Trevor Manternach

I am so glad Black Friday and Cyber Monday are over now. The more I age, the less interested I am in all of this.

It’s been years since I last paid for an Audible.com subscription. I just signed up this week ($5/month for 3 months) and it’s been a delight so far. I discovered that you can pretty easily remove the DRM on the audiobook .aax file. I am using Audible Tools to help me create the ffmpeg command to do this.

Another recent discovery is that Overcast, my podcast player of choice, seems to natively support .m4b files (audiobook file format). It even includes artwork and chapters, so it behaves just like most of the podcasts I listen to.

I left Twitter back in April when this Elon news first broke. I cannot understand the people who are arguing for staying at this point. None of these people would join a new social network ran by Elon Musk, but they have convinced themselves to stay on twitter. I think it has more to do with stroking egos than anyone wants to admit.

No follower count is worth your integrity.

Someone found my old iPod nano. Circa 2012. Still works perfectly! 🎶📱

Went and spent a couple of nights in Canada this weekend. Hadn’t been there since January 2020, felt good to get away. Saw a hockey game and a movie; both were fun!

A Day in the Life. 4:45PM, Montana. Finishing up First Grade math homework. 👦🏻✏️

I just got my COVID-19 booster vaccine and a flu shot at a drive-through clinic. Starting to feel like this is just going to be a fall tradition for life. 🏥

I finished the Lakers documentary on Hulu last night. I hadn’t cried over Kobe’s death in a long time. Overall the entire 10-episode show was amazing. 🟪 🟨 🏀 🏆

Searching through old email, I came across this from 2007. This is how easy it was to post to twitter from the terminal back in those days:

curl -u username:password -d status="Tweet goes here" http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml

I miss the simpler days of the internet. 👴🏻🔊☁️

Adnan is free!!

good game serena. good career. go serena. 🎾 🐐

The earliest photo I have of me at a computer. Circa 1997!

The newer Apple laptops have the Function key pulling double duty as a “🌐 Globe key”. This must be mapped to the emoji picker by default, because it would randomly appear on my screen whenever I accidently hit the key by itself. I wanted a way to be able to re-map this key to anything I wanted. Here are the two simple steps to get this done. Note that this requires Keyboard Maestro.

Step 1: Disable system default

• Open System Preferences -> Keyboard and set “Press 🌐 to” to Do Nothing

Step 2: Keyboard Maestro

• Create a macro and set the Trigger to Hot Key Trigger. Press the 🌐 icon. The UI inserts a question mark, but it does actually work.

  

I am using Raycast as my Spotlight replacement these days. I couldn’t map 🌐 directly in Raycast, so I left it as ⌘+Space and then the KM macro types ⌘+Space when triggered.

That’s it! You now have a single keystroke that still works as a Fn key when held.

I had to share my Wordle solve today. It’s perfectly U-shaped!

Wordle 383 4/6*

🟩⬜⬜⬜🟩
🟩⬜⬜⬜🟩
🟩⬜⬜⬜🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

I got my first Solo Loop Apple Watch band today. It feels so different than the Sport Band I’ve had since I got my watch. It doesn’t even feel like I’m wearing a watch anymore, I love it!

I am having fun building a small electronics workbench in my basement. Here I used some left-over 3D printed clips for PVC pipe to build a wire spool holder.

I got my first electric toothbrush and was blown away at how forceful it is. Not in a bad way, and I don’t know what I was expecting, but it definitely surprised me! 🪥

Making some popcorn at the local movie theatre tonight. I love this old Manley machine! 🦖🦕

I avoided all of the WWDC rumors that I could over the last couple of weeks; I wanted to try to enter the keynote with no expectations. Not entirely sure how I feel about everything that was (or wasn’t) discussed yet, though. Still soaking it all in. Macbook Air looks great!

I just filled my coffee pot up for the morning. And then hit the “On” button instead of the “Schedule” button. They are right next to each other, it was bound to happen eventually! ☕

Last month Apple announced the end of the iPod. I thought it might be fun to document my history with the product.

–

I got my first iPod in March 2005. I believe I bought mine at Best Buy on a weekend trip 350 miles away from home.

I was listening to a lot of podcasts in those early days and had to use “podcatcher” software because iTunes didn’t support podcasts yet. That changed later that year when iTunes 4.9 added podcasts and the rest is history.

I visited that same Best Buy a couple years later when the iPod Touch was released. I remember checking their website and they said they had them in stock, but when I got to the store I couldn’t find them. I finally asked and they were still in the back, they went and got one for me.

The iPod Touch was so much fun back then. The iPhone wasn’t “in” Montana back then (no joke) and so the Touch was as close as I could get. I remember jailbreaking the thing, and even hanging out in IRC chatrooms trying to troubleshoot my jailbreak attempts. :-D

This past winter I spent ~$100 on new parts to revive my old 4th gen iPod. It now has new life with a fresh battery and an SD card in place of the 20GB spinning hard drive. It’s hard to believe a piece of consumer technology from 17 years ago is still alive and well.

I love iPod. It was one of my first adventures into a lifetime of technology.

Day31: endurance

I bought an exercise bike last month to try to build some endurance. It made me realize how out of shape I am! #mbmay

Day 30: fish

Only fish I could find today. From our “art” door to our pantry. #mbmay

Day 29: stripes

One room in our basement is wood paneling. Maybe if we wait long enough it will come back into style? 😂 #mbmay

Day 28: fair

This horse carousel reminds me of a county fair. #mbmay