Blog

Short blog posts, journal entries, and random thoughts. Topics include a mix of personal and the world at large.

Mask on unlock

The latest iOS 15.4 release brings a super welcomed feature: the ability to unlock Face ID with masks on. Ever since this pandemic became a thing, it has been a real pain in the butt to unlock our iPhones whilst masked up. Sure, lucky Apple Watch owners have been able to unlock their iPhones with it for some time. But I obviously don’t have one. Smug friends with Android phones simply use their fingerprints to unlock, a feature Apple abandoned a few years ago in favor of Face ID.

Not ever expecting the world to mask up entirely for over two years and counting.

Anyways, finally I can unlock my iPhone with my mask on while I’m on campus. No more waiting for the phone to reject the face scan, then punching in the backup PIN numbers. How does it work? It seems the camera is scanning more closely the areas around the eyes. I did have to do a full Face ID rescan in order to activate this new mask-on feature. It’s still rather sensitive: it doesn’t work with sunglasses. If I wear my hat low or my mask higher on the face, the phone rejects the scan.

I bet if I were to get punched in the eye, it wouldn’t work either. Not that I’m aching to test that hypothesis. I’m sure Face ID with masks on will only continue to improve.

But it may be too little, too late. The Bay Area no longer have an indoor mask mandate. There’s still one at San Francisco State University - where I work - but that’s likely to go away in April as well. Pretty soon I won’t have wear a mask daily for eight hours. It’s not that I mind wearing a mask (us Asians have had a masking culture long before the advent of COVID), but long-term usage makes my face break out in pimples. Given the option to not wear one at work, I would definitely choose to do that.

I don’t always drink coke. But When I do.

Good for you, my friend

Recently, one of good friends announced he has accepted a position as associate dean of students at a local private university. The hard work of getting both his masters and doctorate (in education, I’m guessing) is finally paying off. Also needs paying off are his student loans, though surely that’s quite more doable now that his salary is in the six-figures.

After expressing congratulation and happiness to my friend, I immediately followed it with self-reflection on my own situation. Perhaps I too should look for greener pastures and higher yearly pay. Amongst our friend group, I would now be making the least by a considerable margin. Comparison is the thief of joy indeed. Look at the professional success of my friends! Oh god I am falling behind…

Upon further reflection, however, I once again realized I am very happy with where I work and how much I make. Would it be nice to make more money? Sure; who doesn’t want to be ever more comfortable, to buy the expensive things, or have the fun experiences. But there’s trade-offs in earning more, and usually that means time. Take my good friend for example: those years of post-undergraduate school was a significant investment in time.

Most importantly, a larger paycheck and more things aren’t going to make me any happier. Take it from me: I’ve spent six-figures on my dream car. The euphoria from monetary and material achievements lasts only a few weeks. Then you go back to your previous baseline. As my favorite page in Chuck Palahniuk’s Consider This (that’s the guy who wrote Fight Club) reads:

DST blues

Another March, another move of the clock one hour forwards just so we can enjoy some modicum of sunlight past 6:00PM. Losing an hour on Sunday absolutely sucks, and the following workweek to come is even worse. At least on the Sunday of time change you can sleep in a bit to ward off the DST-induced “jet lag”; no such luck on Monday!

Good news for me is I typically wake up way earlier than I really need to for work. Therefore I have the option of sleeping in a little, if waking what is effectively one hour earlier than usual proves to be too challenging. I understand that most people are not like me, so ruined sleep patterns for the rest of you it is! At least for the first week after the clock change anyways.

I am going to keep complaining about daylight saving time until the powers at be get rid of it. I don’t care which timezone configuration they use: just pick one and stick to it! Why must we torture ourselves for two days out of the year voluntarily? I’ve yet to meet a single person who actually likes it when we forward or retard the clock on hour.

Since I’m a morning person, I actually would prefer we keep constant standard time, as opposed to always daylight saving time. My circadian rhythm is better suited to an early sunrise and early sunset. I hate it during the summer when the sun is still up past 8:00 PM, delaying the signals to my body that it’s time to wind it down. Again, I realize I’m in the minority here. I bet if there’s a public vote on which of the two to keep forever, daylight saving time would win.

But please, no more changing the clock. Pick one!

Waiting for class

On my daily walk to work, I would see students parked along each side of 19th Avenue. Now that 50 percent of courses are back in physical session, there’s quite a few of them every morning. I would see the students sit in their cars whist waiting for their classes to start. It brings me back to my own college days. Instead of 19th Avenue, I would park at the other side of campus on Lake Merced Drive. I too have to get there early in the morning just to snatch a parking spot.

But I wouldn’t sit in my car to wait for classes to begin, however. Partly because I didn’t have a smartphone until my fourth year of college. The kids these days have it easy! Super fast Internet device at the palm of their hands. I too would chill in my Toyota Corolla if I had an iPhone back then. Instead I went to the library or the student union and sat there, listening to music on my iPod. Remember those?

Speaking of music, a few days ago the streaming service Spotify had an outage. One of my friends texted the group saying he now has to listen to his own MP3 collection, which only dates out to around 2010. I of course don’t have such problems. Unlike everybody else, I have not made the transition to streaming. To this day I continue to buy and download my music, stored completely on device. Not as a defense against Internet outages, but more like I’m a digital hoarder and prefer to have my curated collection.

179 gigabytes and counting…

But that’s the thing with streaming: there’s always this theoretical possibility that the services will go out of business and then you wouldn’t have access to your music anymore. Or your TV shows and movies. Videos I tend to watch once and forget about it, so losing access wouldn’t hurt. Music, however, I listen to constantly every single day. Therefore I would like some modicum of insurance in case shit happens. So long as I can still buy individual songs and albums on the iTunes Store, I will continue to do so.

Apple Studio Display

As a connoisseur of excellent displays - my main computer monitor is an Apple Pro Display XDR, and my TV is an LG OLED - what interests me most from yesterday’s Apple event is the new Apple Studio Display. They essentially took the panel from the 27-inch iMac, put it in an Apple-worthy aluminum enclosure, give it top-spec webcam, mic and speakers, then voila. For a princely sum of (starting at) $1599, there’s finally another external display option from Apple other than the aforementioned Pro Display XDR. That one commands a kingly sum of $4999.

Fan boys on the Mac forums are mad they’re not getting Pro Display XDR technology - namely full local LED dimming and HDR capabilities - at a smaller size for less than half the price. Of course, that was never going to happen. What we have with the Apple Studio Display is the LG UltraFine 5K monitor but in far nicer packaging. The LG still retails for $1299, so the Apple premium of $300 doesn’t seem absurd at all. I bet that aluminum enclosure is lovely to touch!

Would I have bought the Studio Display if it had been available at the time I bought the Pro Display XDR? Most likely. The price gulf between the two products is difficult to ignore (I could have bought two and still have money left over). Plus the Studio Display has speakers and a webcam, features that come in handy for a home office setup if you’re a minimalist like myself. Besides, I wasn’t yet spoiled by the wonderful black levels and high contrast of the Pro Display XDR.

But now that I am spoiled by the good stuff, there’s no coming down from the nicer of the two Apple displays. I can see why certain fan boys are frustrated: $4999 is a ton of money to spend on a monitor. Apple recycling a six-year-old display with none of the latest technologies like HDR or high refresh rate is probably not the progress we hope to see. However, just because something is old doesn’t mean it’s awful. I’ve had an 27-inch iMac, and that 5K display is still absolutely fine in 2022.

Not Pro Display XDR fine, but as ever, quality cost money. Suck it up, fan boys.

No Internet

Due to various circumstances totally of his doing, my brother is banned from using any Internet-connected devices. That is surprisingly difficult these days because many things more than just smartphones and computers connect to the Internet. For example, my brother had to switch television units with my parents’ Samsung because it’s old enough to lack any smart capabilities. What about gaming consoles? Those have been connecting to the Internet since the PlayStation 3 era. Therefore my brother is relegated to the PS2’s 480P experience.

As standard, computer of any sort is not allowed. Feel the urge to check twitter? Spend a few hours into a Youtube rabbit hole? Too bad. Impossible. My brother’s phone is the flip kind aimed at retired seniors that can only do phone calls and text messages. For someone who grew up in the age of the Internet, this situation must be tough. At least I’m old enough to have some training. I didn’t get decently fast Internet until high school; my first smartphone happened during the fourth year of college!

So I’d like to think I can go back to monk mode without too much agony. A few years back I actually went a whole week without my iPhone. I was definitely forced to be present and notice my surroundings more. There wasn’t a tiny screen to distract me constantly. No podcasts or music to listen to, either.

If I were my brother, now would be the golden opportunity to hit the books hard. Read anything and everything that interests me. Perhaps learn a foreign language, or a musical instrument. I currently do all of that (Korean and the piano, respectively) without being banned from the Internet, but I’m wired differently. Taking the enticing options offered by Internet away, what else is there for my brother to do? For his sake I hope he picks up a regular exercise habit, too.

What would you do if you suddenly lost complete access to the Internet for a long period of months?

Gas prices, batman!

Holy hell have gasoline prices shot up seemingly overnight. I filled up the M2 the weekend prior at $5.25 a gallon premium (thanks, California), and this past Friday it’s already changed to $5.75. At 10 gallons on a typical fill up, that’s a ~$5.00 increase for me. Not too terrible in the grand scheme of things, because I don’t commute. I get gas at most about every two weeks. But for those who do: this sudden increase has got to hurt.

As evident of the long lines at Costco - known for the cheapest petrol in town - of drivers queuing for gas. Delaying the rest of us from getting to our parkings spots and on with our shopping. Even if you’re entirely supportive of the Ukrainian fight against the Russian regime, you can equally hate the second-order effects at the same time.

Hey, it doesn’t cost gas money to drive virtually on Gran Turismo 7! The latest version of the famed racing game - celebrating its 25th anniversary - came out last week. And I won’t be getting it, at least for a while (super sad face). It’s just physically impossible for me to position my steering wheel controller setup in front of the TV (there’s a whole bed in the way). I don’t want to use the regular controller to play. Hopefully when PlayStation VR 2 comes out, GT7 will be a supported title.

At least reviews for the game are looking good. Seemingly a return to form of GT4, arguably the best title in the series, and the last Gran Turismo I played through seriously. It’s a true celebration of the automobile, at a time when electrification threatens the existence of our beloved internal-combustion engines. Disappointingly, my BMW M2 Competition is not featured in the game. Neither is my previous car, the 991-generation Porsche 911 GT3.

I guess I’ll just have to buy a Toyota GR86 to be able to play a virtual copy of my actual real-life car.