Purple corn, with occasional flowers.

I have nothing against streaming music (I do so on occasion), but I prefer buying my music and downloading on to my device. iTunes used to be really great at this. In the last two or more years, I keep running into this glitch where 1) I buy an album from iTunes on my iPhone. 2) The tracks all go through the “Downloading” motions and successfully download. 3) New album or songs don’t show up on my Apple Music library for anywhere between 2 - 24 hours.

Rebooting or killing Apple Music process does nothing to accelerate anything showing up on my library.

Yesterday, while accidentally deleting a song off of a playlist, the album I purchased not 3 hours prior magically showed up.

“Could it be that by manipulating a track list in a playlist resets the library somehow to show the recently downloaded track(s)?” - my brain

Yes, my friends, this is indeed the case. I tested this by buying a track, creating a playlist called “Test” and adding a random song from my library.

Bam, track shows up in my library immediately.

What was once a service I never had to think about on my phone, now requires multiple steps to get a purchased piece of music to show up in my library.

Man, I sure miss Bowie.

Today I posted a Stone Temple Pilots drum snippet and a lame attempt at playing samba.

My go-to beer is the Run Wild IPA from Athletic Brewing but it’s hit or miss finding it in the stores here (or any NA beer besides like O’Doules). Today they had Stella NA and I was skeptical but it tastes great!

Summer, signaling its beginnings.

I’ve been enjoying posting little short snippets of my drum playing on YouTube but I think I’m going to transition to hosting them here instead.

Frozen fruitcicles

Friday last week, we installed the pedals on my son’s balance bike and he didn’t skip a beat, was successfully pedaling on his first try.

I posted another drum cover short on YouTube. Jimmy Chamberlin (Smashing Pumpkins) is a great drummer but I never loved the Pumpkins that much. This song is from Jimmy’s jazz/fusion/rock band Jimmy Chamberlin Complex and Billy Corgan provides the vocals. Wonderful song.

Trying this out, my first YouTube short playing drums.

Incredibly disappointed I missed Godzilla Minus One in the theaters but super happy it was released on platforms today. It was excellent.

My (other) tribe

I’ve discovered an excellent new blog, arun.is by Arun Venkatesan. Today I read a mini first impression of the Daylight Tablet Arun posted back in March of this year. Long story short, I ended up pre-ordering the device, as it seems to be a promising take on e-ink tablets which is something I have been intrigued with since the first Kindle came out back in the 2000s.

Of particular note in his commentary, I appreciated this the most:

In my previous post, Why we crave healthier computing, I explored how the evolution of computing over the last century has made our devices both more powerful and more burdensome. Technology progressed from large mainframes to ever-connected smartphones. Concurrently, users have been presented with an ever-increasing number of questions they must ask when using their devices. I called these the “Six User Context Questions”:

1. “What do I plan to do with this computer?”
2. “Which applications should I use?”
3. ”How may I best arrange my workspace and workflow?”
4. ”How should I collaborate with others?”
5. ”When will I use this computer?”
6. ”Where will I use it?”

I appreciate the approach of having the technology be limited in order to constrain some of the time consumption our gadgets bring today, in this case a device with no cameras, black and white screen, and limited (?) application availability. On the flip side I’d like to think we as humans can overcome this without the need for outside restraints. I’m sure this device will have its quirks outside of the constraints it naturally has but if they nail the interaction model along with the balance for simplicity, it could be successful (ironically as discussions of turning the iPad into a full fledged computer continue to make the rounds).

I’ve been trying (somewhat successfully) to not be consumed by the technology around me. I hope that some day I am completely free from all temptations and dopamine hits that our tech world brings and truly come to full control of my tech vs. the tech powering me, at the very least as a model for my son as his future evolves.

I am this close to some day capturing a lightning bolt.

It’s so silly, but I love that Call and Oates is still active, many years ago I saved the number in my contacts and tried it today and it worked! For those not familiar here’s the npr story from 2011.

Lots of jumping and rolling in the grass today.

Wild asparagus, with occasional grapes.

Playing drums to a loop for giggles, it’s been a while since I did anything electronica-ish. The recording quality through GarageBand (on my phone) is remarkably improved over Yamaha’s Rec ‘N’ Share app. Going to play around with using my old iPhone SE as an overhead mic combined with the EAD10 to see how that works out quality wise.

I appreciate marveling very much

The iPad I want isn’t here yet. But my complaint is not what the general tech pundits argue about.

Still absent in this year’s lineup is an updated iPad mini. I find it to be the perfect size for “tablet” things. My one wish is that Apple would bring external monitor support and the light desktop experience that comes with it. I doubt that it would need a M series chip to do this, certainly an updated A series could probably be up to the task but I guess I wouldn’t complain if it had the M1 chip in it.

The portability it affords is the big draw for me. I would easily find myself “computing” with it on the go sans keyboard or other contraptions, just onscreen interaction. But combine this with ability to plug in a monitor and external keyboard/trackpad, man, what a powerful combo.

I know the iPad Air or Pros already achieve this, but there is something magical about the size of the iPad mini that I think works well for reading, movie watching, general input and shifting to occasional long form productivity with monitors and accessories plugged in would be a powerful addition.

Maybe the only other addition I would want is an enhancement to file management in iPadOS.

So I sit here and wait for Apple to take my money, staring at my fictional shopping cart on Apple.com with a fully loaded cellular iPad mini that will allow me to occasionally connect to a monitor for a more enhanced computing experience while maintaining the tablet experience constraints I still find empowering.

Steve Jobs:

It’s in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough — it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the results that make our heart sing.

Apple:

The clouds yesterday put on quite a show 📷

If the internet went away tomorrow, I think we would all be just fine.

Patience