Mystery Switch

Yesterday, while going through the usual process (read: struggle) of putting my son into his car seat, I noticed a brightly-colored object under the chair next to his. Thinking it was a toy he had dropped, I reached under the seat to pull it out. What I found left me truly baffled.

In my hands was a Nintendo Switch, complete with an attached pair of Joy-Con controllers and a copy of Super Mario 3D World inside. This wasn't my Nintendo Switch, mind you; that one, I knew, was safely sitting in its dock at home. This was someone else's Switch, and it was in my car for some reason.

I instantly started forming a list of every person who had ridden in my vehicle recently. It's a short list, and it's even shorter if you only count the number of people who've sat in the back seat. I just couldn't fathom where this thing might have come from.

Then my mind was flooded with a series of questions: Am I in the right car? (I obviously was.) Is this a weird prank? Could someone be using this device to spy on me somehow?

I may have been making some pretty big logical leaps here, but you have to understand just how out of sync with reality this discovery was. It felt like this device had fallen into my car from a different dimension.

The Switch's battery was dead, so I couldn't check the profile name or settings to try to figure out who it belonged to. Instead, I drove home with the foreign object in the passenger seat next to me, glancing over at it every once in a while just to make sure I hadn't imagined the whole ordeal.

When I got home and was able to connect it to power, the device didn't immediately offer any obvious clues as to its owner. The profile name was a gamer tag, and I couldn't check the email address on the Nintendo eShop account because I was afraid to give the thing access to my network. Finally, I went into its WiFi settings and was able to deduce where it came from based on some of its previously-connected networks.

The Switch belonged to one of my nephews or nieces. I couldn't be sure which one, so I gave my sister a call to see if anyone had reported a missing Switch. She said that yes, one of her sons had misplaced his, and they'd looked everywhere for it with no luck. I told her where I found it, and that's when the story finally made sense.

My nephew's Nintendo Switch had been sitting in the back of my car for over six months, since it was mistakenly left there when my sister's family rode with me to Thanksgiving. Through some combination of interior vehicle design, physics, and my lack of awareness of the world around me, it sat there undiscovered – until yesterday.

Thankfully, the device seems to have survived its half year of neglect without suffering any physical or functional damage. It's now back on its way to its rightful owner, who I'm sure will be thrilled to be reunited with it after all this time. Good on ya, kid.

Even at my age, life is still finding ways of surprising me, and of reminding me that there is such a thing as a story with a happy ending.

Wallflower Creative

I tend to be most comfortable working behind-the-scenes. At my job, I spend the majority of my time in the sound booth, at the back of the room, doing my best to stay invisible because that means I’m doing what I’m supposed to do. It’s the same way with my creative work: the parts of the process I enjoy most are often the ones most people will never notice.

I find it fulfilling – and, frankly, just more my style – to stay in the background and let other people be front and center. I don’t necessarily need my name on everything.

Of course, there are times when I do need to be center stage, regardless of my comfort level. Making cool things can’t always be done from the shadows. And at different times, the balance between being behind-the-scenes and out in front shifts depending on what’s needed of me.

All of that to say, I know it’s been quiet here for a bit. I’ve been more focused on the behind-the-scenes work than the stuff where I’m at the forefront. But I’m loving what I’m doing and proud of it, too.

The balance will inevitably shift back; it’s the way it goes. I have plans for things I want to write about, so hopefully it won’t be quite so quiet here before long. Regardless, I’m happy with the things I’m making, and I so appreciate everyone who takes the time to check them out.

Thank you for reading. Talk soon!

Watch History Journal 1.1

When I released Watch History Journal, my shortcut for logging TV shows and films in your preferred journaling app, I had no idea if anyone else would find any use for it. To my pleasant surprise, a lot of people have reached out to let me know that they're using and enjoying the shortcut. Turns out, we love journaling about the shows and films we watch.

To help make that experience the best it can be, I’ve continued working on Watch History Journal, and I’m excited to release its first update today. Version 1.1 includes a few changes:

• Image Sorter: Title images are added to your journal app in watch order.
• Adjusted character counts for show and movie titles to allow for longer titles.
• Revamped time zone logic to work for all regions.

Image Sorter was the first thing I added to the shortcut after its release, and it came from my own experience using it. I noticed that my journal entries weren’t displaying title images in the order I watched them; in fact, they were showing in reverse. I added a small loop to reorder them, and now, shows and films appear in watch order as they should.

While using the shortcut, I also noticed that some titles were being shortened unnecessarily. It’s hard to know exactly when to cut off a title because not every character is the same width on the image. But there was certainly some wiggle room, so I upped the limit.

The final improvement in this version came after I mentioned Watch History Journal in my recent column for the Club MacStories Monthly Log. Club member Vlahn reached out to let me know that the shortcut wasn’t returning any results even though there were a couple of episodes logged for that day. Thanks to Vlahn's kind help, I was able to narrow down the problem to a time zone issue, and I realized that Watch History Journal wasn’t compatible with certain time zones.

This led to a complete redo of the way the shortcut handles time zones, as well as a thorough testing process. I wanted to ensure that no matter where you are in the world, Watch History Journal will return the titles you watch on a given day in your location – something it was intended to do all along. I believe this version delivers on that.

These are just a few little fixes that make the experience of using the shortcut a bit better (and a possibility at all for those in affected time zones). This update is an iterative one, but I hope it will be the first of many. I’ve never put out a tool for other people to use like this before, much less followed up on it, and I quite enjoy the whole process.

You can download Watch History Journal 1.1 here. Once installed, it will require you to go through the setup process again, so be sure to have your Trakt API information handy. (I suggest copying it over from the previous version.) If you ever wonder which version of Watch History Journal you’re running, just tap the … button on its listing in the Shortcuts app, and the very first text action will list the version number.

My thanks to everyone who’s tried Watch History Journal, and especially to those who’ve let me know how they’re using it. It makes me happy to know that other people are out there reflecting on what they watch, too.

I love working on this shortcut and plan to continue doing so. I’ve got a couple of ideas of thing I’ll try to add next. If you have any thoughts on what you’d like to see in a future update, be sure to let me know!

A Paramount+ Update

Well, they finally got me. After granting me with well over a year of free access to the service due to a technical glitch, my Paramount+ suscription has expired.

My wife and I were settling in Monday night to watch the latest episode of The Equalizer when I was greeted with a message saying I needed to resubscribe. "Oh wow," I literally said out loud. "They finally figured it out."

To be fair, I had been trying to rectify the situation from day one. I only cancelled my original subcription to Paramount+ so that I could activate the plan that comes included with my Walmart+ account. But every time I checked the Paramount+ account page over the past year, it confidently told me that I'm still subcribed. That is, until Monday.

It seems that I'm not alone in receiving this message. Other former subscribers have written in to let me know that they, too, were able to access the service long after cancelling, but it all ended recently. The fact that we were all subscribed through Apple TV Channels and received cancellation notices around the same time makes me think this must be a system-wide fix.

So I was finally able to do what I'd been trying to do all along: I logged into my Walmart account, chose the option to link it to Paramount+, and reactivated my subscription. Within a couple of minutes, I was watching Queen Latifah take down the bad guys again, and all was well.

The only downside of this change is that I'm now on the ad-supported tier of the service, which is a significant step down from the experience I'm used to. It felt like watching linear TV again, with the show constantly stopping to show me the same few ads for things I'm not interested in.

Thankfully, Paramount+ did recently add the ability for Walmart+ subscribers to upgrade to the ad-free Paramount+ with Showtime tier for an additional fee. I image I'll be taking advantage of that option before long.

It makes me happy to see these fixes and improvements come to the tech behind Paramount+. Streamers have been too lax when it comes to ensuring their services are built on firm foundations, but I hope this is one sign that the tide is changing.

If the future of TV is streaming – and I believe it is – it's going to need to be even more solid than the technology that came before. Here's to hoping it continues to move in that direction.

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Update 1: My thanks to Matthew and Steve for reaching out about losing access through their own cancelled Apple TV Channels subscriptions. This post has been updated to reflect that the loophole seems to have been closed system-wide.

Update 2: A big thank-you to Rick for pointing out the option for Walmart+ subscribers to upgrade to Paramount+ with Showtime. A previous version of this post incorrectly stated that this was not possible; the error has been corrected.

Extending Everlog →

Today, I wrote about my expanded approach to journaling in the Club MacStories Monhtly Log:

What I found was that I could turn my journal into something much more than just a place to write. Through a combination of Everlog’s built-in features, Apple’s journaling suggestions, and Shortcuts, I’ve crafted a rich timeline of my life that’s easy to put together, beautiful to look at, and so much fun to revisit.

My excitement for Apple-generated journaling suggestions in Everlog has proven to be well-placed. Over the past few months, my journaling practice has continually grown to incorporate more and more of my life. I love where I've ended up with it, and if you'd like to learn more about my approach, you can check out the column on Club MacStories.