My son starts high school this week, a bizarre sentence to type that I’m sure any parent can relate to. It felt like just yesterday I was dropping him off for pre-K and now here he is, taking the first step on the last step towards adulthood.
High school wasn’t great for me - I was small, quiet and most of my friends from middle school went to a different high school than I did, meaning starting over at a much bigger place with much different people and for the first couple of years it was pretty rough. Thankfully I found some stuff that I was interested in and ended up making a few lifelong friends in the process. But naturally, I worry about how things will go for my son, even though I have no reason to.
I’ve realized that being a parent is all about milestones. There are a lot when kids are born/little and gradually they get further apart, but it has always caught me off guard when they pop up, because it makes you look both back and forward as to where not only your child’s life is going, but also yours as well. And of course starting his next phase of life is important, and I’m excited for him, but it’s also bittersweet because it’s closer to him not being a kid, and me getting closer towards the latter stages of my life as well.
In the end I know he’s going to do great and be successful and hopefully continue on a path to happiness, because I’ve taken all of these years and steps to help him do just that. But I’ll always mark these milestones with a bit of a sigh at the passage of things, even as I’m smiling along with him.
I like to spend my weekend afternoons watching TV, and lord knows I have enough streaming services (like most people) to be able to do that. Some I pay for due to just the volume of stuff to watch and/or for the kids (Netflix, Disney+), some I have through a swap with family members (my Paramount + for my parents HBO Max) and some just because I got a good deal (Peacock) and the comfort food they provide. But pound for pound, I think that the absolute best service when it comes to the quality of the stuff out there, Apple TV can’t be beat. It’s like HBO of the early 2000s, with no ads or tracking, which I highly appreciate.
So I’ve spent the past summer watching some of the new, great stuff on Apple TV and here are the ones that stood out:
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Widow’s Bay - This one sorta came out of nowhere and is way way better than it has any right to be. Described as a “horror comedy” and starring Matthew Rhys (of The Americans fame, one of the best shows in the last 15 years), it’s all about a small Northeastern coastal town where strange, creepy and bizarre things happen. It’s heavy on the dark humor and lighter on actual horror and gore (though plenty creepy), each episode is under an hour and thought each one has a sort of “theme”, they all build to a bigger storyline about the horrors of the island, leaving lots unexplained. Think Stephen King meets Lost meets…well, I can’t think of anything else that is like this. If you can handle some jump scares and a little bit of blood or “thematic elements” then this is a must watch.
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Margo’s Got Money Troubles - Based on a book of the same name, it follows a young woman starting college named Margo (Elle Fanning) who falls for her creepy literary professor, gets knocked up and then has to deal with the ramifications of being a single mother and the challenges that brings in America today, eventually turning to OnlyFans as a way to make ends meet. It offers a lot of social commentary on how our society fails and shuns women who don’t follow their “expected” path, and features amazing performances from her selfish and terrible mother Michelle Pfeiffer who went through the same situation herself with Margo and having to raise her solo, and Nick Offerman as her father, a former professional wrestler struggling to stay sober. Not exactly light topic fare but the show has a lot of heart and humor and like I said, poignant social commentary that makes it worth checking out.
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Star City - A spin-off of the soapy Apple TV launch show For All Mankind (an alternate reality in which Russia got to the moon first), but this time the entire story is told from the Russian perspective. It’s not a rehash of For All Mankind but instead more of a thriller of the awfulness of trying to be innovative and ground breaking in science under the overbearing and stifling, mistrusting rule of the USSR. Hopefully this one gets renewed, because it’s plot lines offer almost limitless possibilities navigating the world of espionage and science.
What are you watching these days?
I spend most of my driving time or when I’m outside doing yardwork listening to podcasts, so I thought it might be worth sharing what is on my weekly rotation. I use Pocket Casts to listen, as I paid for it years ago to get the browser player version, and despite trying some other apps, keep coming back to it as my go to just put something on and listen. On to the podcasts!
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404 Media Podcast - A journalist founded and run independent tech podcast, they break stories every week about surveillance, cyber security, tech and politics and much more. As a paying member of 404 Media, I enjoy their summaries and behind the scenes stories on the stories they publish.
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Lore - One of the original podcasts to break through, the “Lore” comes from folklore, and every week is a new episode about something historical related to folklore from around the world. Often with a creepy bent (think ghosts, witches, hauntings, etc) it never delves into horror territory but is always a fun listen, especially since they alternate between stories based on history and stories based on legends.
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Pod Save America - Look, I’m unabashedly liberal, being highly progressive about just about everything in the US political sphere, and PSA gives good breakdowns and highly opinionated takes on the shit show that is the US political system right now 3x a week. They can be a bit “bro” ish and obviously when the world is on fire, the topics can be depressing, but I still try to listen as much as I can to keep up my media diet.
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Shop Talk Show - Run by Chris Coyier and Dave Rupert, two legends in the front end developer sphere, this one is hit or miss for me in terms of if I listen to it every week or not. It’s not that they aren’t engaging or interesting, it just that some episodes veer into deeper programming content than I enjoy listening to, and their slanting slightly towards AI is also not great when I’m actively trying to avoid it as much as possible. Still, worth a listen to if you are in front end development or web development in general!
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Smartless - A weekly celebrity interview, hosted by Jason Bateman, Will Arnett and Sean Hayes, it’s actually not only entertaining but funny and for three “not smart” celebrities, they ask interesting questions and if you keep up with movies or tv, have some of the best guests around. This one is also a maybe-skip, just depending on the guest.
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The Solid Verbal - My first love, sports wise, is college football and Dan and Ty have been doing this podcast since 2007, and I’ve been a listener for almost that long. Just two friends who love the sport, they break down the games every week, do deep dives into teams and offer a smart and enjoyable way to listen to people talk about college football, especially away from ESPN or any bigger outlets. If you’re a CFB fan, highly recommend, and they are actually the only podcast I am a paying subscriber to, so I’m happy to support them.
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Unexplainable - A Vox podcasts, a rotating crop of hosts talk to scientists and academics 2x a week about, well, the unexplainable things to science in our world. They bring questions like any normal person would, like “What does silence actually sound like?” or “How do birds know how to migrate and why is it because of the Earth’s magnetic field?” that are educational without being too academic
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Welcome To Nightvale - This is one of the hardest podcasts to explain, even though it’s probably one of the oldest and still running podcasts. It’s essentially a “radio” program where the DJ discusses all of the weird and strange things happening in a small desert town called Nightvale, such demonic librarians, dangerous dog parks, the Woman with No Face, Deb the sentient patch of haze and so so much more. The show is essentially one really long running story dating back over 15 years at this point, but you can jump in at any point and still enjoy it. Always make sure to listen to “the weather”, where every week they feature a song from an unknown indie band.
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Version History - From The Verge, each week they look at one gadget and delve into the history of it, what makes it good (or bad), and whether it affected tech and gadgets enough to make it into their (totally arbitrary) “Hall of Fame”. Who knew a deep dive about Furby could be so entertaining?
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You Must Remember This - Currently on hiatus, if you love the history of movies (think pre-2000) and old Hollywood, the scandals and the rise and fall of some of Hollywood’s most legendary stars, I can’t recommend this podcast enough. Each “season” breaks down a topic, such as the Hollywood Blacklist, or Sex in the 90s, or Dead Blondes (famous blonde actresses who met an untimely depth) in deeply researched and deeply discussed topics by host/creator Karina Longworth. And since it’s all history, you can jump in with any season and just enjoy the ride. A new season starts in September and given how much work goes into making each of them, I can’t wait to listen!
I love weather.
More specifically, I love tracking and following and looking at weather. I’m terrible at math and have a beginner’s level skill set in meteorology with terms and reading charts, but in general it just fascinates me. Even though in Florida, we basically have 9 months of heat, humidity and rain and the weather doesn’t change that much day to day, checking the weather for updates is something I do multiple times a day, just for fun.
But it’s not just the stock Weather app on my phone. Oh no, it’s way more than that. As of the time of this post, I have 6 separate weather apps on my phone, not counting said stock Weather app.
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CARROT - The OG all-in-one weather app. Customizable layouts and data sources, tiles and display screens, radar and rain tracking notifications, not to mention some built in snark, I’ve been a subscriber for almost 10 years now and it’s my #1 go to.
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Hello Weather - Built by a small team, this one is a favorite because unlike most of the crap in the app store weather category, they don’t track you or any personal information. They rely on The Weather Channel (now there’s an app that tracks you) for their forecast data, which is usually the most accurate, and have a super clean and friendly user interface. Their radar is also my favorite of the bunch.
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Ambient Weather Network - This is the app I use to pull up the data from my weather station and see super hyper local weather through the network of other weather stations. Oh yeah, I also have a weather station.
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Acme Weather - From the original creators of Dark Sky (RIP), the hands down best weather app till Apple bought them and shut it down. Acme Weather works really well because it compares sources on the fly for you to give you a graph of predicted weather outcomes. Like, this source says it will rain in 10 minutes, this one in 15, etc and offers a lot of the same advanced forecasting that CARROT does.
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Ventusky - All radar, all the time. Rain, lightning strikes, wind patterns, cloud cover, and so much more, if I want detailed radar, Ventusky has it. I don’t use any of their other forecasting features really but scrobbling through that detailed lightning strike path is so satisfying.
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My Hurricane Tracker Pro - I live in Florida and hurricanes happen. While this is mostly a reskinned version of the National Weather Service’s hurricane forecasts, I’ve found that all of the other apps above just do “ok” with tracking major storms, whereas this one gives you straightforward info and a good map tracking system. So something dedicated to just hurricanes is incredibly useful.
Now you might be thinking “Why do you need all of these apps??” and the truth is, they all do one or two things just right and better than the others. That may seem odd given that they basically all pull from the same data available, but truthfully there is a huge difference between Accuweather and The Weather Channel and Foreca and Tomorrow.io and all of their forecasts, as it all depends on where exactly you are. I live in a large metro area so we have pretty good forecasts. But when I travel, I have found that it varies from place to place in terms of which forecast is better. So it makes sense to have all of these (ok maybe not all of them) in my back pocket “just in case” and again, it’s fun to look at weather and compare things!
With the exception of Ambient Weather, none of these apps are free, either requiring an annual subscription or a one time purchase. And I’m happy to give it because guess what? Weather forecasts run off of satelites and satelites (and the time to process their output) is expensive! Bu the other plus side to paying for them is that they don’t track you. All of the free apps have terrible privacy policies - some of the biggest apps that track and sell your location data, are weather apps. So if you want good, accurate forecasts and a little bit more privacy on the side, it’s worth paying up for. I’m not going to be a meteorologist any time soon, so I’m not ponying up for something that is hundreds of dollars a year, but spending about $80 a year on all of these apps as a way to feed my hobby? I’m ok with that.
This is a personal blog, but isn’t super personal about me so I thought I’d use this entry in Blaugust to share a few interesting and/or fun facts about me.
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In 2001, I sank my car - Coming home with a friend during a lingering tropical storm at night, I didn’t see the road had washed out and ended up floating off the road in my Prius into a ditch, the car blocking a sewer grate and causing the car to sink, getting up to my chest in water. Thankfully someone passing by saw us and came and broke the back window, breaking the pressure inside so we could get out. I got a truck after that.
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My son and I almost share a birthday - He was born 29 years, 364 days, 10 hours and 37 minutes after me, at the same hospital in the same town. Now we have joint birthday celebrations, which I’m totally ok with!
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I can walk a 15:30 mile - I really don’t like running but walking fast? That’s my jam and I walk at least 2 miles a day, 5 days a week. People hate walking places with me.
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I discovered I had a half uncle when I was 35 - Thanks to geneology, my Dad found a half brother he never knew he had (his father died when my dad was 10). I still haven’t met my half uncle, but he worked his whole career at NASA, so that’s pretty cool.
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I broke my left foot DJing karaoke - On a company retreat in California, while dancing to someone’s song (and totally sober too), the sole on my right shoe split, I fell onto my left and broke my fifth metatarsal. Wore a boot for 6 weeks but avoided surgery, and got priority boarding on the flights home. The song was “The Impression That I Get” by the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, if you’re wondering.
Just a little about me, maybe I’ll start sharing more personal stuff here besides just ranting about tech and random thoughts and stuff.