The Art Of Not Asking Why

Two more targets of opportunity with the iPhone. Hudson, NY 📷

www.wsj.com/lifestyle/workplace/the-jiggle-is-up-bosses-bust-workers-who-fake-computer-activity-b6374f22?mod=djem10point wsj.com

I don’t know what’s more ridiculous: people’s attempts to fake work or their companies' attempts to crack down on this behavior with various malicious surveillance software. Between these two, something is very wrong with our work culture.

The share of companies using some kind of electronic worker-surveillance system surged during the pandemic, reaching nearly 50% in 2023, according to a survey of nearly 300 medium to large employers by research and advisory firm Gartner.

I’ve been around enough different people to know that abuse exists both ways. I’ve seen people sleeping on the job (literally) or watching YouTube videos for hours when there’s plenty of work. Of course, I also know what spy software looks like on student computers, and the access it has to the students' privacy brings creepy to new levels (I recently refused to take a test on my own computer because of this).

The world we live in…

Nat and I are in Hudson, NY, for our traditional 4th NYC escape. The town is quiet. Very quiet. Not many people around in the street. We are told they don’t really celebrate the 4th here as much as they celebrate Flag Day. Even better. More to (probably) come.

I couldn’t sleep last night, and now I’m about 20% in. I can see this book is going to be tough. Trauma that ties into military service, LGBTQ issues, and a postapocalyptic world with some supernatural elements. Glad I picked it up. The Last Girl Scout by Natalie Ironside 📚#books #scifi

I’m just finishing episode two, and I am really enjoying myself. The story so far is interesting, the characters are memorable, and if you enjoyed the series, this is definitely a nice perk. The only issue I have with the game so far is the graphics - it could have been much better, especially the textures. Maybe this game was rushed.

I’m exploring options for remote desktop (Mac to Linux) again.

VNC is good once you get it to work fully; I have issues with sound and my VPN and don’t have the time to mess with it right now. I tried Open Box (I think that was the name?) before. Uninstalling it is a pain, as it leaves a lot of configurations deep in your system, which is what I’m worried will happen with RustDesk - a recommendation I got from several folks before.

What do folks use these days?

Trainer, formally known as CoPilot (they could have just said Microsoft was planning to sue them; no one likes Microsoft as a company - but I digress), is an investment. It’s also one of the most significant apps I’ve ever purchased.

It’s an exercise app that connects you with a personal coach that builds a workout program for you. You and the coach keep chatting and meeting virtually to discuss progress and adjust exercises, which keep increasing in difficulty by predetermined “cycles.” The coach can also show you how to do certain exercises, watch your recordings to do your own routine and give you tips, etc.

I’ve been exercising with Trainer for almost a year, 4-5 times a week, for about 30-40 minutes each time. My training sessions include weight lifting, flexibility, yoga, running, and even meditation, which I asked my coach to include. The Apple watch has been a great addition as well; the phone shows me a video of the exercise I’m doing and plays instructions using my coach’s voice while the watch “boosts” the app’s intelligence and so it knows to slow me down or speed me up, automatically detect when I’m done a set, and remind me to send feedback to my coach.

At 100$ a month, the app is not cheap, but that’s about the price you’d pay for a personal coach to work with you for an hour at a gym. It’s not the same, true, but for me, it strikes the right balance I need to exercise independently and have the motivation to keep going. It also records what I do. Seeing the progress month to month is critical when you try to get back into a lifestyle like this.

This is easily the best exercise routine I’ve had in a long time. It inspired me to try a meditation app as well (meditation is another area I need to move forward in), but so far, Headspace is not exactly working out. A bit more exploration is needed in this area.

I have several writing outlets, and each one has its own benefits and disadvantages.

There’s this blog, where I slowly become more comfortable writing about more personal things. It’s a good outlet because writing to someone else (you—and thank you, by the way) affects not just what I write but also how I write. Things tend to be clearer and to the point. Usually.

There’s my handwritten journal(s), where I write my feelings and conclusions about certain things as well as notes that I want to keep private. This is a good place to let out thoughts because it allows me the freedom to write whatever I want without explaining myself. At the same time, it limits how much I can write and for how long, as writing by hand is much slower and also starts hurting my hand after a while (I think it’s the pen). It’s also not a good place to find specific information, like names and addresses, which leads me to my new-old addition, the events.org file.

my events file is written in Emacs org-mode. Without getting technical as I usually do when I talk about org-mode, this file contains exactly what the handwritten journal does not: precise locations (with map snippets and links to coordinates), names of people, and exact times. For example, the events file would mention I was out with friends (their names would be captured as tags in the entry) last weekend at a certain pub (map snipper to show it) at a certain date and time. Then, in my handwritten journal, I would expand on our conversation and my opinions if I have more to add.

That last bit above, “if I have more to add,” is different from how I used to capture events in the past completely in Emacs org-mode. I would write down every day in my old journal.org file, making it a habit to try and write every morning or every night, sometimes more in between. I was writing a lot in my journal.org file, leaving little time and energy to write on my blog, let alone a handwritten journal. Too much was invested in one place.

I write on my blog much more often than I write in my written journal. Even if I don’t write a full-length post, I will comment about something I read or a quick photo with an explanation. The more I write these little “nuggets,” the easier and more streamlined writing those become. The “nuggets” workflow is completely mobile with the micro.blog app; most of my photos are taken on the iPhone anyway, and I can edit them with Lightroom or Snapspeed on my phone. I also have Grammarly turned on as a keyboard for proofreading. With these short posts, I skip writing in org-mode anyway.

As you can see, there’s a sort of a cycle going on here. My Events file would describe events along with meta information, while notes about these events would go to my blog and/or my written journal for private comments later when I mentally digest things. There’s another thing I started doing because of the influence of my events file: I started taking more pictures of every place I go to, even if it’s as boring as the sidewalk next to a place.

Photos on the iPhone (or an Android) contain important information I could use later. The time the photo was taken would tell me when the event started. The coordinates, which are captured automatically, will tell me where it was if I don’t remember the name (or if it’s just a spot somewhere without a name) later when I want to find it on a map¹. A photo can also include other information, like a menu of a nice restaurant, or it can be aesthetically pleasing, like the view from a nice spot overlooking a river. Such photos can decorate the entry in the events file, be printed and included in the journal, or be posted here with an explanation. Photos are really great for all of the outlets I mentioned.

¹ - I used to use Swarm for this, and I even have a feature on this blog which posts locations from it automatically, but I stopped. For one, Swarm is a private company and my location data belongs to them before it belongs to me. For another, getting this information out and use it is tricky.

One of the things I like about living in NYC is that Pride is everywhere. Even though it’s somewhat over the top (more of a brand and marketing thing than what it is supposed to be), the fact that it’s important enough to be a brand is important in itself. 📷

Adobe sucks, so why do I keep getting back to Photoshop?

I like GIMP. It’s an amazing piece of free software. It comes with tools like Intelligent Scissors that allow you to easily draw a selection around your subject, much like the Quick Selection tool in Photoshop. GIMP also has Foreground Select, which roughly compares to Object Selection in Photoshop. Even the useful Content-Aware fill in Photoshop exists as a plugin in GIMP.

The problem is that all of these come with a learning gap.

Intelligent Scissors only works with good contrast, and even then, the official documentation suggests using masking tools. You need to have a good concept of these two terms first. The Foreground Select tool is a confusing multi-step process that’s hard to follow and requires me to follow a video explanation somewhere else several times. The Content-Aware plugin for GIMP is an abandoned project that hasn’t been updated to work with the more recent versions of the software, and its installation documentation on Linux requires more research on installing old libraries and Python.

Meanwhile, Photoshop’s help is very effective: short videos whenever you hover over a tool to tell you what it does, complete with the keyboard shortcut if you have one set up. There are video tutorials from the company, not to mention many professional folks who create tutorials. GIMP has one or two people worth following on YouTube, which couldn’t supply the help I needed. It’s a complaint I had before about Darktable, which eventually got me to switch to Lightroom.

As a technical writer who needs to explain tech stuff to people daily, I believe documentation is one of the areas free software suffers from the most. There’s usually a small crew of basement geniuses who write out an amazing tool, but their documentation amounts to technical jargon on Github which means nothing to others. These people write tools for themselves, not for others to use.

I understand the problem. A person who writes a program for free doesn’t have the time and resources (or the experience necessarily) to also write instructions. The same is true at my job: the techies tech, the communicators communicate. The importance of the latter is not often obvious. But if you invent a time machine, and you’re the only person who knows how to use it, does it really matter? If a tree falls in the forest…

And yet there would be that person who would read this post and think help is just a Google Duck Duck Go search away. They will find five or six results and link them to this post, suggesting help is just a quick search away. It is not, not for me. Think about it: what is more likely, that I searched and still couldn’t figure it out, or that I didn’t bother to search to begin with?

The gap exists. Those in the know are so used to jumping over it they don’t even notice it’s there anymore. I know because I do the same thing to others all the time.

I’m grumpy and tired, and when I sit down to work on something, I don’t always want to invest a couple of days' worth of research just to get a certain thing to work. When it has to do with free software, there are a few places things work, and that’s because there’s a community around those who can explain and document things to others. Take Emacs for example. When I started, it was this video by an ordinary guy who explained what the software does in an ordinary way that got me hooked. This dude spoke a language I could understand.

This is why Adobe wins me over time and time again. Their software is good but far from amazing. The company, as an entity, is shit. The privacy factor, which I care for, does not exist. But I can learn it and use it without investing a week’s worth of research on old posts in forums, Github, and Linux chat rooms.

Started reading: The Last Girl Scout by Natalie Ironside 📚 Decided to get this after reading a sample. Good, solid writing and an interesting story so far.

Yesterday I walked into the park and sat on a tree trunk I found years ago. I sat on it as I did back then, letting my mind drift, surrounded by the sound of the leaves rustling in the wind, enjoying my lunch.

The picture 📷 is from nearby, turned into a watercolor painting with AI and Photoshop.

It’s over 90 with humidity over 60% for the last couple of days and I stayed mostly indoors. Today, there’s a nice breeze coming through, and it seems like it’s going to be the best day of the week. Tried to get myself running but I don’t have it in me. A walk then, with some pictures.

When Brandon wrote that he blogs about blogging too much, I bookmarked the post with my Micro.blog service so I don’t forget to reply and went back to read through my RSS list. The next day, Kevin wrote his response, and I wanted to get back to it, but I was in the middle of writing a different post. When I finally got to it Friday, I felt I should contact him before publishing it.

The more I write, the more ideas I have, the more I want to write, the better it all feels. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it’s a form of addiction. Maybe it is, just not a bad one. Kind of like coffee in the morning. Oh, I should write about this too.

In a nutshell, this is pretty much my writing process these days. There’s always something to write, a quick note to share, or another post to reply to. But let’s get back to Brandon.

I’ve been following Brandon for a while, and I suspect his worries are affected by a bit of harsh self-judgment. He is (and I’m writing this with respect and care) a bit hard on himself at times. You can tell because he says so right at the start: “I didn’t realize how much of a problem it was.” So, for Brandon, this is a Problem. But is it? We all get self-conscious sometimes: I just deleted my first three paragraphs because of similar reasons, but I’m also trying to get the point across.

According to Kevin, blogging about blogging is not really an issue. But that’s Kevin. The guy writes with confidence and projects confidence. When someone criticized him lately for being narcissistic for creating a randomized watch selection mechanism in his blog for the world to see, he told them to get back under their bridge. Kevin will tell you what he thinks because that’s why you’re reading his blog. I agree.

And then there is Jack and his blogs (Jack, if you’re reading this, this might be a good name for another blog to write about the other ones you have 😉). The man goes back and forth between platforms every week. Jack’s not really hard on himself (though I get the feeling this is starting to drain him), nor is he confident about how much he writes about his blogs. It’s just something he does. Jack’s reaction would probably be a picture of himself shrugging - in black and white, of course.

I know these three bloggers as my buddies because, among other things, they blog about blogging.

Writing is deeply personal, so writing about writing (or blogging about blogging) is writing about who you are. It’s a topic any blogger would blog about at one point or another because that’s what bloggers do. They blog.

Since blogging is a hobby, I enjoy reading about other bloggers and how they write because I’m a blogger, as Kevin said. I understand Brandon might feel self-conscious, but that self-consciousness is why I like his blog: that’s him.

So, Brandon, please feel free to keep writing about blogging!

And here’s an idea, something I used to do on my wiki: a log, much like version release notes. That’s where I wrote the more technical details of what’s going on for those interested, and those who don’t care just stay out of it. These days I use this less and include things here, though I could create a category for it if I wrote about it enough… oh, here’s another idea to explore, let me add this to the list.

One does not simply quit Google - If you’re not a techie. Sure, you can use Firefox and switch to Duck Duck Go like 90% of the folks who “quit” Google and call it a day, but that’s not doing much.

Lifehacker has the right idea here, interviewing Janet Vertesi. The first big problem is, as she says, “You don’t jump out of the frying pan into someone else’s frying pan,” yet that’s the only option most folks have: switching from Android to iPhone. It’s just another company that owns all your data.

Installing a custom ROM on an Android device is not something most people can do (or keep living with), and even that is only the beginning. Your cell phone number belongs to your carrier, which has you on file along with your address and credit card. It’s just another pan. Even if you get over that, say by paying cash for a cheaper phone every month, you still need to figure out how to get Android apps working on a device without Google’s framework underneath. For the non-techies, it quickly gets overly complicated and non-functional.

As this article points out, sometimes you can’t quit Google services even if you want to. For example, if your work is tied to Google products, you don’t have much choice.

The point is, it’s not easy. There aren’t good alternatives. And I don’t think articles titled “How to Quit Google” help much.