I have tried several AirTag cases and keychains. They’re universally overpriced, and each one has flaws that make me feel vaguely dissatisfied with having purchased them. Here are some of the ones that I have tried, followed by a surprising discovery that ends up being nearly perfect.

First up is Apple’s Leather Loop. It is chic, pricey, and impracticable for any application where it could be subject to rough handling. But the quality is excellent, and it turns your AirTag into a fashion accessory.

Belkin’s version of the Leather Loop, which is made from plastic and paracord, is better priced but still expensive for what you get. If dangling your AirTag is your jam, though, it’s a less pretentious and more secure alternative.

Bellkin does better with their AirTag Secure Holder and Keychain, which was one of the first third-party cases on the market and, at the time, amusingly omitted the word AirTag in any of their labeling or marketing. (Go figure.) Its plastic construction is sturdy but doesn’t add any appreciable bulk, so that’s nice.

Elevation Lab’s TagVault is, by far, the most rugged and secure holder that I have tried. My issue with it is the Torx screws used on the enclosure, which makes changing batteries in the AirTag a pain in the butt. They’re a silly addition that only adds inconvenience, not security.

Pelican Protector AirTag Sticker is a holder that I’m very pleased with, but it’s very much for niche applications. If you want to hide an AirTag in your car, this is a fine choice.

Finally, we come to the most unexpected, inexpensive, and practical AirTag case that I have found. The Aldi Quarter Keychain. If you’re not hip to Aldi grocery stores — a cousin of Trader Joe’s — they rent you a shopping cart for 25¢. I guess it’s charming, and has given rise to various quarter-holder keychains so that shoppers can keep a coin close at hand. Aldi occasionally sells these keychains at the checkout counter for less than two bucks. And they’re nearly the perfect size for holding an AirTag. Just enlarge the opening for the coin slightly, using a sharp knife, and Bob’s your uncle. Seriously, if you don’t mind the Aldi aesthetic, you won’t find a less expensive and more useful AirTag keychain. (If you miss them at your local Aldi, you’ll find plenty of higher priced alternatives at the Amazon.)

This 2023 publication by Eric Bartholomew is subtitled “Thirteen tales of objects and strange occurrences.” It’s a collection of short stories centered around a household (mostly) objects that exhibit supernatural characteristics.

I was surprised and pleased at the variety and cleverness of the objects themselves. And the fun perspectives on how each might manifest its haunted nature. There are stories about bottles, bus tickets, elevator placards, toys, and — my favorite — a haunted pie tin that, under the right circumstances, emanates ghostly scents of past bakes.

The stories are all snappy and fun. They’re just the right length to adequately explore the premise and leave enough things unanswered that they stick with you after you’ve finished. The writing style is first-person anecdotal and feels very much like you’re hearing the tale from a good friend.

I don’t know the author, but I feel like we’ve passed on the street. That’s because many of the tales are set in locations that I’ve visited, some of which are nearby. For me, this familiarity pulled me even further into the stories.

There were quite a few thoughtful concepts that Bartholomew explored, and several more that he conjured within me. Such as:

• Junk drawers as a place for both artifacts of memory and aspirational futures.
• The joy of finding an object that has no discernible online presence. It’s like Howard Carter entering Tut’s tomb!
• Dementia as a form of distorted reality, a person within the world but viewing it from a removed perspective. Is this how a ghost might see us?

I bought my copy of this delightful book at Quimby’s. You can reach the author via his website.

A while back, there was a big controversy when Fujitsu updated their software to be 64-bit clean and stopped supporting older ScanSnap models.

Eventually, Fujitsu relented and added support for the older units. Thank you very much.

Now, they’ve done it again. The latest ScanSnap software no longer supports my perfectly functional scanner. But the last version that does support the unit seems to function just fine on the latest macOS.

So, just keep using the old version, right? Sure, except that Fujitsu’s auto-update mechanism is a royal pain in the ass. Every few days, it will tell me that a new version is available. Additionally, the user interface for declining the update is (intentionally?) deceptive with a double-negative, making it easy to accidentally apply the update and screw myself.

Worse yet, the update notification not only steals focus, it prevents the computer from shutting down until you answer its inhumane prompts!

The solution to this annoyance is to turn off the ScanSnap’s auto-update function(s). This is accomplished using a separate app that you might not have noticed among all the detritus that Fujitsu installs. See the screenshot below for all the details.

Here I am again, waiting in a long line at the local post office. I can’t help but listen to two millennial women ahead of me when they approach the counter.

The first is carrying an armload of loose merchandise. It looks like cosmetics, and maybe some socks. Perhaps it’s a gift she’s sending to someone. She dumps it all on the counter when it’s her turn at the window. “I need to mail these.” With no visible reaction, the clerk directs her to buy a box from the kiosk across the room, then to get back in line. “You’ll put the address on it?” The clerk blinks and explains that, no, she’ll have to write the address herself and that there are pens at the nearby counters.

The second young lady approaches, holding in her hand about five envelopes. They appear to be standard greeting cards. They’re addressed, but lack stamps. “I guess I need stamps to send these?” Yes, she is told, and the clerk asks how many she needs. “How many stamps do they each take?” The clerk blinks, and answers, “one for each.” The woman acts as if this answer surprises her. She purchases the stamps, then before leaving the counter asks where to put them on the envelope. “Upper-right corner,” then adds, after a beat, “on the front.”

Then it was my turn, so I don’t know how either of these scenarios concluded.

For another tale from this post office, see: Five people at the post office

Photo by Alexander Grey.

I’m giving up on the macOS autocorrect feature. It makes too many inappropriate substitutions, and I don’t always notice they’ve happened. (I’m keeping it turned on my iOS devices, where assistance with thumb-typing is crucial for maintaining my sanity.)

Autocorrect used to be great, and much more accurate. It started going downhill when Apple incorporated crowdsourced machine intelligence into the algorithm. With this highly questionable change, if enough of my fellow monkeys bang out a word and leave it uncorrected, it becomes an acceptable substitution to make on everyone else’s computer. Sadly, as the Trump era has shown us, the world (even Mac users) consists of many ignorant people.

In addition to the problem of “garbage in – garbage out,” there are inevitable software bugs. Several years ago, the vulnerability of a machine-based intelligence became evident when iOS started substituting “⍰” for a lower-case “i.” Apple had to retrain the AI to stop making the mistake. (See this report from New Yorker, and this one from TechCrunch.)

Here are a couple of examples of the maddening behavior that finally drove me to disable the feature:

I assure you that “off” is not misspelled. And neither is “here,” below.

In addition to the spelling AI, the grammar checker feature must also use mistrained machine intelligence, as I’ve often gotten numerous ridiculous suggestions similar to this one:

And, ironically, a suggestion about replacing this correctly spelled word with a misspelling, while I was writing the paragraph above.

Fortunately for me, aside from email, these days most of my Mac-based writing is done in Ulysses, which offers suggestions that are more reliable than those proffered by macOS. Although, I still wonder about the backend privacy of what the Ulysses app is doing to analyze my writing. (I take some comfort that, as a German company, they are likely adhering to stricter EU laws in this regard.)

I’ve been humbled by how much turning autocorrect off has slowed my typing. I’ve clearly grown dependent upon the computer interpreting my fast, sloppy keypresses. Now that I have to deliberately enter words, I’m slower, but I’d like to believe that I’m a little more thoughtful, too.

This 2011 book by Dan Roam is subtitled “What to do when words won’t work.” It’s essentially a primer, a justification, and a tutorial for incorporating sketching into your notes and presentations. For the purpose of increasing clarity, improving focus, and utilizing “both halves” of your brain.

It’s a big book; about 350 pages. And while the design and illustrations are very engaging and unique, most of the large-format pages are, inevitably, filled with words. Ironically, too many words. There are a lot of redundant and tangential paragraphs that an editor should have pared down or eliminated.

I was given this book by a friend. And I enjoyed it. I also learned a few things, and I thought quite a bit about its methods and arguments. But those of you who know me professionally will attest that I am an avowed minimalist when it comes to instructional design and writing. This book uses, almost literally, the proverbial “thousand words” to describe the “pictures” it prescribes. I had a hard time not slipping into critique mode as I read its meandering and overwritten advice.

That said, there are a few points of particular interest:

• Words have become our default thinking tool but cannot alone “detect, describe, and defuse the multifaceted problems of today.”
• “Words can be used to describe anything, but that does not mean words are the best way to describe everything.” (The author should consider using “depict” in this sentence for clarity and snappiness.)
• Dr. Suess wrote Green Eggs and Ham to win a $50 bet from his publisher. The challenge was to write a book using only 50 words, including “Sam,” “Ham,” and “am.” (Constraints breed creativity!)
• “Language is the single most sophisticated, finely developed, and important technology humanity has ever created. Using words is what makes us human. … it is also our easiest technology to mess up.”
• School children spend year after year learning how to express themselves using words. But visual education stops at the preschool level, and for most, never develops past that.
• Too much emphasis on words and language has reduced most thinking to using just “halve our minds” — our visual thinking side takes a back seat too often. The author includes a useful chart that relates simple drawing methods to common categories of information. For example, when dealing with a list, try a map instead.

Despite its length, this book can be a quick read. That’s because pretty much all the salient points are covered in the first three chapters and the two appendices. (One of which is based on the author’s Back of the Napkin business book.)

I recommend this book as a tool for exploring a different way of presenting information. I just wish it were more focused and not quite so gimmicky. You can get a copy from Amazon, of course, or borrow it from the library and skim the front and back portions — after that you’ll know if you want to dive into the blah blah blah of the middle sections.

Just prior to the end of the Before Times, my wife and I spent about six months traveling and living in Europe and the UK. We learned a lot about extended trips and being nomadic, but the most common question we get about the trip is how we managed to pack for multiple seasons and climates.

We each had a medium carry-on bag, and the equivalent of a briefcase. Both of which were small enough to fit in the relatively tiny overhead shelves of European trains, and not be too much of a burden for carrying through cities. (Once we arrived overseas, we didn’t fly at all, our transportation was by foot, train, ferry, ship, or taxi.)

You’ll find plenty of sites with advice about luggage and what to wear and pack. But the one tip we learned — and never saw documented elsewhere — can be summed up in two words: fast fashion.

That is, we didn’t carry clothes for the three seasons during which we travelled (Summer, Fall, Winter). We bought and discarded clothes along the way. And the best and most useful of those came from the chain store Primark.

Primark, based in Ireland, is known for inexpensive clothing that doesn’t last long, which is perfect for this kind of trip. As the seasons change, replace what you’re packing. Doing this also removes anxiety from the laundry quandary — when your clothes are temporary and cheap, local laundry service or wash-in-the-hotel-sink becomes less worrisome.

How inexpensive am I talking? A whole outfit for less than the price of a meal! For example, I bought $12 jeans, $8 shirts, and a $22 jacket that I ended up bringing home and now wear for doing yard work.

Even if you’re not going on a long-term trip, packing light is always a good idea. And returning home with fewer clothes than you left with opens up room in your luggage for gifts, souvenirs, or other treasures you might find along the way.

An unanticipated bonus is that now, when we look at photos from our trip, not only do the locations bring up happy memories, but so do the long-lost clothes that we are wearing.

Yes, Primark is for travelers. Get a list of their locations from their website and bon voyage.

I’m not sure when this happened, but lately all the companies that make disc batteries (AKA watch batteries, or coin batteries) are making them bitter. (No, not better, bitter.)

That is, they are coating the batteries with a substance that has an unpleasant taste. The intention, apparently, is to discourage morons and children (now there’s a fine line of distinction) from eating batteries.

I am not making this up. The craze about eating Tide Pods (if it was real, which I’m not so sure) was understandable, to a degree. The pods look edible, but batteries? C’mon. Who looks at that and thinks to themselves, “Mmmm, I’ll put that in my mouth.” (Rhetorical question; see “morons and children,” above.)

Sure, kids don’t know any better. So parents, you should do as generations have done before — keep small non-edible items unreachable until such time your kids can be taught to be less stupid. Problem solved.

Now, if battery embitterment is new to you, you might be thinking “Geez, Gordon, what’s the big deal?” Here’s the issue: The coating prevents the battery from working! You have to wash off the coating — using rubbing alcohol — to allow the battery to make electrical contact with the device in which you’re installing it.

If you’re aware of this, it’s a pain in the ass. But if you’re not aware of it, you’ll think the new battery is dead. And then you’ll discover that every single battery in the expensive package of batteries is also dead. But they’re not, they’re just broken by the coating.

So now you know better. Thank the morons, shitty parents, and nanny politicians for the situation.

Of all the remote controls that should light up in the dark, the one for the Tempur-pedic bed is a natural. And it does light up, nicely, but unfortunately, there is no way to turn on its light without triggering a command. This is an unfortunate design choice.

The only command that you can quietly activate, without moving the bed’s mechanics, is the under-bed lighting system. But finding this single button in the dark is a challenge, particularly if you’re not fully awake.

My solution comes courtesy of Japanese discount store Daiso. A small adhesive stationery adornment provides the tactile locator that Tempur-pedic forgot.

This 2018 short story collection by Mallory Ortberg is subtitled “Tales of Everyday Horror.” While I would quibble with the “everyday” designation (the book is quite otherwordly), I fully agree with “horror.”

Each of the eleven stories is essentially a fairy tale for adults. You may recognize some of them right away, while others draw from a diverse range of influences, which are thoughtfully outlined in an appendix. For example, for “The Thankless Child,” the author cites influences that include Cinderella, King Lear, and Psalm 139. I loved that this appendix is included in the book!

The writing is crisp, clever, and sometimes challenging as Ortberg freely plays with pronouns and genders in several of the stories. This is fun, and contributes to keeping the reader engaged with the unfamiliar. (Talking fish, mermaids, and gender roles by choice not fiat! Where is this is place‽)

I should also mention that, generally speaking, the stories are dark. Ortberg’s take on The Velveteen Rabbit will stick with me for a very long time. As a back-cover blurb observes: “The Merry Spinster will ruin your most-loved fables, in the best possible way.”

Here are just a few of the many phrases and concepts that tickled my fancy:

• “Humans die,” said the grandmother, “and humans suffer too, for they lead short lives and when they are dead, no one eats them. They are stuffed in boxes and hidden in the dirt, or else set on fire and turned into cinders, so no one else can make any use of them; they are a prodigiously selfish race and consider themselves their own private property even in death
• A king’s wife is outranked by her belly.
• The devil’s hour occurs at 3AM, the inverse of Christ’s death on the cross at three o’clock in the afternoon.
• “… she looks at one as though she disapproves of how one parts one’s hair, or spells one’s name, somehow.”
• “A whip for a horse,” I said, “a bridle for a donkey, and a rod for the back of fools.” I don’t know why I warned her next, but I did. “I’m going to speak a bible over you now,” I told her. “Brace yourself.”
• “I did not ask what the frog wanted,” his father said, “I asked if the frog expected to be let in.” All the other daughters had stopped pretending to eat at this point and stared in open excitement at the prospect of watching one of their number get into trouble.

I bought my copy at The Writer’s Block, but of course, it’s also available at the Amazon. Enjoy!

P.S.: For more on fairy tales for adults, see Book Review: The Sister Who Ate Her Brothers and Book Review: The Fairy Tale Review