I have been on a Harry Potter binge recently, having watched all of the movies again, and now re-reading the series. I discovered an article called Alchemy and Harry Potter which was helpful to understand many elements in each of the stories and the series.
A key to growth is to stop assuming I have learned every lesson in a given area. I rediscovered a resource I had mined in a previous decade of my life, then stopped. Today I was presented with a fresh perspective which gave me opportunites I didn’t know I had.
Setting up an iPad Pro and Magic Keyboard for a client today. I don’t covet the iPad as my new Air is perfectly lovely. But the keyboard is easily the best iPad-specific keyboard integration I have yet seen. Just effortless. Wow, did Apple do a great job with that!
Homophones are an issue when attempting to dictate through voice recognition— Mail versus male in one recent attempt to return a text message. That it works as well as it does is wonderful, but sometimes even modifying pronunciation or changing word order doesn’t get the job done.
Could it be true?
Custom domain names are coming to iCloud mail with iCloud+
Have been waiting for this for so long!
Long story, but I’m getting good at replacing door knobs. Bad news is I’m the reason I’m getting the practice. I’m a fan of Kwikset’s design, both from a security stand point and for ease of installation.
Pronouns
I think what it means is to be seen.
Seen as whole. Seen as accepted. Seen in entirety.
It’s not supposed to be easy or simple, until it is.
“More trips than Timothy Leary” said Pat Sajak, just now. Not the sort of counter-culture reference I would have expected on Wheel of Fortune. #findtheothers
Dear Coffee,
I am grateful for you every day.
Yours truly,
Hjalmer
Remembrance
#My first name comes from Hjalmer Lindberg.
Had he lived, he would have been a great uncle.
In World War II, he fought in the Battle of the Bulge with the 94th infantry. He was a sniper who was killed by another.
The story I was told was that first, Hjalmer’s helmet was shot off. This revealed the position of the German sniper. Hjalmer quickly pivoted to return fire, but the German was faster. Hjalmer was shot in the head.
Many details are not known to me. A thousand questions have occurred to me after it’s too late to ask.
Hjalmer was very good friends in the infantry with Erich Gerloff. They had such a strong bond that they made a pact. Should one survive the other, the survivor would travel to meet the other’s family.
Erich’s own life had been dramatic at points. He had been born in Germany, and had crossed the Atlantic three times with his family to escape economic hardship.
He was captured at the Battle of the Bulge and was kept briefly at a stalag. He was on a death march when, because he spoke German well enough, German soldiers told him to get out of the line. They thought he was a spy or agent and were afraid of punishment should he be put to death at their hands.
Erich survived the war, rising in rank through battlefield promotions, assuming I’ve understood the details at all.
He also honored his pact with his friend. He travelled from New York to Wisconsin to visit the Lindbergh family in Wisconsin and proposed to one of Hjalmer’s sisters within a few days.
They married and had a family. Their eldest, a son, they named for Hjalmer, who they had both lost.
That man, the son, was on a tour of duty in Vietnam, when his sister, my mother, was pregnant with me. And she wanted her brother to know she loved him.
Hjalmer is my first name. Erich is my middle name.
Remembering Hjalmer Lindberg and Erich Gerloff, today.
35 Box Office Flops That Are Actually Worth Watching
Kinda nice to get a second opinion on some titles I was already considering.
I have a long queue on DVD Netflix…
Heard Take Me Home on satellite radio earlier today. Because I owned No Jacket Required, naturally, Sussudio is now an ear worm.
Phil Collins, y’all!
You’re welcome.
Bless you, Coffee Machine
Apple Beta program participation disadvantage I haven’t seen mentioned before: media-sharing requires signing out and back in, or de-authorizing and re-authorizing—after applying each update. On AppleTV this means not being able to connect to my server or access iTunes Match
Second shot packed a wallop. In the intervening 24 hours I hope I’m through the worst of it. Body aches, headaches and chills, for me
Second dose acquired.
The Vaccination, Part II: Return to House Pfizer
Contact interoperability via VCF or CSV file is simply terrible. It could be as simple as export/import. But that’s not the case. It’s export/translate/edit/import/edit
Long story short:
Don’t use files to exchange this data. Use services.
To get contacts from Outlook (Exchange) into iOS, I used the macOS-native Contacts app. I connected to the Exchange account that had the contacts needed. Then I connected to the empty iCloud account. I selected the Exchange account, selected all of the contacts, and dragged them en masse to the iCloud account. In a few minutes, all of the contacts appeared in iCloud with the correct data in the correct fields. A few minutes after that, they were on the destination iPhone.
The Voice seasons seem to move really fast now. I don’t feel like I get to know the contestants and their personalities like we used to
I appreciate the voice-to-text ability of my watch more and more every day. Especially as I struggle with keyboards just as much today as 20 years ago
I always wanted to be a DJ, from the days I listened to my Radio Shack FM radio all day long as a boy. The people pushing out the sounds always seemed to have a finger on a pulse. They seemed to connect to something. I imagined a depth and breadth of knowledge and a currency that I’m sure was impossible to attain in reality.
In the 90s I took a job at a record store, which in some ways was a sort of dream come true. I thought I knew about music. I was an avid consumer of what radio and MTV fed me. But it was then that my education began.
When techno and electronica hit, my DJ dream shifted. I wanted to play the records that moved the people in the moment. I have played with decks and mixers a teensy bit. I played with a friend’s collection of vinyl and did my best to beat-match records during a small gathering.
I’ve made lots and lots of mix tapes, that mostly no one has ever heard, but me.
What’s happened is I’ve collected a lot of music over time. I am infected by people who are enthusiastic about a genre or a scene.
Music is so powerful.
It is a giant river, life-giving and fertile like the Amazon or the Nile. Some of it is written down or recorded, where it lives in the vast ocean.
Just like I can’t read every book, I can’t hear every record.
I have been listening to a series of playlists generated by someone close to my own age, that span years including the four that I spent at the record store.
Boy, is it resurfacing old thoughts and ideas and dreams.
The cool part is I agree with many of the selections.
The cool part is I’m hearing songs I would have never heard, otherwise.
The cool part is there is always such good music.
If you do the Apple Music thing, I’m here and I like to share.
Minnesota State Fair Announces Walk-Around Days
“The fairgrounds will be open for a five-day ‘mini Fair’ over Memorial Day weekend with capped attendance.”
When you boot up your MacBook after a few days off and your Login Keychain is gone…
Have lost a cousin to COVID today. It’s still killing people.
Be careful, everyone.
What if you took the opportunity to turn your secure pass-phrase into a positive affirmation?
Or a goal? A mission statement? Your intent?