<img src="/img/2018/shape-of-water.jpg" alt=“Shape of Water” “/> What a magical fable. I found it stunning, sweet, and completely wonderful.

I finally got around to reading Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Lathe of Heaven” and I hate to say that I was a tad underwhelmed. It’s a novel beloved by so many that perhaps I was expecting too much. It’s short enough that I may read it again some day to see if it strikes me differently.

Fast Company: Earlier this week, the online music store Bandcamp reported 18% year-over-year growth in CD sales for 2017, up from 14% growth in 2016 I still listen to CDs in the car and on my home stereo several times a week. So there’s that.

To transfer a file from the AlphaSmart Neo2 to my Mac, I connect it via USB and hit send. The AlphaSmart sends one character at a time to whatever app is frontmost. Terribly slow, but I get a kick out of watching it happen. Here’s a quick capture of the Neo sending some text to Emacs on my Mac.

Mike Monteiro: …those of us currently drawing paychecks for professional design services — are design’s lost generation. We are the Family Ties era Michael J. Fox of the design lineage. Raised by hippies. Consumed by greed. Ruled by the hand of the market. And nourished by the last drops of sour milk from the withered old teat of capitalism gone rabid. Living where America ends — Silicon Valley. Mike sometimes rubs me the wrong way, but that may be because he’s usually on to something that I’ve missed.

Chris Lynch (A Large Regular): It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock ‘n’ Roll) may be the most perfect hard rock song ever recorded. There is no way to improve on that song His list of the greatest AC/DC songs by Bon Scott is just about right. I’d argue that “Let There Be Rock” could be a tie right at the top.

I recently learned about Ranger and have been loving it on Linux. Ranger “is a console file manager with VI key bindings”. Turns out that it also works on macOS so I’ve been using it there too. One thing that I wanted to change was the way ranger deleted files. I’m new here, but I think ranger deletes using rm which I find a little scary when using a new tool.

My experiment with Linux has been fun and sometimes frustrating so far. Using only a Tiling window manager to run things on a brand new (to me) OS is wild and wonderful. When I’m not swearing at it, I’m loving it. The most surprising thing so far is how much I enjoy using the ThinkPad X1 Carbon. I didn’t expect that. It’s nowhere near my 2016 MacBook Pro in terms of pure asthetic or overall fit and finish, but it’s just so much fun to use.

Publishing a blog with WordPress is something I do, not because it’s the best option, but because it’s the most convenient. What I’d prefer is a fast, secure static site published using Hugo. I have often moved away from Hugo because it’s not convenient enough and I become fatigued. The ease with which we sacrifice security or quality or privacy for convenience is troubling to me. The Internet of Things, Cloud storage, and using Facebook are all convenient but less secure or durable or private yet we use them anyway.

When blogging with a static site renderer such as Hugo, creating new posts can be a point of friction. The default way is to call hugo new, type the name of the file, then find and open the file for editing. Not that difficult, but not simple either. Since I use Emacs, the ideal solution would be to simply call something that would do the hard work for me right within Emacs.

Joe Cieplinski: At least Apple knows the difference between a tech demo and an actual product. More critically, it knows to prioritize features where it can actually deliver something good, rather than something better at bad. Joe describes exactly how I’ve been thinking about the HomePod vs Alexa devices, only with more and better words. Source: Good vs. Better at Bad

Vicki Boykis: In a way, finding your way through AWS documentation is not unlike being dropped into a library without a map, where the books are not ordered alphabetically, and the pages in the books are constantly being rewritten. It’s good to know that I’m not alone in my struggles with AWS. Source: Working with AWS · Vicki Boykis