It was @Ddanielson that made me do it! A throwback to my younger years.
Perth can be alright.
Merry Christmas.
I’ve jumped aboard the Ai-generated Funko Box bandwagon!
Hello, this is Andrew talking into MurmurType, the recording app that records and then transcribes whatever I have to say. I could use this to write a blog post, I could use this to write an essay. The only problem is, I don’t think as well speaking extemporaneously as I do when I write.
Subscriptions 2023
A few people are blogging about their current subscription software.
Here I am, jumping on the train.
I have a subscriptions grouping in YNAB so I’m referencing that to assist here. In writing this, I’m discovering that there are a few subscriptions without a YNAB category. I will have to fix that!
Even with YNAB, some of the cost estimates are fuzzy because of currency exchange fluctuations.
What might be most noticeable is the paucity of streaming services. I’ve gotten rid of them all recently, as my budget has changed, and their value quotient declined. I now only have Apple TV+ and Fetch (for ESPN) during the Australian NBL basketball season.
| Service | Monthly Cost AUD | Logic |
|---|---|---|
| Apple One | $24.97 | I use enough Apple Services that the full deal is worth it. I share this cost, so only pay 50%. |
| YouTube | $2.00 | I rarely watch YouTube, but my kids love it, and I don’t want constant ads being driven into their brain. |
| NY Times | $2.00 | I subscribed on a sweet deal to play the Crosswords. Now I’m only playing Wordle and Connections, so this will go when the cheap option expires. |
| Xbox Game Pass | $18.95 | This one comes as goes based on the interest of my kids and I. I tend to subscribe for a month, then turn off automatic renewal. When we want it, I turn it back on again. |
| Micro.blog | $15.00 | The price fluctuates because of the currency conversion. Micro.blog is my digital home. It hosts my blog, it hosted my first podcast, and I love it. |
| omg.lol | $2.50 | My second home on Internet, which hosts my profile landing page, but is also my Mastodon instance. Adam is also a friend. |
| shoutouts.lol | $2.00 | Another indie service hosted by a friend, Vincent. It helps me profile things I like on canion.blog. |
| tinylytics.app | $2.00 | Also by Vincent, this service is a nice simple way to get a sense of which pages on my website are interesting to people. |
| Domains | $10.00 | You can’t be on the internet and not have a few domains. Key ones for me include canion.blog, canion.me and andrewcanion.com |
| Day One | $3.00 | I have been journalling in Day One for about a decade, and I enjoy having a private, safe place to put my thoughts. I’ve even used their book printing service. It’s excellent. |
| AnyList | $1.34 | AnyList helps me with my shopping, but also with my recipe management. I use it all the time. |
| Textexpander | $2.17 | I went away from TE for a while, but a friend works there, and I still enjoy the affordances it provides. They really took a lot of heat moving to subscription before most other providers did the same. |
| 1Password | $5.00 | I would be willing to move away from this, but I’m part of a family group and I don’t love the idea of having to deal with transferring other people. |
| Fastmail | $10.00 | I have been this close to leaving Fastmail in favour of iCloud, but I don’t think I have the motivation. My subscription still has about 4 months left, so we will see how I feel then. |
| YNAB | $8.00 | It’s pricing is stupid, a bunch of their features don’t work in the Australian banking sector, and I’ve outgrown all their training. Yet it’s still the only show in town for keeping me on the financial straight and narrow, so it’s not going anywhere. |
| Flickr | $15.00 | I went through the cancellation flow last year, which netted me a big annual discount and kept me onboard. It’s basically a photo backup and not much else. |
| Microsoft 365 | $9.73 | I got a cheap subscription to the Family plan through my previous employer. I honestly don’t know if I even need it now, but am worried that I will cancel, discover I do need it, and then not have access to the discounted rate anymore. |
| Setapp | $15.00 | I’ve gone back and forth on Setapp, but have always kept it around. I have been onboard since launch and am grandfathered into a slightly cheaper plan. |
| Fetch | $6.00 | An Australian TV service that gives me access to enough ESPN to watch Australian NBL basketball. |
So there we have it, my subscriptions as they stand in late 2023.
Boosted! 🩼🦠
My long national nightmare of not being able to swipe to change Apple Watch faces is over. The setting can be changed in Settings > Clock > Swipe to Switch Watch Face. Now can we revert the button functionality, Apple?
I can hardly believe our little Hemispheric Views podcast has inspired 267 blog posts!
I’ve designed a TypeForm survey. So much nicer to use than SurveyMonkey.
Candy Cane Lane, 2023 - ★★★★
A good old fashioned comedy that actually made me laugh out loud.
My 2023 Mac Apps of the Year
Once again, I’m here to blog about my favourite Mac Apps for the year.
See previously:
The Standard Criteria
For my purposes, to be considered an App of the Year, the software needs to be something I used extensively, value and enjoy. I also must feel I would miss them if they suddenly went away. Of course, it also needs to be a Mac App.
OmniFocus
It’s almost to the point where this app needs to be put into the Hall of Fame, and removed from future consideration. OmniFocus continues to provide structure to my life both at a professional and personal level.
Most of this year has been spent using the beta of OmniFocus 4 in tandem with OmniFocus 3. The new version has come a long way and is closing in on release.
While there are elements that continue to frustrate me (please, can we have natural language entry?) there is still no other task manager that can filter, slice and dice tasks like OmniFocus. And of course, defer dates. No task manager can be serious if it doesn’t have the ability to set a start date for a task into the future.
Obsidian
Notes apps are my playground. I bounce between them continuously. Heck, I’m writing this post in iA Writer! This year, however, has seen me give Obsidian another try - after I stuck with Logseq for some time before it.
There are parts of it that I still don’t like, but it’s now rock solid, and the price cannot be beat. I am even putting aside the fact that it is running in Electron! 😱
I wanted to continue to use Agenda, but it’s simply too fiddly. Plain text entry is so straightforward, it is hard to beat.
Mona
2023 was the downfall of Twitter. In its place stormed Mastodon and I have enjoyed using Mona. While most of the cool kids seemed to gravitate to Ivory, for me Mona ticks all the boxes I need from a Mastodon client.
Reeder
Last year, NetNewsWire took over from Reeder as my RSS app of choice. This year, I’ve flipped back to Reeder across macOS and i(Pad)OS. It’s smooth and gorgeous, and rock solid.
What’s even better is that this year has seen somewhat of a renaissance in blogging, and with the help of the App Defaults craze, launched by our own Hemispheric Views 097, I’ve found a bunch of new voices to add to my feed reader.
Safari
Last year I used Arc. For whatever reason, this year I’ve retreated to the comfort, energy efficiency, and cross-platform syncing offered by Safari. It also makes me feel good that I’m not supporting the Chromium hegemony.
Apps That Fell Off My List From Last Year
- NetNewsWire: As mentioned above, it’s taken a back seat to Reeder.
- Arc: I’ve moved back to the default choice of Safari.
- MarsEdit: I continue to use it, but I could live without it if it went away. Still a great app.
- Launchbar: This year I trialled RayCast, but I’m back on Launchbar. As much as I like it, given there are other alternatives, it didn’t make the cut this year.
- Agenda: As discussed, Obsidian has trumped Agenda for 2023.
Who can resist a Blu-Tak snowman guy?
I can’t.
🔗 Connected #478: Not So Bankrupt Anymore - Relay FM
Amazing to see our podcast, Hemispheric Views, and its Duel of the Defaults! mentioned on Connected!
In today’s “I’m an idiot” news, I almost feel victim to a phishing scam. I wasn’t on my A-game and almost got found out. Frightening!
I did it!
Wordle 892 1/6*
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
I reintroduced my old Raspberry Pi 3B+ to the home network today, and with it, Pi-Hole! I may elect not to renew my NextDNS subscription as a result.
I’ve been building class timetables. Hyper Plan has been a life-saver. I love this app. Timetables have multiple variables (time, day, teacher, skill level) and Hyper Plan has wrangled it all for me in a way that is so much easier and better than Excel Pivot Tables. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Mop Will Always Be Your Friend
A career is an interesting thing.
I’ve never been a “career at all costs” kind of person. Probably why I’ve never made millions of dollars or been a CEO.
At uni, I worked at a pizza shop and a liquor shop. The mop was my friend. Things always needed to be cleaned.
I spent the first part of my “proper” career working to get ahead, to succeed in using my brain and to find new challenges to overcome.
The middle part of my career was spent leveraging my specialist skills to deliver consulting services and support others. There was value in status with this role; being seen to be successful and knowledgable.
Now, in the current (but hopefully not last) part of my career, I’ve got no interest in any of that. I don’t really care what others think of me, or what status is assigned to my job. I’m enjoying the effort of being a good manager. As a manager I have an ethos of never asking somebody to do something that I wouldn’t do myself (if I have the requisite skill and capability).
Mopping. I know this. 30 years later, the mop is still as friendly as ever. I feel no embarrassment about being a manager that mops.
Time for Some Fiscal Policy in Australia
Talking with a friend today. The topic of interest rates came up, as they do in any recent conversation within the Australian context.
My friend asked a poignant and sensible question, “why doesn’t the Government adjust the rate of the Goods & Services Tax (GST)?” It is a broad-based consumption tax. If consumption is getting out of hand and creating an inflationary spike, then why not add a disincentive to consumers by raising the price of consumption?
With interest rates variations it’s the mortgage belt who carry all the pain. They represent about 25% of households. Yet rising interest rates enrich those with existing savings, enabling greater consumption. Wouldn’t it be better to share the load equitably across any and all of those who spend?
The downside to this strategy is that the GST is regressive. It hits everybody with the same cost. For those with lesser incomes, the proportion of income the tax takes is greater. It’s not an equitable solution, because now low income earners are bearing a greater proportion of the pain.
From a political point of view, it’s easier to blame the independent Reserve Bank for pain and suffering. Why place the crosshairs on your own government by changing fiscal policy? “Monetary policy delivered by the independent Reserve Bank, that’s who to blame!”, is the relieving Government cry!
Whether it’s the GST, or a more equitable adjustment to the broader taxation platform, the Australian Government needs to do something. Since its election, the Albanese Labor Government seems content to sit on the sidelines, apart from some modest targeted tinkering. It withdrew funding for some capital works projects, that at least in WA have now been funded by the State Government, so that attempt at withdrawing money and inflationary pressure from the system didn’t work. Some modest efforts to encourage growth in housing supply have been delivered.
Small target strategy, however, seems to remain the prevailing preference in Canberra.
I would like to see the Government take some real, tangible action. Let’s look at negative gearing. Let’s look at tax breaks that make no sense. Let’s recalibrate towards equality and away from the neo-liberalist agenda.
I elect a government to do things: not to watch the RBA use its only blunt instrument.
Get to work, Labor.