Disingenuous and insulting. Te tracking and selling of our data just for reading a website has got to stop.
Chris
Exhaust
“O my soul, Do not aspire to an immortal life, but exhaust the limits of the possible”
– Pindar Pythian III
Long Live The iPod
The iPod is a discontinued 1(as of May 10, 2022) portable media player designed by Apple in 2001. At 20 years, the iPod brand is the oldest device to be discontinued by Apple. It’s the end of an era, that’s for sure.
I fondly recall my first Sony Walkman that had the ability to not only listen to AM/FM radio, but play 90 minutes of music on cassette tape. We maxed in as many songs as we could on that tape drive, but it was never enough, so we had collections of cassette tapes lying around to keep track of.
And when Steve Jobs promised “thousands of songs in your pocket”, most of us were amazed and just.had.to.have.it. It was portable music freedom. I’ve owned three iPods, the original (sadly lost forever, a 5th generation classic iPod (shown below) and an iPod Touch that closely resembled an iPhone. My toddler daughter quickly assumed ownership of that last one.
After this month’s announcement, I decided to grab as many compact discs as I can find to then load onto my MacBook and transfer my songs to the iPod. It’s a multistep hassle for sure, but they are there. They are mine. I don’t have to pay a monthly subscription for them. I don’t need Wi-Fi or cellular connection to play them. There are no notifications or interruptions when I have those wired earbuds in. I’m amazed at how much I have relied on Bluetooth wireless AirPods and streaming music.
This 5th gen iPod was the first to play video, review photos and still retain the classic, iconic scroll wheel. Podcasts, audiobooks, videos, and photos are all synced to the device when plugged into my computer via iTunes. Can a podcast still be called a podcast without iPods? What do we call them now, “Netcasts?”
This iPod projects me back in time, and I am overwhelmed by the nostalgia. It feels less like a novelty item, but a more pure form of music ownership and enjoyment.
Long live the Apple iPod.
Think Again
When students confront complex problems, they often feel confused. A teacher’s natural impulse is to rescue them as quickly as possible so they don’t feel lost or incompetent. Yet psychologists find that one of the hallmarks of an open mind is responding to confusion with curiosity and interest. One student put it eloquently: “I need time for my confusion.” Confusion can be a cue that there’s new territory to be explored or a fresh puzzle to be solved.
The “I need time for my confusion.” quote is brilliant. How can we make time for our confusion? What are some ways we can process the information and then apply it when it is all sorted?
Journaling or blogging is a good start for me because it assists me in reflection. It is based on experience and driven by knowledge. Writing what I know or have learned about is refreshing. Even the fictitious Sherlock Holmes needed time to sort out confusion:
“It is quite a three pipe problem and I beg that you won’t speak to me for fifty minutes.”
Sherlock Holmes, The Red Headed League
That does it for me the next time I have confusion. I’ll grab my tobacco pipe and have a think while I walk for fifty minutes to sort it all out.
Homework
“Being a writer is like having homework every night for the rest of your life.”
– Lawrence Kasdan
This quote could also be used for any hobby endeavor we choose such as photography, crochet, micro electronics, Ham radio, etc.
A hobbyist is constantly researching techniques, going over best practices and learning how to apply them. You don’t just sit down at your keyboard and start cranking out paragraphs without research on the topic. You learn to see the world through the lens of your hobby and wonder how your craft fits into it, or what you can glean from the world to use it. A hobbyist is always shooting, writing, sewing, tinkering and noticing. A photographer is constantly tilting their head looking for angles and composition or color coordinating. Then act on it. A writer is frequently attaching verbal descriptions to a situation and then document it.
“To write, I first must world”
– Laurel Schwulst
Any experience that can be seen as possibly mundane suddenly has meaning, such as grocery shopping, sitting in traffic or walking through the streets. This means they are alert, focused, awakened and deliberately taking their findings to be applied later as homework. Though this homework is not graded, it does help advance our self-induced education, and we are all the better for it.
Media Log
“There is now a little question that how one uses one’s attention, moment to moment, largely determines what kind of person one becomes. Our minds, our lives are largely shaped by how we use them.”
Sam Harris
In other words, we are what we consume. I want to create a monthly1 maybe? log of my media consumption that tracks my passivity, and cultivates my creativity. Example: If I go further, I could map how reading a book sparks a desire to see a show based on it for a broader perspective. A podcast could point me towards a book I otherwise would have passed up.
I’ll attempt to track the shows and movies I stream (no cable service for me!), books I’ve read, podcasts/music I’ve listened to and the rare YT video I watch. Don’t judge me. I’ve been in bed for almost three weeks nursing an ankle issue(!) I may even expand this log to web links I’ve enjoyed and favorited for future use 2eventually. To kick off, I’ll just log what I can remember from April and May of this year.
Viewed
- Suspicion- Apple TV
- The Machine That Kills Mean People- HBO
- Severance- Apple TV
- Outer Ridge- Amazon
- Devs- Hulu
- Tehran- Apple TV
- Frasier- Hulu
- Star Trek: Strange New Worlds- Paramount
- Star Trek: Picard season 2- Paramount
- Star Trek: Discovery- Paramount
- Star Trek: Generations- Paramount
- Reservoir Dogs- HBO
- The Book of Boba Fett- Disney
- The King’s Man- HBO
- The Batman- 1/2 in theater, 100% on HBO
Read
- Ghost Fleet
- You Are An Artist
- The Nowhere Man
- Orphan X
- Reliquary
- Kaiju Preservation Society
- The Return
Listened
- Not Lost
- iPhoneography Podcast
- Dialogues
- Focused
- Mac Power Users
- Music- I borrowed a lot of compact discs from the library to transfer music to my iPod. Remember those?
Notable
Interesting conversation at micro.blog about what people use to take notes. Me?
- Handwriting in notebooks (usually Field Notes™)
- Marginalia in books
- Plain text notes on the computer
- Voice recordings notes in .mp3 format (the plain text of audio)
- Begrudgingly- Bear Notes and Apple Notes
I want my notes to be future-proof and platform-agnostic.
