Excursions

The initial feedback from the Apple community on MacBook 16inch has been unsurprising. I still believe though Mac users are a very vocal set of people, they also are very easy to satisfy. They clearly and repeatedly tell you what they want. You just have to listen. Apple did.

I watched the Endgame again today. I had enjoyed that movie the first time — but then it was the craze that made me get giddy. This time I thoroughly enjoyed it as a fan of the whole series. Makes me want to watch all Avengers again. Maybe I will.

Disney+ must have affected the productivity of so many nerds in the US. And many families too. The back catalog is full of so much binge-worthy content. Hours of Star Wars, Marvel. And of course, nostalgia-enducing original Disney shows and movies. Nice!

Motorola Razr looks cool and has its unique twist on foldable screen. A regular screen folding into a smaller one is a usecase that might work better than regular to tablet sized one. But it is the cost that makes it not-for-all yet. Still experimental - so not for sale almost.

I recently was stuck with a prompt, I just couldn’t come up with a satisfying subplot. I asked my 6-year-old daughter to tell me a story about “space”. This is her story — I believe she has a lot better plot. She always beats me with her creativity and freedom of thought.

I have now watched 4 episodes of The Morning Show and I have to say it has grown on me with every episode. It started rough but I think it has slowly picked up the pace. I have to disagree with critics - this show may not be great television, but it may work. 🎥

What pisses me off the most with Google’s Fitbit acquisition is the fact that Fitbit kept the fitness data always private, on their own servers. No way to even sync it with Apple Health. And now the only way to not share it with Google is to lose it all? That’s so wrong.

I intend to blog on each day during the month of November — and as a challenge, I wanted that post to be a flash fiction series. So I am writing a section every day as a response to the “mbnov” prompts. The posts tagged so are part of the larger story, do read along here.

I recently read through a few of my journal entries from a month back. The experience was refreshing, that too with just a month that’s been passed. It is the content, however, that I find extremely impressive. I had written so freely about everything. Not just the stuff happening with or around me. But thoughts, opinions, views about anything that I find interesting.

As I read through them, I wondered if any of the stuff that I had written was so secret that I cannot share openly. There are some parts which I would not like to talk publicly about. But that is true about only a handful of entries. A majority could very well have been a blog post.

Then why is it that I write a lot more freely in a journal? Is it because I believe no one will read it? And I subconsciously want others to read the blog posts? Maybe.

A quarter in, I had to stop reading Deep Work after another chapter trying to convince me why deep work is necessary. It was getting too repetitive. Sure, I understand the importance of deep work. Can we move on to the ways to be away from the distractions?

I kind of won’t mind if flip phones made a comeback. Not that they are the best form factor for a phone (especially a smartphone). But flat slate devices have gotten boring, common. Only natural that we are seeing more and more devices launched with moving parts.

I wonder what has caused a sudden surge of Bluetooth earbuds being made available in the market. I see almost every player - big and small - launching one of its own. Sure, Airpod’s a success. But it wasn’t the first one. Is it the lack of 3.5mm jack? And so was Apple right?

I am on a journey to consciously reclaim focus from the shambles of the distracting digital world. As part of the process, I have started actively following one more routine - I log out of every social media service once I have used it.

I have, since long, not had any social media apps on my mobile device. This has helped me reduce the subconscious pick-ups of the device. At the same time, it was really easy to access the service in a browser. Especially because it is just one tap away in my favourites. That’s as good as having an app on my device.

To deter these, I now log out of every service from my browser once I have used it. So, every time I am tempted to access any of these services, an additional step of logging in is needed. There’s also an added barrier of two-factor authentications for the services that support it. Cal Newport aptly captures this sentiment of mine.

By removing your ability to access social media at any moment, you reduce its ability to become a crutch deployed to distract you from bigger voids in your life.

All and all, this one step alone of logging in every time is enough to fool my lazy mind to stay away from these “crutches”. And hence not subconsciously spend any time on the services.

Update: I have already gotten rid of every social media platform I do not need (Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat). I am active only on Twitter and Micro.blog. To reiterate, my logout routine is applicable to every site that serves feed of some kind. Including email, feed readers, instant messaging platforms etc.

Besides, I have started accessing these social services only at my desktop browser in Private mode (the Incognito mode in Firefox). So even if I forget to logout, it does not matter. Once the window is closed, all my session information is lost.

I believe this change should also help me from a privacy perspective. The belief is the cookies from these data-hungry social media services would not follow me as I browse around the Internet.

Can’t they? Won’t they? That’s a whole different discussion. But overall am spending a lot less time absentmindedly scrolling these stupid feeds. I feel a lot less burdened thanks to that.

Infinite scrolling sucks. I hate that more and more websites are implementing this terrible feature. It fails user-experience wise. I am at your website to read a particular article — don’t try to entice me with another totally unrelated one.

If you do decide to support this feature, don’t plaster it over your existing website design. That footer you have at the end? Yeah, that’s not accessible. Contact information, copyright notices, nothing can be reached. (Update: This article by Adrian Roselli details more such points).

The only publication that I feel has done this well is TechCrunch. They have thought the experience through and designed the interfaces around that.

I understand why publications want this to succeed. It leads to more page views, and hence possibly to more advertising revenue. But I was pretty surprised to see that even Dave Winer felt the need to support it on his simple blog. Completely unnecessary.

Update: Another aspect I did not think of initially was around accessibility. It must be an extreme nightmare. I think it is an issue even bandwidth wise. Especially on mobile devices. So in short, just don’t implement this solution.

It’s so ironic that Google names one of the colours on pixel 4 as “Oh So Orange” and make it not orange at all. They could very well have named it as “Not Orange”. Plus what’s the recent craze of silly names? The “cute” colour names for the devices do not lead to more sales.

📚 Finished reading Sourcery. I usually enjoy the fantastical narration that Terry Pratchett weaves. But with this one, it was a tad bit incoherent. Some characters just weren’t fun, enjoyable. And they all combined failed to work well together. Rincewind to go on pause.

Early morning drive through the nature with a steady drizzle around is always rejuvenating. Especially with the windows rolled down!

Apparently, Google’s face unlock on Pixel 4 can allow access to a user even if he has his eyes closed. This comes around the same time when a critical bug was detected in the fingerprint unlock on Samsung’s Galaxy S10 devices.

Both the companies put out a completely tone-deaf first response. Samsung, naively, suggested using their “authorised” accessories. Google, on the other hand, reiterated that theirs is a “strong biometric” solution.

I am really surprised by this callous attitude towards the user’s security on the devices.

Google preferred to focus on the gimmicks in Project Soli rather than strengthening the face unlock first. They felt a need to differentiate their face unlock feature from iPhone’s. Samsung felt the need to go with a different mechanism of the ultrasonic in-screen fingerprint reader. All others use optical ones.

This need to differentiate for the sake of differentiation is laughable.

A tweet from Rene Ritchie sums it nicely.

If we’ve learned anything over the last couple of days it’s that good biometrics take a lot of consideration.

Smartphones have become critical for many in their day-to-day use-cases, from identity to banking. And the inbuilt biometric solutions are increasingly being depended on to validate that identity. So the OEMs can’t afford a misstep with these solutions.

I hope the smartphone makers realize they can’t deal indifferently with the security of the devices.

I did not watch the Google event yesterday. And almost everyone is saying the actual event was a bit messy, boring. I guess it was good that I did not spend 2 hours then. I think recent events from all the companies have received similar criticisms — must be a trend.

No doubt, pixel 4 looks a lot better than their previous versions - especially from the back. That camera module, especially, is cleaner as compared to the hideous one on iPhone 11. On the front, that top bezel is too big - looks outdated for sure.

With any event from Apple or Google, I made a point to catch it live. Not much for this one, as almost everything - including the buds - was leaked. That’s why you control the leaks - they mar the interest. And with that your best chance to market to masses.

Facebook has launched the next version of the Portal and The Verge has the review. After more than 1700 word, they end with this - “it’s still a camera connected to Facebook inside your home”. I think that is all the review could have read.

I recently had my wisdom teeth extracted. Boy oh boy, if I had known earlier that the road to the recovery from this procedure is not straight forward, I would have never undergone this without much thought.

There are so many precautions to be taken — from keeping the mount clean to monitoring what you eat. This is in addition to easing the swelling and the pain. I would have liked to time this better. With just a day to go to start going to the office again, it would be some difficult times ahead.

Sure, my dentist did explain all the intricacies involved before the procedure. He also mentioned what all I would have to be careful about. But it was only once the teeth were pulled and the gums stitched back that I became cognizant of the complications.

And all this for a set of teeth whose only purpose is to jam up the number 32. Sigh!

Nice reminder from Dave Winer (who else) on what blogs are not.

You imagine that your blog is lonely and angry that you’re not visiting, but that’s purely a figment of your imagination. The blog doesn’t exist in any corporeal sense. It has no thoughts or feelings. I doesn’t give a shit if you live or die, because it doesn’t have an ego, it doesn’t care about anything.

Yep. There’s no reason to not have a blog. Get some space for yourself on the web - select any platform that lets you do so for free. Write anything. Or just share links and pictures.

Don’t look at numbers. Don’t promote. Don’t yearn for likes or replies. It is a chore that will hamper your interest. Get rid of such mindless distractions. Forget your blog exists if you want. It won’t feel bad. But next time you have a thought, just put it on there. No one will mind.

Derek Sivers recently wrote about how he does not prefer using automation for things that he would better do himself. Or he enjoys doing manually. According to Derek, the decision of whether one wants automation or not comes down to is this.

how much of an expert you are at controlling this thing yourself, how much you still enjoy doing it, if you want the kind of assistance it provides

I believe there is one more aspect that drives this decision for me - how convenient will the automation make my life after all? And what is the the cost associated with automating that?

The price one pays might be in terms of the personal data he or she needs to relinquish. This is relevant primarily when the automation workflows are built and served ready-made by the companies. For example, as part of various functions of the smart assistants.

It can also be in terms of the actual time one has to put in to build the overall automation workflow. This comes into picture when you are linking multiple applications and services to get a use-case handled. For example, while using Shortcuts or IFTT, Zapier and likes.

In both the cases, whether I want the automation or not is a trade-off between the efficiency I gain due to the automation and the price I have to pay for that.