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When Uber is Being Rude
I recently came back from a one-week vacation in Cancun, Mexico. The first thing I did before leaving the airport to go home was to call an Uber taxi. My last experience with Uber went well, but it was quite a while. Boy, this time it was a surprising and unexpected experience. After ordering the car, I was met with a plethora of notifications and ads within the application and via Uber Eat to order food on the go or before arriving at home. Those ads took the form of notifications, but also big popups taking the whole screen within the application. It was so intrusive, it wasn’t always clear how to dismiss the ad to return to the actual trip details.
I understand the idea of integrating two different services from the same company, but doing so at the expense of a great user experience with the basic feature of the application is not the way to go with me. Even Apple sometimes seems to be going in that direction. Not good.
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Russia, GTFO of my blogs
🚫🇷🇺⛔If I could block any IP addresses from Russia from visiting my blogs, I would do it.
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Doing Some Cleanup in My Home Office
After spending some time cleanup my office this today, I found these in my drawers and other places. I no longer use these. Do you? I know some people here on Micro.blog do. I don’t which I find fascinating because I did a lot in my younger times. Before the computers.
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Wondering About Returning to Podcasting
Now that I’m finally having my dedicated room in the house for working, I’m wondering about returning to podcasting (I used to have a podcast, in French) or even testing the YouTuber world (even though I wrote in the past that I’ll never be a YouTuber). Why is that?
First, a dedicated room is mandatory to be able to record without being disrupted too much. Second, sound quality would probably be much better than recording in an open space. Third, I could create a better background because my room is decorated to my personal tastes.
But is this enough to convince myself to seriously consider getting back to audio or video content creation? I have all the tools: a great MacBook Air, a Mac mini, an Apple Studio Display, a good microphone, a NAS for archiving purposes, etc. Yet, I’m not really good at audio or video production, and it’s very time-consuming for me. I would certainly learn a lot while working hard at this. Moreover, should I do this in my native language which is French or do it in English, which I’m not perfectly fluent with? Maybe I could try to do it together with other podcasters (I know a few of them). Too many questions, not many answers.
Photo credit: Will Francis on Unsplash.
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War Games
🇺🇦 It’s fascinating how the war in Ukraine makes me think about many video games. Let me explain. Looking at some Telegram channels feeding the results of attacks with anti-tank missiles or other means. You’ll find many short video clips with music and animation while a tank is destroyed. It makes things look like they aren’t real, only a game, which is far from the case for obvious reasons. Yet, there is the gamification of some aspects of what is filtering out of this ugly and devastating war. 😟
BTW, many tidbits flowing on Telegram are utterly disgusting. Is this the first war to feel so close to the action?
When the coalition attacked Iraq during the Gulf War, I remember people saying it was the first war to be televised. The war in Ukraine is probably the first one made public on social media.
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I’m not writing my Friday Notes edition this week, and I feel guilty. I had a hectic week at work after returning from a one-week vacation. Writing weekly series comes with its challenges. 😔
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Taking a break of many things
If you are wondering what’s up with me, I’m on vacation for a week. I’m not only taking a break from work, my office, but also from blogging. Expect a return to normal programming next week.
Written on my iPad, somewhere on a sandy beach in Mexico 😃😛
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Suddenly Missing Mikhail Gorbachev
This morning while reading the news, I suddenly remembered about Mikhail Gorbachev. He’s still alive, which I didn’t know. His birthday was March 2th. He’s 92. I vividly remember his presidency and what he brought to Russia and the world. One big and hard lesson we’re currently learning is that we cannot take anything for granted regarding democracy. Does he know what’s happening in Ukraine? What’s his take on all this shit? I would love to see him in an interview. He certainly wasn’t perfect, but Russia seemed to have a much more prevalent “human side” under his tenure. Under Putin, I just want to puke. 🤮
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On West Europe Surprising Weak Stance
🧐⁉️ It’s surprising to see European countries’ weak stance against Russia and the dire situation in Ukraine. I mean, world war II is not that far in history after all. Doesn’t Germany remember anything from fascism or Hitler? What about Austria? Their inaction speaks for themselves. I would have thought they would be more proactive in supporting Ukraine and trying to prevent another European war, if not another world war. What will it take to make them change their action cadence? 😮
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About TAGS
🤨 Question of the day: are TAGS a sign of bad or weak content indexing in any computer-based systems? TAGS should be inferred, no?
#thinking #musing
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The Price To Pay
“(…) And we’re likely going to see skyrocketing prices if we did put a complete ban on oil.” — US treasury secretary
Well, what is the price of thousands and thousands of people dying, tortured, raped? I can live with rising energy prices. For fuck sake, support the oil and coal embargo against Russia NOW! We cannot escape any impact of this war without some form of sacrifice.
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On My (Lack of) Medium Readings
📖 This week, I received my revenues report from Medium for last year (for taxes purposes). I made less than 500 CAN$. It reminded me that I was a much more active publisher last year than now. My last publication on Medium was on February 12th.
This morning, I spent a few minutes on Medium. I can’t remember when was the last time I visited the homepage. I was curious about the web experience changes introduced since my last visit. Another reminder is that I don’t spend as much time on the platform as I used to.
I’m wondering if I should keep my Medium account. 🧐
#medium #reading #writing
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Two quick questions: how do you cope with what’s happening in Ukraine? Are you watching the news?
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When Apple Pivoted
Thanks to MacRumors, as reported today, I didn’t know today was the fifth anniversary of a special meeting between Apple’s top brass and select journalists to talk about Apple’s plans with the pro users and their commitment to the Mac.
At the time, we didn’t know how serious Apple’s upcoming pivot would be. In retrospective, Apple delivered and then some. It is simply a tour-de-force to flip the Mac product line upside down and bring power efficient, mighty and beautiful Mac designs. The Mac transition to Apple Silicon is probably the most important change to come to the Mac line since its inception in 1984.
I can’t wait to see what the next ten years will be made of.
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Europe's Future
“…the fate of the whole Eastern and Central Europe and the Black Sea region is being decided on the territory of Ukraine. Therefore, to protect the freedom of Ukraine and Ukrainians is to guarantee the security of Europe.”.
Nothing more to add, your honour.
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How Low Can They Go?
🇺🇦 What is it that Russia doesn’t like about life, love, freedom, everything that makes us humans? 😞
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It’s Was So Fun
This weekend I did some cleanup in my old papers and documents. I found an old bank account statement where I can see a withdraw transaction to help me pay for my Macintosh 128K in 1985: 3460.75 CAN$. 🤑 Ouch. I did some research to better document the time when I had a Macintosh SE while studying at the university and remembered about using Think Pascal, Prototyper and ResEdit to build a floppy disks indexer. That was before the Internet. It was so much fun. It’s gives you an idea how old I am. 😜
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On Ukrainian's
💥Today’s news about a possible attack by the Ukrainian army on Russia’s land is potentially game-changing in this war between Ukraine and Russia. A few thoughts.
First, Russia doesn’t have the exclusive right to use “Special Operation” when referring to war-related actions. Second and more seriously, Who did this? If indeed it is Ukraine, was it to test Russia’s defence? If so, Russia again failed miserably from a military perspective at protecting its territory as, surprisingly, helicopters didn’t face any shots from the ground. Is someone paying attention to the sky in Russia? Another point goes in the column of “weak army.” Mind blown. Or is it that Ukraine wants something else: drag Russia into war and force the West to intervene? Is this scenario too twisted?
What if it is Russia? I wouldn’t be surprised at a deliberate act to help build even more momentum and justify what they are doing against Ukraine. This momentum will be needed when Russia returns on the east front once they finish regrouping and replenishing their units.
The next few hours will be interesting to watch. 📺
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Already a Routine
🇺🇦 For over a month, Ukrainians have been fighting to defend themselves against the invaders. This is a watershed moment in history, happening just before our eyes. Sadly, we can already see the routine of war being in place. Emphasis on the events during the news bulletin is decreasing already. We are so easily bored. We will move on to the next crisis unless there is a significant turn of events. I’m so sorry for that. 😞
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🇺🇦 Another edition of my free monthly Introspection newsletter is out NOW. Get it here! Talked about themes are Apple, photography, privacy protection and climate change. This month, though, to help build awareness, I have many war-related tidbits on each of these themes. 🇺🇦
