streaming

Over the past few years we’ve entered into the world of subscription services for entertainment, among other things. It started out with a few, but media companies have found the benefits of having their own streaming services outweigh selling their content to an existing service. At least, that’s what they think now, but what happens when people get subscription fatigue? It’s happening to me. Let me start by first listing all the entertainment subscriptions that I currently pay for.

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dock

Recently I’ve been wanting a way to launch iCloud directly from the Dock on my work Mac and couldn’t figure out a way to do this. I know it’s not difficult to launch finder and navigate to iCloud, especially since it is an option in my Finder’s sidebar, but I still wanted to save a couple of clicks by launching directly into the iCloud directory. It turns out, there is an easy way to do this. Thanks to a DuckDuckGo search, I found an older article on OSXDaily that explains exactly how to do this. 

  1. Go to the Finder of Mac OS, then pull down the “Go” menu and choose “Go To Folder”
  2. Enter the following path exactly, then hit Return:
    /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/Applications/
  3. Drag iCloud.app to your dock. 

That’s all there is to it. Now you can open your iCloud folder directly. 

Baseball season is just around the corner so it seems fitting to talk about baseball. More specifically, a mediocre baseball player that was known as the “brainiest guy in baseball.” A guy that graduated from Princeton and Columbia Law. A guy that went on to become a spy for the US government in Word War II. I’m talking about Morris “Moe” Berg.

more berg

It wasn’t until the last year or so that I heard about Moe Berg. Actually, it was when I was browsing the IMDB credits of actor Paul Rudd that first brought Berg to my attention (more on that later). If I’m only looking at his baseball career, there’s really no reason for me to know him. He was an average player that played at the beginning of the 20th century and never played for any St. Louis teams. It’s his post-baseball life that I’m surprised never caught my attention.

Berg joined the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. By this point, his baseball career was over, both as a player and a coach. Berg was seen as an asset due two previous trips to Japan with other ball players. He then went on to join the Office of Strategic Services, and the branch within the OSS called Secret Intelligence. He helped evaluate various resistance groups in Eastern Europe to determine who was the best suited to resist the Nazis.

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evolution of the alphabet

I don’t know how I missed this last year, especially since this is right up my alley, but Matt Baker at UsefulCharts published a chart on the evolution of the alphabet. Several times per week, if not per day, I wonder the origin of a word or phrase or food. I’m constantly curious as to how something came about. This chart, and corresponding video below, scratch an itch of learning new about history that I often get since leaving college. A history nerd is always a history nerd.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VNVCxi9TL8

I listen to a lot of podcasts. Too many, actually. It seems like I pick up a new podcast 2-3 times a month, and I rarely drop them. It has gotten to the point where I spend more time listening to podcasts than I do watching TV or reading. It’s a good way to get through the work day, relax, or make the drive to and from work go by a little quicker.

angel of vine podcast

One of the podcasts that I’ve been hearing a lot about over the past few weeks is The Angel of Vine. If you’ve listened to any podcasts recently, there’s a good chance you’ve heard one of the many talented actors that are involved with the project promoting it. After about the fourth or fifth podcast where I heard the actors involved talk about it, I decided to give it a shot. So, what is it? It is a fictional true-crime podcast. From the iTunes description:

A present day journalist uncovers the audio tapes of a 1950s private eye who cracked the greatest unsolved murder mystery Hollywood has ever known… and didn’t tell a soul. Starring Joe Manganiello, Alfred Molina, Constance Zimmer, Alan Tudyk, Camilla Luddington, Mike Colter, Misha Collins, Khary Payton, Nolan North, and Oliver Vaquer. 

If you like stories about old Hollywood or true crime/detective stories, you’ll love this podcast. The acting is pretty wonderful. Joe Manganiello, Alfred Molina, and Alan Tudyk really stand out. Honestly, is there anything Alan Tudyk can’t do? As I was listening to the podcast, which is 10 episodes in the first season (they have not announced additional seasons at this time), I couldn’t help but be reminded of the old radio dramas that aired pre-television. In fact, it’s kind of amazing that after all this time radio plays are making a come back in the form of podcasts. Season one has a very satisfactory ending so don’t worry about there only being one season. It doesn’t end on a cliffhanger. I really hope it finds an audience and more are made.