Category: Musings

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Today is the day

Preorders for iPhones began at 5am.

I’m still deciding if I want to plunk down the cash for a new phone. Indeed I’m wondering if I want to pre-order one instead of seeing it in the store in person. 

I know I want blue. I’m pretty sure I want the smaller of the two phones although the telephoto abilities of the iPhone Pro Max are intriguing. I just don’t think I could get comfortable with the size of the Max. I still like being able to put my phone in my pocket.

Sacrificing that ability for 5x telephoto versus 3x doesn’t seem like a good tradeoff for me given how little I use telephoto in general.

My current phone is 512GB. It’s served me well at that storage level, I do take photos regularly and with the resolution of the new iPhone being 4 times that of the current iPhone I wonder if bumping the phone storage up would be a good idea. Or is that something I can kick down the road a bit? It’s $200 extra. 

That pushes an already expensive phone into the stratosphere. Then again, at these prices? What’s another 200 bucks? It’s improbable that this will be my last iPhone, given that I tend to replace them every 3 years. My estimated remaining lifespan is 10+ years so maybe there’ll be 3 more iPhones in my future. 

My perspective on that kind of thing is changing. The other half made choices that meant he had what was just barely serviceable in the last 5-10 years of his life. I was the one that forced him into buying better things than just “serviceable”. He fought me on his Apple Watch and flat out refused to get an iPhone that used facial recognition.

Because he played harp, his thumbs and fingers were always torn up a little. As it turns out, just enough, that fingerprint scanners in iPhones and iPads more often than not, wouldn’t work.

It wasn’t anything he complained about, but I couldn’t help but notice he made his life more difficult than it had to be. It saddens me that the last few years of his life, he might have been more frustrated by devices and tools meant to make his life easier. When I bought his last iPhone, I should have gotten the one with facial recognition like mine.

Thinking like this has changed my perspective some. I’ve always gone for nice things within some kind of boundaries. Now, I’m looking at things from the perspective of does this make me smile, does it make my life easier or reduce frustration? If it does, then It’s worth it to spend a little extra cash. Especially since I’m aware, the road ahead of me is shorter than the road behind me. Why shouldn’t I enjoy myself?

The computer I’m typing on right now, is a marvel. It’s small, powerful, and has great battery life. In low power mode, the battery life is crazy long. Most of what I do these days is completely unaffected by running in low power mode. So yes, I spent a bloody fortune on this machine, but it meets all the requirement stated above, and probably will not be replaced in the next 5 years and possibly this is the last computer I’ll have.

I’m usually startled at how fast this computer really is when I plug it in. Low power mode turns off when it sees incoming power. Mostly it’s the speed of some applications loading. But when I’m using something like Final Cut, or the Affinity Suite of applications, I really notice. I’m sure I’d notice the speed using Photoshop if I could afford to use Adobe products anymore. $55 a month for access to Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and the other Adobe products seems excessive. If I was a student it would be $20 a month, but if I was a business it’s $85 a month. Wow! Must be nice… 

I miss the days of being able to purchase the Adobe Creative Suite outright and deciding if I needed to upgrade year over year.

That being said, Affinity does a great job of replacing Adobe. I just noticed that most of the benchmark tests aren’t referring to Photoshop rendering speed anymore. I hadn’t thought about Adobe for at least a year, maybe two. That’s a pity, I used to use their products all the dang time. I haven’t even looked at the Adobe Font catalog for more than 5 years. I used to always be shopping for some cool unique font. 

Ahhh apparently Adobe is doing subscriptions on fonts too. Guess What? The subscription is obscenely expensive!

I guess Adobe really did cut themselves right out of the general public’s awareness when they got too pricy for individuals to maintain copies of their products. I’ll have to make sure that all of my previously purchased fonts are securely stored somewhere because I won’t be able to replace them going forward.

I’ve found some font houses are still in business. Of course, looking at the various font houses, I discovered two fonts that I really liked. At $200 bucks a piece They may be a bit too rich for my blood, but at least I could buy them without a subscription. 

Screenshot 2023 09 14 at 10 27 38 AM

From Typography.com, is a very beautiful typeface. As fonts go, it’s not inordinately priced. This is the problem I have with subscription services especially for fonts. It looks like paying one year of Adobe’s subscription price would greatly exceed the cost of purchasing both of the fonts that I’ve just found and liked.

As an individual, I might only need or want 2 fonts. So having subscription access to 1000s of fonts does me no good whatsoever. That being said, I know that I’m an outlier. Most people don’t think about the font they’re using unless it’s hard to read.

Being in the printer and printing industry for as long as I was, I look at fonts very differently. For example, Requiem (above) is elegant, and beautiful. There are features in the font that are very old school having to do with ligatures. I suppose I look at fonts as functional art. Moreover a beautiful font is art that I get to look at and use everyday on my computer.

I digress, I do wonder though if I still have any of the Adobe Type Manager 3.5” disks around that contained my font library. I’ll have to keep an eye out for those as I’m cleaning up.

This is how I lose entire days… One connection leads to another in my head, and then another and another until I realize I’ve learned a lot but haven’t gotten anything done.

I’ve decided that I’m preordering the phone… 

Hmm, apparently not! Something is very odd with the Apple site. Apparently, they’ve got another hit on their hands…

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9/11

Lasttower 2011091122 years later.

That morning, I’d just gotten up, grabbed my computer and began the ritual of looking for a job over my morning coffee. I’d flipped on CNN, back when they were an actual source of information, instead of propaganda and sat in stunned disbelief watching the replay of the planes flying into the twin towers.

I’d missed the actual event due to the time change but witnessed the aftermath and knew that our country would never be the same.

I pounded my fists bloody on the floor in front of the television. Impotent rage at something that had already happened. I was young… just over 40. I was afraid for my brother who I knew was going to be in the thick of it.

I also decided at that moment to take the first opportunity to finally go work for the Military Industrial Complex. I was too old to join the military, but by God I could help to build shit to utterly destroy our enemies. Or, as it turned out, build shit designed to add to the safety of our troops.

On 9/11/2001 I’d have turned the entire Middle East to nuclear glass, and never thought about the millions sent to Allah. It was a safe bet 9/11 was some asshole from the Middle East, My thought was nuke ‘em all and then you don’t have to worry about ‘em ever again. This was especially true when I saw images of people in the Middle East celebrating. I’d have gladly made sure they were all well and truly fucked. I’d have smiled watching those fuckers die like cockroaches in a cheap apartment.

My other half came home from school early. The classes he’d been subbing for had been dismissed and the children sent home to be with their parents. He hugged me, calming my rage and hate. Then he cleaned and bandaged my bloody fists. He pointed out that my nuke ‘em all and let Allah sort ‘em out was pretty close to genocide and that wasn’t a good solution. I admitted he was right. We sat on the couch holding each other, watching the news coverage until it became obvious that the talking heads were repeating the same thing over and over again. We turned off the TV. When we went to bed that night we held each other tightly wondering if there would be more attacks while we slept.

As I said, I knew our country would be irrevocably changed. At the time I didn’t realize that the source of changes  would come from inside our borders, from our own people,  and indeed from within the halls of Congress. 

Later, I remember being uncomfortable with The Patriot Act. I went along with it because there wasn’t a choice (my voice mattered little,) but also on the assurances that The Patriot Act was a Temporary measure. That was back in the day when I has some measure of trust in our politicians and political process.

Well, The Patriot act has been temporary for 21 years and it isn’t going away any time soon.

I never thought that fear would end up being so potent a weapon that Americans, of all people would fall in line asking the Government to protect them, or that they’d be so willing to trade rights and freedoms for the illusion of government protection.

We should have been demanding answers of our Government. We should have demanded an explanation how they had so abjectly failed to protect our borders. You know, the primary thing the government is supposed to do… Not from a place of fear, but from a place of holding the politicians fully accountable for their failure.

Yes, there were hearings and investigations. There were a few “sacrificial lambs”.  “New” more powerful bureaucracies were born. But in the end, the people that were in power, and therefore responsible for this epic failure… Remained in power. Most of the policies that had allowed 9/11 to happen in the first place are still in force today. 

The only people who experienced limitations of their freedoms and rights post 9/11, were American Citizens. Illegal surveillance, censorship, “enacted for the public good,” any of this ringing a bell?

Our borders, which should have been closed on 9/11 at the ends of gun barrels, remained open and still remain open today.

The rationale was and is, “These poor migrants are looking for a better life.” That is a true statement. But the chaos of our border policies, and lax enforcement of expired visas and our not deporting people who have committed crimes (the first of which was entering the country illegally,) and all the rest of it has led to our not knowing who is within our borders.

These are exactly the same conditions the 9/11 hijackers exploited to launch their attack in 2001.

As we listen to Mayorkas in hearings, if you listen very closely, you’ll hear that our border is no longer being over-run by only people from Mexico or failed South American countries. You’ll hear that nationals from all over the world are being apprehended at the border and many more are “got aways”

In other words, another 9/11 is possible, and I’d say probable. If I were a son of a bitch like Osama bin Laden, I’d be planning some big assed 9/11 attack on the 25th anniversary. God knows, I’d have plenty of time to move assets in place. Even if 10% of my guys were stopped trying to cross the almost non existent border, I could still put enough bad guys in place with enough time and resources to make the 25th anniversary a real “blow out”.

Every time I hear Mayorkas telling us that the border is secure I ask myself, “Is he delusional, or is he an agent of a foreign power?”

It needn’t be a disgruntled islamic nation that sets up a 25th anniversary “party” for America. It could literally be any nation on Earth with an Ax to grind, or who seeks the overthrow and demise of our country. China, Russia, Iran, Ukraine (when we can’t afford to give them money and arms). Literally any nation on the planet that would love to see America go down could put their assets in place. 

But the greater threat is, what happens if several nations or theocracies combine forces?

9/11, as terrible as it was for us in 2001 apparently taught our leaders absolutely nothing. I am not saying for us to live in fear. We have the ability to fix the problem, what we appear to lack is the will. Perhaps more concisely we cannot force congress to execute our will. That is a serious problem because Congress doesn’t seem to remember they work for the American people. We should remind them!

Yes, today should be a day of remembrance for those victims of 9/11.

We should remember the valiant action taken by the passengers of Flight 93. We should bow our heads in prayer for all those first responders who died trying to save others, and those who died later of diseases caused by exposure to toxic materials. Many of those men and women rushed in, knowing the dust was likely dangerous, they heedlessly continued to search for, and help others, without any protection.

We should also see to it that nothing like 9/11 happens again. We should see to it our government is brought to heel, with the American people once agin holding the leash. That’s how I believe we should honor the fallen, not with grandiose speeches, empty promises, and outright lies. 

We should honor them by returning to the safety, freedom, and security, our country enjoyed pre 9/11. 

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Ok, this month is flying by

Actually, this whole damn year has flown by and I feel like I haven’t accomplished a thing.

Since the other half died. I’ve been in a fog. It’s getting better but I’m nowhere near 100%. I’ve been nostalgic, and sad, and depressed, and now, I’m beginning to sense, if not actually see a light at the end of the tunnel. I can only hope that light is not the headlight of an oncoming train!

I have managed to consolidate all the photos from various devices into one photo library. At the moment there are 2000 duplicates but the number of original photos added was over 3000 so the exercise is worth the time.

I’ll admit looking at some of the photos is bittersweet. That’s much better than I’d have been only a few short months ago.

Here we are coming up on another anniversary of 9/11. Wow! So much has happened in the past year since the last anniversary, but when you expand focus to all that’s happened since 9/11.  it’s mind boggling.

This time last year I was planning to take a trip to FL to see my Mom. So much changes so fast. I made it to FL in time to enjoy Halloween and the silliness with the family. The other half was working or planning the High Holy Days, and preparing for an annual gig that he enjoyed playing immensely.

4 months later, he was gone. It still strikes me as weird. Something that I can’t quite wrap my head around. Logic and the rational me are fine with it but the emotional me is still working hard to come to grips with it. How can someone you’ve lived with for so long just be gone?

As I’ve looked at the imported photos there’s so much. Seeing the other half and myself in photos before 9/11 we were so very young and innocent. Our world made sense though, and we were happy. Seeing us before the house burned is strange, seeing photos of the house as it was, is weird too.

All of the photos together paint a picture of a life, happy, sad, good, & bad. Call it our “Fractured Fairytale”. The other half would love that description. He was a Bullwinkle and Rocky fan.

I woke this morning to gentle rain on the roof. I thought I’d get up to enjoy it even though I was restless all night and haven’t had nearly enough sleep. It’s one of those rare times when the rest of the human neighborhood is still asleep.

The sound of the natural world is calming for mw. Yes, even the squabbling of a couple of birds in the distance. Last night, I thought I heard an owl in the distance I don’t have enough experience with oils to know what kind it was. I know they make different sounds depending on variety. Nonetheless it was a treat since I’ve not heard owls in the area for at least a decade, I hope it stays. The hooting in the night, lets me know everything is normal.

This is a moment of peace and beauty. Once the humans wake up it will be shattered. Until then, I’m going to enjoy the natural sounds, watch the rain fall and enjoy my coffee.

I’ve found it ironic that some many people in the neighborhood beyond my little street are such “EcoWarriors” AKA “Eco Virture signalers”. Yet, for all their electric vehicles, and tut tutting about plastic bags, they’re the nosiest creatures. From the thrumming of their power tools and music to their loud talking, they create sound pollution all their waking hours.They’re also afraid of the dark because most of them leave their exterior lights on all night long. Light pollution is a real issue here.

The night is supposed to be dark.

I’m going to enjoy the quiet while I can. Happy Sunday.

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This Just In!

An article appearing in Energies declares that 1 Billion people will die due to climate change over the next 100 years!

The Article is here

Doom on you all!

The article may well be correct. There’s a lot of verbiage that seems to be future casting based on previous articles and publications.

Given the human reproductive decline in China, Russia, Japan, The United States, and other westernized countries. The fear mongering may be a moot point.

Will 1 Billion people die in addition to those never being born or is that figure the sum total?

100 years is a long time. Just look at what’s happened in the past 70 years. Look at the accelerations in technology. It was entirely likely that humans would apply their technological prowess and found solutions…

I say WAS with purpose.

I’ve run across some articles and been sent other articles that lead me to believe scientific rigor and the search for truth and understanding of the universe around us has become corrupted by dogma.

Here is an article describing one scholar’s approach to getting funding and maintaining his job in academia. This article is about climate change too, and the author describes omitting information to get the piece published in a peer reviewed journal. The author even says this isn’t science anymore.

Apparently, your article must reflect the current dogma.
You mustn’t ask or answer questions that run counter to prevailing dogma.

We’ve seen this in all aspects of scientific inquiry. In recent years this protective approach to prevailing dogma has been particularly focused in the areas of Climate Change, and Medicine.

What questions may you not ask? What facts must you not present? If you think about it you can easily extrapolate the chilling effect this attitude will have on scientific inquiry.

The same drivers exist in all scientific publications to a greater or lessor extent. This is driven in part due to funding and in part due to fettering brilliant minds with illogic in the name of political correctness.

We’ve seen this before…

Galileo Galilei, arguably the father of modern science, was put on trial by the church because he discovered that the Earth and all the planets revolved around the Sun. Church dogma placed Earth at the center of the universe. Galileo was eventually forced to recant his belief and discovery. He was placed under house arrest for the rest of his life.

Ringing any bells???

Let me help, MDs being stripped of their licenses to practice medicine because they spoke about and tried alternate treatments to COVID? Their unforgivable SIN was that those treatments worked!

Here’s an example that I’ve still not gotten an answer about.

In Biology there’s a classification system for all life on the planet. This system seeks to provide order, and some information about the evolutionary pathway of all organisms.

With the advent of modern DNA studies and sequencing, this classification system has undergone some revisions. We’ve found that certain organisms are not related as closely to others as their appearance, and niche in the ecosystem would have suggested.

These discoveries have caused some organisms to be relocated from one branch to another branch of the classification system.

Many organisms are further sub-classified based on their color, habits, and evolutionary adaptations.

A notable exception is an animal called Human.

Why? Why are we special? Clearly all humans derive from the same basic body plan. So do Gorillas, and Chimpanzees. All humans function pretty much the same ways, our reproductive habits are the same. There are clear genetic differences otherwise we’d all look the same, but we don’t . There are diseases which afflict certain variations of humans and not others. Surely, these obvious core differences deserve the same scientific rigor. However human sub-classification stops at Homo sapiens sapiens which is redundant.

This is nothing less than scientific rigor stopping, because to go further would imply racism. Politically and societally racism is bad and therefore must never be reenforced in any way. So, the rigor and truth of scientific inquiry gets tossed right out the window.

You’d think there would be at least 6 subspecies of Human based on the occupied continents and variations that the environment of each continent induced.

You sure have to declare your subspecies on government forms and job applications! So apparently, racism is perfectly fine if it provides a financial advantage.

I cite the Human issue because it’s to my mind one of the most glaring. If we can’t look at hard truths bravely and clear eyed we will inevitably miss critical information that would lead us in new directions.

It appears that’s where we are as a species.

We got really smart, but we peaked probably in the mid ’90s. Instead of continuing to face uncomfortable truths we closed our eyes and put our fingers in our ears.

Look at our youth, Safe Spaces? Censoring Classical Literature? Math is Racist? How can we move forward if those who are supposed to create new advances can’t handle conflict, dare to dream, or being wrong?

Science… Especially Science, is about trying and failing. One need only look at the history of flight.

How many of those early inventors failed again and again, got up and dusted themselves off and tried again?

Even the Wright Brothers didn’t get it right on the first try.

Think what life would be like if those pioneers of flight had failed, gotten their feelings hurt and ran to their safe spaces, never to try again.

We’d be flying, but with balloons and blimps. The Montgolfier brothers, Joseph and Étienne achieved human flight with a hot air balloon in 1783. The pilot of the ballon was Pilâtre de Rozier.

120 years, from a hot air balloon to powered fixed wing flight.

66 years later we have 747 passenger planes and in the same year landed on the moon.

That’s the power of unfettered thinking. That’s what happens when you’re free to speak, to question, and to explore the edges of the unknown. That’s what happens when the truth of science is seen and not feared or discounted because it doesn’t fit some arbitrary world view.

747-8 In-flight Artwork K64146

And yes… because I know these things, that is why I hate people like Dr. Fauci, and the purveyors of dogma around Climate and Medicine.

Establishment scientists who silence truth are no better than the church in Galileo’s time.

They retard human advancement and the dim the human spirit. They dull brilliant minds by making scientists and amateurs alike, afraid to speak or discover.

We know where this leads too. If everything must be iterative and done the same as we’ve always done it due to dogma, then stagnation isn’t far off.

Give it a hundred years and our Doctors will be dancing around us casting out evil spirits.

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Hmmm… That’s interesting and perhaps problematic.

Years ago, after our house burned and losing our substantial DVD/BluRay & CD / Vinyl collection we decided that we didn’t want to suffer that kind of loss again. There are still CDs and DVDs that we hadn’t replaced because they’ve been out of print (so to speak) for years.

As an alternative, you could perhaps back up a DVD by making a copy and storing the original someplace else. BUT YOU COULDN’T… The anti piracy encoding made that an imperfect solution.

Oh sure, you could buy programs that would “Crack the encryption” those programs would even mostly work but the image quality they produced was hit or miss. Mostly miss!

Why settle for a crappy dvd copy that was barely 480 with a mono sound track, when you had a 1080p or 4k Television and slamming surround sound?

In other words, the solution didn’t work well enough to be called a solution. Oh and that “Cracker” program you purchased… Money right in the pocket of some shitty hacker who’d then happily sell your name and credit card number to the highest bidder.

You could perhaps move a “bit for bit” disk image to network attached storage, some of the storage devices even had applications specifically for the purpose. That solution was slow and often disrupted by the anti piracy shit built into the DVD. You’d get the whole movie, but if you played it back from the network storage you’d find the chapters were all scrambled.

So our choice was to get high speed internet and we’d stream movies or TV shows from a service like Apple, Amazon, Netflix, or Hulu. You could “Buy” movies on Apple, Amazon, or UltraViolet. Supposedly, the movies you purchased would be in your personal library forever (OR until the terms and conditions changed…)

UltraViolet was a really terrible service that worked on every device except the 65″ TV in the living room. To use that nice panel, I needed to connect a computer to it, or some other device. Okay, fine for me. The other half had a bit of a problem with complex technology and keeping track of HDMI inputs, and then routing the audio through the sound system or the TV speakers etc, etc, etc.

He could play Flight of the Bumblebee, Mozart’s Requiem Mass, or Wagner’s Ring Cycle, flawlessly on several different instruments, but the remote control for watching a movie or TV show? There were too many buttons to remember.

Go Figure!

I’d come home from work after the house rebuild and find him reading a book in front of a large screen displaying “No Signal”. Sometimes there would be FM static whispering through the surround sound system, because he’d switched to the radio but couldn’t find a station in range.

I felt responsible, terrible, and guilty. I knew that all he wanted to do was watch some opera performance, or listen to a piece of music that I probably wouldn’t like while I wasn’t home. (I hate Opera only slightly less than I hate Rap.) Oh and Shostakovich… Right the hell out of here! If I happened to be a spy captured by Russians during the Cold War… 3 Hours of Shostakovich and I’d have told the Russians our launch codes and given them the President’s Mistress address and phone number!

He knew that. He liked Shostakovich pieces. So he’d enjoy those pieces when I wasn’t around. Much the same as me enjoying Nine Inch Nails, Linkin Park, and Korn. He enjoyed those groups just as much as I enjoyed Shostakovich. So I listened to those groups on the way to work in the car, or at home when he was off playing church services or a gig.

Honestly… I think the problem was complexity added by the the sound system. When you added the TV, and a connection device to the internal network. Then having to choose which service you wanted to stream from, the Network Storage, or the internet, and which TV you wanted to watch the video on, did you want stereo, or surround sound? On and On, just to play a show or movie.

Writing it just now, and I knew it then, it was a lot of work. It’s a hell of a lot easier to plunk a DVD in a tray or slot and press “play”.

Although as I wrote that, I couldn’t help but think of trying to find a specific item on the internet these days. You’ll get a page or two of loosely related items but not the item, then when you click on the item that most closely approximates what you were looking for, you’ll get annoying cookie notification shit, (Weren’t cookies going away????) Then at least one full screen pop up asking for your email address in exchange for some “Special” discount, then another pop up asking if you need help from a chatbot and all the while, you still haven’t been able to see if the item is what you wanted, or read its description or price.

It’s like the damn gas pumps! No, I don’t want a car wash. No, I don’t want to join your club. Yes, I want a receipt. No, I don’t want a discount on beef jerky inside. Please! I just want fucking GAS!

The ONE question aside from wanting a receipt I’m going to answer “Yes” to, is “Do you want me to turn off the screaming advertising screen?”

Unfortunately, that question is never asked. I suppose that’s why my blood pressure is so dang low when I”m driving across country. I take a lot of back roads, and in those little country towns… A Gas Pump is just a Gas Pump…

Apparently my other half wasn’t the only person who had trouble. Most modern surround systems, and TVs are smart enough that with the right cables, all you have to turn on is the actual device you want to use. The system if properly configured, will see an HDMI input and make certain assumptions about it. Video Game – Connect TV and surround system turn on TV. CD player – Sound system only.

The cool thing is that you don’t have to fiddle with 5 different remote controls (All of which work differently. Some of which have volume controls that do nothing). All you have to do is turn on one device.

I’d been planning to update our equipment to the new standards. I was going to make it a Christmas present to us both this year. I don’t think I’ll be doing that now. He’s gone and I can reconfigure what I have to work until I decide what’s next in my life. But there is a temptation to update everything anyway… It all can be put in moving boxes, right?

In an effort to make things as simple as possible, over the years, I’d made a couple of decisions. Those decisions may come back to haunt me now.

We settled on a single streaming device. We went with the Apple TV in part because this is an Apple household. No, not in the religious sense.

For decades Apple devices, while expensive, worked as advertised, and had long term support. Non Apple devices… Not so much. “Blackberry? Paging Blackberry… Blackberry?” ZUME? PalmPilot? Compaq iPaq? Compaq Computers? The list goes on and is quite long!

This is not to say that Apple didn’t lay some eggs in their time, but Apple supported these devices for a time after they stopped selling them. My Newton Messagepad was a nifty device, ahead of its time, and woefully misunderstood by the blockheads in the media who sealed its demise with horrific articles damning something they didn’t understand, in favor of the Palm Pilot.

Apple though, is getting long in the tooth. They’re beginning to take on the lassie faire attitude that defined Non Apple corporations for years.

That attitude is, “The customer will buy it even if “it” doesn’t quite work.” We’re seeing this in Apple Software, and to some extent, in their hardware. The butterfly keyboard issue is only the latest example of Apple failing to pay attention to quality indicators.

With the Apple TV, the other half could turn on one device, and then have a menu that allowed him to pick what he wanted to see or hear. When we added the HomePod speakers things got a lot simpler One button, one remote. Then it was just a matter of making sure that all the music was available in the cloud. The same was true of Television shows and Movies.

Soon our collection of movies and music was all in iTunes. If the other half had a problem with the system, I could often walk him through corrective steps or just log on to the iCloud account to figure out what was wrong. Simplicity reigned, and I no longer came home to a screen displaying “No Signal”

In hindsight, our collection being completely in iTunes may not have been the best idea. We have a lot of movies. We also tended to buy TV series that we liked. The number of movies would be a problem if they had to be physically stored. They might even be a problem if I were to download each one to the network storage. I could always increase the network storage size, or add bookshelves.

The Apple Movies all have encryption. They can be played from network storage with a computer as long as the computer can verify with the internet that you have the rights to play the video. The Apple TV flat out refuses to see the movies exist on local network storage. Since the purpose was to have the movies on the big screen I haven’t kept up with downloading them since the AppleTV wouldn’t play them from downloads anyway.

One concern I have is that movies are being changed to accommodate the Woke overly sensitive crowd. There’s a bigger problem with some of the TV series I’ve purchased over the years. A current example is the series Archer.

This morning I happened to be looking at purchasing the season pass for season 14 of the show. I noticed with some surprise that seasons 1-8 were available for purchase, as was season 14. What happened to seasons 9 through 13?

I immediately checked my library and found that seasons 9-13 were still available because I’d already purchased them. This begs the question, why is there a gap at all? Seasons 3-5 of The Boys from Amazon are not available on iTunes. I purchased Seasons 1 & 2, on iTunes thinking that I’d be able to complete the series in time.

That seems questionable now. The Expanse is a series that I own except the last two seasons. I suppose I should purchase those before they’re unavailable. I also just checked on “Strike Back” and found that ONLY the two seasons I own are available, the remaining 5 or 6 seasons are completely missing. Just a few months ago all the seasons were available, they were expensive, but available. I suspect I could get a boxed set at Best Buy come Christmas time.

This makes me wonder if digital collections are worth it. If I can’t have a guarantee that I’ll be able to purchase all of a series or have the option to purchase a digital un-woke version of Gone with the Wind, or Looney Tunes then perhaps I need to go back to physical copies.

I still can’t purchase Young Frankenstein on iTunes. But I was able to get a copy of Blazing Saddles.

Then there’s the issue of some of the albums that I’ve had in my collection disappearing and not being available for re-download. Thankfully I have a friend that has a massive collection of music and If I really need to have one of those albums, I have no issues asking him for a high quality copy.

My attitude about this is simple. If I paid for the damn album in digital format and lost the copy of that album due to a drive failure I should be able to redownload it. If you’re not going to let me do that, then my other option is to “Pirate” a copy for my own use.

I have no desire to start selling pirated copies of my music or videos, I just want to the able to play them hassle free.

Unfortunately, I think that ability is going to require buying physical copies of everything again. I don’t look forward to repurchasing DVDs or CDs to recreate my library again. To my way of thinking I shouldn’t have to. Then again, I don’t think like everyone else.

If I were to commit to going all physical copies of everything again… It would be a great excuse to do a complete sound system/entertainment system refresh. That would give a friend and I a great shopping day in the audiophile stores he haunts. I might even go so far as to buy a turntable and get back to vinyl.

I’m not sure I want to go with tubes in an amp. I know my friend will strongly suggest that I do. I think I’d rather put the bulk of cash in really fine speakers.

We’ll see…

In the mean time, I’m going to experiment with some DRM removal software to see if I can download and save my collection to my Network Storage and avoid replacement altogether.

It’s interesting, I think we’re all going to be looking at doing things the “Old Way” because the “New Way” has become so corrupted. I can think of a couple of recordings of live shows from comedians I owned. Those shows / recordings would never pass the censorship the “Woke” crowd seeks to impose.

The Newest Call of Duty game is going to be live censoring any trash talking between players. That’s half the fun! When I played COD with my coworkers, we called each other names all the time over the communication channels. Where else do you get to call your boss a “dumb ass” to his face and have everyone laugh? But along comes the WOKE, they’re going to use an AI to censor “Hate or hurtful speech” in online gaming, and the AI will flush your sorry ass from the game if it doesn’t like what you say.

I’m not sure I’m willing to pony up $70 to have an AI tell me I can’t trash talk my friends during a game. I really enjoyed the creative swearing and trash talk directed at me when I screwed up. Then again, I was playing with retired guys from the Navy, Army, and Marines.

I wonder how the gaming community will respond? If no-one buys the new game, and only plays the old non-AI enhanced versions do you think they’ll get the message?

That’s fantasy! The young kids will keep the games alive and they’ll accept censorship in all its forms because they don’t know any better. Stalin said something about educating the children… I can’t remember offhand the exact saying.

I’m heading to Best Buy later today, maybe I’ll check out the selection of physical copies of music and games.

Have a great one!