Category Archives: Technology

Not To Be Deterred

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Since I began streaming at the beginning of COVID, I’ve been chasing improvement in the audio of each subsequent stream. I did okay when I played everything on the acoustic, save for the first disastrous foray with YouTube’s live streaming option. What they do is “squeeze” bandwidth if you are using the free version of their live service.

To be fair, YouTube’s strong suit is that it allows you to store your videos and not chew up bandwidth on your own website. For that, they are awesome.

Of course, everyone uses Facebook for everything—including streaming. I get it. You can roll out of bed, push the hair out of your face, grab a guitar and warble out a few tunes.

But what if you are like me, trying to capture a live sound that’s more than you plinking out three chords on your ukulele? Rock and roll (the lo-fi variety) with an electric guitar pushed through an amp and—oh my God!! Distortion!! Then, if you top it with some drums—what the fuck?

Anyways, I decided that OBS might be the way to go. Then, when I began ironing out my mix, then tested it last Thursday on Facebook—major problems. That was it for me and Facebook. I don’t like Zuckerberg for reasons I won’t bother with here. But the major reason is I can’t do what I want to do with Facebook.

Then I had a great idea. I’ve had my JBE WordPress site—this one—since 2013. I’ve been kind of neglecting it the past year, or maybe, a better way of framing it is this way. Rather than recognizing WordPress is a site for my writing, it’s actually quite capable of supporting my music endeavors. With a plug-in or two, I should be able to stream on this site, right? Well, not necessarily.

For those of you who consider technological nirvana, turning your smartphone on and off and setting up your voicemail, this isn’t for you. Hell, I’m not going to elaborate any further than to say, there were more speed bumps than I anticipated. Due to that, I couldn’t capture the actual live stream via video, so I took some time Monday after work to create a facsimile. It comes pretty damn close in capturing the music from Sunday’s first service of the First Bunker Rock Church of Lo-Fi Salvation.

JimBaumerMe delivers, per usual, even if it’s his Plan B, or Plan M.

Stay tuned for the next advisement about our next service—it will be here, not on Facebook.

Like a Robot

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Millennials like to text. If you want to stay connected with them, then you’ll need to text them back. Not only do they love to text, they have their own language around texting.

But texting isn’t natural for many of us who didn’t grow up with a smartphone attached to our palms. If you came up during the time when you still received letters and notes in the mail, then texting often seems impersonal at best, maybe even jarring.

I have hundreds of emails between Mark and me. Every birthday, I’d send him a long note with stories about his birth. We bantered about basketball and baseball. We discussed politics. And on his first walk and the final one, I sent him a note every day via email.

Email shares similarities to letter-writing. I say that because it allows me to think in a conversational way, and my emails usually tend toward that kind of flow. I can ruminate while I write, much like people do when they speak in-person.

While this is anecdotal at best, I find many millennials and younger people struggling to communicate face-to-face. It’s hard to have a conversation with them sometimes. There’s a vulnerability about human-flavored communication that’s very different than the digital kind.

Gold star for robot boy.

We’re being channeled to ask Alexa all of our questions. Anytime I interact with a digital assistant like her, it feels like I’m dealing with a robot, or something less than human.

Often, when I talk to people who grew up with technology as their first language, conversation with them simulates some of those same Alexa-like elements.

Alexa, send me a million dollars.

Going Back To the Classic Editor (in WordPress)

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In lieu of a Christmas blog post celebrating the “magic of the holidays,” I’m offering something practical for all you blogging types out there. I know our numbers continue to contract. I’ll be back after Christmas with fresh content.

Occasionally, WordPress requires that you download updates. Since 2012 when I launched this site, I’ve been faithfully executing these “upgrades.” I fear that one day, I’ll download one and the site will simply disappear. So far, so good, though.

The other day, however, when I updated to WordPress 5.01, I ended up with the WP Block Editor as my editing tool for posting. May I simply be blunt? It sucked!! If that’s happened, or if it happens at some point, I hope this video is as helpful to you as it was to me.

By following these simple instructions, I now have the WP Classic Editor set as my default. It’s what I’ve been using for the past six years and it’s way more functional than the latest editor, which again, sucks!

Merry blogging!

Blame it on the Russians

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I was in grade school during the 1960s. This was during the height of the Cold War, when all schoolkids were taught to be suspicious of the Russkies. Actually, American education does a great job of inculcating a fear of the other. The Russians were a convenient target at that time.

Blame it on Vlad!

Blame it on Vlad!

Fast forward to 2016. Apparently little’s changed over the past 45 to 50 years. Democrats are still trying to play “the Commies ate my homework,” or some version of it. Rather than own up to Hillary Clinton being a loser once again, it’s easier to lay the burden of Clinton and the DNC’s incompetence at the feet of Russia, and their current president, Vladimir Putin. Funny how that works—the more things change, the more things stay the same. Candidate Clinton—who ran a woeful campaign—can take solace. The Russians caused her to lose!

But I’m sick of that tune and I’m not going to play it today. Continue reading →

Simple. And Easy to Set Up

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Technology has a tendency to over-promise, and under-deliver. Think about that for a moment.

Do you remember the phrase, “paperless society?” That was what computers at work were going to provide—a workplace where you didn’t need file cabinets and hanging folders to store/organize reams of paper and reports. Do any of you work at a place like that? I didn’t think so.

There’s a technology product called eero. eero delivers WiFi to your home. From the company’s website, they summarize their product.

eero is the world’s first home WiFi system. A set of three eeros covers the typical home. They work in perfect unison to deliver hyper-fast, super-stable WiFi to every square foot of your house. It’s simple to set up. Easy to manage. And gets better over time with new features and improved performance. Stream video, get work done, or swipe right in any room—not just next to your router. Finally, WiFi that actually works.

Immediately, you know eero is cooler than the average WiFi router and set-up—just check out the lower-case name. Why do techies hate capital letters so much?

What’s better is that having an eero (or three) is simple, gets better over time, and you’ll get work done (magically). Who wouldn’t want an eero?

The bliss of WiFi at home.

The bliss of WiFi at home.

Continue reading →

Backseat Reminders

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How did we function before “smart” technology smoothed over all of the rough edges of living? If you spend 5-10 minutes watching the opening segment of your local newscast, you are excused for believing that humans were once more intelligent than we are now, even possessing a modicum of common sense.

Apparently our cluttered lives have become so disorienting that we need the government (and car companies) to rescue us, and prevent us from leaving our kids in the backseat while we’re at work. Seriously, I guess dads everywhere are forgetting to leave junior off at the daycare, forcing him to fend for himself in the overheated car, while dad’s earning his daily bread working for Whitey the Man. Poor dad (and mom).

According to Jackie Gillan, president of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, 29 children have died in hot cars this year.

“These deaths are happening year round. Even in mild temperatures, children unknowingly left in cars can quickly be in danger of death or serious injury,” said Gillan. Continue reading →

When Your Autopilot Fails

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Cars have always fascinated me. This likely dates back to what I can recall of my earliest memories—sitting next to my father, riding with him in his 1962 Ford Fairlane, and watching him manually shift on the column. He’d even let me grab the shifter and after he depressed the clutch, I got to throw the Ford into third gear.

My earliest driving lessons were in a 1962 Ford Fairlaine.

The 1962 Ford Fairlaine: Back when men were men, and cars were meant to be driven.

I’ve just spent much of the past week trying to get JBE1 back to where he was pre-breakdown. For some reason, when my electrical system failure related to losing the serpentine belt, the incident also threw off my air conditioning. All seems to be right in the world, or at least with my car, at the moment.

The automotive world, like much of the rest of the things in our lives, has been increasingly altered by technology. Techno-utopians always consider technology’s upside, while minimizing and often, whitewashing any of the negatives of computers controlling most of our lives—and now, our cars. Continue reading →

Looking for an Answer Man

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In another time, answers seemed ascendant, or at least, you knew how and where to find them.  Knowing your way around a good library was helpful. Sometimes it was as simple as asking dad. Our culture was built around a functional model that’s now nostalgic at best. Now if a youth in school suggested that his information source was good ole’ dad, he’d probably be suspended for some violation or another. Now, it’s all about Google.

Those of us of a particular vintage remember The Shell Answer Man and the series of commercials that Shell Oil ran during the 1960s into the early 1990s. Again, a time not that long ago (when viewing history’s arc) where assurance, rather than uncertainty was trumpeted. Perhaps Americans were simply less skeptical than they are at the moment.

Continue reading →

Summer Reading Program

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May wasn’t a red letter month for me and reading. While I read a couple of books, nothing I ran across seemed to captivate me. The topics were lackluster and perfunctory. I’m sure umpiring 23 games in 30 days had something to do with this malaise.

June hints at hope that I’ve found some new reading choices that will once again reignite my passion for the written word. Great books always do that for me. Better, deep thinkers and prolific authors proffer up a plethora of new options.

I’ve mentioned Neil Postman countless times before. His books critiquing television as well as the power of a medium to affect its message have framed my thinking on the topic. Postman also introduced me to Jacques Ellul, the French polymath.

While searching for someone or one book to kick start my reading heading into the summer months, I learned that no one’s ever written a biography on this intellectual giant of the 20th century. The closest I could come was a book offering up a comprehensive overview of his life and writing (he wrote more than 50 books and over 1,000 articles). This work, written by three Wheaton College (the Illinois-based school) professors, is called Understanding Jacques Ellul. Continue reading →

Making Promises

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We love our smartphones.

We love our smartphones.

If you’ve been paying attention over the past few decades, you should have learned this important fact about technology. It nearly always over-promises, with the delivery on that promise coming up short.

Back when Governor King was sitting in the Blaine House, he made a big to-do about introducing laptops into our schools. The intent, at least as publicly pronounced, was to make Maine “the most digitally literate society in the world.” He touted how this would be an economic boon for Maine, too. Anyone doubting King and his plan were seen as malcontents and neo-Luddites. It’s how tech evangelists always try to bully the cautious into submission and get their way of adding more technology to our overly-digitized lives.

Fast-forward 15 years and one could make the case that King’s laptop plan didn’t deliver much of a return on the $50 million price tag accompanying laptops for all Maine seventh graders. Digital snake oil for the Pine Tree State.

Sherry Turkel was quite enthusiastic about technology as a tool for learning and like many, believed that technology would greatly enhance our quality of life. Turkel’s spent the past 30 years studying the psychology of people’s relationships with technology and our digital culture. It’s safe to say she’s “cooled” in her ardor for technology’s ability as a tool to teach; she actually presents scenarios where it inhibits the ability to learn, even in her own classroom at MIT. Continue reading →