Deleting apps
My computer is home to most software ever written. I try every new app I hear about, but rarely do I delete them once I’ve stopped using them. Of course I keep a bunch of them around, “just in case”.
The problem with the “just in case” apps is that I find myself launching them simply as a distraction or something “new” to play with.
This morning I deleted the apps that I don’t use, or that I don’t want to use right now. Those apps were…
Cardhop, Portacle, Agenda, Amethyst, Capture One, Skelotron, Curiota, Dashlane, Diarly, EagleFiler, Elephant, Fantastical 2, Fork, Ginko, iA Writer, Klib, Launchbar, Mailplane, MailSteward, Marta, Memory Tracker by Timely, Notability, Notebooks, OmniFocus, Oni, Pathfinder, Postbox, Shiori, SnagIt, Spark, TheArchive, Tiddly Desktop, Timeular, Twitterific, Vanilla, Vivaldi, Yoink
There are a half-dozen or so remaining that I should delete, but haven’t yet. This is a good start, though.
Why Paul Ford still loves tech (Wired)
Something about the interior life of a computer remains infinitely interesting to me; it’s not romantic, but it is a romance. You flip a bunch of microscopic switches really fast and culture pours out.
I still want to be Paul Ford when I grow up.
Everything should take 20 minutes (The Outline)
A 10-minute task is hardly a task at all, more of a minor interruption, and anything that takes 30 minutes invites the thought that you could have watched a half-hour episode of television instead. Twenty minutes is, objectively, the ideal amount of time — the Goldilocks number when it comes to doing things.
Friends of the Pod (N+1)
N+1:
Actually, hell is other fans — specifically, fans of podcasts we don’t listen to. People give each other recommendations, barely better than the algorithm’s, and describe it as “discovery.” “You have to check out Pod Save America,” we hear a journalism student say to a barista. A rookie error, to admit to not listening; once you do, you’ve brought the proselytizing upon yourself. By now we have learned to lie, just like we learned to lie about watching Six Feet Under. Of course we love 99% Invisible! That episode about the artists squatting in a room accidentally built into the mall? So good. Back when we were honest, we suffered more.
Talk radio can still control the listener’s emotional response, but no one feels threatened by the infinitely banal podcast. Instead of emotion or camaraderie, what podcasts produce is chumminess — reminiscent of the bourgeois club atmosphere, reconfigured as the desperate friendliness of burned-out knowledge workers.
Reunited with the iPad Mini
I used an iPad mini for a short time when it was first released. I loved it, but eventually fell for the siren song of bigger-better-faster so I upgraded and upgraded and upgraded and ended up with the giant 12.9” iPad Pro with Smart Keyboard and Pencil 2.
The big iPad Pro can (and does) easily serve as a primary computer for many people. I’ve learned that it’ll never fill that role for me. A “real” Mac is where I prefer to do most things.
What this means is that I can never decide whether to carry my MBP or the big iPad so I end up dragging them both along. This rarely makes sense.
What I now have is a 2019 iPad Mini and after a very short time I can tell it was the right move. I don’t have to decide which to bring. I can easily bring both with almost no additional overhead.
“But the big iPhones are practically the same thing,” you may argue, but you’d be wrong. Hold them up side-by-side while viewing just about any document or book or image and if you think they’re “practically the same” you’re kidding yourself. The iPad’s aspect ratio is also much better for viewing the things I want to look at.
It works with the (1st Gen) Apple Pencil, which is awesome. I mean that using the Pencil with the Mini is awesome. The 1st-Gen Pencil is an ergonomic embarrassment, but still.
It’s nice that I can actually thumb-type with the Mini, too.
The new iPad mini is fast, small, has good battery life, and takes up almost no extra room. I think it’s the iPad for me. Maybe it always has been.
Microsoft and Linux and a shift away from Apple
Take a moment to read the excerpts collected by Michael Tsai in his post linking to Microsoft’s announcement that they’ll be shipping a full Linux kernel with Windows.
Now tell me there’s not a shift happening in the Mac/Windows/Linux development ecosystem. From where I’m sitting, it’s not looking like a shift toward Apple.
Don Norman on how design fails older consumers
The designers at Apple apparently believe that text is ugly, so it should either be eliminated entirely or made as invisible as possible. … Today, Apple’s products violate all the fundamental rules of design for understanding and usability, many of which Tognazzini and I1 had helped develop. As a result, even a manual is not enough: all the arbitrary gestures that control tablets, phones, and computers have to be memorized. Everything has to be memorized.
It’s not just a problem for the elderly, either.
Both Norman and Tognazzini were formerly employees of Apple and are very much worth listening to.↩︎
Seeing the music
Turntable
One of my favorite things about listening to vinyl records is that I can see the music as it plays. Ok I suppose I can’t exactly “see” it, but you know what I mean. I like my old reel-to-reel player for the same reason. Even cassette tapes give me a little of that feeling.
Another brush with Hugo and baty.net
I search my old blog (baty.net) nearly every day looking for some reference or topic. I stopped posting there earlier this year, and I often feel like I miss it.
I like the theme and I like static HTML controlled by version-controlled Markdown files. And I like Hugo, so last night I dusted it off and got things configured again. I even published a couple posts.
What I realized immediately is that even though Hugo is great, Blot offers nearly all the benefits in an easier-to-use package.
I ended up moving things around on baty.net so that the home page is now a giant list of every post going back to 2000. I have no intention to post there any time soon. 😔
I’m still down to (only!) three blogs.
- baty.blog - You’re soaking in it
- copingmechanism.com - It’s new and I’m not sure what it’s for yet
- micro.baty.net - My micro.blog blog
That should do it, right?
Minimal configuration, just in case?
There’s this idea of always using a minimal software configuration so that “I can fire up any computer and be productive immediately.” I’m skeptical.
Does that actually happen to people? I’ve never had to jump on a strange machine and be productive immediately. Seems like another case of optimizing for the unlikely.
I always wear a seatbelt, just in case there’s an accident. This is totally worth the tradeoffs, since the inconvenience is minor and the consequences of not doing it are life-threatening.
Keeping my software mostly at its default configuration means that 99% of the time I’m operating less efficiently than I could be, just in case something highly unlikely happens, and that 1% is almost certainly inconsequential.
I don’t want to make that trade.