§ I attended a Vision Pro demo at my local Apple store on Tuesday. Over the eight months since its announcement I had absorbed so much information about the device. I had a lot of abstract knowledge about the technology involved but no idea what to actually expect once the device was on my face. Would my Mac forever feel like outdated technology? Would I start scrounging around for $3,500 to spend on my own headset?

My immediate impression was that the pass-through video was surprisingly bad—blurry, weird white balance, and noticeably grainy. I didn’t get the opportunity to stand up and walk around however I got the impression motion blur might make that a nauseating experience. The field of view was limited too, with stark black vignetting in the periphery. There were a few large posters on the other side of the Apple store that I could read perfectly fine without my glasses that were too blurry to decipher in the Vision Pro with the Zeiss prescription lens' inserted. Maybe my glasses were scanned incorrectly?

On a more positive note, the eye and hand tracking were both totally impressive. It’s kind of weird to use your eyes as a curser but I think it would become perfectly intuitive with practice. It felt like magic, honestly.

As I mentioned above, I did not get the opportunity to stand up, walk around, and re-position windows in space—ya know, Spatial Computing—which is disappointing because I think it is the new idea here.

At the end of the day, maybe this subpar experience is for the best. I’m not going to have any trouble whatsoever sitting out on this initial model.

§ The days are getting longer, the sun now sets after 6:00pm.

A sunny Sunday gave me the chance to do a big mid-winter deep cleaning of the greenhouse for the quails. As my hobbies evolve to be increasingly outdoor, the winters have felt more and more inconvenient. I was super thankful for the opportunity to spend an afternoon outside. I also took a moment to look for signs of life in our garden. The garlic I planted back in November is all beginning to sprout.

The warm weather has brought with it periods of intense, high velocity rain. Drops that could bruise, tenderizing the earth in preparation for spring.

§ True Detective Night Country, at first glance, feels like Fargo only much more self-serious. I’ve realized I’m attracted to the atmosphere of cold snowy mysteries and polar horror—see: A Murder at the End of the World—that said, I don’t find this season compelling at all. I keep watching and re-watching the first four episodes thinking I must have missed some important plot point but I haven’t, nothing coherent has happened and it all comes out feeling like a confused jumble of prestige TV tropes. The edges have been polished off, it is so smooth that there is nothing to hold on to, nothing to make an impression in my memory. It triggers some kind of immediate media amnesia.

§ Mr. & Mrs. Smith feels inventive and fresh. It is funny enough to not feel too heavy while serious enough to not feel frivolous. Unfortunately I don’t think they quite stuck the landing but it was totally worth the ride.

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