Excursions

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.

I had to stop reading Thinking Fast and Slow. Not sure if it was the audiobook form or my current frame of mind, but it was monotonous, bland chapter after chapter — like a textbook. I will pick this up again some time later, may be. But for now, this isn’t for me.

This particular review from Jacques at Goodreads resonated with me. Especially this part.

There is also the struggle between wanting to speed up the book due to the slow and monotonous narrator, but wanting to slow it down to absorb the information.

I love the simple paintings that my sister makes.

On a recent busy Friday morning, I hopped into my cab on my way to the office. I was about to isolate myself by plugging my ears with an audiobook. Right about that time, I heard a voice in Hindi, a local Indian language, giving directions to my Uber driver. It made me pause and ponder on how ubiquitous the technical solutions have become. A large section of society has learnt to start carrying these powerful devices along. And this change alone has made some complex businesses more accessible.

Many, especially Apple, mock Android for being “a cesspool of cheap, sluggish devices”. But it is Android that has put this change on the fast track. I spent my hour-long ride by being a lot more attentive than isolated. I decided to look around to the individuals, running small and medium businesses, using digital solutions. Almost everyone was flaunting some form of an Android device.

Uber drivers for managing their rides and the routes. Small shop owners for accepting digital payments. Delivery-only restaurants for accepting orders. Food delivery agents running around on bikes to find the next order to be delivered. Part-time “service experts” on the look-out for their next housekeeping jobs. And many more individual or small group ventures.

There is no doubt that the always-connected¹ and accessible Android devices have enabled all these use cases. The two combined have also managed to pull millions of more people into the digital age. Sure, iOS might be the more secure, more private platform that’s better for everyone. But it is not for everyone because it is not affordable to everyone.

We need to credit Google for fostering a platform that attracts more and more OEMs. This makes the platform a lot more usable for the majority section of the world. And they continue to lessen the needs of the platform, recently with the introduction of the Go edition. No doubt, it suits and assists their business model. However, it doesn’t matter. They do that so, in their own words, “even the most affordable Android smartphones are as sweet as can be”. I’ve come to believe that. Kudos!

Yes, let’s make the technology affordable for more people so that they too can benefit from the new-age advances. And while we do that, let’s also make the same affordable technology powerful. Because when we do that, we open more ways the people can earn, can learn, can connect, can be part of the world.

I recently went through an experience that put my rational mind under a scanner. After a tiring session of shopping for clothes, I stood in the queue to pay for the stuff that my family had finally decided to buy. I always hate the process of selecting clothes in the shopping malls - more so when my family’s doing it than me. I just can’t fathom the sheer number of parameters my wife, my daughter and my sister together can cobble up while deciding a piece of cloth to be selected (to be frank, rejected seems to be more apt). Anyway, it is a battle that I have lost many occasions over years - so moving on.

The billing process that follows isn’t painless either. I am always bombarded with so many questions.

“Do you have membership? Why not? There are no many benefits like blah.. blah.. Why won’t you become a member?” “Which card do you have? Why don’t you pay this way rather than that?” “Would you need a shopping bag? 1 Large? Or 2 medium?”

It’s an unending sequence of dreadful moments till I leave the shopping mall. But this time it ended in slightly different manner. I was offered an offer which am convinced now must have been part of some psychological study. The lady behind the billing counter explained it to me somewhat like this (emphasis her and mine).

“Sir, you made a purchase worth a specific, nontrivial amount, so you stand a chance to win an assured gift. This is not a lucky draw, you will win some gift¹ for sure. All you have to do is pay a significant amount. That will make you eligible (wasn’t I already?) for this assured gift. And the cost of the cheapest assured gift is twice as higher than the price you pay (how can I verify). So, of course, I should include that, right?”

So, in short, it is pay (over and above what you have already paid for the shopping) to win assuredly? Like what you would do in a casino - but with some surety angle? Why not just have an aisle full of assured gift cards? Why link it to billing? I couldn’t help but think it had to do with the fact that my abilities to think rationally are depleted due to the exhaustion from the decisions made earlier during shopping. And my mind is at my most vulnerable state.

With the pressure from the people queued behind me growing, I nervously said yes. But within seconds, pushed by the pressure from my rational mind, I said no. I wasn’t ready to undergo the scrutiny of my thoughts.

Every now and then, you come across people who are filled with negative vibes. There is nothing constructive that they can ever think of about any activity at hand, individually or for the team. And it is with these people that I find working with the hardest.

Laziness and incompetence are both undesired quirks in a person. But I am fine to have people with these traits on my team than those who are pessimists.

Lazy people can be nudged with a smaller, broken-down tasks. Incompetent people can be trained. Worst case you can decide not to work with them. You only lose that one person.

A negative thought, on the other hand, is contagious — it ruins the environment in a team. It rubs off on to others, bringing down the productivity and the quality of everyone around.

It is even worse if such people are also skilled at one particular job - making timely noise. Because the noise they make first portrays the team in poor light and second dents the morale of the whole team.

Learn to not be a naysayer — wish people could be forced enrolled in such courses too.

1. Duplex on Chrome? Sorry, not for me. Google wants Chrome to be a platform — but it already runs on another platform, my OS. And in here, I want it to stay a browser. Chrome OS can go as wild as Google wants. Not the regular browser. Another reason I stay a Firefox user.
2. Apple today released iOS 13.1.2 and iPadOS 13.1.2. And users are still reporting on some unfixed bugs, even those that Apple claims they have fixed. Has there been any iOS release that has been buggier than this? I hope introduction of iPadOS hasn’t affected the dev team, that was already thin, further. That, at this point, looks to be a strong possibility.
3. When Apple Arcade and TV+ are priced aggressively as they are, the high subscription cost of Apple News+ sticks out. Is it driven by Apple or the publishers? If we don’t see a course correction soon, I doubt it is the later.
4. Music is priced exactly the same. So may be, it is driven by who owns the primary content that Apple provide subscription for?
5. A couple of Surface devices that Microsoft plans to release in their upcoming event have leaked. More than the Surface laptops (which unfortunately look may too similar to MacBook Pros - so much for differentiating), I am always excited about the 2-in-1 devices from Microsoft. I find the hinge designs in there to be really well done, with some crazy low angles!

Every now and then, I wonder about that time when I am at my creative best. It is, rather, everyone’s desire to find that time, that place, those tools that make them more productive at being creative.

However, I have realized over the years that being productive and being creative are antithetical more often than not. There are times when I am at my creative best, I do something that I have never done — say, I doodle the best I ever have — and my brain considers this to be a non-productive use of the time I had at my hands. Why? Because that wasn’t the “plan”.

Productivity can be measured, quantified. Creativity can’t be. As a result, productivity is always driven by one’s overly thinking brain while creativity is a response to a curious mind.

The essential spirit of creativity is captured brilliantly in this quote from Wayne Dyer.

Everything that’s created comes out of silence. Your thoughts emerge from the nothingness of silence. Your words come out of this void. Your very essence emerged from emptiness. All creativity requires some stillness.

That’s so meaningful — no doubt that one often fails to think creatively these days. Our minds are ruffled all the time by the distractions of our digital life. So every so often, I am on the lookout for that stillness.

Apple Arcade needs instant play - similar to the instant apps on Android. It is extremely frustrating to wait for huge games to download before you can even try them. With a huge list of games, downloading every one of them is overkill. More so with Apple’s stingy storage plans.

A year ago I wrote “Woke up to find that Amazon brought a bag full of ‘things’, untied it on stage and started throwing it against the wall. No one has any idea if what try hurled is genuine or shit and if it will ever stick.”

Amazon did that again today — a yearly ritual now.

I am not a gamer. I cannot play a single-person shooter. I was ok with this particular style of gaming when it was on desktop, with a keyboard and a mouse. On mobile, I am terrible. I just can’t make sense of the direction or speed. And completely pathetic in multiplayer situations.

Same applies to the racing games. It was ok till it was simple lane following games, like Road Fighter. But then they become a lot more real.

Actually, the quest to be more real with the gameplay and the graphics killed this form of media for me. It made the controls a lot more convoluted to be fun any more. Arcade-type games had some breezy liveliness to them. But gradually, gaming became a lot more serious, a lot more pro for my casual taste. These pros ruined the arcade in a way.

Of course, that doesn’t mean there do not exist casual games. There do. However, most of them are ruined by the freemium model. And I am not the first one complaining about this.

But what that meant was even the casual gamer in me had recently died — pushed way back for the fear of the effort it would take to find that one good, clean casual game. Like Monument Valley or Alto’s Adventure.

So I was pretty excited with the announcement of Apple Arcade. I am especially pleased with Apple’s aggressive pricing and push in the non-US markets and the initial reviews of the games. These sound like the games that match my taste.

I hope these stay the way they are currently. I hope the pros do not ruin the Arcade again.

I recently started watching Undone. Actual storyline aside, I am not yet sure if I like this method of animation - rotoscoping. Especially the way it is used in this particular show. It is too close to reality to not be presented as such. Why go through all this trouble?

I recently changed the pair of glasses I was using. I do not like to go through the pains of this whole process.

First, one needs to select a frame that would suit his or her face — something that “looks good” on the face. It is bloody difficult to see if something looks good if it is the see aspect that you have problem with.

“I don’t know how it looks on me because you have taken away from me the very object that I can look through.”

Testing eyesight that follows is a similar hassle. I am surprised that there is still no better and foolproof way to do this than actually putting glasses of increasing powers on your face.

Or if there does exist a better way to do this, may be I need to visit those clinics.

Anyway, thankfully this time I was lucky with my glasses - I think the frame does look good on my face.

I find it fascinating that Twitter recommends me to follow someone that hasn’t been active for more than two years. Why, why should “follow” that person? I am yet to come across any recommendation engine that works.

While cleaning up my old notes back from 2009, came across this wonderful quote by Hunter S. Thompson.

Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming “Wow! What a Ride!”

I have been planning to refresh the look of my blog for quite some time now. I, finally, managed to get the things changed a bit today.

The biggest change was the addition of the theme switcher — if you don’t want to read with a light background, you can change the whole theme with a toggle at the top-right corner. I haven’t made it any fancier than it needs to be, it is a plain simple round button.

I was a bit hesitant for a long time to put a manual theme switcher on the home page. I thought anyone can already change the way they read the content with the reader mode of the browser. However, what’s the fun in that. Plus I never found that one perfect mode I liked across the devices and browsers. So I decided to include one that at least I would enjoy reading right here.

I have also added the support for prefers-color-scheme media query to future proof it against the upcoming system-wide (iOS, Android, macOS, Windows) dark mode preference - no manual toggle for you if you are on a dark mode on your system. I haven’t tested this thoroughly yet though. I will continue to experiment with this further.

I am very picky with the fonts and the colors I choose across the site. So I did not want to touch the existing setup till I was sure I had enough time to get this done properly.

Recently, I have been seriously considering moving my Wordpress account to a paid plan. It hosts my old blog with posts from ages ago — it currently acts as an archive of the un-migrated posts for me.

There is a reason why I am a bit itchy with my writing workflow. I am struggling to get stuff written across systems, mainly mobile and desktops, at home and work, with drafts kept in sync. Sure, I can use Dropbox as my file store and access the draft posts using iA Writer or other Markdown text editors. However, I am very particular with not signing into and linking anything personal on my work machine, so this workflow does not work at work.

I would have really liked something that is web based. I have been, since long, trying to find a micropub client with a satisfying writing experience for long form posts, along with drafts support. I still haven’t found one. Neither have my attempts to just create one ground up gone anywhere, mainly for the need for multiple working drafts.

I do have a Netlify CMS setup for my main Hugo driven website. However, though it works fine from a desktop, it has a terrible experience on mobile.

Wordpress solves this particular problem for me. I have come to realize finally that it has a nice, clean writing interface on desktop. And with its stable mobile app, the workflow is manageable on mobile too.

But, boy I am ruined by markdown - I can’t write in “Rich Text” any more. Plus, I can’t host my posts on a website which does not have the Indieweb principles baked in. I am aware that Wordpress has a IndieWeb plugin. However, one needs a business account to install plugins. And that’s too much of a cost to sign up for this casual experiment.

So my search for the online writing interface with support for sync and drafts and satisfactory interface on desktop and mobile continues. With Wordpress, it’s so close, but far.

I am tired of people making fun of a feature just because they cannot think of a use for that. This attitude recently came to the fore with Apple’s introduction of “slofies” - the slow-motion selfies. The call for “stop trying to make slofies happen” was loud and clear from the tech community. Apparently, “no one else wants to use it” because we do not want to use it.

That’s a terrible take. Sure, may be the feature can be graded low on the “usefulness” parameter, but it stands high on the fun scale. And our smartphones today are the most personal devices we carry around with us today, and that is not just because they are useful. They are equally fun too.

So stop mocking anything that you will not use. Selfies. Crazy filters. Slow-motion videos. Loop and Bounce effects - the boomerangs. They all make these dull devices a lot more fun. And their fun factor is what makes them sell in masses.

I wonder what the purists think of the recent computational photography trend.

Google started it with its all-in-cloud touch up of the photos. And then they moved it on-device in the camera app. Every photo one took was stitched together from multiple shots with different settings. And eventually each OEM made their cameras smarter, “AI-driven”.

Latest iPhone 11 stitches a single photo from 4 under exposed frames taken before the shutter button is clicked, one normal picture and 1 over exposed frame. They call this process semantic rendering. What follows is some heavy processing. Here’s snippet from the The Verge’s review of iPhone 11 Pro review.

Smart HDR looks for things in the photos it understands: the sky, faces, hair, facial hair, things like that. Then it uses the additional detail from the underexposed and overexposed frames to selectively process those areas of the image: hair gets sharpened, the sky gets de-noised but not sharpened, faces get relighted to make them look more even, and facial hair gets sharpened up. Smart HDR is also now less aggressive with highlights and shadows. Highlights on faces aren’t corrected as aggressively as before because those highlights make photos look more natural, but other highlights and shadows are corrected to regain detail.

What you get as a result is an extremely clear picture with each object in the photo appropriately visible.

But with so much processing of each image, should this even be called photography any more? Here’s Wikipedia introducing the term.

Photography is the art, application and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film.

What we do with our smartphones is neither an art nor is it creating a single image.

All parts of the photos are independently captured (and even pre-captured) with the best suited settings, processed post-capture, with even some live sections including audio recorded. This is not “creating an image” any more.

Someone might say it all started when the digital photography became mainstream - when the physical limitations of the analog methods did not constrain the person with a camera in his hand. However, what we capture is no longer a single image anymore. A more apt term for these might be “visual memories”. Common people are interested in doing just that, they don’t care if they are called photographers.

Let Photography stay an art.

I had no idea that there exists something called Nation Play-Doh Day. It does, and it is today. This “toy” always fascinates me. This also reminded me today of a crazy, rainy evening from my childhood when we friends deferred on not one, but many activities frowned upon.

It was a different day today. It was a different birthday today.

There was no late night, or early morning, cake cutting celebrations. Because I have come to prefer a time when my daughter is completely awake and can thoroughly enjoy the celebrations.

There was no partying in the night with food that my family doesn’t enjoy. Because what matters more is everyone around me has a great time.

There were no loud and over-the-top plans — just a day of togetherness with people that matter the most to me. Of course, that also meant things couldn’t just be perfect.

There was a crazy rush to get ready and cut traffic to reach theaters so that we can watch a show of movie with the whole family together. There were discussions, to the point of exasperation, over the inevitable traffic jams and the needless security checks. There were squabbles over meaningless stuff that ended with guffaws and family portraits. Even awkward at times.

But all said, it was a day well spent. Everyone decided to stay home. And everyone tried their best to make my day special.

I do not have great pictures captured of the day. But I have some wonderful memories made. It was a different, a special day today.

There are so many of these apparently great films of the 21st century that I haven’t seen yet. I have seen few, but they are mostly from before 2010. I can see a correlation with the changing priorities in my life. And I forgot Gladiator belongs to the current century ¯_(ツ)_/¯

I wonder what’s the best way to make note of the fleeting thoughts, say adding an item to a list of things that one needs to do. I know my memory is not my friend here — it gobbles stuff, but fails to let it out timely.

Digital methods are easy to use, convenient, but are unnatural. You lose touch, context, of the written words after some time. They end up being a plain dump of words with no background.

I can capture more context with analog methods — a quick sketch or the current location — but it isn’t convenient. Either I do not have a piece of paper handy or I can’t stop and capture the thought (being in middle of traffic, let’s say) right at that moment.

I am waiting for the day the digital assistants would be smarter to help capture such thought. Today they aren’t. First, they can’t be easily summoned — “Ok Google” or “Hey Siri” doesn’t work in middle of traffic, blaring horns or loud chatters.

Second, they are terrible at capturing unformed thoughts. They need structured inputs, which quick notes aren’t. Using digital assistants today is a painful battle between reality and expectations. Former is driven by the technology limitations, later by the out-right spurious promises in the advertisements.

With all said and done though, I have recently - and after enduring lot of pain - learned that heavy reliance on one’s smartphone to lead a structured life is not very sensible to do. There is a chance that it can lead to utter chaos when you don’t have your device on you. It can completely paralyze you for thoughts.

If a website doesn’t function on a browser other than Chrome or with content blocking on, it loses me as a visitor. I am tired of web developers being clumsy — prompting that we won’t serve content because you block ads is one thing. A nonfunctional website reeks callousness.