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Watching a commercial for Google’s Nest Hub, and thinking a moment how this might evolve. Much as the phonograph gave way to the iPod and MP3 player, what might come of such hubs in people’s lives.

My last thought was of President Scroob, shouting: “This is an unlisted wall!”, in Spaceballs. Because in the future that’s how things work.

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https://apple.news/Av5apvmC8T7m75cUcy4Pfcw

I find it curious how Hocus Pocus has ended up with so much popularity after the fact. For me, I mostly remember it as good family viewing for Halloween, but I suppose that’s why people still watch it. As well as a side effect of being raised by a Disney fanatic, lol.

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“You can’t break a few eggs without making an omelette. Just don’t let them know you’ve learned how to cook!” — Daniel Zager, République episode 3, cassette tape labeled “Detective”.

This is a rather nice quote from one of the games tapes, in a segment where Zager suggests being taken as a fool for messing up is better than drawing the ire of the Prizrak.

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https://youtu.be/c2ewLZplxY8

A rather different use case, since my pen computing is more handwriting focused, but I think that this is a darn good video for why tablets and a stylus that isn’t shit, is a good idea.

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Watching The Terminator for the first time in some years, I kind of like how well the film has held up with age.

It’s a pretty simple but well executed film. A number of things are also a bit refreshing, in a less is more kind of way. Because back then there was virtually no computer generated imagery, and the first film may as well of had no budget compared to the sequels, of which at least one of was awesome.

Part of me wonders, all these years later: how much of the budget actually went into the scene with the truck and the Terminator. Compared to the brief future scenes and some of the trickier effects shots. I reckon the scene is kinda hokey by today’s fancier visual effects but I do have a soft spot for how things turned out.

The way people structure scenes, and what they show and what they leave out has changed. Someone directing a film like this today would do things very differently IMHO, unless they were shooting it on a ramen budget instead of as a professional film. Because as Judgement Day came and went, and Kyle’s future draws closer: we live in a world where films look more like Avatar than The Terminator. I’m still waiting for when behind the scenes reels have more in common with Mockingjay or a Holodeck, and despite the glorious spectacles, I’m not so sure that’s an evolution purely for the better.

You can tell which scenes are Arnold and which are prosthetics, for example. But films back then, things were a lot more mired in the consequences of how to film what they wanted to portray. Today? Well, you can do pretty fancy shit with powerful  computers and skilled artists.

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Give or take the temptation to call a meeting to discuss the amount of meetings, I think that I’ve gotten my battery’s worth.

My iPad came off charge this morning, and pretty much was my computer for the day. A lot of time spent using Evernote, as a consequence of ~3 meetings, and or already being an integral part of my work flow.

It’s also had to become my email, browser, and terminal on the go. There was really no point undocking my Latitude and hauling a four pound development beast around.

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Things that I consider potential risks, now that I again have a tablet capable of HDMI output:

  • Monitor, and Xbox controller = gaming
  • Monitor, keyboard, and mouse = relaxing.
Typically, my Tab S3 and its predecessors had a high probability of being my device of choice even when sitting at my desk. The main thing that gets me to power on Centauri and use it, is the laziness wires to plug in if I want to share the monitor.
Sadly, Scarlett’s one real failing versus Goldie was the loss of external monitor support. Samsung’s first iteration of USB-C, while welcomed, did not come with DP or MHL alt modes. Which is how Celes, the Chromebook entered the collection of devices I deal with.
Nerine the iPad on the other hand, has external monitor support via DP alt mode, and my USB hub quite the few ports. The risk that I’ll eventually buy yet another Bluetooth mouse, also seems to be incrementing.
What shows no real sign of changing however, is how much I dislike the Mac editing shortcuts. Having had PCs for nearly thirty years, the way you combine arrow keys with modifier keys, while cursing the lack of vi and emacs editing strokes in joe random UI widget, is kind of deeply ingrained by now. Macs, of course do it differently. When you start dicking with the order of modifiers, and which do what, my muscle memory requires a “Are ya really sure?” level of buffering. It will probably be quite a while before that can be eliminted.
On the upside however, I still type at a decently high speed provided that I’m not editing what I insert. Being able to type as fast as I can think, is not a problem. Having to correct for my inability to spell shit is the actual problem. Sigh, that one actually has no real solution. Unless maybe you can make my keyboard provide an electric shock for every genuinely misspelled word, lol. Wait, don’t do that…I’d die.
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https://youtu.be/0acEl97ZBME

Perhaps it comes from being raised by negative people, I kind of like the Cigarette Smoking Man’s Life is Like a Box of Chocolates speech more than the more famous one.

I also find the character curious and unique as a villain. The CSM’s position yields a little power, and in The X-Files, he might very well be considered one of the most powerful people in the country in terms of influence from the shadows. But on the flip side: his life is largely a sad, little one. In which about the only good things are a pack of Morleys. Like really, if you laid out what you don’t want your middle aged life to look like: Cancer Man’s off duty time is what you don’t want yours to end up becoming.

And odds are, his best friend is the nearest seven eleven or vending machine with his brand in stock.

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Pretty consistently, I’ve never cared much for dragging windows around and stacking them across my desktop workspace. Anywhere, or anytime.

When we made the transition from a ROM/floppy system to a modern hard drive and window based system, monitors in my family were universally too small to care, not to mention Windows 98 wasn’t exactly a sexy multitasking anything at that point.

The thing that’s basically stuck with me is how I tend to favor a central application of focus, and rapid switching to another; like having an xterm and API docs side by side. It’s only been the era of the 20-something inch screen that I’ve really found much use for having my workspace split into two or more applications. It’s kinda rare that I do a one window split with two, or a quartet approach even on a big screen.

Once we get down to much less than 20” diagonal, the value largely disappears from many desktop apps. Rather you end up with something more like 1.5 apps or 1.2 apps on a laptop sized screen. Which usually results in me just maximizing what I’m doing, and using alt+tab to switch actives.

It’s probably little wonder that I prefer the style of window management found on Android tablets and iPads to drawing and stacking crap. Or that when I ask my PCs to do much more than provide a convieniet Xfce session, you’ll usually find me running something like Xmonad—that manages application windows for me.

Because I’ve got better damned things to do with my computers than dragging windows around all day.