Write On (Blog Notes)

I finally broke down, bit the bullet, unclenched the fist clinging to the wallet like grim death, and bought a new computer. I had the kind help of Ben Rosengart and Steve Rosenblum. I bought an Apple 3.0GHz i7 six-core Mac Mini with 16 GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD. It's not here yet.

I have a stack of envelopes sitting on my desk from readers who mailed donations recently, which is what paid for most of the new computer. The return addresses include J. Reid, Nicholas Hartmann, Robert J. Sliclen, R. Teasley, G. Andros, Andrew Morang, Mark Gregg, J.F. Van Domelan, Jim Henry, Andrew D. Kirk, and Alan Currie—and there were at least three more whose names I despicably neglected to scribble down before depositing the checks. I apologize for that. I am not organized.  :-( 

Big thanks to them and everyone who donates to the site in any way. Donations now make up for the decline of the camera market and the incursion of YouTube reviewing channels, which dwarf the old TOP in terms of viewers. The Internet is changing!

You what?
I remember talking to a business-book writer in the early days of the Internet. He told me I should write about asbestos illness, because attorneys paid top dollar for leads to clients. When I told him what I did write about, he highly approved, saying that camera sites were known to be among the most lucrative to "monetize." He said the only problem with them was procuring content, which was a PITA (pain in the you-know-where), and he asked me what my sources for content were. I allowed as how I wrote most of my own content, and that, in fact, the content was my principal interest and the monetization of the site was a distant second. He stared at me as if I had just told him that my preferred sexual partners had hooves and grew wool. Apparently such a peculiar motive toward business was a little outside of his wheelhouse.

The Internet is changing; I write on.

Mike
(Thanks to all)

Original contents copyright 2019 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Thomas Mc Cann: "Occasionally I get a twinge of conscience and would like to make a contribution, but dislike Patreon. Is there another route to make an ocasional contribution?"

Mike replies: A small group of diehards sends the occasional much-appreciated old-fashioned check. The mailing address is me, 740 East Lake Rd, Penn Yan NY 14527. Thanks for asking!

Comments

[John Barnard]

Congratulations Mike
I’m just about ready to pull the trigger on the same setup but need a monitor. For convenience in moving the system around my apartment I’d prefer a smallish monitor (24” or less). Any readers with suggestions that don’t break the bank? Cheers, John

[Freddy Schiller]

I think plenty people still like reading. Many use tablets and larger phones for that, or e-readers.

However, unfortunately TOP is really terrible to read on mobile devices, the font is way too small for example.

All blogging platforms have "responsive web" design templates, I am sure typepad as does as well.

Please do install a mobile-friendly design otherwise you will loose all the audience that uses mobile devices!

[Patrick Perez]

Your having bought a new computer ensures Apple will be updating the model you bought at their upcoming event in a few weeks. But that doesn't take away from what you bought.

Patrick

[Henning Wulff]

Since I find video camera reviews annoying and a huge waste of time, and youtube generally of limited interest, reading what you write is much more rewarding.

Keep it up, and I'll keep my end up. And btw, enjoy your new computer. The new Mac Mini is nothing like the old Mac Mini.

[Dan Khong]

You are blessed with the freedom to be able to write for the enjoyment of it.

The written word has great power when you not under the clutches of having to monetize your work.

[Stephan Kleinert]

It's very interesting to learn that the people who are now in the process of irrevocably killing the Internet (and turning it into one big infomercial) already existed when you started TOP... ;-)

[Ed Hawco]

Congratulations on the Mac Mini. I have a very similar one. Be aware that the 2018 Mac Minis seem to have a Bluetooth/Wifi problem that affects some people greatly and some not at all. It affected me greatly, but the solution was simply to switch to a wifi router that has a 5 GHz channel, and to connect to that. If I connect to wifi on 2.4 GHz, I get constant disconnects and dropouts on my Bluetooth mouse, keyboard, and trackpad.

I know -- that seems to make no sense. The web is full of people yelling about this issue and some resolve it easily and some not. I'm not the only one to resolve it this way. Hopefully you'll have no problems and it won't be an issue.

[Michael Perini]

Congrats on the new machine.
Perhaps you could enlighten us about the benefits or problems Apple's new HEIC photo storage system poses.
From what little I've been able to read, it has the potential to be better than JPEG, but I read somewhere that Apple chose equal quality with reduced file size (rather than same file size with increased quality).
And that since the Web is still JPEG, and most cameras are RAW or JPEG, Apple performs HEIC>Jpeg (and vice versa) as needed.I assume each conversion is using lossy compression, but don't know.

I also believe that HEIC is not limited to 8 bit &sRGB as JPEG is.

No one seems to be writing about this so it is possible that it is a non-issue, but would like to understand it better.

[Richard Parkin]

I found @Ed Hawco comment interesting. There are many reports of MacOS Bluetooth problems with trackpad reported on the web and they seem to predate the 2018 Mac mini. Last year I started to get dropouts of the trackpad connection on my late 2022 Mac mini, after years of satisfactory working, which rendered it useless and none of the claimed cures had any effect. However, I installed BetterTouchTool (for reasons I can’t remember ;-( ) but found it didn’t do what I want. While it was installed the trackpad didn’t suffer dropouts and when I uninstalled it the “cure” continued :-). Hope this helps someone!