And so I installed the developer betas of Apple's latest and greatest OSs for my devices... iOS 26 on my iPhone, iPad OS on my iPad Pro, and macOS Tahoe 26. I dunno if watchOS is out yet.

I have mixed feelings about what's going on. Some of it looks great, but some of it is pretty bad. I'll write about it in full tomorrow, but what I can say right now is this: Using Apple's new "Liquid Glass" Graphic User Interface reminds me very much of that scene in Bedazzled* where Brendon Fraser gets turned into a star basketball player, ends up breaking the backboard, then spits the glass at the camera...

Which is to say I'm finding that Apple is spitting this glass effect everywhere, and it doesn't always land...

Now, at this size when displayed on a computer, it's not so bad. But keep in mind you're using it on an iPhone, which is smaller. And, if you're old like me, you have to hold it out so you can see it without reading glasses on. Apple desperately needs to refine this. Or even give you a way to turn the glass off so people with poor eyesight can read everything more easily...

What a mess.

Another quick observation before I take my leave of you... many of the icons look blurry. It gives me a headache.

Not at computer size so much... but iPhone size at a distance. Just look at the Photos app icon here...

But more tomorrow when I've had a chance to play with it all a bit more.

* If you've never seen Bedazzled (the Elizabeth Hurley version), I give it my highest recommendation. Here's that entire scene...

Apple's World Wide Developer Conference is an event unto itself every year. Today I woke up at 4:30am so I could catch up on work and watch the event live so I could add the commentary you've all been dying for. If you want to watch it while reading this, you can find the entire thing on YouTube here.

Craig Federighi once again makes everybody fall in love with him due to his filmed-intro, screaming around the top of the Apple Park building in an F1 car to promote their new movie F1 (original title!) with Brad Pitt. And heeeeere's Tim Cook... to introduce more Craig!

To read all the gory details of Apple's keynote and my random thoughts about what they announced, you can find it in an extended entry, because it's rather long (I type fast and think a lot of things!)...

I may be broiling in the Summer heat, but I must be good to blog... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Stranger, Newer! Look, let's just get this out of the way... it is highly unlikely that ANY show is going to eclipse Andor, The Residence, and Poker Face in my #1, #2, and #3 spots for the best television of 2025. They're just too phenomenal. But if any show has a shot at it, that would be Strange New Worlds. It managed to eclipse the original series as my favorite Trek, and the third season looks like more of the awesome I've come to expect...

   
• Cricket! GAH! I've been replacing some of the outlets in my home with Eve smart outlets. This morning I was replacing the outlet for all my television devices because I want to know how much electricity I'm drawing to be sure I'm not overloading the breaker. The outlet ended up having dual black & white wires, which meant the wire nuts that came with the switch were too small. I quickly ran to the electrical kit to get bigger ones while my Uninterruptible Power Supply was beeping angrily because it had no power. As I was running through the garage, I saw a clump of dirt that must have fallen off the gardening tools I was using this morning. I kicked it under the car so I could sweep it up later. BUT THE CLUMP OF DIRT CRAWLED BACK FROM UNDER THE CAR! BECAUSE IT WASN'T A CLUMP OF DIRT, IT WAS THE LARGEST CRICKET I'VE EVER SEEN! After screaming GAAAAAH! I ran into the house for a paper cup to drop over the insect while I wired the outlet so I could get power back to my UPS. Then I slid a piece of board under the cup and took the cricket out to a nice shady spot in the rock wall behind my home. Sorry, cricket, but I don't want you chirping in my home.

   
• Dip! A friend called and asked what I'm up to. After telling her the killer cricket story, I told her I was making my grandmother's chip dip recipe... except I'm using vegan cream cheese instead of regular cream cheese, vegan mayo instead of regular mayo, tamari sauce instead of Worcestershire sauce, and nutritional yeast instead of cheese. Then I add a little ground black pepper and chili powder to help make the taste of the veggie mayo more palatable. She said "If you're changing all the ingredients, you're not really making your grandmother's recipe tho..." And I was like "Well, the lemon juice in it is still lemon juice... I just substitute vegan ingredients for the non-vegan ingredients. Which is most of them, I guess. Which is to say that I'm not actually making my grandma's recipe after all. Except... I totally am, I think.

   
• Big, Bold, and Beautiful! Well this looks wonderful. A movie that's right up my alley...

Doesn't hurt that the cast is so good.

   
• a-ha! I've never understood the one-hit-wonder status for a-ha. Their debut album and lead single Take on Me are great. Love it. Definitely a hit. But they created a lot of amazing music after. Including Holyground, a beautiful song that defies description...

Lead singer Morten Harket has announced he has Parkinson’s disease.

I flew to New York to see the band on their farewell Ending on a High Note Tour (they were only playing NYC and Los Angeles in the USA). After that they slowed down, but I was so happy they actually kept going.

   
• Pick Me! Lock company sues McNally for showing how easy their locks are to pick. They claim that he "altered" their lock. McNally orders a fresh lock and films himself retrieving the lock from an Amazon locker, opening the sealed box of the lock, cutting an aluminum can to make a pick for the lock, then picks the lock... all without the filming being interrupted. The entire video is two minutes and thirteen seconds long...

I laughed and laughed and laughed. Because this lock company just made things far, far worse for their reputation. He should pick one of their locks live during the trial, assuming the lock company is stupid enough to go through with it.

   
• VARIETY NEWS: ‘Andor’ Creator Says Disney Spent ‘$650 Million for 24 Episodes’ and ‘We Fought Hard’ for Money After Being Told in Season 2: ‘Streaming Is Dead. We Don’t Have the Money We Had Before’ — And every fucking cent is on the screen. This is budget filmmaking. Disney should be thrilled that Tony Gilroy handed them 8 feature films at a budget of only $80 million each. Because every three episodes IS the equivalent. And who makes feature films for only $80 million any more that are this fully-realized and have the talent and dazzling special effects that made them this great? Andor is easily one of the best TV series ever made. It’s the best thing to come out of Star Wars period...

Disney should be begging the guy to do more Star Wars. They should be filling a dump truck with money and backing it up into Gilroy’s driveway to get him to do more Star Wars. This series was an absolute gift to Disney, Star Wars fans, and people who relish great storytelling. Fuck the Empire.

   
And now I'm off! Off the internet Because I'm trying to free up space in my garage.

My cats, both of whom love the heat, are obsessed with hanging out in the catio lately. Which means that activity going on out there doesn't get ignored as it usually does. On a near daily-basis I'm hearing some kind of commotion out there.

And out of all of it, this chipmunk caused the biggest reaction. But what's bizarre is how the chipmunk barely reacted to my cats going apeshit out there...

I love the way hi tail is so fluid.

But what I love most is how he stands up to look around. He's gone full-on meerkat here.

If you've been here at Blogography for any length of time, you know that theme park design is a big obsession of mine. So of course when Disney Parks Blog had an entry this morning about the new expansions to Disneyland, I took note.

To start, the new bridge over S. Harbor Blvd. which goes to a new load/unload zone and 6,000 space parking lot (along with the new entrance on the east-side) is very cool...

But my attention was laser-focused on the information for the new Coco ride...

I loved Coco. The gorgeous art of the film and incredible visuals would make a fantastic idea for an attraction. All we really know about the ride is that you're in a boat...

Now, one would assume that this new ride is going to be at least as big as It's a Small World or else why do it? On the Google Map below, It's a Small World is in the upper-left in pink. Dropping the ride at the location in the press release would put it at the location of the green building I've dropped in the lower-right of the same map below...

Except, a few problems...

• There's this odd road that wraps around the south end of California Adventure (shown to the right on the above map). I have never understood why it's there. I don't think it's a Disney access road, because it's almost completely separated off from any Disney access (the exception being an entry point to the South) and there's another road for Disney inside of it. But the oddest part is that anybody needing this road would just drive on the already-existing S. Harbor Blvd., W. Katella Ave., or Disneyland Drive. Regardless, to put Coco in the above-shown location would require a chunk of this road being ripped out.
• From the artwork we've seen, the Coco ride appears to be a part of a larger Coco "land" expansion that's a part of Pixar Pier. Which means Disney is going to need a big enough area to build that... the ride isn't going to be directly off the walk between Paradise Gardens and Pixar Pier.

And so the actual "Coco Land" will more likely be somewhere within the space I've drawn in green on the map at the lower-right below. It's located behind the IncrediCoaster...

The region I've drawn in yellow is the area available for the Avenger's Campus expansion (which I've already talked about here). The area in Blue is the area available for Avatar Pandora Land West (which seems surprisingly small)...

After these additions, the only real space available for expansion (other than the Disney Forward project areas which I talked about here) is the region to the north of the original Disneyland. That's assuming Disney doesn't buy more property in the area. But in order to use this land (which is fairly substantial, dwarfing even Star Wars Land), Disney would have to level a lot of expensive construction (including the massive Team Disney admin building and the warehouse where I'm guessing the parade floats are built and housed). This seems unlikely, but maybe a portion of this space could be used for park expansion...

At this point all I can really, really, hope for is that Disney doesn't cheap out and give us some crapy boat ride that's undeserving of Coco. It should be more than a bad retread of Gran Fiesta Tour Starring The Three Caballeros from Epcot's Mexico Pavilion. Much more. It should be a destination-worthy spectacle that draws people to the park just to see it.

The Coco ride should be every bit as big and impressive and jaw-dropping as what they did with Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance.

But will it be?

Only time will tell.

It's incredibly frustrating to have a company I once loved... nay, worshipped... fall so far from grace.

There are days that I roundly despise Apple for their fucking bullshit, which is something inconceivable to the me from a decade ago. But every time some bug rears its ugly head despite it being reported years ago... every time an Apple technology I bought into keeps failing year after year... every time I have to endure klutzy interface elements that haven't been updated in years and make for a horrible user experience... every time there's yet another broken promise... well... I'm cursing Apple more and more lately.

And then I read this article: Retreating to Safety, which mentions that Apple will not be doing a live interview at their World Wide Developer's Conference this year. After a decade of doing just that.

And it's like... is it any wonder?

Apple sold everybody new iPhones with the promise of fantastic new AI capabilities... then never released all the new AI capabilities they promised (and still haven't). Plus there's all that bullshit I mentioned at the top. Apple has gone from a golden boy doing everything right to just another shitty fucking company that doesn't give a fuck about their users because they have profit margins to meet.

So now we sit and wait for The New Apple to come along so we can chuck them in the bin just like we have so many other companies which went down this road.

I really cannot be trusted with dangerous instruments any more.

Yesterday I took a phone call while I was in the middle of cutting out some cardboard pieces. After I finished the call, I went to hang up my phone... didn't realize that I was still holding my X-Acto knife... THEN PLUNGED IT INTO MY FINGER!

It hurt for a second, but I honestly didn't think it was that bad.

Until I pulled the knife out of my finger.

Blood. Everywhere.

I wrapped it in a paper towel I had in my desk, sent a couple texts one-handed on my blood-spattered keyboard, then rushed to clean out the wound and get it bandaged up.

Then come back to clean up the mess... which looked like a murder scene. I felt like I needed to call one of those mafia cleaners or something.

Anyway... it bled through multiple banadages before it clotted. Then this morning it was in pretty good shape, all things considered, and I got to clean it up. Good as almost new!

There was a casulty amongst the carnage, however.

Some of the keys on my keyboard were sticking. Since it's Apple, you can't just unscrew it to clean it out, so I did the best I can with soaking a rag in solvent so I could un-stick the keys. As I was scrubbing to get the residue out of the keyboard, I noticed that my key caps were being wiped clean!

But no problem there. I have a fine-point Sharpie marker!

I thought I was being smart by letting the keyboard dry for a couple hours, but it made no difference. The Sharpie started smearing almost immediately. So much for Sharpies being a PERMANENT marker!

Oh well. Probably need to order a new keyboard anyway since the A, W, and Q are still sticky no matter what I do.

I could be in serious trouble if I need an A&W Root Beer, and we can't have that.

This morning while I was waiting for my second meeting of the day, I took a minute to look at picture frames. I bought a couple prints while I was in Hawaii that arrived, and I wanted to find a frame that might match so I could hang them up.

I was surprised, but not really, to find that a lot of the frames I looked at were made to look like wood... but were actually plastic. And it's like... they've been making cheap picture frames out of wood for forever, so why aren't they still doing that? Is it really so much cheaper and easier to make plastic crap? Heck, even when you find an actual wood frame, it's usually a wood veneer over some kind of cheaper wood. Which ain't great, but at least it's real.

My first instinct was to just make some frames myself, but I honestly don't have the time to do that. It's not a particularly challenging task... but even simple jobs take time that I just don't have right now.

And something tells me that even if I had the time, the wood I'd buy to make the frames would be more expensive than tracking down ready-made wood frames... because that seems to be the way it goes. Big box stores have to add a big markup to cover their overhead and still make a profit, whereas frame manufacturers get to purchase wood direct at wholesale prices.

What I really need to do is grow and mill my own lumber!

But if I don't have time to make a frame I'm sure not going to have the time to make a forest.

As what happens every year when I wish my gay friends "Happy Pride," people crawl out of the woodwork with their panties in a bunch for absolutely no reason. Or, to be more accurate this year, a person crawled out of the woodwork because there was only one of them.

And for the life of me I just don't get it. Your life isn't being affected by their existence at all. The Gays are out there living their best life at zero cost to you, so why do you give a shit? Focus on making your own miserable life better instead of harshing other people's mellow. But, whatever... comments are easy to delete.

If only everybody could be as well-adjusted as this guy is about it all...

He's not wrong. June is when gay gets sprinkled all over everything by Corporate America who's (mostly) only interested in cashing in... then their "support" evaporates like a fart in the wind. Until next June. But it does get acceptance out in the mainstream for a month, which is better than nothing, I suppose. More and more LGBTQ+ persons are being subject to escalating levels of hate, bigotry, and discrimination just for existing, and seeing even faux-acceptance might be nice for a change.

Even when you're seeing it for what it actually is.

Happy Pride Month to all my LGBTQ+ friends out there! The world is better because you're in it! Soon I'll be watching a movie themed to this month's topic, but that will have to wait... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• BEES! NEWSFLASH: Millions of bees escape, start stinging after crash in Whatcom County. The first thing I did was go running to Maps to find out how far away these 250 million bees are from my house. Answer? About 3-1/2 hours, minimum. So no need to panic. Yet.

   
• Disney Be Expensive, Yo! “No we’re not going to Disneyland. We’ve got Disneyland at home!”

Absolutely classic.

   
• Sloppy! Peacock TV should just renew Poker Face for ten new seasons to be filmed twice a year. The latest episode Sloppy Joseph is phenomenal, as usual. But it leaps ahead of the pack for one reason. The child actor leads they got for this episode are amazing. AMAZING... and also, in one case, amazingly disturbing. Whomever cast them deserves a raise...

Plus it was deftly directed by ADAM ARKIN? And is that DAVID KRUMHOLTZ?!? Sweet! — I wish they could clone Natasha Lyonne so she could appear in more stuff. Then make a second clone and put her into suspended animation so we have a spare in case we lose the original two.

   
• Wes! If anybody has $400 that they're trying to get rid of... give it to The Trevor Project or Trans Lifeline. But if you have $400 more that you need to get rid of, you could always buy this for me...

Sure I already own all these movies in digital format (and more than a few on DVD and Blu-Ray), but 4K off of Blu-Ray is a considerably different experience than "4K" off of digital streaming.

   
• Linguistically Yours! I love this...

Language is ever-changing and ever-evolving. This is just the latest thing.

   
• Cursed! Sage, sage wisdom being dropped here...

I wish I could reclaim all the time I wasted trying to please people who don't care about me.

   
• Yummy! This video came up in my Facebook memories. So much more clever than Baby Shark...

CHEESE! CHEESE! CHEESE!

   
• Drag News Hour! Yet another drag queen endangering our children! Oh... wait a second... nope! Not a drag queen... color me un-shocked! NEWSFLASH: MAGA Influencer And Fox News Guest Indicted On Child Sex Abuse Charges.

   
And, on that note, it's time for me to make dinner. Until next Sunday...