Hiro.Report - 01OCT2023
Hiro.Report - 01Oct2023
Happy kick-off to Spooky Season to all who celebrate it! I've been ready for Fall since roughly mid-July, so I'm definitely diving head first in to the season.
On to the cool finds this week--
- 🧟♂️ Ghastly Ones: In the spirit of the season, the Ghastly Ones was a spooky surf rock band formed in LA back in the late 1990's, composed of a couple of Hollywood special FX make-up and monster movie creators. Their album, A-Haunting We Will Go-Go (Alt. YouTube Link) is the perfect soundtrack for upbeat Halloween decorating or mixing up some cocktails to enjoy over a scary movie. (PS If you're looking for more in this amazing genre, check out Satan's Pilgrims and, of course, Man... or Astroman?)
- 📰 County Highway: Courtesy of Michael Burkhardt, the County Highway is a print-only, "20-page broadsheet produced by actual human beings, containing the best new writing you will encounter about America. It features reports on the political and spiritual crises that are gripping our country and their deeper cultural and historical sources; regular columns about agriculture, civil liberties, animals, herbal medicine, and living off the grid, mentally and physically; essays about literature and art, and an entire section devoted to music." I'm sold.
- 🔎 Kagi: I've been on a crusade for a few years now to untangle Google from my life and data. After experimenting with many alternative search engines, I've finally found one that I'm actually really happy with-- Kagi. I've been using it for about 6 months now and am really pleased. They surface great search results, they let you set preferences for the specific sites you want them to prioritize when searching (e.g. Reddit and/or Wirecutter, for example) or ban the sites you don't want to see in results (e.g. if you never want to see Business Insider's SEO-oriented posts in your results), and they allow "bang" searches (e.g. searching "!wiki Albigensian Crusade" jumps straight to the Wikipedia article on the Crusade against the Cathars, rather than loading a list of results). Most importantly, they are privacy-oriented and have no ads. The catch? You pay a monthly subscription after a free trial of 100 searches. For me, it's totally worth it. (For more, Matt at A Better Computer just put out a great short video on it this week.)
- 💻 macOS Sonoma - 50 Best Features: Despite having watched the livestream of the launch announcement at WWDC earlier this year, I've been thinking of macOS Sonoma as a pretty minor, incremental update. After the official release this week, I was pleasantly surprised going through this MacRumors post that lists the top 50 new features in the OS. Lots of little delightful improvements and tips. As someone who works remote and does a lot of online presentations, the new Presenter Overlay feature looks awesome.
- 🎬 The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar: This was completely off my radar-- Wes Anderson made 4 short films based on Roald Dahl short stories for Netflix and they all released this week. I haven't gotten to watch yet, but the trailer seems to be hitting all the right notes to have my full attention.
Lastly, I'll leave you with the best pun I heard all week, courtesy of Alexander on Mastodon: "Beware visiting a French bakery, you're entering a world of pain."
Have a great week everyone!
Putting the iPhone 15 Pro's new 3x camera sensor to the test just after sunset, while inflight earlier this week.
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