My current phone is an iPhone 6 and I’ve had it for a little under three years, which is something like 20 in phone years.
It’s been paid off for nine months so I’m free to get a new phone anytime. I’ve resisted until now because there’s nothing wrong with it, though of late it has been a little more sluggish and battery life seems worse. It’s still perfectly usable.
But with the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus out and the iPhone X (10) due out in a little over a month, I’m mulling a replacement.
The weird thing is the phone part–where you make calls and take calls–is probably the aspect I’m least interested in. I’m a lot more interested in the rear-facing camera as my iPhone has replaced my Canon point-and-shoot camera. I’m also more interested in getting a newer device that would be snappier when running apps, retrieving information and other non-phone tasks. I mean, yes, I expect it to handle phone calls, too, but I actually don’t really talk much on the phone anymore and I kind of like it that way.
The other thing I’m mulling is moving to a larger phone. When I am on a call it’s often via ear buds, so I’m not holding a giant glass and aluminum slab next to my ear, anyway. The benefits are better battery life and a larger display for all those non-phone things.
The downside to this contemplation is Apple evolving back to ludicrous pricing territory (last seen prior to Jobs returning in 1997), which, combined with the Canadian dollar, means the 8 Plus and X sell for between $1,000-$1,300.
Or maybe I could just get a new sim for the $40 Samsung flip phone I still have tucked away in a drawer. Granted, it could really only do the phone part, but I could use the leftover $1,000 on, I don’t know, $1,000 worth of apple fritters or something.
Anyway, smartphones are expensive, which sucks, but they do all kinds of nifty things now, which is neat. The end!
In 31 days National Novel Writing Month will begin once again, challenging writers to complete a 50,000 word novel in 30 days (that’s 1,667 words per day).
My success rate with NaNo has dipped below 50% since I started in 2009 and this is the first year where I’ve seriously considered not participating. However, my writing has largely stalled over the last two months, thanks to a combination of vacation time getting me out of the habit, an unfinished short story leaving me flummoxed and frustrated, and my preferred writing program suddenly and obnoxiously switching to a subscription model, leading me to dumping it.
They’re all excuses, really. I could have kept writing because the writing program (whichever one I may use) is just that, a tool. I have a plethora of options to choose from, so saying I can’t find a good replacement for the one I’ve stopped using would be like saying I couldn’t use a particular keyboard because it wasn’t the right color (I was originally going to say typewriter instead of keyboard, but a lot of people probably don’t even know what a typewriter is anymore, except as a prop sometimes seen in old timey movies).
The problem is the usual lack of discipline. I mean, look at me right this moment–I am once again desperately cheating my way through that one-post-per-day thing by attempting to write nine posts in one day so I’ll have 30 for the month (this post will bring me up to 25). The reason I’m doing this is because I lack the discipline to write one post per day (a simple and relatively easy task as I’m not exactly writing thesis papers here) and instead must cram in many posts on the final day (a not-so-easy task that may result in posts of less than great ambition and/or quality. See: the next post, which is going to be a haiku).
NaNo is a great way to reignite discipline, assuming the chosen novel keeps on rolling instead of smashing into a brick wall on the third day. I tend to write NaNo novels that feature roads dotted with random brick walls.
I can make this deal with myself: If I don’t get my writing back on track by the end of October, I do NaNo. If my writing is on track, I skip NaNo, because interrupting a project humming along to start another that may crash and burn in short order does not seem like the best plan.
This means I’ll have to start thinking of ideas, too. I hate this part.
I’ll report back in one month with my decision, possibly with a new keyboard in hand. But probably not.
But I did break out two of the three (!) mechanical keyboards I already have to test them again.
Playing around with the Filco with brown switches convinced me of two things:
The form factor without numeric keypad is the way to go.
Brown switches are not the way to go.
Playing around with the Das with blue switches left me more uncertain. First, the Das specifically is big and heavy and I’m not really into big and heavy for my keyboards anymore. It also has a glossy finish. Note to keyboard manufacturers: NEVER DO THIS. The gloss attracts fingerprints and reflects light like crazy. It doesn’t look good, it just looks distracting.
I still like the feel of blue switches but having used a Logitech K750 for a good long while now, it’s a big shift to go from a low-travel soft touch laptop-style keyboard to one that CLACKS with great force.
So it’s made me wonder if my other choice from the above-linked post, red switches, might be the way to go. You get the reliability of a mechanical switch but without the CLACK, you get the handy non-keypad form factor, and you get keys that actuate without requiring a lot of force.
I’m still undecided.
I’ll pledge to make a decision before National Novel Writing Month starts. That means I have one month. If it goes like my attempts to come up with ideas for NaNoWriMo, I will not be announcing the recently-placed keyboard order I’ve made on October 31. But we’ll see.
I kind of wish Logitech made a version of the K750 without the numeric keypad. I’d grab that in an instant. They do have smaller keyboards, but they all either connect via Bluetooth (yuck) or don’t have full-size navigation keys or both. Why is there no Goldilocks keyboard? Or why can’t I find it?
The answer in one month!*
UPDATE, April 29, 2018: I just ordered the Cooler Master MasterKeys S, a tenkeyless mechanical keyboard with red switches. It’s significantly cheaper than the customizable WASD keyobards I’ve considered, so it will serve as a (still pricey) test drive of red switches. I will make a new post to describe how it goes. And how clicky it is.
On August 10 the company behind the markdown writing application Ulysses announced that the program was switching to a subscription model and that people who had already purchased the Mac and iOS software would get a lifetime 50% discount on the subscription rate (offer available for an unspecified limited time). You can read a lengthy explanation for the switch in this Medium story (the first paragraph contains the line “Our users expect a continuously evolving high quality product,?” which suggests the company is somewhat clueless about what people want from a writing program.
The regular Canadian yearly rate is $50, so I would qualify for a $25 rate or roughly $2 per month.
$2 per month is not much money. It’s the same I pay for a medium steeped tea at Tim Hortons if I throw the dime I get as change into a donation tin (which I do, I’m not a big hoarder of dimes). My decision to sub or not to sub, then, is not based on ability to pay, but willingness to pay.
After thinking it over for some time I finally came to an answer: I’m not paying.
I’ve stopped using Ulysses and will only keep the apps on my iPad and MacBook Pro long enough to move over the projects I’d been working on. The main one, my 2014 NaNoWriMo novel Road Closed has already been exported back to WriteMonkey, the program I originally used to write it back in the olden days of three years ago.
I really liked Ulysses. The interface was clean, effective and it had just enough features that I was sure it would be a good fit for this year’s National Novel Writing Month. It supports markdown, it has a very clean interface, with various ways to eliminate distractions and provide focus. It allowed you to set goals. Like Scrivener, it let you move around scenes or chapters easily. It offered customizable themes and could export to a variety of formats. It had seamless behind-the-scenes integration with iCloud. I never thought about saving, it just happened in the background, and I never lost a word or experienced any corrupted files in the time I spent using it.
There were problems, too. Macs render I-bars (used for selecting text) as thin black lines and Ulysses offered no options to change this, meaning it was surprisingly easy to lose the cursor if you used a theme with a darker background. I also found moving files around was prone to glitches, with nesting sometimes being hit or miss. There’s also no Windows version and the company behind Ulysses made it clear it wasn’t in the works.
Mostly, though, Ulysses worked well. As a simple markdown editor and writing tool, it did what it needed to.
Why am I unwilling to cough up a measly $2 a month, then, to continue using it? A few reasons:
I don’t want my writing locked to a subscription where some glitch or oversight suddenly means I only have read-only access to my projects. I have Microsoft Word as part of Office 365–a subscription service–but if I want to, I can buy a single license copy of Word and never have to worry about losing write access (ho ho) to my work.
Poor value. Even at $2 a month this is a middling to poor value. I get access to all of the major MS Office applications for free through my Office 365 work account but prior to that coming into play I subbed to the Office 365 University edition. It costs $80 and gives you four years of access–$20 per year or about $1.66 per month–less than Ulysses for a full office suite and cloud storage. But even if I went with the full singe user version (Office 365 Personal) I’d be paying $69 per year or $5.75 per month. This is slightly higher than the non-discount rate for Ulysses but instead of access to a single writing program, you get access to a range of products and services. The value comparison (regardless of whether you think Office is the best or worst thing ever) is incredibly lopsided. Office 365 gives you all of this:
Word (word processor)
Excel (spreadsheet)
Publisher (desktop publishing)
Outlook (email)
Access (database)
OneNote (cloud-based note-taking)
1 terabyte of storage on OneDrive (cloud storage)
60 minutes of monthly calls on Skype (web video phone conferencing)
Ignoring the competition. There are a lot of markdown and distraction-free/zen writing applications out there. Most of them are either free or have a one-time and relatively low purchase price. Even when it was a buy-once program Ulysses was expensive, separating itself from the competition in a negative way (but at least that high price was only extracted once). My favorite payment scheme is probably the one used by WriteMonkey. The software is free to use but if you want plugin support you need to donate. Plugins offer some very nice bonus features but the program itself otherwise works fine. The author is essentially engendering good will in the hope that you will donate and get some nice extras. And it worked, I donated.
Ignoring all of the other subscription software and services. Microsoft and Adobe can get away with it because they are big companies that sell to corporate users and can provide updates and services across an array of products and services. At some point people will draw a line and say no more to the next app they like that demands a subscription for use. I pay for Office 365 but I’ve bailed on my Adobe sub because I don’t get enough value from it and cheaper alternatives exist. I pay for Netflix and a few other services, like my mobile phone plan and internet, and I’ll pay for stuff like ad-removal in phone apps I use regularly. But I’m pretty close to the limit when it comes to adding more subscriptions to my load. A single-use program that is already complete and functional just doesn’t rank.
A writing app doesn’t need a subscription. Microsoft can add or change functionality across seven programs and its cloud service, as well as web-based versions of the same. The Ulysses team can…update Ulysses. But as a writing program it is already feature-complete. If I was pressed I could make up a list of “might be nice to have” features but none would be essential. I can’t begin to imagine adding enough stuff to make me say, “That’s worth $25 (or $50 for most people)” a year.”
Several other competitors to Ulysses, such as the teams behind Scrivener and iA Writer, have said they have no plans to go to subscription. I wish them continued success.
As for Ulysses, I would never wish the company ill, but I hope that it doesn’t pan out for them and they switch to a different kind of payment scheme, whether it’s “pay to remove ads” or “pay for infrequent major releases” (the Scrivener model) or something else. I really don’t want to see single-use software continue down the road of constantly dinging the user for marginal value.
This, of course, leaves me looking for a writing program to use now that I’ve stopped using Ulysses. I’ll cover some options in another post.
September 1: 156.6 pounds September 30: 154.5 pounds
Year to date: From 165.9 to 154.5 pounds (down 11.4 pounds)
I shed another 2.1 pounds in September, despite taking a week off running due to a minor muscle pull and generally running less in terms of distance. On the other hand, I resumed lunch hour walks, which is where I ironically pulled aforementioned muscle.
Like August, I ended the month with my lowest weight at 154.5 pounds, putting me only 4.5 pounds from my official target and less than 10 pounds away from my unofficial target of 145.
It feels like things are staying on track. I’ve even allowed myself one donut per week at our work meetings. This seems to be enough to tide me over, so I never actually buy any on my own.
I’m not sure how accurate my Fitbit scale is but I’m a decent bit leaner ‘n meaner compared to the start of the year when eggnog was still available and being consumed.
Body fat for the first nine months of the year:
January 1: 19.1% (31.7 pounds of fat)
September 30: 15.5% (24 pounds of fat)
Run 540 Average pace: 5:25/km
Location: Burnaby Lake (CW)
Start: 10:22 am
Distance: 10.03 km
Time: 54:24
Weather: Partly sunny
Temp: 14ºC
Humidity: 82%
Wind: light
BPM: 169
Weight: 154.5 pounds
Total distance to date: 4202 km
Devices: Apple Watch, iPhone
Because I last ran counter-clockwise at the lake, today I ran clockwise. However, I started my run a little after 10 a.m., which turned out to be around the time a running event was beginning at the lake. The runners, as tradition dictates, were heading in a counter-clockwise direction.
And so it was that between the 3-4 km mark I noticed someone dashing by wearing what looked like an event jersey. The design was too elaborate for me to read as he whizzed by, but then I noticed a few more and thought there must be a small running group out and aboot.
It was when I approached the bridge at Deer Lake Brook that I could see dozens of people in a slowly-spreading out formation, all moving toward me. I managed to barely stay on the edge of the trail and for a moment wondered if I should just switch direction and go with the flow. After another moment I figured they’d pass soon and all was well after that until I rounded the sports fields and about five young women sped past me like a bullet train toward what looked like a finish line. At this point I had no idea how many events were going on or where or how or why, I just quietly hoped I’d be off the trail before hitting the next batch of eager participants.
And I was.
With the forecast promising rain, I headed out with the temperature hovering around 14-15ºC, nearly perfect for running. I didn’t even notice any sweat until I was nearly three km in! The sky was a mix of cloud and sun but this was one of those days where the sun felt like a fall sun, unlike two days ago when it got weirdly warm (27ºC in Vancouver) and very much felt like a summer sun. I prepared for possible rain by protecting my nipples (I wish I could come up with a cute nickname for them. “The boys” seems wrong.) but the rain obligingly held off until two hours after I had finished the run.
I kept up a nice pace and the cooler weather made it easier to maintain the pace. Somewhere between the 5-6 km the left leg began to feel stiff but I waited it out for a bit and it leveled off quickly, so I was able to finish the full run and even felt a little spry in the last stretch (I wasn’t really any faster, but I did keep up a very consistent pace throughout). The walk home was fine and as I write this the leg seems to have recovered nicely. My overall pace was my second-fastest for a 10K this year at 5:25/km. I am provisionally prepared to say I am safe for running 10Ks on the weekend.
Which I will probably do in a counter-clockwise direction from now on.
The five novellas in this collection all tell stories either centered around or at least featuring (sometimes very tangentially) the Gothic residence known as Irongrove Lodge, with narrative bridges connecting the stories together in a manner of sorts.
Irongrove Lodge is a nasty old place, full of tortured ghosts and malevolence that drives its occupants to madness and worse. Its many victims prove that a good design treatment on a hell house just leaves you with a nicer-looking hell house.
I enjoyed four of the five stories quite a bit, while one of them left me a bit unmoved. The linking narrative also didn’t really click for me and probably could have been excised altogether. The passages are brief enough that you can get through them quickly, though.
“Maggots” features a protagonist who may be afflicted by imposter syndrome–or his aunt could actually be taken over by some alien entity. It’s appropriately weird and yet thoroughly grounded at the same time. At one point Will, the young man who feels he may be standing precariously on the edge between worlds, writes down possible explanations for what he perceives as his aunt’s strange behavior, ending with “I have lost my mind.” The whole thing is enjoyable in how the characters behave and react in the most ordinary of ways to to each other and events both mundane and…less so.
“Priest’s Hole” is about a man who discovers he can shape-shift thanks to a rather special room in Irongrove Lodge. He ends up with an agent he never sees who finds him jobs and it gets complicated and messy from there. The shape shifter narrates the story and frequently apologizes for being melodramatic and stupid. It’s a neat take on shape-shifting.
“Gnaw” is a straight-up ghost story, in which a young family moves into Irongrove Lodge, the husband determined to remodel it and make it a home for his wife and two children. Various ghosts and ghost-like entities have other plans, most of them violent and disturbing. The remodeling does not go well. This is one of those tales in which you will find yourself constantly muttering to yourself, “Why won’t they leave?!” but still manages to keep on the side of the characters behaving believably.
“The Best Story I Could Manage Under the Circumstances” is a surreal trip through magically-appearing doors in bedroom walls and ceilings, in which a young boy is ensnared by a demented storyteller. The whole thing is presented in a very droll manner, as a kind of modern fairy tale, and while it is a triumph of style, I found I didn’t care about the characters and nearly stopped caring about how things would turn out. If this style works for you, however, it may make your socks roll up and down in delight. My socks didn’t really move much.
The final story, “Skin Deep” is told as a series of vignettes from the perspectives of those involved, a format author Sarah Lotz used to good effect in her novel The Three and again uses skillfully here. This is another remodeling-gone-amok tale, in which a May-December couple moves into one of the flats at Irongrove Lodge, where Robin, the younger of the two, becomes obsessed with redecorating the place to the detriment of his wife’s bank account, their marriage and his sanity. The remodeling again does not go well, though the cleaners manage to get most of the nastiest stuff cleaned up.
Given the subject matter of most stories, the tone in the majority of them is surprisingly light, yet with the exception of “The Best Story…” the presentation never feels glib. “The Best Story” is all about being glib and weird and gross (you may not want to pass along this story to someone expecting a baby–trust me on this).
While I would overall recommend Five Stories High,/> the marketing of it is deceptive, as only two of the stories are really ghost stories at all. They also happen to be the only two that really make Irongrove Lodge a significant part of the narrative, rather than something shoehorned in to technically fit the theme of the collection.
