General

What “one more thing” means to me…

It means coming back from the grocery store and realizing I forgot to get the main item I went there to buy. I get everything else, just that one more thing…

This is why it’s important to put everything on your shopping list and not assume your giant brain will remember anything not on it.

I knew I should have added dishwasher soap to the list. Do I really want to go back just to get it?

The persistence of paper books and bookstores

When you think about it, it makes sense that ebooks did not push paper books out of the market.

Most people only read a few books a year–or none at all. The hardcore book reader is not your average person. What makes more sense to these people:

  • Spend $20 on two paperbacks per year (rounding to $10 each for convenience), or…
  • Spend anywhere from around $80-200+ on an ebook reader, plus $20 for two ebooks

Let’s take the Amazon Kindle Paperwhite as an example. It costs $160 Canadian (on sale as I type this for $125). $160 would buy you 16 books at $10 each. That means someone might need to read for eight years before the Kindle purchase breaks even, so to speak. After that, you get the advantages of an ereader and ebooks. But eight years is a long time. Too long for most people, I suspect, and so they just continue to buy the occasional paperback. And unless you’re content to peruse the meagre selection of books at a drugstore or similar place, the place you go to is a bookstore, hence the persistence of bookstores. Well, there are undoubtedly hardcore readers who also simply prefer paper to an electronic reading experience, too, and they probably play a big part in sustaining bookstores.

Bookstores have the advantage of letting you see piles of books on shelves, where covers can grab you (or turn you away), an experience that simply can’t be replicated by an online store–even one selling actual paper books (though that was how Amazon started, and it remains a successful system for them).

Although I’m nearly 100% ereading these days, I do sometimes wax nostalgic about bookstores and just wandering the sections and seeing what was new, or in stock, or would randomly draw my eye. I tried using the BookBub newsletter for a time to sort-of replicate this, looking over its random bargain offerings, but got burned by too many mediocre novels. To be fair, when I was reading in my late teens and early 20s, the same thing often happened when I picked up bargain books at places like Book Warehouse.

All of this was inspired by a comment about a kind of bookstore that was slain by the rise of the web–the computer bookstore. Yes, somewhere I have a copy of C++ for Dummies. Also, JavaScript, HTML and others. Learn to code in 21 days! As far as I know, these bookstores are completely gone now, since the information in these books is now copious, often free and more up-to-date online. In every way this is better, yet it’s still another experience that I once found enjoyable and is gone forever.

Time marches on.

And now, back to my ebook…

How social media works

I saw this, appropriately, on Mastodon today, and it’s pretty much perfect.

I just want to add that quick-to-judge people have been around since forever, the internet (and social media) just grease the wheels for them, so to speak.

Creativity, taste and practice: Blend together and enjoy

I came across this quote from Steve Jobs (by way of Ira Glass), and it speaks to me in a way that rings so true I can still hear the bells clanging in my head. Stupid bells. It also echoes what I read in Talented Is Overrated1I was originally going to link to my reivew, but it turns out I never reviewed this book. It’s short, so I’ll just re-read it and do a proper review. Short version: The first half is compelling, the second is mostly “be a better businessperson blah blah blah”., which posits the idea that we all have ability, we just need to nurture it and practice…a lot.

Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, and I really wish somebody had told this to me.

All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But it’s like there is this gap. For the first couple years that you’re making stuff, what you’re making isn’t so good. It’s not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not that good.

But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you. A lot of people never get past that phase. They quit.

Everybody I know who does interesting, creative work they went through years where they had really good taste and they could tell that what they were making wasn’t as good as they wanted it to be. They knew it fell short. Everybody goes through that.

And if you are just starting out or if you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Do a huge volume of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week or every month you know you’re going to finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you’re going to catch up and close that gap. And the work you’re making will be as good as your ambitions.

I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It takes awhile. It’s gonna take you a while. It’s normal to take a while. You just have to fight your way through that.

Steve Jobs

I looked at tumblr tonight

It’s kind of weird. Like, what if Facebook was nothing but posts from your eccentric friends you never hear much from any more, instead of your grandma?

But it’s still around, so they must be doing something right(ish).

Anyway, I’ll have more Social Media Thoughts™ soon.

Kobo: Time travellers

I got an email from Kobo this morning, titled thus:

Except I have not finished reading Fairy Tale (for those wondering, it’s the generically-named latest novel from Stephen King). I’m reading the book on a Kobo device, so Kobo knows I’m reading it…yet apparently is just guessing that I am done, maybe based on how much I’ve been reading per day? (I didn’t read last night because my nose was being super mean to me.) Or maybe the email is from the future where I have, in fact, already finished the book. Or maybe this is the fault of AI because it’s everywhere now, and who knows what it’s getting up to.

Anyway, this is my 63rd post of the month, and I have given myself a made-up award for posting so much, even if most of it is nonsense. Maybe especially because of that1Actually, the real answer is I gave myself permission to basically post anything I wanted, no matter how trivial, weird or silly. I’m enjoying it so far..

April 2023 summary: Phhhbtt!

Free grumpy cat image

April 2023 in list form:

  • It rained most of the month
  • We got teased with summer-like weather for two whole days (which was admittedly nice)
  • I think I overdid a couple of runs and my knees got stiff, making me pull back on my running to let them recover, which made me sad
  • Too much snacking, too much weight gain
  • My Garmin Forerunner sent me a notification telling me my heart rate was too high because I was apparently very quietly freaking out at my computer desk (it hasn’t happened since)
  • I’ve been hit by either the worst spring allergies EVER or have a head cold to end the month
  • No chocolate bunnies at Easter

But it wasn’t all bad:

  • I got some nice bird shots
  • I did a few desperate last-minute daily photo shots that turned out funkier than expected
  • I re-read some of my old fiction and liked it!
  • I started reading books in bed again, which had two effects: I’m reading books again, and no blue light (iPad) before bed has resulted in better sleep
  • I’ve made some nice bird art
  • Noise issues have become tolerable
  • I have learned to accept some things that can’t be changed
  • We are this much closer to summer and I already have sunblock!

I am ready for May.

What is social media?

Answer: You got me!

In the olden days, it was connecting with your family, friends and acquaintances and seeing what everyone was up to. Uncle Bob is having a BBQ at the cottage. Grandma is playing with the grandkids. Aunt May is into the bourbon again. Your old high school buddy has gone missing. Stuff like that. And usually on Facebook, because what else was there? mySpace?

Twitter was mainly used to pop off zingers, since you only had 150 characters, or posting memes. Sometimes useful stuff, too, which became a thing for news organizations and the like, which typically got around the character limitation by posting an image that contained 2,000 words of text. And people liked this. I think.

But today? The only people left using Facebook are your Aunt May (still on the bourbon, but also now posting memes you’ve seen three times in your feed already today), bot farms also pushing memes or misinformation/propaganda, and approximately one trillion ads.

Twitter…well. Since it assumed new leadership, it has gone full dumpster fire and people are peeling away from it in search of an alternative. And there are plenty, with more all the time, some doing different things (Artifact), some mostly the same but with key differences (Mastodon) and some shamelessly copying Twitter, including having their ex-CEOs on the board (Bluesky). And people are, of course, arguing about which is better.

But then I ask, why are people even looking? Why not quit Twitter and…do something else? When was the last time anyone read a book? 2007? How about go outside, then come inside and not post about it? Has that happened since 2010? I don’t think so! Instead of posting the perfect riposte to someone you don’t know, will never meet, and has no impact on your life in any meaningful way, why not write a poem about trees and bugs or something? Paint a landscape. Help an old person kick their bourbon habit.

I appreciate the irony of writing this on a computer on my blog (a micro-micro Twitter feed of one, if you will), but I’m taking my own advice. I’m going outside. I’m touching trees. I’m not posting memes.

For at least one day!