/ gander

Instagram

With the arrival of Cerbie, brother and fellow Kauai rescue hound from Copper’s Dream Rescue, I have been blogging, and decided to create an instagram account for sharing pics and updates about him.

I have a love-hate relationship with Instagram. I suspect that I am not their demographic, but there are a lot of dog picture sharing, so I am wading into the pool again.

However, that said, I have to grumble (damn, I am getting to be an old man, grumbling about new fangled whizz-bang things).

  • There is no good way to access it from my computer. It is app and smartphone centric, I get that, but I have most of my images on my computer. I do take snaps with my phone, but that is a small fraction of what I have. I have to move pictures to my phone to post. Lame.
  • There are no good apps I have found for my Mac to post images to IG. There used to be a couple that I bought a couple years ago, but they are no longer working. Seems like IG keeps their API locked down to force use only with the smartphone. Sure, I can log in with my browser, and see the images, but that sucks. Sure on my Mac, I can force the client string in Safari to pretend it is an IOS browser. Still sucks donkey balls.
  • Even simple things like updating or editing my profile on the web from my computer is horribly borked. Seriously, even after disabling blockers and ghostery, I got errors in editing my profile fields. Lame. It is almost as if they don’t want you to use their web service.

Still, I will use it, as I now have a following. Check out Cerberus47 for fun pictures.

/ gander

Apple Music – A Fresh Look

With the shifting allegiances in streaming music, I found myself re-enabling my Apple Music subscription. There are some benefits, and some less desirable aspects.

This is relevant as I again ponder the mix of music that I have in my collection, as well as the convenience of streaming. In the following post, I lay out the pro’s and con’s of Apple’s Music subscription plan. $9.99 a month, it is in the ballpark of the offers, between Amazon and Spotify. All three of them also offer family plans for the same price (alas, my Wife isn’t interested in sharing a plan.) Continue reading →

/ gander

Music, part 5,231

If you dig through the archives, you will read my travails around a permanent solution to my streaming/collection.

The last “winner” was Amazon Music, hands down the best app experience, a decent library (not as big a selection as Apple, but enough) and the instant “AutoRIP” feature of what I bought from them were clinchers. The real win for Amazon is that whatever magic they do, even when I hit deadspots in my commute (via VTA Lightrail in San Jose), it just kept chugging. Continue reading →

/ gander

Fucking Referrer Spam

Sorry for the language. However, I run a handful of small, fairly low traffic sites. This one, my product management site, one for my dog(s) and their exploits, and my Wife’s professional site.

All of these use WordPress, and I have Google analytics set up to track and monitor them. Continue reading →

Pork Chili Verde

Growing up in the south bay (the San Francisco Bay Area) we often ate at Mexican restaurants. One of my favorite dishes was, and remains to this day, a hearty green pork chili, called Chili Verde. While there have been many differences in the dish, it is always a green chili pepper of modest heat (Anaheim is milder, and Poblanos make it hotter, but I often use what looks freshest when I shop, even Jalapeños). Continue reading →

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Vietnam by Ken Burns

Currently in the queue on Netflix is the “Vietnam” by Ken Burns. I just finished it, and, like all the Ken Burns targets, it is outstanding.

It starts well before the common story (with advisors ramping up through the early Kennedy administration,) back when the real drama started with the French trying to maintain its hold on its Indochina colonies after WWII. The French were abysmal stewards of their colonial properties, ruthless, and exploitative to the extreme of the indigenous population. However, their strength sapped, they turned to us, and our paranoia of the spectre of communism leaking out of the USSR and China realm, took the bait. Continue reading →

/ gander

Serverpilot Changes

A service that I absolutely love is changing their business model. Serverpilot, an automation, and management front end for simple VPS1 deployments, that takes a minimalist droplet from Digital Ocean and abstracts the drudgery and risk of managing that installation from the user. Continue reading →

/ gander

One Month Free

Friday July 6th marks a full month without Facebook. As soon as the second week transpired, I got the notifications of all the other “attached” bits being severed. A good sign that I had held out the full two weeks. Apparently once they “delete” (cough cough) your account, it takes about 90 days to tag your data for removal, and for it being removed1 from their servers.

I have removed the hosts file redirection of facebook.com to localhost. The temptation to go back to it has waned. I have refocused some energy on this blog (and my other greytbros head over and see some fun about our new family addition). Continue reading →