Long time coming…

Mac OS X 10.12, or Sierra, was released on September 20. So it’s now been out for a full month but I haven’t read a single word about the first dot release, not even speculation about it. This also applies to Xcode 8.

Perseids on August 12

Earlier this overnight, the Perseid meteor shower ostensibly reached its peak for 2016. Much of the day had been cloudy so I didn’t have much hope of seeing any shooting stars tonight.
But half an hour ago I went outside to see what I could see. Surprisingly, even though it took several minutes for me to see more than a single star, I was able to see three meteors fly by. It was fun to see.

iTunes has a positive development

Some days ago, David Bowie passed away. I was rooting around on the iTMS today and noticed that there was a section set up for his music.

David Bowie

Years ago, I purchased a number of songs from Ziggy Stardust and occasionally since then, I’ve checked to see if I could ever ‘complete the album’. I’ve never been able to as it looks like that specific conglomeration of songs has been removed from circulation.

One of iTunes many, many shortcomings is that it fails again and again in its presentation of music and the details around the publication of music. Although Apple generally posits iTunes as a single source of music, with a tremendous collection that is larger and more expansive than any other, the company is pretty useless when it comes to managing that collection. For example, for most music that predates the store, the release date would actually indicate the year that the album was added to the iTMS, as though it nothing existed prior to the store. This would be the case even for artists long deceased. (As an aside, the store apparently thinks that McKinley Morganfield and Muddy Waters are different artists). For the most part, this is useless information.

Why would I care when a song or album was added, except perhaps in the case of determining whether I had purchased something before or after a re-mastering. Anyway, this has long stuck in my craw. While Apple hasn’t completely fixed this, they have taken a small step.

Most of the albums released on Bowie’s page have their original release years. So this time, Ziggy Stardust is shown as being a 1972 release. Aladdin Sane, a re-mastered release, shows that it was re-mastered in 2013 with an original release of 1973. This is great. Of course, they still have some albums showing only their re-mastering year, such as Hunky Dory and Pinups, which both have 2015 as the year of their remastering and of their release. They’ve fixed quite a few albums though. Small steps.

Rest in peace, Mr. Lawrence.

Three-way Bounce

Weird play early in game four of the ALCS.

Dickey throws high and inside to Escobar in the top of the second. He recoils and the ball ends up knocking the mask off of the umpire, who is staggered by the blow. The catcher Martin reaches out to steady him as he picks up his mask.

Escobar claims that the ball hit him. The umpire barks out to the first base umpire, asking if he went around. Escobar repeats that he was hit, implying that it shouldn’t matter if he went around.

Anyway, when looking at the replay in close, you can see the ball deflect off of Escobar’s hand, then off of Martin’s glove, and then finally off of the umpire’s mask. It barely grazed the first two. Anyways, they reviewed the play and determined that the batter was hit and Escobar eventually went down to first.

An ugly start for Dickey and the Jays as the Royals are continuing on from last game’s 9th inning in piling up the runs.

Falling Down Again

Yesterday, there were some horrible problems with the game’s feed. Today has mostly been fine but just now, the audio fell out of synch with the video and I saw Cespedes throw out someone at the plate in the 5th but didn’t hear it until after the ball was subsequently thrown to first. A batter later, the same problem occurred with a throw to second. It’s weird. I’m going to play some other channel for a few seconds and hope things get straightened out when I come back.

Update, it worked again for a while, but as Harvey struck out La Stella to end the 7th, the strike wasn’t called until Harvey had reached the foul line as he walked back to the dugout.

Meanwhile, the Royals took it to the Jays today. While things felt good when the score was 3-0, the seeds were there for their demise. The subsequent at bats weren’t impressive and the Jays couldn’t add to their lead. Then after he struck out the side in the 6th, Price stumbled in the 7th. The Royals whacked him around with a slew of singles in their half of the inning.

So the Jays return home down by two games. It would have been nice if they could have held on to the 3-0 score yesterday and forced the Royals to bring Davis out in the 9th. He was nice and fresh today and although the Jays got two runners on against he, he bore down and prevented any damage. It made for a tough loss.

Falling Down

The 2015 ALCS begins tonight. The Jays are in Kansas City to face the Royals. I’m trying to watch via MLB on my Apple TV. So far, so bad. The feed is in rough shape. In addition to numerous stops and starts, there have been two segments repeated. While Tom Verducci’s bon mot about after dinner mints was at least novel the first time I heard it, its allure was absent the second time. I also got to see the officiating crew twice.

Meanwhile, I didn’t get to see the first batter for the Royals as the screen was frozen. Suddenly Zobrist is up with Escobar already on second base.

All this compounds the start time crap. It clearly stated on the app that game time was at 7:30, so I tune in at 7:30 only to find the ‘game will begin shortly’ screen up. It stayed up, for the most part, until 8. There were a few seconds of some of the Jays being introduced but then it went back to the shortly screen.

Well, at least it didn’t fail during the rundown of Escobar between second and third. He made a mistake in getting caught between the bases but adeptly kept moving until Cain had made it to second base. Fortunately, the next hitter grounded out nicely to second to end things there.

This should be good.

Update… If you’re a Royals fan, it was probably good. Not so much for a Jays fan. Oh well, we’ll get’em tomorrow.

Series – Athletics

Tonight the Jays are playing the Oakland Athletics in the Skydome.

It’s an interesting matchup for a couple of reasons.

First of all, the Jays have just come home after administering a serious beating to the Yankees†, so there’s a lot of excitement around these parts. Is the team going to crash emotionally after sweeping the Yankees in New York?

Secondly, the series after the A’s is against those same Yankees, this time at home. So everyone wants the Jays to maintain their momentum.

Thirdly, we’re now but a game and a half behind the Yankees. With some luck and some good play, the Jays could lead the division by the time the Yankees fly into town.

Fourthly, the A’s have a number of ex-Jays on their team. Brett Lawrie and tonight’s starting pitcher Kendall Graveman, were part of the deal for Josh Donaldson in the off-season. Danny Valencia was just scooped off of waivers last week and he’s been hitting up a storm while wearing green and gold. In his first at bat tonight, he hit a good double that Pillar just missed catching that resulted in the A’s first run. Losing him sucks as he’s a good hitter and I think, a good teammate. But the Jays have bench issues and apparently felt the need to move him around.

Bautista just hit a screamer into the second deck. I normally don’t care about the MLB statcast stuff but I’m curious as to how fast that ball flew off the bat, even though the pitch was a breaking ball.

Colabello followed Bautista with a sharply hit single to the right side and that’s it for Graveman. The Jays have four runs, it’s the fifth inning, he’s made 103 pitches. For the most part, he’s pitched decently. The majority of the runs came off of poor fielding by the A’s. They have two errors. Bautista’s home run was all his fault though.

Anyway, it’s over. Jays win 4-2. Meanwhile, over in Cleveland, the Yankees have tied the game with an 8th inning home run by Beltran and the Indians failed to score with a man in scoring position in the ninth.

Update 1: Early in the game, each team had cause to review a play. The Jays had apparently gotten out of the first with a double play but the review overturned the play. It took over 4 minutes to review. If the original call had been safe and they’d rejected a Blue Jays challenge, I wouldn’t have minded since it was a really close play but none of the replays I got to see were conclusive. The Jays have lost some ugly challenges lately, and this one resulted in the game’s first run. Having said that, they gave the Jays a call at second on Smoak when he slid into second after driving Martin in with a drive to the left field wall.

I’d need to see it again but it didn’t look like Smoak ran hard out of the box. The announcer suggested that he may have thought he hit a home run. If so, he needs a kick in the pants. In New York, he wasn’t running out ground balls. It’s unbecoming in any hitter, let alone one hitting .220.

For what it’s worth, while the same umpire had two calls overturned, I can’t fault him too much. They were both really close plays.

Martin almost made a remarkable play on a popup that almost fell into the first base dugout. Unlike the ball, Martin did end up in the dugout. The effort was great but it was a scary play. What’s more, he could have had the ball if he’d just waited by the railing rather than jumping on it.

Update: Indians win in 16. With runners on first and second, Michael Brantley hit a ball right at Mark Teixeira at first but it was a rocket that was too much to handle.

After reliever Pinder induced a fly out from Giovanny Urshela to lead off the 16th, Jose Ramirez hit a broken bat single. Francisco Lindor, who scored the tying run in the 10th that resulted in a blown save for Andrew Miller, then hit a good hard single to move Ramirez to second. Just before he did so, Yankees announcer Ryan Ruocco (I think) ominously told us, “And trouble is waiting with Michael Brantley on deck.” Brantley of course hit a rocket that ate Teixeira up at first, the ball punching its way out to right field, and won the game.

So the Yankees lead over the Jays is now down to ½ game.

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† As an aside, much has been made of the Jays shutting out the Yankees for two consecutive games over the weekend but it was even worse than that. The league umpires gave them an ugly home run in the first game on a play that a fan reached into the field of play, apparently affected the ball’s flight but somehow, didn’t interfere. They changed the call on the field and gave New York a home run. Without this gift, the Yankees are shut out for the entire series. When was the last time that happened?

Teams Re-stocked

Exciting times in the baseball world, at least for Blue Jays fans.

Last night, they did something fairly unusual… winning a game against Kansas City’s relievers. The Royals’ star pickup at the trade deadline, Johnny Cueto, pitched a decent game and left with a 5-3 lead after six. The Royals padded their lead with a run in the top of the seventh and then put the game into the hands of their relievers.

Anyway, the Jays went on to tie it in the bottom of the 7th and proceeded to win it in the 11th after a peculiar balk call by the home plate umpire sent Jays’ star pickup, Troy Tulowitzki to second on a balk. For what it’s worth, I didn’t think it was a balk. Morales’ footwork was a bit fishy but I’d need to read the rule and watch it again before I’d suggest it was a balk. For what it’s worth, the step allowed him to get off a good pick-off throw.

With Tulowitzki on second, the white hot Josh Donaldson drove him in to win the game for the Jays, which allowed them to keep pace with the damn Yankees and Orioles, who both won their respective games against weak opponents.

It was a tough game to watch as the Jays kept giving up leads and although they kept clawing them back, there seemed to be several opportunities for them to blow the game open but just couldn’t do it. An awful game by Justin Smoak didn’t help. Cueto struck him out all three times he faced him, and then with the bases loaded in the sixth, he ground into a double play. A run scored… and it was even the tying run, but it was painful nonetheless. Smoak went 0 for 5 and compounded problems by having the most runners on base during his at bats.

Trade Deadline Week

All in all, it’s been a hectic few days for the Jays. In addition to the pick-up of Tulowitzki, they added Tigers star pitcher David Price, relievers LaTroy Hawkins and Mark Lowe, as well as outfielder Ben Revere. Personally, I’m pleased with all of the pickups.

Price will front a rotation of R.A. Dickey, Mark Buehrle, Marco Estrada and Drew Hutchison. I’m okay with that.

I’m not sure what the plans are for the bullpen but Hawkins has pitched well and Lowe has pitched very well so far this year. Concerns? Do we have enough left-handed pitching?

Assuming no issues, Revere can step into left field, which will let Carrera revert to being a spot outfielder and keep Colabello out of left field. I’m not if it would work or not, but I’d be fine with him taking over centre as well. Pillar has been very good there but I think that as a left-fielder, he’s an easy gold glove. In centre, he’s very good but Revere might be better. Not sure if he’d be upset about such a move though. The more I think about it though, the more I think it should be done. Update: Just being doing some reading about Revere and while he’s fielding well this year, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of enthusiasm about him playing centre.

Concerns? Not enough left-handed bats. Revere bats left, as does Carrera, but otherwise, Ryan Goins is the only guy who bats left. There are a couple of switch-hitters but neither of them, Smoak nor Navarro, are really every day players… between the two of them, they only have about 250 at bats and both of them are currently batting under .240. This isn’t the number of left-handed bats amongst the starting lineup… it’s how many are on the active roster. The Jays have more left-handed bats amongst their pitchers than their position players. While Travis is a better hitter than Goins, he too is right-handed so when he returns, it’s only going to get more right-sided.

So the Jays situation is that they have some nagging injuries (Encarnacion, Bautista, Travis, maybe Martin, Sanchez) that keep them from fielding the team they want to on most nights and results in too many at bats for weaker hitters and too many defensive innings with poorer defenders.

They are exposed when playing against teams with strong right-handed pitching. This is especially apparent when it’s a game on the line moment and they can’t put pinch-hitting pressure on the other team’s pitching. Tough right-handers, like O’Day from the Orioles, can work their way out of jams with minimal damage. Even in last night’s game, the relief damage was done against lefty Ryan Madson and lefty Franklin Morales. Righty Kelvin Herrera came in with two on and nobody out and escaped with just one run scored, albeit the tying run. He then pitched a scoreless 8th. Righty Luke Hochevar pitched the next two innings without giving anything up. Even the day before, all five runs (including three HR) came against the left-handed starter, with zero runs off of the two right-handed relievers. The Jays are leading the league in big innings this year. I’m curious to know the breakdown of pitchers that have been lit up by them. Not being able to bring left-handed bats into the game also allows teams to preserve their relief options since they never have to switch up for a really critical at bat.

The Jays can beat up on anybody but as their order gets more lop-sided, the big innings are going to be harder to come by. I think that the lack of left-handed bats is probably my biggest concern as we gear up for the pennant race. Injuries can interfere with any team’s progress but the Jays are a little more fragile than I’d like.

As an aside: After Encarnacion walked the bases loaded in the 7th, the KC announcer commented that the Royals had yet to lose a game when they held a lead in the 7th. The graphic they displayed elsewhere indicated after 7 but either way, it’s an uphill climb against them.

Train Wreck, or the Music app on iOS 8.4

The other day, Apple released iOS 8.4. Without thinking much, I upgraded both my iphone and iPad to it. For the most part it’s fine and there isn’t much in the way of change.

However, there is one major change to the device. The Music app has been completely re-built in order to bring Apple Music to the masses. Alas, Apple has chosen to subordinate the typical music playing functionality, presumably in order to drive the streaming options. It’s a mess.

There’s too much to write about now but at first glance, all manner of useful features have been removed. There is no longer a useful ‘shuffle’ button at the top of the screen. To start playing music, you have to tap on a specific song. So whatever song is at the top of the list is going to get heard to the point of sickness, even if it is just the opening bars. In order to play the next song, you have to then tap on the song at the bottom of the screen as it’s playing. This makes that song full-screen and gives you the standard player options. This is also where you can enable ‘shuffle’.

Previously, there were buttons in standard places for viewing by artist, or album, or genre, etc…. You could choose the most commonly used items and there was a dropdown (or popup) menu for the less-used choices. Now, they all are stuffed into the same dropdown menu and four buttons are given over to streaming.

Even the description irritates me, in how it offers me my whole library of music. As opposed to what? Fortunately, it appears to be a one-time thing but when you first launch the app, you have to tap on a button to gain access to your music. This is terrible, juvenile product design and it’s really disappointing to see.

Added bonus: All of my ‘skip when shuffling’ is now ignored. I get random classical tracks interspersed with everything else. I just looked at a song in itunes. The option is still checked off. So the new Music app is just ignoring it. As such, I don’t know how I’m going to deal with that.

Anyway, as I use my phone to listen to a lot of music and I’m not interested in the streaming options at this time, I find that the app isn’t really usable for playing music from the device. So I’ve started trying out other apps. This is a dismal exercise as the search function within the app store is nigh on useless, especially so for apps such as a music player. So last night I just started searching with Google and found a number of articles on various, random sites that discuss alternatives to the default app. Unfortunately, most of these articles are multiple years old and some of the apps I’ve seen references to are no longer available.

I’ve downloaded two so far, one from Denon and one called Ecoute. Écoute is a French word for ‘listening’. The word has an accent aigu on the initial ‘e’, but the app drops that.

The Denon one suffers from configuration requirements. It won’t do something obvious like just play music. You need to first ‘add all songs’. To what, I wonder? Someone didn’t think this through.

The Ecoute app was inexpensive at a dollar (well, $1.19 up here). I don’t mind paying for the app but I hate that there are about a billion such apps and the websites for iOS apps are typically awful and non-informative. Even though my needs are pretty simple, i.e. mimic the functionality of the previous default app, I don’t know for sure which app will do so well. Alas, it fails in that it doesn’t read the ‘skip when shuffling’ setting and plays everything. What a nightmare this is. I guess I’m going to have spend some time creating new playlists and researching other apps. The app doesn’t seem to have any ‘how to’ information within it.

Icon Horror

Apple just released a new version of Yosemite. It’s now at 10.10.4.

Along with this came an upgrade to iTunes, now at 12.2.

Alas, the app came with a new icon. It’s flat, which I don’t mind so much. The icon had been really garish and ugly for a long time. But this time, the colour scheme is awful. It’s a weird blend behind a white mask.

Well, it’s still better than the old one.