This week I played with the technology in my (home) life a bit more than on an average week, so I thought I’d share some of these changes and experiments (ok, I’m making them sound much bigger than they are).
Reading Blu-rays on my Mac
I finally found a way to have my Mac read Blu-rays; the best part of it is that I didn’t have to install any new software: I just needed to activate an option in MakeMKV and convince VLC to use it, and - voilà - I can open a Blu-ray disk on VLC (instructions are here, if anybody is interested). The navigation is a bit cumbersome (VLC has no ‘return to menu’ button), but for the rest it works fine, and I might consider retiring my 2012 Sony Blu-ray player (and its annoying remote control).
From the Mac I can then ‘screen mirror’ to my Apple TV, and use the AirPods to listen without disturbing the neighbours; this is the reason why I wanted to do this in the first place: my TV doesn’t have bluetooth, and the cheap transmitter I bought for this purpose always had problems pairing, and it self-destroyed last week.
Trying a different desktop email client
Earlier this week I noticed I am no longer very inclined to write personal emails: in practice, emails feel like work, and my very serious email client doesn’t help; I love MailMate and its filters and its privacy features and the ability to write in markdown, but it doesn’t really transmit enthusiasm.
I thought about trying a different client, and I decided to install Spark for Mac; I already use it on my phone, so I thought it would give me fewer privacy concerns (that is: if they want, they already know how to access my accounts).
I installed it, I struggled a bit to configure a couple of email accounts, I tried writing an email, and I just didn’t find the way: I could edit the ‘To:’ and the ‘Subject:’ fields, but not the email body. No way of getting even a single character where I thought it should be.
I uninstalled it. I guess MailMate will have to do for now.
Trying Tapestry
Like everybody else on the planet who has a Mastodon account, I downloaded the new Tapestry app by IconFactory, the goal of which is to provide in a single timeline multiple flows (in my case, I configured Mastodon, Bluesky and a random RSS feed).
Honestly, I didn’t love it: for RSS feeds, I like the ability to decide what posts to read immediately and which ones to keep for later; I might be wrong, but the lack of a ‘read/unread’ status is a dealbreaker for me. Reeder has the same problem.
I think the app is much better suited for social media, but the configuration options for the free tier are so limited that I can’t enjoy the app; I’m much more comfortable with using separate apps for the two social networks now.
I haven’t deleted the app yet, so I might change my mind, but I don’t see myself paying a weekly subscription to use it (I tried with Ivory, but I didn’t last long).
Deactivating my AirBnB account
I have used AirBnB exactly once in 2016 (a trip to Copenhagen, where I had to wait for half an hour outside the apartment for the owner’s neighbour to come home and give us the keys…). Today I’ve received an email announcing new terms and conditions, so I thought it was a good opportunity to just remove my account altogether.