This is a photo of me doing my taxes this year (getting that Canada Revenue Agency T777 form ready in particular).

Today I learned that if you right click on an image in Firefox on macOS (and only on macOS), you can “Copy Text From Image“. This does what it sounds like: macOS has a system to recognize text in flat/static images like JPEGs and PNGs. You can also select text in flat images in the macOS Preview.app and QuickLook image previewer to copy the text.

The version 14 release of macOS (aka “Sonoma”) added a “Reactions” feature that seems to have been enabled by default.

If you hold up a thumbs-up gesture with your actual hand, the system will recognize the gesture and show a virtual overlay of a thumbs-up graphic in a bubble overplayed on your video. I don’t know why you’d want a “virtual” thumbs up showing when everyone can already see your actual thumbs-up. Other animations include a thumbs-down, a heart, and rain.

I’ve seen these gestures triggered accidentally, and can easily imagine an accidental reaction animation being wildly inappropriate. The animations are often understandably attributed to Zoom, instead of macOS where they are actually coming from.

Apple has some documentation explaining how to turn off these reaction animations. The short explanation is:

• When your camera is on, click on the bright green/white camera icon in the top right system menu
• Click the “Reactions” item to toggle it off (or back on)
• Bonus: you can manually trigger these animations using the same green camera menu, clicking the arrow to the right of “Reactions” and clicking on a particular reaction.

There are a few other gestures and associated animations. I will admit to using the rave-lasers-background to generate mirth among my peers.

BREAKING NEWS UPDATE: This accidental triggering of macOS Reactions happens on the inaugural episode of WikiHole with D’Arcy Carden (around the 17m40s point).

Mike Knott is among the songwriters who had the greatest influence on my life. I discovered Knott’s music as a strange underworld below the depths of the strange world of “Christian music” when I was a kid. As a typically disgruntled teenager, his music was everything that the Christian music industry was not: raw, honest, and sometimes ugly.

I learned today that Mike Knott has died. See this obituary from NPR.

I’m grateful to my friend and personal music consultant, Dennis, for introducing me to the music of Mike Knott.

Among the loads of music he made, the albums that resonated most with me were:

• The Rocket & A Bomb, Fluid, and Strip Cycle solo albums
• His LSU album Grace Shaker
• The first album he made with the band Cush (go listen to Heaven Sent now)
• The Aunt Bettys album (now go listen to Rock & Roll)

In 2000, when a flight to Ontario would have cost me several months of income, I flew to see Mike Knott perform in London, Ontario. I knew at the time it might be my only opportunity to see him live, and it was. I’m so glad I look the time.

Knott never quite broke through with mainstream popularity, but was deeply influential on those who knew his music. It’s only an accident of history that he isn’t in the pop culture pantheon of rock stars.

At this 2000 show, Mike was mourning the loss of his friends Gene Eugene (another of my favourite songwriters) and Dennis Dannell. He put two paintings up on stage with him, one reading “MISS YOU DENNIS” and the other “MISS YOU GENE”.

Miss You Mike.