Last night I was looking through my photos to send one to a friend who was asking for travel advice. While digging through the archives, I noticed something strange... before 2008, my photos were a lot less personal. Sure, I had photos of me and my friends when we're together, but so many things in my day-to-day life along more casual moments went undocumented.
It took me all of two seconds to figure out why.
The iPhone was released on June 29, 2007. I got one a month later.
Before iPhone, I was usually using a digital SLR as a camera which was (mostly) only taken on trips. I was never hauling it around with me everywhere I went. I also had a pocket camera, of course, but it was just one more thing to carry around, so I mostly didn't. On top of that, a lot of places... like concerts, shows, and such... wouldn't allow you to take a camera in with you anyway. You had to be a professional photographer with a permission card to take photos.
Then iPhone came along, and I had a camera with me wherever I went. And everything changed. It wasn't a great camera, but it was good enough. Far better than the cameras on the phones I owned before (which I never used because they were so bad).
It took a few months before my brain was suitably programmed to remember that I had a camera in my pocket, but by 2008 I was very much in the habit of whipping out my iPhone to snap a photo when something fun or interesting happened.
I didn't have cats yet, but suddenly my iPhone was filled with photos of all the cats I met...
And occasional selfies, which I had never taken before (note I'm off-center because a front-facing camera wouldn't appear until iPhone 4)...
And mundane moments, like the food I was served on a plane...
And of course food in general. I rarely photographed food before... only when it was incredibly special... but now? From 2008 onwards, food photos were everywhere in my camera roll and on my blog...
Yeah, yeah... the photos I was getting were only ever decent when the lighting was perfect (I took seven photos of that cat trying to find the best angle and position to get the best detail in the fur), but even drab, low-res, blurry shots were cool at the time! Documenting the stuff I did and saw became second nature.
Back then, like now, people were telling me that I was spending too much time taking photos instead of enjoying the moment... but they were (and are) wrong. At least when it comes to me. Unlike traditional photos which required planning and camera choices, iPhone photography was just pressing a button on an object you already had in your hand. It was seconds of your life captured forever.
And I loved that.
Every one of the moments captured in photos above would have been easily forgotten if I didn't have photos. But instead I remember the cat that sat in my chair at a photo shoot I was at in Seattle... I remember everybody wearing cracker crowns at my sister's house for Christmas dinner... I remember how disappointed I was that I was in First Class on a flight and feeling Last Class because all they had was Pepsi instead of Coke... I remember loving Chicago-style veggie dogs so much that I didn't eat anything all morning so I would have room to eat two of them at lunch... I remember the Key Lime pie I got for lunch at Universal Studios Florida right before I rode the Incredible Hulk Coaster three times in a row... and I remember how my life changed when I ordered extra cashews on my cashew-caramel-frozen-custard sundae on a work trip to Wisconsin. Little moments preserved in time that I probably wouldn't have given a second thought if I wasn't able to scroll through them over and over whenever I want.
I'm sure as I get older and memories are more difficult to recall, I'll be very glad to have so many things digitally captured to help me remember the life I lived.
Including that time I had to chisel my car out of a hotel parking lot while working in Maine after an ice storm hit the night before...
Who wouldn't want to vividly remember that?
APPLE NEWS: Apple to use Google's AI model to run new Siri, Bloomberg News reports.
So... when I bought my Apple iPhone with the promise that they would make their stupid-as-shit Siri voice assistant smarter with it... this was a crock of bullshit all along? They NEVER had the ability to fix Siri. I've been waiting OVER A YEAR for something that was never coming.
And now they're going to have Google fix it for them? Why the fuck wouldn't I have just bought an Android phone if that's what I was going to get? That way I would have had a working voice assistant all this time.
Remember when Apple wouldn't talk about something until it was ready to release? Apple doesn't... BECAUSE NOW-A-DAYS THAT'S ALL THEY FUCKING DO! It's all lies. The company has billions of dollars and yet they still have to use OTHER COMPANY'S TECHNOLOGY to get shit done? How fucking embarrassing. I guess Apple's done.
This seems like a situation that's ripe for a lawsuit.
Because this was my morning with my iPod mini as I was going to take a shower...
ME: Hey Siri, play Opalite by Taylor Swift.
SIRI: Playing music by Taylor Swift.
ME: Hey Siri, STOP! — Hey Siri, play Opalite by Taylor Swift.
SIRI: Playing Elizabeth Taylor by Taylor Swift.
And it's not like you can tell Siri that they're a flaming pile of shit that's terrible at their ONE job. They'll just say "I won't reposnd to that" and go back to doing whatever stupid shit they were doing.
Which should be Apple's slogan now-a-days.
I'm sitting here wondering what the heck happened to my weekend and all the things I was supposed to get done that I never did, but I'm still getting Blogography done... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...
• Melissa. Hurricanes are a way of life in the Caribbean. But there are hurricanes, and there are hurricanes. And it's looking very bad indeed for Jamaica. Right now it's looking like Hurricane Melissa is going to hit at a minimum Category 4... maybe even Category 5.
At the 3:29 and 5:40 there's a cat in the frame, and chickens at 5:51, and it fills me with despair for the animals that have no idea what's coming... and no way to prepare and stay safe.
• Papal Security! When you're raised Catholic, the Pope becomes a rather large figure in your life. But when I was young, I didn't know much about him other than he was the leader of The Church whom I should keep in my prayers. Then I left... or rather I was kicked out when I was asking too many questions during Sunday School... and that was the end of it. Except my grandmother remained Catholic, and so on my first trip to Rome in 2000, I decided to visit the Vatican museum and buy her a rosary souvenir because I was told they all got blessed by the Pope. It was there that I was first introduced to The Swiss Guard, which is a fascinating topic...
The thing that makes them so iconic is their hallmark colorful uniforms, which I think have got to be one of the most beautiful uniforms there's ever been. Despite being so bright, they don't cross the line into garish. Probably because of the way they're constructed. With the exception of the cuffs, the red accents are hidden in-between the panels of gold and blue, so they are only visible when a guard bends or moves. It' a very cool effect. It's commonly thought that Michelangelo designed the uniforms, but it's not true. They were designed hundreds of years later, long after he died, by Commandant Jules Repond in 1914. It's a fun urban legend though.
• WE PWNED! If you're not scared shitless for the future of this country as it's being taken over by corporations owned by the wealthy elite, you're not paying attention...
It's all by design. All of it. Our government is owned by these incredibly wealthy people who get regulations and laws changed to benefit them instead of the American people. You can see it everywhere if you just look around. We are beyond fucked.
• Classic! You can have my old-school 1990's Speed Queen Washer & Dryer that came with the condo I bought when you pry them from my cold, dead hands. I am forever indebted to my friend who told me I was crazy to get rid of them. Since I've already had to replace an oven that only lasted 5 years, I'm betting my microwave, refrigerator, and new freezer are not long for this world. And here's why...
There's a huge, huge opportunity for a company to start releasing old-school appliances that will actually last. I would happily go back to an oven with knobs and dials if it means I don't have to replace them so quick. Though it sounds like that might not even be possible given what's presented in that video.
• Package PingPong! A couple days ago I wrote about a package which was supposed to have been delivered this past Monday. It made it to Spokane, 3 hours away, but then kept going back and forth. Last I checked, it had made it to Spokane twice but then was headed back to Ohio. Again...
But then Friday night I checked again. Sure enough, it was back in Ohio. But when I checked this morning, all the previous back-and-forth had been erased. As if it never happened...
Apparently UPS has finally realized there's a problem, corrected it (I hope), and then made it look like nothing was amiss. And it gets worse... if the package is in Spokane, then it should be delivered to me on Monday. And that's what UPS says is going to happen. But they've said that previously. Before the mysterious "YOU DIDN'T SEE THAT!" correction, it was projected to arrive on Wednesday. Now it's two days earlier. I will be very interested to see what the package looks like when it (eventually) gets delivered. It's been through a lot.
• iBusted! I finally did a Google Search to try and find out why I'm having so many problems with the Apple iPhone keyboard lately. It seems as if it's constantly coming up with words that I'm not typing. And since I use the "swipe" method of typing, it's very, very noticeable. And the answer is nope! Not just me...
It's absolutely pathetic how fucking bad that Apple products are becoming. Between Apple Home, CarPlay, and Siri all being a pile of shit, the Apple "experience" is so far behind what others are doing as to be embarrassing. Forget about all the broken promises that were supposed to make Apple reign supreme by having "Apple Intelligence" make their products the best in existence... Apple can't even be assed to through money at the problems they can actually fix!
• ERROR! ERROR! I watch a lot of YouTube videos. It's pretty much the only thing I do watch any more since streaming companies have lost their damn mind with their pricing. Last night a video came up about a horrible software error in a radiation treatment machine which killed people. Twice the city where tragedy happened was Yakima, Washington... a city not too far from me. It was a fascinating watch, but grated on me because they kept mispronouncing "Yakima"...
In the video, he says "yaw-KEEmah" but it's actually "YAKihmah." Now, when it comes to Native American words, nobody is going to get it perfect if they've never heard it before (and even then it's not guaranteed). And then there's the added complexity of non-Natives changing the pronunciation so that it's more comfortable for them to say. But in any event, there's a way that locals say it and, given how this is most certainly available somewhere on the internet with an easy Google search, it's strange that the narrator for a video wouldn't take a minute to make sure their pronunciation is accurate. Or at least in the ballpark. Oh well. Just another case of my being picky, I suppose.
And now I guess I'll load my dishwasher so I can feel like I accomplished something before Monday rolls around.
More smoky days ahead, but it would seem I can still blog while being trapped indoors... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...
• AI is Still Shit: Part 1,683! Dang. Googling my own blog to find something... and seeing their AI summary at the top is scary as hell. "Gemini" is drawing some very good conclusions each time, but missing the point entirely on a lot of things I've posted. Sarcasm and humor are left out of the equation, which means what I was intending to convey is badly misrepresented. Kinda freaking me out that people will see what Google is telling them and think that's what I was saying. But that's AI for you. Anybody who trusts it entirely needs to drastically reevaluate what they're being told.
• Unboxed! Marques Brownlee will be reviewing all the new iPhones in short order, but I wanted to reiterate how gutted I am that we finally get a brightly-colored iPhone Pro the minute I decide I'm going to pass on upgrading. Just look at how awesome it looks...
Yeah... the orange color paired with the camera lenses being upgraded (not to mention the sensor) almost makes me want to upgrade. Almost.
• Jaws! My current mood...
Cats are fiesty, that's for sure.
• NEWSFLASH: Whey to go: Is cheese the new reason to travel? It always has been. Going to the Kaasmuseum (Dutch Cheese Museum in Alkmaar) became a life ambition the moment I found out it existed. That's why you always travel for cheese! Parmesan and mozzarella in Italy. Cheddar in England and Canada. Feta in Greece. Butterkässe in Germany. Pepper cheese in Australia. Camembert in France. Cotija and Queso Fresco, and Oaxaca in Mexico. Manchego in Spain. Queso Tico in Costa Rica. Provoleta in Argentina. Sakura in Japan. I didn't have a specific cheese in Korea that I can remember, but I DO remember their corn cheese! And of course ALL THE CHEESE IN THE NETHERLANDS! I don't eat so much cheese now, but I would still travel for cheese!
• Big! This really takes me back. The interesting thing to note here is that projection TV technology was shit back in the day. If you don't view it directly-head-on, you can't see the picture well at all. Viewing from off the side was impossible...
Of course now people are thrilled to have their entire living room taken over by a television. I know I am!
• NEWSFLASH: Child dies of horrifying measles complication in Los Angeles. Herd immunity is failing now that anti-vaxers have created the society they’ve been dreaming of. And the death toll is only going to rise. This is horribly sad. Herd immunity is critical for protecting people unable to be vaccinated... like babies. How the fuck did we get here?
And now back to our regularly-scheduled wildfire season.
My days of running out and upgrading to Apple's latest and greatest are apparently over.
Because I've never been so overwhelmingly meh about a keynote that I can remember.
iPhone Pro Max 17
It's not that I wouldn't love to upgrade my 16 Pro Max to the latest model... I've always upgraded because of the cameras, and the improvements there are very nice indeed. 48MP cameras across the board on the rear, allowing for even more amazing "deep fusion" photos. A longer zoom. A 56% bigger sensor. Better low-light performance. Yes to all of that. And if I were still traveling regularly, I'd probably jump at it. But I'm not. I mostly take photos of my cats, and I can do that just fine with what I've got now. Everything else that's new doesn't mean much to me. My existing battery life, CPU speed, screen, enclosure, and the rest are already more than I already utilize. And what Apple "Intelligence" features I got in the year since they were supposed to be included on the 16 Pro don't impress me at all. I never use them because they're crap. I do like the orange color, having been dying for a Pro model that isn't drab and boring like we always used to get.
iPhone Air
I guess if all you wanted was a super thin and light iPhone, this is the model for you. But I want a phone for the camera, which is to say that this is not the phone for me.
iPhone 17
I guess if all you wanted was a less expensive iPhone Pro, this is the model for you. But I want a phone for the camera, which is to say that this is not the phone for me.
Apple Watch Ultra 3
Even if the size wasn't total overkill for me, the feature set would be. I'd make an exception if I were into the activities that the watch was designed for, but I'm just... not.
AirPods Pro 3
Even though these are the newest AirPods, you'd be forgiven for thinking they weren't given how there's AirPods 4 out there already. Regardless, Apple seems to be basing the price on how good the noise cancelation is. None is $129. Active is $179. World's Best Active is $249 (with Live Translation tossed in). I think the AirPods I own are the original Pro models, and they are still everything I need. Except the battery life is tanking, making them soon-to-be-unuseable. Which I'm sure is exactly what Apple is counting on... built in time bomb so you have to purchase new ones. Just like my Beats that died. At this point I think I'd rather go back to corded.
And so... guess I'm saving my money this time.
Even though it means I'm losing my Certified Apple Whore™ cred.
The Dog Days of Summer may be slowly fading, but the Bullets of Summer are still sticking around... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...
• Yesterland! This video of Disneyland in 1956 is wild. Everybody dressed up for a day out at Disneyland... from dress shirts with long pants and full on suits... to sundresses or Capri pants... nobody was in jeans and a T-shirt (and where were short pants for the guys?)...
I remember for my first visit 20 years later it was the same. My brother and I were dressed up in matching green suits that my grandmother made. And the reason I remember them so clearly? Because the threads in my suit glowed when we were riding It's a Small World. I remember the suits right down to how the buttons looked (but don't ask me what I had for dinner last night). And, wow, were the attractions very different at the beginning! No E-ticket rides in 1956 because they didn't come until three years later. And of course this were back in the days where not much was politically correct. Something I didn't know is that Disneyland was never segregated. Walt Disney wanted everybody with the means to pay to visit the Happiest Place on Earth. That being said, there are precious few non-white people in this film (except for the "Indian Village" entertainment, of course). Interestingly enough, the boat skippers on The Jungle Cruise fired AT the hippos instead of in the air to "scare" them back in the day. Vicious.
• I've Been Framed! Every payday I've been buying picture frames to hang up prints and art and maps and bits and pieces I've been collecting over the past 50 years. Last time, I bought some frames that arrived in a totally a different color than I ordered, so they refunded me 50% of the cost and I just spray-painted them. Score! Today they finally stopped smelling, so I hung them up. They're prints by Bill Mudron as a tribute to Hayao Miyazaki and his Studio Ghibli films (based on prints by Kawase Hasui). I love them. There were actually five I wanted, but two of them were sold out, so I got the these three, which are incredible. They're in the hall as I walk in the front door...
Dang. I wish I could afford glare-free museum glass (to get a closeup glare-free look at them, you can visit the artist's website here). What I really love is that the characters from the films are almost hard to spot in these prints because they're very small. In mine for Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away and My Neighbor Totoro, you have to look a minute...
I really wanted the prints for Kiki's Delivery Service and Ponyo as well...
You can buy reproductions on Mudron's website, but you can't get them at the size of the original prints, dangit. I may buy a few smaller reproductions to hang somewhere else in my home, because they're so frickin' amazing.
• The Plot Thickens! If you've never seen Robots Draw, you're missing out. I knew about the account, but I didn't know that the guy behind it did a TedTalk...
Before I could afford a dot matrix printer, I had an Atari 1020 4-color pen plotter, which I'm reminded of every time I see a Robots Draw reel...
The printer was mostly for fun because the paper was only 4.5-inches wide, but it was better than nothing. Even if it took forever to print text because the letters had to be drawn one by one. Wikipedia has a short article on the unit here (which is where I got the photo).
• Gooey! I honesty don’t know how in the hell got to be THIS BAD at Apple after Steve Jobs’s died. Granted, I am using a public beta of the latest iOS, and this might be fixed... but... what the fuck does this last button do in Apple Music?
The first is shuffle. The second is repeat. The third is infinity auto-play. But that fourth button provides no feedback as to actually doing anything, so I have no idea. This odd set of buttons could very well be the worst GUI design I’ve ever seen. Coming from a company that used to care about GUI! Fortunately, long-time blogging friend LeSombre managed to remember an article about this very topic and was able to tell me it means "AutoMix" and Apple describes it as "Songs transition at the perfect moment, based on analysis of the key and tempo of the music." So I immediately turned it off, because I wondered why in the hell the end of a song was either sped up or slowed down in weird fucking ways as it faded to the next song via CarPlay. No thank you. And, on that note... APPLE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, PROVIDE SOME FEEDBACK FOR YOUR FUCKING BUTTONS SO PEOPLE KNOW WHAT THE FUCK THEY ACTUALLY DO!
• Only Connect! If you've ever been frustrated by The New York Times puzzle "Connections," you should know that it was inspired (or stolen) from a UK quiz show Only Connect. These puzzles always feel incredibly difficult, and I can't fathom having to solve them within a time limit. It usually takes me forever when I have forever!
In other news... "Father's Day" was invented at a YMCA in Washington State?!??
• Atmosphere! Alaska Airlines has rebranded their loyalty program as "Atmos" now that they've merged with Hawaiian Airlines. Which is fine, I guess, if not for the fact that Dolby Atmos home theater sound standard already exists. I'm guessing that there was no trademark danger since they are wildly different industries, but I still wonder why they'd go with this?
"Atmos" isn't a real word. At best it's an abbreviation for "atmosphere" (which is where Dolby got it, I'm sure, because they're creating an atmosphere of sound). Not sure where Alaska's head is at here, but I can't help but think they could have come up with something better.
• Winds of Waiting! I am clinging to the idea that the person asking this horrific question has challenges gauging social situations and perhaps didn't know that what they were asking is awful. Anything else just beats down my faith in humanity to new lows. I don't care how impatient you are for the next book, this is inhuman. And I have zero doubt that this question already haunts George RR Martin himself. So... why?
That. Being. Said. While undeserving of... whatever this was... Martin has kinda brought fan frustration on himself. He has been stringing everybody along for thirteen YEARS. All the promises and all the assurances of Winds of Winter being a "priority" falling by the wayside while he finds another TV show or movie or game or book or convention or talk show or whatever to do. Anything but actually getting the work done. Add to that the HBO adaption utterly destroying the ending of the A Game of Thrones adaptation and making fans even more anxious to know how everything "really" ends... and, well, it takes things to new levels. — No, he did not deserve this terrible question. But I have to wonder if George RR Martin wasn't constantly making promises he couldn't keep, would we have an environment where people feel entitled to ask a question like this in the first place? Something to ponder. Also something to ponder? BRANDON SANDERSON COMPLETING A SONG OF FIRE AND ICE?!? Good Lord. I'd rather have no ending than that. These authors in no conceivable way complement each other. Like... at all.
Now it's time to go pick tomatoes for my dinner.
Why can't anybody make a browser that doesn't fucking piss me off?
Apple's Safari is hot garbage and has been for years. Can't load Facebook or Instagram pages to save its life. Fails to display content properly all too often. And I'm not talking esoteric, fringe sites... I'm talking about major websites. Which is to say that either Apple doesn't use their own shitty fucking browser. Or they just don't give a crap. Or probably both.
Google's Chrome reminds you that Google Chrome is not your fucking default browser every fucking time you run it. And when you click out of it, then visit a Google service, it feels the need to fucking remind you again. On top of that, there are some sites which refuse to render properly on it or any of its variants.
The Brave browser (also built on Chrome) wants to sell you its VPN, and didn't turn out to be the bastion of privacy it claimed to be.
Microsoft's Edge is better than Chrome. At least was until they killed its code-base and also built it on Chrome. Now it's got their Copilot AI bullshit being built into it, which I have zero desire to be involved with.
And then there's Arc (also built on Chrome) which has some nice ideas, but keeps getting in its own way while trying to use it on top of inheriting Chrome's failings.
Opera is also built on Chrome.
Vivaldi is also built on Chrome.
Maxthon is also built on Chrome.
Mozilla's Firefox is not built on Chrome and was my former browser of choice until it also had problems loading Instagram and some other mainstream sites. Then they came out and said that their top priority for 2025 was AI. And they killed Pocket. I have zero interest investing in their bullshit again.
Tor is built on Firefox but, strangely enough, gave me even more problems with websites that Firefox can actual open properly.
Midori is also built on Firefox.
And so...
I mostly use Safari unless it's for Facebook, Instagram, or a handful of other sites which are unusable with it.
And that's pretty much all you can do because Apple and Google own every fucking thing. And since most browsers are actually Google Chrome in disguise, Google can basically do whatever the hell they want to break standards while Apple stubbornly refuses to be compatible with what they choose to break.
At this point I'm contemplating giving up on the web and moving to a cabin in the woods.
Before installing the iOS 26 Developer Beta, here's what I did when I rounded the corner of the street where I live (once I got a vehicle with Apple CarPlay). I'd say "Hey Siri, open the garage door." Then my garage door would open. Then I would drive into my garage. Then I would say "Hey Siri, close the garage door." Then my garage door would close. Then I would turn off the car engine and go inside my house.
I used to have my garage door automatically when I rounded the corner, but then I became paranoid when I saw my iPhone misregister my location. I thought "Huh. What if it thinks I'm going home when I'm not?" Which is when I switched to telling Siri to do it via voice control.
Then I upgraded to iOS 26 Developer Beta.
Now when I say "Hey Siri, open the garage door," Siri tells me that I have to unlock my iPhone first.
To which I can only say "What the actual fuck?!?"
I'm guessing that this is some kind of pretense by Apple telling us this is a safety precaution. They want to make sure it's really you before it opens a door to your home.
Except...
Which is all to say... this is not Apple being "concerned" over "security" at all.
But it gets better...
Do you know what happens when I pull into my garage and say "Hey Siri, CLOSE the garage door?"
Siri tells me that I have to unlock my iPhone first.
You know... out of "security concerns"... or whatever bullshit that Apple will blow up our asses when we complain how this crap makes absolutely no fucking sense whatsoever.
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!)...
→ Click here to continue reading this entry...
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