My wife and I bought e-bikes this year, and we agreed that that purchase was really a highlight of 2022 for us. That lead me down the road of buying more and more accessories for them: a rack for the car, weatherproof mittens that stay on the handle bars, even a thermally insulated bag to carry a pizza box home. That’s why I had a good chuckle at the headline of Bicycling’s review of the Ford F-150 Lightning: “The Ultimate e-bike Accessory”. Well, at nearly $100k, I sure hope that’s the end of the e-bike accessory market. The review is a good read, especially if you’re also interested in eventually converting to some EV and intend to take it out for a day to hike or bike.
The Hum Goes on Forever – The Wonder Years
The Wonder Years are a band that just keep getting better. The previous album, Sister Cities shifted a bit from their signature pop-punk to painting sonic landscapes (witness “We Look Like Lightning”). There are a handful of moments on this album that reflect that growth (“You’re the Reason I Don’t Want The World to End”), but overall this feels like a return to form; for instance, the intro to “Old Friends Like Lost Teeth” will never fail to get me pumped the same way “Local Man Ruins Everything” does.
Favorite Albums of 2022
In no particular order, these are the albums I really enjoyed this year. Over the coming days and weeks, I’ll write a bit more about a few of the albums below, if I have more to say about them than just this simple recommendation.
The Hum Goes on Forever – The Wonder Years
Midnights – Taylor Swift
Bring Funny in a Foreign Language – The 1975
Asphalt Meadows – Death Cab for Cutie
Voyeurist – Underoath
The End, So Far – Slipknot
Harry’s House – Harry Styles
All The Truth I Can Tell – Dashboard Confessional
some kind of peace – piano reworks – Olafur Arnalds
Glass Onion
What a fun movie. Both this movie, and Knives Out are awfully fantastical, but in truly the best way. The way Rian Johnson weaves together multiple story lines, frequently changing the meaning of words between the first and second time you witness a conversation, is just magical. The plot of both films feels a little absurd at times in some twists, but if you allow yourself to suspend your disbelief, they really are a fun ride.
Similar to Knives Out, the film revolves around its fantastic ensemble cast. The only returning character from Knives Out is Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc, the protagonist and a world renowned detective. I don’t recall the characters in the first film being tied so deeply into modern discourse, however this film certainly is. For instance, Kate Hudson plays a clueless model that simply can’t help making offensive and racist remarks; however, she thinks she is simply saying what everyone else is thinking. Similarly, Dave Bautista plays a mens’ rights activist that we are introduced to as he rants about the “Breast-ification” of America. Edward Norton’s character is somewhere between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg on the narcissistic-tech-billionaire spectrum, which makes his bullshit instantly recognizable to the audience, while still fun and new.
Lastly, the cinematography in this film is just as great as Knives out. The colors and lighting are always fantastic, and really immerse you in the scene. There’s one particular moment, which I won’t spoil entirely, where Edward Norton’s character is leaning into a darkened foreground as you can see a perfectly lit Benoit Blanc in the background. Really fantastic stuff, given what will be revealed later in the film.
Mastodon
Just joined Mastodon as a back-up in case Twitter implodes
NINE
Blink–182’s new album, NINE, is great. It’s a cool blend of California and the Mark half of untitled (think “Go” and “Here’s Your Letter”, rather than “Asthenia” and “I’m Lost Without You”). The stand outs for me are “The First Time”, “Pin the Grenade”, and “No Heart to Speak Of”. I even like “I Really Wish I Hated You” much more within the sequence of this album, rather than as a stand alone single.
https://open.Spotify.com/album/4gARZz9eV7zbGbtOjhVTPF?si=M98gko1dROO0ejY2JSFkdA
Hello Exile Singles
The Menzingers have released three songs from their upcoming album Hello Exile, and all of them are great. The standout of the pack for me is “Anna”, which does an incredible job weaving together a sweet and sad story of love and longing. Really looking forward to the album’s release.
Hereditary
My wife and I saw Hereditary when it was released in theaters in 2018. I recall enjoying it – it definitely had a few great shocking and spooky moments. However, I didn’t “get” the ending. It felt like the last 5 minutes took a hard left turn.
We rewatched the movie a week or so ago, and wow is that movie better the second time around. Given that we had a year gap between the first and second viewing, the surprising moments still had a bit of a punch, but we also had a completely new perspective on the characters and their motivations. Great movie.
My favorite Mac utilities
Its been a while since I’ve written on here, and I’ve had a few friends lately ask about utilities I run on my Mac, so I thought I’d share some of my favorites. These aren’t all of them, but these are my favorites.
Bartender 3, $15
Bartender 3 is what make this list work. Bartender hides all of the utilities I run in the background, so that I don’t have to see them. ⌥+Space later, and all of the utilities running in the background are revealed.
Greenshot, $2
Greenshot is a great and easy utility for screenshots, and there is a Mac and Windows version, which is great is you a Mac at home and Windows at work, like me. I’ve got mine set up to bring up the screenshot crosshairs with F1, then send to screenshot to my clipboard. I even used it to take the screenshots used above!
Tripmode, $8
Tripmode is a utility to modulate data use when tethered to a smartphone. The Mac makes it very easy to connect to a smartphone for data when traveling, but none of the apps on your computer (like Dropbox, iCloud, Google Drive, etc.) know that you’re on a network with a data cap. Tripmode solves this by allowing the user to determine which apps can use data, and these settings can be network-specific.
BetterSnapTool, $3
BetterSnapTool emulates the Windows 7 feature of snapping windows to one side of a screen. Although the Mac now has a native split screen mode, this wasn’t always the case, and BetterSnapTool brought this useful functionality to the Mac with lots of customization. I use it to simply split my screen for a moment, but if I’ll be using a split screen for a while, I’ll typically use the native Mac feature.
Amphetamine, Free
Ever need your laptop to finish something and not go to sleep. Well, Amphetamine will keep you awake.
Turbo Boost Switcher Pro, $10
I got this one from a great episode for ATP. Basically, if I’m using my laptop in “laptop” mode, I want great battery life and I’m unlikely to be doing anything computationally expensive. If I’m sitting at my desk and plugged in, I want my laptop to be as fast as possible. Turbo Boost Switcher Pro does this by enabling and disabling Turbo Boost, which pushes your CPU past its base clock speed at the expense of battery life, based on whether your computer is plugged in or not. Better battery life when using the battery, better functionality when on power. Marco Arment has a good post on this too.
Parallels, $80
Okay, Parallels isn’t really a utility, but I think its at least worth mentioning. Parallels is a Virtual Machine software, which means you can other operating systems within Parallels on your Mac. This is another indispensable app that I need from time to time, when I need to run a Windows specific application. Parallels gets an upgrade every year, and I’ve sort of put myself on an every-other year upgrade cycle. Those seem to have big benefits in how resource intensive Parallels can be.
CleanMyMac X, $40
CleanMyMac X will, hold on for this one, clean up your Mac. Dump your RAM, clean out Caches, empty your trash, etc., all in one fell swoop.
Screens Connect, Free (iOS counterpart is $20)
Screens is a great iOS app that I use to connect back to my Mac. Screens Connect is the Mac end that lets my access my Mac from my iPhone or iPad when I’m out and about.
1Password, $5/month for five accounts
I love 1Password. 1Password is a password storage app, which keeps track of all your passwords and will generate random passwords for all your accounts, on all of your devices. Theres a version of 1Password for every operating system. They even have a feature to inform you if a website where. you have an account is hacked! This is another one that is absolutely indispensable for me.
Backblaze, $50/machine/year
Back-ups are a part of any healthy digital life. Backblaze will back up as much as you can give it for $50 a year. This is mostly for a worst case scenario. If my laptop and my local backup were to fail, all my data is also stored at Backblaze.
Time Machine, Free
This is the only 1st party utility on this list, and it’s for a good reason. Time Machine is great, simple, and reliable back up solution for the Mac. At a minimum, you can plug in a hard drive and it’ll back up everything new. At its best, you can point it to a NAS and back up wirelessly every hour.
FruitJuice, $10
FruitJuice is just a handy utility to track battery health. It’ll send little push notifications asking you to unplug your laptop from time to time, and with updates for how much battery life you have. In addition, it tracks how many cycles your battery has, and its overall health.
Sister Cities
The Wonder Years are a band to grow up with. Every album has caught me at a specific point in life where you’ve learned more about life, and you’re not quite sure how to handle it. Their catalogue is basically just a diary of growing up, starting with a stereotypical “I want to get out of this town” pop-punk album, to an album about community, then the weight of becoming an adult, then social responsibility. Their most recent album Sister Cities is an album about grief and absence.
The lyrics to the album masterfully weave together metaphors across tracks to describe appreciation and longing for your loved ones while you’re grieving. The opener “Raining in Kyoto” sets the tone for the record lyrically – desparation and longing for your loved ones when you’re far away and grieving: “Raining in Kyoto. I’m starting to shake. They’ll hold your service tomorrow. I’m an ocean away.”
I’ve really grabbed on to how the album uses colors to set the scene and feeling. Its as though the lyrics describe those moments you tell yourself to take in the scenery and appreciate where you are, despite whatever is going. Thats a constant theme of this album: taking a moment away from grief to appreciate who is still there, but to still feel that grief. Its a fine line to walk, but this record does it skillfully.
This album isn’t as instantly accessible as Surburbia I’ve Given You All, and Now I’m Nothing, and thats okay. Sister Cities needs you to chew a bit and sink into what they songs are about. The album’s closer “The Ocean Grew Hands to Hold Me” ties all of the metaphors through the record together, which gives the previous songs significantly more meaning, and begs you to listen again. While we’re having a rainy spring time in the Pacific Northwest, I think thats just what I’ll do.
At Ken 