this is me
Some genius made a mix of 600 songs that were released between 1990 and 1999 and blended them perfectly. I never would have though to put Mariah Carey over the I'm Just a Girl riff, or mixing Beck and Busta Rhymes, but it works. If you want to keep track of every single song used in the mix, watch the video. Otherwise, just hit play and let it take you back to the '90s.
Recently, 1Password announced early access to version 8 of their new Mac App. Things did not go well from there.
You see, the problem with the new 1Password app for many Mac users is they switched to a technology called Electron. If you are not familiar with Electron, it's a technology that allows businesses to more easily make cross platform apps. Great, right? Not exactly. Electron is the bane of many Mac users' existence. It's slow, heavy, bloated, and does not integrate with the OS. Instead of looking like an app that belongs on the OS, it looks like you're running the website in a container... because that's what you are doing. Needless to say, Mac users were not happy and expressed their frustrations on Twitter, Reddit, and the 1Password Community. Many posts from users cancelling/leaving are still up as of writing this post.
1Password tried to hide the fact that they were using Electron for the new version. When people would ask, point blankly, if they were using Electron, they would deflect and say the back end is written on Rust and it's super fast. When people would push back and again ask if it was using Electron, they would ignore the question and not respond.
When users started to install the app and call their bluff, they weren't ready. There were instances where users were actually showing how much worse resource usage in 1Password 8 is compared to 1Password 7 by posting screenshots. Resource usage for most users were 3-4x higher. One event went as high as 6 times higher resource usage. 1Password employees responded with wrong screenshots that cut off multiple 1Password 8 processes to make it look like it was behaving better than it actually was.
They then set up a Reddit AMA that was scheduled for a 3-hour period. In the first 2 hours of that AMA, only 1 employee showed up. When asked where everyone else was, they responded that the others forgot. Forgot the AMA that they were advertising on Reddit and Twitter the previous day and all that morning? Sounds unlikely.
To give credit, some employees did eventually show up, but I'm not sure why. Every single question was evaded. Take a look at this example below.
The lovely non-answers given by 1Password employees
Every single response is similar to this. Instead of addressing the issues that Mac users have with Electron and how it impacts them as users, 1Password could only post about great Electron is for them as a company. Totally tone-deaf.
Next up, we have instances where 1Password actively lied to users. When asked in June if 1Password would continue to use native (non-Electron) apps, they replied, "Don't worry, we love native apps."
Multiple posts I've made in the 1Password subreddit and the 1Password Community pointing out these issues have been removed. Other posts have been removed as well. Because they can't (or won't) address these issues, they pretend like they no longer exist. This makes me wonder if they knew this would be the response from the community. If they didn't know, that's a pretty scary proposition for a company to be that out of touch with their user base. If they did know, I wonder if their new investors at Accel were aware of the potential pushback that would come as a result. If they weren't made aware, that makes it look even more shady on 1Password's end.
We also have 1Password admitting that they used devs who have never used this technology before. This sounds kind of scary for a company that holds all of my passwords and credit cards.
Come be our security guinea pig!
The fact is, in the three days since the announcement that 1Password would be moving to Electron, not a single user concern with Electron has been addressed. They've completely ignored the concerns of Mac users and no longer care about us as users. They have mishandled this (maybe intentionally) from the start and it doesn't appear that they have any intention of fixing it. Instead, they continue to ignore the complaints of users that are still appearing hourly.
1Password recently received a huge valuation and an influx of cash from investors. The enterprise market is now their customer. That's fine. That's their decision to make as a company, but I can no longer recommend them to friends, family, and coworkers. With the amount of gaslighting, ghosting, outright lies, and condescending responses employees have given, I don't know how anyone could trust them again, especially since they are a security company. I will be leaving for another service, but the damage to 1Password's reputation is just getting started. What a fall for a once-great development company.
Edit: Jason at Six Colors has a great post about how Mac users are no longer important to 1Password.
Weezer has been an interesting band to watch over the years. I was a fan of their hits in the 90s and have followed their radio career casually ever since. In the last few years, they've released a few interesting albums, including a covers album, an album of Van Halen songs, and now an album backed by a 38 piece orchestra recorded on all analogue recording equipment entitled OK Human. You may not always like what they are doing, but you have to admire them for doing what they want. The album isn't exactly an album you can rock out to, but it is great background music to get you through the day. Listen to the album below or on Apple Music.
Christmas has come and gone. It was a bit strange this year as on my mom's side we didn't exchange gifts and just got together to catch up and play games and have dinner. It was really fun. I definitely preferred that than a three-hour present exchange marathon (our family is quite large).
One of the best things that happened this Christmas was giving my brother-in-law his present. You may be wondering what it was. It was a pillow with my face on it. Oh yeah, and I'm wearing a sombrero. My sister and I have a history of playing pranks on each other at Christmas. This year my brother-in-law was on the receiving end of the prank since I had his name in the gift exchange. The pillow is one of those pillows with sequins on it that display something when the sequins are facing one way but swipe the other way and they show a different picture/design/color. Anyway, below is a nice video and pictures of the pillow as well as some other Christmas pictures.
PS: Wonderful Christmastime by Paul McCartney is an awful song.
75 years ago this year Major League Baseball saw the first, and only, all St. Louis World Series when the National League Cardinals played the American League Browns. The National Baseball Hall of Fame has a great article about the series.
1944 World Series Program
I was surprised to learn that the series took place entirely at Sportsman's Park, the home of the Browns, and was played over six consecutive days. Can you imagine today's games going back-to-back like that? It would never happen.
The series also saw baseball great and Cardinals legend Stan Musial, then 23, who went on to report to the Navy in 1945. I'm fairly young so my mind can barely comprehend how strange it is to see baseball players joining the war effort, another thing that I don't think would happen today. A baseball player as a spy definitely wouldn't.
With a war raging overseas and uncertainty overwhelming the nation, a unique World Series was taking place pitting two teams who shared the same home ballpark.
The 1944 World Series, considered a David versus Goliath matchup at the time, was an all-St. Louis affair featuring the prodigious Cardinals, a franchise having just won its third consecutive National League pennant, and the plucky Browns, the winners of its first American League pennant in its 43rd year of existence...
With no travel days needed, the 1944 Fall Classic was played over six consecutive day games from Oct. 4-9.
If you are a fan of baseball, and especially baseball history, go read the article. It really is a great read.
30 years ago today the television show Saved by the Bell aired its first episode [1. This does not include the original show Saved by the Bell was spun off from, Good Morning Miss Bliss, which aired in July of 1987]. This will come to no surprise from people that know me but I'm kind of obsessed with Saved by the Bell.
I was born in 1983, so I was six when the show first aired. A show revolving around High School kids doesn't seem like a show a six year old would be interested in, but I had two older sisters that also watched the show. That being said, I think I did most of my SBTB watching on weekday mornings and afternoons. In fact, I didn't watch SBTB in its normal time slot, on Saturday mornings, until the last season or two. Superstations TBS and WGN used to air back to back episodes before and after school. Local station, KPLR channel 11, also aired back to back episodes in the afternoon, so I could potentially watch six episodes in a single day. I was in heaven.
So what is it about the show? It's cheesy. The acting isn't the best. The storylines are completely unbelievable. I don't know what drew me to it. Perhaps I thought High School would really be that way. Zack was the definition of being cool. Kelly was a babe. Whatever it was, it had me hooked. I still watch the show to this day, though now it has been designated as the go-to show I drift in and out of consciousness to when I'm sick.
So now that you know (or have been reminded) of my obsession, let's take a look at posts from past years on the topic of Saved by the Bell.
So take a trip through your memories and remember a simpler time when you were a child. Flip on Hulu and watch some episodes. Don't have Hulu? iTunes has the complete series on sale today for $19.99.
I still can't believe that the St. Louis Blues won the Stanley Cup. This was a day I never thought I'd see. I thought the Blues were doomed to another 50 years of championship drought a la the Cubs or Red Sox. I've never been so happy to be wrong in my life. Congratulations to the St. Louis Blues, and the Blues fans around the world.
When I was a kid one of my favorite times of the year was New Years Day because the annual tradition of a The Twilight Zonemarathon. TTZ is my favorite television show of all time. When it was announced that Jordan Peele, writer and director of the massively popular Get Out, would be bringing the series back I was excited to say the least. It seemed to me, based on all the interviews that I read, that Peele has a lot of admiration and respect for the original series. I felt that he could come out with a version of the show that was as close to the original as possible.
So far, I've watched two episodes of the new series, The Comedian and Nightmare at 30,000 Feet. I thought both episodes were really good, strengthened by wonderful performances from Kumail Nanjiani and Adam Scott, respectively. The thing that really made me enjoy the show so far is how much it feels like the original series. I've seen some criticism complaining about how it felt too much like the original series, but to me that is a strength and not a weakness. I think you can remain faithful to the original series but also have a modern spin (thinking specifically of the podcast plotline in Nightmare). I'm really exicted to watch the rest of the season.
If you are a fan of the original series or if Black Mirror was just a little too dark for you, give The Twilight Zone a shot. Honestly, the only downside I have experienced with the series so far is that it airs on CBS All Access, which is streaming service that you have to pay for in order to watch the CBS back catalog and some service-exclusive shows like The Good Fight, Star Trek Discovery,and The Twilight Zone. If you're not a regular watcher of CBS programming, you may want to wait until they all air that way you can sign up for a CBS All Access trial and binge them all. I can't wait that long because of my excitement for the show, but for more casual viewers the show alone probably isn't worth the price of a subscription to a whole new streaming services, but I was impressed with what I've seen so far that I will continue paying for the service.
Conan O'Brien is in the process of bringing his entire catalog of interviews, stand-up performances, sketches, and remote segments online. Over a year ago Team Coco announced that they were going to put all 25 years of Late Night With Conan O'Brien clips online and the first phase is rolling out now.
350 remote segments from Late Night and Conan are now available available to stream for free.The remote segments are really where Conan shines. I don't think he's any funnier than when he's interacting with various "real" people. He really knows how to get a joke out of any situation. Go watch them. They are really funny. One of my favorites, where Conan plays old-timey baseball, is embedded below.
I love discoveries like these. It amazes me every time we discover something new about past civilizations. Archaeologists recently discovered more than 150 Maya artifacts in a series of caves Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula.
Archaeologists hunting for a sacred well beneath the ancient Maya city of Chichén Itzá on Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula have accidentally discovered a trove of more than 150 ritual objects—untouched for more than a thousand years—in a series of cave chambers that may hold clues to the rise and fall of the ancient Maya. The discovery of the cave system, known as Balamku or “Jaguar God,” was announced by Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History
Balamku was first discovered by farmers in 1966 but remained sealed for more than 50 years until it was reopened in 2018. Incense burners, vases, decorated plates, and other objects were found. Check out the full story at National Geographic.
Image credit: Karla Ortega
Over the past few years we’ve entered into the world of subscription services for entertainment, among other things. It started out with a few, but media companies have found the benefits of having their own streaming services outweigh selling their content to an existing service. At least, that’s what they think now, but what happens when people get subscription fatigue? It’s happening to me. Let me start by first listing all the entertainment subscriptions that I currently pay for.
Current Subscriptions:
On and Off Subscriptions:
That is a lot of subscriptions and it doesn’t include services that I would like to or will be likely to sign up for in the future. We know that Disney is starting their own streaming service and that’s where all the Marvel (and Star Wars) content will be. Apple is jumping into the streaming game with their own service (expected to be announced on March 25th). CBS has Star Trek Discovery and the reboot of The Twilight Zone on CBS All Access, which may be enough to tempt me to subscribe. Warner Bros. is launching a service with their film and TV catalog. Universal is as well.
At what point will consumers see subscription fatigue? Are they already? I am starting to feel that way. There’s only so much money I will spend on entertainment in a given month and there’s only so much time to enjoy said entertainment. This cannot be a sustainable model for users or for the services. I've only listed the ones that I subscribe to. There are many others, ranging from Britbox and Acorns, which caters to lovers of British TV, to WWE's streaming service for wrestling fans.
Will we eventually see bundled subscriptions? That sounds a lot like cable, which loses more and more viewers each year partly due to price. Will some of these services go away? I wouldn’t be surprised if Hulu eventually goes away now that is majority owned by Disney. I think this could also lead to a decrease in quality of the programming as well. As viewers are forced to choose what new streaming services they want to pay for, total number of subscribers for each service is sure to thin. So, if you have less viewers, you are less inclined to continue producing a low-rated, yet high quality, show like Netflix's Travelers or STARZ's Counterpart. If your service or show is niche, the budget for said content is sure to be small.
I don't have any answers to the above questions, and neither do the streaming companies. This is going to be a situation of wait and see how the market plays out. I think in the end we will see some casualties of the streaming wars with only the major players surviving. In the meantime, it's going to be tough to pick and choose which services I should continue using.
Recently I’ve been wanting a way to launch iCloud directly from the Dock on my work Mac and couldn’t figure out a way to do this. I know it’s not difficult to launch finder and navigate to iCloud, especially since it is an option in my Finder’s sidebar, but I still wanted to save a couple of clicks by launching directly into the iCloud directory. It turns out, there is an easy way to do this. Thanks to a DuckDuckGo search, I found an older article on OSXDaily that explains exactly how to do this.
/System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/Applications/That’s all there is to it. Now you can open your iCloud folder directly.
Baseball season is just around the corner so it seems fitting to talk about baseball. More specifically, a mediocre baseball player that was known as the "brainiest guy in baseball." A guy that graduated from Princeton and Columbia Law. A guy that went on to become a spy for the US government in Word War II. I'm talking about Morris "Moe" Berg.
It wasn't until the last year or so that I heard about Moe Berg. Actually, it was when I was browsing the IMDB credits of actor Paul Rudd that first brought Berg to my attention (more on that later). If I'm only looking at his baseball career, there's really no reason for me to know him. He was an average player that played at the beginning of the 20th century and never played for any St. Louis teams. It's his post-baseball life that I'm surprised never caught my attention.
Berg joined the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. By this point, his baseball career was over, both as a player and a coach. Berg was seen as an asset due two previous trips to Japan with other ball players. He then went on to join the Office of Strategic Services, and the branch within the OSS called Secret Intelligence. He helped evaluate various resistance groups in Eastern Europe to determine who was the best suited to resist the Nazis.
In 1943, he was assigned to Project Larson. Project Larson was a program whose purpose was to kidnap Italian rocket and missile specialists and bring them to the US. Also part of Project Larson was Project AZUSA. AZUSA's goal was to interview Italian physicists to see what they knew about Werner Heisenberg and Carl Friedrich von Weizsacker. Per Wikipedia:
From May to mid-December 1944, Berg hopped around Europe interviewing physicists and trying to convince several to leave Europe and work in America. At the beginning of December, news about Heisenberg giving a lecture in Zürich reached the OSS. Berg was assigned to attend the lecture and determine "if anything Heisenberg said convinced him the Germans were close to a bomb." If Berg came to the conclusion that the Germans were close, he had orders to shoot Heisenberg; Berg determined that the Germans were not close.[45] During his time in Switzerland, Berg became close friends with physicist Paul Scherrer. Berg resigned from the OSS in January 1946. “Mr. Morris Berg, United States Civilian, rendered exceptionally meritorious service of high value to the war effort from April 1944 to January 1946,” reads the Medal of Freedom citation. “In a position of responsibility in the European Theater, he exhibited analytical abilities and a keen planning mind. He inspired both respect and constant high level of endeavor on the part of his subordinates which enabled his section to produce studies and analysis vital to the mounting of American operations.”
After Word War II, Berg worked for the CIA gathering information about the Soviet atomic bomb project. He was unable to deliver anything substantial.
Berg is such a fascinating guy. It's almost as if this is straight out of a movie, and you're not far off. That brings me back to Paul Rudd. In 2018, Rudd starred in a movie called The Catcher Was a Spy. The movie premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival and had a limited release in the summer of 2018. I haven't seen the film and the reviews aren't that great (33% on Rotten Tomatoes), but iTunes has it for $6.99 if you want to give it a shot. There is also a book written about him with the same name.
I don't know how I missed this last year, especially since this is right up my alley, but Matt Baker at UsefulCharts published a chart on the evolution of the alphabet. Several times per week, if not per day, I wonder the origin of a word or phrase or food. I'm constantly curious as to how something came about. This chart, and corresponding video below, scratch an itch of learning new about history that I often get since leaving college. A history nerd is always a history nerd.
I listen to a lot of podcasts. Too many, actually. It seems like I pick up a new podcast 2-3 times a month, and I rarely drop them. It has gotten to the point where I spend more time listening to podcasts than I do watching TV or reading. It's a good way to get through the work day, relax, or make the drive to and from work go by a little quicker.
One of the podcasts that I've been hearing a lot about over the past few weeks is The Angel of Vine. If you've listened to any podcasts recently, there's a good chance you've heard one of the many talented actors that are involved with the project promoting it. After about the fourth or fifth podcast where I heard the actors involved talk about it, I decided to give it a shot. So, what is it? It is a fictional true-crime podcast. From the iTunes description:
A present day journalist uncovers the audio tapes of a 1950s private eye who cracked the greatest unsolved murder mystery Hollywood has ever known... and didn’t tell a soul. Starring Joe Manganiello, Alfred Molina, Constance Zimmer, Alan Tudyk, Camilla Luddington, Mike Colter, Misha Collins, Khary Payton, Nolan North, and Oliver Vaquer.
If you like stories about old Hollywood or true crime/detective stories, you'll love this podcast. The acting is pretty wonderful. Joe Manganiello, Alfred Molina, and Alan Tudyk really stand out. Honestly, is there anything Alan Tudyk can't do? As I was listening to the podcast, which is 10 episodes in the first season (they have not announced additional seasons at this time), I couldn't help but be reminded of the old radio dramas that aired pre-television. In fact, it's kind of amazing that after all this time radio plays are making a come back in the form of podcasts. Season one has a very satisfactory ending so don't worry about there only being one season. It doesn't end on a cliffhanger. I really hope it finds an audience and more are made.
Weezer surprised fans today with a new album, Teal Album. This is not like any of their previous albums though. This is an album of all cover songs, 10 in total. The album is anchored by the cover of Toto's Africa, which has had a lot of success on the radio and internet over the past few months. I listened to this album on repeat throughout the day. While I haven't liked a lot of Weezer's more recent music, this album is really good. That are able to capture the spirit of the original songs, all while maintaining their guitar-heavy style that makes them immediately recognizable. The only song I'm not really a fan of on this album is their cover of TLC's No Scrubs. The cover of Michael Jackson's Billie Jean is probably my favorite on the album. Teal Album is available on all the major music services, such as Apple Music and Spotify. Check it out if you like Weezer, cover songs, or both.
I've never really been a New Year's Resolution type of person, but that may change in 2019. I've been a bit bored with my websites recently and I've had the real urge to tinker around. I haven't had this urge in years. Since it has been a while since I've kept up with the web development community, I started researching what software or service everyone is using these days for creating content. I signed up for a trial on Squarespace out of curiosity and imported this site to see if I'd like their interface. It's pretty nice, but there are a few things that bother me about it and will, most likely, prevent me from moving from WordPress, which I've used since this blog's inception. I will probably create a separate blog post for my thoughts on Squarespace (and WordPress) at a later date. The point is, that led me to a realization that is brought me to my resolution: I don't blog anymore and I'd like that to change.
Over the past several years the frequency in which I update this site has slowed and slowed and has pretty much stopped almost completely. If you look at 2018, I had four posts. Yes, four. This is a blog that has existed for 15 years. I used to post weekly, if not daily, in the beginning. Of course back then I was in college and in the beginning stages of my career and as such I had more time, but in 2018 I managed to knock out four whole posts. I've essentially stopped writing. I think a lot of the reason why I no longer post is I'm always busy at work and when I get home the last thing I want to do is spend more time staring at a computer. This makes finding the motivation to write or share something pretty low. Especially since there are easier ways to share my thoughts. That brings us to Twitter.
Posting Activity for 2018
I've been on Twitter since almost the beginning. I think since it's second year in operation. I used to love Twitter. It was my go to place for sharing thoughts on a variety of topics. There was also a really great community that I followed on Twitter, especially the St. Louis area people. However, Twitter has become a cesspool of Alt-Right hate groups and trolls. I don't spend nearly as much time there as I did a year or two ago. In fact, there are days where I don't check it at all. So now I'm getting the urge to get back into blogging and sharing myself through my blog, taking me full circle.
So in 2019 I'm going to try and post more. If I have something to share or say I'm going to try and do it here first. I'm going to make myself get back in the habit of posting. I have an Instapaper account full of articles that I thought would make great posts but never took the time to actually post them. It kills me when I discover something really cool, save it for a blog post later, only to see it spread its way around the internet and by the time I work up the motivation to post it is old news. 2019 is the year of the blog (again).
I was looking for something to watch on Netflix over the weekend and found a show from Conan O'Brien entitled Conan Without Borders. I've been a fan of Conan for years. He quickly became my favorite late night talk show host and I was excited when he took over The Tonight Show. I don't have to tell you how that ended, but the whole experience allowed me to have some dealings indirectly with Conan and his people (I once owned the domain teamcoco.com and sold it to him after he left The Tonight Show).
Conan Without Borders doesn't have any new footage, that I can tell, but is instead a re-packaging of Conan's travel segments from his talk show. If you've not watched Conan before, oftentimes he goes to another city for several days (if he's filming the show in said city, then he'll usually stay the whole week) and each night they will air an 8-10 minute segment of Conan interacting with the people and places of that city. What this show does is takes each of those 8-10 minute segments and combines them into a single episode. There are 6 episodes in the first "season" and he visits Cuba, Korea, Mexico, Israel, Haiti, and Italy.
The idea of the show is pretty smart. It can potentially open up Conan to more viewers who don't watch his late night show. It also shows Conan at what I think is his best. In these segments he is his typical goofy self, but in many of these places he really shows his human side and there are moments of the show that are quite touching (in the Haiti, Mexico, and Israel episodes for example). He's having real conversations with real people about real things. They are not the normal 6 minute canned promo interviews that plague late night talk shows. Each episode was really enjoyable, though I think Haiti and Israel were probably my favorite. Those two I think were really impactful, especially in the current 'America-First' political climate.
If you are a fan of Conan or travel shows, or both, I suggest you give it a watch. Some of the segments you may have seen before if you are a regular viewer of Conan, but the segments are so good they hold up in repeated viewings.
One of my favorite artists over the past 10+ years has been Kansas City rapper Tech N9ne. I was first introduced to him in High School by my friend Leon. Since then I've been following his career closely and have been amazed at his success, including appearing on Forbes' list of most successful rap artists. I even interviewed him in person for a Midwest hip hop website while I was in college. This week Tech appeared on Tiny Desk Concert on NPR. Watch the video below. It's a pretty stellar performance.
The other day I was browsing YouTube and a suggested video that came up dubbed itself a lot episode of Saved by the Bell. What? An episode of SBTB that I have not seen? How could this be? So, I watched it. All twenty minutes of it. It's not really an episode. It's a promo for the NBC Saturday morning lineup and it features Zack, Kelly, Lisa, Slater, Screech and Jessie. There is no Mr. Belding, and the whole premise is really weird.
Because it's a promo for Saturday morning, there are a lot of clips of cartoons. You have Alf (the puppet) interacting with the SBTB kids and talking about his cartoon. There's John Candy introducing Camp Candy, and appearances by Marsha Warfield and Sherman Hemsley. It was really weird. If you like SBTB or retro TV stuff in general, give it a watch below.