I have been watching a lot of movies and a lot fewer series. The latter demand too much time, something I do not have much of. Even the shows I watch are the selected episodes of the ones I have already seen earlier. I don’t remember the last new TV series I watched. Suzhal?
Matt Gemmell reminded me recently that it is ok to write less. However, this passage especially caught my attention.
Blogs were originally a kind of diary, and they were mostly repositories of short pieces, not huge articles. It’s an absolute fallacy that longer works are better or more valuable; indeed, shorter pieces are more likely to be read and digested, which intrinsically increases their value.
As I had complained recently, I have been growing through a slump in my writing. I have started taking my blogging too seriously. “Not every thought deserves to be published”, I convinced myself. Or “this needs to be elaborated; the readers won’t understand”.
This might sound rude, but since when have I started caring about my readers? I should read some of my earlier posts. They were terrible. They made no sense then and don’t make any sense even now. Even to me. So why care?
Publish anything, everything. Short, long - doesn’t matter. Anywhere that’s convenient at the moment. Don’t take Grammarly too seriously. Get back to writing more. I can work on making it better later.
Coffee and a book. After a long long time 🍵📖
I watched Pathaan yesterday. The only reason this movie even is bearable is due to the charisma that is SRK. It’s a terrible movie otherwise. A two star movie with one big star, who earns an additional star by himself.
It keeps mistaking skiers, and some other fitness enthusiasts, for car-wreck victims.
Source - My Watch Thinks I’m Dead - New York Times →
I never tried Matter enough, even though I like most of what I have seen and respect their goal. I just don’t want to start liking an app that will eventually cost me another monthly subscription. One that’s not cheap either at $8 per month.
Finally, if you were subscriber to Twitterrific for iOS, we would ask you to please consider not requesting a refund from Apple. The loss of ongoing, recurring revenue from Twitterrific is already going to hurt our business significantly, and any refunds will come directly out of our pockets – not Twitter’s and not Apple’s. To put it simply, thousands of refunds would be devastating to a small company like ours.
Source - Twitterrific: End of an Era • The Breakroom →
I had missed to post this, but this passage was painful to read.
In general, what characterizes this phase of the tech giants' development is a shift from unlocking user creativity and customer value to doubling down on surveillance, usually augmented by AI.
Source: Two ways to think about decline →
I am recently pretty inspired by the concept of wiki or #digitalgarden. I have got me one. Why? Well, it goes back to my belief that blogs are boring. The list of posts displayed reverse chronologically doesn’t help much. I’ve read many articles on how blogs and their typical homepage have made the web dull.
But it also is one more place to update. So many places that I can write, and yet I hardly write anything these days. Or is it because I have so many places to write at. Whatever the reason, the ups and downs of the inspiration for the writer in me continue.
There are so many things I do not like about Micro.blog. Yet that #platform remains the platform of choice for me. Why? Because it does everything just enough. I wish it got the writing interface right.
Does the stream of posts matter anymore?
While responding to an observation from Ben Werdmuller, Om Malik asks, “Is reverse chronological ‘stream’ still a valid design principle?” I believe the answer is complicated.
As with most folks commenting on Om’s blog, I have been a follower of his writings for a long time. And also been a blogger since updating one’s blog, and visiting others to look for inspiration was a multiple-times-a-day activity. It still matters for all of us who have consumed the stream of blog posts. Or at least we understand it.
I generally follow blogs through RSS, where a stream is meaningless. But I would still follow a linked post to a new blogger that I don’t know about. I then browse through the stream of posts to see if the blogger’s topic and writing interest me. If it does, I subscribe to his RSS. So the stream is important for me for discoverability.
But the people who haven’t ever consumed such a stream of blog posts may not find it helpful. The algorithm has spoilt us with the “recommendations” – the links to the other stuff on the platform.
So we as bloggers should serve the same. Recommend stuff to the reader on our platform, our blogs. On our home pages. And around our posts. But instead of letting AI decide, let’s curate these recommendations manually. We have all the tools that we need. Tags/Categories. Let’s add a few layers if required.
I have already started doing this with my blog. I have modified my home page to take readers to specific sections of the blog. I have separated posts prominently. I want to introduce a few more sections on blog and around posts. This is all still a work in progress, though.
Another tangential thought. We have stripped our blogs of all the fun in our quest to get minimal. Do you remember the tag/word clouds? Posts by date? By category? Or most commented? Let’s bring them all back. We had more than one way of presenting our blogs to the readers. Why did we stop that?
I love my laptop
My laptop has been off battery power for the past couple of weeks. I hardly used it, which made me realize how much I missed it. It felt good to have it back on my lap.
Sure, I had an iMac and an iPad with me to use. And, of course, I had my phone too. But a laptop has the best form factor for casual writing. There is some comfort in carrying this device to a corner of your home that you find the most convenient at that moment. I don't need to be near power. I don't need a sitting chair. Or a desk. I don't even need a data connection. My laptop is perfect without any of these.
I had confessed my love for this device earlier too.
I love my laptop a lot more than my smartphone and my tablet. I’m more comfortable with the trackpad and the keyboard than a touchscreen. I can focus more with a lot more windows in front of me than say one full-screen app.
The benefits become even more prominent while writing. The device has the best size and best weight. Not too large or too heavy. Especially the thin ultrabooks – like the one I own. It sits comfortably on my lap, allowing me to stretch now and then. It doesn't wobble (or worse, topple over) as I type. If and when I want, I also place it on a stand on my desk, connect it to a big monitor, keyboard and mouse and get typing.
Neither a desktop nor a tablet can claim to do all of that.
Sure, each device has the usage it excels at. I always prefer my iPad to read. Or my iMac to get some work done. But when I write, give me my no-nonsense laptop any day.
Update: I love the form factor of a traditional laptop. Not the currently popular 2-in-1s or laptops with touchscreens. What they lose in convenience completely overshadows the advantages they claim to provide. Give me a fixed screen with a good keyboard and a workable trackpad, and that's all I want.
Boredom is a luxury not many can afford.
[W]hy do layoffs at all if they don’t actually work? “People do all kinds of stupid things all the time,” Pfeffer says. “I don’t know why you’d expect managers to be any different.”
Source - Why so many tech companies are laying people off right now - The Verge →
Cracks, like scars, tell a story. They are not only beautiful to look at, they are also lessons in survival and perseverance
Source - Scars are beautiful →
Deep down, I want to work on lot of projects. But life is keeping me busy. With happiness the moments bring though, I ain’t complaining.
Customer satisfaction, though important, is not as much of a priority as customer demand — and getting your customer to crave a food item because they never quite feel satisfied after their last taste effectively establishes long-term and lucrative demand.
Source - Why are we addicted to junk food? →
Twitter’s staff spent years trying to protect the social media site against impulsive billionaires who wanted to use the reach of its platform for their own ends, and then one made himself the CEO.
I read someone rate a movie on a scale of 100. And that someone rated it 72. Not 70. Not 75. Precisely 72. Respect! Here I am struggling to decide if I should rate something a 3 or 4 star 🙄
I stopped reading Linchpin today. I don’t think this one should have been a book. It’s very repetitive. Extremely shallow. Plus, it hardly has anything to say beyond what’s written on the back cover.
Android has a way better to experience when connected to external monitors. Or keyboards and mouse for that matter. Especially Samsung devices with Dex. My iPad fails to use the big screen efficiently the way my smartphone does. The later is almost a Chromebook on big screen.
They may seem the cornerstone of democracy, but in reality they do little to promote it. There’s a far better way to empower ordinary citizens: democracy by lottery.
Source - The Case for Abolishing Elections - Boston Review →
Often I am recommended a podcast which I wish was just a blog post. I find reading a lot more convenient than listening. Former I could do whenever, wherever. With my own speed. Later, I need a particular environment.
I find reading on my smartphone much more convenient than anywhere else. That also means sharing stuff is difficult if I do not have social media apps on my device. It’s been more couple of months since I deleted all the apps from my smartphone. And it’s painful.
Wish there were more apps like Buffer that supported publishing to multiple places, especially Micropub and ActivityPub.
Covering everything from the company’s claim of transparency to its own security practices and more, Palant believes LastPass has downplayed the risks and is guilty of “gross negligence.”
Source: LastPass' breach update was full of lies →
I published a post a day back while I was still recovering from the cold. I didn’t fuss about where to write. Or in what manner to do so. I didn’t do many reviews. I just wrote what I was feeling deep within and clicked sent. I still haven’t read that post again. I don’t want to.