Deflock is a crowd-sourced mapping tool which shows the locations of Flock surveillance cameras, searchable by zip code or address. I’m kind of shocked that there are only a few in my general area. If you care about civil liberties, tell your local lawmakers you don’t want Flock cameras, and if they’re already installed, tell them you want them removed.
Over at the Autopian, founder and chief editor David Tracy had been periodically updating the site with progress on his latest crazy idea: building a new WW2 Jeep from parts sourced strictly through eBay. He’d gone dark for the last couple of months, but reading his July 4th article wrapping up the entire project, it’s clear why: he was working nonstop to get it done by the deadline, so he could drive it 900 miles to Moab for the Jeep Roundup. It’s a great story for anyone interested in foolish ideas, old Jeeps, or road-trip adventures.
Jason Kottke posted a response to an interview I hadn’t been aware of until now: Ezra Klein interviewed Ta-Nahesi Coates for the New York Times, contrasting the way they each see the current situation in America. Andrea Pitzer took a look at what they said, and contextualized the different ways they see things:
It might sound pessimistic to see, as Coates does, the likelihood of many losses looming ahead, even as we fight for wins. But if you consider the long history of the problem at hand, it releases you from bright-kid syndrome, from the illusion that you yourself are going to have every answer or fix the world. You understand that to do so is impossible. You are—at most—going to be one piece of that solution in a chain of many people that begins before you were born and continues after you die.
Her take on things is really smart, I think, and sums up a lot of what I’ve been struggling with for the last ten years: I can’t fix everything, but I have to stick to my core values and continue to do what’s right for my people and my little corner of the world.
This is a really interesting historical and technical background to the unique and sexy sound of Morphine, one of my dear departed favorite 90’s bands. I knew Mark Sandman played a heavily modified bass with two strings, but didn’t know he played everything with a slide—and the action on his strings so high.
I also like how the host goes into the interplay between Sandman and Dana Colley’s baritone sax and how the latter complimented both the bass and vocal melodies in such a unique way. There’s something about a tight group with a rock-solid drummer high in the mix that does it for me; see: Soul Coughing, Smashing Pumpkins, early Queens of the Stone Age. It also just occurred to me that Sandman died two years before I started this weblog.
Having seen the new Scout Motors models in person, and having talked directly to several of the company reps, I came away incredibly impressed with everything about them. But I haven’t put a $200 deposit down on either vehicle, as much as I’d like to. I have no idea what price point they’ll actually release at, but I’d wager it’ll start somewhere in the mid-$50K range, which is just too expensive for our family to justify. I would definitely go for the Traveler model at this point, as much as I’d like a pickup truck; the small dimensions of the bed pretty much negate any advantage having an outside box would bring. The primary reason I bought the Travelall was to have a 4-door SUV with hauling capabilities, and that need hasn’t changed any.
However, Slate is coming out with a no-frills EV truck platform they swear will start at $25K. it’s supposed to get about 200 miles of range, which is more than enough for 95% of the driving we typically do every year. And it’s customizable, where adding an extra $4K would build an SUV-style truck. This is more my budget and style; as much as I’d love a Traveler with the range extender, I see a Slate fitting in my driveway—and my wallet—a lot easier. We’ll see how it shakes out.
Tim Cook told the Wall Street Journal that Apple will have to raise its prices due to the skyrocketing demand for RAM and storage.
“Unfortunately, price increases are unavoidable,” he said. “We’re doing our best to mitigate the huge increases that are being passed to us, and we’ve been trying to shield our customers from the increases, but the situation has become unsustainable.”
I’m feeling pretty good about pulling the trigger on this new MacBook Air. It’s made editing videos much quicker, and I know it’ll be a solid workhorse for the next four or five years. Meanwhile, the M2 Air I got back from the estimator is now my walk-around machine, something I’m not afraid to bring out into the garage to look things up or follow a video tutorial on.
I spent the entire Juneteenth weekend at hard labor, taking advantage of unseasonably mild mid-June weather. The temperatures were in the mid-80’s but with little to no humidity, which made being outside pleasant, even if I was swinging Dad’s mattock into our rock-hard topsoil. We inherited a bunch of poorly-poured concrete sidewalks with this house, which I’ve slowly been removing over time, and this weekend I broke up and hauled out a section sitting right in front of the basement stairwell, itself a poured concrete structure set into the side of the house. During heavy rainstorms, water would over the top of the saturated grass and down the slab, which had settled backwards towards the house, up and over the edge of the stairwell and down into the basement. This was a primary cause of flooding during both of the 100-year storm events we shared with Ellicott City, requiring Jen and I to man the bilge pumps and shop-vac to bail out the house.
After knocking the slab into sections (it was only 2″ thick at its deepest) I hauled it over to the driveway and stacked it for future disposal. Then I trenched out a 8″ area around the stairwell about 14″ deep, built some plywood forms, and mixed 8 cubic yards of concrete to pour, bringing the next step up another 5″. I had to go out twice for more ready-mix, because the both internet and the instructions on the bag were completely incorrect for estimating how much I’d need. I also used the mattock to break up a section of topsoil where another area of sidewalk had been, mixed in some new lawn soil, and laid out a piece of sad-looking sod in the hopes that it will root and take. by 6PM I was beat, and after a shower I took it easy for the rest of the evening.
Saturday we were back at it, beginning the day by filling the back of the Scout full of garbage for a dump run. The County is getting squirrelly about everything, so I had to take the time to cut all of the wood down to 18″ sections, which took time. Jen and I went over to the church to break down the steel rack she’d bought to store donated food, and we continued working on the rest of the sidewalk, as well as excavating a section of lawn next to the garage for a new planter. I drank about five gallons of water and might have peed a thimbleful all day.
Sunday we got back at it, employing Finn with the mattock to finish up the sidewalk planting while Jen and I scoped out the garage planter. By about 4:00 we had the trench dug, lined with landscaping cloth, and filled with eight bags of river stones. All of this excavation yielded about six wheelbarrows full of extra dirt, so we spread it on the far side of the garage, cleaned up our tools, and went inside. Jen heated up our dinner and the girls went out to bring me back a shake for dessert, which I sipped on while laying on the couch on the front porch, a nervous dog snoozing under my feet.
This morning I’m moving slowly. My brain is foggy, and my joints are stiff. It feels good to have a lot of long-gestating projects closer to done, but that took a lot out of me.
I posted a trip log on the Scout site recapping the weekend, as well as a video. This year I didn’t shoot as many videos or photos as in years past, which was strange, but I like to think I spent more of my time enjoying myself, talking with friends, and just generally being in the moment. That’s a nice change.
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.
This is a recording of Underworld’s full set from EDC Las Vegas in May. Everything, Everything got me through a rough patch when I’d been laid off for the first time back in 2000, and their back catalog was the soundtrack to my later coding career. Great repetitive, melodic song structure, perfect for doing a bunch of molly and dancing until sunrise, or shutting off one side of the brain to deep focus for six hours straight.
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I got word from the second-party evaluator that the MacBook Air I sent in as a trade, which was initially quoted as being worth $485, was, according to them, only worth $85. They claimed there was damage to the screen (there is nothing wrong with the screen) and that there was damage to the case larger than 2 inches (there is one ding on the front edge of the case less than 1/4″ tall). I told them to send me my perfectly good machine back.
I’m not quite sure what to do with it, honestly; I originally figured I’d list it myself on Marketplace for $500 to see if I could recoup some money, but now I’m wondering if I should hang on to it as a secondary unit.
Jen has been quietly doing A Thing for the last four years, and it has been growing steadily in size and scope. She got involved collecting food donations for local elementary schools so that kids would have meals over the summer break; a little-known fact is that here in the US roughly 15% of school-age kids experience food insecurity. She started putting the word out and collecting donations at the church across the street, and last year we wound up with a half a ton of food stored on our front porch. She and another friend then divided our dining room in half to split the food out equally, and they dropped it off a few weeks before the end of the school year.
This year, she was able to double the amount of food collected; carefully organizing, weighing and storing the donations by category, she wound up with a literal ton of food. Realizing she couldn’t split it all out by herself, she organized a volunteer effort on Saturday morning to divide, repackage, and move it into vehicles for delivery Monday morning.
One of the deliveries filled every available inch of the Scout. The other delivery was split between three normal cars, because a quarter-ton of food made the springs in the CR-V sag to the bump stops.
We are all exhausted from the logistics, planning, execution, and delivery, but I couldn’t be prouder of Jen and the work she put into this. And please, donate to a food pantry near you if at all possible; kids can’t learn or study when they’re hungry.