The St. Louis Accent

April 13, 2018

Before there was a Hot in Herre, there was Highway Farty and carn on the cob. No, I'm not having a stroke, I'm referring to the dialect that I heard as a child growing up in St. Louis. Citylab recently had a post explaining the St. Louis accent.

The most stereotypical St. Louis pronunciation is “farty” for “forty.” St. Louisans swap an “ar” for an “or” sound, so they eat “carn on the cob” and wish each other “good marning.” This is unique to St. Louis, but the city has other features in common with the Midlands. Older St. Louisans say “worsh” for “wash,” “wants off” for “wants to get off,” and “I waited on him” instead of “I waited for him.”

The whole article is pretty fascinating. Go and give it a read.

Harlem Globetrotter Uses Rube Goldberg Machine for Trick Shot

February 28, 2018

As if the Harlem Globetrotters weren't awesome already, check out this video of a Globetrotter nailing a trick shot using a Rube Goldberg machine.

If that interested you, on World Trick Shot Day in 2017, the Globetrotters were in St. Louis to make the shot from on top of the City Museum.

Prevent Dock Following in macOS

December 20, 2017

I love macOS, I really do, but sometimes there is a feature that exists that makes me wonder what Apple was thinking. The current frustration I'm facing is Dock following. It is horrible and the only way to disable it is to turn off other useful features. For those not familiar with Dock following, it is a feature that allows the Dock to move to external monitors when you move your mouse to the bottom of the monitor. This may sound useful, but let me tell you about my setup to show you why I hate it.

My Mac setup at work is a 13 inch MacBook Pro connected to two external monitors. On the right side of my desk, is the Macbook. On this display is Outlook. I usually do not display anything else on this monitor since it is only 13 inches. In the middle display is a 22 inch display that houses the applications I use most throughout the day. This includes web browsers, SQL Operations Studio, One Note, and others. On the left most display (another 22 inch monitor) I run Skype for Business (don't get me started on how horrible this app is) and Jump Desktop. Jump Desktop is a remote connection manager that is the best RDP manager I've found on macOS. Because my work has historically been a Windows-only shop that is only just now starting to support other platforms, I have to do quite a few tasks on Windows. When I'm using Jump Desktop, I want my RDP connection to my Windows machine to be as large as possible so I can perform my Windows tasks effortlessly. This is where the annoying Dock following feature comes into play.

Five or six times a day I will move my mouse to my left display to click on either the Windows Start menu or the task bar and as I do that the dock pops up on the left monitor because my mouse went to the bottom of the monitor, close to where the Windows Start menu and task bar live. Not only does the Dock just appear there, but often times gets in the way of what I was trying to click. Very annoying. Today, I found out there is a way to prevent the Dock from following your mouse. If you go to System Preferences and into the settings for Mission Control, there is an option called Displays have separate Spaces.

mission control

After unchecking this box, Dock following was disabled. I thought my problem was solved, but I quickly found out that this option has several drawbacks as well. By unchecking this, the menu bar no longer spans across displays, so any time I want to do a menu action, I have to do it on the MacBook's main display, which means sometimes I have to traverse three displays in order to get to the menu action. Also, while not a heavy user of spaces, I do use them from time to time when I'm heavily multitasking and during those times I want displays to have their own spaces. So, I'm back to the original issue of wanting a way to disable Dock following. I've done several Google searches and the only option to disable it that I've found is via the Mission Control setting. It boggles my mind that Apple does not provide a way to disable this. If anyone has a way to do this, drop me a line.

Saved by the Bell: The Game

August 3, 2017

No, you are not dreaming. There really is a Saved by the Bell board game and it looks amazing. Well, it looks like it would be fun to play once or twice until your friends stop playing with you because you know way too much about the TV show and it is no longer fun for them. From the description on Pressman's website:

Your homework assignment: Be the first player to collect one of each Character Card, or 3 Character Cards of the same player. Once you spin “View a Scene,” you’ll have a few seconds to glance at snapshots of classic scenes from the show. Be prepared to answer random questions. So, study up and don’t flunk this memory test to win a Character Card!

If you spin a number, you must move your character that number of spaces on the board. You can land on “Time Out” and steal from your fellow players. You’ll even receive your own Yearbook to collect your Character Cards, but don’t doodle on Zack – you must be focused to get an A+! Once you’ve collected one card of each Character or three cards of a single Character, you’ve won the game and you’ve been… Saved by the Bell!

You can pick the game up from Target. If you're not sure if the game is for you, check out the instructional video on how to play.

40 Years of Hip Hop

June 8, 2017

Those who know me know that I love hip hop more than any other genre of music. I love when stuff like this comes across my screen. Check out this video celebrating 40 years of hip hop in 4 minutes. Hat tip Kottke.

Over 150 songs from more than 100 artists representing 40 years of hip hop all crammed into 4 minutes. It’s not a chronological history of hip hop. It’s rappers from different eras finishing each other’s rhymes over intersecting beats, all woven together to make one song.

Before and After Chuck Berry

March 28, 2017

chuck berry

The New York Times has a great article on Chuck Berry and his influence on music, more specifically rock 'n' roll.

Chuck Berry himself would be the first to admit he didn’t invent rock ’n’ roll, but he came to define it in a series of iconic singles made between 1955 and 1959.

Mr. Berry wrote almost all his hits himself, and he drew from the music he loved — from the blues and boogie to country and Calypso. The result was a hybrid sound that, in 1955, was just beginning to be called “rock ’n’ roll.”

Here, an audio guide to just a few of his revolutionary songs: what came before, and what came after. Listen to the sound of rock ’n’ roll being made.

Chuck Berry would play in St. Louis almost monthly up until a couple of years ago when he was in his late 80's. I made a promise to myself that that I would see him perform live before he passed. I never kept that promise and it's something I deeply regret.

Every Day of Groundhog Day in One Day

February 2, 2017

bill murray groundhog day In celebration of Groundhog Day (and one of my favorite movies of all time, Groundhog Day), you can now watch every single day that Bill Murray relives in the movie simultaneously.

From the creator of the video

I wanted to see what it would be like if the events of the movie "Groundhog Day" all took place simultaneously. The film shows 37 separate days from Phil's thousands of Groundhog Days in Punxsutawney. Every frame of the movie is used from days 1-37, with the exception of a few crossfades.

Watch the video below.

How Louis CK Tells a Joke

January 19, 2017

Louis CK is one of my favorite comedians. If you've ever wondered what makes him such a great performer, look at the video below. In the video, Evan Puschak examines why Louis CK is such a great comedian and how every word, from the set up to the punchline, is used with great purpose.

It's a good premise and joke, but the way Louis delivers it elevates it to a whole new level.

Finding Cahokia

December 13, 2016

Cahokia Mounds

Growing up in St. Louis, I learned about Cahokia Mounds in school. It's fascinating how little we know about the settlement that was once North America's largest city. If you grew up outside Missouri or Illinois, you probably never heard about it at all.

A thousand years ago, huge pyramids and earthen mounds stood where East St. Louis sprawls today in Southern Illinois. This majestic urban architecture towered over the swampy Mississippi River floodplains, blotting out the region's tiny villages. Beginning in the late 900s, word about the city spread throughout the southeast. Thousands of people visited for feasts and rituals, lured by the promise of a new kind of civilization. Many decided to stay.

They didn't stay long though. By 1400, the city was abandoned and no one knows why. A group of archaeologists are attempting to unlock the mysteries of the Mississippian people. Check out the coverage on Ars Technica.

White Rabbit Project

November 28, 2016

Netflix released a trailer for their new show White Rabbit Project today. If you were a fan of Mythbusters, you'll probably want to check it out. It stars the former Mythbusters build team, Kari Byron, Tory Belleci, and Grant Imahara as they go down the "rabbit hole to investigate weird and wonderful events from pop culture, science, and history."

I was a huge fan of Mythbusters and was sad when they decided to part ways with the build team in the final season. I'm happy to see the gang back together. You can stream all episodes starting December 9th. Check out the trailer below.

Removing Public Beta Updates in macOS Sierra

September 30, 2016

Because I love shiny new things, I enrolled in the macOS Sierra public beta to play around with it before its general release. Once Sierra was released, I no longer wanted to receive public beta updates. In the past, I've gone to System Preferences -> App Store and disabled beta updates. Normally, this would remove the updates from appearing in the App Store's Software Updates, however, this time I was still getting notified of new public betas. That's when I found this thread on Apple's forums. The solution, opening up Terminal and typing the following command: sudo softwareupdate --clear-catalog

Running the command removed the beta updates from the App Store and now all is right with the world. I thought I'd post this solution in case anyone else runs into this issue as well.

Update on iCloud Automatic Backups

September 6, 2016

I previously wrote how iCloud automatic backups were killing my internet connection and thought I'd provide an update, but first I want to discuss my experience with Apple support.

People who know me know I'm a huge advocate of Apple and their products. So, when something goes wrong, it is a bit disappointing. When I was troubleshooting the issues I was having with my iCloud backups I noticed that my iCloud storage was shrinking at a rapid pace.

[caption id="attachment_2555" align="alignleft" width="423"] phone backups The amount of space my phone says I was using for backups.[/caption]

It appeared that every time iCloud tried to back up and failed, the data that was backed up prior to the failure stayed in iCloud and there was no way for me to access it or delete it. Even after turning off iCloud backups, there was still over 50 GB of backup data that I could not remove.

When looking at the settings on my phone, it showed how much backup space I was using. According to the phone, I was using 8.8 GB of space on backups. This seemed correct and about what I was seeing before the trouble started. However, if I looked at the iCloud settings on my Mac or in iCloud.com, I would see something completely different. There, I would see over 50 GB of space being used for backups. This is obviously incorrect. Each time I attempted a backup and it failed, the number would grow.

[caption id="attachment_2564" align="alignleft" width="393"] iCloud backup storage The amount of space iCloud said I was using for backups.[/caption]

I contacted Apple about this, and while all the employees that helped me were very nice, none actually comprehended the issue and could provide me with a way to delete this backup data. I tried explaining the issue to several different techs, but none could give me an adequate answer. Finally, after a week of going back and forth via email with an Apple tech, I gave up and just told them to close the case. This was not going to get fixed because 1. They really didn't understand the issue and 2. It was being caused by iCloud backups failing, which they also couldn't solve. I was extremely disappointed by the support I received but there was nothing I could do at this point. I even had to upgrade my iCloud storage to 200 GB just so I wouldn't get the space warnings on the 50 GB tier.

Fast forward a couple of months to the release of the iOS 10 Public Betas. I installed the beta because I'm a nerd and love to have the latest and greatest. After the third or fourth beta, I noticed that the 50+ GB of backup data no longer existed in iCloud. Everything started showing correctly on my phone, my Mac, and iCloud.com. Furthermore, backups were running without killing my internet connection. In fact, I am now able to stream media, backup my Mac data to CrashPlan and perform an iCloud backup all at the same time without an issue. I also noticed that my iPad, which backs up a lot less frequently, is backing up without issue now as well. Something with the way iCloud backups work must have changed with iOS 10. I'm really hoping that this continues through the public release and that backups continue to work. Otherwise, my phone will be stuck backing up at work only again.

The Rise and Fall of Hollywood

August 12, 2016

hollywood sign

YouTube channel Now You See It published a great video about the rise and fall of Hollywood. It's a short video, so it is quick, top-level analysis that doesn't get too deep, but it does do a great job covering the more momentous parts of Hollywood as a whole, from moving from the east coast to the creation of big budget blockbusters.

Old Hollywood has always fascinated me (especially the old studio system and mob connections), so this was right up my alley.

Prehistoric Wings Discovered in Amber

July 11, 2016

Scientists have recently discovered a pair of wings that belonged to dinosaur-era bird ancestors encased in amber. From The Verge:

In a new study published in the Nature Communications journal this week, researchers say that the wings have very similar structures, coloring, and feather layouts as the wings of modern birds, despite the fact they likely belonged to 100-million-year-old avialans called enantiornithes.

X-ray scans indicate that the fossilized wings — found in northern Myanmar — likely belonged to juvenile creatures, and contain skin, muscle, and claws, as well as various layers of feathers, arranged in a markedly similar fashion to those of birds. That's not the only similarity: the feathers appear uniformly black inside the amber, actually show up in shades of brown, silver, and white under the microscope.

I love that discoveries like this are still being made. It gives us more insight into our planet's past.

The Max is Coming to Chicago

May 31, 2016

the max

The Max, the fictional diner from Saved by the Bell is coming to Chicago this summer. The popup restaurant will only be around for the summer, but is sure to be a popular destination for people my age who grew up on the Saturday morning television show.

The diner, called Saved by the Max, sold out reservations quickly, but travelers may still be able to walk-in for brunch and some late night grub. Visitors can order themed items from the menu, such as A.C. Sliders, Mac and Screech, Preppy BLT and the Bayside Burger (no green mystery meat here). According to Vogue, Ed Alonzo will reprise the role of namesake magician-owner of The Max and is set to perform magic tricks for the grand opening—just one in the series of late-night Bayside After Dark special events scheduled. Others include Tuesday Saved by the Bell trivia challenges and Sunday performances from the diner’s in-house band, The Zack Attack.

The decor looks great, but small. You can see photos at Vogue.

Unfortunately, I was not able to get a reservation. If anyone I know is going, please take pictures!

The Bygone Ballparks of St. Louis

April 5, 2016

Now that Baseball season is upon us, I thought I'd share a link that was sent to me a couple of weeks ago. Distilled History has a great look at the history of baseball parks in St. Louis (please forgive the author for not being a Cardinals fan). I never realized how many there actually were, especially in north St. Louis. Growing up, I only really heard of Sportsman's Park, and of course, Busch II & III.

Go check out the post. He has some great images and maps.

st. louis ballparks

Automatic iCloud Backups Killed My Internet Connection

March 17, 2016

For the past few months I've been experiencing intermittent connection issues with my home internet. The internet would stop working completely, on every device in the house, for a period of 10-15 minutes a couple of times a day. After a few months of experiencing this, I decided to finally start investigating. It was this past weekend when I finally noticed that about a minute after I plugged my iPhone into a charger, any charger, the internet would quit working. I was able to consistently recreate the issue. If I unplugged the phone right away, the internet would come back right away.

I figured out it was due to iCloud's automatic backup when plugged in and on a known wireless network. So, when the phone starts to backup, the internet connection dies for all other devices while the backup is taking place, or tries to take place. Most of the time, iCloud backups on my home network fail [1. Most successful backups I see are being made on my work's network when my phone is plugged in during the day]. I did some searching on the internet to see if others have had similar issues and found a couple of posts, but no real solution. For a few days I thought I had fixed it by resetting the network settings on the phone. It looked like the small, but annoying problem, was finally resolved. Or so I thought.

While working from home yesterday, the problem returned. Plugged in the phone and the internet would stop working. Unplug it and internet is back. I'm not sure what the exact problem is. Is it a problem with the modem? The router? iOS? Last night I decided to update to the latest iOS 9.3 beta to see if backups become more reliable. So far, it does not look good. The phone was not able to backup to iCloud overnight. I will have to test more at home tonight to see if my connection dies the next time it tries to backup. I'm not sure what else to try at this point, besides disabling iCloud backups, but I'm not giving up yet. Suggestions welcome [2. shep@iamshep.net or @shep on Twitter].

EDIT: Check out my update on iCloud backups killing my internet connection. iOS10 seems to have fixed the issue.

How Far is Planet 9?

March 12, 2016

This excellent video by a former NASA employee does a great job explaining just how far Planet 9, the mysterious planet that exists way past Pluto, is from our Sun. The planet is so far from the sun that it takes 15,000 Earth years to orbit the sun once.

Cutting the Cord (Sort of)

March 1, 2016

A couple of months ago I decided to do something I never thought I would do. I cut the cord. Sort of.

In December I decided to cancel my cable. The bill was getting too high and I have been watching less and less traditional TV. Many of the shows I watch over the past few years have ended or I lost interest in them (looking at you The Walking Dead). Many of the shows I continued to watch I found I could watch the next day on Hulu, of which I was a subscriber. I also found many new shows that rivaled the quality of network and cable shows, even premium cable shows, on Hulu and Netflix. So, I made the decision to cut the cord.

Currently, I subscribe to Netflix, Hulu, Amazon (a bonus of my Prime shipping subscription) and HBO Now. The only show that I currently watch but cannot get on these services is AMC's Better Call Saul. Well, that was the case until this week. Charter, the cable company in my area, is offering their version of the Sling TV service called Charter Spectrum Stream. For $20 a month you get some popular cable channels (TBS, FX, ESPN, and AMC among others) plus either HBO or Showtime. So for $5 more a month I can get HBO plus some other cable channels including AMC for Better Call Saul. I can then cancel HBO Now. One of the other upsides to the service is that you get the local channels (even the alternate HD local channels that no one ever watches). This was great for me since, even with an antenna, I couldn't get any local channels over the air (not entirely true. If I touched a co-ax cable to the window frame and grounding the signal, I could get 3-4 local channels. Trust me, it works).

This is almost TV as I want it to be. I am paying for the channels I watch the most and can watch my shows whenever I want without the added cost of a DVR. It will be interesting to see how this continues to evolve over the next few years as more and more people cut the cord and opt to watch TV in non-traditional ways. The only thing I have yet to figure out is how to watch Cardinals baseball this summer (without using MLB at Bat and a DNS routing service). I think sports will be the last hope that traditional cable and satellite subscriptions have. Once the various leagues wake up to the potential of offering sports without a cable subscription, I will be set. But I'm not holding my breath.

The Best Rapper Alive, Every Year Since 1979

January 11, 2016

tupac

Complex magazine has come up with a list of the best rapper for each year since 1979. It's crazy when you look through the '90s and see how much talent existed in the hip hop community. That fact becomes especially obvious when you start comparing the list to the 2000s - 2010s (Drake on the list multiple times, really?).

My personal favorite is, of course, Tupac.

1996 is a case study for every aspect of why 2Pac is so celebrated. He was a viable, competent artist in multiple arenas, and he had the discipline to incorporate his varied and conflicted missions into a single mantra. That savvy paid off in this year more than any other. It’s a shame that 2Pac’s ride had to end early, and on someone else’s terms, but the dedication to his craft that was on such full display in 1996 is why he’ll live forever.