Trying out the new AirPods Pro 2 and the fit with the smallest sized earbuds is far superior to the previous version. I still need to assess if they’re going to work longer term but I can’t manage to shake them loose, they don’t fall out when I’m eating something, and they don’t dislodge after walking outside for 20 minutes or so. My longer weekend photowalk will probably help clarify if I’ll keep them or return them.
A whole generation of journalists and semi-public individuals (myself included) are watching one of the ways we communicated with one another, and developed as professionals, is negligently being burned down. And so a lot of electrons are being tortured into describing our collective experiences.
My question, though, is this: what is the next system or platform that younger generations will use? Will it be YouTube or TikTok or is there another, still very small or yet to be created, platform that will do the same? Will we see a recursion back to things like Tumblr or blogs and RSS more generally? Will newsletters or email become a thing?
I’m genuinely curious while, simultaneously, a bit sad that a service that I’ve very successfully used to propel my career is almost certainly in steep decline.
A couple thoughts after shooting with the iPhone 14 Pro for a day, as an amateur photographer coming from an iPhone 12 Pro and who also uses a Ricoh GR and Fuji X100F.
I haven’t taken the phone out to shoot extensively at night, though some staged shots at home at night showcase how much better night mode is compared to that in the iPhone 12 Pro.
Anyway, early thoughts. More complete ones will follow in the coming week or so.
I’ve been making some small changes to Excited Pixels. I’ve updated my list of good podcasts I listen to (it now includes several of my preferred photography podcasts) and I’ve also created a portfolio page that currently showcases some of my recent preferred monochrome street photography. For my daily photography check out my Glass profile.
I’ve been doing my own IT for a long while, as well as small tasks for others. But I haven’t had to do an email migration—while ensuring pretty well no downtime—in a long while.
Fortunately the shift from Google Mail (due to the deprecation of grandfathered accounts that offered free custom domain integration) to Apple’s iCloud+ was remarkably smooth and easy. Apple’s instructions were helpful as were those of the host I was dealing with. Downtime was a couple seconds, at most, though there was definitely a brief moment of holding my breath in fear that the transition hadn’t quite taken.
Over the past two years or so the parts of the Internet that I inhabit have tended to become less pleasant. Messages that I see on a regular basis are just short, rude, and often mean. And the messages that are directed to people who have an online professional presence, such those who write and speak professionally, are increasingly abusive.
I’m one of those writers and speakers, and this year I decided to do something that isn’t particularly normal: when I come across a good piece of writing, or analysis of an issue, or just generally appreciate one of my colleagues’ work, I’ve been letting them know. The messages don’t tend to be long and usually focus on specific things I appreciated (to show that I’m familiar with the work in question) and thanking them for their contributions.
This might sound like a small thing. However, from experience I know that it’s surprisingly uncommon to receive much positive praise for the work that writers or speakers engage in. The times that I’ve received such positive feedback are pretty rare, but each time it’s made my day.
There are any number of policy proposals for ‘correcting’ online behaviour, many of which I have deep and severe concerns about. Simply saying ‘thanks’ in specific ways isn’t going to cure the ills of an increasingly cantankerous and abusive (and dangerous) Internet culture. But communicating our appreciation for one another can at least remind us that the Internet is filled with denizens who do appreciate the work that creators are undertaking day after day to inform, education, delight, and entertain us. That’s not nothing and can help to fuel the work that we all want to see produced for our benefit.
After letting it languish for far too long (a year or two, I think!) I’ve updated my Podcasts page to include the podcasts that I either listen to regularly, or that have come to a conclusion but that I enjoyed.
Disappointed that Apple seems to have changed the delivery date for my new Apple Watch last minute with minimal notice. Definitely not how to create delight and joy with their customers.
I’m liking the incremental update to the Photos application on iOS and iPadOS in the newest release of the operating systems. The ability to easily add titles to my photos and also access the EXIF metadata helps to maintain a (slightly) more organized photo library. Access to this information also makes it easier to share out photos straight from the Photos app, since I can copy the title of an image as part of sharing it.
However, I’m still missing the ability to create Smart Folders. Specifically I want to be able to have folders that are accessible, on iOS devices, and which sort based on the camera that took a given set of images. It’s been in MacOS for a very, very long time and it’s nuts that this kind of feature parity hasn’t been reached between operating systems.
I haven’t seen evidence that the newest version of iOS has fixed the green flare issue (which I first encountered when reviewing my iPhone 11 Pro). I know it was in an earlier beta but haven’t yet seen it implemented in a production release.
This story of how the National Security Agency (NSA) was involved in analyzing typewriter bugs that were implanted by agents of the USSR in the 1980s is pretty amazing (.pdf) in terms of the technical and operational details which are have been written about. It’s also revealing in terms of how the parties who are permitted to write about these materials breathlessly describe the agencies’ past exploits. In critically reading these kinds of accounts its possible to learn how the agencies, themselves, regard themselves and their activities. In effect, how history is ‘created’—or propaganda written, depending on how your read the article in question—functions to reveal the nature of the actors involved in that creation and the way that myths and truths are created and replicated.
As a slight aside, whenever I come across material like this I’m reminded of just how poor the Canadian government is in disclosing its own intelligence agencies’ histories. As senior members of the Canadian intelligence community retire or pass away, and as recorded materials waste away or are disposed of, key information that is needed to understand how and why Canada has acted in the world are being lost. This has the effect of impoverishing Canadians’ own understandings of how their governments have operated, with the result that Canadian histories often risk missing essential information that could reveal hidden depths to what Canadians know about their country and its past.
Excited Pixels