Application Update

I use MacUpdater to keep my applications up to date. This is a great service that will, sadly, be coming to end at the end of this month. Thus, I figure it’s a good time to really go through all my applications. The idea is to make sure that each application is up to date. During this process, I either confirm that the application is up to date, update or delete each application.

I’ve found Latest which performs a similar function. It is open source.

Latest is a free and open source app for macOS that checks if all your apps are up to date. Get a quick overview of which apps changed and what changed and update them right away. Latest currently supports apps downloaded from the Mac App Store and apps that use Sparkle for updates, which covers most of the apps on the market.

It doesn’t look quite a full featured as MacUpdater, but I’m giving it a go.

Bronco

Time for the Bronco oil change and tire rotation. While rotating the tires, a nail was discovered in one of the tires. The nail is right along the edge of the tire, thus can’t be patched. Because of the wear on the tire, if the tire can’t be patched and has to be replaced, it means replacing all four tires. Fortunately, upon pulling the nail, it hadn’t breached the tire.

Curiosity Course

I signed up for the Now I Know Curiosity Course. Mostly, just to support Now I Know. If your aren’t subscribed, Now I Know is a great little newsletter. There is one interesting story per day (Monday through Friday).

America’s Declining Test Scores

Michael Pershan has An interesting write up on test scores – I Don’t Know What to Think About America’s Declining Test Scores and Neither Should You. Pershan points out the incongruity of the standard tests – some up, some down. Everybody talks about the effect of the pandemic on academic achievement, without the follow up of how important teachers are.

I honestly think that this is a huge issue right now. Apparently, not being school has a detrimental effect on students. We haven’t taken this opportunity to understand just hwo important teachers are. Nor have we taken the opportunity to celebrate what a difference teachers make. Rather, we just kind of skip through that part.

Back to Pershan. He makes some points about how the weakest students are impacted the most. He makes a few references to “No Child Left Behind”. He even brings in Social Studies and civics.

Pershan also brings up declining scores for adults. Literacy and numeracy declines were even seen in the 55-65 year old age group.

Maybe it’s the phones? Or maybe not. Maybe it’s just an America thing?

Head over and give it a read.