As an update to The Experiment: I woke up this morning and promptly left the house, iPhone in pocket. I wonder if that’s all the insight I was looking for.
The Experiment
For one week, starting tomorrow, I’ll be temporarily parking my iPhone 8 and instead using a Nokia 130 feature phone.
I’m not sure what to expect, but in preparation I’ve charged my Kindle and I’m eyeballing the London A-Z sitting on the bookshelf.
I’m hoping the experience will be somewhat more insightful than a lesson in inconvenience — join me on this incredible journey!
Systems, Mistakes, and the Sea
I’ve found this article to be food for thought, especially this passage:
My hunch is this: folks can’t talk about real design systems problems because it will show their company as being dysfunctional and broken in some way. This looks bad for their company and hence looks bad for them. But hiding those mistakes and shortcomings by glossing over everything doesn’t just make it harder for us personally, it hinders progress within the field itself.
/via Jeremy Keith
IKEA sell a portable induction hob.
This is a fun and nicely designed game.
I Walked 600 Miles Across Japan for Pizza Toast
One man’s journey to track down the origins of pizza toast led him to the traditional Japanese kissaten (cafes built around coffee sets and simple bread-y snacks)
First impressions after a few weeks with AirPods Pro
Having owned the first generation AirPods for a couple of years and found them to be a terrific (and convenient!) piece of kit, I decided to upgrade to the AirPods Pro primarily for their noise cancelling functionality.
- The headphones are quite tricky to take out of the case as it’s hard to get a grip on the slippery plastic.
- The AirPods Pro case doesn’t seem to be as sturdy as the AirPods case. The “landscape” orientation of the case doesn’t feel quite right in the hand.
- I’ve found the Noise Cancellation mode to be good and Transparent mode works a treat.
- The force sensor took some getting used to: both using the press and press-and-hold actions. It still feels a bit awkward. I miss the AirPods’ double-tap action on the headphone to pause (etc).
- I wish the stalks were a little longer: it would make them easier to take out one’s ear and a larger surface area to use the force sensor.
- The headphones are comfortable to wear for extended periods, more so than the first generation AirPods.
- Having gotten used to having the first generation AirPods case in my pocket all the time, the larger size AirPods Pro case is quite noticeable.
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019)
I really enjoyed this. A satisfying end to the trilogy!
★★★★
How William Gibson’s long-lost Alien 3 script became 2019’s most intriguing audio drama
Audible Studios’ new audio drama Alien III by William Gibson offers one of those alternate paths for the Alien series. Gibson, the author of Neuromancer and Mona Lisa Overdrive, has his own vision of what happened after Ripley, Hicks, Bishop, and Newt nuked LV-426 from orbit in Aliens.
I’m listening to this at the moment — it’s very good.
Marcus Samuelsson: My life in five dishes
Award-winning chef, restaurateur and writer Marcus Samuelsson describes his extraordinary culinary and personal journey from one of the world’s poorest countries to Sweden and then to Harlem, New York.
I enjoyed listening to this.
Evidence – Squirrel Tape Instruments Vol. 1
iOS 13.2 Killing Background Apps More
Super annoying.
A real-time 3D digital map of Tokyo’s public transport system.
Love everything about this.
I quite enjoyed this documentary about Mark Ronson:
We follow Mark in London, Los Angeles and New York at work and at home. Mark tells us how he came into music, growing up in a musical family. We find out his musical influences and how he started as a hip hop DJ in New York in the early 90s. He discusses the projects that worked and the ones that didn’t.
If you use Prompt and have upgraded your Apple device to iOS 13 then you’ll notice that SSH connections disconnect on the regular. I found a help document regarding this new behaviour:
From what we can tell, our available background time in iOS 13 has been drastically reduced from earlier versions of iOS. It appears that if you’re running one of our iOS apps on iOS 13, you’ll only get about 30 seconds of background time before needing to switch back to the app to prevent your connection from being terminated. As this is something that is controlled by the OS, there’s not a lot we can do.
Logs were our lifeblood. Now they’re our liability.
Logs are a funny thing: on the one hand, they’re enormously useful. On the other, because they grow exponentially by design and there’s never any less of them, and they seem to be everywhere, like crumbs that you just can’t get rid of.
I think this must be the first time I’ve travelled without a laptop. Instead, I opted for my iPad and “Smart” Keyboard Folio combo, which is working well. The lack of access to a local shell is somewhat irksome but I’m making do with SSH.
This site is created and maintained by local surfers, for local surfers. Our goal is to provide a great and accurate place for the 30a surf community to check conditions and know when to go.
This is a very pleasing website 🏄♂️
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A Small World Cup by rujogames
This is fun!