I use a WordPress plugin called Modern Footnotes1You can check it here: Modern Footnotes plugin to make pop-up balloons for posts. Yes, not actual footnotes, because this isn’t a Grade 8 Social Studies paper2I still have some of the essays I wrote in high school and college. Toward the end I think I was getting bored, because my focus seemed to be more on wordplay and being funny than extensive research and nuanced arguments, but pop-ups that appear when you click on the footnote number, allowing you to keep your place while reading about funny cats3Cats are funny people, my runs4Officially up to 735!, my weight5Treading water at the moment or my latest excuses for not taking part in National Novel Writing Month6Too many to fit into a footnote or pop-up.
Today I spent some time modifying the CSS of the footnotes and almost have them the way I want them. Almost. They’re more round and bigger and a little sexier.
This concludes my programming FOR THE ENTIRE YEAR.
File Explorer crashed for the first time in a very long time after I installed the update that added tabs to it. The tabs look nice, they function just as you would expect, like in a web browser. The contents of tabs are also often slow to load, like I’m using Safari on an iPhone and every time you look away from the screen, it reloads everything again. And then the crash.
I am left whelmed. Hopefully there’s some indexing or something going on, and a future update fixes the speed, without introducing a parade of other new bugs and glitches. But this is Windows 11, so my hope is…guarded.
Overall, thumbs sideways, for now.
UPDATE, October 22, 2022: I went a second day without any crashes, woo. But I also only had two tabs open, instead of 6-8.
Yesterday, Apple updated its base iPad and iPad Pro models, along with the Apple TV box, via press release and tweet. Speaking of tweets, here’s one showing how you charge the Apple Pencil on the 10th generation iPad (that’s the one they announced yesterday if you aren’t a hopeless tech geek like me):
I had the 10.5″ iPad Pro from 2017 and it used the first generation Pencil–it charged just like in the Old shot above, though I used the female to female lightning adapter to charge it via cable rather than risk it snapping off while plugged into the iPad in what was an ill-considered charging scheme.
Speaking of ill-considered, the new iPad still only supports the first-gen Pencil, but eliminates the lightning port in favour of USB-C, thus creating a situation where there is no way to charge the Pencil (the 2nd gen Pencil charges via induction by magnetically attaching to a side of the iPad).
Apple’s solution is to now include (another) adapter with the first-gen Pencil that allows it to connect to a USB cable, which then plugs into the iPad. This is also how you pair the Pencil. It’s cumbersome and requires two separate items (the adapter, the cable) in exchange for previously needing none.
It’s silly and dumb and Apple is rightly getting roasted for it.
Some are speculating that Apple did this because they finally moved the front-facing camera to landscape mode and couldn’t figure out a way to also includes the magnets in the same space to allow induction charging. That’s possible. Did Apple make the right choice? Will more people use the front-facing camera than a Pencil? I really don’t know. It seems like six of one, a half dozen of the other to me, but I can’t help thinking Apple either should have found a way to make induction charging work, or not move the front-facing camera until they could. This solution is an awkward, muddled compromise.
And it’s an excellent example of the current state of Apple.
Also note: The iPad Pros announced do not get the landscape camera, because they’re just getting a spec bump. Fair enough, you might say, but people are inevitably going to wonder why the low end model now has a superior camera to the high end, and rightly so. Apple wasn’t forced to spec bump and release the updated iPad Pros at the same time–but they chose to.
This is also an excellent example of the current state of Apple.
(I didn’t even mention the absurd $120 increase in price for the base iPad, which Apple acknowledges by keeping the old $329 model in the line-up. We’re at a point now where it makes more sense to buy older Apple stuff than the latest, because the latest is overpriced, even by Apple’s lofty standards.)
Oh, Apple. Why are you always such an easy, juicy target?
Google is a big company–so big they created a new one called Alphabet to stuff Google into. Since starting their search engine in 1997, Google has come to dominate both web searches (92%) and web browsers (65%), with Google search and Google Chrome, respectively. Google is a company built on advertising and harvesting user data. They are big enough now that they are trying and in some cases succeeding in pushing web standards that suit them, forcing others to follow along.
Part of the perpetuation of Google as the dominant player comes from writers using “Google” as a generic verb. You don’t search, you “Google.” This is bad because it entrenches Google needlessly, reinforcing in people’s minds that there is only one way to search on the internet, and that is by going to google.com.
Look at this screenshot from an article published today on engadget about finding a good productivity mouse:
I am honestly perplexed why any editorial staff on these sites would allow writers to do this. I wonder if the author of the piece had written “Bing around” (yes, I know, it is funny to say that out loud), would an editor have run a red line through it and suggested something else. What would they have suggested?
This may seem like a nitpick, but it bugs me because:
It is sloppy and lazy writing
It perpetuates a commercial product (Google search) as the “proper” way to do or use something
In conclusion, use DuckDuckGo. Or even Bing. Or one of the boutique search engines in closed beta that think people will pay for a “good” search experience (it’s possible!). But mostly, stop using “Google” to mean “search.”
On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 meaning “I will sell vital organs to get this now”, based on recently released tech gizmos:
Apple stuff
It’s fair to say I did not find their September event particularly “far out.”
iPhone 14: 2 (I don’t need to spend $1,000 on an incremental upgrade)
iPhone 14 Plus: 1 (see above, but bigger)
iPhone 14 Pro: 3 (mildly interesting, mainly due to the camera improvements)
iPhone 14 Pro Max Super Ultra Deluxe Who Approves These Names Anyway: 2 (put in pocket of shorts, act casual as weight of phone pulls shorts down to knees)
Watch Series 8: 5 (I probably need a new watch, but this is just so boring as an upgrade)
Watch SE 2: 1 (no better than what I have now, really)
Watch Ultra: 3 (some mild intrigue, but $1099 for a watch? lol no)
AirPods Pro 2: 3 (I’d probably go for a deal on the original Pros first)
Other:
Steam Deck: 2 (I know it would end up sitting in a drawer)
Wacom Cintiq Pro 27: 8 (this would be awesome for drawing, but at $3,500 U.S. I would actually need to sell vital organs to get one)
Amazon Echo Show 8″ or 10″: 7 (I kind of want one to sit on my desk, but it pretty much defines “inessential”)
Garmin Forerunner 255: 9 (I will almost certainly get one of these, due to a combination of frustration with my increasingly flaky Apple Watch, tech lust and a desire to get more/better stats on my running and other activities. Also, being able to use the watch during a run in the rain would be novel).
I feel like I’ve missed some other recent stuff, so I may update this list later. Or not. I can be all unpredictable like that.
When you speak to old Mac geezers (OMGs), they will often wax poetic about Snow Leopard as being the best version of OS X (and remind you it’s the Roman numeral 10, not the letter X), not because it came with a boatload of new features, but because it didn’t. Apple advertised it as having “0 new features” because it focused on improving existing features and fixing bugs found in Leopard, the previous version of OS X.
Back then (roughly the first decade of the 2000s) Apple released its updates on a “when they are ready” schedule, which meant you could go almost two years between updates. That changed in 2012 when Mountain Lion (OS X 10.8) came out a year after Lion. Henceforth, all Mac OS updates would come out on a yearly basis, ready or not.
Ready or not.
iOS updates and the rest of Apple’s lowercase-Uppercase OS releases followed suit, and now yearly releases are the norm.
And they are a bad idea, bad for the industry, bad for users, and Tim Cook should feel bad.
Why? One word: Bugs.
Apple has tacitly admitted it can’t keep up with yearly releases, because it now regularly leaves out major features until “later”. Just this year they delayed iPadOS 16 altogether from September to October just to get things working properly. Yearly releases are not sustainable, they’re dumb, and serve no one when they come with incomplete or missing features and copious glitches. Apple is the 800 pound gorilla in consumer electronics, so if they change course, the industry is likely to follow. And they should!
And the thing is, if Apple switched to updates every two years or “when they’re ready” people would still buy tens of millions of iPhones, plus oodles of iPads, Macs and AirPods, not to mention staying subbed to the cash cows that their services have become. But Apple is not only gigantic, they are incredibly conservative and unlikely to change course unless forced by circumstance or the law (but mostly the law).
Why do I think this? Why am I posting now?
Because watchOS 9 is a bug-riddled mess and since I use my watch for my running workouts, the glitches affect me on a regular, ongoing basis. None of these issues happened before watchOS 9 was released (Apple eventually forces updates, so you can’t even just stay put, eventually you’ll need to upgrade).
Among the bugs I’ve encountered:
Stuttery or missing animations (not a big thing, but annoying)
Unreliable heart rate monitoring, especially at the start of a run (this is a big thing)
Music playback on the watch being permanently muffled when interrupted by a notification. It happened today (again) and even closing the music app did not fix it. I restarted the app and tried three albums before the music finally popped back to regular volume.
Pausing music playing from the watch via the AirPods (clicking the touch control on one of the earbuds), then unpausing, and the playback switches to whatever you were previously listening to on the iPhone. It’s like having someone come into your living room, quietly pick up the remote, change the channel from whatever you were watching, then just as quietly leaving the room.
I suppose I should be happy most things are still working. But bleah, the yearly updates are clearly not going to improve, so I really wish Apple and the whole industry would move away from them.
UPDATE, August 2, 2023: Microsoft changed its mind, and has continued to support SwiftKey with both bug fixes and new features. The reversal happened before the app would have been delisted.
I have had some kind of iOS device going back to the iPhone 4 in 2010. How has it already been 12 years? Time is crazy.
The default keyboard the iPhone uses has never felt right to me, and so early on I looked for alternatives when Apple allowed for third-party keyboards. I found one in SwiftKey, which looked nice, was usually good with autocorrect, rather than aggressively awful (why is it I had not seen the term “auto-corrupt” before today?) and didn’t require you to swap to a different keyboard screen for something as simple as using a question mark.
Microsoft bought SwiftKey in 2016, but this didn’t seem to affect the app itself, so I continued on my merry way with it.
Microsoft didn’t say why they are killing off only the iOS version, but it probably has to do with data collection and the limits Apple has in place for third-party keyboards.
I am sad.
For now, I’ll keep using it, as I don’t expect to get a new iPhone or iPad any time soon and the app will work fine in the meantime. After that, if I do get a new Apple iSomething, I’ll have to consider other options:
Default keyboard. It’s better now, but it still has a weird floaty feel I don’t like, and the keys seem a bit too small, even for my tiny, doll-like hands.
Gboard. Decent, but I’m trying to get away from Google, not run into its data-harvesting arms.
Grammarly. I guess they make a keyboard? Does it prompt you to get the Grammarly app if you make too many typos?
Others? Microsoft also owns Nuance, which itself owned Swype, so…who knows?
Meh. Meh, I say! This also reminds me that the utterly addictive iOS game Dungeon Raid got abandoned years ago. I played the heck out of that thing, then it stopped getting updated and is now gone forever (it was a paid app, not “freemium”). Given how much I played, I probably shouldn’t lament its disappearance.
Today I cancelled a Substack newsletter and a streaming service:
Sweary History (after not quite a year)
Netflix (after being subbed for many years)
The reasons were a bit different for each, but both are part of my ongoing digital decluttering process.
For Sweary History, I actually quite like James Fell’s foul-mouthed writing style, and his personal posts (which require a paid sub) were especially enjoyable and informative. But as someone who chronicles human history, and given how dark and awful so much of human history is, Fell often wrote about unpleasant people doing unpleasant things. And in the same way that actively seeking out current news was making me generally unhappy, I found getting a dose of daily “look how terrible people have been throughout history” started having the same effect. This morning I started to read the latest newsletter and just stopped partway through, like a little switch in my brain flipped. I unsubscribed.
Netflix was different. I found that I just wasn’t compelled to watch any of the current stuff on it (Archer has grown stale, Stranger Things is something I want to catch up on, but it seems the season four episodes are long, and it’s more of a commitment than I’m willing to make right now), plus Netflix seems to think they can keep raising their prices and make up declining subs by squeezing their most loyal subscribers that much harder.
Didn’t work for me! I checked “too expensive” as my main reason for dropping the sub, and it’s true. If Netflix was cheaper, I’d probably just keep it, but it’s $18.47/month after taxes and that is too much for the very minimal use it gets.
For streaming, I still have Prime Video (as part of Prime), Disney+ and Apple TV+ (as part of Apple One), so depending on how things go, I could potentially get down to just a single service. And more time to draw.
These companies are making it easy for me to slim down my reading list.
In the case of Pocket, it’s ironic, because they’re all about providing reading lists.
A while ago, Pocket switched from a weekly newsletter to a daily one, with an option to change the frequency, so you could go back to a weekly newsletter if daily was too much.
I stuck with daily for some time, but eventually did decide it was too much. I switched to weekly, which seemed more manageable. It was fine at first. But then I got my weekly newsletter, and it was “sponsored” by The Wall Street Journal. This means every article was from…The Wall Street Journal. I subscribe to the Pocket newsletter to get stories from a number of sources, not just one. I don’t know if their answer is to go back to daily (which I won’t do) or pay for the premium version, which will somehow spare me the sponsored newsletters.
This morning, my weekly Pocket newsletter was again sponsored, this time by MarketWatch. I don’t even care about MarketWatch! Or its stories.
So I unsubscribed.
I’ll still use Pocket to occasionally capture interesting stories I want to read later. It works well enough for that, though it would not surprise me if the free version eventually gets crippled in some way to make it too annoying to use. Which may make you ask, why not pay for the premium version? And the answer is I don’t use it often enough to feel it’s worth the money (it’s $4.99 US per month or $44.99 annually). If they did make it horrible to use the free version, I’d probably just create a temporary bookmark folder as a “read later” dumping ground. Not ideal, but it would be functional.
So thanks, Pocket, for helping me in my ongoing quest to digitally declutter!
FAKE EDIT: I also emptied the Pocket folder in Outlook, deleted its category, then deleted the Pocket folder itself. Doing these things was strangely satisfying.
UPDATED: I have updated my amazing predictions, post-event.
Actually, I don’t have any. But I am amused at how pretty much everything gets leaked ahead of time and yet Apple still clings tenaciously to its super-high levels of secrecy, as if they are unaware of the entire rest of the world existing around them (Steve Jobs snarkily acknowledged this in his keynotes, at least).
Apple is big, conservative, and evil, but in a banal sort of way. They are also becoming victims of their own hubris, thinking their Apple Poo™ smells better than other poo. It does not, it just costs more.
Okay, here are some predictions:
New iPhone models
New Watch models
Updated AirPods Pro, with updated (higher) price
Previews of Apple TV+ shows that no one will care about (even if they end up watching some of the shows)
Tim Cook will tap dance in the opening segment. Okay, he’ll actually just recite corporate boilerplate in that supremely bland way of his, but I would buy a new iPhone if he tap danced instead. UPDATE: No tap dancing, but he did kind of shimmy in place a bit, with lots of hand gestures, which could be interpreted as “white guy dancing”.
DISCLAIMER: Technically, I am talking about personal knowledge management (PKM) tools, which act like your own little personal Wikipedias, and not just plain note-taking apps. My main purpose for using a PKM is note-taking, though, and I make the rules here! Am I using a hammer instead of a screwdriver? Probably. Read on, anyway!
I love fiddling around with new stuff. It’s why I have three mice sitting on my desk (computer mice, not the living kind) and a bunch more stored away. It’s why I have more keyboards than I could ever need in five lifetimes, stuffed into drawers and scattered about my place.
And it’s why I’m a sucker for a shiny piece of new software, which leads to this post’s topic: note-taking apps.
Even if you have absolutely no interesting in note-taking apps, you probably still have one, anyway, whether it’s Notepad on Windows, the Notes app on Macs, or some built-in app on your iPhone (Notes again) or Android device. They are ubiquitous. And now, with the whole second brain1Go ahead, try looking up what a “second brain” is. Your actual brain will explode. thing being the new hotness, note-taking apps have started popping up like bunnies. Note-taking bunnies.
I noticed that after expressing some interest in technology on Medium (via my preferences), it started offering me stories on note-taking apps. I believe there are roughly a trillion of these articles on Medium, which nearly matches the number of note-taking apps themselves.
I thought to myself, “Self, you need to be more organized, somehow. For some reason. You need a note-taking app that will let you consolidate all your notes in one place, so you never need to figure out where your notes are. This future of unparalleled organization will be awesome.”
It’s a good theory. My notes were previously scattered all over. I used:
Paper. Actual paper, like cave people used to do
Drafts. An app on my iPhone that can send to other apps.
OneNote. I kind of stopped using it a few years ago and I’m not sure why.
Microsoft Word. Because I had it, so why not?
Apple’s Notes app on various Apple platforms. Because it’s there.
iA Writer. Not really built for notes, but…
Ulysses. See above, plus a subscription. Ew.
There’s more I’m forgetting, and this was all before the current explosion of note-taking apps. Since then I’ve tried:
Craft
Notion
Obsidian
And contemplated a million others, while absolutely only positively ruling out a few, like Evernote, usually due to what I deem excessive pricing.
For a time I thought I had settled on Obsidian. It supports markdown, is free, can work between Mac, PC and (somewhat) with iOS (it really wants you to use iCloud for your “vault”). On (virtual) paper, it provides everything I’d need in a note-taking app and also has all the second brain stuff, like backlinks and things.
I feel like I’m grossly under-utilizing it by not making proper use of links (back, forward or any other direction), tags and other means of keeping things organized. I mean, look at this guy wax poetic about how useful Obsidian is. It makes me want to install it again right now!
While I’m clearly not tapping into Obsidian’s potential, I am big on bullet lists, because I love lists. So now, as I think about whether to stick with Obsidian or not, I wonder: Why do I take notes? The answer is in a list. Right below!
Track ideas. These can be ideas for:
stories
blog posts
game design
comics
drawings
General reminders (I have moved these to actual to-do apps)
WIP stuff on my newsletter (five issues so far, published very intermittently)
Book and movie reviews (that get posted to my blog, Goodreads or elsewhere)
Random tips and tricks, usually associated with tech
Everything that doesn’t fit into the above
And Obsidian has worked reasonably well here. I’ve added plugins to expand on what it can do. Look how organized everything appears to be (I have redacted a few items, but it’s nothing scandalous, like panda porn or something, just stuff regarding the condo or other personal yet banal items):
And yet I feel like:
I am underutilizing Obsidian to the point where I probably could just use Notepad, for all the difference it would make
Maybe I don’t have the kind of personality to connect the dots, or in this case, the notes?
Maybe I actually don’t have a compelling reason to use backlinks and I’m overthinking things, as is my way
But it all seems so useful. There are so many articles! I want to do more! Yet I am not feeling there is a yawning chasm in my life because I have only clicked a backlink maybe once in Obsidian, and that was just to see if it worked (it did).
Anyway, have a look, there’s plenty to choose from!
