Finished reading: Dust by Hugh Howey 📚

Here are the books I finished reading in 2024. Lots of Star Wars. 2025 is the last year of the High Republic series 😕

Decided to go back and document my Wordle misses. Thankfully I message my mother-in-law with my results so it was easy to track down some of these,.

Finished White Lotus Season 2. It was another great season although it always makes me anxious watching all the bad behavior.

Finally got around to playing Journey. Installed it on Vision Pro connected a controller and set my environment to White Sands. The game was fantastic and is such a work of art.

Last week, I updated my MacBook Pro to macOS Sequoia 15.2, which introduced the new Image Playground app. I immediately began creating images of people from my extensive photo library of over 100,000 images. The intuitive interface guides you through the process of crafting an image.

In the initial step, you select a person from the “People” section of your photo library. However, the list isn’t sorted, which can be a bit challenging to find a specific individual. Once you’ve chosen a person, you’ll be presented with various options. I found that the initial image generated for the selected person is quite satisfactory until you explore the other suggestions. At that point, none of the options seem quite right. After selecting one that resonates with you, you can start building the final image by adding prompts.

By this stage, you’ve seen numerous variations of the person, and none of them appear quite right. However, eventually, you’ll find something you’re happy with. After completing the image and hitting “Done,” it’s added to the main window of the app.

It’s only at this point that you realize how strikingly similar the new images are to the people. It must be some form of human brain image recognition that enhances the image’s recognition when placed alongside dissimilar images. The more you revisit the image, the more it resembles the person.

Overall, it was a delightful evening spent creating images of various individuals. While I’m not sure it’ll become a regular activity, I could see myself occasionally revisiting the app to observe the improvements in the models.

Finished reading: Aurora by David Koepp 📚

Just finished watching Season 1 of The Penguin. It was a well paced dark show with a solid ending.

Finished reading: Star Wars: The High Republic: Tears of the Nameless by George Mann 📚

Guess what? Portsmouth has a new Chik-fil-a, but it’s super busy, so I opted for Dave’s Hot Chicken instead. Can you believe how many people were there? Maybe they were craving chicken just like me!

I noticed dripping water near the furnace in basement and looked up to see a rusting component with water dripping. We called plumbers for help but nobody responded, but after a call with my father in-law it sounded like we could replace it ourselves. So yesterday we found one at our local Lowe’s and Kaleb and I installed it. The hardest part was getting the old one out of there because the bolts were so rusted.

Just finished up two new seasons on Apple TV+, Slow Horses and Bad Monkey. Slow Horses is still great although I felt it was missing something from previous seasons. Bad Monkey was a fun ride and I loved all of the characters, well except for Eve of course.

The new iPhone Mirroring app in Sequoia is great. When can we get it in VisionOS?

I can’t wait until they bring iPhone Screen Mirroring to Vision Pro.

Second softball game of the season for me and the team’s first win. HR, 2B, 1B, 2BB, 4 runs scored. Final score 22-10 in 6 innings.

I took a solo trip up north today and climbed East Osceola. I was at the lot by 7:30 and back at the car by 11. It was steep with boulders for the last third but I made it. The rain started just as I got back to the car.

I downloaded the first VisionOS 2 beta and even though there aren’t dramatic changes, the little quality of life improvements like re-arranging home screen icons and new hand gestures for the home screen are great. The ability to change any photo into a Spatial photo is magical.

Finished reading: Star Wars: The High Republic: Escape from Valo by Daniel José Older 📚

If you are setting up an Apple Watch for the first time, here are some tips for getting the most out of your watch

Navigation

The Apple Watch has two buttons, the Digital Crown and the Side Button. It also supports other swiping and long press gestures.

• Digital Crown
  • Pressing the Digital Crown will show the App View.
    
  • Turning the Digital Crown while you are looking at the time will show you some action tiles and eventually show the list of apps.
• Side Button
  • Pressing the Side Button will show Control Center.
    
  • Double clicking on the Side Button will show Apple Pay.
• Swiping down from the top of the screen will show Notification Center
• Watch Face Edit View is launched by long pressing on the watch face
  • Scroll the digital crown to switch to a different watch face
  • Click Edit to make changes to a watch face

Recommended Changes

Out of the box a lot of the settings Apple has chosen are great, but there are a few adjustments I make for a better experience.

1. Turn on Silent Mode so it won’t make sounds via Control Center
2. Try out the Find my Phone functionality also in control center, the icon is a phone with sound waves coming out of it
3. The Watch app on the iPhone makes it really easy to configure the settings on your watch and also to manage your watch faces
4. Set up Apple Pay on your watch because it is way easier than having to take your phone out
5. Enable Bold Text in Settings > Display & Brightness for better readability of text
6. Turn on Prominent Haptics in Settings > Sounds & Haptics, this will give you a bigger vibration when prior to the normal vibration
7. Update the Siri settings, I like to have “Hey Siri” and Raise to Speak disabled, but leave it on for pressing the Digital Crown
8. Change the App view to List View, by pressing the digital crown and scrolling to the bottom of the view and pressing List View OR via Settings > App View
9. Disable reminders for the Mindfulness app so it won’t ask how you are doing twice a day
10. Disable reminders for the Handwashing app so you won’t get notified every time you wash your hands for less than 20 seconds
11. Disable “Start Workout Reminder” in Workout app settings, this means you won’t be prompted if you are just walking around and I think it might also save a little battery life too.

The Apple Music Top 100 Albums is super cool and makes me want to discover new music, unfortunately you can’t view the entire list inside Apple Music and have to use the website to view the complete list. After you sign in the music plays in the web browser instead of the Apple Music app. 👎👎

Amazing views of the Aurora Borealis from my own backyard last night.

Finished reading: Star Wars: The High Republic: Defy the Storm by Tessa Gratton 📚

Finished reading: Smuggler’s Run by Greg Rucka 📚

I got a Meta Quest 3 for Christmas and have really enjoyed testing out different features, but one of my favorite things has been viewing 360 degree panoramic photos from my DJI Mavic Air 2S drone. Here is an example of a panoramic photo over San Francisco

It is really cool to put on the Quest and be able to look all around from a fixed spot in the air. I went out yesterday to took some near different bridges on the Merrimack river. Here are some regular photos I took while there.

Here are the books I finished reading in 2023.