A weekly-ish email to my internet friends
This is a lot of money for a domain.
Are you crazy?!
Now we’re talking!
Instead of spending all this money on a stupid domain, I voluntosubscribed to MetaFilter. Because reasons. If one webpage out there deserves to be out there forever it is MetaFilter.
Honestly, I can’t even.
Dominik
Hey, it’s Monday again! That means we’ve just had a weekend and at least here, it was probably the first real summer weekend. So of course I had to (start) with my summer-is-here media consumption rituals:
Apparently I have a lawn. I keep forgetting about it, because it’s too far away from the house to still get WiFi and is therefore not really useful for me at all. That doesn’t change the fact that it needs mowing and if I wouldn’t have been reminded that I do have a lawn, I would have forgotten about that, too.
So on Saturday, I mowed the lawn.
I will not pretend I enjoyed it. But I did hate it a tiny bit less than I thought I would, thanks to the magic of podcasts.
In fact, a lot of stuff I used to hate becomes bearable thanks to the magic of podcasts.
While this might be a good thing in aggregate, it might also be a bit of a problem: I hardly do anything anymore without making sure I am distracted by some kind of media. I listen to podcasts when I walk to town or when I clean the house and if I’m not doing that, then more often than not I am listening to some music. And while I sometimes to wander around without any real purpose behind it besides “being outside and moving,” it is never without something to keep my mind occupied. Apparently I am not the only person with that problem: The slow death of purposeless walking
People should go out and walk free of distractions, says Nicholson. “I do think there is something about walking mindfully. To actually be there and be in the moment and concentrate on what you are doing.”
And this means no music, no podcasts, no audiobooks. It might also mean going out alone.
CS Lewis thought that even talking could spoil the walk. “The only friend to walk with is one who so exactly shares your taste for each mood of the countryside that a glance, a halt, or at most a nudge, is enough to assure us that the pleasure is shared.”
I don’t know, but for me that sounds kind of scary.
Now for something completely different – I am looking for some good travel blogs, what are your favorites? Just reply with URLs, you don’t need to be nice about it. (Even though it’s nice to be nice.)
Dominik
I like to tell myself that I enjoy traveling. When I am bored, which happens a lot less than one might think, I like to daydream about being one of those people who have their work (and play) here today and somewhere else tomorrow. I read a whole lot of travel blogs and have been to a bunch of countries, too.
Sometimes I wonder, though. In me there are two souls, alas, and their
division tears my life in two. (Not much tearing, really, but as we Bildungsbürger learn, it’s never a bad idea to quote Goethe.) Because a lot of those things I read about “life on the road” sound incredibly dreadful to me. (Especially the whole ‘interacting with people’ part. I can be a bit of a curmudgeon that way.)
But maybe that’s just because I still have to conquer the idea of traveling on my own. Now those who know me might wonder: “But, wait… didn’t he fly around a lot on his own?” and yes, I did. But I was always visiting someone – and while probably not staying or spending all the time with them, it gave me a bit of an anchor at that destination.
But yes, indeed, I really do like flying by myself. Because that combines three things I quite like: doing nothing, being by myself and yet, doing something with a purpose.
Remember Poultry Internet Touching? Now there is this.
Webster’s Dictionary defines Shit Writing Syndrome as “a disorder that turns one’s writing to shit, for example, by causing one to quote this dictionary when describing the disorder.”
This does not sound familiar at all. I doubt I’ll ever get that guy’s treatment for that syndome, though: How Writing for the TV Show “Community” Cured Me.
Yes, the Stromae concert was very good, thanks for asking. And stepping on my stupid internet scale is still terrible, but this looks like a nice and steady improvement:
(Y-axis conveniently cut out of the picture. Because vanity.)
Have a nice weekend!
Dominik
Let me tell you a little secret: that thing starts to annoy me. But it is part of an important(!) experiment. I made that pact with myself: if nobody mentions the beard all week, I will shave it off on Sunday.
I usually know on Monday that I will keep it for at least another week.
Because I am slightly annoyed, I thought I made it easier for Team No-Beard: I will shave it off on Sunday if I don’t hear a “He, he, you look like one of those taliban!”-“jokes.”
Now I usually know by Tuesday.
It might be no surprise that I really like the internet. On some days, it really delivers, though. I give you: yesterday evening! (If you follow me on Twitter, you have probably seen most of it already.)
Deep Sea Fauna… With Googly Eyes. Vous êtes des pros. PornBurger. Trick Global. (Yes, two videos by the same group of people. So what.) Nobody likes the president of France. Not played, yet, but I like the idea: Make it rain – The Love of Money.
Tonight I’ll go to see Stromae live, so that should be good.
Take care, y’all.
Dominik
No, this is not about that court decision regarding Google nor is it about the news stories from last week.1
This morning I realised2 that I immediately forget anything that I don’t write down, complete with a reminder and/or an entry in my calendar. (Yes, I know – nothing new for listeners of Back to Work.)
This can be a problem, because quite often I tend to forget (hah!) to create a reminder or a calendar entry. And this is a problem that can only be solved with something called “discipline” – a concept that people tell me about and that I only vaguely understand.
So I guess I’ll be okay with sometimes learning that I have an appointment later in the week that I made half a year ago. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Well, actually, stop the shrugging right there – it is something I was really good at and lost due to my sudden overreliance on “the cloud” – so it should be possible to retrain myself.
Or (warning, community manager power trick!) what do you folks think? Have any good ideas on how to handle reminders and remembering these things?
So, if you changed from an iOS device to a non-iOS device, things get ugly with your text messages.
There is now the ‘pay-as-you-live’ generation and the satori generation and never forget about the millenials.
It’s fascinating, really.
An interview with Peggy McIntosh, the person who coined the sociological term “privilege” and who is very apparently a lot smarter (and kinder) than those kids over on Tumblr. (But then she has the privilege of being a nice old lady, so that’s that.)
I had enough sleep last night, yet I am extremely tired today. Something must be done about this.
Have a nice day… I think it’s Wednesday?
Dominik
Remember 26: Infinite Improbability? Well, imagine my joy/horror when Jason Seifer started to quote and comment on it in the latest episode of IRL Talk.
Just one more round…
I don’t know how and why it happened, but Civilization got me again. Instead of doing something useful, I was playing Civ V all weekend. Again.
And then there is going to be a new one soon, which is exciting – I mean, just look at that trailer!
I just bought two iPhone apps just because they were in the Mac Power Users shownotes:
I haven’t listened to the episode, yet and I just looked around the apps a bit – they both seem pretty and they seem to be doing something well that I’d want them to do.
As usual: take care, people.
Dominik
No numbers today. They are silly anyway, should I get rid of them?
So, yesterday a friend of mine posted the title of a highly fascinating scientific paper to Facebook: “A mobile pet wearable computer and mixed reality system for human–poultry interaction through the internet” – if you want to read it, you can buy it from Springer or download it from Researchgate. Or even better, you can watch the video, which has a chicken in a virtual reality suit.
It increases the poultry pleasure… in a scientific way.
(If you want to see other cocks experiencing virtual reality, there is always this blog.)
I don’t think Werner Herzog would approve.
Now that we all had a hearty laugh (Hehe, chickens in virtual reality suits are funny!) and suspected it has to be a student prank, let’s realize that this research has been done roughly ten years ago and that
“Poultry Internet” was one of the pioneering works on virtual reality communication between humans and animals.
Says Wikipedia on Mr Cheok’s biography page, so it must be right. In fact, reading that bio and following a couple of links, it is obvious that this guy is doing really important work, that will probably influence our perception of reality in the future.
Plus, it is probably safe to say that once we’re completely decked out in internet-connected sensors, (“wearables” ugh) our pets are next. I’m already sure that strapping a cheap Android device with a data plan to a dog might not be such a bad idea – if the dog runs away, as they apparently tend to do, it should be possible to just look at an app with a map and see where they are.
Take care, y’all.
Dominik
Okay, it’s Monday, I didn’t get enough sleep over the weekend and I forgot my coffee. I hope your start to the week is a better one.
Of the many podcasts I am subscribed to, IRL Talk is easily in my top five – it is relevant to my interests, both hosts are equally charming and hilarious, and it is always an entertaining and sometimes “educational” hour.
Their latest episode was a bit different, though: one of the hosts – Jason Seifer – wasn’t around, so Casey Liss (the “other guy” from the Accidental Tech Podcast) came in to fill the role and he did it very well.
Especially the segment about the pyramid of methods of communication made my basically explode into a big cloud of agreeing with the hosts.
For me it is also really relevant which method of communication I use with people and which one people tend to pick to communicate with me.
And basically phone calls are never okay with me, unless someone is dying, in a terrible emergency, or late to an appointment.
Nein, ich will nicht telefonieren. Synchrone Kommunikation ist strukturelle Gewalt!
— Matthias Bauer (@moeffju)
(“No, I don’t want to talk on the phone. Synchronous communication is structural violence.”) And as Casey said on the podcast: Calling someone is always a sign that you as the caller value your urge to communicate higher than whatever it might be the called person might be doing at that moment.
Yes, sometimes that might be the case – as I said, if someone is dying or in a terrible emergency, then it is pretty reasonable to assume that not many people are engaged in something more important. And if you’re late, you should call because the reason “I am late” is probably more important than what the person is doing at the moment – namely: waiting.
It is also rather polite to call ahead instead of just showing up at someone’s doorstep. Just to chat.
Of course there are always people around who are either not willing to understand that concept or just happen to live in a reality, where calling people just to chat is normal and acceptable.
The first group of people are the worst: very often they assume that the whole premise “Only call me, when you are sure that something is more important than whatever it is that I am doing at the moment.” means “Whatever I do at that moment, it is more important than you.”
I can see where the confusion might come from, but at least from my point of view, it is deeply flawed – we are living in a world where asynchronous communication is possible: if you want to hang out and chat, send me a text message. I get those, I read those. And I will answer them eventually, no worries.
And if we’re in a remote setting, just stay in that medium. I have a very relaxed group chat over on Line1. There is little sense of “This communication needs to happen right now” – I don’t expect to get an answer on there right away – but if it happens, it’s cool, too.
This weekend I went to the WordCamp Switzerland in Zürich and I was pleasantly surprised. Every talk I saw on Saturday was good, the people I talked to were all pretty smart and interesting and that whole weekend was very well organized.
One thing that really stood out for me was the fact that way more than usual I got to talk with people with the same interest in building stuff on the internet from other countries in Europe and beyond. Even I, who is admittedly not much of a social personality and can have problems approaching people, managed to talk with folks from Poland, Serbia, France, Ukraine, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, the UK and Canada.
I think a big part of having such an open, interesting crowd is of course the language. The fact that the organizer decided to have both the conference day and the contributer’s day in English helped a lot in attracting a more diverse crowd. And as Hanni Ross said in her talk: people from different (“offline”/IRL) cultural background with the same interests and passion in a topic have often more in common with each other than with their neighbours.
Wow, that was a long one. Thanks for sticking around all the way to the end – you know I appreciate it. And as usual – if you have something you really need me to know about what I said in these emails, don’t hesitate to click that reply-button.
Have a good start to the week,
Dominik
Hello new readers! You are quite a lot since the last email, which of course puts a lot of pressure on me to welcome you properly.
Let me see what I have for you.
Yes, it’s mostly nerd stuff today, sorry. I was on the road more or less all day and when I came back, I was too busy, re-watching that video of The Prodigy at Milton Keynes and google image searching Rinko Kikuchi.
You see, important work.
As someone who liked the whole location-based check-in silliness since Plazes was around, I am slightly wary of what Foursquare might be doing with their new Swarm app.
I was always doing that as a purely solipsistic endeavour – I never cared where my friends checked in and I couldn’t care less if they know where I am, most of the time.
So, uhm, do I have to build my own check-in-thing now? I have something half-finished somewhere in a backup.
Apparently there is a beta version of Google Chrome around that hides the URL of a website in favour of a Google search box.
Does that mean I have to change browsers now? URLs are the glue of the web, without them it’s just text and a bunch of images and a whole lot of porn.
Apparently there are now a few startups that want to be “Dropbox for physical objects” – one of them just got a cool 8 Million $$$.
For a box.
To be honest, they also send some underpaid dude over to your place to pick up the box and take it… who knows where. Honestly, with the garbage fees being as high as they are over here, I might actually be willing to pay a startup money to pick up my stuff and put it somewhere where I can forget about it.
I just hope they don’t return it if I stop paying.
Actually that’s all there is today. I played Civilization all evening and will be at the WordCamp in Zürich all weekend.
Take care y’all.
Dominik
I might have mentioned that I quite like the “Silicon Valley” series.
What gets me most about it is the fact that even in the German “tech scene” – and to be honest, I am not as exposed to that as one might expect – I have met most of these people. And what might be even worse: I have met a lot of people who aspire so, so much to be like one of the guys in “Silicon Valley.”
Okay, maybe even I do. I mean Big Head’s “Rest and Vest” seems like a pretty sweet deal.
Recently I signed up at some online service or another. It’s not strictly aimed at consumers and that’s how they communicate, too – basically their customers are their peers and what their peers are, are other technical professionals. So far so great. It is just weird, when someone new from within their company contacts me, because they forget one thing: they don’t introduce themselves.
Hi Dominik,
as you have probably seen, we have deployed a new version of our API, which is 100% backwards-compatible.
No action is needed on your part.
Bob
Uhm, hi Bob. We haven’t met, yet. Why do I need to wait until your email signature to find out that you work for that company? I know it is an automated email to all customers, many of whom know who Bob is, but still:
Hi Dominik,
this is Bob from Great Service Company. As you have…
would have helped me not to almost delete the mail unread. But maybe that’s just me and most people read all their email until the very end?
I have seen many of you use Runtastic and post their workouts to Facebook. I wonder what made you pick them over Runkeeper?
I actually want to know, so send me a quick reply if you’re a Runtastic user and maybe looked at Runkeeper as well.
That’s all I have for today. Tomorrow is May 1st, so if you are so inclined, enjoy your day of sanctioned class war.
Speaking of comrades, if you are interested in our tech world and in history and generally like to watch a great talk, go here: Our Comrade The Electron
Dominik
