The five hindrances are sensual desire, ill will, sloth and torpor, anxiousness and worry, and doubt. But if there’s nothing to obtain in Zen, do they even matter?
Find out more, including show notes for each episode, at the Zen of Everything website and at Treeleaf Zendo.
Bach’s lute music is some of my favorite music, and I love this recording played on a ten-string guitar.
I honestly don’t know if this is the fifth iteration of Kirkville, but it was time for a change. “Simplify, simplify, simplify,” said Henry David Thoreau in Walden, and I’ve been trying to minimalize much of my working environment. My home office, my desk, the apps I use, etc.
The oldest post on this blog dates back to 2004, and there are currently more than 3,800 posts. I think I deleted some older ones, during a move from self-hosted WordPress to WordPress.com in 2019. It was probably in 2004 that I started using a blog, instead of a static website which had a few hand-coded pages. At first I used Geeklog, then I switched to WordPress after a few years. In 2012, an artist friend made the header you see at the beginning of this article; that might have been when I made the switch.
So it was time to simplify: to get rid of sidebar widgets, to remove comments, to stop using tags and categories – I doubt many people ever clicked on those links anyway – and to make a theme that is as simple as possible, while still being responsive, so it displays well on mobile devices. It’s much faster, easier on the eyes, gives me more room to use graphics. I may actually move to another blogging platform soon, which offers back-end simplicity; if so, you’ll see some changes to the theme.
I’ll continue to post regular articles, as well as links to my articles published elsewhere, and all my podcast episodes. It’ll just be cruft-free.
If you have something to say about one of my articles, use my contact form. And see my About page for links to my socials.
In a recent article, I looked at the new Apple Music Classical app. Apple has taken an interesting step to develop an app designed for classical music, which only represents about 2-3% of the overall music market. This app is needed because of the metadata required to distinguish different recordings of classical music.
One of the features of this new app is a series of programs to help people “discover” classical music. I’m not sure how helpful this is; I have never felt that you need to be “educated” to like classical music, like in a music appreciation class in school. Classical music is enjoyable; all you need to do is find the music that you like.
In this article, I present 10 classical works for people who want to discover classical music that doesn’t sound like Mozart, Beethoven, or Mahler. This is a very subjective selection, heavily influenced by my personal experience with late 20th century minimalist music. But it is also an attempt to show a wide range of modern classical music without too much atonal music, which might turn people off. Many of these works are album-length, and some even longer. I include embedded players for Apple Music, so people who subscribe to the service can listen to the music from this page.
Don’t assume that you have to “understand” this music right away. Some of this music will speak to you instantly, and some of it will turn you off; that’s fine. Classical music covers an extremely wide variety of music, over a number of centuries.
“Time is not endless becoming. And painting, notoriously, is the art that cannot show us time.”
― T.J. Clark, If These Apples Should Fall
Macs can last a long time. It’s not uncommon to have a Mac that is ten years old, or even older. While you can’t always update old Macs to the latest version of macOS, there are workarounds that let you run the current version of the operating system on unsupported Macs.
If you have an old Mac, it may or may not be worth selling it, but there are lots of things you can do with an old Mac. One of the most useful options is to repurpose it as a server. You can use it to store files and to back up other Macs in your home or office. Here’s how to set up an old (or new) Mac as a server.
Read the rest of the article on The Mac Security Blog.
AI is coming to an app near you. We discuss how these features will affect work, and the potential security implications of AI tools snarfing up files in businesses. We also discuss how to set up an old – or new – Mac as a home server. It’s a useful tool if you have multiple Macs.
Follow the The Intego Mac Podcast, which I co-host with Josh Long. We talk about Macs and iOS devices, and how to keep them secure.
I’m writing this article with my voice. I’m talking to my Mac, and the computer is magically converting my voice into words on a virtual page. I don’t have to type, I don’t have to hunch over my keyboard. I can sit back with a cup of tea in my hand and talk.
Dictating is a different way of writing that you can use effectively to change the way you work. Here’s how you can dictate with Scrivener.
Read the rest of the article on The L&L Blog.
To learn how to use Scrivener for Mac, Windows, and iOS, check out my book Take Control of Scrivener 3.
