At the diner table next to me, a middle aged man monologues about painting his house, taxes and other middle aged man things to his largely silent adult daughter. Eventually he asks about how her mother’s doing.
Snotty upmarket opticians: no sir, that loose hinge on your glasses is irreparable. You will need a new pair. Walmart opticians: give me five minutes, I’ll glue it, no charge.
Writing across iOS and Chromebook - the options
I’m spending far too much time recently figuring out my best options for writing apps across a bunch of platforms, and having finally been forced to tabulate my findings for my own benefit, though I might as well stick them as a blogpost.
Table below, for the impatient, but for the more patient, some context:
I’m mostly Apple-based (iPhone, iPad, Mac Mini) but for the next few months a lot of my writing and other work type things will be on a Chromebook, for various reasons. (Old basic iPad with a Logitech keyboard just about scrapes by as an emergency pseudo-laptop, but only just).
Getting a Macbook would make compatibility a lot simpler but I can’t really justify one when a Chromebook does everything I need for a quarter of the price, if I can live with some minor complications.
I have no strong views about OSes/open sourceness/proprietary software, but Windows seems to be going through an awful phase at the moment, so I’d rather avoid it. Similarly, I’m a bit cautious about anything corporate American because who knows what’s going to happen there. I’m not fanatically anxious about AI, but it would be nice to avoid being scraped and intruded on if I can.
I’m generally able to get online but I want to be able to be able to work offline if necessary.
So I looked at what my options were, and these are them. Obviously there are other criteria but these are the important ones to me. Judgements are subjective, of course.
In the unlikely event anyone reads this, I’d welcome your thoughts.
Finished reading: We Had to Remove This Post by Hanna Bervoets 📚
Douglas Coupland lite, hyped because of the social media moral panic.
Finished reading: Nightwatching by Tracy Sierra 📚
I read it fast, which is a good sign. One of those ‘does what it says on the can really well’ books.
TIL that Google Keep doesn’t have a way to add photos from Google Photos. Image files from your drives, yes. Photos Google already knows about, not so much.
Roses are read Violets are blue The ASCII for ‘space’ Is Code 32
Snowy, innit.
When I log into iCloud in Chrome I get a weird serif font in Reminders. On the other iCloud account, same browser, literally logging out of one account and into another, I get the right design. I’ve cleared the cache, logged in and out, and the wrong font has persisted for months. Thoughts?
I find I’m filtering all the coverage of the US through my ‘what would the Germany-in-1933 version of that be?’ touchstone to gauge implications.
Disturbed to find Martin from Friday Night Dinner as a murderous baddie in the very bad final Da Vinci Code film. He has yet to say ‘shit on it’ and his shirt remains on, however.
Most journalists (some of my best friends etc.) want to get the story right, but they need your help. Find out what you can do in this close analysis of me getting the wrong end of the stick over a story this week. truesciencestories.substack.com/p/how-to-…
A planned post for my True Science Stories substack about how a study got covered in the media didn’t turn out how I expected. Always good to figure out when you’re wrong why you got it wrong.
Full confession in tomorrow’s newsletter.
I think humanity is safe from AI for the moment. I just had to beat Google’s Gemini into submission after it had come up with four erroneous ‘solutions’ to a thing I wanted to do on Substack before admitting it couldn’t be done. It’s like dealing with a toddler who’s just discovered lying.
Et tu, BBC?
Just heard Fi Glover on Times Radio being immensely dense about a study saying banning phones in school doesn’t materially affect educational benefits. However much the lead researcher patiently explained the point was that school use made little difference because most use is out of school, Glover was determined that the take away was that phone use overall makes no difference.
I double checked the story quickly on the BBC (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy8plvqv60lo) and it seems this is the obtuse line across the media more widely.
I’ll dig into more in my newsletter this week and explain how these things happen.
Trump trying to outsource taxation and make other countries pay for the US via tariffs is a kind of analogy for how he wants likes to manage his narcissistic emotions, by forcing other people to make him feel good inside.
Finished reading: Human Traces by Sebastian Faulks 📚
Really interesting stuff about early psychiatric/neurology research, but not enough plot and too much about building cable cars.
A dudebro behind me in this café, having grown weary of praising Trump oh-so-ironically, is now explaining to a fellow dudebro how Kraftwerk invented synthesisers.
My attempt to provoke Gemini into an existential crisis by asking what the point of it was just failed.
I asked it to collate contact names from public websites like LinkedIn and employee profile pages. But it can’t use that dataset. It can make up researchers, departments and institutions and only admit it when you point this out.
I’m only getting scared of AI when it stops recommending I buy a Very Expensive Thing because I just bought an identical one.
When you realise that of your five Substack readers, one is yourself, another is your ex wife keeping tabs, and another is a bot. The other two are old clients.
How the fuck does anyone ever break through Substack if they don’t bring followers with them?
Things coming together
Reading through some old journal entries about the whys and hows of my writing. I’d come a long way when I wrote them nearly three years ago, and I’ve come further now. I needed the healthy, supportive relationship I have now and also, I’m realising, the time and distance I’m getting by moving to Canada.
When accidentally leaving your laptop at home reminds you that sometimes scrawling stuff into an actual physical paper notebook hits a vein of way better ideas.
Oscillating between anxiety about paying bills (unwarranted because I can afford them) and reassuring myself that Big New Plans are panning out as I wanted, just slowly. Which I also expected.