“Our Dogs Can Get Lyme Vaccines And We (Still) Can’t. When Might We?”

“That’s because we used to have a vaccine for Lyme, called LYMErix, but it was pulled from the market. Now, the only family member who can get a Lyme vaccine is your dog.”

What a shame. Given how and where I ride my mountain bike, I frequently discover ticks on me post-ride. I’d gladly pay the $150 fee for the vaccination to reduce my chances of getting Lyme.

Our Dogs Can Get Lyme Vaccines And We (Still) Can’t. When Might We?

New vaccines or antibodies against Lyme disease in humans won’t be available for several years at best, but at least there are projects underway, including clinical trials that began this year.

www.wbur.org

“Google Play Music now works with Apple’s CarPlay”

The Verge:

“This is Google’s first app to offer CarPlay support. While you’d expect Google Maps or the popular Waze to be more obvious choices, Apple doesn’t currently allow navigation alternatives to Apple Maps on CarPlay.”

Waze would be my #1 most wanted app on CarPlay. Apple not letting other nav apps is one big reason I’m not eager to get to CarPlay.

Google Play Music now works with Apple’s CarPlay

Another choice for listening on the road.

www.theverge.com

“‘It’ director Andy Muschietti signs on for Sony’s ‘Robotech’ movie”

Man, I don’t know how to feel about this. I loved Robotech when I was younger, and it was one of the things that got me into anime. That said, I also feel like I’m done with it, that it can’t ever be as interesting as it was then. We’ll see, I guess. If they do it, I hope they do it justice, and I’m sure I’d go see it if it was done well.

‘It’ director Andy Muschietti signs on for Sony’s ‘Robotech’ movie

More than 30 years after the original series debuted on television, the classic Mecha anime Robotech will once again grace the silver screen. Sony announced on Monday that it had tapped Andy Muschietti, who just finished directing the reboot of Stephen King’s It, to direct the upcoming live-action reboot.

www.engadget.com

“Jodie Whittaker is Doctor Who’s Thirteenth Doctor”

I’m excited to see what they do with this opportunity. Hopefully they use this as a chance to reinvigorate the writing, which has been in a bit of a slump. (I’m admittedly behind, having had the slump buck me from keeping up with the latest.) I really hope they don’t spend too much time just navel-gazing over The Doctor being a woman now, but instead show that a woman can be as good a Doctor as any male incarnation has ever been.

Based solely on my somewhat faulty memory, I remember some good scenes with Whittaker in Broadchurch, but don’t recall being too impressed. I was more aware of her performance in Black Mirror, which was quite good. Let’s hope she knocks it out of the park, since she reportedly was great in auditioning for the part.

I’ll not comment too much about the inevitable furor from small-minded people who are complaining, other that to echo the sentiment that has been bouncing around the ’net: If you’re watching a show that features an alien who completely changes form and personality over-and-over again and are offended that form can sometimes be female, you should honestly ask yourself why. Then again, people hate any change; there’s always an uproar when The Doctor changes, even to another male incarnation. Hopefully this ends up being more of that, and not just rampant sexism.

This announcement has given me motivation to suck it up and catch up with the latest episodes so I’m ready for the new series.

Jodie Whittaker is Doctor Who’s Thirteenth Doctor

First female actor to play the iconic role

www.theverge.com

“The Lightroom Manifesto: Adobe has lost its way”

Jim Harmer (via Michael Tsai, who has links to other related things around the web:

“Also, the feature set in Lightroom has slowed to a crawl ever since Adobe locked us into a subscription. They swore up and down that the subscription model would allow them to make better improvements to products and consistently develop them over time. That is simply not factual. The list of significant features added to Lightroom in the last two entire years is barely one sentence long.”

Apple killing off Aperture can’t have helped. The fact that they don’t have to sell new licenses to Lightroom any more definitely hasn’t helped our cause.

The Lightroom Manifesto: Adobe has lost its way - Improve Photography

The Lightroom Manifesto: Adobe has lost its way. I’m not happy with what I’m writing. I don’t like calling people out and spreading negativity on the web.

improvephotography.com

“‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’ behind the scenes footage is here”

“December 15th can’t come soon enough.”

Indeed.

‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’ behind the scenes footage is here

After offering up a quick look at Star Wars: The Last Jedi in April, Disney gave us a further taste at its D23 Expo today with a new behind the scenes reel. More than anything, it sets the mood for what looks to be a particularly dramatic film. According to director Rian Johnson, fans might find some aspects of The Last Jedi “shocking.”

www.engadget.com

“Why We Love 1Password Memberships”

I think they buried the best part of this post:

“Please don’t think our excitement for memberships has anything to do with money. We’re completely self-funded so we don’t have any investors forcing us to make changes by looking solely at our bottom line. We were doing just fine selling individual licenses and AgileBits was already steadily growing before 1Password Teams was even introduced. We created 1Password Memberships because we had a vision for how 1Password could be even better and we followed our dreams. The result has been stupendously awesome and better than our wildest dreams! Today, over 95% of our revenues are coming from subscribers, which is truly mind blowing. Many investment strategists would say it makes sense to simply drop support for everything else and focus on the money. That’s not how we do things around here. We focus on people, love, and happiness. It’s the way we do things and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Why We Love 1Password Memberships | 1Password

We believe 1Password memberships are the best and will shout it from the mountaintops, but standalone vaults will contine to be supported in 1Password 7.

blog.agilebits.com

1password Moves to Subscription Software Model

1password, my favorite password manager, went to a subscription model recently, and there has been a lot of reaction to that, almost all of it negative.

My first reaction to seeing this news was “ugh”, because it really does seem like I’m being nickel-and-dimed each time some app published wants me to pay a subscription for something that was working just great as a one-time license product. In this case, I did get over it mostly because of utility: I use 1password all day, every day. I really like 1password as a product, and I think the developer really is the kind of company I want to trust this kind of work to. I recognize that being an independent software company is hard, and the subscription model is one of the solid ways for them to stay independent and making first-class products like 1password. I really, really don’t want to see them snapped up by some other company or—worse yet—go under.

I had a discussion about this over the weekend with Mike, who’d recommended 1password to a colleague and was appalled to find that there was no way to “just buy” 1password as he had done, and I sympathize. His point was that he didn’t see any value to the enhanced Windows support, “travel mode”, or the other things that the subscription brings in addition to just a great Mac and/or iPhone client. He is happy with Dropbox support, so the cloud service wasn’t a value-add either. Again, I sympathize with his position, but I can see why they’re doing it.

Is 1password worth $36/year? IMO, yes, so I subscribed. Good luck to them.

As a postscript, let me add that I recently bought a new MacBook Pro, and had decided to go with a clean install, rather than restoring everything from a backup of my old machine. I’d decided in advance that I wasn’t ever going to install the Dropbox client on it, and moved completely to the 1password cloud service for my passwords. It was slick: I installed the 1password software, logged in to my 1password account, and everything was just there and working, without the invasive Dropbox client. Very nice. I did the same with my Windows gaming box, and the new client there is much, much better than the old one. I’ll do the same with a Windows box at work, and just love that it’s so easy to have the best way to manage my passwords everywhere I work, without having to install Dropbox everywhere too.