It was great to get out of the house today. I read some of my book, and had a FaceTime call with @burk.
My bike has been professionally serviced. Once again, I have no excuse not to ride.
While @maique is looking forward to a wet and windy Christmas, I’m looking at this:
A year ago today I received my MacBook Air M1. It doesn’t feel I’ve owned it for a year; it still seems brand new in my mind.
2021 Retrospective
For the end of 2020 I wrote a retrospective looking at the main events and happenings of the year, broken down by month. I figured it would fun to do the same thing again for 2021. I didn’t take copious notes over the course of the year, so I’m piecing this list together from calendar notes. Year Notes Throughout the year I worked on two podcasts, NBL Pocket Podcast and Hemispheric Views.
The King is Dead; Long Live the King
Update: 14 December 2021: John, a kind reader of this blog emailed me to correct the record regarding the age of these apps. I imply below that Quicksilver predated Launchbar when in fact Launchbar is the oldest of the crop. In my usage, Quicksilver was the first King - it was my gateway drug to this application category. But Quicksilver was not the first. A few days ago I noticed that Launchbar was consuming excessive CPU cycles on my iMac.
Family Entertainment
This post was originally written in July 2021 for Hemispheric News; subscribe at the Patreon site One Prime Plus to receive this monthly newsletter and other benefits that are linked to the Hemispheric Views podcast. I am a father of two boys. One is 9 (almost 10!) and the other is 5 ½. I work in a fairly flexible capacity whereas my wife has a highly demanding job that has significant variability.
It’s cool to see your own feature request that you’ve been beta testing forked into the main build. Thanks BusyCal team!
When dragging tasks from OmniFocus to create events, BusyCal now applies the duration (if any) to the event too.
Crypto - I Don't Buy the Hype
Either I’m an old man who is shaking his fist at the clouds, or I’m a rational person that isn’t easily bedazzled and deluded by the madness of crowds. I prefer to think I’m the latter. Crypto has captivated the masses, and delivered opportunity to the financial grifters who portray themselves as disciples of a new financial world order. I may be missing out on ‘easy wins’, trading cryptocurrencies - buying low, selling high.
So, yeah. I can’t sleep. What are others doing at 1:30am?
Subscribers (or Hemisphereans) to @hemisphericviews podcast now know about the PhD that @martinfeld is working on. One Prime Plus
Finished reading: The Process Is the Product by Paul Shirley 📚I had read most of the source material and I love basketball so this was up my alley. A quick read which would be a nice primer for people who have never dug into the world of productive work habits.
Chess Kids
I taught Benji chess today, and he began to understand it immediately We played a couple of games, which led to David becoming interested, so I taught him too. The boys had a good game between each other, with me coaching both of them. Tonight, Benji is sleeping with the chess set.
I have bought the Alfred Powerpack. I am sick of the glacial development pace of Launchbar, and the fact it seemed to be consuming excessive CPU cycles. I wonder if my muscle memory can be retrained?
I’m a subscriber of Drafts.app although my usage barely scratches the surface. I could probably be using it almost as a Textexpander replacement. I still find it’s UI virtually inscrutable though.
EPW Reawakening XX
Last night our family and and some friends attended Explosive Pro Wrestling’s Reawakening XX show. This is EPW’s showcase annual event. Their Wrestlemania, if you are searching for a comparator. At a sold-out theatre the company put on an amazing show. I’ve always enjoyed wrestling and nothing beats being in a venue where everybody who is there “gets it”. No need to put up with the naysayers who talk about wrestling being fake, or silly, or whatever other negative comment they want to throw at it for some reason.
A follow-up article to Hemispheric Views One Prime Plus 016, with additional information from my brother.
I nuked and reinstalled my iMac successfully. Although the problem that motivated the reset remains. Clearly a bug in the software (Marked.app).
I’m about to erase my iMac and reinstall Monterey. @Burk made me do it.
I’ve watched the first two episodes of Dopesick and I’m into it. Looking forward to the chance to watch more.