Excursions

I have decided that I will skip the iOS public betas this year. iOS 13 betas just haven’t been stable enough right from WWDC time. And the dark mode can wait. Sure, would have loved to get used to iPadOS early - but am not ready to pay the price for my impatience.

The concept of dreams always fascinate me. There are dreams that jerk you out of the sleep. And there are those that make you put yourself back to sleep, if you leave them unfinished.

There are dreams that can give you sleepless nights. And there are those that can make your sleep the happiest phase of your day.

You follow some dreams with a wish that someday you will fulfil them and they become fact.

You run away from some facts, some realities of your life, hoping that they were, well, mere a dream.

Even with all the scientific advances we have made, we can’t make up our minds about whether the sleep session full of dreams is better or one without any.

Some say dreams are mysterious. Some say mysteries are dreamy.

Dreamy - do they mean “dreamy” as in marvellous or dim, vague?

Whatever, dreams always fascinate me.

Apparently, less than half of Google searches now result in a click — that percentage is even lesser on mobile devices. Google’s push to provide direct answers via feature snippets is working well for them. But it isn’t for the websites that the content was scrapped from.

It is tiring to make decisions. Because the judgement that follows after every decision invariably forces one to question whether it was worth the enforced change. I published some quick thoughts recently on making decisions.

It is very tiring to make decisions. There appears to exist a popular perception that decision, once made, leads to some irreversible change to the currently “working state”. What, then, one has to decide is whether the change was good or bad, and so whether the decision made was right or wrong.

This judgement that follows after every decision invariably forces one to question whether it was worth the enforced change. The fear of making the wrong decision is the reason, more often than not, behind the lack inclination to change.

You can be deciding what gift to buy for someone or who to choose to be your life partner. It does not matter whether the decision to be made is critical or trivial. Our subconscious is always at work, judging our every decision.

However, it is up to you to not let this fear of judgement drive how you lead your life. It is easier to overcome the wrong decisions you make than to lead a life being too indecisive.

My sister recently bought a new iPhone - her first, switching over from Android - and was happily setting it up with all the apps she had been using. And many more new ones. I did observe one bothersome behavior while she was using her device. She was happily tapping around whenever iOS threw a permission prompt at her, without paying any attention to what the prompt said. “Sure, have all the access you need.”

And I do not think she is in minority here. I observe this behavior very often and every single time, I am left completely befuddled. Why would you not read what permission the app is asking for and why would you not question why it needs that?

For me, no app gets any permission the first time it asks for it. Everything is disabled by default. Especially the access to my location, microphone or camera. None. You need to convince me to the core at the right moment that you deserve this privilege. I prefer veering towards extreme stringency of access to my device.

As more and more connected, data-hungry devices surround us, it is becoming important to instill awareness amongst the populace of the fallouts minor negligence while using these devices can lead to. Not provoke moral panic, but train to be cognizant towards one’s privacy and security. If we ourselves don’t put price on our data, we have no right to expect the organizations to lend respect to something that is a primary and sole fuel to their profits.

Natural beauty always trumps everything artificial - allows me stay connected to our roots.

There is no point ignoring sleep - you can’t steal hours from what the sleep deserves. You can be happy for a day because you got some extra hours in your day to work on things you enjoy. Or to “relax” by watching some mindless videos that YouTube’s recommendation engines serve you. Or to read those articles you have been adding to your Instapaper queue. Or to binge watch and complete that one season of the show you enjoy on Netflix.

Sure, you can do all this on a late night by stealing some hours from sleep. But it vehemently gets back at you. If not on the very next day, you have to pay back in the week that follows. For days in a row. It is better to let sleep carry on with its routine.

I went very conservative while setting the reading challenge for myself this year - I have been very poor recently in completing any books. Was pleasing to find am 3 books ahead of schedule already. A routine with less podcasts and a lot more Audible gets the credit.

After months of neglect, I finally updated my /now page today. There have been too many updates recently. Plus too many things on my mind that I had to put down. Enough that many of my thoughts have missed their chance to be on the archive space. Whatever.