Blog
- Skimming / Getting up to speed
- Learning / Education
- Novels and Entertainment
I’ve been using the Journal app on macOS since it was in beta, as a test to see if it could replace the text documents I had been using up until then. I’d migrated from Day One a couple of years ago, having become less than enthusiastic about its owners once it was sold on.
I migrated everything to Ulysses, and made each entry an .md file and stored them on a synced and encrypted drive so I could always find them again if needs be and have peace of mind about security. There are very private thoughts, remember.
When the Journal app came along, I wanted to give it a try to see if it would work for me. The type of journaling I do is basic and is easily suited to plain text files. But I wanted something that had a few bells and whistles to help get me into the mindset to use it, and using the same editor I use for long-form writing was fine, but it didn’t really gel. I checked that I could export all the entries, if needs be, because that was a deal-breaker if it wasn’t possible. And I started using it.
So far, I’m pretty happy with it, but it has its idiosyncrasies. For example, when I start a new entry, text input is not always ready to accept typed words. I click in and out of the window a couple of times, and then I can write. It’s a bit shoddy for a company like Apple, but it’s hardly the end of the universe either.
However, the biggest issue for me is that there are no controls to adjust the size of the text displayed. Being able to scale text would make such an improvement to the app, particularly if, like me, you primarily use a 27” monitor.
So that’s my request of Apple. Please include text sizing options to help make it more inclusive for users.
Like a lot of people, I have had an interest in photography for many years. I had some projects that spanned over six or seven years and I’m pretty happy with some of the outcomes of those photos. I’m trying to archive them better for posterity and future use. I briefly mentioned on my Now page.
A couple of weeks ago, I had a catastrophic failure of my last remaining Nikon DSLR camera —with a little luck should be repaired soon— which has provoked me to look into replacing it. I’m moving off DSLRs to Mirrorless cameras. There’s probably a couple of camera brands I would like, Nikon, Sony and Panasonic, but I have a strong pull for Fuji cameras.
Diving into this rabbit hole, I came across some videos from a photographer and professional colourist in the film industry. GxAce.
The production quality of these mini films is just stunning. The look, the ideas and the attention to detail to the history of the things he presents is just so interesting. You may not like the William Gibson-esque nature of the presentation, that’s fine, but the information provided and the way the stories are told is quite something. Highly recommended.
PS. If I had a tenth of his talent for composition and production, I’d be overjoyed.
A few days ago, I was a guest on a podcast here in the Caribbean to talk about some difficult topics. Over on my main blog, I’ll probably post about it soon, but I wanted to mention how I feel doing these things.
I read a lot, which contributes to a gathering of a lot of research on several topics that may or may not be loosely related to the work I do. I find it broadens my mind and having other reading helps me write and contribute to the projects I get involved. It’s a labour of love and isn’t always monetised, but to hell with it. I don’t feel the need for everything to be monetised.
Recording discussions with other people is so rewarding, and it adds to the information that I have researched and learned through papers, sites, and videos as sources. Being put on the spot to discuss topics that can be a little tricky, helps me think deeply about what I’ve learned and what it all means. Writing takes that further, but I wouldn’t give up the opportunity for discussion for anything.
I used to feel very self-conscious of my voice, but now I’m starting to get used to it, and I’m started to forgive my vocal ticks (I say, so on and so forth, too much) and savour the discussions that are recorded and published.
Recording a discussion and editing it many times really helps break down that distaste of one’s voice. At some point, I’ll get to like blogging and not be so self-conscious.
I updated my Now page to try to keep track of things I do over the months. I’m sure that’s not the main purpose of a Now page, but as I keep each version, it’ll act as a record over time.
It serves as a reminder and a motivator to keep plugging away, too.
When people finally organise and take over the repugnant regimes of the right in the future, Social Media will try to take credit for it, despite being the main enablers of the fall into fascism.
Don’t let them get away with it.
Their schizophrenic allegiances to you, the user, are actually an unwavering deference to money.
Don’t be fooled.
Last year, I tried to be a bit more intentional with reading. In some respects, I was trying to get back to a time when I would always have a book on me and would read it throughout the day, on public transport, in the office, or whilst waiting for something. It is an activity that I have lost and missed, and, I think, to many other people since the attention capture of Social Media.
I largely achieved that goal, and it has been good for the soul, but I’m sure that I could have done better. I’m largely off anything social, although I read a few posts on —non-nazi bar— forums and Mastodon. But it got me thinking about the types of reading I do and how I can fine tune the intentionality for (hopefully) better outcomes.
If I had to categorise the types of reading I do, it tends to fall into one or more of the following bins:
For the first type, I am starting to limit myself to a maximum of an hour over a full twenty-four, to catch up on posts on Mastodon and news-related sites with NetNewsWire’s fine RSS reader. This is high sugar content that satiates a need in the instant, but quickly dissipates from my brain, leaving room for other things. It used to be MOAR of the same, but this is a habit that I am slowly kicking. But damn, the world going to hell in a handbasket is really not helping!
For learning, this is highly intentional reading, where I will need to set aside time to read, re-read and digest the information. Within this category, there are probably a couple of other subtypes. For example, for training materials, I tend to read quickly, take a couple of notes to get the gist, re-read then take the test / exam. This serves me well, and I generally get high grades. For other writing that is ostensibly something I’d like to “learn” something from, I have a tendency to read it, think I’ll remember it, and of course don’t. Typically, this is on personal blogs of writers, or others sharing on a topic that interests me. It’s not formal training, or journalism, but it is nonetheless interesting and helpful to developing one’s particular interests. The change this year —if I can achieve it— is to treat it more like education and take notes. Even if these notes are not extensive, structured and written with poor handwriting skills. They might never be seen again, but that doesn’t matter because the exercise of effort to write them in the first place is likely to have a positive effect on retention and learning capacity.
For novels, I want to get back to the wonder I felt when reading books when I was younger. I’ve never been one to take reading notes and write my personal summaries. Whilst I aspire to that, I don’t think I’m wired that way, so I’ve decided not to fight against it. I’m going to read them. Enjoy them. Finish them. And then move on to the next book. This doesn’t preclude me from taking an interesting note at some point in the future, but I’m not going to ‘intentionally’ start reading a book with the purpose of producing reams of notes. And, to be honest, I have a fairly unique relationship to novels, in that I cannot re-read them in the future, as I already know the story and what is about to happen that it kills all the joy for me. I can count on one hand the number of novels I’ve re-read over my life. I just can’t do it.
I’ll see how I get on this year and in trying to keep myself on track, I’ll return to this post every now and again.
2025, Good fsck-ing riddance!
Hello 2026. A lot of work to be done.
If you give over agency to intermediaries and automated arbitration systems, you effectively abdicate agency and control.
You are then ripe for exploitation, and exploitation will happen eventually. The temptation for those intermediaries are too strong to ignore, and number must go up.
The incentives change the second you no longer have control over what you search, see, check, purchase, and experience in life. You have become a digital slave.
You can take back control (mostly), and it is easier than you think. Start by blocking ads like they are cancerous cells invading your body. A good proportion of them are fraudulent anyway. If that makes you feel a little guilty, then pay the people whose stuff you consume directly. Most of them have a method.
“you should not rely on …”
Services like ChatGPT generate responses by reading a user’s request and, in response, predicting the words most likely to appear next. In some cases, the words most likely to appear next may not be the most factually accurate. For this reason, you should not rely on the factual accuracy of output from our models.
Source: https://openai.com/policies/eu-privacy-policy
It’s right there in the policy documents.
Let’s just call this what it is …
From RestOfWorld, The hidden labor that makes AI work:
This industry has been called by many names: “crowdwork,” “data labor,” or “ghost work” (as the labor often goes unattended and unseen by consumers in the West). But this work is very visible for those who perform it. Jobs in which low-paid workers filter out, correct, or label text, images, videos, and sounds have been around for nearly as long as AI and the current era of deep learning methods has been. It’s not an exaggeration to say that we wouldn’t have the current wave of “AI” if it weren’t for the availability of on-demand laborers.
… Modern slavery.
You too can read the sycophantic babbling of a rotten politician (nor a good one), as he brown-noses Zuckerberg the Immoral.
Why live in reality when you can convince yourself the world out there (the one you don’t live in) is not real?
Makes me sick.
You can tell a lie a thousand times, but that does not mean it is true.
You can tell it a million times, with the same result.
You may convince all the people around you that the lie is a truth, but still, it is only a lie.
You can dress it up in half-truths, cherry-picked evidence, anything. But still. It. Is. A. Lie.
This immutability will be revealed.
The truth will out.
Let’s see what the Empire announces tomorrow.
8 June 2025 — French West Indies
The datacenters are the Achilles’ Heel
You’ve probably heard about Vibe Coding by now. The method by which a person creates an application through the use of AI, in a most Dunning-Kruger manner.
It leads to poor code, poor maintainability, poor security, and misaligned outcomes that create more problems than it solves.
The next big thing coming is Vibe Hacking. And like its sibling, it will enable those with a hacking bent to mount cyberattacks at a frightening scale. However, unlike Vibe-Coding, the fact that the code is poor is a feature, not a bug.
If there is one thing that is becoming clearer to me when thinking about big tech, it is that the datacenters are the next target.
They will be attacked both digitally and physically, and I fear that physically will bring the most disruption to the services that we all rely on for our daily lives.
The datacenters are the Achilles’ Heel.
4 June 2025 — French West Indies
Rebel Alliance
At some point, your scrappy Rebel Alliance gets so big that it becomes the Empire.
7 May 2025 — French West Indies
Meta, as in data
Finally, I’ve changed my mind. Meta is a completely appropriate name for the organisation. Meta, as in metadata.
They are only interested in the metadata around what is on their products. Number must go up.
The minutiae, the details, the wellbeing, the mental health, the privacy, the collapse of democracy, the genocide; these are all things that ‘they’ have no interest in, specifically Mark Zuckerberg and the management team.
It will catch up to them one day. That day cannot come soon enough.
30 April 2025 — French West Indies
Adtech is a cancer. It will eventually eat and destroy a business and more often than not its morals. You will only notice when it is too late.
It is disheartening to hear of a wildly successful business focusing more and more on ads and not on the products that made it a good business in the first place.
It will destroy this company.
19 April 2025 — French West Indies
Any online-only survey on the economy that asks how people are fairing is inherently flawed and cannot be taken too seriously.
The ones suffering are the ones that have no access to the internet and smartphones to be able to take part. So these surveys totally miss possibly the most important cohort in their analysis.
29 March 2025 — French West Indies
Blockchain is still a solution looking for a problem. Why are we still talking about it?
From Ars Technica:
“It feels like a fake technological solution for a problem that doesn’t exist,” she says. “I don’t think we were ever able to find an instance where people were using blockchain where they couldn’t use existing tools.”
From a technology consultant helping large-scale humanitarian organisations adopt technology.
I’ll say it again, blockchain is a slow, wasteful database that at best is a curiosity and not GDPR compliant.
It’s like inventing a “new” combustion engine that is both slower and 100x less efficient.
26 March 2025 — French West Indies
“Ireland is Apple's second home” - Tim Cook
VIa Apple Insider.
When mere mortals have homes, they pay taxes.
Pay your taxes, Tim.
17 March 2025 — French West Indies