03.14.24
2024 has been off to a weird start. At the end of January, I got let go of my job. I was initially frustrated by the whole ordeal but have come to recognize how destructive it was to my mental health.
Reading
So far this year, I’ve read 49 different manga and graphic novels, including ones that had been sitting on my shelf for nearly a year. I finished 58 last year, so, needless to say, I should have no trouble clearing that. As an aside, I’ve added reviews to my games and books to better keep track of the stuff I’ve enjoyed.
Games
I’ve been playing Final Fantasy VII Rebirth for the past few weeks and Persona 3 Reload before that. Both games have been a ton of nostalgic fun. FFVII, in particular, walks this fine line between the familiar and the unknown, for which I commend the team. Even as someone who wasn’t the biggest fan of the original, I find what they did there pretty amazing.
I hope to wrap it up before Dragon’s Dogma 2 drops on the 22nd.
TPC
I found out Tokyo Police Club is breaking up, and that has me bummed out. They’ve been one of my favourite bands for a long time.
Guestbook
I took a page from Manuel Moreale’s (guest)book (Kev Quirk’s, too) and built one of my own. If you’re passing through, feel free to leave a message. I appreciate it.
Shop
Lastly, I built and integrated a Gumroad store into my site to sell stickers. The goal was to prop something up relatively quickly and motivate me to get back into drawing. If you decide to buy a sticker, know that you have my thanks. I’m handling all the shipping personally, so I’ll do my best to get it to you ASAP.
Wrap-up
Thanks for reading. I’ll try to make these a little more consistent. I had a preconceived idea of what I thought these updates needed to be: long, carefully crafted posts. Giles Turnbull’s Doing weeknotes site has convinced me otherwise.
The plan now is simpler, shorter, and more frequent. 🤞🏻
Linkedout
I’ve been spending an uncomfortable amount of time on LinkedIn lately, which is to say more than 5 minutes, and I’ve noticed some things.
- Notifications, which are pretty important in a professional environment, are wildly inconsistent. Someone commented on a post of mine, recommending a role, and I never got a notification about it. Worse yet, it’s very difficult to find your own posts to review those comments manually.
- There are plenty of people contributing to Linkedin’s “Collaborative Articles” that appear around the site and in other’s feeds. They have enough information on you. Adding your hard-earned knowledge freely to the AI they’re building doesn’t seem worth it.
- Everyone is using DALL-E or Midjourney to generate pictures for their stories about tips for success or how to fund your startup. If I had a loonie for every cheesy, “inspirational” photo I’ve seen featuring people with extra fingers, I’d be rich. They look awful and are not helpful. In fact, they’re the opposite.
Design contests
If you’re a company considering a design contest where you solicit free work from trained designers for your websites, apps, icons, or logos, stop. It’s insulting to an entire profession and makes me think less of you, your company, and your product.
You wouldn’t call hundreds of electricians to install a light at your house and pay the “winner.” This isn’t any different.
If you’re a designer thinking about spending the time and energy participating in a design contest for a couple hundred bucks or a free year of membership to some service, don’t. Take pride in your craft. Your time and skill are worth more than a cash prize and “exposure.”
It’s 2024. Enough of this bullshit.
01.17.24
I knew getting into a regular cadence with these updates would be an uphill battle but it’s been particularly tough to get motivated this year. I’ve fallen into a bit of a depressing spiral lately but my family has been super supportive and helped keep me on track. This, like most things, will pass.
Gaming drought
I haven’t had much to play lately after burning out on Baldur’s Gate 3. I thought about maybe trying Diablo IV again but opted instead for the mindless zombie looter State of Decay 2 while I wait for Persona 3 Reload. Though maybe I should give Dragon’s Dogma another spin to prep for 2?
/uses
I built a uses page after going down a bit of a rabbit hole around discoverability on the indieweb the other day. Specifically, I found a site by way of Matt Stein that showcased different “uses” pages from others around the web and decided to make my own version of one.
It was a fun little exercise, having to distill the many things I use into a simple, digestible list. It’s also handy to have a record of which models of things I’m using in case I decide to upgrade anything at some point.
Collections
As I’ve mentioned on numerous occasions, my lovely wife got me a record player for Christmas so I’ve been hoovering up whatever records I can find. Is This Thing Cursed? by Alkaline Trio gets here today actually. I’ve been giving some thought to building some kind of a “Collections” page but I’m not sure if it’s worth the effort at this point. Regardless, my record collection stands at fifteen and growing.
Intermission
My blog does this thing that I thought at one point was neat where it changes the accent colour on every page change/refresh. I’m starting to think it’s a bit annoying? I don’t know, maybe I’ll remove it. We’ll see.
I started using a service called Letterbird by the folks at Good Enough, who also make PIKA. It’s a neat idea that gives you a super basic (but customizable) contact form, which is sometimes all you need. I love the work they do: really simple solutions to specific problems. Great stuff.
Blogrolls
Keenan showed off their new blogroll and it looks great. It’s a bit overwhelming to be included amongst so many great sites but I’m thoroughly flattered nonetheless.
Recent reads
I’ve finally dug into my graphic novel backlog a bit, finishing Night Fever and Where The Body Was, both by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips. I really can’t get enough of their work. They’re by far the most consistent team in comics. I don’t know what they’re doing next but I know I’m buying it.
Where The Body Was had a particularly interesting angle, telling a story across multiple perspectives, even going so far as including a map of the neighbourhood so readers could orient themselves throughout the story.
12.07.23
It took two weeks but I’m finally feeling better. Having run the gamut of headaches, nausea, fever, chills, and back to headaches, I’ve had my fill of sickness for a while. If you needed another reminder: mask up. It’s terrible out there.
Game collection update
I hacked together a way to track the games I’m playing in a more visual way on my blog. First, I created a new content type from posts, complete with its own dedicated page in the dashboard. I can set a title, description, platform, a link to IGDB (or elsewhere), and a featured image to have it appear in my /now page. The next evolution of this would be to connect to IGDB’s API and automate it but I’ll save that for a rainy day.
Speaking of games
I’ve started The Invincible, a hard sci-fi walking-sim based on the 1964 novel by Stanisław Lem. I’m not far enough in to give a good review of it but it’s been enjoyable so far. There hasn’t been much on my radar since Alan Wake II. Next year starts with a bang. Persona 3 Reload, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and Dragon’s Dogma II are all coming before April.
Mammoth 2
There’s a new version of the Mastodon app Mammoth out today. I was apprehensive about it during my earlier testing but it’s grown on me. The For You page and Smart Lists, in particular, are interesting. They improve discoverability of new people to follow and news stories for topics you’re interested in. I’m curious how those will evolve.
Some inspiration
Luke reached out yesterday and praised my /now and /photos pages. He and José said they felt inspired to make their own. This made my week.
Default app updates
More than 250 people have shared their personalized default apps list. This is crazy. I’ve already changed some of my apps since posting my initial list.
- I couldn’t resist the savings of my Spotify family plan and switched back from Apple Music.
- I’m now using NetNewsWire (with iCloud) for RSS feeds instead of Reeder and Feedbin.
- I use Safari’s built-in feature for saving articles to read later, switching from Instapaper/Matter.
- I turned to Keychain after struggling with 1Password’s recent updates.
And finally, some links
12.01.23
I’ve watched Michael Camilleri write over 200 of these things so I thought it might be time to give it a shot myself. I can’t guarantee I’ll do this every week but I want to try and push myself out of my comfort zone a bit.
Sick, sick, sick
I spent last week in Montreal on a work trip and got home last Friday (after a 4 hour delay). The travel took a toll on me, clearly, since I’ve been battling a sore throat, cough, and head cold since getting home. I’ve tested for COVID a couple times and been negative so if there’s a silver lining, it’s that.
Blog updates
In between coughing fits, I found time to update a few pieces of my blog. Among the notable changes:
- New footer design: The new version not only looks better but offers more functionality by housing social media accounts and my new blogroll.
- Blogroll: As mentioned, I created a new menu that connects to the WordPress dashboard. This lets me easily add some of my favourite sites to have them show in the newly designed footer.
- Now page: If you’re unfamiliar, a now page serves as a snapshot of the author’s current activities. In addition to a list of personal projects, I’ve added a widget from Literal to show what I’m reading (spoiler: it’s always manga), and tapped into the Last.fm API to show my most listened-to albums over the past week.
- Photos page: I built a plugin for WordPress that creates a nice grid of all my photo posts. Photos only appear on this page, not in my post loop or RSS feed to reduce the noise. I don’t have many in there yet but I’m considering importing my old Instagram photos at some point.
Connections
This week, Keenan reached out by email with a quick hello. It was very nice. You can find their website in the blogroll below.
Wrapped / Recap
Spotify Wrapped and Apple Music Replay came out this week and, given I’ve switched between both this year, I was able to compare the two. I enjoy the simplicity of Apple’s version more than the graphically intense presentation Spotify goes with.
For those curious, I ended up with a total of over 45,000 minutes listened across both platforms and Beach Bunny was (unsurprisingly) my top artist.
Some dusty links
Here’s a few items from my Matter queue that’ve been sitting for a while.