My work from home setup is perhaps different from some.

I've gone with laptop only and like the freedom of moving around the house. With the kiddo in virtual schooling, being able to sit down at the dining room table on a whim is great. As are video calls from the stairs/bedroom/breakfast-nook/patio etc

My body has not reacted with the same enthusiasm.

In the before times, I drove to my office, had a "normal" external monitor/keyboard/trackpad setup. Now I type solely on my MacBook Pro keyboard. It's super convenient to have the laptop on various tabletops or just my own lap.

My arms are telling me another story.

For one other surprise 2020 has brought me is RSI. Specifically Tennis Elbow of all things. The angle of my arms as I type isn't helping. Short term I'm taking anti-inflammatory medicine, icing my elbow, and wearing one of those forearm brace thingers.

Clearly I need to re-assess my posture as I move around the house.

I know, I says to myself, I'll update my Mac to Catalina. It's been out for a while, and lots of bugs likely fixed by now.

Right?

Mail.app is a shitshow. Data loss with empty message bodies. I've never been more annoyed at an OS update in my life. In a nutshell, I've experienced what is described here. Perfect storm of Microsoft Exchange and a local Mail rule to move messages to a local folder.

The "fix" is to move away from local folders and rules. Instead, create a rule on the Exchange server to move the email to a folder before Mail.app downloads anything. If I hadn't stumbled across that, I would have thrown my laptop in the ocean restored Mojave from backup.

So there's two hours of my life I'm never getting back. Thanks Apple for the stellar quality control.

This past weekend was the hottest so far this year.

Summers in the desert. pic.twitter.com/gL4OgAjyw3

— Kevin Spencer (@kevin_spencer) July 11, 2020

Not having any humidity is the key. For while it does hit you like an oven, you can stay outside for longer than you'd think before starting to sweat. Compare that to the East Coast and, really, I don't know how people in Florida do it. Instantly drenched when you take three steps.

When it gets this hot, there are some fun outdoor cooking stories of course. This Reddit thread from r/phoenix has a couple good examples. From frying eggs in a pan, to baking cookies on your dashboard. The first one I've done, the second is a bloody fantastic idea.

While it's supposed to be our Monsoon Season, we haven't had any rain since April 11th. And no fun lightning storms to watch.

John Gruber had a post on Woodrow Wilson's racism.

It’s absolutely flabbergasting to compare these basic facts to what I learned about Woodrow Wilson in high school, which was more or less just the facts of World War I and that Wilson’s spearheading of the League of Nations was noble.

What we're taught in school vs reality is something I've thought about for a while. In England it was no different of course. No mention of the negative side of empire building. No mention of atrocities, no mention of the role in the slave trade.

A few weeks back the statue of Bristol slave trader Edward Colsten was torn down. My immediate reaction was "who?". Which is a terrible thing to admit, but that part of history was just skipped over in the classroom.

Years ago I read Howard Zinn's A People's History Of The United States which paints a rather different story of how America was settled. The genocide of the Native American people in stark contrast to the glorification of history in print and on screen.

Learning about what actually happened is really important. The more of this we can teach in schools, the more each generation can tear down monuments both figuratively and literally. Public holidays, building names, flags, and statues celebrating crimes against humanity should not be tolerated.

As a self confessed music nut, I've owned more headphones in my lifetime than I can possibly recall. I can think of no other gadget I've used more in every day life. I've likely spent a wee bit of money on them if I'm honest, the cats…they chew. What are you gonna do?

I've been partial to in ear monitor headphones for years. When you get them fit just right, there's nothing better. I had a not really that cheap pair of Shure sound isolating chaps for years until they gave up the ghost. Um, someone decided to leave them on the floor and tread on them.

These days, Apple Airpods Pro are in my ears every day.

The Good:

Sound quality is excellent. Not Shure excellent, but they're really good. Noise cancellation just works, but flipping to what Apple calls 'Transparency' mode allows outside noise in. Super handy for when you need to hear your own voice on conference calls. Auto connect as you put them in your ears nice. Pulling either air pod out of your ear pauses the music like magic. No cable means nothing cats can chew on.

Take Some Getting Used To:

My first foray into the world of bluetooth headphonery. There's still some room for improvement for the switching between devices. I find I play a game of "no I want to connect them to my Mac, not my phone" more often than I'd like. Remembering to charge them.

Overall I'm very impressed. I suspect it will all be fun & games until one of the cats decide to bat an airpod under the fridge.

As a RSS refugee from the olden times, I've used more aggregators than I can possibly remember. Most recently Reeder on top of feedbin and have been pretty happy with that setup for a few years.

But I got a bit bored with all that and wanted to give something else a try. Enter Tiny Tiny RSS.

Open source, self hosted web app with community themes. As long as you have a host and a DB, you point the installer at it, import your OPML file, add the cron job to crawl for updates and then it "just works".

Hey @kapgar, look what I'm reading.

There are more TV shows than you can possibly watch in your lifetime. Yet should you wish to try, here are some that I loved and you will too.

Hunters. It's 1970s New York, and we follow a band of Nazi hunters led by Al Pacino. Has a very Tarantino feel to it.

Fleabag. Recommended by friends, I had no idea what this was going to actually be about. Phoebe Waller-Bridge is just great in every way. After binge watching both seasons I could literally watch her give those looks to the camera all day long.

The Mandalorian. Want to see Dave Filoni make one of the best seasons, not only of Star Wars content, but sci-fi in general?

The Clone Wars. Want to see Dave do that again? Season 7, especially the ending four part arc, probably the best Star Wars content I've seen since The Empire Strikes Back.

The Expanse. Speaking of best sci-fi shows of all time, this is really up there with Battlestar Galactica. Even the disappointing big bad in season four can't sway my love of this. Beltalowda.

The Man In The High Castle. Alternate history timeline. What if the Germans won World War II and the US became the American Reich?

There's something about the morning, just sitting outside with your coffee. Soon there will be Slack, and email, and video calls.

But for now. Breathe.

I got one for Christmas. Turns out I love fizzy water, and you can pry this thing from my cold dead hands.

• No matter what room I'm in, my laptop power cable is always in the other room. See also: phone, reading glasses, heroin needle.

• Oliver Chesler, The Horrorist and one of the "bus kids" in Depeche Mode's 101 was on an episode of Blind Test wherein songs are guessed.

• Got to the grocery store as it opened, acquired toilet paper, walked out with a strut like I just won the lottery.