The Aptly Named, Sam's Blog

A sunny day made the backyard moss look very vibrant.

If you had a Geocities site, it may still be living in this archive: geocities.restorativland.org

Mine’s lost to the times. It was at http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Hall/5277.

“What app should I use to find my friends?”

“Find My app”

“I don’t want to find apps. I want to find my friends.”

“Yea, for that you need Find My app.”

“Oh, so it helps you find your friends as well as your apps?”

“No, but it does help you find your devices.”

ಠ_ಠ

As of the last several years, I’ve spent a lot less time gaming than before. I’m basically an occasional gamer. It is with that in mind that I recently sold my PS4 which was lying unused, and bought a subscription to Apple Arcade that let’s me play games on several devices and for short windows of time.

I’ve played a few games on it now, and by far my favorite has been “WHAT THE GOLF?”. I don’t think I’ve had as much fun playing a game in a while. I fire it up a few times a week on my iPhone and make a little progress each time. It is interesting, inventive, clever, and above all, hilarious. I’m 77% through the game and savoring the last of it. I hope this team makes more games and I look forward to them.

I recently discovered downlinkapp.com and am enjoying it 👍

Finally mounted this poster that Jenni got for me for Christmas 😍

Quite windy. #pdxtst

Winter evening.

Me on the 29th, and then me on the 30th.

Happy New Year 🥳

Olive showing me a thing or two about #staycation.

What team? I just want a folder that syncs, like it has, for I don’t even recall how long.

Last night’s sunset.

The only winning move is not to play. twitter.com/awgonnerm…

It was a pretty sunrise today 😊

Do decorations made of juniper smell like bad BO to anyone else, or is it just me?!

A handy control in case you need to fine tune your zip code.

Four months seems too short a policy for this, but it also highlights how long it has been since a government action took away a major utility from a lot of citizens. www.theverge.com/2019/12/5…

SE Portland, Oregon. 2nd December, 2019.

Great! Now you just gotta go and turn that preference on in all your seventeen Slacks :picard-facepalm: twitter.com/SlackHQ/s…

Assorted Fall Sun Around the Neighborhood

Things you are not speaking that your kitchen smart assistant is adding to your profile on the company server, now or in the near future:

• Noting how often you open the fridge and for how long it stays open.
• Noting how often you open bags that sound like they contain chips.
• That song you’re humming.
• Noting how often you sniff, or cough, or clear your throat.
• Noting the sounds your appliance makes, to detect the make and model, or the settings you use.
• Noting how often you answer your phone, as opposed to declining the call.
• Noting which notifications are you most likely to respond to by picking up and unlocking your phone.
• That deep breath you just took after a particular notification rang on a particular device.
• That bag of chips you opened a short while after you took that deep breath.

And of course, correlating this data to the time, date, current weather conditions, and past behavior.

Perhaps the company that makes the assistant also knows the content of those notifications and everything else happening on that device because they make that as well.

The machine is learning.

I almost just clicked on an ad with a one action button in the place where sites usually put the cookie disclaimer post-GDPR. Sneaky!