The Joys of Analytics

I've written a couple of times before about Squarespace's traffic overview section where I can see how many visitors this site gets on a hourly/daily/weekly/etc. basis, including the ability to see where the traffic is coming from thanks to IP tracing. As expected there's a lot of traffic from Nashville and the surrounding area, as well as a few usual places where I have family and friends. The majority of it though is spread out all over the world. Just this month there's been 27 different states, Ireland, Canada, Germany, England and Italy. Some of it comes from Google searches for specific keywords where a post I've written shows up in the results, a lot comes from direct Twitter links, and some navigate directly to the homepage.

Tonight while going over the stats for this past week 3 items in the traffic logs stood out:

IP addresses originating from Cupertino, California. 1 running iOS 10 and the other 2 on macOS 10.12

I'm not saying Apple employees are reading this site, but I'll be damned if it sure doesn't seem that way.

When I was a kid and dreamed of being a rock star I always imagined what it would feel like to have Joe Perry listen to one of my songs. Now I know exactly how that feels.

Revisiting My iOS 10 Wishlist

3 months ago I made a list of things I'd like to see in the next release of iOS. With iOS 10 being revealed today I thought I'd look back and see how well I did:

  • iCloud Account Merging: I knew it was too much to ask for. Sigh.

  • Multiple Airplay Speaker Support: It wasn't mentioned, but I'm not ruling it out just yet, especially since Google announced it with existing Chromecast hardware.

  • Mail.app Overhaul: Unfortunately not a word was even said about Mail. Thinking it's time to make that switch to Airmail permanently.

  • Better Healthkit Integration: Boom! My first wish to be checked off. Literally everything I asked for is happening in iOS 10.

  • Apple Music Overhaul: In my best Jim Dalrymple voice, "yep". I'm 2 for 5 now.

  • Third Party Siri Integration: Another one in the win category. Can't wait.

  • HomeKit: Another example where it's like they read my list and went point by point. I'm batting .500 now.

  • IFTTT Integration: I knew there was no chance in hell of this all along. It's one of the few downfalls of a company that takes privacy that seriously.

Overall I I got 3 (maybe 4?) out of 7. Not too shabby, especially when a couple of them I didn't honestly expect anyway.

WWDC 2016 Recap

Today was the kickoff of Apple's 2016 World Wide Developers Conference including their annual keynote address, one of the most anticipated days of the year for Apple fans and followers of tech in general.

Apple has always been notoriously tightlipped and this year was no exception. Few spoilers were leaked ahead of time and the majority of what was introduced hadn't already been written about ad nauseam. There will be a million articles detailing all of the announcements so I'll make this brief and go over the parts that have me the most excited for the next few months:

Mac OS X Become macOS

This had been rumored for awhile so it wasn't much of a surprise. It brings their oldest and most established operating system inline with the naming scheme of the rest of their products. Still, it'll be strange to no longer be running OS X.

Siri

Another change that had been talked about for weeks was Siri on the Mac, but the implementation is beyond what I was expecting. The ability to use sophisticated queries (including follow up questions) and control 3rd party apps brings Siri up to par with the competition, in theory. I'm anxious to see how well it works in actual day to day use.

Apple Music Redesign

Thank god. The lyrics display is a nice touch but not something I'll likely use very often. The UI changes look good and I hope the "Discovery Mix" that was shown lives up to the bar set by Spotify.

Photos

Confession time: I recently uploaded my entire photo library to Google Photos. I'm not proud of that but I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. It didn't take long. Fortunately almost all of the features that made Google so attractive are being brought to iCloud Photos. Facial and object recognition, "Memories" and map view are all going to be nice additions.

Messages

The list of changes here are too extensive to go through, and while some of them seem kinda silly (emojifying text?) the ability to incorporate 3rd party apps into Messages makes this a HUGE upgrade.

watchOS 3

What I'm most looking forward to. Faster app opening, customizable watch faces, handwriting recognition, and most importantly better activity tracking including the social aspect that had been missing from the beginning.

The biggest takeaway from all of this has been the furthering of the new "Open Apple" even more. Almost every presentation ended with the announcement that whatever they'd just talked about would now have an SDK for developers to use. Messages, Activity, Maps, Siri - all will be open for 3rd party apps to tap into.

The only real disappointment was the lack of new hardware, but Apple PR had more or less announced that wasn't happening. That's ok with me since I can't afford a new MacBook Pro yet anyway. Hold that off for a few months when I'll be ready to throw my credit card at them no questions asked.

If you've got a spare 90 minutes and actually read through all of this, take the time to watch the entire presentation. Seeing all these new features are a helluva lot more interesting than me rattling on about just a handful of them.

"Pray For The Victims"

The rallying cry of every piece of shit politician who has blood on their hands yet still wants to appear sympathetic.

Stop fucking praying for victims and do your part to make sure there aren't any more.

It's pathetic.

One of the main reasons I left Facebook was having to listen to right wing asshats who cry about the 2nd amendment and use fear tactics to support their agenda. Fuck that. I'm done avoiding confrontation and keeping politics out of the conversation.

A Man Called Destruction

Just finished reading Holly George-Warren's amazing biography of Alex Chilton and have come away somehow even more enamored than I was before.

A detailed look at his entire life from childhood through his teen idol phase with The Box Tops to Big Star on through to his latter day solo material. A criminally underrated and often misunderstood genius, Chilton spent the majority of his career trying to destroy his past before finally embracing it in his final years. It's a captivating read that's recommended for anyone who's ever loved his music or wants a further education on how crooked and unfair the music business can be. A beautifully written story about a beautiful person.

The biggest shame is how someone who created some of the greatest music ever committed to tape died practically broke and didn't go to the doctor when he first had chest pains because he didn't have health insurance. If the man who wrote "September Gurls" wasn't worthy of free health care we're all fucked.

If I Only Knew Then...

Sometimes when you least expect it something from your past will pop back up, feel like yesterday and subsequently hit you like a ton of bricks.

Not sure why I went down the rabbit hole today, but I did, and it's left me sad, lonely and missing someone I haven't seen in almost 18 years. Is that even possible? How can such a short period of time effect you for the rest of your life?

I was young and stupid and scared and had no idea what I really wanted. It's just taken me this long to realize I already had exactly everything I'd ever need, and I'd spend the next 20 years trying to find it again. I should've fought a little harder and tried to make things work. Giving up too easily was one of my biggest faults then just as it is now.

As much as I blame youth and stupidity, there's a beauty in innocence. I'm too old, tired and jaded now. There will never be another "you" or another "us" - because those people and that time are gone. It'll never happen again because I'd never let it. Once you've had your heart broken again and again and been lied to over and over for almost 20 years, the joy and wonder of those days are sad relics of something I let go of way too soon.

I'm sure I'll never see you again or get the chance to tell you all of this, but writing it at least makes me feel a little better.

Thank you for showing me how amazing being madly in love can be.

I'm also incredibly sorry. Sorry for the way we ended, sorry for everything.

Wherever you are now just know there's a part of me that will love you always.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

This is comedy gold.

Holy shit. I can't stop laughing. Vince Neil's voice is many, many things - but "bulletproof" certainly isn't one of them. Jesus. He's sounded like shit since 1983.

Dear Netflix

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If this title isn't available in my region, why the fuck are you showing it to me?

Please don't turn into YouTube. Please don't turn into YouTube. Please don't turn...

35-14

Even with all the bullshit going on in the world today it's still an amazing rush to wake up on May 31st and the Chicago Cubs are 21 games over .500, have won 6 in a row and are far and away the best team in baseball.

What a fucking glorious time to be alive.

2557 Days

7 years ago today you came into my life. I'm not sure who cried more that afternoon, you or me. I was scared to death. From the moment I saw you though I knew what it was to truly love something more than life itself.

Every day since you've continued to amaze me with your humor, your intelligence, your kindness and at the wonderful young man you've become.

Happy Birthday Christopher
Love, Dad

For You, Discover Weekly and SongShift

One of the big features touted with the introduction of Apple Music last summer was the "For You" section. Designed to give recommendations based on music you've told Apple you like, either by having it in your existing iTunes library or explicitly hitting the "Love" button next to a specific track or album. While in theory this should be great (and to be fair music curation is really hard), the results have been wildly inconsistent.

I've made jokes before about their suggestions, but sadly it's not improved at all in the last 11 months. I'm consistently being recommended Scandinavian death metal, hip hop, 80's R&B, etc. Either that or I'll get shown a playlist like "Intro To Elliot Smith", which makes no sense considering I have every note he ever recorded already in my library. Why would I need a 12 song introduction? The suggestions seem completely random and in no way based on what I've tried to let Apple know I love.

On the other hand, Spotify's Discover Weekly playlist has been universally praised by almost everyone who's used it. A 30 track playlist added to your library every Monday morning built specifically to suggest new music Spotify think's you'll love.

Much like the envy felt by Apple users toward Google and Amazon's progress in the "Personal Assistant" category, being an Apple Music subscriber it's easy felt left out of the next level of music discovery. Then I remembered something.

Before the release of Apple Music I'd briefly joined the paid version of Spotify and painstakingly recreated my entire 30,000 song iTunes library using their streaming catalog. So I re-downloaded Spotify, logged into my long dormant account, and there waiting for me were 30 tracks by artists I'd either never heard, never heard of or knew just enough about that they were already on my radar to check out. Not wanting to leave Apple Music though, I needed to find a way to either import these playlists or at least replicate them as close as possible.

Enter SongShift

Originally designed to help users migrate from one streaming service to another, it moves music between services duplicating playlists and saved tracks. I immediately bought it and went to work.

All you have to do is login to your Spotify account from within the SongShift iOS app and then give it permission to access your Apple Music library, from there it analyzes your music on both sides and let's you move things around in either direction you want. With just 3 clicks every Monday morning I can import Spotify Discover Weekly directly into Apple Music. I've already found a dozen artists I likely would never have listened to otherwise that have put out some of the best music of 2016. SongShift is a godsend.

(Oh, and I've also used it to recreate a few dozen of Spotify's mood/activity specific playlists that are so much better than anything Apple has managed to come up with)

I'm holding out hope the folks in Cupertino get better at music discovery and tools like this won't be necessary for long, but until they do it's nice to have the best of both worlds. I can get Spotify's top notch recommendations without giving up the comfort of the Apple ecosystem.

Now excuse me while I go listen to anything other than "Battle Metal".

Album Covers Used To Be Important

I remember vividly buying albums based entirely on the cover. Staring at record sleeves for hours, studying, memorizing every detail. Go back and look at the cover of 'Physical Graffiti', the embossed pentagram on the front of 'Shout At The Devil', the simplicity of 'Back In Black'. All landmark albums that had covers that were works of art.

Today Apple Music suggested I listen to Blake Mills. I don't know anything about Mr. Mills or his music, but there's just no way I can listen to anything with a cover like this:

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What in the name of fuck is going on here???