Why I didn’t write a personal year in review for 2020 (#blogger #bloggerlife #writing)

Journaling space for my future year in review for 2021

The year 2020 came to an end without me posting my personal year in review. You might wonder why. I read many reviews in the last few days. Most of them are delightful to read as they contain gems about personal lessons learned, personal discoveries, etc. To write those reviews, you have to be prepared for that particular intention to write about it later. Without notes, it’s nearly impossible and takes too much time to prepare. It also would be too easy to miss essential tidbits.

What about 2021? Good news, for 2021, I want to be ready. Now it’s the best time to get organized. All year long, I’ll be using the excellent notes taking application called Craft. I already started to put things down. The picture at the top of this post is a glimpse at my journaling space structure, where personal notes will be confined all year long. I’ll use a monthly section for each domain or theme I want to touch on in this future year in review. I’ll see where it goes.

Pinboard, Pocket, Raindrop, Instapaper, Notion? Which tools is best for you? (#blogger #bloggertools #writers)

Denise jans J4coHtrn24A unsplash

Alan Ralph on Why I Use Pinboard As My Reading List

I’ve mentioned before that I use Pinboard for bookmarking webpages of interest so that I can refer to them later. I realize this might seem like an odd choice, given that there are more obvious candidates such as Pocket or Instapaper, so I’ve decided to summarize my reasoning

I could add other apps and services like Raindrop (which I tried) or even Notion (which I love) as places to save bookmarks. It’s tempting to use more focused tools to fill a very specific part of a workflow. At the end of the day, it’s a matter of preference or workflow optimization (you can read about my recent workflow update).

I'm afraid your maths are right, @brentsimmons (#covid19 #vaccination #usa)

COVID-19 Virus Rendering

Brent Simmons trying to determine where the US should get back to normal. After some maths, he asks:

“(Is any of my math wrong? There’s no point in being overly-precise here — but please tell me if I’ve made some error that changes things significantly.)”

I’m afraid his maths are right, even if they aren’t precise. Things could change, though, after Biden is officially in his Office. Even though, change of government takes a lot of time in the US.

I said it in the past: COVID-19 shows how weak the US is as a country to fight this non military war.

So many questions lefts unanswered (#apple #iCloud #death #legacy)

Cemetery2

In What to do about Apple devices and iCloud content when the owner dies from AppleInsider, there are so many unanswered questions. For example, are the requirements from Apple different from one country to another? Something critical when someone dies, having access to his or her smartphone with a PIN. Without it, the challenge is close to impossible to meet. That is one of the many requirements explained in A Guide for Preparing to Leave Your Numeric Legacy.

Grading Apple's response to COVID-19 (#apple #covid19)

Harry cunningham cPMRltmUls8 unsplashFrom Basic Apple Guy’s top 5 of 2020:

“I appreciated the stewardship Apple has taken this year in balancing their product interests while also supporting the fight to respond to COVID-19.”

Two things. First, Apple’s response to COVID-19 was and continue to be faultless. Some governments should take notes. Second, the closing-reopening-closing dance of their physical stores didn’t impact their bottom line, not in a significant way, apparently. In a way, Apple is not only making and selling products, they are the product, it’s not only how they look, it’s how they work.

Microsoft + ARM: Why it took so long? (#microsoft #arm #surface #intel)

Bram van oost soFr1hofDfU unsplash

About Microsoft being Years Late to a Party They Tried to Start on iPadInsight:

“According to a recent Bloomberg report, Microsoft is finally getting into the custom silicon business. It looks like they are starting down this road primarily to aid their cloud and server business, but it’s hard to believe they wouldn’t have future plans to bring these new ARM-based chips to their Surface Pro X and other future models, replacing Qualcomm’s SQ1 and 2 processors.“

and

“The $10,000 question is, why did Microsoft wait this long? Why did they bother messing around with Qualcomm to produce ARM chips for the Surface Pro X only to get mediocre results from a chip that still isn’t fine tuned to both the hardware and Windows 10? Those results were completely and totally predictable. They took the easy way out and the Surface Pro X, while a really slick looking device, isn’t going anywhere because of it. Who wants to pay more and still have to make compromises in both performance and compatibility?”

Maybe Microsoft didn’t want to piss off Intel?

Documenting our numeric life (#journaling #tools)

My DayOne Journal for blogs

Basic Apple Guy on DayOne, a popular journaling app:

“My current journaling habit is to make one entry per day, typically at night. However, I may add multiple timestamps to the entry throughout the day to capture a specific occurrence or thought. This daily journal is currently on a 2,668-day streak, with 4,325 total entries, and 3,297 photos.”

A streak of 2,668-day to capture thoughts, events, etc., manually? Consider me impressed. I used to write my thoughts too in DayOne, but eventually I stopped as I couldn’t keep up because of all my writing projects. Yet, I found a way to keep using DayOne, by automatically documenting my numeric life. I wrote a piece about it in 2018 that is still absolutely valid today: “Documenting my Numeric Life”. I’m using IFTTT as the engine to push updates into my many journals, inside DayOne. Works like a charm.

The Substack "clique"? (#substack #writers #newsletters)

My current newsletter subscribers count

Is Substack the Media Future We Want?

“on Substack, the most successful newsletters are almost always written by people who have already cultivated an audience at traditional publications or built up a following elsewhere.”

and

Substack is a natural fit for the influencer, the pundit, the personality, and the political contrarian.

Starting from scratch on Substack is quite a challenge. From the graph shown above, this is the curve of my subscribers count. It plateaued. The new reader feature coupled with the discovery tab didn’t move the needle at all. We have to wonder if Substack is just a clique in disguise.

You can read my past newsletters by visiting my Substack page. Be sure to subscribe, it’s free!

Not the best way to build brand loyalty, @LGUS (#smarttv #airplay2)

LG 4K OLED Smart TV

According to an article from MacRumors, LG is rolling out a software update to its 2018 Smart TVs to enable AirPlay 2 and HomeKit support. I personally own a 2016 model and I don’t expect to receive such update anytime soon. As a software-only solution, I don’t see why they couldn’t make it happen for 2016 models too. When you think about Apple supporting iPhone models dating back to 2015 with iOS 14, we have to wonder who’s playing programmed obsolescence here. As someone who’s looking to upgrade its 2016 LG Smart TV to a 2020 model, which will support HDR, Dolby Atmos, AirPlay 2, HomeKit and have a 120 Hz refresh rate, I don’t appreciate LG approach to brand loyalty building.