Month: March 2018

Digg Reader and other thoughts on RSS and news consumption

I learned today that Digg Reader just shut down. I had set up an account there when they started it up, but wasn’t actively using it. I also have an account with The Old Reader, but I’m not really actively using that one either. Both of those services started up after Google Reader was shut down in 2013. I’ve been thinking about going back to checking RSS feeds semi-regularly, rather than relying on Twitter and Facebook as much as I do now. If I did that, I’d probably just try to check my Old Reader account more often and maybe add/remove some feeds. (Here’s an article with a few other RSS reader alternatives.)

While I haven’t really jumped back into RSS yet, I did download Flipboard to my iPhone and iPad recently. Flipboard isn’t an RSS reader, but it is a way to follow a variety of news sources, similar to Apple News, but maybe better. (Well, Flipboard’s founder thinks it’s better, but he may be biased.) I think Flipboard is interesting, and likely is better than Apple News, but this is another case where the app is free, which makes me wonder about their business model. I think they’re just making money off in-app ads, which is fine, but who knows. (And I’m not really that excited about in-app ads either, to be honest.)

I’m still reading a lot of email newsletters, from the NY Times and a variety of other sources. I’m very far behind though. I’m currently reading news from late December 2017. (Merry Christmas!)

Here’s an interesting article from Farhad Manjoo about an experiment where he switched to getting his news from print newspapers for a couple of months. (Except that he didn’t really unplug like he said he did. Sigh.) I’m not going to switch back to print anytime soon, though I’m occasionally tempted. I’m also a little envious of this guy, who just stopped reading the news entirely after Trump got elected. That just seems irresponsible though. (And wildly impractical too for most people.)

 

Harry Potter excitement

I’m starting to get pretty excited about going to see Harry Potter and the Cursed Child this weekend. As I mentioned I would do in my last post, I reread the script book this past weekend. I had indeed forgotten the plot almost entirely, but it came back to me as I read through it. (I may have linked to this before, but here’s a good article on how to remember what you read.)

I don’t normally read Vogue, but here’s a good article from them on the play. While I was rereading the script, I was trying to imagine how they’d stage a lot of the stuff in it, and I’m really stumped as to how they’ll be able to do it all and not have it look really hokey. But I have faith; the play has gotten really good reviews (from the London run), so I assume it’ll be great.

Meanwhile, WonderCon will be going on this weekend and I’ll be missing out on some good panels. I had pretty much decided that I wanted to go to WonderCon this year, but then the Potter thing came up and I decided that was more important. I’m not regretting that decision, but I kind of wish I had a Time-Turner so I could go to both!

And, as long as I’m going to be in New York, I might also try to see Weird Al one more time, since he’s playing The Apollo on Friday. I didn’t think I’d be able to get tickets for it this late, but there are some available at reasonable prices right now. His Tarrytown show was great, and he has been mixing up his set list more than he usually does on this tour, so maybe it would be worthwhile to see him again.

We had a lot of snow yesterday, but I’m starting to feel like spring is here. (Please, please, let there be no more snow this weekend!)

Home phone service (for old people)

Last summer, I got a notice that Verizon was going to retire the copper phone lines in my town. And, via my landlord, I’ve been told that our building apparently can’t be upgraded to fiber. So, we won’t really have an option for “traditional” home phone service anymore. I got a follow-up notice from Verizon last month. They still haven’t set a final date for retiring the copper, but it looks like it’ll happen before the end of this year. So I started looking around at alternatives. My cable company has an option for phone service, for $30/month, which is a little less than what I’m paying Verizon now. But I did a little more digging and found that Verizon has a wireless home phone option that’s only $20 a month (assuming you already have Verizon Wireless), plus $30 for the little base station that you need to buy. So that’s not a bad deal.

I know that all the young people have given up on regular home phone service. But I’m an old man, and I’ve had the same home phone number for more than twenty years, and I don’t want to give it up. So I went ahead and signed up for the Verizon wireless home phone service today. I’m hoping that the call quality is reasonable. In theory, it should be about the same as my cell phone, since it’ll be on the same network, but who knows whether the $30 device they give you affects call quality (vs an iPhone) or not.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

I’m going to go see Harry Potter and the Cursed Child in NYC in a few weeks, so I thought it might be fun to reread the script book. I read it when it first came out, back in 2016. And I’ve almost completely forgotten the plot, I’m embarrassed to say. I mean, I remember that there was a curse, and a child, I think. But not much more than that. So I could reread it, to refresh my memory, or I could skip it and go into the play not remembering anything, and be surprised.

I just realized that the version I have is the Special Rehearsal Edition, which is no longer available. There’s a new version, published in 2017, with the final script. (Or at least the script they were using at that time. Maybe they’re tweaking it again for the New York run.) So now I need to decide if I want to reread the version I already own, or spend $9 on the new version. I did a little research, and it sounds like there’s not much new in the final edition. So I might as well stick with the one I already own.

I’m really looking forward to the play. Here’s an article from the NY Times about the NYC production. It’s interesting, the scale of it, and the amount of money and effort that goes into something like this. Here’s hoping it does well.

Weird Al in Tarrytown

I went to see Weird Al in Tarrytown on Thursday night. This is probably the third or fourth time I’ve seen Weird Al in concert. (I’m not even sure.) Tarrytown would not have been my first choice of venue, but his show at the Apollo was sold out, and he’s only playing relatively small venues on this tour, so it was the closest we could get. (It would have been cool if he’d played the State Theatre in New Brunswick, but no such luck!)

This tour is a little different from Al’s usual. He’s calling it his “ill-advised vanity tour.” He’s playing mostly original songs (not parodies) and he’s just sitting on a stool throughout the show, no funny costumes or sets or anything. Rolling Stone has an interview with him about it. The set list was varied and had a lot of fun stuff in it.

I’m getting too old to drive as far as Tarrytown on a weeknight, so I turned the concert into a two-day vacation, with an overnight stay in Manhattan. I took NJ Transit into NYC on Thursday afternoon and checked into my hotel. I did some random wandering around in NYC, then took a nap in my hotel room, then took the Metro North train to Tarrytown. It was a great show, and everything worked out pretty well. I caught a train back to NYC at around 11:20pm, getting into Grand Central just after midnight. By then, it had started raining, though not as bad as it would get on Friday. I checked out of the hotel Friday morning and went straight home. I had wanted to hang out in Manhattan a bit on Friday, but the rain was getting bad. I’m glad I didn’t stick around, because apparently the rush hour commute home on NJ Transit got VERY bad.

NJ Transit has been getting pretty bad, in general, lately. The trip into the city on Thursday hit a snag, due to a disabled train in the tunnel into Manhattan. That caused a delay of about 30 minutes. That kind of thing is getting to be “the new normal,” it seems. You just have to build an extra hour into your schedule, in case anything happens on the train. I’m hoping that Phil Murphy manages to find some way to spend some money on transportation infrastructure, but I’m not optimistic. He’s at least trying though.

Anyway, this was supposed to be a post about a great Weird Al concert, not a post about how much trouble NJ Transit is in. Weird Al also has a new single out: The Hamilton Polka! I’ve never seen Hamilton, or even heard much of the music from it, but this is a typical Weird Al polka medley. It’s pretty funny, and probably much funnier if you’re familiar with the source material.