Dan Bricklin @danb@qoto.org

Old age alert! FoxTrot debuted in newspapers 37 years ago today. Thanks to everyone who has supported my work and let me do this for so long!

Hey everyone, @glennf has a reissued his marvel "Six Centuries of Type". Now's the time!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/glennf/six-centuries-of-type-and-printing?ref=thanks-copy

French civil engineer Charles Joseph Minard was born #OTD in 1781. He was known for his contributions to information graphics, including his famous map of the losses suffered by Napoleon during the 1812 Russian campaign.

Writing about Minard's map, Edward Tufte said “It may well be the best statistical graphic ever drawn.”

Image: Charles Minard / Public domain

Given how long I've worked with GPS data it is amazing to me just how often I still need to reference this xkcd.

https://xkcd.com/2170/

Watching the Immersive Metallica concert got me thinking about how much affection is born out of depth. How the pieces of media I have the most affection for are those which I’ve had the opportunity to really dive deeply into.

I think about the LOTR trilogy DVD extras, which probably exceed the runtime of the movies. Watching them is what built my affection. Why doesn't this concert have an “extra" of fixed views you can watch through uncut, it is hard to build affection without any depth.

Another thing I settled on while walking in the wilderness last week was a determination to cultivate a posture of optimism in the midst of all the current complexity and challenge. I don't have as much enthusiasm right now as I have in the past, but that doesn't mean I should stop being optimistic and find the positive perspectives on any situation. Optimism isn’t enthusiasm.

First example of this was thinking through the positive affects of a possible iOS 19 re-design: https://www.david-smith.org/blog/2025/03/17/optimism/

You Didn't Notice MP3 Is Now Free

Link: https://idiallo.com/blog/listen-mp3-is-free
Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42957517

I wrote about how doctors are embracing Apple Vision Pro—to a degree that surprised even Apple, developer honcho Susan Prescott told me. https://www.fastcompany.com/91269127/apple-vision-pro-healthcare

Today we have the final episode of Core Intuition. 16 years. 626 episodes. Thanks for listening and thanks @danielpunkass for recording the show with me!

This may surprise you as much as it surprised us to make the decision: today's episode of Core Intuition, the podcast that @manton and I have run for more than 16 years (!), is the final episode. Enjoy, and thanks to all our listeners, members, and sponsors who have supported us for so many years. https://coreint.org/2025/01/episode-626-something-has-to-change/

Happy 40th birthday to the computer that changed everything—the Apple LaserWriter

Retro gamers save one of the last 45-inch CRT TVs in existence
440-pound 1980s behemoth rescued from an Osaka restaurant days before demolition.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2024/12/retro-gamers-save-one-of-the-last-45-inch-crt-tvs-in-existence/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

New from me on my blog: Dave Winer's 30 years of blogging, and much more

https://dangillmor.com/2024/10/15/dave-winers-30-years-of-blogging-and-much-more/

@danb @manton
#TV #Technology and people's relative spending... .Think it's well said to begin with.

Not much I can offer on top of that apart from:

The Gartner hype cycle came to mind. Which is well named :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gartner_hype_cycle

Especially the "Hype in new media" which aside from legit hardware advancement hype in the media, shows us you can also "sell anything" in the media given the right #psychological presentation with #NFT's / #BlockChain :) These seem like a good example of people "buying into it" and possibly funding near-unuseful crap / non-existent improvements to the next level.

Also hardware like graphics cards that are basically the same board but re-arranged boards and have same (or even less) output are fun to remember now... (remember the box for the #graphics card having lightening and animals being the major qualifier to push your parents that you "need" this card!... lol
And if the box was bigger well it was like buying a bigger fish!

#Media I think does that to a decent level that it's like the other arm to the #selling of #technology.

@manton @danb I would love to visit museums all of the world without having to travel. How about the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology (Vietnamese minority tribes) https://www.vme.org.vn/modules/frontend/themes/vme.org.vn/assets/videos/video.mp4