Author: Andrew Huey

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.

 

Generation Grumpy

From the NY Times: Generation Grumpy: Why You May Be Unhappy if You’re Around 50

The generation of people born 1962 to 1971, now in what are typically peak earning years, are finding they are not doing as well as they might have expected.

As a fifty-year-old, I can attest that I am indeed grumpy! (Though not necessarily for the reasons outlined in this article.)

Stop and Shop is gone

I guess I don’t get out much these days. I decided to go to the Raritan Shop and Shop yesterday to dump some old coins in their CoinStar machine, and when I got there, it was closed down. Apparently, it closed back in November 2017.

Since there’s a ShopRite practically across the street from my apartment, I haven’t bothered to go anywhere else for groceries in quite some time. Back during the years after PathMark had closed and before ShopRite opened, I used to go to Stop and Shop almost every week. (Occasionally, I went to Wegman’s.)

I should probably get out more and check out some other supermarkets occasionally. There’s a Whole Foods opening in Bridgewater in March. That could be interesting. The idea of an Amazon-owned grocery store makes me a little uncomfortable though.

I did go to Wal-Mart today in Manville, to use their CoinStar, but I didn’t buy anything. I hadn’t been there in a long time either; they seems to have expanded the store and added a full grocery section since I was last there.

Anyway, I’m glad I have a ShopRite in walking distance. I like being able to do all my grocery shopping without ever needing to get in a car. That’s something I take for granted, and I really shoudn’t.

The ThinkPad Lives Again

After seeing yesterday’s post, a friend recommended that I pull the battery from my ThinkPad, hold the power button down for a few seconds, then put the battery back and see what happens. Well, that turns out to have fixed it. I’d never heard of that trick (or if I had, I’d forgotten about it). I searched to see if I could find any reference to it, and I found this SuperUser question. There’s not much information there, but heck, if it works, it works. So that’s one less thing I need to worry about today. Thanks!

The ThinkPad Might Be Dead

My ThinkPad locked up today, and, when I rebooted, it didn’t think it had a hard drive. So either the hard drive is dead or something is wrong with the ThinkPad, and it’s no longer recognizing the drive. I wasn’t really in the mood to spend a lot of time troubleshooting today, but I went as far as pulling and re-seating the drive. That didn’t help. If I have some ambition tomorrow, I’ll remove it and try to mount it externally, maybe connected to my desktop or my MacBook.

I’m not too worried about this, since the ThinkPad has basically become my “third choice” computer. I use my MacBook the most (every day), my Dell desktop PC second most (generally for more “serious” stuff), and the ThinkPad gets booted up maybe once a month. I also don’t have anything really important on the hard drive. Everything important is in OneDrive or Evernote. If the drive is dead, I probably lost my saved game of Neverwinter Nights, but I’d pretty much given up on that anyway.

I bought the ThinkPad in 2011, and replaced the original hard drive with an SSD in 2014. So the laptop is more than six years old and the drive is a bit more than three years old. If the machine is dead, well, it was probably time. If the drive is dead, then I’m a little disappointed with that, since I think an SSD ought to last at least five years.

I’d like to get the machine working again, if I can, but if I can’t, that’s fine. It’s a pretty old machine and it might be time for a new one. Or maybe it’s time to give up on the idea of owning three computers. The desktop and the MacBook are good enough, especially when you add in the iPad, the iPhone, the work laptop, the work iPad, and all the other random computing devices in my apartment. Maybe it’s time to downsize a bit!

Reason To Be Hopeful

After reading Bill Gates’ thoughts on Steven Pinker’s new book, I added it to my Amazon wish list, along with the dozens of other books I really want to read (but probably won’t ever get around to). Here’s a little video of Paul Solman interviewing Pinker, from PBS NewsHour.