Back to the Mac, Various Ergonomic Issues, and Gestures of Care

One of the Quixotic quests I continue to waste energy on is the idea of “One Device to Rule Them All.” It’s completely impractical and fails to take in account what those devices excel at. Their core competencies.

I have three computers: My Mac, which for so long was the creative center of my life; my gaming PC which is where I pretty much just fly Microsoft Flight Simulator; and our VDI tool for work. I mention the VDI tool because while it is platform agnostic, that use case and its particulars take up 40+ hours of my week.

So, given how much I fly Flight Simulator and how much I work, using my gaming PC as my primary device seemed to make sense. So, I did. The whole thing kinda exploded with multiple monitors. That PC also gives off energy and heat, and consumes a ton of energy1.

An important aside is my microphone situation. For decades I am haunted by a weird ongoing issue with MacOS and USB headsets. After about 20 minutes it sounds like I am calling in from the far side of the moon. This has endured through four Macs and countless headsets. When we started the whole WFH thing in 2020 this became a glaring problem. To solve it I broke out my Shure SM58 stage microphone. Problem solved. In four years, I never have a problem with audio. I sound great as well.

Another factor was my short-lived YouTube channel. Switching the Shure SM58 between my Mac and PC was a huge PITA. On my Mac, I really need to crank the input to be heard; on the PC, that setting blows out eardrums.

About my Back Issues and Ergonomic Changes

I also suffer from back and neck issues. Once a month I get a treatment on my back to alleviate the pain. I missed February’s session and really felt it. As I was getting the treatment recently, I used that time to really think through how I can work on better ergonomics.

What I never really thought of is one issue with using the SM58 is you really need to be right on top of it to be heard. It is great that pretty much all background noise is eliminated, but I noticed as a result of this I was leaning slightly forward when I spoke. I hooked up my HyperX Cloud III Wired Headset.Now my microphone is at a fixed distance from my mouth and I can work on sitting up straight at all times. If the USB-headset issues arises, I have the Shure58 still hooked up ready to go2.

The monitors also contributed to this. The monitor to the side also required moving and holding my head and neck at an angle. So, off came the second monitor. My focus now is straight ahead. I have always used my iPad a sort of transient device. I might have a YouTube vide up while working for example. But that can now go under my monitor where an eye movement is all that is required to see the screen,

Now, these ergonomic issues don’t require a set computer. Mac or PC, it doesn’t matter. Both gain from it.

Back to the Mac

One of the challenges with the gaming PC as my primary is decades of Mac-based workflows and apps aren’t translatable. Sure, there are some cross-platform tools I use like Office and Photoshop, but others like Ulysses are MacOS only. I was trying to find different alternatives, but it wasn’t working.

I also prefer a cozy and minimal creating workspace. I can get that on Windows, sure, but that PC set up for Flight Simulator means the most efficient way of configuring it is a lot of Taskbar items3. A cluttered Taskbar and Dock offend my sense of elegance.

Look, I’ve never been a fan of the Cult of Mac stuff, but there are reasons people have hammers and power tools they like. The Mac and iOS are platforms that help me create. For decades, MacOS has been the central operating system to my life. For the last 6 months or so my MacBook Air sat off the side. I would bring it with me when I left the house or wanted to go downstairs and do something, but it wasn’t a computer I revolved my life around.

I had lost my way.

While I have shut down that YouTube channel for now, I also noticed that I had stopped creating completely. I’ve never been a prolific blogger, but I had stopped writing entirely. I was also missing tinkering with aspects of MacOS and iPadOS. One of my favorite podcasts is Automators. Because I was out in the wilderness on Windows I stopped listening to it. I was out of the loop on ways my favorite platforms could help me.

This isn’t a knock on Windows. I just get a good energy from creating on the Mac that was missing on PC. Switching to Mac also lets me use the gaming PC for its core competency: playing games.

Building a Live I Love

I am obsessed with desk setup videos. There is a subset category of desk setups that focus on cozy spaces. It’s not a complete contrast to the minimal setups, but the cozy spaces have more life than the stark, utilitarian setups. I am finding the cozy spaces help my mental health.

I found this setup video from Ying. The entire video is great, and the reflections section I linked to is the highlight of the video. She talks about how she has the items around the desk and her apartment and the meaning they have to her. There is one quote that really stood out to me:

“These are all the gestures of care that I’m showing to myself. To build a space that energizes and celebrates me.”

One of the sayings I use a lot when I am doing future me a favor is “this is a love letter to myself.” Self care is a huge focus item for me right now. Going back to my Mac as my primary computer is a huge gesture of care that I’m showing to myself.

  1. My wife is especially sensitive to these things. Today she came in my office. The PC was off and I was just working on my Mac. She said, “something feels better here.” ↩
  2. With my Stream Deck, it’s also just a one-button press to switch audio. ↩
  3. For example, it’s not just MSFS that runs when I fly. There are 4-5 supporting apps that run at the same time. The easiest way to launch, or check they launched is Taskbar icons. ↩

Various Thoughts on VATSIM

I have a handful of flights on VATSIM, which naturally makes me an expert on this topic.

VATSIM is an Air Traffic Control (ATC) simulator that allows folks on most of the major flight sims to fly with live Air Traffic Control. Obviously, not FAA-ATC, but a reasonable facsimile. It’s real people guiding you around the skies. The learning curve for pilots is very high. It’s one thing to control your plane while you are YOLOing around on your own, but when you are in a multiplayer environment, where ATC expects you do what they say, when they say, and failure to comply with their actions really, really, fucks things up for a lot of people.

My flight today was a sample of most early online flights. Short hop from Victoria, BC to Vancouver — about 30 min flight. This short flight was part of my problem. You basically just take off and land, There really isn’t a cruise section of the flight. I didn’t set myself up properly for the landing before I took off. I wasn’t 100% sure the route I was going to take, or misheard (and mis-read back ATC), but I didn’t have the waypoint he wanted in my system. By the time I got that sorted out, I was already handed off to the controller for the landing where it turned out I was on the wrong approach all together. He then told me to turn left to a heading, but the Airbus went “nah, it’s quicker to turn right” and at that point I just disconnected in frustration since I wasn’t doing anyone any favors. The ATC was fab. This was all on me.

For anyone who has played an MMO, VATSIM feels a lot like raid night. Everyone has to do their part of the dance correctly for things to go well. I can see where a lot of practice this could yield some fun. Especially when flying along with friends. There are some VATSIM events where it’s packed, a lot happening, and it really feels like you are flying an airliner in a busy area.

But, for reasons not worth getting into, there are multiple injectors of stress in my life right now. Nothing critical, just there is a lot going on. Getting comfortable with VATSIM just adds to that stress. Additionally, I spend most of my day hooked up to a headset. Other than a casual game night with friends, I really don’t want to have the headset on.

The rub, though, is the in-game ATC is not very good. It barely can control traffic, won’t give you vectors, and really you are just along on a scripted event. I use FSLTL to inject traffic. As I get used to its limitations I find it adds a level of immersion when coupled with a live traffic injector. None of the other ATC programs for MSFS solve the problem in a manner for me that is worth the money. Too many of them have other issues with how they handle traffic so I end up just using the built-in ATC since it’s free. They are saying that ATC might get fixed in the next version of MSFS due out next year, so we will see.

I like the multiplayer aspect of VATSIM, and it is something I will likely keep working on. It is fun to see what other folks are flying. I just need to make sure I am in a good space to accept that stress and accept I may be tagging along on a lot of flights offline instead of via VATSIM.

On Content Creation, YouTube, and Telling Stories

It is very hard to succeed at something if you don’t know what the goals are.

I started a YouTube channel in April 2022. At first, the focus was pretty simple: I played American Truck Simulator/Euro Truck Simulator 2 a ton, and would record and upload my game sessions. My biggest influences were Jeff Favignano and my friend Zilla Blitz. There were some challenges with my hardware at the time: The Mac wasn’t great for recording video game content and my PC was ancient. But, I was able to soldier on.

Then in May I got a gaming PC and now it was very easy to record. At the time life got really chaotic and it is hard to grow a YouTube channel with an infrequent posting schedule.

In December, my gaming really got upended when I switched to Microsoft Flight Simulator. The sim looks fantastic, but creating content is harder. There is the first the technical challenge of learning to fly the damn airplane. Using some replay utilities it is possible to create cinematic videos.

For a cacophony of reasons my channel has not been successful. After a year, I have 22 subscribers. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. I don’t post because it’s all just pissing into the wind, and it’s all just pissing into the wind because I don’t post a lot. The YouTube algorithm is a harsh master.

The real reason I haven’t been posting is I don’t know the story I want to tell. I am a story teller. Even in my work documentation, it’s sort of ok, we are going to tell a story about how we are going to implement this system.

”He worked in profanity the way other artists might work in oils or clay. It was his true medium; a master.” – Ralphie.

I am a writer. I enjoy writing. The whole process — an idea for a story I want to tell, how I want to phrase something, fussing over the details. With writing, I know the story I want to tell, how I want to create it, and best of all I don’t need to be sitting at my desk to do it. Words are my medium.

“Saying ‘no’ is actually saying ‘yes’ to other things.” – Patrick Rhone.

It’s not the end of my YouTube channel. I will still poke at it. But maybe the story of my YouTube channel is there just isn’t a story for me to tell there. By taking the focus away from worrying about my channel, I can tell stories in a medium that works for me.

How, and Why, I Hoover Up Large Amounts of Real World Flight Information for MSFS

Microsoft Flight Simulator is my latest game addiction. Since the beginning of the year, it is the only game I have been playing. Once I figured out how to fly airliners, it all clicked and I got hooked.

Part of the appeal for me is recreating real world routes. For instance United flight UAL679, is an Airbus A320 flight route from Boston to Newark. I have sceneries for both airports, as well as an A320, so I will fly that route with that flight number.

To organize this, I have a fairly complicated Excel sheet.

A Brief Aside About Tracking Sceneries

The default, AI generated, airports in MSFS are a blight on humanity. I simply refuse to fly into or out of them. There is an important distinction here: often MSFS creates a handcrafted, reasonably accurate, representation of an airport. In my database these are not treated as regular default airports.

So, on the aforementioned Excel sheet, there is a worksheet called “Handcrafted” into which I capture:

  • ICAO code for the Airport (KEWR for Newark)
  • The source of the scenery:
    • World Update: The handcrafted MSFS sceneries.
    • Freeware: Usually from flights.to. There is a sub category for free sceneries I have found lacking.
    • Owned: I bought the scenery.
    • Paid: I’m not tracking all the paid sceneries available, but if I plan a route and there is a paid option, I document it here. This scenery is usually wish listed.

When I capture a route on a separate worksheet, there is a VLOOKUP that returns the scenery source. If it does not show up on the Handcrafted worksheet in any form, it displays a value of Default to tell me there just aren’t any good options.1

My Research Sources

Volanta:

Volanta is a flight-tracking app for MSFS that shows the routes I have flown, the airframe used, and a few other stats. There is a subscription-only service that displays real-world route information. I can filter the main view for installed sceneries, and when I click on a departure airport, I can also tell it to only how installed sceneries. However, and this is a reason behind why I use Excel, it does not see the MSFS Handcrafted airports as installed sceneries.

Volanta is my first-stop for real-world information

Flightaware:

If I doubt something in the Volanta database — usually when a streamer who focuses on real world ops has a flight, and I can’t find it in Volanta — I go to Google and type in “flightaware KBOS KEWR” that shows me the list of flights between those two airports and their airframes. If I enter a streamer route into my collection, it’s after I verify the information.

Flightsim Dispatch App:

This is a fantastic resource for historical routes. Their database stops around 2022 so it’s not great for current-day routes. However, the historical data is very accurate and reasonably matches up to timetables I checked it against. The flight number is often different, but given how often flight numbers change, it’s not a sticking point. When I research US Airways flights, for example, it the sole source I use.

However, this database is not exhaustive. In the case of US Airways, the routing is correct, but it does not show every flight and model; only what the dev had access to. It also does not show the source of the information.

Another Aside on Types of Flights

Keeping with the theme of overanalyzing data, as I research and document routes I group them into these categories:

  • Real World: This route has come from a trusted source that this airline actually flies with that airframe today. I use Volanta for some of this, and some of it is from FlightAware.com. Generally speaking, I only log real world flights for airframes I own, or are imminent purchases.
  • Historic: This route was flown by a now-defunct airline, and notes the airframe used in this flight. For instance, The “Miracle on the Hudson” flight 1549 was a route from KLGA to KCLT in an Airbus a320. So on my planning worksheet, it would be referenced as historic.
  • Defunct Virtual: This is a rare category, but falls into some “what if Pan Am survived” and I recreate a route they flew, but with an airframe I own. In Pan Am’s case, they had ordered A320s, but sold off their spot in line to Braniff. These were likely going to replace their Boeing 737s, so while it would still be classed as Defunct Virtual, it’s almost historic. At one point, I was thinking of leaning hard into a what if for defunct airlines, but ended up backing away from that. In the end, it was hard to overlook the factors that caused the airline to fail.
  • Virtual: In this case, it’s not a route pairing I could match up to anything. If I flew it, I would usually use my own custom livery for my YouTube channel.

Both Historic and Real World are very specific on the validity of the data. To get classed in either of these, everything matches against the trusted source. However, the incompleteness of the data does require some creative interpretation. For instance, in 1992 US Airways flew from Washington D.C. to Boston 16 times a day. The dispatch app just shows one entry from 2008. It’s why I don’t pay attention to flight numbers, and I will tend allow myself to fly any airframe the airline used. US Airways flew A319s, A320s, and A321s so any of them are fair game for a route.

Cargo and Executive flights are an interesting challenge. It is very difficult to get flight information for cargo flights. Some routine cargo flights — like Amazon and FedEx, are somewhat easy to get information about. It takes a little digging. Amazon does not fly flights under its own call sign. Instead, they subcontract out flight operations to two groups in the US. Sun Country (SCX)2 and Atlas Air (GTI). The main hubs are KLAL (Lakeland Linder International Airport), KAFW (Perot Field Fort Worth), and Cincinnati (KCVG). At that point, using Flightaware I could dig out some flight information. The handful of Amazon flights I have actual routes for I track as Real World. Other cargo flights are usually in my own livery as Virtual.

Executive flights are always classified as Virtual. The only way an executive flight would show up as Real World is if the flight was both an airframe and livery I had, coupled with a flight tracking history. Given how many of these jets opt-out of tracking, they exist this is likely to not happen.

There is appeal to only flying business/cargo. You aren’t limited at all by real route airport pairings. Especially in Europe, there are a lot of cargo air operators that do charters for one-off transport so it’s plausible.

Back to the Topic: Why It’s All in Excel

Were it not for my fascination with historic routes (Especially US Airways and America West), I could just get by with Volanta. I can work around how it displays the handcrafted as default sceneries. Honestly, while I have this massive sheet, I still end up going to Volanta and looking it up.

However, the Excel sheet does have a lot of things going for it: It combines historic and real world routes. When I filter on an airport pairing, I can see if there is a historic flight option.

What is great is it really lets me pair up airports I own. The mot frequent use case for this is I decide to fly out of an airport I own (KEWR), and want to fly to another airport I own. I will set my filter on Origin to KEWR, and my Destination Source filter to Owned. This will report out all the routes I have captured that meet that criteria. I can then filter down to airframe and airline if I so desire.

  1. For the Excel nerds, it’s all wrapped in an IFERROR statement. ↩
  2. To really mess things up, SCX is also a passenger airline, flying 737s on those routes as well. Fortunately, the Amazon flights are SCX3XXX. ↩

Some Additional Thoughts on Using the OG iPad Pro… still.

I was a guest on Tim Chatan’s iPad Pros Podcast last year, talking about still using the 2015 iPad Pro in 2021. Well, it’s 2022 and I am still using the thing.

I’ve mentioned enjoying Patrick Rhone’s enough, and have said for a while the OG iPad Pro is still enough. It’s still enough for me, barely, and on a frugal technicality.

The battery is completely and totally trashed. I might get like 3 hours battery life, and it drains quite a but sleeping. A few years ago, before the pandemic, my battery was just hovering above the 80% health cutoff for Apple to do a $99 repair. Now, it has probably passed that, but I don’t want to spend the money to replace the battery in a 7-year-old device.

Apparently, I don’t want to spend any money to fix the problem. Which has me to contemplating the iPad’s role in my in life these days.

The iPad is mainly the bed time computer for me. It’s what I read Twitter on, RSS, surf web, etc. It’s a complete consumption device for me. Almost any sort of creative work I have moved to my MacBook Air. .

If my iPad died, I’d probably replace it, but I’m not sure with what, and it’s why I keep the kicking the can down the road. With the new iPads, I’d also want a new Apple Pencil so that adds $130 to every price. Matt Birchler’s USB-C is one of the best quality-of-life changes in tech in the past decade prompted me to think about this in greater detail.

I am trying to move everything that has a cable or charger to USB-C. I got the new Kindle Paperwhite mainly for the USB-C cable. I have a charging hub next to the bed, and now it just has Lightning and USB-C.

I likely should just get the iPad Air with USB-C, but until Apple removes the Lightning connector, I am always going to have that cable at hand. Frankly, the base $329 iPad is what I would probably get. I can still use my 1st Generation Pencil.

What I have given a lot of thought to, though, the iPad Mini. The price — including the $130 for the new Pencil — is less than the cost of just the Air. It has the new design, and the USB-C chip. Lee Patterson had some good observations about the Mini. Hopefully, I can continue kicking this can down the road long enough for the M1 chip to migrate to the Mini.

I need to actually spend some time with one in an Apple Store, though. I am concerned going from the 12.9” screen to the 8.7” might be a little too harsh. I’d certainly welcome the lighter weight, though.

A Few Random Thoughts on Intentional Computing

I am not a huge fan of the notion of digital minimalism, or minimalism in general. The slippery slope for either of those ends in a sort of ascetic lifestyle. Especially in digital minimalism, there seems to be a prevailing theory of there must be only work.

That said, I have worked on adopting Intentional Computing. The basis for this is you sit down at the computer and focus on the activity you want. This can be productive or just playing a game.

Shortcuts

Like everyone who tries to be intentional about their computers, I fail a lot. I will look up a reference video and end up watching a video about muskrats or something. To help with this, I have a brute force Shortcut — Apps — I use to help me focus. This shortcut allows me to choose from a list:

  • Quit All Apps: This is a complete system reset and, well, quits every open app. I use this a lot to clear out clutter of open apps and resets my view to allow me to begin an activity I want to focus on. I also use this as part of my nightly shut down routine so I have a clear pallate in the morning.
  • Work Start: This launches the apps I need for the day job: Things, our VDI application, Teams, Webex, and OneNote. It also quits all running applications at the start.
  • Work Quit: This shuts down the work-specific apps. Things will stay open for personal stuff, but the jobby job stuff gets quit.
  • Work Refocus: This to help me recenter if I feel I am drifting to far away from work. Like, if I take a break and Discord and Tweetbot are still running. This one quits all non-work apps except Overcast stays running since I will listen to a podcast while working.

A few Thoughts on Gaming

I likely spend too much non-work time playing games. Some of this related to what Greg Morris wrote about “Making Friends as an Adult Sucks”. My main time wasters are online games like Final Fantasy XIV. A large amount of my friends aren’t physical friends but people I know in these games. Especially during the pandemic when we were really in a lockdown, these relationships were a lifeline. Virtual Worlds let me leave the house when I am unable, or unwilling.

I do often think of just uninstalling all the games, especially online games1, and really having that ascetic, there is nothing but productivity lifestyle. This is fool’s errand. The reasons I’m not creating, and this is the first blog post in over a year, have nothing to do with gaming and more about my own headspace at the time. You could lock me in a cabin in the woods and if I don’t want to create, I won’t.

The thing that does work, and I need to go back to, is the notion of using my leisure activities as more of a reward for good behavior. Did I create something that day? By all means, play a game. Did I bust my ass during the day job and have earned a mental break? Play the game. Creating does a lot of heavy work in that requirement. Working on a model for my model trains for a little bit counts.

  1. I am not even going to mention how often I have uninstalled and reinstalled World of Warcraft this week. ↩

The M1 Air

The M1 Air

Ended, my ‘Using the iPad as a Main Computer’ phase has. 

Using my iPad as a main computer was always a lofty, if unrealistic goal. The closest I came was the betas for iOS 13. I could set an iCloud folder to always reside on the device1. However, over time I started doing more data analysis work with Tableau and drawing in AutoCAD. Neither of them work at all on the iPad. If can’t do something on the iPad, it’s not a wall I graze against, it’s one I slam into.

The iPad, though, became my main secondary device. If I went out for some light writing (remember coffee shops?) and didn’t want to drag my 15” MacBook Pro with me I’d bring the iPad in its keyboard case.

I bought the 15” because I wanted the dGPU as well as trying the minimalist just a laptop and an empty desk routine. I got neck pains from just using the MacBook, so I ended up with monitors on the desk again. The dGPU helped a little, but 4 years later it is barely more effective than an integrated chip. Large laptops aren’t very portable, obviously, and I’d run into issues using it on the train (remember trips to Boston?).

My favorite laptop, though, was my old 11” Air. Even recently, I used it frequently during times I needed macOS but didn’t want to move the 15”. There exists a parallel universe where instead of getting the 11”, I got the Retina 13” Pro, thus negating getting the 15” with the Retina screen.

When the M1 Macs were announced, my plan was to wait until the first of the 4-port Macs were announced and get the 13” (or 14”) version. My feeling was the M1 Macs now were the slowest we’d see, and the true Pro machines would be fucking amazing.

But, I kept going back to the idea of the 11” Air and how I dragged that thing around with me constantly. Super light; super portable. The 15” became more of a conscious choice: do I need the big laptop?

All that said, while I hated the keyboard on the 2016, I still overall liked it. I wasn’t a fan of the TouchBar, but I could deal with it. It was decently fast and I could play my games for the most part fine. Back in November, it popped the alert that the battery requiring servicing. The 15s aren’t known for their amazing battery life anyway, and and with a crippled battery it was horrible battery life.

When I looked at replacing the battery, I thought I’d rather put the money to a new laptop. This was a good time to downsize to a portable machine. Even though mobile for me now means changing rooms.

Which lead me to taking a longer look at the M1 Macs out now. We had passed the period where the early reviews are the usual amazing, and also now could get some real-world usage over a few months2. If there was one tipping point, it was Marco Arment mentioning on ATP that he was very happy not using his iMac Pro and using the Air as his main computer. Marco, to put it politely, is fussy about his computer setups. If the Air, the lowly Air, was enough power for someone who sweats the small stuff on this, it was likely good enough for me. Looking at Geekbench scores, I was going to gain 1k on single-threaded, and 5k on multithreaded. The M1s are basically very close to iMac Pro performance. In a MacBook Air. An iMac Pro is already more power than I need, so waiting for an even faster version of a computer seemed superfluous.

Which lead to a lot of internal debate over a Pro or Air. The Pro has active cooling and better battery life. The Air, though, is a style I love with the wedge shape. I could also get it in gold. As with waiting for a faster Pro, a few more hours of battery life — on a device that also about quadruples my battery life from the 15” — again was superfluous.

Another data point was ArenaNet completely dropping Mac support, and Bethesda saying they would not support M1s. Neither of these are games I play, but did prove a suspicion I had: Apple Silicon will likely force a lot of the game developers for games I do like to either have to go all-in on Mac support, or cut their losses. It is likely around the time Apple ends Rosetta 2 support I will need a gaming PC to keep playing some of my games.

So, you may be asking, that the heck does this have to do with iPads? A valid question.

As mentioned in my piece, Life with a Series 0 Watch, Older Tech, and COVID-19, I have a Quixotic quest to try and get down to just one damn device and an iPhone. For years, I wanted this device to be an iPad. I will admit, the ascetic lifestyle of a digital hermitage on just an iPad appeals to me. Folks like Chris Lawley, who performs almost all his life on an iPad, are fascinating.

The M1 Air, though, pretty much does give me that one device. The main uses for my iPad are News, Instapaper, and Overcast. News and Instapaper have Mac-native apps, and I can use the iPad version of Overcast on my M1. The M1 wakes from sleep and is usable as quickly as my iPad.

I’ve had the M1 for about a month, and I feel like I have a fast, retina version of my beloved 11” Air.

  1. This feature never made it out of beta. ↩︎
  2. If there is one thing reviewing MMOs back in the day taught me: There is a significant difference between my feelings at publication date, and my feeling 2-3 months later. ↩︎

Life with a Series 0 Watch, Older Tech, and COVID-19

I have mentioned this before, but I am a huge fan of Patrick Rhone’s enough, and Minimal Mac. Patrick is probably the closest I have to a minimalist sensei.

Patrick still uses his older 11” MacBook Air as his daily driver. Back in 2014 he wrote an excellent post: Not for Me. The thesis was that he decided the products Apple released are not worth reaching for his wallet, and his existing tech still worked for him.

I still use my Apple Watch Series 0. It’s five years old, and every year I think the newer Apple Watches will finally get me to reach for my wallet. This year, like other years, I decided my Series 0 is still, well, enough for me. It’s not that I think the new Watches suck. It’s that they don’t solve $400 worth of problems for me. The only thing that makes me think of getting a new watch is the EKG sensors.

Likewise, my iPad is a 2015 12.9” iPad Pro. The battery on it is kind of shot and doesn’t yet register under 80% health for a cheap battery replacement. This is probably the longest I have kept an iPad. My iPhone 8+ still trucks along just fine and I don’t see a burning need to replace it as well.

In 2016, I bought a new 15” MacBook Pro. This device is the likely upgrade candidate with the new M1 Macs. There are times I feel like I am pushing the power constraints on it, and, yeah, that damn keyboard. When balancing out power vs portability, my old 2014 11” MacBook Air still wins some usability battles1. This makes me think that maybe I will get a 4-port, 13” Pro when they come out.

I have a strong aversion to getting rid of tech that still satisfies a use case. The likely catalyst to buying a new iPad will be when a new version of iOS stops supporting my iPad. My relationship with my tech is dichotomous: I want to use the best tool for the job; but I also Quixotically continue to bang away at a One Device to Rule Them All2 mentality. Even with my 11” Air and my daily driver 15” Pro, maintaining both computers has a mental overhead. If I don’t use my Air for a bit, the first use is a miasma of app updates and iCloud syncing. As Matt Gemmell said, devices have “a weight that’s not from its mass.” The ascetic lifestyle of iPad-only lifestyle appeals to me, but these days so much of my social interactions are online games and weekly Skype gaming sessions with my friends, the monastic lifestyle of only having an iPad would be unpleasant. When I periodically purge my space of cruft that builds up, the stereotypical empty room with just a desk and a laptop appeals to me. This tends to be an overreaction for when I realize I have 3 computers going, with two games running as a switch between them like a dog chasing a flock of squirrels.

We don’t live in a non-COVID world, as much as some people would like to pretend we don’t. I don’t really leave the house these days. Gone are the days of working for a few hours in a coffee shop. I made an appearance in the office thrice since March. Mobile these days means I might go down to the family room, or the patio, and do some work. Since the big issue with my iPad is battery life, and I am rarely away from a power outlet, resolving that issue isn’t a high priority.

This current-state isn’t going away any time soon. When I look ahead to 2021, every instance I think of where I’d need a more mobile solution isn’t going to happen. My big gaming convention I spend 4 days in a hotel geeking out? They already announced it will be virtual next year. I love going into Boston for the day, wandering around and getting some good food. The idea of getting onto public transportation and doing all that seems so foreign to me.

  1. There exists a scenario where I upgrade the 256gb SSD in the 11” to a larger drive. ↩
  2. The scales continue to shift to the Mac. Instapaper now has a version that runs on even Intel-based Macs. ↩

Friday Night Gaming, the Corona Virus, and Well, Everything

I have known my friend Dave for almost 50 years. I think about that often. Fifty fucking years. We met on the first day of kindergarten. We haven’t stayed in touch all those years. There is a period of time, like most friends, we lost touch. But, up through college at least, we had a regular gaming group: Dave, Mike, Paul, Kenny, and sometimes Kenny’s brother. We were fast as thieves. It was rare to see one of us and not the others.

Usually Kenny’s messy bedroom, or Dave’s dining room table, was our congregational point. Kenny’s was fun because you could drop a die on the floor and come up with 5 bucks in loose change and your wayward d20. We played a ton of D&D, Traveller, Axis and Allies, and the old Avalon Hill board games. The Losers Club from IT? That was us, man, with our own version of the Barrens.

After high school I went off to college, Dave joined the Marines. Mike joined the Guard and did a tour in the first Iraq war. I lost touch with them and missed them. Then, life took a weird turn. My wife at the time was petsitting for a woman who lived in a duplex. The next door couple also needed a petsitter and during the initial talk my now-ex is asked, “Hey, any chance you are related to Mark Crump from Natick?” It turns out it was Dave’s brother. Dave was getting married in a few weeks. The bachelor party was at a paintball place and I was invited. Dave and Mike still got together on Fridays to game. After that, I also joined in.

This was about fifteen years ago. Life is full of chance moments. I mean, what are the odds that my wife’s petsitting business would hook me back up with my high school gaming group? It’s one of those plot points a reader would roll their eyes at and mutter, “yeah, right” under their breath. The wife is gone; the friends remain.

Since then, most Fridays we still get together. The congregational point has changed. Instead of Dave’s, it’s Mike’s. We still act like it’s the high-school D&D group. It is not a time for deep, reflective conversation about the plight of the common man. Instead, it’s a lot of, “that’s what she said.” It’s the escape from life that we need.

For a few years we’d also try to have a computer game night mixed in there. Sometimes it was playing D&D on Roll20 or whatever MMO we wanted to try. We had a few board games on Steam, but board games were usually reserved for Fridays, in person, moving physical pieces around while Mike and I kept an eye on Dave because Dave is cheating bastard. Some Fridays we would play online — usually when a blizzard hit. The preference, though, was in person.

The virus changed, well, everything.

Now the congregational point is Skype. Instead of a table, we use Steam. We don’t need to police Dave since cheating in an online game is functionally impossible. We don’t wonder who shuffled this fucking deck when five red cards come out in a row in Ticket to Ride. It’s not the same, but, yet it is. We don’t move physical pieces around. Our game options are smaller. We tend to stick to a few board game equivalents on Steam since playing an MMO has a lot of waiting for someone to catch up, or doing a quest twice because someone forgot to grab the fucking quest. There is still a lot of “that’s what she said.”

The virus changed, well, everything.

We are all in this weird Groundhog Day House Arrest mode. Monday through Friday, I get up, plod down the hall to my home office. Traffic these days is a jackknifed cat in the hallway. I look out the window at the woods and my monitors and, well, work. Weekends…. I get up, plod down the hallway and sit in the same chair looking out the same window at the same backyard at the same woods at the same screens and, well, not work. The only difference is my work laptop is now in my bag instead of on my desk. I will think: I don’t want to fuck up my sleep schedule but why bother? Everything is fucked up. My viewport to the world hasn’t changed in three weeks.

The virus changed, well, everything.

Friday nights, though, while a different congregational point and a different medium, are still a sense of the Before Times. Before the virus. Before I haven’t left the house in three weeks. Before toilet paper of all things became a rare resource. Before sneezing and coughing clear out a room faster than a Taco Bell-infused fart. I miss, well, everything but I can still have what passes for the normalcy of a Friday night gaming session.

That’s what she said.

iPad Life: Additonal Thoughts on the iPad Pro

I am going to largely ignore the hubbub and criticism that surrounded the iPad 10th Anniversary. For the most part my comments in the Almost Four Years retrospective still stand: I remain divided about the iPad and its place in my life. It is both one of my favorite Apple devices, and one of the most frustrating.

I will say I find iPadOS to be a frustrating release. I frequently have to jiggle my smart-connected keyboard to get it to work, often needing to force quit Messages for the keyboard to work again.

The battery life on my first gen 12.9 is horrible. Two visits to the Apple Store in the last 6 months yield a battery that is close to eligibility for the battery replacement. In September I was between 85-87% battery health; on February 10th it was at 82%. The battery drain is worse than 17% loss, and feels more like 50%. In a meeting it dropped from 72 to 52% in about 20 minutes. The trip to Apple prompted a review of background apps. Nothing really stood out, but there were a few interesting data points. Things 3 had 4.5 hours of background refresh over the last 10 days, and Home and Lock Screen was also at 4 hours background over the same period. When I got home I took the drastic step of wiping my iPad, setting it up as new, and turning off almost all background app refresh. The results are slightly better, but it’s too early to say. The battery life in iOS 13 continues to be a hot topic on the MacRumors forums.

However, over the last week or so I’ve started brining my iPad instead of my MacBook Pro when I leave the house. The draw of the iPad is a light I can’t veer away from. In the parlance of Patrick Rhone, it is often enough. While I enjoy using apps like Tableau, which isn’t available on the iPad, a decent amount of my Tableau time is just refreshing data and viewing the results. Publishing the workbooks on Tableau Public with an auto-refresh of Google Sheets data fills that need.

My yearly theme for 2020 is Creativity. I constantly ding myself for not drawing, and this year drawing is one of my creative goals. The iPad is the perfect tool for that. Even AutoCAD, which kinda sucks on the iPad, is enough for me to do some hard-line drawings on the iPad.

The mantra I frequently use is the iPad is the ideal mobile creation tool, and I want to get back into having that focus in my life.