Book reviews for October 2015
Make Me (Jack Reacher #20) by Lee Child
3/5
Everything you need in a Reacher book, and nothing you don't. Too well oiled.
Microsoft you are literally killing me. Please tell me there is a reason.
Windows 10 has had a reorg of notifications. People in Redmond have spent quality time thinking about how and when to bother me. User experiences have been imagined, focus grouped, re-imagined, tested, pushed out to beta, revised, polished and finally shipped in a heaping turd of time wasting.
After one of the never ending reboots following some critical update or other I get a nice popup to let me know that updates were installed:
I'm not sure this is the most important news I'll read all day but fine, thank you and I click the little x to dismiss.
Windows at this point knows that it's told me about the updates, and it knows that I've seen the message because I took the time to actively dismiss it.
So why is this now in the Action Center:
I have to acknowledge my latest helping of updates all over again. It's the sort of double confirmation I'd really value before inadvertently nuking Belgium but for pretty much anything I've ever seen in Action Center it's overkill. It's causing the most anger I've had with an Operating System since I had to Google how to shut down Windows 8.
Windows 10 is on 110 million devices. Assuming a reboot a week and three seconds per device spent dismissing the extra message we're looking at a cost of $28 million a year (at US GDP). Microsoft has said it expects a billion Windows 10 devices in 2-3 years. Even at global average GDP that's $64 million down the drain.
It's not a quirky design decision, it's a class action lawsuit waiting to happen.
Smart people must have spent time on this. Please tell me why?
(Published to the Fediverse as: Updates were installed... #etc #microsoft #update #windows Why does Windows 10 make you dismiss notifications twice? Genuinely, if you know leave a comment. I'm curious. )
3/5
Everything you need in a Reacher book, and nothing you don't. Too well oiled.
Photo of downtown San Francisco seen through a crack in the rocks at Corona Heights Park.
(Published to the Fediverse as: Corona Heights #photo #sanfrancisco Photo of Sa Francisco from Corona Heights Park in San Francisco, California. )
My new hobby: finding photos of myself on Google Street View.
Updated 2016-08-04 17:57:
Updated 2018-01-07 10:40:
(Published to the Fediverse as: Street View #photo #streetview The art of self stalking on Google Street View )
Andy Goldsworthy's Spire sculpture in the Presidio of San Francisco (before it was badly damaged by fire).
(Published to the Fediverse as: Spire #photo #presidio Photo of Spire, the Andy Goldsworthy sculpture in the Presidio of San Francisco. )
Video of hypothetical sea level rise through 2407 set to the theme tune from Buck Rogers.
(Published to the Fediverse as: 25th Centuary #etc #video Them tune from Buck Rogers in the 25th Centuary showing hypothetical sea level rise until 2407. )
5/5
I wanted to like The Atrocity Archives more than I did (which is still quite a bit)... I'm glad I pressed on to The Jennifer Morgue which is a tight spy thriller, a send up of spy thrillers and manages to be funny and moving in turns. I'm stuck in for the duration of the Laundry Files at this point.
4/5
Autumn begins right now in the northern hemisphere, Spring for the hemispherically challenged. Rendered in Catfood Earth (Windows, Android).
Catfood Weather 2.20 fixes a problem with the forecast failing to update (the National Weather Service changed the URL of the web service that Catfood Weather uses and while they were kind enough to put a redirect in place it was a form of redirect that didn't play nicely with WebClient so a patch is needed).
In addition this release should fix the ignore alerts feature. It's one of those cases that after not having looked at the code for a couple of years I suddenly realized that the implementation was fatally flawed (bordering on idiotic) and could never have worked. Should be better now.
Download Catfood Weather 2.20.
(Published to the Fediverse as: Catfood Weather 2.20 #code #weather Catfood Weather 2.20 is a critical update that fixes the forecast and also corrects the ignore alerts feature. )
An update to my previous sunset sunset timelapse, this time with better colors and in 4K. It's sunset over the Sunset District in San Francisco.
(Published to the Fediverse as: Sunset sunset 4k #timelapse #sunset #sanfrancisco #4k #video Timelapse of sunset over the Sunset District in San Francisco shot in 4K )
Download a Sharepoint File with GraphServiceClient (Microsoft Graph API)
Which PG&E rate plan works best for EV charging?
Export Google Fit Daily Steps, Weight and Distance to a Google Sheet
Accessing Printer Press ESC to cancel
Google Photos killed my Aura Frame
Monitor page index status with Google Sheets, Apps Script and the Google Search Console API