Posts
How to Feel Good
You get to decide how you feel.
This is a technique I learned once, for use when I am faced with a choice of (thinking unpleasant thoughts or having a bad mood or feeling down) or of feeling good. It works for me.
This came from Mindful Loving.
Whenever you have a thought or emotion that disturbs your peace:
identify and call out the thought: think to yourself “oh, this is one of THOSE disturbing thoughts!
Posts
Apple Reminders
Before the release of iOS 13, Joy and I used a shared Apple Reminders list called “Grocery” to keep our grocery list in.
I’ve found the Reminders app to be completely broken for me now in iOS 13. I can’t get my phone, ipad, and icloud.com to agree on which lists I have.
Apple has explicitly stated sharing a list is broken in iOS 13:
Sharing a Reminders list using the Add People function does not work currently in iOS 13.
Posts
My New Favorite Martini
I have long been a fan of the Vesper martini, using the recipe published in the Vesper app by Q Branch:
3 oz Tanqueray Ten
1 oz Belvedere or Stolichnaya
.5 oz Lillet Blanc
Belvedere was my vodka of choice.
At my father-in-law’s house, I found myself elected to make martinis. Now, my wife’s dad favors vodka martinis, which I’ve never had success with. His vodka is Chopin, a Polish potato-based vodka.
Posts
Apple Watch Update
Complications work much better with WatchOS 2 (I’m on 2.2). No more rebooting the watch to get the sunset time.
But Apps are still slow.
WatchOS 2 brought color to the complications on the Utility face. Most complications look nice with color, but the Sunrise, Stopwatch, and Timer are a hideous orange, which forces me to set the second hand to match. So instead of using my favorite yellow second hand:
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iOS 9 Content blockers
Yes. Oh yes. This is the best thing ever. I downloaded Crystal and probably buy peace soon too. I can’t say enough about the web on my iPhone with these things turned on.
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The Apple Watch
After five weeks with apple watch, here are some thoughts on the various faces.
Note: when I refer to a half complication, below, I’m talking about the one which will only show the date, the day of the week and the date, or nothing.
Chronograph
The chronograph face allows four-and-a-half complications and is one of my favorite faces, thanks to discretely small hour-indicator numbers, beautiful hands and layout, and one-tap access to start the chronograph (which is mission-critical on my wrist!
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Watches
I got my first watch in Fifth grade: a used mechanical watch with spinning number wheels which didn’t last but a few weeks. it drifted hours in a day and soon I was in the habit of taking it apart (one of the number wheels was loose and I’d hook it back on to get a few more hours use out of it).
Next I went through a series of calculator watches, progressing in junior high through several “data bank” versions, into which I painstakingly typed the phone numbers of everyone I knew.
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Paper Note Organization
I’ve been enjoying the Bullet Journal system for utilizing a paper notebook. The idea of using one whole “spread” of two pages for a specific topic is particularly appealing. I also like the index idea.
All the items I want to record in a notebook are of the notes variety. The other main entities of the bullet system (events and tasks) are well-covered by my digital tools (namely, iCloud calender and Omnifocus).
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Live icons
I’m looking forward to the day when apple allows all iOS apps to show information in their icons, like the apple calendar and clock apps do. Just a number badge is so boring in our modern world!
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Forcing a Mac to get updates from iCloud
I’ve had trouble with one of my macs not syncing to iCloud.
Specifically, if I update a document on my second mac, it goes to iCloud just fine (I can see the updates on iCloud.com, my iPhone, and my iPad) but I don’t get the update on my first mac.
The best workaround I’ve found is to make sure both macs are awake and online when a document is modified. it seems if a mac is offline and misses the new data push from iCloud, the mac never requests new data from iCloud.