This Is My Last

I enjoy coffee. Any coffee. My usual intake is 2 cups a day. I go up to 3 cups if I am feeling sad and just want something comfortable. Also, I do sometimes wake up in the middle of the night and cannot get back to sleep. Should I cut back on the number of cups per day? Or should I do it for my heart? ~ Links: Less Coffee, Better Sleep, by Viktor Löfgren, Marginalia Scientists Reveal Why Up to 5 Cups of Coffee a Day May Benefit Heart Health, by Amanda Castro, Newsweek

So, the availability of the MacBook Air from Apple is now “constrained”. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman “heard the company is prioritizing sales of the entry-level 14-inch MacBook Pro, in part to clear the way for an M6 refresh coming this fall.” Maybe Apple’s incoming CEO should follow the lead of a previous iCEO and start to simplify its product lines? The stupid AI problem doesn’t seem to end anytime soon, and do we really want too many product lines competing against each other for memory chips?

If a screen doesn’t have a connection to the internet, that’s great. If a screen want to connect to the internet, but doesn’t need to, do not give it the wifi password. If a screen need to be connected to the internet to be useful, choose your screen manufacturer wisely. ~ Link: BMW Is Showing Commercials On Their Car’s Dash Screens And They Want You To Think It’s A Treat, by Jason Torchinsky, The Autopian.

No, I am not doing a link blog here, so don't expect this everyday, but here are some links for your morning commute / lunchtime / bedtime reading. :-) We Don't Shame Smart Glasses Wearers Enough, by ...hi, this is ava. MkLinux and The Pimped-Out Apple Workgroup Server 9150, by Old Vintage Computing Research. Everything is Lonely, by JA Westenberg. Apparently, I’ve Got ‘Comfort Creep’. I Prefer to Think Of It As Finally Knowing What I Like, by Polly Hudson, The Guardian

I have come across my fair share of spreadsheets; they are almost always Excels, because that is what everyone uses. I don't dislike using Excel. It's a fine tool, even though Microsoft till this day still insists on keeping its non-standard copy-and-paste operations that tripped me multiple times. What I really dislike is the way some people 'decorate' their spreadsheets with boxes and arrows and colors and extra text and all sort of nonsenses that make using and manipulating the data…

Personally, I have never come across a video store clerk that recommended movies for me. But there is one person whose taste and opinion has shaped my movie-watching experience: Mr Roger Ebert. Nowadays, after I watched an 'old' movie, I will still go to Ebert's website to find out his opinions. ~ Link: The Lost Civic Life of Movie Rental Stores, by Joshua M. Greenberg, MIT Press Reader

If I ever write the sentences "I do not want to be a burden" or "there is no point carrying on" in this blog in the future, please email me to remind me of what I am saying here: I want to continue living a good life. Even when I am feeling lonely, which of course I do from time to time in this crowded city, I want to be useful, to serve, to love. And it's up to me to find ways to be useful, to serve, to love. This is what I will always want to remind myself. YMMV, there will always be mileage.…

I guess I can no longer call this little corner of mine a beta, now that I have started telling everyone this is my new (and only) blog. And if my plan aligns with the universe, this will be last (and only) blog, until, you know, when I EOL.

I love sitcoms. I love that all the problems in the world are neatly tied up in 22 minutes, and everyone has a great laugh at the end. 30 Rock is now on Netflix, and I am going through the seasons and ignoring all the other shows that I've queued up to watch. And I see another sitcom with many episodes, the U.S. version of The Office, is also on Netflix. Maybe I should learn to multitask my TV watching.

I have one podcast player that I dedicated to nighttime listening when I cannot fall asleep, or when I cannot fall back asleep. The 'sleep mode' is always turned on, so the playback should automatically stop after twenty minutes. On this player, I subscribe to podcasts that aren't too boring, so that my mind will not wander and start thinking of doom and gloom, but they are also not too exciting, in the hope I can still get to sleep. And definitely no podcasts where the hosts are too excited.…

So, according to this report from 404 Media, Apple failed to fix a privacy bug with its Hide My Email feature for more than a year. The bug was only fixed after the website published its report earlier this month. Well, dear Apple, the privacy bug may have been fixed. But there're still more bugs: something seems to be still wrong with your bug-reporting and bug-fixing process. Time to fix that too.

Maybe I should be happy that I don't have to run AI on all my machines. I cannot afford to buy all the memory and chips at these prices in this economy. Maybe there is still joy in writing PHP codes by hand. Maybe there is still joy in figuring out things by thinking and testing and trying. Maybe there is still joy to be had in the simple things. Stop worrying about whether you can afford to get more RAM and more CPU, and try to capture joy in whatever you already have and whatever you can…

I live in a city filled with people that care a lot about the food they eat at restaurants and food courts and hawker centres. I don't. All my good memories about eating out are from the people I am with. Sometimes I remember the things we were talking about. Sometimes I remember the emotions I've had when we were together. I rarely remember about the food. Maybe I don't have a good taste with food. Maybe after being alive for so many years, I haven't bothered to learn how to appreciate good…

According to this report from Reuters, Apple Intelligence is launching soon in China, having cleared the country's regulation. This probably means that Apple will be launching Apple Intelligence in China with the better Siri. Apple has been widely viewed as being late to the AI party, especially in China, but at least it will be launching with the right version. Unlike the rest of the world, which didn't have a good first impression. We don't know yet how the AI models used in China compare…

Hello. This is my little corner on the Bear blogging platform. Which, if I understand from the creator, will never shut down. And, 'hopefully', this will be my last little corner on the internet. This is where my random ramblings and erratic thoughts will go. Until it's time for me to go. After which, I don't really care what happens to this little corner. (Nor can I care.) But, maybe, this little corner will continue to exist. Welcome. (Yes, the subdomain has been inspired / stolen from when a…