Try again…

This is too funny not to share. I found a very old iPhone and plugged it in. Once charged, this was the message that came up on the screen:

“iPhone is disabled try again in 25,931,376 minutes”

That’s 49.3 years! What generation iPhone do you think will be available in early 2071? Not that it matters to me because I highly doubt I’ll be living to the ripe old age of 103.

How many times do you have to fail trying a password to get penalized that many minutes? Who wrote that program? So many questions… and not enough time! 😜

Eye of the beholder

I did a little digging and found this:

The proverb, ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder‘ is attributed to Margaret Hungerford who was an Irish novelist.Hungerford lived between 1855 and 1897, and she tended to write using a pen name: ‘The Duchess’. In her novel ‘Molly Bawn’ (her most well known book), she included the idiom ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder‘.

Plato said something similar, but the Hungerford quote was the one I was looking for.

In our basement my wife put up a painting and I really dislike it. To her, it matches everything nicely and she likes it.

To me it isn’t art.

I’m not opposed to abstract art. There are abstract paintings I can appreciate, and like. But to me this isn’t art. It’s visual noise. It feels more like a distraction than an attraction. I don’t see an artist expressing themselves, I see a mess of paint on a canvas.

While I believe beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder, I also think art has an innate beauty. I can look at a photograph and tell you that it is good, or I can tell you that it is poorly composed, or that it is beautiful even if the subject matter isn’t.

I think abstract art is like that too, and I think this painting was not done by a good artist, or even if it was, it certainly wasn’t one of their best works. I’ve threatened to paint over it. My wife isn’t amused.

If you know an abstract artist (and you admire their work), please ask them what they think of this painting without an explanation first. I’m interested to see if they agree that this isn’t good art, or if it’s simply true that beauty lies in the eye of the beholder and I’m simply not beholden to the beauty of this piece.

Living in a Faraday cage

Our house was built in the early 1960’s. The good news, no asbestos in our walls, so we don’t have a massive abatement cost added to an already expensive renovation. The bad news, the plaster/drywall has wire mesh in it.

We used to complain to our phone service providers that the coverage was bad in our area, they even came with trucks outside our house to test reception. But it turns out it’s just bad reception in our house. We are basically living inside a Faraday cage, with large dead zones. ‘Dark’ areas where signals can’t reach or be sent out by our phones because we are surrounded by a metal cage in our walls. Hopefully the center wall on the main floor being removed will make this better.

Currently, when using a cell phone in my house I’m reminded of when we used to be tied to a specific location where the phones were on tables or were connected to the wall. I would be walking around talking to someone and the line goes silent. I would then need to backtrack to where I last had the signal and hope that I wasn’t disconnected. Once I’m reconnected, I have to stay locked in that one spot.

For most people mobile phones are mobile, but in my house we are still tethered to specific locations. For those of you that have nostalgia for the old days, this isn’t as much fun as it might sound.

Ain’t no such thing

I was having a text conversation with a friend and he accidentally used the wrong punctuation, and then corrected himself. But I read it as him answering his own question.

I hope so?

So!

He meant to say ‘I hope so!’ As in I hope I can make it. I interpreted it as him hoping so but not sure? Then being sure and saying, ‘So!’ As in yes I can. Mainly because I wasn’t watching my phone and didn’t know the messages came one right after the other, thinking there was a delay between the two. So we texted back and forth and he jokingly said, “And here I go thinking text communication is the most perfect and clear form of communication.”

Then I said, “In communication and transportation there ain’t no such thing as perfect.”

He replied, ‘Lol. Good one’, to which I replied, ‘Might be a blog post’.

Two things come to mind. First, the quote, “The meaning of your communication is the response that you get.” So even when you think you’ve communicated clearly if the response is unexpected, well then it wasn’t clear. Often we think we’ve conveyed a message clearly but when it isn’t received clearly, well then part of the blame does go to the communicator. This simple idea helps me be more patient and thoughtful when my communication is not received as I expected.

Secondly, there is no form of transportation that is close to perfect. If anything is traveling from point A to point B, an accident can happen… even if that accident isn’t caused by the transportation of choice. A simple example of this would be imagining that there were a (almost) perfect and safe way to get from A to B, but during the travel a tornado hit the vehicle. If something is being transported, the method of transportation is not perfect.

So, in communication and transportation we can expect mistakes and accidents.

Mistakes in communication can be made up for by being responsive, and by knowing that mistakes happen. Accidents in transportation will happen and there needs to be safety protocols and contingency plans. For example, I’m not against pipelines, but I think that companies that want oil as a natural resource should have to create a billion dollar cleanup fund for accidents that will eventually happen. If they say they can’t afford that, well then the government response shouldn’t be subsidies, but rather a response of, “The oil will be there when you can afford it.”

Perfect communication? Perfect transportation? I really don’t think so!

Old locks

While packing things away for our renovation, I came across a my collection of old locks that I purchased at different markets in China. These locks are simple when it comes to operation, but complex in design and artistry.

My favourite of these are the combination locks:

The last of these I can’t get open despite having the combination.

My wife loved going to all the open markets when we visited a new city, and spending a few hours shopping at them really bored me. That is, until I found one of these locks and started looking for more. Suddenly I had a reason to go and it didn’t bore me quite as much.

While the locks are all unique, I honestly have not looked into them too closely and they could range in age from over 500 years old to less than 50 years old, but my guess is they are not worth that much in the condition they are in. And, I probably paid too much for them anyway. Still, I didn’t buy them for their inherent value, I bought them for the adventure of looking for them and finding them.

These locks may not have a lot of financial value, but for a couple years living in China they unlocked the secret to being a happier shopper when my wife would drag me to yet another open market on our vacation adventures.

The death and rebirth of alone

I’m listening to Neil Postman’s ‘Amusing Ourselves to Death‘. I’ve shared the amazing cartoon based on the introduction before, looking at the contrast of the dystopian novels ‘Brave New World‘ by Huxley and ‘1984‘ by Orwell, and “the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.” I’ll share the comic again below.

But first, a thought about how we amuse ourselves with digital entertainment. I think that if Postman was alive today his fear of television as an entertainment distraction would have been exponentially magnified with the advent of the post Truth world that the internet and smartphone have propelled us into. In some ways this book feels dated, and in others prophetic. Television no longer has the grasp on everyone it did when this was written in 1985, but everything about Postman’s concerns are just amplified with entertainment and distraction constantly at our fingertips.

One thing this brought to mind is the fact that kids today are never bored, at least not bored like I was sometimes as a kid. I mean, I couldn’t contact my friends after school whenever I wanted, and I couldn’t choose something else to watch when nothing was on tv that I wanted to watch. I just got bored. Then I figured out a way to fill the time… by myself… all by myself as in ‘all alone’.

I don’t think kids today know how to be alone, but they certainly know how to be lonely. They are always connected yet feel disconnected. They are always ‘on show’ but many just feel ‘off’. They see social media of everyone’s best self, and feel like they can’t be that person themselves.

The new ‘alone’ is constantly connected, but always feeling alone.

—– —– —–

Writing that last sentence reminded me of a poem I wrote, ‘A Life Consumed‘.

Below is Postman’s Huxley/Orwell comparison I mentioned above.

Living in renovation chaos

We are close (and yet not close) to having our entire main floor empty… Boxed and tucked away in our basement and garage, to start our renovation of our main floor.


I have no idea if our plan of a kitchen/living room in our basement (with hot plate and laundry sink) while sleeping upstairs is going to work. Will we have to exit the basement door at the back and walk around to the front door to go upstairs? Or will we drag dust and renovation dirtiness with us as we enter and exit the under constitution main floor?

Permits are ready, and we just need a couple inspections and we are under way. We’ll get the last bit of the main floor cleared even though the last 10% feels like it doesn’t end, and then the chaos begins for a planned 5 month reno… which by everyone’s experience with renovations before me actually means seven months.

No matter how I look at it, there will be no ‘normal’ happening in my life for the next half-year. I just need to remember and focus on the end result and the chaos will all be worth it.

Voices, Ambition, and Action

“Today we need the correct mix of voices, ambition, and action. Do some leaders in this world believe that they can survive and thrive on their own? Have they not learned from the pandemic? Can there be peace and prosperity if one third of the world literally prospers, and the other two thirds of the world live under siege, and face calamitous threats to our well-being? What the world needs now my friends, is that which is in the ambit of less than 200 persons, who are willing and prepared to lead. Leaders must not fail those who elect them to lead.” ~ PM Mia Mottley

Take a few minutes out of your day and listen to Barbados Prime Minister, Mia Mottley’s entire speech, which not only shares the eloquence above, but also an attainable strategy to fight global warming.


Well beyond enjoying the lilt of her Bajan 🇧🇧 accent, reminding me of home, this entire speech is a calling to those in power to take action on climate change.

— — —

I also really appreciate when intelligent people use a word I don’t know, and then I look up the definition to discover that it is indeed a better word than any that I would have used:

ambit

ăm′bĭt

noun
  1. Sphere or scope, as of influence. synonym: range.
  2. An external boundary; a circuit.
  3. Compass or circuit; circumference; boundary: as, the ambit of a fortification or of a country.

A short clip on kindness

Take a couple minutes out of your day and enjoy this story by @therichb on TikTok: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZM8xFUYDm/

It’s amazing how small acts of kindness can spread joy, not just for the person receiving the kindness, but for the giver as well… even if it’s done without recognition.

Here’s another video to make your day:

Spread love and kindness, it’s good for you!