I have learned a lot, but I’m often frustrated — Eventually we will live in a world where language translation is either automatic or unnecessary. That is, either everyone will speak a common language or our personal tech will translate anything accurately and easily. Our tech is not so very far from that latter choice. It’s good enough now to…

Maybe this one will be different? — In 1973, six years after our marriage, my wife and I bought our first house, a small Cape on a side street near a lake and the center of town. The unfinished second floor would become our older daughter's room and that of our second, born the next year. That…

The ‘feel good’ show that isn’t cheesy — I’m always late to the party. It’s a phrase I feel like I’ve typed or uttered many times recently, but alas, it’s true. In real life, I’m a punctual human. …

Advantages and disses — We already had a camera that points at our front porch, but because it needs to plug in, it peeks out through a window at a sharp angle and doesn’t get a good view. …

Because it doesn’t work as well — I get dizzy fairly easily. All it takes is a little bending over or standing up too quickly, and sometimes not even that, to set my head spinning. I’ve even fainted while just walking back to bed from getting a sip of water. Yes, yes, I’ve been to the doctor…

Yup. I bought one for my wife. — My poor wife and I are suffering from damaged hearing. That is, she has the damaged hearing, but both of us suffer because of it. She’s tried hearing aids. The first pair we bought from a local audiologist. They weren’t fancy ones, but still pretty pricey at around $1500 for…

You forgot all about it, didn’t you? — A Mac What? I said Mac Mini. If you go into an Apple store it might be hidden behind the iMacs. …

And I tried making some videos — All of my regular readers know that I’ve been vacillating forever about putting my own videos into my posts. Most of my reluctance is that I just don’t see the point of my reading a post to you. Unless you are having trouble falling asleep? Never mind that, today I…

Though “Why did you buy this?” was her initial question — Years ago, I rather foolishly set up a mail rule that forwards any message from Amazon to my wife. The purpose of that was so that she doesn’t have to ask me if something she orders has shipped. …

I came across DoneIt when it was very new and very rough — I live by a to-do chore list. It’s not that I wouldn't remember to do these things. I would certainly remember all the daily tasks and even most of the weekly ones, but I might not remember them until later in the day. So I list them and check them…

Murder and moustache origin stories in Kenneth Branagh’s CGI-smothered take on Agatha Christie’s classic. — Ever felt a burning desire to know the origin story of Hercule Poirot’s moustache? Me neither. Still, that’s what Kenneth Branagh gives us in the opening scene of his adaptation of Agatha Christie’s classic murder mystery Death on the Nile, in a flashback to the trenches of World War I…

I never knew this stuff was there — I was sitting parked after telling Siri where I wanted to go and for some reason I tapped on the CarPlay screen. What magic is this? More controls popped into view, controls I had never seen before. What? Why didn’t I know about this? Curious, I tapped the top icon…

Spielberg, Hitchcock, Kubrick, Lynch… They all have their duds. — Even the greatest directors have off-days, and indeed “off-films”. Here then are ten examples of movies from great directors that either I consider objectively bad, or at the very least fall considerably short of their own high standards. …