Year: 2019

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How a 1919 Army Truck Convoy Across the U.S. Helped Win WWII.

The daily log being made available kind of interests me in doing some reading.

Really I’m kind of surprised that the Army could make such good time with that assortment of vehicles. Most Americans alive today take for granted that the main problems getting around relate to traffic conditions, navigation off the main roads, and affording the expenses.

How awesome our road systems are is largely a modern thing. The growth of car ownership may have exploded out the wazoo during the twentieth century but that doesn’t mean suitable roads and bridges predate the Ford Motor Company. Today you can basically get in the car and go–the problem becomes affording a long vacation rather then can you get there by automobile.

The United States is not without our problems but we at least solved a few over the generations 😉.

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Forbes: Netflix’s Worst Nightmare Has Come True.

I think the notion that Netflix will survive but shrink is likely true. They’re large and successful enough that they won’t go suddenly into the night but quietly over a couple decades.

Along with Hulu they’ve long enjoyed being one of the only whales in the game. Efforts at original content have been a mixed bag but I think this also owes to to simple facts.

One is Netflix isn’t built around making media. They’re not like the big TV networks with the huge pipelines for content and advertising. Their strength has been in their service, and that’s gone well enough that people like me will likely remain customers for many years to come.

Second is they don’t have anti-trust / holy crap that’s comically one sided rights to streaming content. Eventually everything you see in Netflix will end up impacted by a contract and neogotiating them. It’s not like certain old world network blocks that got given away with too little forsight 😝.

Moving towards where we may be nickle and dimed by various networks is still an improvement over the cable situation IMHO. Because greater control versus take it and like it. Net result being: if it’s not in the circle of stuff we subscribe to the we are either going to skip it ’til it is or eventually come to an arrangement.

I know that’s how my streaming subscriptions work, and how several decades as a cable customer worked.

Note to self

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Google Photos show up in Blogger’s photos UI under “From your phone” regardless of source. Probably. Or at least when I use my tablet.

Impromptu dinner

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Just when I decided on curry rice for dinner, I got home and realized that one of the lies we tell ourselves is: “I’ll do that before bed”.

Thus I came up with an alternative that works when I do dishes after dinner rather than before 😀.

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The Verge: A portable Bluetooth cassette tape player brings retro audio into 2019.

Not sure what’s worse: that someone actually thought of this or that I like the idea.

For better or worse I pretty much made the conversion from compact cassette tapes to audio files on a computer; largely bypassing CDs and the once common MP3 player. Thus prior to two thousand something, any music I have is either on tape or you’re counting my parents record collection 🤣.

And there’s just not that much stuff laying around that supports cassette anymore, lol.

Last time I moved, I had found a tape off some of my dad’s taste in music. Shortly debated if I wanted to break out my mother’s boombox (don’t ask) or not. In the end I decided to take a ride as the car I had at the time was a simple radio + cassette unit. Well let’s just say that the car option isn’t so there anymore 😜.

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Watching Astra Lost in Space made my trip to Hulu well worth it.

The series kick off interests me enough that I may need to check into the availability of the manga. Surprisingly good stuff.

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Watching Demon Lord, Retry! in Hulu reminds me that not all simulcast goodness it’s limited to Crunchyroll territory.

Also when being summoned to another world: always end up the demon lord and leave a note about erasing your hard drives.

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BGR: Bill Gates explains why he couldn’t duplicate Steve Jobs’ magic ‘spells’.

“I was like a minor wizard because he would be casting spells, and I would see people mesmerized, but because I’m a minor wizard, the spells don’t work on me,” 

Gates said, according to advance news of his remarks reported by B/oomberg. 

While the minor wizard bit might seem modest but I’ve got to admit: it strikes me as an excellent way of putting it. In a way it also makes me wonder how many table top RPGs Bill Gates may have played over the years, lol

To archive or not to archive: that is the question!

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In a way I wonder what is kind of more sad.

That for all these years that I have had my e-mail archives well organized. E.g. different labels for different types of messages being archived. It’s a very clean system.

Or that it’s probably taken more than a decade for my laziness to tell me “Meh, why don’t you just use one archive directory.”

Because when I actually do hunt for old messages there’s this thing called “Search” that tends to work well enough that I don’t need to refine by ‘where’ I archived. And the amount of taps to move messages to xyz archive consumes more time per year than smacking archive or how often I pull up old messages per decade.

Yes. I have a feeling lazy may win out.