Though today is a double 626 day because it's 62626 this year.

The chaotic alien from the animated masterpiece Lilo & Stitch is "Experiment 626," but he's better known as "Stitch." And, as somebody who absolutely loves this brilliant Chris Sanders character, it's a day I celebrate. Usually by buying something new for my collection of Stitch crap.

Last year for 626 I purchased a print from my trip to Disney's Aulani resort...

This year I bought a couple of Lilo & Stitch picture discs to frame...

They'll look pretty cool hanging in my guest bathroom with my other Stitch stuff once I get them framed.

"It don't mean a thang if it ain't got that twang!"
                                        —Duke Ellington (maybe)

I have a longstanding love affair with mayonnaise. It's far and away my favorite condiment. Then I discovered Dutch mayonnaise and things got taken to the next level. Then I started trying to eat more vegan and switched to making my own egg-free mayo. But it never even comes close to what I love about the stuff.

So while I eat considerably less real mayo now-a-days, I do still eat it.

The Dutch mayo I obsess over has gotten very expensive, so I went back to Best Foods (AKA Hellmann's East of the Rocky Mountains). But then one day Duke's mayonnaise somehow showed up at the grocery story. It was on an introductory sale cheaper than Best Food's and so I gave it a shot.

When I got home, I saw that the jar said It's Got Twang! on the lid.

And, sure enough, it does. Duke's doesn't have any sugar and includes a hit of apple cider vinegar, and that's where the "twang" comes from.

I was not a fan.

At least not immediately.

The "twang" was competing with the other flavors on my sandwich or burger. So I decided to use up the jar in potato salad where I could adjust the ingredients to offset it. Problem solved.

But then... I ended up using it in other places from time to time until I started... enjoying it?

And now it's my go-to mayo. Unless it's not on sale and Best Food's is cheaper. Because given the INSANELY FUCKING HIGH PRICE OF GROCERIES, the only thing that tastes better than "twang" is savings.

I don't own a mobile phone with a camera on it. I own a pocket camera which just happens to be able to make phone calls. And a lot of other stuff.

It wasn't always this way. I started with a Canon SLR film camera which I got for my birthday. And while I took it a lot of places, it was as inconspicuous and unobtrusive as a boat anchor. So I didn't take it everywhere, much as I wish I could. All too many times I would be somewhere and see something cool that I'd like to capture for one reason or another. Maybe it would end up being a good reference for a future project. Maybe I liked the way the colors played and thought I might need to use a combination like that one day. Maybe it was something I thought I could cut out and use in a photo collage. Maybe it was a hundred reasons or no reason at all. I just like collecting stuff.

And my iPhone makes it possible to do just that.

Too easy, actually.

I thought about that this afternoon as I was walking to the post office and passed this...

I may ignore it for the rest of my life. Or perhaps I'll be working on something and it will come in handy.

In the meanwhile, it can be blog fodder.

   
No.

So there I was doom-scrolling through Disney+ to find some background noise while I worked. And there it was... Naked and Afraid.

I've heard of the show, of course. But I've never seen it and it's never popped up on YouTube (which is what I'm watching 90% of the time).

Now, I have nothing against survival adventure shows. I've watched Running Wild (the Bear Grylls show) and Survivorman, and they're fine. Likely staged to a certain extent, but fine.

And then there's Naked and Afraid. No idea why they're naked. I guess butt-cheeks and blurred naughty bits draw viewers...

The show is fine. Weird but fine.

But I'd rather watch Survivor.

UPDATE: The exploit to get around Apple's waitlist for New Siri has been patched, so if you're wanting an early look, you'll have to wait until Apple decides to add more users.

   
• Siri Island! On iPhone, the visual interface for New Siri pops out of the "Dynamic Island" at the top (which is where the selfie-camera and LIDAR sensor is located). When it comes to camouflaging that hole in the screen, I have to say that Apple is doing an amazing job...

On the Mac, you can hold down the F5 key to invoke the Siri Orb, which floats in the top 1/3 of the screen, awaiting your command (though you can move it anywhere, temporarily)...

In a way, I think this orb thing makes Siri feel kinda gimmicky. I mean, I know that there should be some kind of feedback that Siri is listening, but it's taking a lot more of my attention this way than it probably should. I dunno. I think that, in time, this will be toned down quite a bit because people will be more accustomed to knowing that Siri AI is listening. Interesting to note that Apple touts the corner radius on windows being consistent now, but Siri is a notable exception when the text interface opens up.

A bug with the MacOS version is that whenever you initiate Siri, even on another device, the orb will remain on the MacOS screen even after the task was completed. Really hoping they get this squashed, because it's more than a little annoying.

   
• Smarter Siri! I've made it very clear what I've thought about Siri over the years... it's stupid as shit. I mean really bad. Often times it's a "voice assistant" that makes things more work than it would be if you just did it your damn self. So now that Apple has finally... FINALLY... invested some money in upgrading the experience (albeit with Google's help), is it any better? In a word? Yes. With reservations. It's certainly on par with other offerings that I've largely been ignoring but, since it's integrated with the Apple ecosystem, it's something I might actually use. Especially since it's darn capable. Not only for answering questions and doing mundane tasks, but for helping you to get the most out of your Mac/iPhone/iPad/Apple Watch/Whatever. Though, if I'm being honest, there are times I'm not sure if Siri actually is that incredible... or if it's just better than what we had by so much that it feels that way?

   
• Go Deep! Siri has access to all my emails, texts, calendar appointments, and the like. So when I ask "What was the name of that restaurant I ate at in Little Havana" it's able to tell me. But context is everything. When I asked "What was the name of the restaurant I ate at in Miami?" it didn't know, and listed restaurants around my hotel. But when I asked "What was the name of the restaurant I ate at in South Beach?" it found a reservation I made and was able to tell me the correct place. Despite the fact that my hotel was also in South Beach. It's strange how Siri can be smart in guessing what might be the answer based on a piece of information it found... while ignoring the answer in information it fully had access to.

   
• Deep Questions! I wanted to break out "deep search" questions from the next section where I just ask usual questions because it's absolutely bizarre and shouldn't be lumped in somewhere it's bound to get overlooked. I asked Siri what the name of my cats are...

What the heck? MADDIE?!? When I manually searched in an attempt to find our where in the heck this could have come from, I couldn't find it. The reference says "PhoneAppIntentsExtension"... so, Siri got it from... my phone? How? This makes no sense at all. However... once I corrected Siri, it answered correctly with Jake & Jenny from then onwards. But here's the thing... this was a rare stumble. I threw all the bizarre questions I could think of about myself and my life and Siri rarely stumbles. If it's on my iPhone or Mac or wherever, Siri can dig it up. Even if it was 16 years ago...

This will probably come in handy as I get older.

   
• Regular Questions! Siri is darn smart when it comes to searching the internet in order to answer questions. Which isn't terribly special because Old Siri could respond correctly when you say "What is the capital of Uzbekistan?" No, where New Siri shines is with the things Old Siri wouldn't have a clue. Things like "Does eBay have any DVD copies of the movie Flight of the Navigator for sale?" where Siri not only says "Yes," but looks to see what options are available...

It goes on and on. I made dozens of searches asking for things that go beyond simple questions. Then I ask questions on the answers to my questions. And questions to the answers on the questions to the answers of my questions. And tossing in stuff like "When was the last day of school where I live?" made no difference. Siri is able to figure it all out. And, unlike Old Siri in my car, New Siri won't tell me I have to wait until I've finished driving.

   
• Photo Query! You can ask Siri about photos you've already taken or images your camera is currently looking at. This is not shocking because Google Lens has been telling Android users where photos were taken, what's the name of the thing or place in the photo you're looking at, or where you can buy something shown in a photo you're looking at. But, if you've never experienced it before, it's a bit of a shock. Not because it's possible, but because Siri always goes extra. I asked Siri what was in this photo I took. Not only did it answer correctly, but told me where it was taken and the story behind it...

Now that's cool. And when it comes to one of my favorite topics, food, Siri is darn handy. Take a photo of what you're eating and Siri will identify it. Then you can ask about the calories or nutritional value. Or you can ask to find some recipes for it. Or where you can buy it locally. Whatever...

Except... when that same rainbow bagel just has cream cheese on it, Siri thinks it's a pill...

Which is a step ahead of Siri not knowing what something is at all...

Still, from all my experiments, it was more often impressive than it was disappointing.

   
• Recipes! And speaking of food... Siri is an ace at tracking down recipes. I ask for a cheese tamale recipe and Siri gets me one. I ask for it to be vegetarian and Siri finds me a new one. I ask for one which uses different cheeses and Siri hunts one down. I ask Siri to add the ingredients to my shopping list and it's done. And then... ten minutes later... an hour later... two hours later... I can ask Siri about the recipe and it has no problem repeating it...

   
• Take Control! Now, the thing that shocked me the most about New Siri is how it can control my Mac. Want the volume higher or lower? No problem. Want the screen brighter or dimmer? No problem. Want a file or app opened? No problem. It's nice to be typing along and have Siri do something while you keep working. To a point. You can't do things like empty your trash or delete something since Siri wants to make sure it's not malicious or accidental... but so many things can be implemented just by asking.

   
• Lack of Control! HomeKit may still be shit, but Siri's ability to control HomeKit seems to be taken to a new level. You can chain commands (at last) and make adjustments (at last) which is a step in the right direction.

   
And there you have it. New Hotness Siri is a massive improvement over Old Shitty Siri. And a use of AI that I'm not opposed to for once. Kind of a taste of the future-sci-fi world we keep reading in books and seeing in movies.

Jenny alternates between acting like a cranky old cat and a little princess kitten, and there's not much in-between.

But in both cases, she's complaining a lot and being demanding. Which is apparently her default. If she wants something, she complains until she gets what she wants. If she's upset at a situation, she complains until it's changed. If she is angry at something, she complains until it's been removed.

Take Thursday night. I was working in bed. Jenny complained until I pet her. Then I wasn't petting her like she wanted so she complained until I figured out what she wanted. Then I needed both hands to type and she grabbed my hand... and complained...

And if I start pulling away anyway, she digs in her claws.

I blame myself.

I've never told these cats "no" except when they jumped on the kitchen counters. And now they don't know the meaning of the word.

What do you do when you have hundreds upon hundreds of tiny Instax instant photos? For the longest time, I didn't know. I just collected them in a box.

Initially I wanted to have a wall covered in them. The idea was that I could create slats where the photos could be trapped by temporarily flexing them a bit. Then I could easily pull them out and change them whenever I wanted. But I never found a good way to create the slats. So I moved on to clips. When that didn't work, I moved on to gravity holders. When that didn't work, I gave up.

Then I thought I would buy photo albums.

I bought a few samples, but didn't like any of them because they were all either too expensive to be feasible... too cheap to look good... or too badly constructed to last.

Then one day I found these little books that looked like they would be a fun option to display all my photos. I liked the idea that it was a quick flip-through and I could pile them in a tray on my coffee table...

They aren't perfect though. Because the Instax photos are much thicker than a piece of paper, the books bulge out quite a bit...

So not perfect.

But the best option I've found. For now.

Maybe one of these days I'll come across a better one.

Decades ago, I was a kinda-sometimes programmer. Mostly for personal use in a programming languages called Pascal (followed by Modula-2, C++, Objective-C, Perl, Java, and Rust).

Along the way I picked up a few tools which made programming easier. Editors, outliners, re-compilers, and the rest. One thing that I didn't pick up was learning RegEx (or "regex" if you're boring).

Shorthand for Regular Expressions, this is a tool which allows you to search for text in interesting and helpful ways... then act on what you find. And I don't know why I never looked at it. I had certainly heard of it, but ignored it for forever.

Until I couldn't.

This week I have been working on a difficult work project when I finally ran into a wall. I needed to alter hundreds of occurrences of text which was ever-changing. I had no idea how to do it. I assumed there would be a tool that allowed wildcard functions. And there are some. But none of them could do what I needed to do, and I resigned myself to manually changing everything.

And all of a sudden I remembered RegEx.

The reason I couldn't find a tool which did what I needed was because it had already been invented in the 1950's.

Twenty minutes later, and I had learned what I needed to learn and had completed a task which would have taken hours.

My biggest regret in life is that I didn't learn how to learn RegEx earlier than I did.

I honestly wasn't going to write more than two posts about Pride Month. It was going to be one post at the beginning, wishing all my friends in the LGBTQ+ community a Happy Pride... then another at the end, summarizing the genre movies I watched for the month. That's it.

But holy crap are people up their asses this year.

So much faux persecution, hate, and bullshit.

And though this excellent piece by Dan McClellan is about baseball, you can apply it to many, many, other scenarios...

And then there's this nonsense...

Serious question... do these assholes even READ the Bible?

Because the meaning of the rainbow for Christians is right there in the Book of Genesis: "I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant..." — Genesis 9:13-15

Rainbows are widely interpreted to be a sign from God that his judgement over the earth has passed and he won't destroy the world with a flood again. Kinda the opposite of a "weapon."

And, oh yeah... THE PRIDE FLAG IS NOT A LITERAL FUCKING RAINBOW!!!

It was intentionally made as its own symbol, with each color representing LGBTQ+ values. Six colors instead of seven. And originally it had 9 or something. The LGBTQ+ community is not "stealing God's rainbow" which is categorically absurd. When Hawaii put a rainbow on their license plates, did they steal it from God? Give me a fucking break.

I swear these assholes spend more time thinking about gay stuff than any gay person I know.

Which is not surprising given the rate that most of them turn out to be closeted homosexuals, and this is just an attempt to divert attention away from them.

Misdirection always works!

Until it doesn't.