Hi, this is Allison Sheridan with the NoCillicast podcast, hosted at podfeed.com, a technology podcast with an ever so slight Apple bias. Today is Sunday, November 5th, 2023, and this is show number 965. After a long hiatus for which I have no excuse, Chichette Across the Pond Light is back with a fabulous interview with Adam Anxt, publisher of the long running internet-based email newsletter, Tidbits. Adam's been on the show a few times and he is always just such a delight to talk to. I told him that after I get off with him, I have more energy. I'm not exhausted after doing an interview. I'm just like energized because he's so much fun to talk to. This episode focused on an article that he published in Tidbits, entitled iPhone Recommendations for Senior Citizens. Now my audience knows I'm an advocate for the accessibility of technology in all forms, and they also know that I bristle at the suggestion that people past a certain age aren't good at technology. If you throw a gender along with that, such as the phrase I hear all too often, it's so easy your mother could do it.  So when I read Adam's article, I had a desire to learn any tips he could provide, making the iPhone more accessible to seniors, but at the same time, I was ready to jump down his throat if he implied that elderly people can't be technically competent. I was delighted to find that he pushed none of my hot buttons and he gave terrific advice. In our conversation, we talk about how to approach senior citizens on what their needs are and understand what their limitations might be. Do they have low vision? Do they have arthritis, cognitive issues, dry fingers? We talk about the pros and cons of face ID versus touch ID as it relates to the different challenges each person might be facing. Adam even gives some cool suggestions on how to rearrange their home screen on the iPhone, including a shortcut that he created that might make communicating with just a few people easier. After you sign up for the Tidbits newsletter, I've included the links to Adam on Mastodon in the show notes and please go listen to Chitchat Across the Pond Lite in your pod catcher of choice. I've written an email to send to my friends and family trying to give them a heads up about pass keys. Now my goal is to tell them not to be afraid of the concept because it really does sound too good to be true. In my email, I'm not going to explain to them the details of how pass keys work, but I wanted them to start noticing where they're being offered and tell them it's okay to give them a try. My other goal is to tell them they don't have to jump in right away, it's okay to wait. Now I thought the text might give you a framework for how to communicate with those whom you support in your personal life. So please feel free to steal this idea and this text and make it your own. As you read it through or listen to it, please let me know and let all of us know if you think I've missed anything fundamental or if I've mischaracterized anything. Maybe you knew a way to simplify what I'm trying to explain even further and let us know if you do. Let me read you the text I plan to send out. The subject of the email is gonna say, pass keys are a good thing. Here's the body of the message. You may start seeing offers from online services to use something called a pass key. The website will make wild promises about how this is our passwordless future finally come to pass and how easy and fun it will be to log in. While this seems too good to be true, believe it or not, these are not scams. Pass keys are a wonderful new technology that will make logging in easier and more secure. As of right now, I've been offered and I am using pass keys to log into Amazon, Best Buy, CVS, Google, eBay and Home Depot. The technology behind pass keys is complicated so I'm not gonna try to explain it here. I have confidence in it partially because the technology has been created by an alliance of the biggest tech companies including Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft and OnePassword. The main idea behind pass keys is that it will allow you to teach a website who you are from each device you own, Mac, PC, iPhone, iPad, et cetera. And from then on, you won't have to type in your password. You'll use some simple biometrics. I know that sounds crazy or crackable, but it is not. Now the good slash bad news is that if you use pass keys for a service, you can still type in your password if you need to. Websites are still storing and using your password so it still has to be long and strong and not ever used on more than one site. Now each website seems to be enabling pass keys differently so I can't give you a step-by-step instruction on how to enable pass keys. I would suggest that if you're offered to set up a pass key, say yes and follow the instructions the website provides. If this sounds like sorcery and still too good to be true, you're welcome to stick with using your password manager to help you log in for now. You don't have to change the pass keys right away but I just wanted to let you know that they're not a dangerous thing, they're a wonderful thing. I said I wasn't gonna bother you with the nitty-gritty of the technology but if you would like to listen to or read a fabulous explanation of the tech behind pass keys, I highly recommend this episode of Chit Chat Across the Pond I recorded with security specialist, Bart Bouchotte entitled Bart Bouchotte's on why Fido pass keys rock. After I posted this letter that I plan on writing to the web, I got quite a few comments from people who said that they're gonna use this for user groups, so they're gonna send it out to their user groups or read it during their user groups and help other people to get the idea that pass keys are not scary and dangerous. When the latest iPads came out, it was obvious that Apple had produced one of their most confusing product lineups since the old Performa days of the 1990s. Some of them have touch ID, some have face ID, some have lightning, some of USB-C and some have the camera on a different side. It's a hot mess. Now when Apple announced the new Apple Pencil USB-C, it took confusion just up that extra layer over the top. Now we have three Apple Pencils, which sounds great, but figuring out which one works with which iPad is a real challenge. If anything, they made the iPad lineup even harder to understand. If you select any device category on the Apple website such as Mac, iPad, iPhone or Apple Watch, you'll see a compare tool in the top black bar. This lets you compare up to three devices side by side to see all of their relative features. If you try this with the iPad, it does work to see three of the five models at the same time, but you can't see all five. If you scroll down, the names of the iPad models you're comparing stay at the top, so it's nice. You can scroll till you see the pencils allowed for each of the three models. To be honest, they did their very best to illustrate the mess that they've created, but it's still very hard to follow. The pencils below each of the iPads are little itty bitty cartoon drawings, so you have to read all of the words below each one. You also have to switch out one of them to see the fourth and fifth iPad models, and then if you're like me, you'll forget what you just read before you change the models. And what if you have an existing Apple Pencil and you want to upgrade your existing iPad? How would you easily use this method to find out the compatible iPad models? I thought maybe if we could start with a specific Apple Pencil on Apple.com, they'd list compatible iPads under it, but they don't. Now, if you're familiar with my work, you know this means it was time for one of my world famous diagrams. I was afraid I might need to go into the fourth dimension to describe this mess, so I limited the information I'd provide to the five current iPad models, their authentication method, Touch ID versus Face ID, and which Apple Pencils worked where. My first attempt definitely illustrates this and it's pretty clear, but it's boring. I put the five iPad models in a horizontal row with a symbol below the models for either Face ID, Touch ID on the home button, or Touch ID on the top button as appropriate. Below each iPad model, the pencil or pencils that work with each model are listed. I use better graphics for the pencils than the cartoons Apple uses on their Compare 4 iPad. Now, it's basically replicating the information on the Apple website, but just the information you need and all five iPad models represented together. Besides being boring though, it's hard to follow. The pencil images in particular are hard to tell apart. The second gen pencil and the USB-C pencil look identical in the images, but the USB-C pencil has a thin line that lets you know you can pull the cap off to get the USB-C port. The first generation is more recognizable because it has that silver band on it and it's round instead of flat. Overall, you do get all of the information you need in one spot and it's not as bad as having to read the pencil names, but it's still not as clear and helpful as I wanted. You can't easily start with a pencil and quickly see which iPads with which iPads it's compatible.  Do you remember those from primary school? That's where you draw circles around different things to demonstrate where there's overlap. The now classic example of a Venn diagram is the one going around the internets that tries to explain the differences and similarities there are between a dork, a nerd, and a geek. Okay, so back to iPads and pencils. I thought I'd be able to plop the images of the five iPads into my favorite free diagramming tool at drawio.com. Then I had to rearrange the pencils around the iPads and I put in the touch ID and face ID images and finally I draw colored boxes that showed where the overlaps were for all of this. While the first diagram was boring, but my attempt at a Venn diagram will make your eyes bleed it so ugly. It has the added feature of being nearly impossible to interpret and answer any of our questions. I included it in the show notes just for completion sake but on top of everything else, this diagram is wrong. My delicate sensibilities couldn't take looking at it long enough to get it right. Obviously I needed to do some more work. I decided to go with a classic flow diagram where I placed the images of the devices on the page and I draw lines between them. Took quite a bit of time to figure out how to rearrange the iPads, pencils, and three different authentication methods in order to make as few lines as possible overlap. While the diagram is excessively complex, it's only complex because the product line is complex. In order to make the diagram accessible to those with color blindness, I made sure to not just use different colored lines but also to use solid dashed and dotted lines. Keep that in mind when you're designing things. Never use just colored to differentiate things or you'll be leaving people out. Now the full diagram is clear and as concise as it can be but it occurred to me that I could easily give you specific diagrams to answer any question you might have. I created layers in my diagram for each of the pencil perspectives and the two authentication methods. I copied only the elements of the diagram that answered that one question. So I was able to create one simple diagram that shows you which iPad support the first generation pencil and what authentication method those have. You can see clearly that you can use the first gen pencil with the ninth gen iPad and the 10th gen iPad. That's the one that you have to use to lightening the USB-C dongle with it and you can see the two different types of Touch ID. I know the idea of a pencil sticking out of the side of your iPad is not ludicrous enough. Adding a dongle is adding insult to injury but think about it. If you already have the first gen pencil and you could use it on a new iPad 10th gen that's a really good thing. Now I did get a comment on this diagram that pointed out that you could really use the first gen pencil on any one of the iPads but it turns out you can't authenticate it so you can't pair it to the iPad, which is kind of weird. All right, next I made a layer for the USB-C Apple Pencil. Right away you can see that USB-C pencil is the most flexible pencil to buy. The iPad Mini, iPad Air, iPad Pro and iPad 10th Gen all can be used with Apple Pencil USB-C. If you have a second gen Apple Pencil your iPad options are actually more limited. When I removed everything that didn't apply to the second gen the diagram shows that you can use it with the Mini, the Air and the iPad Pro models. Once I got this far along the road I figured maybe people who have a preference for a particular authentication method would like to see the diagram from that perspective. I decided not to make separate diagrams for where the Touch ID was located even though I'm sure the diehards would have liked specific home button diagrams. The Touch ID specific diagram is pretty complicated but it includes nearly all of the iPads because the final diagram of just the Face ID iPads has one and only one device on it, the iPad's Pro. I have to tell you, I was astonished when I filtered it down to Face ID that there was only one model of iPad that uses Face ID, the iPad's Pro. You all probably knew that but it was actually a surprise to me. To be honest having used an iPad Pro for many years and having brief dalliances with iPad's Mini I think Touch ID on an iPad is actually a better method. With Face ID I have to lean forward to get my face and view of the camera which causes me to do a partial sit-up and nobody wants that. Anyway, I hope at least one of these diagrams helps you decode the mess that Apple has made of their iPads and pencils. One of the delights of using electronic devices is when you accidentally discover a hidden capability. A few years ago I was hammering away on the keyboard on my Mac and I accidentally hit the semicolon while holding down the option key, out popped and ellipses. Those three periods that are used to convey some missing words in a quote or to transition to a new thought. I use them often as a way to convey a trailing off of my tone. I'm not sure if that's even the right use of it but maybe that's just me. Whether I'm using ellipses correctly or not the Mac keyboard can type all kinds of useful punctuation that you can't find just by looking at the keyboard. While I was listening to a recent Mac Geek Gab they brought up two more useful punctuation marks. Pilot Pete mentioned that you can type a greater than or equal to sign by holding the option key with the greater than symbol. Likewise, less than or equal to can be typed with the option and the less than symbol. These sound obvious once you hear it but I've needed these symbols from time to time and I never found them with the all powerful option key. Inspired on this, I started holding down the option key and tapping around and discovered two more useful ones. If you want a true divided by symbol you know the horizontal line with the dot above and below it hold down the option and the forward slash or is that the backslash? The one down on the bottom right next to the shift I never know which one's which. Anyway, that makes sense, right? Cause they're both used for divide. The other one I've often wanted is the not equal to symbol. By now I bet you found the pattern it's option with equal symbol. Now while these hidden keystrokes are lovely I have trouble remembering them.  Mac OS has a keyboard viewer that lets you interactively view what will be type based on the modifier keys you hold down. Back in the old days the keyboard viewer was super easy to find but I actually had to dig through a lot of support files to figure out where they've hidden the keyboard viewer in Mac OS Sonoma. The only way to get to the keyboard viewer is if first you show what's called input sources in the menu bar. To enable this feature open system settings and select keyboard on the left hand side. You should see under text input a line that says input sources. To the right of that it'll show in gray letters the language you've chosen to use. For example, DE for German or in my case it says US. To the right of that there's an edit button. Well this is really unintuitive because I have no desire to edit the input source but that's where Apple has chosen to play this particular round of their little scavenger hunt. In the unintuitively named edit menu the top toggle says show input menu and menu bar. Once you toggle that on you can close system settings. Now in your menu bar you'll see this very detailed icon that looks like a finder window with the three little buttons in the upper left. It's got some lines of text in the window along with the command symbol. When you select this input sources icon in the menu bar the dropdown gives you the option of showing the emojis and symbols tool or the keyboard viewer. When you open the keyboard viewer you can hold down modifier keys like our beloved option key and then you'll see what the different keys will type. In the screenshot I put in the show notes I held down the option key and you can see that it's slightly highlighted in red. Since the option key is held down you can see less than or equal to, greater than or equal to, divide, the ellipses and not equal and those have all replaced the normal keys you see without the option key. Now as soon as I hold down a modifier key while looking at the keyboard viewer I have trouble remembering which key is showing the character I want. So I just toggle the modifier key on and off, on and off, on and off until I can remember the key combination to get to my desired punctuation. After you enable the keyboard viewer I highly recommend holding down the different modifier keys just to familiarize yourself with what's available. Don't forget to try option shift as well. One of the keystrokes I can never remember is how to type the Apple logo. I'll leave it as an exercise for the student for you to figure out how to type it using the keyboard viewer. Ooh, I just found another one. Option shift two is how to type the Euro symbol. Now why wasn't that option shift dollar? That would be good, but at least now we know we can find it with the keyboard viewer. Now I mentioned that the modifier key you hold down will be slightly highlighted in red while looking at the keyboard viewer, but you'll also notice that several of the keys have orange boxes around them. These are very special keys and I'll explain by example. Where the E key is normally, with the option key held down you'll see an accent going up and to the right. And the key is highlighted in orange. If you wanna type this accent character above a letter you hold down the option key while typing the letter E and then you follow it with the letter over which you want the accent. It's quite common to put this accent above the letter E so you type option E followed by E again and you get E with the accent. By the way, one of the few things I remember from high school French class is that this accent is called an accente U or acute accent. Get it? Is it acute angle, acute accent? I love that. Now umlat is another accent that's useful in German and I imagine some other Germanic languages. The umlat is common over both the letter U and the letter O, which you can type with option UU and option UO. Now that might sound funny, you might have thought it'd be option OO, but the umlat is over the U key when you hold down the option key. So it's option UO to put the umlat over the U. Now I'm betting a lot of you are hollowing at your devices right now that there's no need to know any of this because nowadays you can just hold down the E or the U or the O on your keyboard and macOS will offer you all of the available accents. True, but if I told you that first, I never would have been able to combine a story of high school French and geometry. I mentioned earlier that it used to be a lot easier to launch the keyboard viewer. In macOS we have a pane called the character viewer that you can launch by tapping the globe icon on your keyboard. It might just come up with emoji, but you can also see the full suite of emoji and symbols by tapping the icon in the upper right. Guess what that icon in the upper right looks like? It looks exactly like the input sources icon we just enabled in the menu bar. It now simply does this toggle back and forth between just emoji and emoji and symbols, but in the old days that icon would open the keyboard viewer. It's fascinating to me that they still use the same icon, but now they have two different meanings for this icon. Now, since we've lost that feature, I wonder if maybe there was some key combination I could use to invoke the keyboard viewer to come up and I found a very clever workaround to make that happen. So instead of adding the input menu, there is a way to get the keyboard viewer to come up with a keystroke. In the macOS subreddit, contributor Roma H explained that in the old days there were two redundant keyboard viewers, the one I used to invoke and the accessibility keyboard. Roma went on to explain that starting in Catalina, they eliminated the extra one. So the keyboard I've been describing is actually the accessibility keyboard relabelled as the keyboard viewer. Better yet, Roma explained how you can use an accessibility shortcut to open and close the keyboard viewer. It's a bit convoluted and if you already use the accessibility shortcut for other things, you might not want to enable it for this. The steps Roma outlined are as follows. Go to system settings, accessibility and on the left you can go down to shortcut. Then you'll see a list of check boxes. I check all of them except for one, accessibility keyboard. Once you have only one, there's no need for the list of accessibility options to come up when you trigger the shortcut so it'll go to just the one you've selected, in our case, accessibility keyboard. By default, command option F5 will now launch the keyboard viewer. If you want to change the shortcut, you can go to system settings, keyboard shortcuts and select accessibility on the left. You can then customize the show accessibility as options shortcut to a combination of your choosing. All right, now I've given you three pass or maybe four to help you figure out how to type fancy punctuation and other symbols on the Mac like the Apple logo. I hope one of these methods works the way your brain thinks. This week, Michael Westbay became a new supporter of the Podfeat podcast via Patreon. I'm floored by his generosity and as I told him, I will endeavor to be worthy of his continued support. If you'd like to be awesome like Michael, please consider going to podfeat.com slash Patreon to pledge your support. I think the first time I talked about the wonderful menu bar app organizer bartender was in January of 2014. When I do my annual new compave, bartender is on the top list of critical apps I install first. It also has a warm place in my heart because it reminds me of the gone too soon Tim Verporten on the Mac review cast when he told us about so many awesome menu bar apps that he said, some would should event a menu bar app to manage them. Over the last nine years, bartender just gets better and better. In 2021, bartender four was a huge step forward. And now in 2023, we have the newly released bartender five from MacBartender.com. If you're already a bartender fan and you have not yet upgraded to Mac OS Sonoma, it's important to know that bartender four does not run under Sonoma. You'll need to upgrade to bartender five. If you already own bartender four, you'll be eligible for upgrade pricing probably. And if you bought it from July 2022, then you get a free upgrade. If you don't yet own bartender, it's only $16 and it comes with a free four week trial. In this day and age of subscription pricing, it's refreshing to have a single price to pay. Now that we have the pricing out of the way, let's talk about the cool new features. Bartender's main purpose in life is to let you have a secondary menu bar told all the menu bar items that you don't need to access frequently. You may also have apps that have menu bar icons, but you simply never view those apps in this way. And bartender lets you keep those always hidden. By hiding things you don't need often, bartender reduces confusion in the main menu bar. It's also a critical tool if you're using a laptop with limited screen real estate. To see the secondary menu bar, also called the bartender bar, you can choose to have it show when you hover over the empty space in your menu bar or when you click on the bartender icon. Bartender five now allows you to create menu bar item groups. With groups, you can have a single icon that's always visible or in the bartender bar, but when you hover or click on the icon, you get a little dropdown of just the items in that group. Now this would probably be more clear with an example. When you open bartender to the menu bar items tab, you'll see the familiar, shown, hidden, and always hidden sections. You drag and drop the menu bar icons up and down between those three sections. Below that you'll find the menu bar items palette in which you'll find two little lozenges, he calls them. Add a spacer or add menu bar item group. If you drag the add menu bar item group lozenges up into the shown or hidden bar, you'll get a new window allowing you to customize this group. First you get to create the icon and or title you'd like to have for your group. The icon options are from what are called SF symbols that says those tiny black and white graphics. All menu bar icons are black and white now and I think it makes it significantly harder to tell them apart. For that reason, I don't choose any of the SF symbols for my menu bar item groups. The real fun comes if you choose the emoji button instead of adding text. Let me explain with an example. I really like I step menus from Bejango, but there's so many nifty graphs to monitor about my system that they end up taking up a lot of space in my menu bar. Making them a group is the perfect solution. In the emoji picker, I searched for graph and I found a colorful little bar graph that's perfect for my I step menus group. I can actually tell it apart from all the other icons. In creating a menu bar item group, I think it's handy to switch on the toggle that enables you to simply hover over the icon for your group to instantly reveal the contents. The next step is to drag the menu bar items up into your group. Once you've created the group, remember to remove the same items from the normal menu bar or you're gonna see all of those twice. I'm excited about menu bar item groups and bar tender five to keep my smaller laptop screen uncluttered and the items actually easier to find. One of the other ones I created was a cloud icon, a cloud emoji I should say, and then I can put all of my cloud based services under those so I can never remember which one is, I'm always looking around like where's Dropbox, where's Google Drive, where's iCloud, whatever. Now I can have them all under a single icon. Bar tender five now gives us flexibility in the styling of our menu bars. The first thing you'll find in the menu bar style tab is the option to add a tint. You'll see this non-descript wide empty lozzage. If you tap on it, it'll bring up the traditional color palette. When you choose a deep, rich color, don't be surprised when the menu bar does not turn that color, it just tints the menu with that color. If you're fancy, you can even add a gradient to the menu bar. The button is labeled add color stop for gradient, which will add a little circle at each end of the color lozzage. Tap on one of the circles to change the color at that end. It can make a very pleasing effect or you can successfully create garish combinations that clash terribly with your chosen desktop wallpaper. You can even add more gradient stops to add more flare. You can add a border to your menu of color and thickness of your choice and a nice drop shadow to set it off. But this border is just gonna be a horizontal line under your entire menu bar. For me, the real fun of styling the menu bar is the next session. If you toggle on the switch for rounded menu bar, you'll notice that the two ends of the menu bar are now rounded, forming a long rounded rectangle. Wait, it gets even better. The second toggle, rounded separate sides, does something magical. The left menus next to the Apple logo and the right menus near the time become completely separate menu bars with their own rounding. Looks really, really cool. And it highlights that these have always been two different menu bars. Note that the rounded menu bar and rounded separate sides are kind of inverse toggles. If you flip one on, it flips the other off. Now, if that isn't enough styling, you can also round the corners of your display if it's not already rounded. You can round just the top, just the bottom, or toggle them both on for a fully rounded rectangle experience. If you aren't using the rounded menu bar or rounded separate sides, it makes for a very pleasing look to have the screen rounded on all four corners. If you do have the menu bar rounded, I find it a bit unsettling that the diameter of the rounding menu is slightly different than the rounding of the display, so you see a little sliver of the display up in the corners. That's literally the only thing I can complain about with bartender five. There's one more toggle in this section that might provide an improved experience for you. If you're like Brett and you're bothered by the camera notch on your laptop, toggle on below menu bar. This toggle puts a black bar across the top, under the menu bar, and also rounds the top of the display below the menu bar. It's kind of hard to explain, but it makes the menu bars feel like they're floating above the main screen and everything looks very finished off and you can no longer see the notch. With this many toggles to play with to control the look and feel of your menu bars, you're bound to find a combination that you find pleasing. If you do so many changes to your menu bars and you're experimenting that it's a hot mess and you wanna start over, there's a reset menu bar button at the bottom of the menu bar style tab. You'll also see a button that says apply to all menu bars. This is a hint of another feature of bartender five. By default, your modifications to the style of bartender apply only to the current display. This is awesome because it's quite likely that you might want a different style for the menu bar on a small laptop display than your larger external display. Okay, enough fooling around with the aesthetics of your menu bars, let's get back into the power bartender five brings to you. We now have presets. If you're anything like me, you have different contexts in which you work. For example, when I'm recording a podcast, I need to have quick access to some very specific menu bar apps. But when I'm recording for screencasts online, I need to have the absolute minimum number of menu bar items showing during the recording to create a distraction-free video. To create a preset, you select the giant plus button. In the pop-up menu, you can name the preset and even add a description. In my example, mine would be called recording and in the description, I could list the menu bar apps that will show if this preset is chosen, such as audio hijacks, sound source, do not disturb, and logitune to control my lights webcam. Next, you have the same three areas we see in the main interface of bartender, shown, hidden, and always hidden. Makes sense, right? Below that, you can add a spacer or add a menu bar items group, just like the normal settings for bartender. Once you have your preset set up, you'll see it in a list on the preset tab along with any others you've created. You can tap the button to apply a preset and you can modify it by double clicking or tapping settings. In the upper right, you'll see a button to remove the applied preset to go back to your default. Now you don't have to launch bartender settings to switch between presets. Simply right click on the bartender icon in your menu bar and the dropdown menu gives you access to changing presets. Here's a big caution about using presets. If you have a preset enabled and then you go back to the menu bar items tab where you create your defaults, you'll see a warning. It shows you the name of the currently applied preset with a button to remove applied preset. Below that is an explanation of why you need to remove the applied preset. It says, changes made here when a preset is applied will not be saved to the default menu bar layout or the preset. To a more colloquial language, you're spitting in the wind here if you make any changes to the defaults while a preset is applied. It's not changing the preset and it's not changing the default menu bar. I think this is a big enough notification to catch your eye but if you forget or don't notice, you'll enjoy what Bart likes to call spooky action at a distance where changing something doesn't affect what you think it should. Presets are super powerful and give you granular control over the different contexts in which you might work, but the best tools let you automate the switching of contexts.  The triggers tab looks a lot like the presets tab with a giant plus button inviting us to add a new trigger. You're invited to name it and then choose how you want the menu bar to change when this trigger is fired. If you've gone to all the work of creating a preset, you can choose to activate a preset from a pull down but you can also simply select menu bar items to include with this trigger. This selection method seems simpler than the normal method of dragging icons up and down between shown, hidden and always hidden. You get a simple list of every menu bar item that's currently available to you with the icon of the real app, the name and the frustratingly black and white icon for the menu bar item itself. So it's super easy to figure out which one's which. Check off all the ones you wanna show and tap done. Easy peasy. Next you need to add the trigger condition. You can trigger on an app, battery status, location, time, by script or by wifi. If you choose to put trigger by an app, you can decide whether simply being open is when the menu bar will change or whether you only wanna change when that app is in the front window. I suspect the second option might be disorienting as you switch apps when working but there might be a case where that's valuable. Now back to my recording example, podcast recording normally requires my lighting which is controlled by an app called Logitune. This means that just the fact that Logitune is open could trigger my recording preset to be enabled. Now here's something interesting I learned and talked to Ben, the incredibly responsive developer of bartender. I just finished telling you that you can have your menu bar change to a preset you've created or you can select the menu bar item specifically for this trigger. He explained that you can actually do both in the same trigger. Here's an example where combining these options might be handy. One of the things that drives us crazy with our devices is constantly watching our battery indicators. I'm convinced that watching it actually drains it. Hey, maybe that's why my MacBook Pro loses batteries. But anyway, I digress. If you really wanna watch your battery when it's low but you wanna lower your stress, you could set up a trigger to enable your standard preset when the battery of your MacBook is above 30% but below 30% it adds that one icon to your menu bar. If you want to have one set of menu bar items when you're at work and one for when you're at home, you can use a location trigger. It brings up a little map with your current location shown but it's zoomed way out. In my case, I could see more than one state at the default size. You then pinch and zoom around until you've got the area you want to trigger a change. Tap the update trigger region and a circle of maybe a mile or two will be drawn around that area. By default, the trigger fires when you're inside the circle but you can change it to when you're outside the circle. I could see a simple setup where your menu bar looks one way at home and as soon as you leave your neighborhood, you want it to change. Setting triggers by Wi-Fi condition is several different options. You can set it to fire when connected to any Wi-Fi network, when disconnected from all Wi-Fi networks or connected or disconnected from a specific Wi-Fi network. This might be an easier way to define a trigger based on whether it work or not. Another cool use of this option would be to set it so that when you're not connected to your own Wi-Fi network, be sure to show your VPN software's icon in the menu bar.  I'd love to hear your story if you think up a useful script to trigger a change in your menu bar items. In version four of bartender, you could define some hotkeys, but they're just enough different bartender five that they're worth mentioning. You could define hotkeys to show hidden items, which you had before. You can also set a hotkey to hide the left application menu. So if you've got a small screen or you've got the resolution set, particularly low to accommodate your vision, or you wanna see a lot of menu bar items at the same time, be able to hide the application menu on the left might be the only way to see them. Like some of our other modifications, hiding the left application menu only affects the screen you have selected, not both displays. You can set up a hotkey to show all menu bar items and do a quick search of menu bar items. I always forget that there's a search capability in bartender. I find myself scanning back and forth, back and forth, hovering over each icon, trying to find the one I'm looking for. You can use a hotkey or if you right click on the bartender icon in the menu bar, you can also trigger a search from there. I really need to remember that. You can also set a hotkey to navigate your menu bar items using just the keyboard. This may be your cup of tea if you truly hate to remove your hands from the keyboard. With a hotkey for keyboard navigation, it selects the first menu bar item and highlights it in blue. You then use the arrow keys to move from left to right to get to the desired menu bar item. To interact with that menu bar item, you hit the enter key, then use the down arrow to navigate to the control within the menu bar app you want to manage, and again, use enter to invoke the command. Now, I'm often guilty of overcomplicating my descriptions of simple things, but this one is just as time-consuming to execute as it was for me to describe it. If you need to get to a menu bar item that's in the hidden menu bar bartender bar, you have to arrow over to the bartender icon, enter to open the hidden items, then arrow from left to right to get to the one you want, hit enter, down arrow, and enter again. Again, maybe this is your cup of tea, but I probably won't take advantage of keyboard navigation in bartender five. What I very well might take advantage of is the option to add hotkeys to invoke specific menu bar items. I'm gonna set one of mine to open sound source from Rogue Amoeba. I'm constantly going in and out of sound source to toggle between my headphones and my speakers for audio out. You may be thinking, Allison, you have a stream deck. Why don't you just assign a button to toggle between those two settings? Yes, that's a grand idea and I've tried that multiple times. Every time I try to do it, it works for a couple of days.  Anyway, using the menu bar items hotkey section, I can use the button at the bottom to add a menu bar item hotkey for sound source, select the menu bar item from a list and assign the hotkey. You can choose to have this hotkey left or right click or use left or right click with the option key. The last option is to just show the item and that's a great way to bring up a hidden menu bar item with a keystroke so you have quick access to it. Finally, we've got an advanced tab with a few useful controls. We can tell bartender to reduce energy usage on battery, change the delay before hiding temporarily shown menu bar items, show notifications and to show all sections when command dragging items. You can set whether to check for updates automatically and if you wanna live on the wild side you can allow updates to include test builds even though they might be unstable. Now I've buried the lead on my single favorite feature bartender. I've been planning it for a long time to put in a feature request to Ben asking him if when settings opened could it please open to the menu bar items tab instead of general. My logic was that the general tab is where you set things up once and for all at the very beginning and the fun was all in the menu bar items tab. Before I got around to ask him for this change Ben released bartender five and he did one better than my request. Settings open to whichever tab you opened last. I know this sounds like a silly thing but if you're testing a bunch of different style changes or maybe setting up presets and triggers you might wanna close settings for a bit to see how you like your changes and then open it back up and make some tweaks. Makes me so happy that it opens right where I was working. The bottom line is that bartender five is a terrific upgrade and well worth the low price to do the upgrade or even to buy it from fresh. It's only $16. Now it may dismay you that your old version of bartender won't run under Mac OS Sonoma but for such a small price the upgrade is definitely worth it. If you don't own bartender yet rush over to macbartender.com and get bartender five. You'll be glad you did. All right that's gonna wind us up for this week. Did you know you can email me at alisonapodfeed.com anytime you like. I need some content for you so please send in your reviews to alisonapodfeed.com. Gonna need some help for Thanksgiving week for sure. If you have question or suggestion you can send that on over too. You can follow me on mastodon at podfeed at chaos.social. Remember everything good starts with podfeed.com. If you wanna join in the conversation you can join our Slack community at podfeed.com slash slack where you can talk to me and all of the other lovely no-silicast ways. You can support the show like Michael Westbay at podfeed.com slash Patreon or with a one-time donation at podfeed.com slash PayPal. And if you wanna join in the fun of the live show head on over to podfeed.com slash live on Sunday nights at 5 p.m. Pacific time and join the friendly and enthusiastic no-silicast ways. Thanks for listening and stay subscribed.


Section 203 of Childhoods, Favorites, and Fairy Stories. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Childhoods, Favorites, and Fairy Stories by various authors. Section 203 The Brownies by Juliana Horatio Ewing 1.   It was the tailor's mother who spoke. She was a very old woman and nearly helpless. All day she sat in a large armchair, knitting rugs. What have my two lads ever done to help me? continued the tailor sadly. They do nothing but play. If I send Tommy on an errand, he loiters. If I ask him to work, he does it so unwillingly that I would rather do it myself. Since their mother died, I have indeed had a hard time. At this moment the two boys came in, their arms full of moss, which they dropped on the floor. Is there any supper, grandmother? asked Tommy. No, my child, only some bread for breakfast tomorrow.  What can I do for you, my poor children? said the good woman. Tell us a story, please, so we can forget we are hungry. Tell us about the brownie that used to live in your grandfather's house. What was he like? Like a little man, they say. What did he do? He came early in the morning before anyone in the house was awake and lighted the fire and swept the room and set out the breakfast. He never would be seen and was off before they could catch him, but they often heard him laughing and playing about the house. Did they give him any wages, grandmother? No, my dear, he did all the work for free. They always set a pan of clear water for him and now and then a bowl of bread and milk. Oh, grandmother, where did he go? The old owl in the wood knows. I do not. When I was young, many people used to go to see the old owl moonrise and ask her what they wanted to know. How I wish a brownie would come and live with us, cried Tommy. So do I, said Johnny. Will you let us set out a pan of water for the brownie, father? asked Tommy. You may set out what you like, my lads, but you must go to bed now. The boys brought out a pan of water. Then they climbed the ladder to the loft over the kitchen. Johnny was soon in the land of dreams, but Tommy lay awake thinking how he could find a brownie and get him to live in the house. There was an owl that lives in the grove, he thought. It may be the old owl herself. When the moon rises, I'll go and find her. Two, the moon rose like gold and went into the heavens like silver. Tommy opened his eyes and ran to the window. The moon has risen, he said, and it is time for me to go. Downstairs he crept softly and out into the still night. Hoot, hoot! cried a voice from the grove near the house. That's the old owl, thought Tommy. He ran to a big tree and looked up. There he saw the old owl sitting on a branch and staring at him with yellow eyes. Oh dear, said Tommy, for he did not like the owl very well. Come up here, come up here, she cried. Tommy climbed the tree and sat face to face with her on the big branch. No, what do you want? said the owl. Please, said Tommy, I want to know where to find the brownie and how to get one to come and live with us. Woo-hoo, woo-hoo, said the owl. That's it, Chisit, I know of three brownies. Hooray, said Tommy, where do they live? In your house, said the owl. In our house? Whereabouts? Why don't they work? cried Tommy. One of them is too little, said the owl. But why don't the other two do something, said Tommy. Nobody does any work at our house except father. They are idle, they are idle, said the old owl. Then we don't want them, said Tommy. What is the use of having brownies in the house if they do nothing to help us? Perhaps they don't know what to do. I wish you would tell me where to find them, said Tommy. I could tell them what to do. Could you? Could you? Woo-hoo, woo-hoo. And Tommy could not tell whether the owl was hooting or laughing. Of course I could. They might get up early in the morning and sweep the house and light the fire and spread the table before my father comes downstairs. So they might, said the owl. Well, I can tell you where to find one of the brownies, and he can tell you where to find his brother. Go to the north side of the pond where the moon is shining on the water. Turn yourself about three times while you say this charm. Twist me and turn me and show me the elf I looked in the water and saw. Then look in the water and think of a word which rhymes with elf and make the charm complete. Tommy knew the place very well. He ran to the north side of the pond and turned himself about three times. He repeated the charm. Then he looked in and saw himself. Why, there's no one but myself. I can't think of the right word. What can it be? I'll go back and ask the owl owl. Thought Tommy, and back he went. There sat the owl as before. Woo-hoo! said she as Tommy climbed up. Did you find out the word? No, said Tommy. I could find no word that rhymes with elf except myself. Well, that is the word! Now, do you know where your brother is? In the bed, in the loft, said Tommy. Then all your questions are answered. Good night! And the old owl began to shake her feathers. Don't go yet, said Tommy humbly. I don't understand you. I am not a brownie. Am I? Yes, you are, and a very idle one too, said the old owl. All children are brownies. Are there really any brownies except children? Inquired Tommy in a dismal tone. No, there are not. Now listen to me, Tommy. Little people can do only little things. When they are idle and mischievous, they are called bogots, and they are a burden to the house they live in. When they are thoughtful and useful, they are brownies and are a blessing to everyone. I'll be a brownie, said Tommy. I won't be a bog hut. Now I'll go home and tell Johnny. I'll take you home, said the owl. And in a moment Tommy found himself in bed, with Johnny sleeping by his side. How quickly we came, said Tommy to himself. But is it morning? That is very strange. I thought the moon was shining. Come, Johnny, get up. I have a story to tell you. Three While his brother was rubbing his eyes, Tommy told him of his visit to the old owl and the grove. Is that all true? Asked Tommy. It is all just as I tell you. And if we don't want to be bogarts, we must get up and go to work. I won't be a bogart, said Johnny. And so the two brownies crept softly down the ladder into the kitchen. I will light the fire, said Tommy. And you, Johnny, can dig some potatoes to roast for breakfast. They swept the room and laid the table. Just as they were putting the potatoes in a dish, they heard footsteps. There's father, said Tommy. We must run. The poor tailor came wearily down the stairs. Morning after morning he had found an untidy room and an empty table. But now when he entered the kitchen he looked around in great surprise. He put his hand out to the fire to see if it was really warm. He touched the potatoes and looked at the neat room. Then he shouted, mother, mother, boys, boys, the brownie has come. There was great excitement in the small house. But the boys said nothing. All day the tailor talked about the brownie. I have heard of little people, he said. But this is wonderful to come and do the work for a pan of cold water. Who would have believed it? The boys said nothing until they were both in bed. Then Tommy said, the old owl was right. And we must stick to the work if we don't want to be bogarts. But I don't like to have father thinking that we are still idle. I wish he knew that we are the brownies. So do I, said Johnny. Day after day went by and still the boys rose early and each day they found more and more to do. The brownies were the joy of the tailor's life. One day a messenger came for the tailor to go to a farmhouse several miles away. The farmer gave him an order for a suit of clothes and paid him at once. Full of joy at his good fortune he hurried home. As he came near the house he saw that the garden had been weeded. It's the brownie, he said. And I shall make a suit of clothes for him. If you make clothes for the brownie he will leave the house, said the grandmother. Not if the clothes are a good fit, mother. I shall measure them by Tommy, for they say that brownies are about his size. At last a fine new suit with brass buttons was finished and laid out for the brownie. Don't the clothes look fine, said Tommy, when he came down in the morning. I'll try them on. The tailor rose earlier than usual that day, for he wished to catch a glimpse of the brownie. He went softly downstairs. There was Johnny sweeping the floor and Tommy trying on the new suit. What does this mean? shouted the father. It's the brownies, said the boys. This is no joke, cried the tailor angrily. Where are the real brownies, I say? We are the only brownies, father, said Tommy. I can't understand this. Who has been sweeping the kitchen lately I should like to know? We have, said the boys. Who gets breakfast and put things in order? We do, we do, they cried. But when do you do it? Early in the morning, before you come down. But if you do the work, where is the brownie? Here, cried the boys. We are the brownies and we are sorry that we were bogart so long. The father was delighted to find how helpful his boys had become. The grandmother, however, could hardly believe that a real brownie had not been in the house.  End of the brownies. End of section 203. Section 204 of childhood's favorites and fairy stories. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Shaleefa Malhiam. Childhood's favorites and fairy stories by various authors. Section 204. The Story of Peter Pan. Once upon a time there were three children named Wendy, John and Michael, who lived with their father and mother in London. One evening the father and mother were invited to a party, and the mother, after lighting the dim lamp in the nursery and kissing them good night, went away. That evening a little boy climbed in through the window whose name was Peter Pan. He was a curious Lizzo fellow, very conceited, very forgetful, and yet very lovable. The most remarkable thing about him was that he never grew up. They came flooding him through the window with him, his fairy, whose name was Tinkerbell. Peter Pan roped all the children up, and after he had sprinkled fairy dust on the shoulders, he took them away to his neverland, where he lived with a family of lost boys. Tinkerbell was jealous of the little girl Wendy, and she hurried ahead of Peter Pan and persuaded the boys that Wendy was a bird who might do them harm, and so one of the boys shot her with his bow and arrow. When Peter Pan came and found Wendy lying lifeless upon the ground in the woods, he was very angry, but he was also very quick-witted. So he told the boys that if they would build a house around Wendy, he was sure that she would be better. So they hurried to collect everything they had out of which they could make a house. Though she was not yet strong enough to talk, they thought perhaps she might sing the kind of house she would like to have. So Wendy sang softly this little verse. I wish I had a pretty house, the littlest ever seen, with funny little red walls and a roof of mussy green. When the house was done, Peter Pan took John's hat for the chimney, and the little house was so pleased to have such a capital chimney that smoke at once began to come out through the hat. All that night Peter Pan walked up and down in front of Wendy's house to watch over her and keep her from danger while she slept. All these children lived in an underground cave, and the next day when Wendy got well, they all went down into the cave and Wendy agreed to be their mother and Peter their father. They had many good times together. They also had some exciting adventures with the Redskins and with a pirate named Captain Hook and his crew. After a time the Redskins became their friends and Peter rescued his family from the pirate ship.  They decided to hurry home. When they reached home Peter Pan was before them and he closed the window so that they could not get back. But when he heard the children's mother singing such a sad song inside his heart was made tender and he opened the window and the children grabbed back safely into their mother's arms. Wendy's mother invited Peter Pan to stay and be her child. But Peter was so afraid that he would have to go to school and grow up and be a man that he went back to his home in Ferryland. Wendy promised to go once a year and stay a few days with Peter Pan and clean house and mantis clothes. Let us picture them in the little house that was built for Wendy which of the fairies had put up in the branches of a pine tree. The birds are singing in the nests and in the branches and far below the clouds you can see the land and the sea. Wendy is suing for Peter and Peter Pan is playing his pipes while she works.  In a few days Wendy will go back to John and Michael to tell them what a good time she had on her visit in the little house in the woods. Childhood's Favourites and Fairy Stories by Various Authors Section 205 Sir Lark and King's Son by George MacDonald Good mother, my lord! In the sky alone saying the lark as the sun ascended his throne Shine on me, my lord! I only have come of all your servants to welcome you home I have flown right up a whole hour I swear to catch the first shine of your golden hair Must I thank you then? said the king Sir Lark for flying so high and hating the dark You ask a full cup for half a thirst half for love of me Half love to be first As many a bird makes no such haste but waits till I come That's as much to my taste And King's Son hid his head in a turban of cloud And Sir Lark stopped singing quite vexed and cowed But he flew up higher and thought Anon the wrath of the king will be over and gone And his crown shining out of its cloudy fold Will change my brown feathers to a glory of gold So he flew with the strength of a lark he flew But as he rose the cloud rose too And not one gleam of the golden hair came through the depths of the misty air Till weary with flying with sighing sore The strong son-seeker could do no more His wings had had no chrysm of gold And his feathers felt withered and worn and old He faltered and sank and dropped like a stone And there on his nest where he left her alone Sat his little wife on her little eggs Keeping them warm with wings and legs Did I say alone? Ah, no such thing! Full in her face was shining the king Welcome, Sir Lark! You look tired Said he Up is not always the best way to me While you have been singing so high and away I've been shining to your little wife all day He had set his crown all about the nest And out of the midst shown her little brown breast And so glorious was she in a russet of gold That for wonder and awe Sir Lark grew cold He popped his head under her wing and lay As still as a stone till king's son was away End of section 205 Section 206 of Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Jennifer Stearns. Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories by various authors. Section 206 The Imps and the Heavenly Meadow by Kate E. Bunce after Rudolph Bonbach To Heaven's meadows, bright with flowers and sunshine, the little children go when they have had enough of life's sad dreaming and leave the earth below. But as they had not time to learn their lessons before they went away, there is a school where all the angel children work for hours a day. With golden pencils upon silver tablets they copy fairy tales and learn to keep their halos bright and shining and sing and play their scales. And twice a week they glide with merry laughter all down the milky way and homework in the evening wander softly upon a sunset ray. But Sunday is the day they love and long for then all the children go and play from one till night in the meadow where flowers and thousands grow. The meadow is not green but blue and golden the flowers like dew drops bright. When it is night they burn and glow and glisten men call them stars of light. Through Heaven's gate they all must pass to find it where Peter with the key keeps watch and mourns the little angels kindly how good they all must be. They must not fly about or run too quickly nor go too far away with the golden key he calls them then they must all obey. One day it was so very hot in Heaven that good Saint Peter slept and when the little angel children saw it away they quickly crept. Ah then they ran and flew about with laughter and fluttered far and wide. So far they wandered out of Heaven's meadow they reached the other side. They came to where the strong tall wooden pailing shuts all that place away where idle careless mischief-loving naughty the imps of darkness stray. And there the angels stopped devoutly wishing some opening there might be so that they might each one enter and peep through it and see what they could see. But not a chinker-hole for all they're seeking no gleam of light pierced through so would their little wings outspread and eager right to the top they flew and looking down they saw with awe and wonder imps all as black as soot each had two horns and each a tail to play with and hoof instead of foot. They heard the rustle of angel feathers they felt the cool sweet air and lifting up their little cold black faces they saw Heaven's children there. Then with one voice they cried oh angel children you look so good and fair we pray you let us come up into Heaven and play a little there. We will not tweak nor pull your shining feathers but be so very good. We will not try and steal your halos but all do as we should. Then quick they flew away for Jacob's ladder Peter was still asleep and placed it safely where from Heaven to Implan the way was dark and steep then every imp with shouts of laughter helped by an angel's hand scrambled right over the great wood and paling and stood in Heaven's land. They all with air sedate and pious faces discreetly walked around their tails like trains upon their arms of holding and eyes upon the ground. The little angels fluttered round in rapture and showed the lovely flowers and bade them listen to the thrilling voices of birds in Heaven's bowers and gently led them by the crystal streamlets bade them on dew drops feast and showed them where the silver moon was rising to light them from the east. Alas when all the little demons saw her the moon so large and round they all began to roar and growl and gibber and leap from off the ground and mocked the great white moon with ugly faces turned somersaults in air and when the angels prayed them cease in terror they vowed they did not care they trampled down the grass in Heaven's meadow they tore the flowers about and flung them on the earth beyond the paling with jive and jir and shout they chased the birds that sang among the treetops and hushed the music sweet they pulled the angels' tender feathers and trot upon their feet then to the good Saint Peter cried the angels to help them in their pain and if he would but this one time forgive them they would be good again then rose Saint Peter from his peaceful dreaming and angry saint was he he rung his hands and clasped his head in horror and seized his golden key then blew a mighty blast and wrath upon it back all the angels flew and wide he threw the door of Heaven open and thrust the children through and then he called two great and powerful angels the strongest of the race to chase the little demons out of Heaven and clear the holy place they gathered up the little imps and armfuls bore them with mighty stride and flung them over the strong wooden paling down the other side and though they fought and lashed their tails and whimpered and kicked with might and mane to Heaven's meadow bright with sun and flowers they never came again for two long months the little angel children were not allowed to play before the door of Heaven in the meadow but stayed in all the day and when again they sought the heavenly meadow each child with humble mind must lay astride its little shining halo and leave its wings behind but all the flowers that on that day of sorrow flung out and skydored were took root and bloom again in earth's green meadows as daisies white and fair end of 206 the imps in the heavenly meadow recorded by Jennifer Stearns Concord, New Hampshire The Birthday Honours of the Fairy Queen by Hapgood Moore Once upon a time there lived in green airing a little girl by the name of Nora her home was a small fatched cottage of stone beside the bray at the foot of a mountain in the midst of a woodland so deep that in the summer time when the trees were full the sun got its rays in sun and in the summer time the trees were full the sun got its rays inside but a few hours of the day and you could see of the stardust that covers the fields of the sky no peace larger than the palm of your hand it was a famous meeting place for the fairies this horn to the foot of the mountain by the stream for the little folk from the heather above used nightly to foregather in the meadow with the little folk from the woodlands below and there they danced a long night through among the shamrocks but although Nora had heard about the fairies from her grandmother who sat all day tending the peat fire and something more about them from her mother when of an evening after supper she had time to speak to Nora of herself when she was a girl yet Nora had never in all her life set eyes upon one of these feasters of the forest for the fairies mind you come only to two kinds of folk to those who believe in them and to those who need them now Nora believed in the fairies alright alright but she had never been in need of them until now at this time that I'm telling you of now this same Nora was one of these lasses that is a wee bit gloomery and you don't know what this same gloomery is well she was at times hindered by a rainy morning disposition so it was plain enough to the fairies that she was in some need of them one day Nora went into the deep of the wildwood a few steps below her mother's cottage to a tristing place where she often resorted when she had the time from her daily duties she had been unusually heckled that morning as all of us are at times by being obliged to do many things for which she had little liking that was a favourite one of Nora's there was a shelter of rocks above almost like a cave or roof and below there was a tiny stream of water that ran out of a spring in the back of the hill and sang its way down the slopes to the bray below in this pool Nora nearly always laid some field flowers because they kept fresher there than anywhere else from the low seats that Nora had made out of a stone in the back of a shelter she looked out into a sunny place in the woods around which stood as if they were pillars of a woodland palace six grey beaches now upon this sunny afternoon that I'm speaking of hardly had Nora reclined upon a bench feeling a bit drowsy no doubt with the heat yet not quite sleepy listening to a robin singing with the voice of Eden when she heard a light tapping all of the largest beach the one that was nearest to the place where she was lying at first when she heard this sound she thought that it was the robin red breast that she had noticed hopping up and down in the open place in the sunlight and yet she knew well that robins do not drum upon the bark of trees like woodpeckers so she jumped lightly up and ran to the tree and at once she was aware that the tapping was from inside the tree and between the taps that were no louder than those of a branch against a windowpane she distinctly heard a very tiny voice how tiny was the voice Michael Arun you're asking me how tiny the voice was let me see if I can tell you you've heard the sound of the rivulet when it falls upon the mossy stones in the pasture by the barway about as loud as the echo of that if you should walk 30 paces away and then listen so Nora had to put her ear up close against the breasts of the beach tree and even then the voice sounded no louder than the sound of a beachleaf when it falls from a branch into the moss bed but she could hear what the voice was saying and it was these words Nora my darling and let me out Nora looked around in amazement but sure enough there on the breast of the beach about the height of her heart was a small key of the color of the bark that she had never noticed before even though she had hooked that beach tree every morning of her life so Nora turned the key at once and outstepped a fairy Michael yeah better than a fairy, a dryad that is a fairy of the tree for a fairy of a tree is as much higher in rank than a fairy of the meadow as a duchess is than a goose girl she was about the size of the robin red breast and was dressed all in green except a lovely cloak of red that when it was folded about her made her look very much indeed like the red breast himself and she was no bit bigger than a robin either Nora ma vurnain said the dryad I have been noticing that you seem a bit sad hearted of late and for no reason either that anybody knows so if you don't mind I will take you with me for a walk this afternoon through fairy land and we will see if we cannot do something to restore your good spirits again at these words Nora and you would never have been able to guess that she had ever known a downhearted moment so the dryad clapped her tiny hands three times and out of the open door in the beech tree stepped a little gnome who came and bowed low before them holding in his hands a silver salver on which lay a little pellet how little was the pellet uncle well what would you say if I told you that it was as small as a hummingbird's egg oh you think it was smaller than that well how about the seed of a coriander no then I will tell you the truth it was as small as the knot that gets into your eye that feels as big as a rat so Nora took the pellet from the platter and thanked the gnome kindly and she ate it down and no sooner had she swallowed it then she was no bigger than the dryad herself so the dryad took her by the hand and they walked gaily into the beech tree door and the door shut behind them they went down and down a lot of winding stairs that were lighted only by small windows in the bark of the tree that Nora had never noticed before and could never find afterward it was very cool and pleasant for they could hear the sap go singing on its way from the roots up to the branches and leaves and when a summer shower went by they could hear the raindrops as they went singing down the trunk outside to the roots after they had reached the foot of the stairs they walked for a long way through a cool corridor it was not quite dark for little people stood at every turn who seemed to be doing what fireflies do on summer nights in the grass and each one whistling to himself as he held his softly shaded lantern aloft down the side passages Nora could see thousands of tiny miners at work and what do you think they are doing? digging for gold and diamonds they were tending the woodland plants that hang their golden blossoms in the pathways and carrying up the dew drops that sparkle like diamonds on their leaves in the daybreak and it was pleasant to see them work for they were all singing by and by Nora and the Dryad came to a place where there was a brighter light ahead and as they drew nearer Nora could see that they had come to the bank of the pond that is below Nora's cottage only that they were under the surface looking up through a light so soft that it cast no shadows and now the Dryad took Nora's hand and she found herself in a little boat no bigger than a leaf sailing across the pond but still beneath its surface and here she saw on every hand working amid the mire and the murk such jolly little divers who were feeding the fish and tending the pond lily roots and like all the others she asked now you will know of course that they were on their way to the home of the fairy queen and it was but a short while before they were there I need not tell you children how lovely is her palace with its golden floor and silver walls and its hangings of the colours of the rainbow nor need I say how beautiful is her majesty herself with wings her splendid butterfly and a gown like the morning and a face like the sunshine it seems that Nora had come upon the queen's birthday and she was just giving the birthday honours so Nora and the Dryad stood in the background and watched the scene around the throne stood gallant fairy gentlemen clad like beetles and dragonflies for splendour and ladies whose long gowns hung like the light on the waterfall of Loughmarine but to the amazement of Nora those who came forward to receive the honours were for the most part dressed like workmen and many of them were bent with hard labour as each advanced and made obeisance the royal herald read the exploit for which the rank of knighthood was about to be conferred for one he read who covered the lilies of Moira from the attack of the frost king and to another to the gallant yeoman who watered the grainfield of Kilvelyn and to still another to him who dug the trench by the roadside and kept safe the highway to Throselwaite Fair and as each came forward the trumpets peeled in triumph and after a gold star had been pinned upon the new knight's breast the gentlemen and ladies of the court greeted them with hearty reverence and Nora looked in the smiling face of the dryad but said nothing then Nora herself in a breathless moment of fear was presented to the queen and the queen kissed her daintily just above her lips on both sides and suddenly suddenly Nora found herself back on her stony bench by the spring with the branches of the beech tree waving silently before her oh motherine and grandmother kin she cried as soon as she got home and she ran home all the way let me tell you about the wonderful visit I've been making out in the wildwood and after she had told a story motherine said I think Nora has been dreaming but grandmother kin said no daughter I think our little Akushla has had her eyes opened the day then Nora in triumph showed the two dimples where the fairy queen had kissed her and do you know my darlings I cannot but think that she told the truth after all forever after if one kissed Nora upon these two dimples or even touched them or even looked at them she would break into the sweetest smile and she never was gloomering or lowering anymore End of section 207 End of Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories by Various Authors


All right, so thank you all so much for having me and for letting me wrap things up in terms of presentations. So I'm actually different than maybe everyone here, certainly all the presenters from earlier today, in that I don't work with a big set of data. We're not worried about aggregating a bunch of annotations that are all across, you know, 40 million different documents. I'm actually thinking about very small numbers of documents, but how to get people to, lots of people to engage with them. So my name is Michael Weinberg, and I work for an organization called Public Knowledge. We're an advocacy organization in Washington that focuses on technology policy issues. And so what that means is that we're the people who spend a lot of time in Congress just sort of like trying to explain to them how the internet and how technology works and how not to mess it up most of the time. And in practice that means we deal with a lot of highly technical primary documents called bills. They're proposed laws and trying to explain to, in addition to trying to explain to Congress what's going on with them, also trying to explain to the public what's going on with them, and trying to get the public to kind of weigh in on it. And, you know, we've all heard, you know, law is code, code is law, but actually law in the sense of bills really is code in the sense that it's a highly technical, highly structured language. Very rarely do you see a bill that just sort of says, from this day forward, all ducks must wear shoes or something like that. It's usually actually a very kind of technical instructions on editing existing statutes. So when we do this, we actually don't use annotation today. And so what I'm hoping to do very quickly is to show you how we deal with translating these documents and trying to bring them to people in the hopes that there are better ways out there and people have good ideas on how to do it. So let me just sort of give you a sense of where we are with this right now. And hopefully some glaringly obvious ways to do it better will jump out at you and you will then come and find me. So like I said, you know, bills, we've all seen through bills, bills are complicated, they're very structured. And if you look closely at bills, they really do contain these instructions. So here it says, you know, section 1201 A1B of Title 17 of the United States Code is amended by striking this and adding that. And if you just read this, it's hopefully you're a rational person completely meaningless to you because you have no idea what section 1201 A1B of Title 17 says today and what it would mean if it changed it. And more importantly, even if we said, okay, now I'm going to show you what it would look like after we do this. So here's the existing part of the law and then we're gonna cross out all of this stuff. And then we're going to put the new stuff into the old law. That isn't necessarily very much more useful to you because while you may, there are lots of people who have a very real and detailed and meaningful understanding of the law at sort of that first level of abstraction sense and the sense of these are the rules and this is how it works. I'm having the understanding of what the law means in that very technical sense is usually reserved to what the lawyers deal with it, which is a healthy way to see the world. But it means that when we're thinking of the people who we want to reach with this information and who want to reach us, we don't necessarily think of the best way to do it is to annotate the actual statute or annotate the actual bill because the sliver of people who are interested enough in reading the bill, they're gonna read the statutory language but don't know it well enough they wanna see the annotations haven't traditionally struck us as a big enough subset of people to spend time actually developing that attribute, those annotations. And so what do we do, this is actually a bill if any of you have been following the cell phone unlocking battle that's going on in Congress right now this is one of the proposed bills.  And so this chart is useful for some things but it doesn't give you that deep level of annotation but at the same time it's helpful for a lot of people and when we present these charts we always link to blog posts that explain it and to the statute themselves we don't traditionally annotate the statute or annotate the bill. And I wanna give you a couple other examples of things that we interact with. So obviously we interact with bills all the time with laws that people, members of Congress and their staff email us and say what do you think about this or that have been proposed but also we deal with things like speeches and presentations, other primary documents right now the register of copyrights who is the woman who runs the copyright office is making a push to completely rethink the copyright law. The last time the copyright law was completely redone was 1976, you may have noticed a lot of things have changed since then and maybe it's worth doing it. And so she in a combination in a speech that she gave and then in testimony in front of Congress she laid out kind of the case, the initial case for doing this and taking the next couple of years to just rewrite the copyright act. And so we could have actually gone through and annotated the speech or annotated the testimony but again it's long and there's a lot of information and so what we did instead was we did a blog post where we sort of broke it out and gave you the prose version of what could be thought of as annotations. And then also because there was testimony we broke out a bunch of videos and things like that and said here's a 20 second video, here's a 30 second video, if you wanna watch the whole thing here's a link but here are some clips to give you a sense of what's going on. And we do this actually for our own things as well. As I said, we do a lot of sort of internet stuff and so after SOPA and PIPA were stopped we got a lot of questions that said, well great, congratulations for being against something but what are you guys for? I'm thinking they were like being very clever because that had never occurred to us before and we said, oh well actually I'm glad you asked and so we put up this website called the internet blueprint and the internet blueprint has six different laws that could be passed today that would make the internet a better place usually with regard to copyright but these are actual laws, these are honest to God fully drafted bills that could be introduced and passed tomorrow and we wanna make sure that people understand them. Now one option would have been to annotate them for people but that's not the way that we went and what we did is as you see up here the first thing we did is there was kind of a short summary of the bill that sort of gives you the whatever 50 word version of what's going on and then if you click through the explanation you actually get a longer again prose explanation of what the bill actually does and then if you decide to go into that third level of understanding then yeah you can read the bill and you can see exactly what's going on. Now all of these are techniques that we have developed over time to translate through these technical core documents to people who wanna get involved but it tends to be more one way than two way. We get a lot of feedback in all sorts of ways we get people who send us emails, we get tweets, we get people who write blog posts people who just stop us and talk to us about these things but we haven't traditionally seen kind of a collaborative response and opening up a bill for annotation. Congress has made a couple of attempts to do this, a couple of members and I think it's been an interesting process but so far the real value of it is giving organizations and individuals who have kind of that kind of specialized writing knowledge who understand how statutes and bills need to be structured to really weigh in with their changes and in that way it's actually not that different from the traditional way that bills in an idealized world and actually more often than not than bills are structured and so what we're interested in going forward is finding a way to open it up a little bit and see if annotation both as an educational tool and as a tool of understanding is something that can work and that can work in a way that if you're an organization with 15 or 20 people who are doing a lot of things can be done in an efficient manner and so that's one of the reasons that I'm here today is thinking about how to do that because I'm convinced that there's a way to do it but I'm not quite sure what that way is and so we talk about again, you're still in this sort of world of highly technical specific language. How do you, if you don't necessarily have a community of people, software code is a really interesting community because there's both a sizable community of people who understand code and who are inclined to engage about it online in a way that you don't see historically, traditionally, with statutes and laws and so going forward, we're really interested in thinking of ways to build that space for people to do it and to really get involved. So that's sort of what we're, that's our goal, it's a long-term goal, it's an abstract goal but I really appreciate being invited here today because there's been a lot of learning on my part and seeing how other communities tackle similar problems or actually tackle problems that appear to have nothing to do with this problem but are actually very tightly related and so with that I say if you have ideas and you're interested in tackling this, please let me know because we're always looking for more ways to both translate what is happening in Washington to people and also give people a way that is useful and productive to them to tell Washington what they want to change and I think there's a way to do that with annotation but we haven't quite figured it out yet but thank you very much.