Minor smoke particulates and some fairly significant low-level humidity interfered with shooting, but light conditions and weather were great for some whole sky #astrophotography last night.

#NightSky #pentax #MilkyWay

Karl Guttag always has very detailed, technical, and thorough write ups about AR/VR headsets. I love reading his analyses because I come away learning something new 🙂

He’s done a write-up on his thoughts about Apple Vision Pro and while I have not read all of it yet, it already sounds like something which asks the hard questions, unlike any of the thoughts/discussions I’ve read yet from people who did get to spend some time with the headset.

Or, as Karl says in his article: “Unfortunately, I didn’t see a lot of “critical thinking” or understanding of the technical issues rather than having “blown minds.”” 😛

If you are interested in a technical and critical look at Apple Vision Pro, you’re probably not going to go wrong reading Karl’s post.

https://kguttag.com/2023/06/13/apple-vision-pro-part-1-what-apple-got-right-compared-to-the-meta-quest-pro/

#Apple #VisionPro #AR #TechnicalDissection

Part 2 of Karl Guttag’s series of articles on his thoughts on the Apple Vision Pro is now up on his site.

He discusses the possible issues with the AVP this time around from a hardware perspective. If you’d like to get a thoughtful perspective on all the various factors that you might want to consider when trying to decide if AVP is for you or not, you might want to give the articles a read and so that you can make your own mind up instead of relying purely on hype, or how excited others are about it 😛

https://kguttag.com/2023/06/16/apple-vision-pro-part-2-hardware-issues/

#Apple #VIsionPro #Dissection #Analysis #Hardware

https://medium.com/rediscover-steam/50-black-women-in-stem-you-should-know-about-f74bd23503fd

The #poppy field was too beautiful!!!

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.” - Carl Sagan on The Great Bamboozle

Un peu de soleil et beaucoup d'herbe verte au lever ce matin.

#isere #myisere #grenoble #igersgrenoble #frenchalps #alpes #iseretourisme #photography #Vercors

If you take a social media sabbatical, don’t announce it. Just make your last post something fun like “I wonder if there’s a bear in this cave?”

Four mossy photos from my archives. Babeny clapper bridge, Wistman’s wood in 2012, Shaugh Prior #Dartmoor #Devon #mosstodon #photography

New Tropical Palm Tree Artography just posted on my website. I love how the sun glows behind the the tree as the viewer looks skyward, so relaxing!

ART: https://3-pamela-williams.pixels.com/featured/palm-tree-reaching-to-the-sky-pamela-williams.html

#palmtree #tropical #paradise #digitalart #beachlovers #beach #nature #naturephotography #art #mastoart #AYearForArt #buyintoart #TheArtDistrict

🔁🔁🔁🔁🔁

Something with an Autumn flavor from several years ago.
Prints here: https://mark-tisdale.pixels.com/featured/grow-old-along-with-me-mark-tisdale.html

#Autumn #Fall #DigitalArt #Painting #woods #FediGiftShop #MastoArt #ArtMatters #MarkOnArt

One my fellow #DoctorWho fans will hopefully enjoy.
Prints here: https://mark-tisdale.pixels.com/featured/tardis-in-the-rain-london-mark-tisdale.html

#DigitalArt #Painting #London #BigBen #Tardis #FediGiftShop #MastoArt #MarkOnArt

When Apple first introduced SharePlay a couple of years ago, I was certain that this was to support their to-be released AR headset 🙂

But then time passed and nothing much appeared to happen with SharePlay. In fact, I had almost forgotten about it since adoption of SharePlay seemed to be mostly limited to streaming service apps or music apps, and that was about it ... Even amongst streaming apps, the ones I used like Neflix or Amazon Prime did not have SharePlay.

But this year, it appears that SharePlay is back with a vengeance 😛 Check out the following WWDC session to find all the new functionality being added to SharePlay:

https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2023/10239/

My Favourite? SharePlay over AirDrop so that you can start shared activities with people in the same room by just bringing your phones together — no need to start a FaceTime call!

The thing I don’t know at this point is, will SharePlay work if there is no network (or at least, no Internet)? I’m guessing not, but I’m curious to find out.

#Apple #WWDC #WWDC2023 #SharePlay #SharedActivities #VisionPro

Pickled Ginger!

I have so missed having picked ginger. I should not have waited this long to make it.

No, it's not pink. I didn't have young ginger. Yes, we prefer my homemade pickled ginger. It tastes better.

#food #cooking #pickling #ginger #gari
Slices of ginger sitting in a j…

The things that excite me.

In other news, anyone have recipes or dishes other than sushi that use wasabi or seaweed sheets?

#food #cooking #wasabi #nori
A photo of a package of seaweed…

It’s interesting to me how some people see Apple as not being capable of any wrong, and others see it as not capable of doing anything right 😛

Why get so worked up (one way or the other) over a corporation? They are not there to make friends, they are just trying to sell products and make money. Sure, if you love their products, by all means talk about it and how good they are. But don’t get so fanatical that you think that everything they do has to be right. Look at everything critically …

And the same thing applies to fans of Google or Meta too … It’s just that I run across Apple fans way more than I do the others 🙂

#Fans #Fanatics #Antics #Reflections

I’m curious, does anybody use (or have ever used) SharePlay?

When it was announced a couple of years back, I was like “This is Apple’s initiative to bring shared media consumption to their AR headset when it arrives!”. But it doesn’t seem to have gone that way? I don’t think I’ve seen much adoption of it …

I can’t use it personally since it requires FaceTime (at least for video, I think?) and FaceTime does not work in the UAE 😛 Plus, our other use case, sharing videos while on a plane wouldn’t work either …

I know some of the streaming service apps have SharePlay integration but I don’t believe the ones I use, Netflix and Amazon Prime, do 😀

So I’m curious, is anybody else using SharePlay a lot (or even a little bit)?

#Apple #SharePlay #VideoSharing #MediaConsumption

Sometimes, you know something exists (like Xcode Playgrounds) and how to use it, and yet fail to see the possibilities in terms of how you can integrate that thing with your regular workflow 🙂

The “Prototype with Xcode Playgrounds” session was such an experience for me 😛 I watched the session and immediately realized that there were so many ways that I could have used Xcode Playgrounds in the past to make my work easier!

Give it a watch, I’m certain you won’t be disappointed …

https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2023/10250/

#Apple #WWDC #WWDC2023 #XcodePlaygrounds #Prototyping

I love my Controlled Electrocution Unit ™️ aka TENS unit.

I did something to my knees about a month ago, and then did something that caused an audible snap to the back of my leg yesterday. Controlled electrocutions help.

To whoever invented this, thank you.