I went into the Taylor Swift Eras Tour movie expecting something along the lines of Hamilton. A well-produced video capture of a live event. And, I suppose, that is what I got. But what I hadn’t anticipated was the awe-inspiring, mind-boggling creative production that was this concert — if you can even call it a concert.
Taylor Swift is at the top of her game. It was quite the thing to be reminded of the breadth of her discography. Her mastery of songwriting has only grown over time, and she’s an intricate wordsmith. These are things that I already knew, but re-appreciated during the film.
I hadn’t realized what a commanding performer she is. That stage was all hers from the very first beat. Every movement was measured, rehearsed, and then executed with extreme precision. It was almost uncomfortable at first being confronted with something so obviously calculated. It felt somewhat antithetical to the idea of seeing a creative artist live. But then I realized that this is just what Taylor Swift does. She sets a goal and then pursues it relentlessly until it is perfect. Why would her self-funded, self-distributed show be any different?
In the end, I came to enjoy watching and being amazed by such a precise performance. The details of its production were astonishing. The seamless costume changes and transitions. The elegantly-styled microphones that matched each Era’s theme. What I wouldn’t give to see a rundown of the logistics behind this show.
What I think I enjoyed most, even beyond the absolutely top-tier and cutting edge production, was that it was so obvious that Taylor was having fun from beginning to end.
She’s set a new bar with the Eras Tour. And I can’t even imagine who could top it.
Kev Quirk and I did our latest exchange with for the PenPals project this month. You can follow along with our conversation here, but you owe it to yourself to see the awesome email styling that he’s done over on his site.
Here’s a peek into our second exchange, as summarized by ChatGPT:
In this exchange, Kev and Jarrod cover a range of topics. Kev shares insights on his blog hosting choices, preference for Blot and Kirby, and his diverse interests like watches, animals, and blog writing. Jarrod discusses his experience as a Mountain Guide and Scout Camp Director, revealing aspirations for owning and operating a climbing gym and doggy daycare. They delve into the challenges of managing a Scout group and the joy of parenting. The conversation extends to the addictive nature of smartwatches, syncing multiple watches, and blogs and podcasts they follow. It’s a rich dialogue spanning personal experiences, hobbies, and future goals.
If you’d like to be a penpal for this project, please reach out! I’d love to get you on the schedule.
You know how sometimes you stumble across bits of information that feel like they were packaged up just for you? That’s what happened to me yesterday when listening to AppStories and Federico Viticci solved an internet problem I didn’t even realize I was looking for a solution to.
Yup, that’s me. Over three years ago, I plugged my wife’s PS5 into Ethernet and ignorantly assumed that it would swap over to the hardwired connection. Our Wi-Fi speeds were pretty fast, so when she downloaded games and I could see the progress bar visibly moving, I assumed all was working correctly. But there were times that I noticed lag (like when using PS Remote Play), or was surprised by the time it took to download even smaller updates to the device. But I thought it was already using Ethernet, so what could I do?
Enter this new age thought technology: actually check the goddamn settings. 😅 Less than a minute of futzing through the network settings, and now the PlayStation is getting 6x — that’s right, six times — the download speed. Probably the most valuable seconds per Mbps increase I’ve ever invested.
Here’s how you can futz through the settings yourself and hopefully get a massive increase in speed to your console as well.
Look-ey here. Even though it’s got an Ethernet cable plugged into its butt, the PS5 thinks the Wi-Fi is the way to go. Nuh-uh. Next stop, ‘Network → Settings → Set Up Internet Connection’ to initiate the Ethernet connection.
But before you fire up that Ethernet connection, go ahead and do a speed test on Wi-Fi so you know what kinds of gains you get afterward.
80 Mbps?! Yeah, something’s not right here when I’m paying for a 500 Mbps pipeline to the modem it’s hooked directly into.
Start up a LAN
Over in ‘Set Up Internet Connection’, you’re going to make a new connection and select the Wired LAN option. This threw me off for a second. I wasn’t trying to set up a LAN Party where my buddies could bring over their consoles and we could string them all together for a Halo showdown. Would this LAN setting know to actually connect with the broader internet? Did I need to name it the same as my Wi-Fi network?
I needn’t have worried. It just worked. I did end up naming it ‘JandJ Ethernet’ just so I’d know exactly what the connection was, but I don’t think it matters what you name the network at all.
Speed Test
Okay, back over in the ‘Connection Status’ pane, we can see that the Ethernet connection has now taken precedence. It retains the Wi-Fi network in its memory, which is good I guess, but hopefully, we never have to use it again.
There’s that 500+ Mbps I was looking (and paying) for!
That’s it!
The PS5 should be feeling better now that it’s not trying to sip data through a kiddie straw. Now it’s punching a hole in the side of those data beers, cracking open the top, and shotgunning megabytes down its gullet at warp speed. Wow, that analogy about an Ethernet cable in its butt really doesn’t work now, does it? 😂
I did a real-world test and a large game update zipped through its download faster than ever before on this console. Success.
Hopefully, you see those same massive gains in connection speed. And, Sony, if you’re reading along, maybe consider prioritizing the wired connection automatically when one is plugged in. I can guarantee that’s what your users expect.
4️⃣ You’re not gonna want to miss this example of a program that uses AI vision and speech generation to have David Attenborough narrate a live webcam view. [🔗 Benj Edwards // arstechnica.com]
6️⃣ If you’re a Mastodon (or Micro.blog or ActivityPub…I should just say “social web”) user, you should follow the (unofficial) @merlinwisdom@botsin.space. It’s an account that spits out a random entry from Merlin Mann’s Wisdom Project (which I’ve mentioned before) every six hours. I’ve used Shortcuts and widgets to surface these in the past, but there’s something to be said for them just popping up in a feed I’m already reading. [🔗 @merlinwisdom // botsin.space]
7️⃣ Count me in for Todd Vaziri’s Apple TV remote redesign proposal. I haven’t been particularly annoyed at my remote lately, but can’t deny that this would be an improvement. [🔗 Todd Vaziri // fxrant.blogspot.com]
Thanks for reading 7 Things. If you enjoyed these links or have something neat to share, please let me know. And remember that you can get more links to internet nuggets that I’m finding every day by following me @jarrod on the social web.
Hey guys, thanks for having me back on this 529th episode of Clockwise! I didn’t hear my audio get into the podcast last time; maybe my track was muted? Anyway, I’m happy to be part of the conversation here on these four five tech topics.
Dan Moren: Do you have any plans to start capturing spatial video even if a Vision Pro may not be in your immediate future?
I would love to capture spatial videos for viewing on a Vision Pro whenever I get one. I think having that extra data will be useful in the long run, and I think it’ll be a worthwhile trade-off for those videos to be 1080p rather than 4K for the time being. Surely Apple is working on upping those specs and having a vertical video mode.
The only problem is that I’m currently rocking an iPhone 13 mini, and don’t have any plans to replace it. Spatial video capture could push me towards upgrading, but certainly not before there’s a Vision Pro in my possession.
Maybe next September’s iPhones will be the ones to finally tempt me away from the mini form factor. (Or Apple could bring it back and include spatial video capture on that device too. That sure would be great.)
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Joe Rosensteel: Does anyone have strong opinions about the fonts that they use for work or note-taking in their lives?
I’m typing out this very blog post in Drafts, where I changed the default font to whatever monospace version it has built-in (it’s Menlo). For text and Markdown files, I prefer a (read: any) monospace font. Otherwise, I’m a big fan of the San Francisco typeface and its variants, so I will typically choose them if given the option.
I’m pretty basic in that regard. But I do appreciate good fonts, expertly used.
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Mikah Sargent: Have you ever used or do you currently use a journaling app or service? And how long have/did you stick with it if you do/did?
I’ve tried the journalling thing several times, but it’s never stuck. I’ve primarily tried Day One, but I’ve also done a few stints with the Theme System Journal. I still haven’t filled the first one that I started years ago, and although I like Day One’s prompts, I’ve not been able to make journalling a habit.
I’ll certainly give Apple’s Journal app a shot, but I’m not expecting a miracle here.
(I’m not counting the automatic import of my Instagram posts, blog posts, and New York Times newspaper covers as journaling, even though those do all make it into Day One. It would be hard to give that automatic archive up if I were to make the switch over to Apple’s app.)
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Kathy Campbell: When do you tell your non-tech people in your life to update the software of their devices and do you make different recommendations for different devices?
I used to be so bad about this. And by “bad” I mean that I was a monster about pushing people to update to the latest OS. I would let my wife that a new update was available pretty much as soon as it came out in September (I was probably already on the beta). Then, if she didn’t update on her own within a few days, I would do it for her. Cringe. There were a couple of times that something moved, was removed, or just generally different enough that it disrupted her day, and she was not pleased.
I’ve stopped doing that.
Now, I’ll generally not say a word and let the news reach her organically. Or, if there’s a particularly handy feature in the new version, I’ll show her on my phone, and then if, and only if, she asks about how to do it, I’ll let her know that she’d have to update to get it. This sometimes happens throughout the beta period, giving her a stack of reasons to update in the fall.
My parents, on the other hand, routinely ask me to audit their devices when I’m home to make sure that they’re up-to-date. They’re getting better about doing it on their own, but I think they appreciate having someone on hand to help them figure out the new stuff, or fix the broken stuff if needed.
In general, I now try to practice the art of not interfering with other people’s lives when they haven’t asked for it and it doesn’t affect me. Folks can choose for themselves if they want to update their stuff, and choosing not to do so is totally fine too.
To come completely clean, though, I will say that if my wife has already updated to a major OS version and then a security patch comes out later, I’ll make sure that her devices get that patch. I feel like that’s just good looking out, and is rarely disruptive.
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Bonus Question: What was your favorite playground structure to play on as a kid?
I was always a big fan of the monkey bars. The classic ones, and the ones that formed a sort of dome structure, were always so fun to swing around on. I was also known to push my luck from time to time by getting on top of the monkey bars to crawl or walk across.
I suppose it’s no wonder that I still love to climb and swing around on things.
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My Question: It’s getting to be wintertime here in the Northeast, and I’ve been scheming about what I’m going to do to fill the short days and long nights. What are your winter objectives this year?
This summer, my objective was to rock climb the intimidating and remote Wallface big wall, located in the heart of the Adirondacks. Which I did! 🎉
But I don’t have one big, overarching goal that I’m set on yet for the winter. There are a couple of fuzzy goals that I’ll aim toward: do my first ice climbing lead and maybe complete the arduous Johannsen’s Last Call backcountry ski by the end of the season. But both of those things will depend on how confident I feel in my abilities, and will take significant time investments to build up skills.
I think I can do them, and I’m going to try, but I’m still considering if there’s something else that I can really sink my teeth into and keep me motivated throughout the cold days.
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Another fun one in the can. Now I’m watching the clock say that it’s pushing past 2 AM and it’s time to go have a long visit with my pillow. Thanks again for having me on!
All this talk about creating custom GPTs has gotten me brainstorming. Here’s an AI idea that I’d love to use:
Take all the unread items in my RSS feed and summarize the contents as if presented in a lively podcast. Include a ‘Follow-up’ section in which topics that have been recently covered in previous episodes are described even more briefly as simply updates rather than re-explaining the whole topic.
Take that text transcript and generate an audio version of it with voices, music, etc. Add that episode to my personal RSS feed for this ‘RSS Digest Podcast’ that I’m subscribed to in my podcast app. Tag the summarized RSS articles as ‘RSS-Digest’ and mark them as read.
Could also be great for catching up on social media feeds.
A weekly list of interesting things I found on the internet, posted on Sundays. Sometimes themed, often not.
1️⃣ Matt Birchler used an AI tool to dub one of his videos into French and back into English. The results are surprisingly solid. [🔗 @matt // isfeeling.social]
4️⃣ Aqueux has some of my all-time favorite desktop wallpapers, and Hector recently updated it with Sonoma versions. [🔗 hector.me] (Via Josh Ginter)
5️⃣ Getting after it after becoming a parent isn’t impossible. Just fucking hard. [🔗 brendan // semi-rad.com]
6️⃣ This aspect of Spatial Computing is going to be very cool indeed. [🔗 @firtoz // threads.net]
7️⃣ This is the first I’ve seen of this testimonial.to web service, but it looks slick for gathering up goodwill for a thing in both text and video form. Kudos to MacSparky on all the love for his projects! [🔗 testimonial.to]
Thanks for reading 7 Things. If you enjoyed these links or have something neat to share, please let me know. And a reminder that you can get more links to internet nuggets that I’m finding every day by following me @jarrod on the social web.
Regarding many of us reconsidering Apple’s services amid their price increase, it struck me that TV+ is the one I’m least likely to drop. I’d drop Apple Music before it (could switch to Spotify). I’d drop iCloud+ before it (could switch to Google Drive or Dropbox). I’d drop Fitness+ before it (plenty of good fitness apps out there). I’d drop Arcade before it (I’m just not a frequent gamer, despite it having good titles and a compelling model). And I’d certainly drop News+ before it (with all the ads, it hardly feels like a premium experience anyway).
But TV+ is the only place I can watch my favorite shows. Trying, Ted Lasso, For All Mankind, Shrinking1, Severance, The Afterparty, and our newest hook, Lessons in Chemistry, to name just a few of our most-loved programs of the past few years. It’s where both my wife and I now turn first for new things to watch. And that content is available nowhere else.
Not that I want to drop the rest of the services. I’m quite happy with the value I get out of Apple Music, Fitness+, and iCloud+ too. But if I were to drop Arcade and News+ from the Apple One bundle, I would end up paying $9/month more than if I just kept the full Premier plan.
I’ll concede that this bundling interface is well done. ⌘
“But what about iCloud+ storage?” you might be asking. “Why not just drop down to a lower storage tier? Do you really need 2 TB?” No, I don’t. But, wouldn’t you know it, there actually aren’t any iCloud storage tiers between 200 GB for $2.99/month and 2 TB for $9.99/month. Considering our iCloud Photo Library and Messages history cracks 200 GB on their own — not to mention iCloud Backups, iCloud Drive file storage, or any app data — they’ve got us stuck at 2 TB.
If Apple Music was the candy trail that lured us into the Apple One bundle, it is TV+ (along with iCloud+) that was the Trojan Horse that now guards the exit.2 Well, that and the fact Eddy Cue has done his math well.
And, considering Apple can pull the strings to adjust the individual pricing of each service along with the overall bundle, I don’t foresee that reality changing. I fully expect Apple One to always be on the razor’s edge of feeling like it’s too costly, while the popular services will always add up to be more expensive on their own. So Apple will keep getting north of $500 per year out of us for the privilege of using their core services.
I’m literally writing this blog post while listening to an 8-hour version of the excellent theme to Severance. It’s superb thinkin’ music that eerily obscures the passage of time.↩︎
And what a Trojan Horse it was, effectively costing $0 for the first 21 months before coming in at the bargain bin price of $4.99/month. Even at $9.99/month now, I still content that it’s a solid value.↩︎
Hey, I’m so excited to be here on episode #528 of Clockwise with you all! Long-time listener, first-time caller.
Audio narration generated with Jordi Bruin’s Voices app using OpenAI’s text-to-speech.
Wait, did you just say “four people”, Dan? Cause there are definitely five of us altogether here. And “four tech topics”? Yeah, I think you’re experiencing an off-by-one error, buddy.
Oh, okay, I guess we’re just blowing past my comments and onto washing clocks with cats. Cool. Um…can you guys even hear me? Is this mic on?
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Mikah Sargent:Tell us about a recent software bug that has gotten on your nerves.
Not to pile onto Rosemary’s answer (and what Federico Viticci said the other day), but I’ve been struggling again with a bunch of Shortcuts bugs lately too. It’s been painfully laggy when building shortcuts both on my iPad and my M1 Mac mini. Getting shortcuts to show up consistently in the share sheet has been impossible — I just have to try again, sometimes again and again. And there are a number of actions that just don’t work when you’re running them. Plus all the never-ending sync and duplicate conflict issues. These are things that never used to be a problem, but have gotten worse and worse over the past few years…weirdly, it seems, right after Craig Federighi declared that Shortcuts was “the future of automation on the Mac.” If that’s true, the future is looking ever dimmer
and I hope that report about Apple taking a pause in next year’s OS development to address bugs includes those in Shortcuts.
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Rosemary Orchard:Is it good for big tech companies (Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc) to be involved in the creation of standards (Qi, USB, etc.) or is it better for them to be defined by external bodies, and who should those be if you think it’s better for them to be external?
I feel pretty strongly that the big tech companies should be involved with creating and updating standards, and for a couple of reasons. For one, they’ve attracted a lot of the most talented and brilliant engineers, and those are the people we want to help develop the technology that we will all end up using. Plus, they probably have better insight into how products are being used in the real world by real people. Through their customer service arms, they hear about the struggles that everyday users face, and those friction points should inform and shape standards. But, I think the standards bodies should be chaired or headed up by an impartial third party.
I’ll also take a moment to recognize that I’m heartened by the fact that Apple seems to be contributing more, or at least more visibly to important standards. We all know that they played key roles in developing USB-C and Thunderbolt, but now they’ve essentially given away the designs from MagSafe to Qi2, a bunch of the HomeKit framework to Matter, and now it sounds like their Home Key tech will form the foundation for that new Aliro smart lock standard. They put a lot of R&D and care into the UX for their own products, and by them being intricately involved in
making standards, the rest of the industry is benefiting too.
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Dan Moren:Should Apple be forced to make its messaging system (iMessage) work with others and embrace a standard that works with everybody, or is this something that is a bit of a “tempest in a teapot” or overreach from Google’s side (now that they’re asking the EU to strong-arm Apple into interoperating)?
You know, this will probably come across as me being an Apple apologist, but no, I don’t think they should be forced into this decision. Don’t get me wrong, I would love for Apple to support a more modern texting standard like RCS so that the world can start to transition away from SMS and MMS. I would enjoy the typing indicators, better group threads, reactions, and other benefits it would bring when texting Android users in my life, of which there are plenty. I can’t decide if Apple has concerns about RCS in general — maybe regarding encryption and how messages are stored? — but it’s hard to imagine that RCS would be worse than SMS in any way. Or maybe they’re dragging their feet because it probably won’t help iPhone sales.
But there are plenty of other alternative messaging services out there for people to stay in touch across platforms. Google itself runs (and has killed) more than a few. For the EU to force Apple into either adopting RCS or adapting iMessage to work on Android would feel like an overreach when it’s not a case where there are no other options for people to use.
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Jason Howell:It used to be that video game movies and TV shows (like the Mario Bros movie and the rumored Legend of Zelda movie) were really risky and cringy, and there weren’t many examples of good products that had come of those, but have times changed?
In short, yes. People seem to crave nostalgia more and more these days. I’m all for it! I, myself, have been able to get better insight into pop culture because of adaptations like these. The Last of Us was never a game that I was going to play. But I got to enjoy the story of it because of the HBO series, for example.
I think it’s natural that when you love something, you want more of it. If that means big-budget shows and movies for niche intellectual property, I think these past few years have shown that people will vote for it with their dollars. Bring on the Spyro the Dragon live-action mini-series!
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Bonus Question:What is the coolest natural feature you have ever personally seen?
I’ve been to a lot of cool places, but I can’t say that any particular one of them sticks out. If I had to choose, which I guess I do, I would say Mount Rainier in Washington State. It’s an imposing figure stationed in the background of every view from Seattle and Tacoma. And quite intimidating when you know you’re about to attempt to climb to its summit.
My question:Are you a read-later or watch-later saver, and, if so, how do you manage your queues?
I have a huge save-for-later problem. At this current moment in time, I have…oh, roughly 1900 articles saved across two apps that I’m definitely still going to read. And 693 YouTube videos that I’m for sure going to sit down and watch when I get a spare 209 hours.
My journey through read-later apps is a storied one, but right now I’m saving them into Pocket with a swipe left from Reeder, my RSS app, or with Pocket’s share extension. For saving YouTube videos, I use the excellent Play app by Marcos Tanaka, which too few people know about. I use its share action in the share sheet. There used to be a shortcut that I’d use for everything, and it would sort out which app to send the link to based on its URL, but Shortcuts’ bugginess (see above) led me back to the native extensions.
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Well, I hope all that came through and you can fix my audio in post. You guys didn’t really leave me with much time to get in those answers — I had to talk so fast!
Oh, what’s that? This is an open invitation? Great! Maybe I’ll see you next week! 😉
For the PenPals project this month, I’m corresponding with Robert Silvernail. Below is a glimpse at our final exchange, as summarized by ChatGPT:
Robert apologizes for forgetting to discuss two topics in his previous email and proceeds to update Jarrod on his office’s “No-takeout November” initiative. In an attempt to avoid the expenses and calories associated with daily takeout lunches, Robert suggests a monthly challenge where coworkers take turns bringing in homemade meals. He shares the success of the initiative, featuring dishes like Bean Soup, White Chicken Chili, Potato Soup, BBQ chicken, and Breaded Chicken Tenders. Robert humorously mentions a cheat day with Arby’s brand Curly Fries but emphasizes the use of low-calorie BBQ sauce. He details the upcoming meals, and in the next email, he promises to delve into “Squirrel Season” with a teasing cliffhanger. Jarrod responds positively, appreciating the camaraderie among coworkers and expressing intrigue about the squirrel story, urging Robert to spill the details.
If you’d like to be a penpal for this project, please reach out! I’d love to get you on the schedule.
