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These brief notes are published here and syndicated to Twitter and Micro.blog.
I’ve been waiting on updates to the Mac Mini to replace my home media server. The 8 TB storage, 32 GB memory, M2 Pro configuration is only $200 less than a similar configuration of the M1 Max Mac Studio. What to do?
Some good news for web developers out of Google I/O — GoogleBot is now evergreen. It previously ran an older version of Chrome that didn’t support newer features like ES6. Skipped ahead 33 versions 😅
It finally happened…stuck spacebar on my 2016 MacBook Pro. Maybe the failure rate on these things really is 100% if you keep it around long enough. I even use an external keyboard 99% of the time 😩
I’ll be giving a talk on the basics of Vue.js and how you can use it spruce up the UI of your next web project at this Thursday’s Refresh meetup. Nicholas Scheurich will speak on React. Come get your fill of all the hot JavaScript frameworks.
IndieWebCamp is tomorrow in Austin. Still time to sign up if you’re in the area: https://2019.indieweb.org/austin
Heading to Austin this weekend for IndieWebCamp — a gathering for indie web creators to share ideas, work on creating for their own websites, and build upon each other’s creations. And tacos — https://2019.indieweb.org
LCD Soundsystem released Electric Lady Sessions last Friday. The album is a live studio recording, meaning, the band played the songs together the way they would at a show, the show just happens to take place in a studio (Jimi Hendrix’s famed Electric Lady Studios).
The album captures the energy of a live performance and the evolution of the songs since they were first released — without the crummy live mix and crowd noise that often accompanies a live recording. I’d like to see more bands release recordings like this. LCD Soundsytem has done this once before with London Sessions in 2010, which I totally missed.
Nice Friday surprise — Pedro the Lion has a new album out next week and you can download it now from their store.
There’s a Refresh Baton Rouge lunch today at City Pork on Jefferson at 11:30. Come hang with your fellow nerds and talk web/shop.
Starting today, you can store code that needs to remain private on GitHub for free. From their announcement:
GitHub Free now includes unlimited private repositories. For the first time, developers can use GitHub for their private projects with up to three collaborators per repository for free. Many developers want to use private repos to apply for a job, work on a side project, or try something out in private before releasing it publicly. Starting today, those scenarios, and many more, are possible on GitHub at no cost. Public repositories are still free (of course — no changes there) and include unlimited collaborators.
I started moving my private repos from a free plan at BitBucket to GitHub’s $7 per month developer plan last year because I prefer GitHub’s interface and experience — plus the convenience of having my code stored in the same place as the other code I use every day.
I’ve been in consolidation mode at Studiosaurus HQ and just finished moving old sites off a DreamHost account I’ve had open since 2006 and a few client sites that were on Linodes managed with Forge. Now all my sites are on Linodes managed with ServerPilot.
Between the GitHub pricing announcement and hosting consolidations, I’ll be eliminating almost $40 of recurring monthly costs.
Watching an excellent first season explainer before diving into the season two Westworld premier.
Prince’s original studio recording of “Nothing Compares 2 U”. Recorded in the summer of 1984 and recently released by The Prince Estate.
Richard Edwards (of Margot and the Nuclear So and So’s) started a Patreon this week where he’s regularly releasing music to supporters. So far he’s shared demos and live performances along with stories to put them in context. 🎶
The Shins released The Worm’s Heart today, a follow-up to 2017’s Heartworms. Same songs on both, but downtempo tracks have been rearranged upbeat and vice versa. Neat concept. 🎧
Started the new year with five fun and relaxing days in Playa del Carmen celebrating Katie and Ryan’s wedding. Congratulations to the newlyweds!
❄️ BTR 🛫 IAH 🛩 CUN 🛬 🏝
Thanks to the guys from @mof1podcast for having me on during Crop to talk about dinosaurs, pizzaversaries, and sage career advice from college professors. Check it out
Migrated my site to Craft 3 and its database to Postgres so I can fill my posts with emoji 🎉
In other nerdy news, posts are now published to my website and syndicated to Twitter via Micro.blog.
Just voted. Still have ~2.5 hours to have yours counted for State Treasurer, City Judge, and the hotel tax to support Visit Baton Rouge.
Bobby Bare Jr.’s covers of Sister Golden Hair :the_horns::skin-tone‑2:
Beta (Rock) — www.youtube.com/watch
Alpha (Acoustic) — www.youtube.com/watch
AirPlay 2 is coming to Sonos in 2018. Should replace my Apple TV/Connect hack for multi-room podcasts. 👍
BTR ✈️ DFW ✈️ SEA #PeersConf
Compact nuclear fusion would produce far less waste than coal-powered plants since it would use deuterium-tritium fuel, which can generate nearly 10 million times more energy than the same amount of fossil fuels, the company said.
McDonald’s — the place where even healthy choices are anything but. Since 1955.
Real oatmeal contains no ingredients; rather, it is an ingredient. As such, it’s a promising lifesaver: oats are easy to grow in almost any non-extreme climate and, minimally processed, they’re profoundly nourishing, inexpensive and ridiculously easy to cook.
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[In] typical McDonald’s fashion, the company is doing everything it can to turn oatmeal into yet another bad choice. […] “Cream” (which contains seven ingredients, two of them actual dairy) is automatically added; brown sugar is ostensibly optional, but it’s also added routinely unless a customer specifically requests otherwise. There are also diced apples, dried cranberries and raisins, the least processed of the ingredients (even the oatmeal contains seven ingredients, including “natural flavor”).
A more accurate description than “100 percent natural whole-grain oats,” “plump raisins,” “sweet cranberries” and “crisp fresh apples” would be “oats, sugar, sweetened dried fruit, cream and 11 weird ingredients you would never keep in your kitchen.”
The details are not the details. They make the design.
Right now, ebooks are a byproduct of paper books; the distribution and publishing process is identical, while the reading experience differs only slightly. The current crop of ebooks takes advantage of the digital format in as much as they permit you to carry more of them around than you could before; but other elements of the medium — “hyper” part of hypertext — are noticeably absent.
Many developers are sticking closely to a paper metaphor in apps used to read these books. The paper metaphor can be done away with. Books that play video and show passages others are highlighting don’t need “pages” with a fancy curl animation. Scrolling is a better method on a touch-based device, but probably isn’t the best answer. It will be interesting to see what other conventions are explored as devices and the format mature.
In a laboratory vault outside Paris is a small cylinder of platinum – iridium alloy that serves as the standard for all mass measurements worldwide. By an 1889 international accord, the mass of this metal cylinder defines the kilogram.
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The reference cylinder’s mass has drifted slightly through the years — not enough to throw off your bathroom scale, but enough to bother measurement scientists.
Researchers plan to discuss relating the kilogram to Planck’s constant.
Research has shown that all plants contain protein and at least 14% of the total calories of every plant are protein. Broccoli contains more protein per calorie than steak and, per calorie, spinach is about equal to chicken and fish. Of course, you’ll need to eat a lot more broccoli and spinach to get the same amount of calories that you do from the meat.
So how much is “a lot more?” You’d have to consume about 2½ lbs of spinach to get the same amount of protein you get from a ¼ lb chicken breast.
I’m a cheating vegan or a picky pescetarian depending on the day of the week. I don’t eat meat other than seafood and I’m very selective about what seafood I do eat — mostly tuna and oysters. I don’t consume dairy other than the occasional ice cream and cake (and cake).1 Even so, 2½ lbs of spinach sounds daunting. Luckily there are other options:
Beans (27% protein), lentils (36%), chickpeas (33%), peas (30%), and kale (22%) provide the greatest opportunity to acquire micronutrients packaged with protein. Practical solutions to add more of these include adding beans/legumes to salads, stews and soups.
