All Posts

Back

Father Son Weekend 2025

Wil standing in front of Racoon Roost, our cabin at Camp Laney

This weekend my son Wil and I attended Father/Son Weekend at Camp Laney in Mentone, AL. Camp Laney is a special place for my family. My dad went there, my uncle went there and was a counselor for years, and I went there when I was in elementary school.

Wil, who is about to turn six, heard about Laney from a neighbor when he was three. He's been talking about going since then. The thing he was most excited about was getting to shoot a rifle. Well, he got to do that, and much more. He learned how to shoot a bow and arrow with almost no instruction and managed to hit the target four times in a row. My first time shooting I don't think I hit anything except the ground. He tried the zipline and thought it was the best thing ever.

He has so few of the anxieties that I had as a kid. He is afraid of very little, has no trouble talking to grown-ups or other kids, and is willing to try just about anything once (except food). All this to say, I'm so proud of him, and I'm glad that we got to go and spend some one-on-one time. We were both exhausted when we got home. There's nothing like sleeping in a cabin with 10 other people in mid-August in Alabama.

I hope he decides that he wants to be a camper when he gets a little older. My anxieties caused me to bail out pretty quick. But, if he doesn't that's okay too because we got to have the experience together.

AOL discontinues dial-up service

AOL routinely evaluates its products and services and has decided to discontinue Dial-up Internet.

Obviously, it's hard to believe that AOL was still running their dial-up service. AOL was a formative part of my internet experience. While it wasn't the first (SLIP, PPP) it was the first with a true graphical interface. It's where I really got into newsgroups. It quickly showed me that there was a much bigger world out there outside of the BBS's I had spent so much time on as a kid.

So pour one out for an OG.

Close AppleTV apps when swipe is disabled

I recently replaced all of my old Apple TV remotes with the updated Siri Remote. One of the things I hated most about the old remotes was the terrible touchpad. The remote looked so cool, like something out of a sci-fi movie, but the touchpad was so prone to accidental input that I wanted to throw it across the room. The new Siri Remote still has a center touchpad, but I found that there is a setting to turn off swipe on the remote. However, once it's off, I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to force quit an app if it was misbehaving.

I finally figured it out and thought I'd share. When swipe gestures are disabled, you'll still want to press the TV button twice to bring up the switcher, but instead of swiping up on the app to close it, you press 'up' twice very quickly. I hope this saves someone a headache.

How Tomorrow Never Knows changed music production

Really interesting video that breaks down the isolated tracks from The Beatles' 'Tomorrow Never Knows.' Just found out that the reversed guitar solo was most likely lifted from the 'Taxman' recording session.

The story behind Caesar Salad

The Caesar salad was born in 1924 in the Mexican border city of Tijuana, where Italian immigrant Caesar Cardini had opened Restaurante Caesar's to attract US visitors craving an escape from the prohibition laws. The story goes that on a bustling Fourth of July, the restaurant was running short on menu items, so Caesar snatched up the leftover ingredients, rolled them out in a dining cart in the presence of drunk, hunger-stricken Americans, and prepared an improvised salad with a theatrical flourish, tableside, distracting them from the random ingredients. It was an unexpected success.

The story behind Caesar salad