The Art Of Not Asking Why

I am happy to report I just took a very good nap. That is all. Carry on.

Getting used to Edge again means trying to duplicate some of the productivity tricks Arc gave me. Having a collection of work-related tabs in one accent color is nice, and being able to customize their icons and rename them is also important. Here’s what I have so far.

Can someone please explain how Apple can sell close to a grand of a phone AND charge extra for a normal-length cable but still charge me more for a wall charger?! 🤬 Am I missing something here, or is it a “welcome to the club” situation??

Sincerely yours, GBD.

Attempting not to use Arc browser, take 2. No, it’s not because of the “oh no, they are a shady AI company” wagon. It’s more that they started the “we might not make it” videos, and today when I tried to access my Google timeline, this happened:

Yeah, I think their days are numbered.

Apple Watch newbie question: Do I have to press the side button twice before I pay to go into transit, or is there an option without it? On the iPhone, you can

Last Friday I woke up from a power nap and the first thought that popped into my mind was, “It’s time to get an Apple Watch.”

I thought about this several times before, especially since I started exercising with Co-Pilot. Over several notes in the journal and Emacs, I convinced myself not to opt for the Apple Watch mostly because of my love-hate relationship with privacy. After all, buying a GPS-tracker-personal-information-sharing-device for your wrist from a company with most of its infrastructure invested in China is not exactly a good pro-privacy argument.

But in the last couple of years, as I slowly started opening up about my lifestyle (here and elsewhere), I stopped giving a shit. Privacy at this day and age is impossible, at least with current technologies. In the meantime, what an Apple watch can offer is very appealing.

For one, it puts my exercise routine on another level. It’s one thing to exercise with the iPhone and watch the screen; it’s another to have a watch telling you to slow down or speed up or have it pause and continue sets without me needing to clumsily try to touch the screen while holding a weight is excellent. Then there’s running, which I plan to get back to more seriously again, and I want to track my progress.

The other thing I hope the watch will assist me within the well-being department is meditation. I meditate whenever I finish my exercises, but I need to go longer and deeper. I might consider something like Headspace (if anyone reading this has opinions, please share!), but for now, I’m still getting adjusted. Meanwhile, I appreciate being reminded to meditate (Breath in Apple Health) daily on top of the one at the end of my exercise.

Then there are my sleeping issues, and I want to keep track of those. While it’s pretty easy to know how well I slept (do I feel like a zombie or not?), having a long-term insight into this with all the information the watch provides would be helpful.

Outside of the health department, there are many more implications, like taking notes and reminders consistently, knowing when someone important messages me, the ease of taking the subway and paying without taking out a wallet (especially during the winter), and even taking selfies from a distance with the phone is a plus.

There’s the magic-wow factor (I can’t get over the pinching to open menus on the watch, or just raising it to ask Siri something, and it’s all right there), but that will probably fade away.

It will take the watch a few more days before I get all the data I want to see and a few more days for me to get adjusted anyway. In the meantime, please let me know if you have any useful tricks/routines you use your Apple Watch for or even useful Shortcuts!

Just discovered my old college stopped offering the technical writing program. I understand where they’re coming from (it was always a hard program to market), but at the same time, it sucks. There’s too little understanding of technical writing, especially during the age of AI.

Here’s a crazy NYC fact for you: as it’s getting hotter and more humid toward summer, I find that I’m adjusting to colder temperatures: the indoor temperature is at an average of 74 degrees or so with the heating off. During the winter, I need to adjust to warmer temperatures, as it’s 80 (and beyond) with the heating on.

It’s time for a grumpy post:

I hate it when tiktok (or reddit, or youtube, or whatever the hell) won’t let you watch a link a friend sends because you need yet another account for their silo app.

We need a non-tech-friendly yt-dl solution that for people to download and send these vids as is.