Your Daily Lex isn’t a tech podcast, but this is a technical episode in that, I mean technically it’s an episode, but also in that I’m gonna talk about technology things.

So, I guess buckle up and here we go.

♪ Your Daily Lex ♪ So first things first, I think I mentioned on a show earlier this week that one of my birthday presents was an Aura picture frame and I have no sponsorship with Aura, but man, I love that thing.

It’s really been great.

So I highly recommend them if you need a gift to give or receive this season.

You can also share access to your Aura picture frame with other folks.

So like if you’ve got grandparents in your life, you could set them up and it comes preloaded with a bunch of photos and they call it infinite storage, which is hilarious because there’s no storage on the device.

It’s getting all the images from the internet.

But I’m a big fan.

It’s a very smartly done thing and the app is pretty good.

It has a little touch bar on the top, not like the Mac laptop keyboard touch bar was, but like a little touch sensitive bar that I think works fine, but not great.

But just letting it do its thing and putting up pictures, man, I love it.

And it also turns off when the light goes off in my office, which I think is smart.

And I was really excited to come into the office today to see what picture we’ve got in that picture frame first.

So I’m a big fan of this thing.

It’s, I’ve often looked down upon digital picture frames as something silly or useless.

And this one is fantastic.

If you noted that there was just a cut right there before this very sentence that I’m speaking now, that sharp intake of breath I was taking before the break was in anticipation of a sneeze.

I have since sneezed seven times.

I’m probably gonna have to pause to sneeze again.

I’m currently fighting off the eighth sneeze, which is really trying to come out.

Hang on.

I recognize it’s ridiculous to say hang on because for you there’s no break at all other than maybe the audio break, but there’s no like actual pause.

It’s just me talking and sneezing.

Ah, man, oh man.

A lot of sneezes have happened and more sneezes are gonna continue to happen while I record.

I wanna talk about the other tech topic.

But before I do that, I gotta finish the first tech topic, which is just to say, I know that you can see your digital photos in other places.

I know like your iPhone lock screen probably shows your digital photos or you’ve got them, you know, just in your photos app or whatever.

But there’s something very nice about a picture frame and a picture frame that’s always updating with photos.

Man, it’s pretty great.

So highly recommending that aura.

I don’t think I have a referral code or anything.

So just tell them Lex sent ya and make sure they know it’s me and not the other guy.

But apparently now I’m talking about sneezing a lot.

I inherited the sneezing many times in a row gene from my mom.

I’ve Googled why it happens and what you can do.

And some people say like, if you rub your nasal passageways a lot, or I don’t know, use a, you know, a hope, a genie, dreams, prayer, that it can help.

My God, I just keep sneezing.

I have lost count.

It’s really out of control at this point.

I can’t even keep a train of thought because I keep pausing to sneeze.

Sometimes this happens if I’m on a Zoom.

Like, so if I have a business call, I can be fine all day.

And then right before the Zoom, this sneeze thing hits.

And I know that if I sneeze once, I’m going to sneeze many, many times.

And you can, you can probably hear some of these pauses where I’m breaking to sneeze, but doing it on a Zoom, you know, I’m trying to mute, but you don’t really want to mute the video because that brings even extra attention to it.

And people like, are you okay?

I’m like, yeah, I’m okay.

I’m just sneezing over and over again.

Like there’s nothing I can do about it.

It’s, it’s the worst.

It is so frustrating.

So anyway, it’s happening while I’m trying to record this podcast.

And I still haven’t gotten to my second tech topic.

Good Lord.

Now, now I’m like short of breath from all the sneezing.

But last night I was at rehearsal and I’m wearing my Apple watch during the show.

Cause I have a Milanese band that fits my character, but I don’t want notifications to pop up on it or the screen to light up in distracting ways.

So I did what one has always done for all the years that the Apple watch existed to get to control center on the watch.

I swiped up from the bottom of my screen to open control center.

But of course, starting with the latest version of watchOS that doesn’t work anymore.

It brings up a different thing.

I don’t even know what the thing is.

I know many of you know what that thing is.

I don’t know what that screen is supposed to be.

It’s like recently used apps or widgets or something.

I don’t even know, but it brings up something else.

And so then every time that happens, I press the crown, the digital crown.

And when that happens, you go back to the main watch face.

So then I push that press, I press that button again, and that gives you the list of apps.

Or if you leave the dumb, weird springboard thing, it brings that up.

And only then do I press the big button to actually get control center, which was never where control center was before.

And, you know, I posted my complaint about it on Mastodon saying, I love the new Apple watch gesture to open control center.

You swipe up from the bottom, then try the crown, then try it again, then hit the big button.

It’s been favorited, is that what they call it?

It’s been hearted, starred on Mastodon 406 times as I record these words and boosted 185 times.

That’s, those are good numbers for me.

And my sense is that Apple watch wearing nerds everywhere are annoyed by this dumb change.

And I get why Apple changed it.

And clearly Apple has access to more data than I do about how people use control center, about how people use their Apple watches.

But man, what a frustrating change because I really liked control center and it doesn’t go where I expect it to go.

I also think it’s the kind of thing that you would expect would be mirrored between how other iOS or iPhone OS or iPad OS style devices work.

And it doesn’t, it kind of used to resemble how iPhones worked at least, but now it doesn’t.

And it’s dumb.

So Apple, if you’re listening and I know that you are, change it back.

Thank you so much.

Anyway, I’m going to finish this episode and then I guess blow my nose 87 times.

So I hope you have a wonderful rest of your Thursday.

Can you believe it’s been a week since American Thanksgiving?

I can’t.

Actually, no, I can absolutely believe it, but it’s still crazy.

Anyway, only other topic I have in mind is Elf and we’ll probably get into that more tomorrow.

Goodbye.

Lex.

Lex.

Lex.