Feb 2024 progress

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David Eisinger
2024-01-30 00:19:41 -05:00
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@@ -4,11 +4,83 @@ date: 2024-01-24T22:48:09-05:00
draft: false draft: false
tags: tags:
- dispatch - dispatch
references:
- title: "My iPhone Taught Me How to Grieve - The Atlantic"
url: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/01/iphone-grief-dynamic-wallpaper/677034/
date: 2024-01-30T03:57:19Z
file: www-theatlantic-com-lww5au.txt
- title: "Grief and a Photo Shuffle Six Colors"
url: https://sixcolors.com/link/2024/01/grief-and-a-photo-shuffle/
date: 2024-01-30T03:57:45Z
file: sixcolors-com-xx0plp.txt
- title: "Periodical 14 v DIY - Christopher Butler ☼"
url: https://www.chrbutler.com/2024-01-21
date: 2024-01-30T04:10:23Z
file: www-chrbutler-com-gbjxba.txt
--- ---
We spent MLK weekend with my folks in the Shennandoah Valley, and visited [Luray Caverns][1], something I'd done as a kid and still rips 30 years later. Neat place, highly recommended if you're ever in that area. We also got some snow at our cabin, which was pretty fun for Nev.
[1]: https://luraycaverns.com/
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I signed up for the [Wrightsville Beach Valentine Run][2] 10K in Wilmington in early February. Feeling pretty good about that -- gives us a good excuse to spend a weekend with Claire's sister in Wilmington, and adds a little bit of focus to my running without the commitment of half-marathon training. Might try to keep that going, finding good pairings of organized 10Ks in places we want to visit.
[2]: https://runsignup.com/Race/NC/WrightsvilleBeach/WrightsvilleBeachValentineRun
I stumbled on [this article][3] ([via][4]) about an iOS feature that periodically updates your lock screen to a random photo of a selected person. It is ... delightful.
{{<thumbnail IMG_5439.PNG "400x866" />}}
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[3]: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/01/iphone-grief-dynamic-wallpaper/677034/
[4]: https://sixcolors.com/link/2024/01/grief-and-a-photo-shuffle/
Here's a new track called "Altocumulus":
<audio controls src="/journal/dispatch-12-february-2024/Altocumulus.mp3"></audio> <audio controls src="/journal/dispatch-12-february-2024/Altocumulus.mp3"></audio>
<!--more--> I really set out to make a track that didn't have a bass hit on one and three and snare on two and four, but some things you just can't resist, though you can tell I tried for the first 90 seconds or so. I also found a [really nice app][5] for practicing scales -- Apple catches a lot of shit (perhaps deservedly so) for its app store policies, but it's a pretty cool thing that I can so easily find quality software like this at a fair price.
[5]: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/piano-chords-and-scales/id714086944
I traded a couple emails with my buddy [Prayash][6]. He's a super talented musician (among other things) and has a new track out called ["Weightless"][7] that's worth a listen. He also put a [video on Instagram][8] of his production process which is neat.
[6]: https://prayash.io/link/
[7]: https://music.apple.com/us/album/weightless/1722942938?i=1722942941
[8]: https://www.instagram.com/p/C2bWin4rSLG/
I installed [these crossbars][9] on our car in the hopes that we can avoid replacing it with something bigger for a while longer. I get a real kick out of DIY upgrades and fixes like this -- using your brain and hands to adapt the things you have to better suit your needs is so, so satisfying. Fellow Durham blogger [Christopher Butler][10] put up a [good post][11] that speaks to this same idea:
> One thing I hope my children learn is to nurture the balance of curiosity, creativity, and willingness to mess-up that is needed to make the world your own while youre here.
[9]: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0045V8CKU
[10]: https://www.chrbutler.com/
[11]: https://www.chrbutler.com/2024-01-21
Couple security updates: my favorite [TOTP][12] app, Raivo, [got bought up by a shady-looking company][13], so I switched over to to [2FAS][14]. Super smooth onboarding experience, and I actually prefer its authentication flow (browser plugin ➡️ push notification ➡️ Face ID ➡️ accept ➡️ autofill). Also, I listened to [a podcast][15] some months back that described the damage a thief can do with a stolen iPhone, so when I learned about this new [Stolen Device Protection][16] feature, I enabled it immediately.
[12]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-based_one-time_password
[13]: https://blog.thenewoil.org/changes-arent-permanent-but-change-is
[14]: https://2fas.com/
[15]: https://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2023/07/11/ep-381
[16]: https://gizmodo.com/stop-everything-enable-stolen-device-protection-iphone-1851188262
I finished [_Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales_][17] and decided to stay on the short story collection train with [_Story of Your Life and Others_][18].
[17]: #
[18]: #
I try to keep plaintext backups of the things I link to on this site, at least the text-heavy stuff I might want to refer to later (you can see them down below in the "references" section). I'd been using [Lynx][19] to get the text to store, but that was having issues on some sites, so I switched over to [w3m][20] after finding the right command-line flag[^1] to include link URLs in the text. I've got some ideas around building a more robust archiving solution but I'm gonna let it marinate for a bit.
[19]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynx_(web_browser)
[20]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W3m
This month: This month:
@@ -18,18 +90,31 @@ This month:
Reading: Reading:
* Fiction: [_Title_][1], Author * Fiction: [_Story of Your Life and Others_][21], Ted Chiang
* Non-fiction: [_Title_][2], Author * Non-fiction: [_Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life_][22], Anne Lamott
[1]: https://bookshop.org/ [21]: https://bookshop.org/p/books/stories-of-your-life-and-others-lib-e-ted-chiang/16687839
[2]: https://bookshop.org/ [22]: https://bookshop.org/p/books/bird-by-bird-some-instructions-on-writing-and-life-anne-lamott/8649952?ean=9780385480017
Links: Links:
* [Title][3] * [[2024-01-11#Hypercritical I Made This]]
* [Title][4] * [[2024-01-17#The Rise and Fall of Getting Things Done The New Yorker]]
* [Title][5] * [In Search Of The Shanahan Offense](https://defector.com/in-search-of-the-shanahan-offense)
* [[2024-01-21#Cold-blooded software]]
* via [[2024-01-21#Cold-blooded Software - Jim Nielsens Blog]]
* [[2024-01-21#How I Pocket Notebook cygnoir.net]]
* [[2024-01-21#Paper notes - macwright.com]]
* [[2024-01-21#Paper notes - Tim Hårek]]
[3]: https://example.com/ * [Title][23]
[4]: https://example.com/ * [Title][24]
[5]: https://example.com/ * [Title][25]
[23]: https://example.com/
[24]: https://example.com/
[25]: https://example.com/
[^1]: Running `w3m -dump -o display_link_number=1 <url>` gives a nice plaintext version of a webpage with numbered link references (via this [helpful StackOverflow link][26])
[26]: https://askubuntu.com/questions/805014/getting-text-and-links-from-a-web-page/1493418#1493418

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by Jason Snell
[48]January 5, 2024 12:41 PM PT
[49]Grief and a Photo Shuffle
Charlie Warzels beloved dog died last year, and he [50]used an iPhone feature
to memorialize her:
Instead of a memorial photo of Peggy, I opted to try a newer, “dynamic”
wallpaper feature called “Photo Shuffle.” Every so often, my iPhone would
change my wallpaper and home screen to an image it had grabbed from my
camera roll. To help it along, I could offer parameters for the photo
choice. Knowing that Apples Photos app uses image-recognition software to
identify cats and dogs in the camera roll, I chose a “Pets” filter.
Grief is not linear, and neither is Photo Shuffle. Over the next few
months, I watched the photos change in and out at random—always with a dog
in focus. 
Not only do I empathize with Warzels situation (we lost a beloved dog in
August 2022), but [51]as I wrote about last year, my wife and I also recently
started using the Photo Shuffle feature that was introduced with iOS 16… and
its pretty powerful.
Not a week goes by where my wife doesnt show me one of the pictures of our
kids (her phone is set to shuffle through photos in which either of our
childrens faces has been identtified) that have surfaced on her phones lock
screen. Weve taken tens of thousands of photos of these children over two
decades, and while many photos are familiar (the ones that weve printed out
and framed, or put on calendars, or added to a Favorites list), the vast
majority of them have largely gone unseen, filed away in an infinite iCloud
Photo Library filing cabinet.
One of the magical thing about Photo Shuffle is that those obscure photos also
keep floating to the top. Theyre not necessarily the best or most polished,
but theyre surprising and delightful.
Warzel writes that iOS has “taught me how to grieve,” and while I havent used
Photo Shuffle to grapple with that particular emotion, just a few weeks after
our dog died, our youngest child went off to college and we officially became
empty nesters. I suppose the Photo Shuffle is filling a particular (but
different) emotional need for us, too.
—Linked by Jason Snell
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[1] Christopher Butler ☼
[2]Archive
[3]Info
[4]Now
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Periodical 14v DIY
While youre here, make the world your own.
[3cd9e2b2-3c0a-4053-b19e-ea042cb77dd0]
Hello from the makerspace, otherwise known as home.
Home should be a makerspace! At any levelfood, art, life, clothing, and on
to more difficult craft like furniture and constructioneveryone should have
their hands in something. Ideally, its unique, if not straight-up weird. Life
is too short to default on your surroundings.
What Kyle Chayka calls [5]AirSpace is not exactly new, but it has been newly
invigorated by the power of Instagram (he also coined that term [6]back in 2016
!). Yes, every coffee shop looks the same, and so does every Zoom background,
and every book cover, and every haircut, and so on. Its called style. What is
culture, after all, but a shared sensibility? Kyles point, though, is that the
technology of the day spreads style especially quickly, which creates a
feedback loop that radiates outward into economies and life choices. I think
hes right about that.
Because theres a big span of something between a shared culture of images and
things made in a certain way to express a certain value and images and things
made to do little more than appear like something else. The problem with going
much further with this critique is it really cant be done without some kind of
snobberyespousing the notion that one preference is simply better than
another. Thats not for me, so I wont.
But I will say that while debates over culture rage on, you can always just
make your own. Its interesting; its fun; its often cheaper.
This weekend was a very DIY kind of weekend.
The first project I finished was one Id been contemplating for years. It was
High Optimization. You see, we store our CD collection on a set of built-in
shelves in our den that originate with the house itselfseventy-two year-old
construction, encyclopedia-deep like any good mid-century den should have.
Whats bothered me for years is that even though I rebuilt the shelves to
reduce the vertical space and house more rows of CDs, the depth remained the
same. The discs were always getting pushed back, making them hard to retrieve
without disrupting the entire row of discs and making everything look out of
order. It made me very twitchy. So I built custom frames to insert at the back
of the shelves, reducing their depth to about half-an inch shy of a CD. Now you
can push a disc fully back, keeping the row perfectly flush, and the half-inch
that hangs over the edge of the shelf is just the right amount to make
retrieving a single disc very smooth. The frame also retains the space behind
it, which is great for storing overflow or box sets.
[eb2ed767-8b1f-4574-bb17-d5dc73e77249]
I also made a set of dividers that are wrapped in very bright orange cardstock.
They divide the collection by genre and pop out very nicely.
[e5f44b30-c128-4579-8d51-f62b015d2e1f]
Since my tools were out and I had some extra wood, I made a quick sketch of a
desk riser Id been imagining and quickly made it a reality. The moment my
daughter saw it in the office, she exclaimed “I WANT ONE TOO!” I said, lets
draw one and make one together!
[c8c5f2ed-eb96-4fa0-8daa-a369df0e7015]
One thing I hope my children learn is to nurture the balance of curiosity,
creativity, and willingness to mess-up that is needed to make the world your
own while youre here.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Written by [7]Christopher Butler on January 21, 2024, In [8]Log
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Previous Entry
[9] Periodical 13 Image ecology and my top 10 science fiction films.
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[5] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2024/jan/16/the-tyranny-of-the-algorithm-why-every-coffee-shop-looks-the-same
[6] https://www.theverge.com/2016/8/3/12325104/airbnb-aesthetic-global-minimalism-startup-gentrification
[7] https://www.chrbutler.com/information
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[50]Technology
A Second Life for My Beloved Dog
A simple iPhone feature unexpectedly changed how I grieved.
By [51]Charlie Warzel
Illustration of a man walking his dog
Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Zero Creatives / Getty.
January 5, 2024
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Illustration of a man walking his dog
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09:16
Produced by ElevenLabs and NOA, News Over Audio, using AI narration.
Peggy was my first dog—the dog I waited 28 patient years for. I finally met her
on August 15, 2015. She was eight weeks old, covered in filth after a 14-hour
ride from Georgia to New York, and inexplicably still adorable. Floppy ears.
Jet-black muzzle. Meaty little forepaws. We didnt plan it this way, but my
partner and I rescued her on the same day we moved in together. Peggy
represented a new phase of my life: the beginning of my chosen family.
As soon as I brought the chubby, squirming ball of fur home, I felt compelled
to capture, however clumsily, the joy she brought into our lives. You can see
the change in my iPhones camera roll: Two-thirds of the way through 2015, the
mosaic of images shifts away from the drab tones of a poorly lit Brooklyn
apartment and is infused with a new vitality. She was a junkyard dog—a stubborn
scrapper that loved eating garbage off the street, and one that had a
supernatural ability to charm humans. Once, in South Brooklyn, I left her tied
up for an instant to purchase a coffee and came out to find shed seduced an
old Italian pastry chef to procure some breadcrumbs. People remarked that her
face felt familiar, like an old friend was in there somewhere. Her mystique was
compounded early on, when an unfortunate accident left her with three legs, for
which she compensated by becoming comically muscular. Of course I was obsessed
with documenting Peggys life.
She was a constant, as any dog would be, through cross-country moves,
quarter-life crises, career changes, new presidential administrations, and a
pandemic. Then, one day last May, quite unexpectedly, she was gone.
We let her go in the middle of the night, so quickly that we werent able to
say goodbye. Until then, Id been lucky enough to avoid this type of tragic,
sudden loss. My grief in those early moments felt like the emergency exit on an
airplane had opened mid-flight, the sudden loss of cabin pressure violently
sucking everything out of the hull that isnt bolted down. For days, my
fuselage was empty, the contents scattered and falling from the sky. I went on
walks, laughed and cried at random, and tried to stay busy. But all I really
wanted to do—the only thing that felt appropriate and sustaining—was [58]look
at pictures of Peggy on my phone. I lost hours inside my camera roll staring at
her reddish-brown fur centered in the frame, while watching us become a family
in the background. My device, normally a wasteland, became a refuge.
[59]Read: There are no “five stages” of grief
On the day she died, I set my phones wallpaper to my favorite photo of
Peggy—appearing to smile on a ridgeline trail in Missoula, Montana, the
bright-yellow balsamroot flowers in bloom behind her. But a month later, I told
myself that it was time to stop wallowing. Instead of a memorial photo of
Peggy, I opted to try a newer, “dynamic” wallpaper feature called “Photo
Shuffle.” Every so often, my iPhone would change my wallpaper and home screen
to an image it had grabbed from my camera roll. To help it along, I could offer
parameters for the photo choice. Knowing that Apples Photos app uses
image-recognition software to identify cats and dogs in the camera roll, I
chose a “Pets” filter.
Grief is not linear, and neither is Photo Shuffle. Over the next few months, I
watched the photos change in and out at random—always with a dog in focus. Many
of the stills were pictures I didnt remember taking, ones Id passed over or
missed in my melancholic, late-night scrolling. So many were chaotic, blurred
streaks of fur and tongues curiously sniffing a lens or bounding out of frame;
a lot were objectively bad photos, which I found made them especially funny as
iPhone wallpaper. Peggy wasnt the only subject—our other dog, Steve, a winsome
and serious-faced cattle dog, shared screen time—but being First Dog meant that
Peggy had been photographed much more. She took on a starring role: Peggy wet
from a beach swim, regal Peggy posing under the Christmas tree, puppy Peggy,
manic post-fetch Peggy with a yards length of tongue sticking out of her
mouth. Sad photos inevitably cropped up: Peggy in the hospital, Peggys last
car ride, Peggy and Steve side by side on our lawn, enjoying what would be
their last sunset together.
My partner turned on Photo Shuffle, too, and we developed a new ritual. Look at
this new Peggy, one of us would say, holding a phone up to the others face.
Wed usually laugh or smile; occasionally one of us would tear up. Sweet girl.
Miss you, Pegs. Mostly, though, wed take a moment and orient the photo in our
lives, remembering a trip or a random ordinary Wednesday on a trail or at the
dog park. The photos opened up little windows of reflection and a moment to
express some gratitude—for Peggy, and for our lives together.
Devotees of note-taking apps such as Notion and Evernote have a term for the
mass of musings, links, documents, and projects they store on the cloud: the “
[60]second brain.” If you organize your data the right way, these programs will
allow you to recall an extraordinary amount of information, in the same way
your mind might. Ive never been very good at using these apps, but Ive found
that my camera roll functions similarly. It is like a digital appendage of my
mind, functioning in a complementary, Proustian way—triggering and dredging up
memories that have been long filed away. My camera roll is a diary, a mood
board. Thanks to the ability to screenshot, it is also a place for sundry notes
and clippings. When I scroll through my photos over a long enough period, I
find they are a pretty decent archive of my life.
[61]Read: Please get me out of dead-dog TikTok
The dynamic wallpaper, however, adds a new layer to this experience. It is a
curator, maybe even a biographer. And, however inadvertently, the feature has
become a counselor, allowing me to grieve on my own timeline. Right now, Peggy
is the dominant face on my screen, but, over time, I imagine the ratio of Peggy
pictures to others will change. I will get older, get new dogs, do new things,
and take more pictures. Peggy will still be there, popping up when I least
expect it, but her presence will gently recede as I learn to live without her.
This complex universe of grief and moving on is playing out on my phone screen,
but also in my own behaviors. This summer, we added Beverly, a new puppy, to
our family. Im not sure why but, since the pandemic, Ive been less inclined
to take photos than I was in Peggys halcyon days. But recently Ive found
myself consciously pausing and grabbing my phone to document Bevs adolescence.
My renewed interest is simple: I need photos of Beverly so that she may join
the wallpaper rotation with frequency.
A photograph of the author's dog in front of flowersPeggy resting in Missoula
The more I scrutinize this small feature on my device and the way it became a
load-bearing part of the past year of my life, the more I encounter some
resistance from myself. Theres a part of me that doesnt want to think too
hard about what this all means, because doing so forces me to wrestle with just
how important this brick of ceramic glass really is. We can snark about being
addicted to our phones or worry about inflated screen-time numbers or the way
we pull out our cameras to document moments we should instead be present for,
but acknowledging the positives is equally disorienting—to do so suggests a
certain unknowability about a technology we live with every day. What are our
phones doing to us? A lot, it seems. Perhaps more than we realize.
So much of the information I consume through my phone is jarring, presented in
an overwhelming, intrusive fashion—via push notifications and design tricks,
all vying for my attention. The dynamic wallpaper offers something else: quiet
moments in my day that stop me in my tracks and promote reflection, rather than
engagement. My phones operating system has taught me how to grieve.
That doesnt mean its been easy. Its always the little things—the memory of
the crimped hair behind her velvety ears, the image of her panting softly while
sunning herself on the porch on a crisp summer morning, or the phantom feeling
of the heft of her body, pressed against mine as I read before bed. These
memories used to be painful; now they bring gratitude. Perhaps thats because
theyre not static—theyre alive, both in me and on the silly little device I
take with me everywhere. Theres a three-legged hole in my heart, but I see
Peggy every day.
[62]Charlie Warzel is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of its
newsletter [63]Galaxy Brain, about technology, media, and big ideas. He can be
reached via [64]email.
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[51] https://www.theatlantic.com/author/charlie-warzel/
[58] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/10/smartphone-camera-ai-photo-editing-fakery/675710/
[59] https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2022/10/five-stages-complicated-grief-wrong/671710/
[60] https://www.buildingasecondbrain.com/
[61] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/03/dead-dog-tiktok-algorithm-pet-loss-grief/673445/
[62] https://www.theatlantic.com/author/charlie-warzel/
[63] https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/sign-up/galaxy-brain/
[64] mailto:cwarzel@theatlantic.com