It’s time to jump aboard another blogging fad from those trendy guys over on Hemispheric Views. Oh, what’s that? I’m late? Shoot, I guess it was waaay back in May that Martin, Andrew and Jason spoke about their perfect albums. And then Robb, of course, put together an amazing cover flow-inspired mini site to catalog all the albums that listeners sent in. Well, I want mine in that hall of glory!

But what constitutes a “perfect album”? Here’s the prompt that Jason posed to his co-hosts:

Pick in your mind a perfect album. And I think it’s mostly open to interpretation, but I’m kind of thinking an album that you would say you could just start from beginning, let it run all the way through, without skipping songs, without moving around, just front to back and just sit there and do nothing else and just listen to that whole album.

What would that album be?

There are a handful of albums in my library that fit this description, but only one immediately jumped to mind. And it was the very first entry in my 52 Albums project (that’s been on hiatus but will come back, I swear) this year: ~How I’m Feeling~ by Lauv (2020)

(And just look at that album cover! Iconic.)

Here’s how I described it for the 52 Albums project:

It’s only been out for three years, but ~How I’m Feeling~ has to be one of my most-played albums of all-time. Lauv’s crystal-clear vocals ring true and carry forth all the emotion you’d expect from an album with such a title. It’s catchy from start to finish. It’s well-produced, yet raw. It makes me feel things. I love it.

Based on its themes around loneliness, depression, and self-reflection, you could be excused for thinking this was a COVID album, released by someone struggling through the effects lockdown. In fact, it was released on March 6, 2020 — just a few days before things “got real” here in the United States.

As you might expect for a “perfect album”, there are so many fantastic track in this record. A few standouts for me: “f**k, i’m lonely (feat. Anne-Marie)“,”Billy”, “Tell My Mama”, “Feelings”, “For Now”, “I’m So Tired…”, “Tatoos Together”, “Sad Forever”, “Modern Loneliness”, god there’s so many that I’m finding it difficult to not list every single song.

Whereas some albums, even great ones, can feel like they’re a mashup of all the individual songs an artist has come up with lately, ~How I’m Feeling~ has a distinct style and through-line of sound that carries from the first note to the final one. It makes my heart swell and constrict. It’s achingly beautiful. It captures raw emotion. It’s perfect.

If you give it a listen, I’d love to hear what you think.

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This is post #25/31 for Blaugust 2024.

Blaugust Podcasts Music

[Steps up onto soap box.]

I actively avoid using Snapchat because its notification system is so bad. It’s a messaging service that doesn’t show you your messages in the notification preview. Instead, you get bland and unhelpful notifications saying “John sent a message.” Great. I tap on the notification to go into the chat view and reply. Now that I have an active conversation going, my notifications get even worse because when my chat buddy starts to type, I get another notification saying that they’re typing. Not the little typing indicator within the chat view that every other messaging service does. No. A full-on notification sent to the lock screen that buzzes my phone or watch with the text “John is typing…”. I don’t want typing indicator notifications and I don’t need them, but hell if I can figure out how to turn them off without turning off all of Snapchat’s notifications altogether.

But Snapchat is primarily a photo messaging service, you might say. Surely those notifications are better. Nope. Instead of showing a photo preview in the notification, you just get a big red (or purple for videos) square image to let you know that you have a photo waiting for you. Super helpful, thanks.

I assume part of the problem is that Snapchat is erring on the side of privacy, seeing as part of their differentiation is that their messages are only temporary. Photos can often only be seen once and old chats fade from the conversation history (also super annoying, in my opinion). But that’s not how everyone uses Snapchat, and it sure would be great to have more user preferences that I could adjust for how I receive my messages.

(And while I’m on a rant about Snapchat, I’m also often put into a bad mood when I open their app because they’ve put the ‘My AI’ chat at the very top of my chat list. But it seems to load slower than all the other chats, so when I aim and tap on the top conversation in my list, at the last second the list refreshes and I find myself tapping into the AI chat instead. So I’m often extra annoyed.)

Snapchat, I’m sure you can do better. But since you don’t seem to want to, I’ll continue to prefer Instagram DMs, iMessages, Discord chats, and basically any other service that does their notifications in a sane way.

[Steps down from soap box.]

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This is post #24/31 for Blaugust 2024.

Blaugust Apps

I’ve gotta share with you one of the small changes that my wife and I made to our home that’s had a far outsized effect on our wellbeing. A life hack, if you will. It’s to turn off your microwave.

Well, not quite turn it off. But turn off two specific functions of it. First, turn off its clock display. Second, turn off its ability to beep.

Turn off the clock

Do you really need another appliance clock in your kitchen? The stove has one, your coffee maker has one. Even your fridge might have a clock on it these days. And that’s not even considering smart displays, the smartphone in your pocket, watch on your wrist, or actual clocks on the wall. If you can, I say choose only one to keep going. The rest, turn off if you can — and if you can’t, set it to a wildly different time and then never think about it again.

It’ll be at least one fewer clocks to set when the time springs forward and falls back each year. One fewer clock to dial in after a power outage. One fewer clock to try (and fail) to keep in sync with the countless other timekeepers in your house.

Personally, I like fewer things on my to-do list.

Turn off the sound

My wife gets all the credit for this one. For as long as we’ve been together, she’s loathed letting the microwave get to the end of its cooking cycle and sound the alarm that the food is done. The loud beeps that go on for way too long were personally offensive to her. So when she used the microwave, she stayed on alert waiting for the time to tick down toward zero, and then she’d manually stop it with one or two seconds remaining. All in the service of fewer shrill beeps.

When we eventually bought a new microwave in one of our moves, I happened to be riffling through the manual and saw a section about changing its options, including how to turn off the beeps. It made the microwave completely silent — no beeps when it’s done and no beeps on each press of its buttons. I earned some Good Husband Points that day as I banished those beeps from our life.

If you’re worried about forgetting about food in the microwave because there’s no alarm, well, that’s not been a problem for us. The only downside is that, although I eliminated having to reset its clock, now I need to go through those options to turn off the beeps after every power outage.

Give it a shot! A quick internet search for your microwave’s model name and the word “manual” should bring up a PDF of that instruction booklet you assuredly discarded long ago. But there could be some life-changing stuff in there.

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This is post #23/31 for Blaugust 2024.

Tips Blaugust

A weekly list of interesting things I found on the internet, posted on Monday (this time). Sometimes themed, often not.

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1️⃣ If you read my site, I think there’s a good chance that you also listen to a Relay podcast. They just celebrated 10 years as a network, and this is a touching short film about the hosts and community during their 10th anniversary live show in London. [🔗 _IanOfEarth // youtube.com]

2️⃣ Everyone was right, the Twenty Thousand Hertz episodes exploring Apple’s iconic sound design are excellent. [🔗 The Sound of Apple // 20k.org]

3️⃣ Joshua Grady has a great tip for keeping web apps on your phone without needing to keep their icons on your Home Screen. [🔗 @joshuagrady // social.lol]

4️⃣ Yikes. Prepare yourself for the photorealistic AI generation revolution that’s coming. [🔗 @chriswelch // threads.net]

5️⃣ The thing that kept sticking out to me during this amazing video about the GameBoy’s engineering is that their pursuit of making it affordable led to it being more efficient, and vice versa. [🔗 Real Engineering // youtube.com]

6️⃣ I expect I’ll have more to say about it soon, but I’ve been binging through The Sharp End Podcast. One episode per month details with survivors of climbing accidents. They discuss what happened and what they’d do differently. I already consider it required listening for mountain go-ers. [🔗 Ashley // thesharpendpodcast.com]

7️⃣ I doubt I’ll ever tire of watching people pursue things at the ragged edge of their ability and come out on top. Tradprincess works an absolutely wicked looking roof crack, one that’s only been sent by a few very elite climbers. [🔗 Tradprincess // youtube.com]

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🔗 Take a Chance

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Thanks for reading 7 Things. If you enjoyed these links or have something neat to share, please let me know. And remember that you can get more links to internet nuggets that I’m finding every day by following me @jarrod on the social web.

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This is post #22/31 for Blaugust 2024.

7 Things Blaugust

Manu Moreale, writing on his blog about how the digital world often reflects the physical one:

There was a time when forums were the cities of the web but now are more like small towns. They’re the place where people congregate around shared interests. Spend enough time on one and you’ll get to know its citizens. New threads are infrequent, discussions are slow and can develop over months and years and it’s the refuge for those who are tired of the busyness of the big cities but still want some sense of belonging to a community.

And then there’re personal sites, the house in the forest. It’s the place people escape to when they’re tired of the noise. However personal sites are not isolated islands. They interact and stay connected, using links, mentions, emails, and RSS. It’s a part of the web that moves at a slower pace and that’s a feature, not a bug.

I really like this metaphor for your blog being your home in a connected neighborhood, and how the internet is a compelling digital manifestation of the community structures that humans have built in the physical world — but with improbable scales. Manu likens the large social networks like Facebook and X and TikTok to major cities, while I think of them as skyscrapers. Silos, if you will, reaching impossibly far into the sky. So many people crammed into one spot, sharing common utilities, and yet only a small percentage actually know each other or interact directly.

Mastodon might be more akin to mass transportation system. There are large instances and small ones — like planes, trains, or buses — but they all interact and intersect. It doesn’t really matter which one you use because the point isn’t which you’re on, the point is where you go and what you do with it. Sometimes you’ll chat with the people you’re sharing the bus with (the local timeline), but it’s kind of rare.

Blogs, as Manu noted, are the homes. We decorate them differently. We organize what’s inside them in different ways. You might like yours tidy, while mine is a bit of a mess. We stockpile posts and links, hobbies and projects, and then sometimes get a wild hair and clean house. Throw out the junk. Put a fresh coat of paint up and new photos on the wall. But despite how different each individual home is from one another, they all serve the same purpose. It’s where we live and can just be ourselves.

(Email is — of course — just like snail mail, spam and all.)

We can’t help but rebuild familiarity with our physical world into our digital ones.

This is post #21/31 for Blaugust 2024.

Blaugust Linked

After another (let’s be honest, expected) delay on my part, I’ve wrapped up my PenPal conversation with Steve Ledlow of Tangible Life. For our final exchange, Steve told me more about his kids’ dance competitions:

Dance comps for my older two girls are pretty competitive, but each one has some common measurement aspects.  Usually, they are doing both solos and duets, as well as some group numbers for their company dance group.  The ratings are usually done by a group of judges, and the styles range from lyrical, contemporary, tap, hip-hop, jazz, musical theatre, ballet and some that blend those.  It’s really an amazing world to have fallen into because of their passion for it.  I could never have imagined knowing so much about a world I’d never been exposed to in any form before them.  They have both done well, earning convention scholarships and some cash prizes when they place in the top few spots for their respective age groups and level of performance.  I’m so proud of them and watching them on stage these last few years is like nothing else.  Even when I’m unable to attend the events live, they usually have a stream and I’ll even pull over on the road on the way to something else to watch their performances via live stream.  There’s an overused and cliche phrase in the dance world of “my heart is on the stage”, but it is the truth when I’m watching them do their thing.

Now there’s a proud dad! 🙂 We also chatted about using Cotton Bureau to get t-shirt designs online for purchase, and how he’s having some trouble getting his first design approved. I hope that gets resolved soon so I can buy whatever he comes up with!

Read our entire conversation →

It was a pleasure to email with Steve, and I hope that thread stays open. And although I’m going to be taking a little break from the PenPals project for a month or two, if you’d like to be a part of it in the future, please do let me know!

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This is post #20/31 for Blaugust 2024.

PenPals Blaugust

My (not so subtle) attempt to someday guest on “the tech podcast where Dan has abandoned us once again.”

⏱️⏱️⏱️

Mikah Sargent: What is a third-party app that you think everyone should have on their phone?

This was a hard one to answer because the hosts and guests picked such good ones already (I also use CARROT Weather, Libby, and Annotable — they’re great).

So instead I’m going to choose an app that I only just found out about a few hours ago, but I’m convinced that everyone should use, and that’s Unwatched. I discovered this from the boys on Connected, and it’s a completely free app for keeping up with your YouTube subscriptions, with a rockin’ interface. Give it a list of channels you want to follow, and it’ll present an RSS-like list of all their latest videos, ready for you to swipe into a queue or dismiss. There are lots of niceties like per-channel speed settings, a sleep timer, a shortcut for saving ad-hoc videos, bookmarks, and more.

For years, I’ve been using Play to save videos for later (and have currently amassed nearly 900 unwatched videos), but I think (hope) that Unwatched queue system will encourage me to actually watch more of them. The interface is that good. And maybe I can move out all the YouTube RSS feeds I have in my RSS app.

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Kathy Campbell: What is the app you open when you wake up in the morning?

It kind of depends on if I received any notable notifications overnight, but in general, I hope my email client, Spark, first thing. The slower, asynchronous nature of email is one thing that I like best about it, but I also like to be prepared for my day and get back promptly to people if I can or need to. So I’ll look through my latest emails and do a quick triage first thing.

My next-up apps, in no particular order, are Reeder to check news and blog posts that published overnight, Micro.blog for a quick scroll through latest posts from friends, Overcast to start my morning podcasts, and (if I’m vulnerable or susceptible) Instagram where I’ll waste a bunch of time watching Reels.

⏱️⏱️⏱️

Jason Snell: What’s a bit of tech in your life that is getting a little old or faltering and probably could use a refresh?

Well, I’m currently in phase two of replacing a bunch of light switches around our house with Lutron Casseta smart switches, but the current ones aren’t faltering — they’re just not smart. So instead, I’ll say that I’d like to replace our water heater with an instant-hot tankless propane heater. We had one in our last rental home, and the immediate never-ending hot water was glorious. Our current water heater isn’t necessarily on its last legs (although, I think it has exceeded its expected life span), but it also doesn’t always keep up with our needs — even with just my wife and my usage.

But that seems like a whole thing to replace, so we probably won’t jump on it until the current water heater is truly dying.

⏱️⏱️⏱️

Jeremy Burge: Which tech product or concept were you wrong about?

Excellent question! I think I’m going to have to go with the Meta Quest/AR devices. For years I thought the whole AR/VR craze was just a fad. And to some degree, it has been cyclical — right now the world seems to be cooling off on them again — but in my brief time using my wife’s, I was impressed. Gaming is surprisingly fun, and the interface offers a glimpse into the future.

I was enamored by the Apple Vision Pro from the get-go, so I can’t say that. But another similar device that my opinion has changed drastically on, also from Meta, is the Meta Ray-Ban Smart Glasses. I thought the Snapchat Spectacles looked silly, and the Ray-Ban Stories were also not that great. But the feature set grew enticing enough with the Meta Ray-Bans that I really wanted to give them a go, and they’re indeed awesome for outdoor activities.

A couple of Meta products that I’ve had to eat my words about — who knew!?

⏱️⏱️⏱️

Bonus Topic: What is the best thing you’ve ever eaten while on vacation or traveling?

My wife and I sure had some incredible meals while on our honeymoon to Ireland and Austria, but I couldn’t describe them to you now. What I can recall with absolute clarity is the Big Mac meal I had in Aspen, Colorado after a massively draining hike on a two-week road trip out west. My wife had suffered from altitude sickness, and I carried her pack on my front while wearing my pack on my back during the 9-mile and many thousands of feet descent.

Not only was the beef quality better in Aspen, but my ravenous hunger contributed to that being the best McDonald’s meal I’ve ever had, by far.

⏰⏰⏰

Overtime Topic: What is a hardware or software feature that you can remember enjoying in the past that has now been taken away and that you wish would return?

Great answers again from the guests and hosts. I likewise miss 3D Touch on my iPhone so much. I only used Nuzzle briefly before it was shut down, but that app was super cool too. And I loved the breathing animation on Macs and miss that as well, although I’ve noticed that the LED on the Apple Vision Pro does a similar breath-like pattern while charging, which is nice.

But my true answer is Dashboard on macOS. Dashboard was a feature on the Mac that you could access with a swipe or keyboard button that brought you to a full-screen view of all your widgets. This is before the massive expansion of app widgets thanks to iOS, mind you. My favorite widget was the Web Clipper, where you could “clip” a bit of any webpage and save it as a widget, and then that small web view would stay up-to-date over time. So if the website updated, so did your clipped widget.

All the widgets back then oozed personality, and I loved the hodgepodge of skeuomorphic designs all in that one view. You’d think with all the widgets coming with apps nowadays that it would be the perfect time to bring back that Dashboard view instead of today’s desktop widgets being hidden beneath all your windows.

I hold out hope.

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Until next time, watch what you say, and keep watching the clock. Bye everybody!

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This is post #19/31 for Blaugust 2024.

Crashing Clockwise Blaugust

A weekly list of interesting things I found on the internet, posted on Sundays. Sometimes themed, often not.

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1️⃣ Luke Burrage took on the Herculean task of editing the 100 episodes of the Hypercritcal podcast, hosted by John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin, into new episodes, each by specific topic. That’s right, he cut apart and labeled each topic, and then stitched the like ones all back together so that you can listen to a full recounting of John and Dan’s thoughts about a given theme across the years of the show, (especially) including Follow Up™. [🔗 Hypercritical By Topic // lukeburrage.com]

2️⃣ Avery Trufelman of the 99% Invisible podcast makes a compelling case that the Olympics should be held in Greece every time instead of moving hosting duties around the world. [🎙️ overcast.fm]

3️⃣ I know there are iOS apps that do this (I’ve tried them), but boy I hope Apple build something like this pass maker into Wallet soon. [🔗 Wes Davis // theverge.com]

4️⃣ I really dig Matt Birchler’s concept for a ‘Question’ type of post on social media. [🔗 Matt Birchler // birchtree.me]

5️⃣ Matt Birchler also writes about the possibility that Apple is in a permanent descent from the high regard its biggest fans have had for it for decades. It’s a feeling I’ve had too. [🔗 Matt Birchler // birchtree.me]

6️⃣ Blogging extraordinaire Lou Plummer shared why and how his daily blogging habit brings him joy. [🔗 louplummer.lol]

7️⃣ Last night, I happened across this old Trailside episode about climbing in the Adirondacks that is very of its time, but actually does a great job explaining and showing climbing concepts. If you’re curious about how outdoor rock climbing “works”, it’s a good one. It’s also pretty cool to see the same spots that I climb today highlighted in video from 20 years ago or longer. Oh, and the climber/guide featured here is Russ Clune, who recently wrote a memoir about his climbing adventures and even gave a local talk at The Mountaineer just yesterday. Coincidence? [▶️ Trailside // youtube.com]

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🔗 Take a Chance

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Thanks for reading 7 Things. If you enjoyed these links or have something neat to share, please let me know. And remember that you can get more links to internet nuggets that I’m finding every day by following me @jarrod on the social web.

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This is post #18/31 for Blaugust 2024.

7 Things Blaugust

Today is August 17th, so we’re over halfway through Blaugust 2024 and I thought I would just let you know how it’s going. Bonus, it counts for my blog post for today.

After a few months of mostly not blogging, having a goal to post something every day was a real jump. Kind of cold turkey-ing my cold turkey hiatus. I didn’t announce I was going to do it. I haven’t set a recurring to-do in my task manager — doing those things would add too much pressure, I think. I just know that I want to get 31 posts in and that I should strive to write something every day.

It’s been going well! Although I haven’t posted every day, technically, I have kept up and doubled up on days when I missed. I’ve typically been writing as one of the last things I do in the day. Kind of like homework, that’s just when things with a deadline get done for me. At night, usually while sacrificing sleep. 🤷‍♂️

Although Blaugust has a suggested weekly topic theme or a prompt list to go off of, I haven’t used either of those things. I have a few ideas bouncing around my head each day and then I make the final decision when I flip open the iPad to start writing. Getting started writing isn’t really an issue for me. I just start typing. The fact that it’s been coming easily makes me optimistic that I’ll stick with this and complete the challenge.

Most of the time, I expect my off-the-cuff blog posts to be only a handful of paragraphs long, but many have turned out much longer. I just keep writing until I’ve said what I want to say and run out of words. No outline. No real plan. Just vibes that end up on the page.

I really ought to take this approach more often. Outside of Blaugust, I usually feel like I should be writing something meaningful. Something that takes time, some research, lots of links, and perfect grammar. When the goal is just to write every day, those hang-ups have kind of fallen by the wayside. Not that I want these posts to be poorly written (they still get a Grammarly proofread), I just feel that they can be a little more informal, more me. Hopefully you agree.

Anyway, my goal tonight was to let you, dear reader, how I’m feeling about Blaugust. I’ve done that, and I’m running out of words. So I think I’ll end it here. See you tomorrow!

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Bee Tee Dubs, Check In is one of the coolest (and important) iOS features that you’re probably not using. Let’s say you’re driving somewhere and want to let your significant other (or parents because they insist) know that you arrived safely. But it’s so hard to remember once you get there to stop and send the text that everything was fine. Check In will do it for you. See how to use it here.

It also works for walks at night, hiking, outdoor exercises, climbing alone, and any other time you just want your phone to have your back.

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This is post #17/31 for Blaugust 2024.

Blaugust

My mother-in-law sent a message to the family group chat a few days ago that went something like this: “Hey, there’s still a few weeks left of summer and I think we should all play a long-distance game together. Let’s all download a license plate tracker app, and compete to find the most state plates. It’d be a good excuse to check in periodically so that I know you’re all still alive and well.”

I was all in.

On family road trips growing up, the license plate game was a staple for car entertainment. Granted, we typically played the alphabet version where you’d find letters of the alphabet in order using only license plates, but the idea was still there. You still had to be on constant lookout, afraid that your sibling would snipe the license plate you were scouring.

Then on a trip out to Colorado in college, my professor and I played the alphabet game but with car models as we switched off driving duties. That competition was likewise fierce.¹

So, despite us not being on a road trip, I’m ready to win this battle. And I think my chances are good seeing that I live in a tourist destination. I’m up to six out of fifty states so far. Wish me luck! (Here’s the app I’m using.)

And I agree with my mother-in-law, it’s nice to have a specific reason to check in and stay in touch. I’m pretty bad about it otherwise — I just get caught up in all the other things to do. Maybe start a competition within your own family or friend group to round out the summer?

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This is post #16/31 for Blaugust 2024.

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1. Funny story about that trip, we got super stuck on the letter “O” for the longest time. We didn’t see any models starting with “O”, and we couldn’t even think of a vehicle that started with “O” that we could be on the lookout for. It was hours later that he smacked his forehead and exclaimed, “The van I drive is a Honda Odyssey!” We tracked one down soon after.↩︎

Blaugust