Where I would like to blame missing a week on the disruptions of the new features and settings in iOS 15 on my iPhone that are supposed to cause less distractions, alas I truly cannot. Perhaps I am the only person who loves all notifications and not grouped, but that’s another post for another time.

Grands – I appreciated the few kudos on reaching 1,000 blog posts, especially from long-time reader and fellow blogger Matt, who pointed out another word for one-thousand is chiliad. I am still trying to find a way to work it into a sentence without sounding snooty.

Nice thinkin’, Ray – Next week the Ghostbusters original story becomes a trilogy. I came across this video clip with Ivan Reitman, the director of the first 2 installments and Dad of the director of this one, showing a video to Bill Murray of how the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man has evolved. It opens in the US next week, and finally I have a reason to return to a movie theater.

More proof the Cloud is simply someone else’s computer – Open-source file management and application platform Nextcloud has announced a new app to allow for peer-to-peer backups. All you need is someone else who uses Nextcloud and you can backup your files to theirs, encrypted and compressed of course. I have used Nextcloud for years, though ironically I don’t know anyone else who uses it.

Snap up 80’s music lore – When I read about Deirdre O’Donoghue being “the most influential American DJ you’ve never heard of,” I said to myself, “self, I never heard of her, and I am intrigued.” She was a DJ on a public radio show in Los Angeles that featured interviews and a great mix of 80’s alternative music. Though she is no longer on this mortal coil, the tapes of her shows have been recovered and a podcast series called Bent by Nature has been produced from them. The first few episodes are fun, and if you’re into the best music era of all time on this earth, give it a listen.

Time killers as we await Valentine's Day – I was sad to hear that Christkindlmarket will not return to Milwaukee this year, though it will be back in its original Chicago location. Where trekking that far south may not be in the cards for me, trekking a little south to Milwaukee for the Noel Light Park and Christmas Market sounds like it may make up for it. No definitive word if they will have boot mugs though.

Crafting I could tolerate – New to me is Cricut a line of computer-driven cutters that can be used to make car window decals, and likely other crafty things. But car window decals! They also make a mug press for dishwasher-safe printing on coffee mugs, though it looks like supply chain issues have hit their larger mug sizes. This would certainly make for an interesting hobby, and a nice Christmas present for me.

Make Images Vital Again – Back in the old days of the Web people would upload a ginormous image to their Web site, and you could see it slowly loading a line of pixels at a time. Sadly that is still going on over a quarter of a century later. I learned about TinyPNG a Web site where you can upload and optimally compress the size of image for a Web site – note that a picture straight off of your phone is likely too big for a Web site. I saw this service listed on this great article from consultancy SmoothFusion on overall improvements you can make to your Web site.

Mixed feeling about this phone repair – Apparently if you crack the screen of your iPhone 13 and bring it to a non-Apple authorized repair place, Face ID on your phone will no longer work. Where I don’t use Face ID on my non model 13 phone because of risk and security concerns, it goes against your right to have your phone repaired wherever the heck you want to which clearly Apple, et. al. don’t want you to do.

Rudy Reminder – While watching All-American with one of my kiddos this past week there was a mention to a “Rudy moment” and guessing (correctly) she didn’t know that reference, I proceeded to give her the top-line story about Rudy Ruettiger and mentioned the movie about his life. I also recalled in the closing scene of the movie, there’s a shot of Rudy being carried off the field of Notre Dame Stadium, and sticking out among the dark clothing is my friend Tim, waving while wearing a white cap and bright blue jacket to the left of the on-screen which you can see at the 3:37 mark of this video words. He just happened to be at an actual Notre Dame game when this scene was filmed.

FILO – If you are a regular reader of my What I Learned posts or anything I write here at this humble blog, you will notice I like to include some original photo, artwork or even screenshot. As I looked thru photos the last few weeks, there wasn’t really anything to choose from. So I scrolled back to the oldest photo on my phone and I have added it above; it’s a photo of a mural on a park pavilion in Redgranite, Wisconsin, taken this summer. It caught my eye, and hopefully does yours too.

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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