Todd Sizemore

I think my brain has become too inflexible to switch from Apple Podcasts. When I objectively examine Apple Podcasts versus Overcast or Pocketcasts, it’s easy to see where it comes up short. Queue building is very basic and well hidden, intro and outro skip settings are not there. But I still keep using it over what seem to be better choices. Maybe I should just stop thinking about it since it obviously doesn’t matter enough for my brain to break the connection.

With all that said, the AI generated chapters are really useful to me. One of the few uses I have seen for the tech that makes sense.

I don’t give a shit about these two companies fighting.

It occurred to me that Microsoft has always tried to forcibly change the market with their gaming ambitions. The problem is that they were always doing so from third place. It’s pretty rare that the weakest contender can somehow find an idea their bigger rivals haven’t considered and flip a market to their advantage. In their history, they had only had one slight chance at it (the 360 to One transition) and they blew it.

My opinion is that they should have hunkered down and kept trying to make a top-tier gaming platform rather than turning the Xbox One into some sort of multimedia home hub idea. They could have still felt out their ideas overtime and seen what if any of them the market would accept without degrading their money driver (games!).

Microsoft suffers from a desire to make big bets rather than do the hard job of building up overtime. I won’t go into why they have always tried to shortcut their way to the top, because frankly I don’t know. I guess the desire for money makes you dumb? To quote a hockey term, “gotta do the reps boys”.

Having a Mac with non Apple accessories can be like death from a 1000 paper cuts. I have a Logitech G305 mouse and it does not support smooth scrolling on MacOS. I know it can be done because both Linux and Windows scroll smoothly with this mouse Fortunately there is a little app called Mos that’s solves this problem. Why you need a third party app to make non-Apple mice support smooth scrolling? It’s not in Apple’s interests I guess, open ecosystems aren’t really their thing but you would think that Logitech might get a little bit better treatment since they have worked with Apple on several accessories. I guess everyone is a second class citizen in Apple’s eyes.

I gave Apple $610 dollars CAD today to upgrade my son’s iPad from a 9th generation to the latest model. I didn’t like doing it because I was forced into the decision. Yesterday, Apple raised prices on damn near everything. Looking around I saw that Bestbuy still had the base model iPad for the old price so I struck. My plan was to wait until Christmas but I don’t trust even the new higher prices will stay that same until then. Some analysts are predicting RAM could still double in cost by this time next year!

You can blame AI Datacenters for this trouble and you definitely should. But let’s not forget that Apple has a profit margin of like 37% on their hardware. They chose to transfer almost all of the increased component costs over to the consumer rather than touch that margin.

I’ve mentioned before this before but it seems that the reasons for using Apple products are getting smaller and smaller every year. They chasing the insanity of an unending growth story that will surely end.

This is the worst time of year for my RSS feed as every website I follow spams hundreds of Amazon Prime deals across their feeds. I don’t blame them for doing so because they have to make money somehow (Google sure isn’t helping them out), but it’s annoying as hell. For one, I’m not in the US anymore, so most of these deals don’t apply to me. Two, I don’t buy from Amazon as much as possible.

Even past Prime Day, I have noticed a huge uptick in rss articles being nothing more than affiliate link promo messages. Again I don’t blame them, but it does sully their reputations in my mind. It’s especially bad for sites like Wired, which I pay, for to do such a thing. At least they could do is offer an ad-free feed for subscribers.

I need to find an RSS app for Mac and iOS that can do some keyword filtering. I know a RSS service like Feebin or Inoreader could do this, but I have subscription fatigue as it is, and I won’t use the rest of the features enough to gain the benefit. So I guess I am stuck complaining on the internet.

I was listening to Windows Weekly this morning and they had a big section devoted to Microsoft closing/selling/spinning off several game studios. While listening they mentioned the price hikes that Game Pass underwent last year and their reduction earlier this year. In talking about the pricing dynamics of a subscription service I got the idea in my head that maybe by trying to bundle newer games into the service its over inflated the value of these games.

When Game Pass was a cheap service to play older and smaller games I bet the costs to acquire games was probably right in line with their expected value in return. I.E. They were making a good return for the money they were putting in. When larger (AA or AAA) games started to become the focus I suspect that Microsoft started to overpay as they bet that these games would increase the subscriber base. That threw the careful pricing of games for the service out of whack and lead to its loss in subscribers when they dramatically increased the cost.

I wonder if Game Pass stuck with its original intent (older, smaller titles) if it would have faired better, maybe the subscriber base would still be stagnate but at least it would still providing a decent return. This is all just me speculating and I have no evidence to back it up. Just another opinion out on the internet.

With the completion of the fence I am working through the new logistical matters that have been brought to light its existence. Most of them are boring mundane things but I do wish I had given them more consideration before we started the project.

Pros

1. Its very nice the dog can be let loose in the back without having to leash him. He loves this freedom now that he is used to it.
2. The dog can now poop all over so the spots by the house where his leash ended will finally get to grow back.
3. The privacy is REAL, its awesome to feel as if I am in my own little contained outdoor space. I have I not truly had that since I lived at home 26 years ago.

Cons

1. The dog can now poop all over the yard. I have no idea where he does it now and will have to go searching.
2. The gate is great but I it means more work for me in the morning. I have to go out the back yard door, come around and open the gate, pull the car out of the garage, then close the gate before I go to work.
3. With a fence I will need to be more judicious with where I blow the snow this winter. If I throw it against the fence I may cause it to lean. I also have less room to place snow now that some of it can’t just go into my neighbor’s backyards.
4. A similar issue with the gate, its very close to the ground on the left hand side. During winter I am going to have to work to keep that portion of the gate able to swing fully.

Work began of the fence on June 1st as expected but it has been a slow affair. At first, only one guy was coming each day to do work because the job they had done previously ran over. Not a problem really, but then we encountered multiple days of rain so they could only work sparingly. At the end of the week we only had a few posts in the ground.

This week has been much better though, good days (if not hot and humid) lead to a lot of work getting done and we think they are probably 2 to 3 days away from completion. With all that I have said about the delays, I can’t say they don’t do good work, I have been happy with the construction and attention to detail.

With more ads added to the App Store and now ads in Apple Maps I have to wonder what the point is of paying premiums for Apple hardware? I already give Apple money each month for iCloud storage and Apple Music, could I not get a break from the ads with that? Granted these two are minor in comparison to other services like Google’s but it still rubs me the wrong way. Plus there is no indication that it will stop in the future, ads for Apple Music? Ads in Photos?

Subscription creep is another thing that’s been driving me up the wall recently. My wife is a prodigious photo and video taker and we are quickly approaching the 2TB limit on our iCloud storage. To move to the next tier would take our costs from $12.99 CAD a month to $39.99 CAD a month. There are no options in between! In comparison Google has new storage plans available that will give you 5TB of storage for $26.99 CAD a month. I am working to clear out duplicates and low-quality photos (she for some reason takes a ton of pictures of the inside of her pockets) but at some point I will run out of chaff while the wheat keeps growing. Then I am kind of stuck.