is split pane, which enables me to put by blog on one half of the screen and my editor on the other, then see side-by-side any changes that I make.#
Drummer is claiming to be running in another tab and for the life of me I cannot find it. Found it, it was running on my iPad for some reason. #
Friday, December 19 was my last work day at DXC. My retirement is officially on December 31, 2025 but I am now on holiday until then. Friday held within itself a bundle of emotions, starting with completing my last time sheets (weekly time reporting is perhaps the most important act of a DXC employee), then going to lunch with my wife, wrapping up with video calls with two of my former bosses who were no longer with DXC and another with those whom I have been working.#
I met my wife through work, specifically at an after work party that started with dinner and drinks at What's On Second and an evening show of Second City at The Attic Theatre. The first time spent by just the two of us was during a work day lunch at the West Side deli. West Side no longer exists but we had our lunch at a nearby Potbellys, a place I often got lunch from when I worked at the Renaissance Center in Detroit. It seemed to be the best place to go for my final work day lunch.#
On November 27, 1989 I boarded an airplane for the final destination of Plano Texas on the first day of my employment with Electronic Data Systems (EDS). Over those 36 years that I worked what was a subsidiary of General Motors became again a standalone company in 1996 only to be acquired by Hewlett Packard in 2008. In 2017, after a brief stint as part of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, I and what was left of EDS was merged with Computer Sciences Corporation to form DXC Technology. On December 1, 2025, on the 37 year mark of the first Friday of my employment with EDS I submitted my resignation for the purpose of retirement. I didn't plan it this way but I am struck by the timing of this moment. #
Dave has connected Scripting News to his Wordpress site so that what he writes appears in both locations. I couldn't help but notice how Dave got around the Wordpress requirement for title in order to create a direct link to a post, which is to generate a standard title using the date of the post, which i show I have been doing it using IFTTT. For example, look at this on Scripting News, it's copy on Wordpress, as compared to one of my copies from micro.blog to Wordpress. I was hoping Dave could influence Wordpress to improve how they handle titleless posts.#
There is a web browser standard for creating links that jump directly to a snippet of text on a web page. For example, this link should take you to the middle of my now page in which I wrote that I completed the 91 mile CA-M segment of the Pacific Crest Trail. To make the link I use the mouse to highlight the text, right-click and click Copy Link to Highlight. Unfortunately only Safari loads the page with the selected text highlighted, the other browsers jump to the location but do not make it obvious what is the text specifically jumped to. This is a form permalinks link generated on this site and anchored to the hash at the end of every paragraph. #
The only thing of benefit for my Google Pixel 7a in the November 2025 Pixel drop is the theme packs, which I have no interest in because I have no interest in turning my phone in to an advertisement for Wicked.#
In a country in which greed rules, is pedophilia the line that cannot be crossed? (Probably not) We all know the real problem in our country is that greed for wealth and power, an idol, drives us to not accept constraints on anything, but most of us in the United States are conditioned to not address, let alone recognize, the problem. Heck, we allow people elected to Congress to get wealthy by trading stocks no matter the clear conflicts of interest and likely insider trading that sends the likes of Martha Stewart to jail. The idea that any person can have too much money is heresy of the American religion, which itself is a heresy of the teachings of Jesus. And some dare to claim that the United States is a Christian nation? #
WriterdeckOS: Convert any laptop and most chromebooks into a writer deck into a device designed solely for writing. #
Install this AI app on your smartphone, the thing that probably has stored on it, or has access to, your most personal of personal information. What could go wrong?#
Last night was the 50th anniversary of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. I was in middle school at the time and don't recall the event when it happened but I do recall hearing Gordon Lightfoot's ballad about it for the first time a year later on the school bus one morning.#
It is the beginning of November and the MLB season is done, as it should be. Now the new season starts with the kick-off of free agency.#
The Bluejays can win the World Series tonight and end baseball in October, as it should be.#
Just had an experience of a form of browser takeover with Chrome on my Ubuntu remote desktop. I've removed Chrome and replaced it with Brave, which is requiring me to reinstall all my browser things. #
Does it matter what are Trump's approval ratings? It seems every day I see articles in the context of what has been normal about the United States, but I think we crossed a line in which looking at everything from what we thought be normal is a mistake.#
Headline of an article on The Free Press, "Trump’s Been Bombing Boats in the Caribbean. Is This Legal?" I think is irrelevant in the current U.S. illiberal democracy in which anything The Executive does is legal according to the Supreme Court. (BTW, having the word "Supreme" in the name of a branch of government seems to be an Achilles heel hidden in plain sight.) Nearly everyone has not yet come to terms with the fact that the idea of "rule of law" was overturned by SCOTUS when it said The Executive had immunity from the law.#
The real litmus test for the U.S. Government is whether the Federalist Supreme Court justices are truly federalists in the traditional sense of states rights that they uphold lower court rulings that effectively enforce that the Federal government cannot do whatever it wants to states. Does the ninth and tenth amendments matter? We've already seen SCOTUS ignore the ninth with the Dobbs decision.#
The U.S. Congress has made itself so irrelevant that it can cease to function and nobody cares, such is another sign for how entrenched the dictatorship is becoming. We will all find out next November that the midterms don't matter, because even if Democrats take a majority of Congress the Executive and his Supreme Court will simply ignore it. It seems as though Republicans in Congress know they are irrelevant and happy with the charade of power and the Executive simply doesn't care because it will simply do whatever it wants and nobody will stop it.#
My reaction to this article about Today's Christian Tribes is that Jesus called us to be small things like yeast and salt. I do not think Jesus intended for a religion for which his title was an adjective to be the official religion of empire, but that is how it became assimilated, like the northern tribe of Israel. I will note too that one thing the article gets right is associating the Christian religion with tribalism, for religions are tribes that align identity with a deity. #
Note, the header graphic is not from this year, my wife took that picture in Houghton, Michigan during our fall trip in 2023.#
Last weekend we were on our annual fall road trip to visit my mom in Menominee, Michigan. We stayed in Mackinaw City on the way there and back and on Saturday we drove over to west side of norther Lower Peninsula to drive through the Tunnel of Trees on M119.#
I agree very much with the gist of this article on 9to5google.com that some of the features of Android Phones is taken for granted and therefore underappreciated. Features like Now Playing and At A Glance have become so fundamental to my expectation of my phone that I am sure I would miss them in a "what do you mean that is not here" kinda of way. #
The Cubs beat the Brewers last night to force a deciding game 5 in the NLDS Saturday night. Both teams have held serve in their home parks, so the Cubs will need to break the pattern to play the Dodgers in the NLCS. #
Journalism professor Jay Rosen has retired from NYU to join a non-profit that has the purpose of training content creators how to do better news reporting. I am a bit uncertain about how even good news reporting distributed through social media contents with the wealth generating algorithms. In other words, do we have a creation problem or a control and distribution problem with news? #
From an originalist perspective, what is "the press" as stated in the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution? I think it is obvious that which exists today is not like "the press" in the late 18th century, which is why I think originalism is flawed. I can imagine the current SCOTUS saying that the first amendment freedom of the press doesn't apply to CBS News because it is not "the press." #
- I am reading Thomas Zimmer's essay about Russell Vought that I think correctly states what is happening in the United States. The MAGA project is the destruction of the United States that they view as already been destroyed. In their view this is the third American Revolution, the second American Revolution started with the New Deal and culminated in Obama's election. I think in order to fight against this I think more attention needs to be put on the question of what comes after the U.S. government is entirely destroyed.#
- Rooted in this question is the reality that these people only place value in freedom for themselves, freedom is not for their opponents. Democracy, including the U.S. Republican one, allows the possibility of one's opponents gaining power and therefore impeding upon their freedom. Consequently, Democracy is flawed and the only way to assure their freedom is a dictator. The form of what is in place may have the appearance all one thinks of about the United States, a Congress, President, Supreme Court, but for that structure to remain there must be guarantee the opposition can never gain power. #
- Consider the current government shutdown, doesn't it feel different to you? The difference is that the current Republicans behind the shutdown do not fear the voters, they don't fear not being re-elected, because they believe so long as the fall in line with the MAGA project they will continue to have a share of power.#
- Of course, anyone who understands what is going on ought to be sober enough to know that when everything relies on human feelings rather than laws sooner or later you can, and likely will, become the opposition to that person. Marjorie Taylor Green might being finding this out right now.#
Stop calling it mainstream media, instead call it corporate media or capitalist media. What is even considered mainstream today any way? It is definitely not "the press" as intended by the First Amendment. #
I think that Craig Counsell has done a poor job of managing the Chicago Cubs in this NDLS against the Brewers. First, he should not have started Boyd for game 1 on only three days rest and second it is absolutely wrong to not start your hottest hitter, Michael Busch even when going against left handed pitcher. How do you justify starting PCA who clearly has difficulty with left handed pitching and no start Busch. Pat Murphy was Counsell's bench coach and I am beginning to think he did more the managing than Counsell when he was in Milwaukee. His performance does not justify being the top paid manager in baseball. David Ross could have equally managed to the two losses that have occurred in this series. #
Yesterday I read on reddit that the Gemini Pro model does a better job of translating handwriting on the Viwoods AIPaper Mini than the Gpt-4o model so I tested it using the Journal notebook and can confirm that it does a better job of translation. I had it translate all four pages of the notebook and it did a nearly perfect job!#
Welcome to October on what could be the last day in which we see 80 degree temps in southeast Michigan this year. #
Read on Reddit that a plugin has been developed for importing notes on the Viwoods tablets in to Obsidian. There are also a couple of demo videos on YouTube. #
Here is a well written review of the Viwoods AIPaper. The author has experience with Remarkable and notes that much of the notetaking functionality mimics Remarkable. #
It is looking like the ability to publish what I write in Drummer to my blog hosted on micro.blog is breaking/broken. The trigger for micro.blog to check the outline for new updates runs slower and the posts are not being published every since Manton made a "fix" to enable category filters to run. I feel bad about complaining because I know I could be the only person want to post in this manner. At least the posts end up over in micro.blog, but I have to take the extra step of loading it up over there and updating to publish.#
The Chicago Cubs play their first Wild Card game for the 2025 MLB playoffs this afternoon, which is their first playoff game in many years. Looking forward to seeing how the team performs. I am not expecting much success in the playoffs this year, and I am mostly happy for the young players to gain experience with playoff pressure. Winning championships is part experience, part talent, and part luck, you need them all to win a World Series.#
We are seven days in to autumn and in the last two weeks we have had the best summer weather of all year. Temps in the low 80s with low humidity during the day and temps dropping down into the 50s over night. Apple Weather says the average high temperature for today is 69 degrees, the forecasted 81 degrees is 15 above that average. The forecast temps for the next 10 degrees are all above average, summer continue well in to October.#
Two years ago the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft dropped off the samples it collected of the asteroid Bennu. I've been fascinated by our ability to fly a spacecraft to an asteroid, which is also rapidly hurling through space, do a "touch and go" to collected samples, then fly back to earth, drop the samples off and continue on to another asteroid. Today I did a quick search to see what has been learned about Bennu. Recent reports state that Bennu is "a mixture of dust that formed in our solar system, organic matter from interstellar space, and pre-solar system stardust. Its unique and varied contents were dramatically transformed over time by interactions with water and exposure to the harsh space environment." [Source] and "In addition to the five nitrogenous bases -- adenine, guanine, cytosine, thymine and uracil -- required for building DNA and RNA, the researchers also found xanthine, hypoxanthine, and nicotinic acid (vitamin B3)." [Source]. OSIRIS-Rex has been renamed OSIRIS-APEX and is currently flying toward another asteroid, Apophis, which it is scheduled to meet up with in 2029. #