Paul Graham, with some striking thoughts on how writing focuses, refines, develops, and communicates ideas better than most anything:
Half the ideas that end up in an essay will be ones you thought of while you were writing it. Indeed, that’s why I write them.
[…]
I can to some extent write essays in my head. I’ll sometimes think of a paragraph while walking or lying in bed that survives nearly unchanged in the final version. But really I’m writing when I do this. I’m doing the mental part of writing; my fingers just aren’t moving as I do it.
[…]
The reason I’ve spent so long establishing this rather obvious point is that it leads to another that many people will find shocking. If writing down your ideas always makes them more precise and more complete, then no one who hasn’t written about a topic has fully formed ideas about it. And someone who never writes has no fully formed ideas about anything nontrivial.
[…]
Putting ideas into words is certainly no guarantee that they’ll be right. Far from it. But though it’s not a sufficient condition, it is a necessary one.
My remaining grandfather passed away this past week. He was a foundational figure in my life, a role model who stuck to his values and principles. He loved his wife fiercely, and never, ever stopped caring for her, even as his own health declined. I’ll always remember Grandpa’s mischievous grin, which appeared when he got away with a joke that you didn’t expect from his typically serious demeanor. I like to think we share many things in common, the least of which are our unusual middle name and our inability to blow our nose without sounding like a blaring horn. I’ll miss him.
Here are just a few life lessons I gleaned from his 91 years of voracious life.
1️⃣ To balance goofy and serious like a master.
2️⃣ To put your partner and family first.
3️⃣ Work hard, play hard.
4️⃣ It’s okay to enjoy the things that you enjoy.
5️⃣ Given the opportunity, people will rise to meet your expectations.
6️⃣ Independence is a thing to be cherished. But it doesn’t last forever, and it doesn’t do to resist help when those who care offer it.
7️⃣ Going fast in a boat brings a smile to anyone’s face.
They say you learn something new every day. But it’s not every day that you newly learn an old thing. Or rather that a thing you learned as child, and have done every day since, well, you’ve been doing that thing wrong.
Yes, I recently learned that I’ve been tying my shoes wrong for over 20 years.
You know, I’ve always had a nagging feeling that other people’s shoes looked neater and stayed tied better than mine. I’ve actually been double-knotting my shoes every time to avoid their inevitable loosening. But I convinced myself, “You’re a Boy Scout, you know knots,” and kept on keeping on. Then, at the age of 28, when watching a YouTube video1 about alternative ways to lace boots to avoid hot spots, I heard the sentence that split my life into Before and After: “If you wrap the loop the opposite way, your knot will be cockeyed and not hold tight.”
For anyone else out there who thinks their shoe lacing method might also be wrong, here’s was my old process:
Cross one strand around the other, and pull tight.
Make a loop (actually called a bight) with the lefthand strand.
Cross the righthand strand under and around the loop.
Push a loop/bight through the loop created between the two strands.
Pull both loops to tighten the knot.
Tie the two loops in an overhand knot to double it.
Can you see my fatal flaw? It turns out that by going over and around the loop with the righthand strand instead will get the knot to sit perpendicular to the shoe, rather than the awkward parallel nonsense that I’d been doing for two decades. It had never occurred to me to try a different method.
If there’s a profound takeaway to be extracted here, it’s this: It sure is easy to get stuck in our ways of doing things and then never reconsider them. But I wanted to share how, even the simplest bit of knowledge that I took for granted — like how to tie my shoes — could be reevaluated and improved. Even for someone who literally ties life-preserving knots for a living. It’s always good to keep an open mind.
I regret to admit that I can’t find the life-changing video to share. Trust me, I’ve tried.↩︎
I’ll be honest, I stopped reading the version 8.10.0 update release notes after getting to the second line and started to write this post because it addressed my one real gripe with the redesign of 1Password:
The release notes are long, and after going back to read the rest of them, I’m impressed at how much AgileBits has fixed and improved in this “minor” release. 1Password continues to be the only password manager I recommend to folks if they’re not getting what they need out of iCloud Keychain, or other built-in password management features.
Following its history-making, back-to-back Emmy Award wins for its freshman and sophomore seasons, Apple TV+ today revealed that season three of its global phenomenon “Ted Lasso,” will premiere around the world with the first episode on Wednesday, March 15, followed by new episodes weekly, every Wednesday. Moving to its new weekly Wednesday premiere, “Ted Lasso” marks the first Apple TV+ series to launch midweek.
First of all, 🥳⚽️🟦🤩!
Second, I’m glad to see Apple try a new premiere night. Fridays are really full already, and it makes it more difficult to choose what to watch. I mean, I would have chosen to watch Ted Lasso first anyway, but now TV+ can own my Wednesday night watching for a while and I’ll still check out what’s new on Fridays.
Thirdly, I notice that the press release didn’t mention anything about this season being the series finale, as it did with Servant. Could mean nothing, but I’m choosing to be optimistic that Apple, Jason Sudeikis, and Co. are leaving the door open for more in the Ted Lasso universe.
TL;DR: You can now subscribe to HeyDingus posts by email to receive my blog posts in your inbox. I’m using Feedrabbit, and you can subscribe right here.
Tired: Getting emails via RSS.
Wired: Getting RSS via email.
Since starting HeyDingus, I’ve wanted folks to have the option to subscribe to my blog posts via email. Personally, I think RSS is the best way to keep up with a website’s updates, but not everyone is down to finding a feed reader or even knows what RSS is. Especially after considering blog posts as emails to the internet, it seemed appropriate that people should be able to receive my writing through that medium.
The bummer is that neither Squarespace nor Blot offers email delivery as a “free” feature. When I put the question to the Blot forum, I got recommendations for Buttondown. I’ve explored their newsletter platform before and both it looks great and features an RSS slurping mechanism to make it dead simple to get your content in without having to copy and paste or recreate it.
That all looked promising, and I might consider Buttondown more seriously if I decide to supplement HeyDingus with a premium newsletter. But for now, I didn’t think that adding another full-blown host for my writing was a complexity that I wanted to take on. And their free plan only allows for 100 subscribers. I don’t know how popular getting blog posts as emails will be, but I didn’t want to have to start paying for additional subscribers if it took off. Luckily, I found a free tool that requires no extra effort on my end.
Feedrabbit does exactly what I wanted. Give it an RSS feed plus your email address, and you’ll start getting every new entry as an email. It’s a consumer product, so all of the power is in each user’s hands. I have nothing to manage on my end. I can’t adjust formatting, nor the speed of delivery, and — like RSS — I have no idea of who or how many people subscribe using Feedrabbit. And their basic plan is completely free for everyone.
If Blot adds a native email subscription feature, I’ll probably switch to that. But until then, I’ll point readers to Feedrabbit if they want an email delivery option. And even if/when I do switch, Feedrabbit should continue to work for anyone subscribed in that way.
(For other bloggers, you can make it easy for readers to subscribe by entering your RSS feed into Feedrabbit’s search box, hitting ‘Subscribe’, and then copying and using the resulting URL which will point to your feed. Then readers only have to enter their email address to subscribe to your site. They won’t have to root around for your RSS feed.)
No extra work, no extra hassle. If you’ve wanted to have my writing (or any other site with an RSS feed) delivered straight to you by email, I recommend giving Feedrabbit a shot.
P.S. Blockquote formatted text gets rendered a little funny in Spark, but looks better (though not perfect) in Apple Mail. I sent feedback about it along to Feedrabbit, but you’re welcome to also let them know if you want.
P.P.S. I fed this article to ChatGPT and asked it to summarize it:
The author of the HeyDingus blog wanted to offer email subscriptions to their posts, but their website platforms didn’t have this feature. They received recommendations to use Buttondown, a newsletter platform, but it was not ideal due to its pricing and complexity. Instead, they found Feedrabbit, a free tool that delivers new blog entries to subscribers via email using RSS feeds. The author recommends it to other bloggers as a hassle-free way to offer email subscriptions to readers.
👍👍
P.P.P.S. I should have mentioned that you can find the email subscription link in the footer of any page on this site:
A weekly list of interesting things I found on the internet, posted on Sundays. Sometimes themed, often not.
1️⃣ Here’s a solid piece on Birchtree comparing touch/tap targets on a MacBook Pro and an iPad mini. There’s not as big of a difference in target size as you might expect. [🔗 Matt Bircher // birchtree.me]
4️⃣ David Smith found a fantastic use for ChatGPT. He’s speeding up language localization for his apps. It’s neither perfect nor all-encompassing, but it’s certainly a useful tool to ease getting from 0 to 1. [🔗 @_DavidSmith // mastodon.social]
5️⃣ Speaking of handy tools, simpleicons.org is another free one that I think I’m going to get a ton of use out of down the road. [🔗 simpleicons.org]
6️⃣ If you’re from my neck of the woods and are into playing outside in the winter, the Adirondack Community Avalanche Project is something that should be on your radar. It just got onto mine. [🔗 adkavy.org]
7️⃣ And here’s a fun one. My wife turned me onto these bird feeders that are basically reverse bay windows that get the birds into your house for observation! So I guess we’ll be building one of those when we own a home. [🎥 Jesica Kia // tiktok.com]
And so that is the advice I now pass on to those of you who, like me, can feel overwhelmed by the resolutions and the intentions and the mantras, those of you who feel the pressure to make big promises to yourself that you may or may not be able to keep.
It’s okay. Keep going.
Because with a little grace and a little time and perspective you will see that you are not the same person you were at 13 or 30 or on January 1st of the previous year.
I’ll admit that the clickbaity title got me, but I’m glad I read Liz’s article. It reinforces that yearly themes > New Year’s resolutions.
It’s not everyday that the core leadership team at Apple sees a change. Here’s Chance Miller, writing for 9to5Mac:
Apple has added a new face to its executive leadership team. The company has named Carol Surface its new Chief People Officer, who joins Apple after nearly a decade at the medical device company Medtronic. Surface is Apple’s first-ever Chief People Officer.
I’m a bit surprised to see Apple hire an “outsider” for this high-profile role. I thought they had learned their lesson last time. Hopefully, Surface fits within Apple’s culture better than other external hires.
As part of this change, Apple is realigning the role of Deirdre O’Brien, a 30-year Apple veteran who has been Apple’s senior vice president of Retail + People since 2019. Once Surface begins at Apple in March, Apple will remove the human resources responsibilities from O’Brien’s role, allowing her to focus full-time on retail.
It’s probably for the best that O’Brien has those duties split out. On one hand, Apple’s retail team makes up a huge part of their overall headcount, so having those roles aligned under one person makes sense. On the other, I can imagine that there are opposing incentives in trying to make the retail stores as successful and profitable as possible, and also have the happiest and most successful employees. For example, I often wonder how situations play out when retail employees are upset by one of O’Brien’s decrees. When your head of HR is also the retail boss, knowing where and how the buck stops — I imagine — gets murky. Having Surface as another person to balance out those debates will probably be beneficial for everyone.
As a side note, I’m curious about how Apple determines a “Chief ____ Officer” role versus a Senior Vice President or Vice President. If there’s a pattern to their Leadership page, I can’t see it. ‘People’ joins ‘Executive’, ‘Financial’, and ‘Operations’ as the only C-level positions after the Chief Design Officer role disappeared with John Ive’s departure. A fact that’s more relevant this week as Apple is, reportedly, planning to have their lead industrial designers all report to the Chief Operations Officer, rather than name a new head for the team after Evans Hankey, current vice president of industrial design, also exits.
Anyway, back to Surface as the new Chief People Officer.
Carol Surface joins Apple after a 10-year stint as an executive vice president in charge of human resources. Prior to that, she spent three and a half years in that same role at Best Buy as well as over a decade in human resources and personnel at PepsiCo. She received a Bachelor of arts in psychology from Castleton University and a Ph.D. in industrial and organizational psychology from Central Michigan University.
Surface certainly has the receipts to be successful in this role. Apple’s been dropping down the “best places to work” list, so they could use a change up in that regard. I wish Surface all the best, and hope we hear positive feedback from Apple employees about her tenure. I’m extra rooting for her since I see she earned her Ph.D. from Central Michigan University; it’s also my alma mater.
Apple TV+ today announced that its international Emmy Award-winning global espionage thriller “Tehran” has been renewed for a third season, and that multi-Emmy Award nominee Hugh Laurie (“House M.D.,” “The Night Manager,” “Roadkill”) is set to join the ensemble cast. Created by Moshe Zonder, Dana Eden and Maor Kohn, and directed by Daniel Syrkin, season three of “Tehran” is now in production.
Tehran is definitely one of those edge-of-your-seat sort of shows. I thoroughly enjoyed seasons one and two, even if I was thoroughly frustrated with some of the characters’ decisions.
As a huge Hugh Laurie fan, I’m excited to see his role in the show and where season three will go after the spicy end to season two.
