• Good riddance

    Good riddance

    We’re supposed to remember to type 2021, and it’s easier than ever because what a shit year 2020 was. I mean really, you’d be hard-pressed to dream up something worse.

    (more…)

  • The Perfect iPhone?

    The Perfect iPhone?

    I pick up the latest iPhone every year, just like I do with the iPad Pro. One could argue the necessity of that, but my excuse is that I work with these things. In pre-pandemic times, that was extra true because I did a lot of video with a setup centred around my iPhone 11 Pro. These days, not so much…

    Which suits me fine because when the iPhone 12 models dropped, I could easily go for the one I wanted, namely the iPhone 12 mini.

    (more…)

  • Bad Habit Projects

    Author Preeti Chhibber pretty much nails it, in her How I Work interview on Lifehacker:

    … I have a very bad habit where I start a lot of projects at the same time, and I end up with four podcasts, several blogs, and all these things.

    Me too, Preeti. Me too.


  • Raspberry Pi 400

    This is by far the coolest thing I’ve seen in a long time: A computer inside a keyboard!

    We’ve never been shy about borrowing a good idea. Which brings us to Raspberry Pi 400: it’s a faster, cooler 4GB Raspberry Pi 4, integrated into a compact keyboard. Priced at just $70 for the computer on its own, or $100 for a ready-to-go kit, if you’re looking for an affordable PC for day-to-day use this is the Raspberry Pi for you.

    Yes, I know – been there done that – but the fact that Raspberry Pi is doing it, with its just announced Raspberry Pi 400, and they’re starting at €70/$70, makes it worth the enthusiasm.

    I’m getting one when the Nordic keyboard layouts are rolling out.


  • Make someone (then do it again)

    Darius Kazemi calls himself an internet artist, and who am I to disagree? Anyone who can make something as wonderful as the Make someone page deserves whatever moniker they’d like.

    So go ahead, make a person. Then make another until the day’s wasted away.


  • Substack adds support for domains – but there’s a catch

    Substack, the hyped and overall pretty excellent newsletter and website service that I use for Switch to iPad, has added support for custom domains. That means that I could, if I wanted to, point my domain switchtoipad.com to my Substack page, which of course is located at switchtoipad.substack.com. Prettier, no?

    I was going to do just that, but then I saw that Substack has decided to charge a $50 one-time fee to activate this feature on your account. This to me is a greedy money-grab, and I won’t do it. In fact, it makes me wonder if Substack is the place for me at all. I’ll surely rethink my strategy henceforth.


  • Kill the Newsletter

    If you’re fed up with all those newsletters clogging up your inbox, and you don’t want to pony up for Feedbin or Feedly, then Kill the Newsletter is for you. It’s a clever little service that lets you create a unique email address for signing up to a newsletter, and then converts its issues to an Atom feed that you can subscribe to in your favorite feed reader app or service. You could even add it to Feedly in the free tier…

    I love these one thing well apps and services.


  • Food For Your Inbox

    Looking for some new newsletters to subscribe to? Then this mammoth list from InsideHook might be for you, serving up 80 newsletters across a number of topics. My only gripe with it would be that it doesn’t feature neither Switch to iPad nor RE:THORD

    I’m really enjoying the newsletter resurgence, but I know not all of you do, because it clogs up the inbox. The solution I’ve gone with is using Feedbin, a RSS service, which gives you a unique Feedbin email address for your subscriptions. That means I get (most of my) newsletters with my RSS feeds, a perfect fit if you ask me. Feedly has this feature too, nowadays, but not on the free tier. Both services are worth paying for, so pick the one you like if you want a good RSS – and newsletter subscription – service.


  • Delete Facebook and Google

    Two sites to link to whenever someone starts talking about deleting their Facebook account, or quitting Google. Talk is cheap, you know. I wish I could get out of both rackets, but it’s not possible because of work. I will, however, move my email from Google soon, possibly to HEY when they support custom domains.


  • Karl Lagerfeld’s Chanel sets

    Do you need some extravagant fashion sets in your life? Not much of that going around during a pandemic, and – let’s face it – it’s not like most of us would go to a show anyway. That doesn’t mean that they’re not cool though, like this New York Times gallery of Karl Lagerfeld’s most fabulous Chanel sets. Like it or not, those are some wild sets designed to showcase fashion…

    And yes, I might be digging deep in my Pocket reading queue. Still cool though, even if the link is from last year.


  • Don’t go to the movies

    A discussion recently led me to send this AV Club link, about going to the movies in a pandemic, to a friend. I figured it should be here too. The quote below is Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, talking about what’s so dangerous with going to a movie theatre right now.

    I’m a huge fan of movies. I really enjoy them. They’re a great way to have some fun and escape from the world—which we need, especially right now. But going to see a movie in an indoor movie theater, it’s just about the last thing I would do right now. From what we understand, the virus is transmitted through through aerosolized droplets that come out of our mouths, oftentimes when we talk or when we laugh or when we sing. And so, being in a room for two hours with a bunch of folks who are laughing at a movie, and where air is not being circulated in an efficient way, and where you don’t know who has been in there before you, that’s really hazardous exposure. I just don’t think it’s worth it.

    Dr. Abdul El-Sayed

    The whole piece, with quotes from medical professionals, is worth a read.


  • The weird webring

    Remember webrings? Of course not… It was a web 1.0 phenomenon where sites linked to each other in a ring-like fashion, usually with an ugly graphic somewhere. The blogroll was the natural evolution of webrings.

    There’s a webring, called the Weird Wide Webring, that I love, and would join if it didn’t mean sticking yet another JavaScript on my site. Do check it out though, it’s made by Jack McDade, known for the Statamic CMS and his own wacky website. Fun times.


  • In 2 Minutes or Less

    In 2 Minutes or Less

    Here’s something to live by: If it takes 2 minutes or less, just do it.

    Got an email that you can reply to in 2 minutes or less? Hit reply and, well, reply, getting it out of your inbox and – more importantly – out of your mind.

    (more…)

  • Craigstarter

    Congratulations are in order, because Craig Mod has launched a successful campaign for his new book, Kissa by Kissa. Yes, it’s about walking, as most things seem to be with Craig these days. He created something wonderful, the Craigstarter, for this project. It’s essentially a way to do crowdfunding with Shopify, with proper support for stretch goals and everything. I love the fact that something called Craigstarter exists, and released into the wild for everyone to use too.

    Also, this resonated well with me, because Craig’s projects are funded by his Special Projects membership drive:

    I see all members as voters, but Yearly Members are like mini-investors. As I wrote in Kickstartup: “I want to share with you a story about books, publishing, fundraising and seed capital.” Yearly Memberships are seed capital. I don’t mean that in the way of crude, spreadsheet driven, emotionless capital deployment, but in the freedom-unlocking, the opportunity-giving way. Obviously, members are not only “seed capital,” but the dollar amount of Yearly Memberships, in aggregate, become a kind of Kalman filter or linear quadratic estimation in a way that Monthly amounts aren’t. Yearly members say: Ya got a year, delight me! And if I fail to do so, the onus is on me. So, as a thanks to Yearly Supporters for that pledge of faith, I see the $50 coupon as a kind of financial dividend (beyond all the cultural dividends I hope the program inherently pays).

    Read about the project in Roden 042, which – of course – is a newsletter.


  • Switch to iPad hits issue three tomorrow

    The first two issues of Switch to iPad has been sent to subscribers, both free for all. The first issue, asking the question wether you’re ready to switch to iPad, clocked in at 1,500 words, whereas the second – covering picking the right iPad – was 1,900 words.

    The third issue is due on Tuesday, and it’s another long one: the first draft is 1,900 words. Issue 3 is only for paying subscribers though, so you might want to consider subscribing? Pretty please?

    Either way, I’m happy with the Switch to iPad project thus far, and I’m looking forward to keeping at this for quite some time.