BrianFeeney.us v11.2

Welcome to a slightly updated brianfeeney.us. This morning, I transferred my domain from one server to another, moving from my old website to this one. Minor updates on the front-end, but it's a fully updated Craft instance on the back-end. Apologies to anyone following via RSS; you might have just been flooded with a bunch of old posts and new.

Only a few things have changed between v11.1 and v11.2. Here's a short list:

• I've added a Notes post type for short comments not necessitating a title.
• There's a new homepage featuring writing and photos.
• My portfolio & CV is no longer on this site, but on a new domain: http://brianfeeney.design
• An about page! I plan to update this with something better ASAP.

That's about it for now. I'm currently playing with designs for a big v12 update. I don't feel pressured to get that up anytime soon, as I still really like the general design of v11. Maybe summer 2024?

If you're a reader, I welcome you to reach out! I run this site as if there are literally zero real people visiting. I don't believe for a moment that the 4.6k unique visitors registered by Cloudflare is really real. But surely a few those are friends and future friends out there.

AirPlay is Broken

At some point in the last few months, Apple degraded the user experience with AirPlay and the HomePods. I used to be able to play music on my speakers via an "iPhone -> Living Room" option. Now, I can only handoff to the Living Room option, which is a combo HomePods/AppleTV thing. I can control the music playing out of the speakers, but it's not really my Apple Music library. It's a facsimile of it. And that's the real problem. It doesn't retain "favorites", gives me an "Add to Library" option for songs supposedly playing from my library, does not allow for rating tracks, and play counts do not increase inside my iTunes smart playlists. When viewing on the iPhone, it doesn't even let you look back through the history so you can update Favorites or ratings from there. It's all very frustrating because it used to work exactly as I expected it to.

I've troublshooted by turning on/off every single setting I can find on my phone, HomePods, Apple TV, and Apple Music apps. No luck. The problem is such that no amount of specificity in my Google search terms can filter to it. I suspect that once you set a pair of HomePods to be the default audio for an AppleTV, those HomePods are no longer findable on their own to AirPlay to. They disappear as their own thing which can AirPlay.

My hope is that my personal use case has fallen into the cracks between one update and the next within something in the Apple ecosystem, and that an upcoming update will realign it all. That AirPlaying music will once again be possible.

New Findings on Migraines

This Vox article on migraines is a rare quality on on the subject.

Experts used to think migraines were solely caused by the abnormal expansion of blood vessels in the brain, according to Zhang. Over the past couple of decades, that thinking has evolved: Scientists now believe the brains of people with migraines are exquisitely sensitive to the effects of certain neurotransmitters, in particular calcitonin gene-related peptide, or CGRP.
"The CGRP molecule is essentially a pain molecule," says Zhang. Headache researchers have found that people with migraines had higher blood CGRP levels during headaches than people without migraines, and that giving migraine-prone people infusions of the molecule triggered headaches. These discoveries made the molecule a target for a flurry of drug discovery, and since 2018, the FDA has approved eight new migraine drugs.

Nurtec is one of the newer drugs and it has been wonderfully effective for me. I've been taking it every other day since late 2021 and it effectively prevents my migraines. Rizatriptan had helped, too, but it wasn't preventative and I was going through the maximum 10 pills a month. If you're a migraine sufferer and put off seeing a neurologist, let me tell you to change that. The new drugs work.

Anticipatory anxiety, the worry about something bad to come, is one of the types of stress that can trigger migraines. That can make it challenging to disentangle actual migraine triggers from beliefs about triggers. Lipton remembers a patient who blamed his migraines on changes in barometric pressure, which his smartwatch pinged him about in real time. "I took away his watch, and his headaches got a lot better," he says. "Beliefs about triggers cause anticipatory anxiety, which increases the probability of headache."

This is also true for me. It's undiagnosed, but I'm pretty sure I have a low-level general anxiety disorder which I highly suspect it's also one of my migraine triggers. How frustrating is it that fear of a thing could make that thing happen? Very.

He notes that migraine triggers are often cumulative: For example, many women can drink alcohol without getting a migraine at most times of the month, but a glass of wine during their menstrual cycle can lead to a headache.

Absolutely. After keeping a migraine journal for years, I found this to be true for me. I learned that migraines were regularly occurring on overcast or rainy days. That itself, wasn't enough to cause a migraine, but it was if I had had multiple drinks the night before. Or if I was stressed about something, or my diet had been bad for a day or two. Keeping tabs on all of this has been a huge help.

When it comes to prevention, the greatest boon has been the ability to work from home. No commute, no fluorescent office lights, no social anxiety and forcing myself to be pleasant. Also, when at home, comfortable on a couch in soft natural light.

Migraines are the worst. I've been suffering from them since I was in 3rd grade, when my eyesight went south and I needed glasses. And when my social anxiety was coming on board. If you're suffering from regular headaches and haven't looked into treatment, you absolutely should. I put it off for a very long time and regret it.

Where Have All The Websites Gone?

Jason Velazquez wonders "Where have all the websites gone?" It's a nice post decrying the ongoing dominance of major social media platforms. If you're reading this via RSS, you understand.

But he ends on an optimistic tone.

So when we wonder where all the websites have gone, know it’s the curators we’re nostalgic for because the curators showed us the best the web had to offer once upon a time. And the curators— the tenders, aggregators, collectors, and connectors— can bring us back to something better. Because it’s still out there, we just have to find it.

This is partly why I always feel the need to start blogging again. I want to get back to the place where small, weird sites share links to other small, weird sites. The internet is massively bigger than it was in 2003 when I made my first website. I want to be a part of the community finding and sharing the good stuff.

OpenAI Versus The House of Lords

OpenAI is begging the British Parliament to allow it to use copyrighted works because it's supposedly "impossible" for the company to train its artificial intelligence models — and continue growing its multi-billion-dollar business — without them.

If your company cannot function without breaking laws, your business model is not a viable one. This isn't hard.

Lego Polaroid

Spent a few hours today building this Lego Polaroid camera. The first time in maybe 30 years I've built a Lego set by myself. It was extremely relaxing, and I'd love to do it again. We had on music while Lisa was prepping a stew for dinner. It was a cold, snowy day in Brooklyn. Perfect for a silly indoor project like this.

It's from the Idea Series. I'd also love to build this typewriter someday.