Monday, March 11, 2024

Federalist: Daylight Savings Is A Scam

No comments:
Daylight Savings Is A Scam
By: Nathan Stone,

Americans don’t get more daylight. Plants don’t enjoy an extra hour of sunshine. The only difference it makes is to harm our health.

A great summary about the origin of Daylight Saving time, what people claim it accomplishes, and references to the inconvenient truth that is doesn't accomplish anything, but does significantly impact our health an well-being.

Friday, February 16, 2024

Apple's magic sound-file renaming

No comments:
This is based on a discussion thread I just started on TidBits Talk.

For those who are unaware, in macOS 11 (aka "Big Sur"), Apple changed all of the standard system sounds. If you compare the system sounds preferences of it (or newer) releases with prior releases, you'll see that the standard set changed:

Old (pre- Big Sur) macOS system sounds New (Big Sur and later) macOS system sounds
Basso Mezzo
Blow Breeze
Bottle Pebble
Frog Jump
Funk Funky
Glass Crystal
Hero Heroine
Morse Pong
Ping Sonar
Pop Bubble
Purr Pluck
Sosumi Sonumi
Submarine Sumberge
Tink Boop

Tuesday, January 30, 2024

Disabling an iPod's headphone volume alerts

No comments:
This is a cross-posting of a thread I started on TidBITS Talk

Yesterday, while taking a short road trip, my iPod Touch (running iOS 15.8.1) stared giving me "headphone safety" notifications, complaining that I’m subjecting myself to dangerous volume levels for an extended period of time.

Yes, the iPod was running at maximum volume for three hours. But not into headphones. The headphone jack was connected to a cable to the car’s AUX audio input, for playback over the car's speakers.

I’ve been doing this for years, but something must have changed recently because I never got these warnings before today. (And they even propagated through iCloud into my phone’s Health app - just to rub it in, apparently).

I eventually found the location to disable this, but contrary to expectation, it’s not located in the "Sounds → Headphone Safety" page of system settings (where the option to "Reduce Loud Sounds" is located), but is instead, in the Accesibility section, for some strange reason. Accessibility → Hearing → Audio/Visual → Headphone Notifications.

I've turned it off. I’ll see if it does anything on my next road trip, where I'll be playing music at 100% volume out the headphone jack into the car stereo for six hours.

h/t: iPhone Life: How to Turn Off Headphone Safety Notifications on iPhone (iOS 17)

Thursday, October 26, 2023

Loony Tunes: "(Blooper) Bunny" (1991)

No comments:
While looking for something completely unrelated, I ran across this great cartoon that I had never before seen. Enjoy:

Read more about this cartoon on Wikipedia.

Thursday, August 10, 2023

National Pulse: Native Americans Demand DC Football Team Reinstate 'Redskins' Moniker.

No comments:
Native Americans Demand DC Football Team Reinstate 'Redskins' Moniker.
10-August-2023. Jake Welch

The non-profit Native American Guardians Association (NAGA) has threatened the newly renamed "Washington Commanders" with a boycott similar to that of Bud Light's parent company Anheuser-Busch unless the American Football team reverts to its historic name, the 'Washington Redskins.'

The organization has written a letter to the team's new ownership demanding the opportunity to discuss reinstating the team's name in a face-to-face meeting, citing lawsuits, polls, and general sentiment to suggest that Native Americans are not offended by the name, 'Redskin.' The organization has also launched a "Reclaim The Name" online petition that has attracted over 70,000 signatories so far. However, it has been routinely ignored.

I don't think I need to comment about this one. But I'm both laughing and not (very) surprised.

Thursday, May 04, 2023

Names for those funny icon-based menus

No comments:
Just in case you were curious, those funny-shaped menus, consisting of lines and dots, that are used in apps (both mobile and desktop) these days have actual names.
  • If the menu is three horizontal lines, it is called a hamburger menu.
  • If the menu is three dots in a horizontal row, it is called a meatballs menu.
  • If the menu is three dots in a vertical column, it is called a kebab menu.
And now you will know what to call these menus when talking about them with your friends.

Monday, March 13, 2023

iPhone tip: Watch out for "Time to Leave" calendar notifications

No comments:

This weekend, I was traveling out of state. While away, my phone started alarming at 4:00am. Which is very strange because I hadn't set any alarm for that hour, nor is there any event scheduled for that time.

After a bit of investigation, I discovered that it was because an event later that day (a simple reminder, scheduled for 9:00am) accidentally had its alert time set to "Time to Leave". See the image (right) for an example.

In case you're unaware, the "Time to Leave" alert is a feature meant to let you know when you need to start traveling in order to arrive at the location for the event. For instance, if you have a doctor's appointment, and the doctor's office is 15 minutes away from home, it will alert you 15 minutes before the appointment when you're home. But if you happen to be somewhere else, it will alert you based on the estimated travel time from your actual location (based on a computed route, traffic conditions, etc.)

You can probably figure out what happened. My reminder was scheduled for 9:00am, with a location set to my home. And the alert time was "Time to Leave". So when I was out of state (a 5 hour drive away from home), it dutifully alerted me 5 hours before the reminder's time - at 4:00am.

Let this be a friendly reminder to double-check your alert settings when creating events, especially if they are daily/weekly reminders.

Monday, March 06, 2023

Some of my favorite scripts

No comments:

I've been writing small little scripts and utilities for myself to use for many years.

Today, I decided to release them (with a GPLv3 license) and have uploaded some of my favorites to GitHub. The link is: GitHub: Shamino0/scriptsandtools.

Enjoy.