Radiohead - OK Computer OKNOTOK 1997 2017

The original analogue tapes are the highest definition version of the record, and nothing will ever beat them. However in the 20 years since the original release mastering technology has improved a lot, and with new equipment and techniques we can make a digital version that’s an improvement of the original transfer.

I’m getting this. While I don’t think I’ll appreciate the higher quality of the remaster, the influence this album had on me was huge. I love this album. My mom took me to the store to buy this album on a Friday after high school, and suddenly I had a musical taste that really clicked.

Microsoft Surface Laptop

Beautiful laptop, and amazing introduction video. If this was the new MacBook Air, I’d be excited. Sadly, regardless of Windows 10 S or Pro, I’d choose ChromeOS or Linux first.

Apple AirPods satisfaction at a remarkable 98% for customers

New Experian survey explores consumer satisfaction with AirPods and other voice-first hardware.

Doesn’t surprise me at all, the AirPods are my favorite Apple gadget in a long time. But, curious about how many use it as a voice-first hardware. First thing I did was turn-off Siri on double-tap.

Auphonic Audiogram Generator: Waveform Videos for Podcasts and Audio Files

Auphonic can now generate shareable videos from audio files, including a dynamically generated waveform and your cover image (or possible chapter images) as background.

This is really cool¹, it lets you create a video out of your audio. Which is easier to share and way more catchy on social networks. If/when I do another podcast, this will likely be on the workflow.

Books of Winter 2016

Here are the books I read over the past 6 months. As usual, the fiction ones were on Kindle, and the non-fiction as audiobooks.

Fiction

• Lucifer’s Hammer by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle. | ★ recommended
  I was in the mood for a disaster book that dealt with the aftermath, and on that it delivers. The book is from the 70’s, which is fun for the prehistoric tech enviroment, but not so much for some flat (and sexualized) female characters.

• Killfile by Christopher Farnsworth. | ★ recommended
  Fun action-thriller page turner with believable superpower (as in good balance of superpower versus its downside). This is a perfect weekend vacation book.

• Death’s End (Remembrance of Earth’s Past) by Cixin Liu, Ken Liu | ★ recommended
  The final book in The Three-Body Problem trilogy. Among the best Sci-Fi I’ve read. I don’t think it is my favorite of the three, but that’s not saying much given how I love the first two. If you enjoy mind-stretching Sci-Fi, read these books.

• Dark Matter by Blake Crouch. | ☆ skip it
  Great premise, powerful start, but it lost me in the second half. Maybe I was expecting more Sci-Fi, and it ends up being more action thriller. If you like do-over books give it a try, but I just went through the motions in the end.

• The Grace of Kings (The Dandelion Dynasty) by Ken Liu | ★ recommended
  Borderline fantasy — or as much fantasy as Game of Thrones is. This feels more of an early Roman or Japanese empire story set in a fantasy geography. Fun story with very strong characters.

• The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth Book 1) by N. K. Jemisin. | ★ recommended
  Fascinating fantasy world. Actually, the world itself is a character, which in a novel with very strong characters says a lot. I’m likely in for the whole series.

• The Obelisk Gate (The Broken Earth Book 2) by N. K. Jemisin | ★ recommended
  Suffers a bit as a sequel, but still a great read. It advances the story nicely to the next book, which I’ll read for sure.

• Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky | ★ recommended
  A new classic hard Sci-Fi about humans leaving earth for the stars… without much of the usual cliches involved. While never dense, it gets a bit slow sometimes, but it’s for good reasons and you get rewarded for it. Among my favorite books of 2016/2017.

• Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman. | ★ recommended
  Not my typical fiction book, it’s basically a combination of deeply studied viking folklore stories put together, which makes a somewhat coherent book — as much of folklore does. I read it because I love Gaiman and was somewhat intrigued by the topic. I enjoyed it a lot more than expected.

Non-fiction

• How Star Wars Conquered the Universe: The Past, Present, and Future of a Multibillion Dollar Franchise by Chris Taylor | ★ recommended
  Rogue One was coming and I wanted a Star Wars fix. It’s a journalist view of the Star Wars property, written by a fan. It worked really well for me, since it steps back and look at the big holes in the universe, without loosing the love for it.

• A Little History of Philosophy (Little Histories) by Nigel Warburton. | ★ recommended
  I thought this was going to be a copycat of A Little History of the World¹, but was gladly disappointed. If you struggle like me to put historic characters in context — or in a timeline — this is a great book. Complex concepts are explained as simply as possible, and very dense ones are highlighted enough so you can look for more if interested.

Spotify looking at hardware talent

You will be leading an initiative to deliver hardware directly from Spotify to existing and new customers; a category defining product akin to Pebble Watch, Amazon Echo, and Snap Spectacles.

Spotify bluetooth/4G headphones? smartwatch? green discman? Car Stereo?.

‘The Fifth Element’ Returning to Theaters for 20th Anniversary

A 4K restoration of the 1997 space epic will hit multiplexes on Sunday, May 14th and Wednesday, May 17th as part of Fathom Events’ 20th anniversary re-release, Entertainment Weekly reports.

This is babysitter worthy. Will report.

Steph Curry Eliminates ‘Unnecessary Distractions’ by Deleting Social Media Apps

The Golden State Warriors superstar recently told Chris Haynes of ESPN that he deleted all of the social media apps from his phone before the playoffs began. The reason behind it, of course, is he wants to devote all of his attention toward winning another championship. 

I think the time for early adopters to adopt no social apps is here.

/via jamcnn

Firefox 53 new minimal themes

That’s why today’s release of Firefox for desktop ships with two new themes: Compact Light and Compact Dark. Compact Light shrinks the size of the browser’s user interface (the ‘chrome’) while maintaining Firefox’s default light color scheme.

Enjoying the new themes, and snappiness of Firefox versus Chrome. Will use it as my work default for a few days.

Cal Newport on doing Deep Work and escaping social media — The Ezra Klein Show

[…] I’m a bit obsessed with Newport’s work right now, and especially his account of how the digital environment we inhabit is training us out of concentration and into distraction in ways that are bad for us, bad for our work, and ultimately bad for the world.

Halfway through the episode and I already deleted all social apps from my phone again — will use the websites for the next month.

/via coliver.

Seeing Theory

A visual introduction to probability and statistics.

I say amazing a lot, but this is AMAZING.

The Alphabet Book

Great lesson on idle time. I just want to print the results somewhere.

More cool designs at Ål Power website.

Increment Magazine

Amazing online magazine from the team at Stripe:

Increment is dedicated to covering how teams build and operate software systems at scale, one issue at a time.

Just skimming the first issue makes me realize I would have paid for it. This is a great contribution to the tech community.

Sublime Text 3 new icon

Among some welcomed better High DPI support and fixes, Build 3128 of ST3 has nice looking new icon:

Sublime Text 3 new icon

No more replacing the default icon by me.

Book publishing in the digital age

A bunch of interesting snippets in the article:

This technical distinction is also present in consumer behavior. eBooks—with their instant access and cheap prices—sell generally 6x more quantities than print books for us. That said, a print book will generally generate 7x more revenue than an eBook.

Very interesting, and I strongly agree with the next sentence in the paragraph:

It’s hard to generate revenue on an eBook because the whole premise of the platform is, I want this quickly and at the cheapest price possible. The premise of a print book in the digital age is driven by luxury: I read better on paper…or…I like the feeling of turning a page. You can’t create much markup on utility, whereas you can create a great deal of markup on luxury.

The whole article reads like summary notes of an industry paper, worth the bookmark.

74,476 reasons you should always get the bigger pizza

Always, always, go extra-large:

The math of why bigger pizzas are such a good deal is simple: A pizza is a circle, and the area of a circle increases with the square of the radius.

Happy friday.

Art in apps became a real thing (Why Pro Matters)

Great overview by Sebastiaan de With on my the Pro market should matter to Apple:

Without a truly top-tier workstation, Apple will miss out on a huge segment of digital creatives that can craft the future of human-machine interaction — something way beyond tapping a piece of glass. It would lack a Mac workstation with the raw computing power to prototype VR and AR interactions, build game worlds, simulate complex models and render the effects of tomorrow’s great feature films all the while offering those same creatives a platform to create for its own mobile devices.

These are all rational reasons. We have less access to the financial ones, but I’m sure they’re there. Lastly, there’s the feeling of coolness; of getting the right tool for the job. That’s a thing Mac’s are slowly loosing.

But it does seem that Apple finally noticed.

Soylent Ad: Pizza Helper

Originally didn’t get the Trish AI spokesperson concept, but as a Soylent user, this ad represents how I think about the product.

How to align your daily todos with your long term goals

From imranq, Ask HN thread:

Advice from my physics professor: make a detailed plan and then discard the plan and do what you feel.
This doesn’t mean the plan was unnecessary…rather the plan carves out the neural pathways in your mind

Have been coming back to this a lot this week.

Siempo — The Phone for Humans

We felt overwhelmed by our phones so we built a better one. Smart technology re-imagined for a less distracted life.

Lots interesting ideas. Seems like these should be features and not an Android fork, but will be happy if it finds a niche.

A Bot’s Bot

I still don’t use bots, but they continue to be released — with some interesting integrations.

What I’m hoping for is a smart(ish) bot valet. A meta bot which connects to other bots based on what I’m asking. Basically the lovechild of Siri and IFTTT, without all the configuration, and can read and write.

Curious why IFTTT is not in the bot game already? Seems a natural evolution.

Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms

The shift toward Google-powered devices is hurting Apple’s revenue. Of the $7.35 billion that schools, colleges and universities spent on mobile and desktop computers in 2016, sales of Apple devices fell to $2.8 billion in 2016, from about $3.2 billion in 2015, according to IDC, a market research firm.

This is not like the smartphone marketshare debate, where the iPhone is “loosing” — yet has by far the biggest revenue share. On schools they are loosing in both areas.

Then there is the keyboard issue. While school administrators generally like the iPad’s touch screens for younger elementary school students, some said older students often needed laptops with built-in physical keyboards for writing and taking state assessment tests.

Either physical or touchscreen, the iPad needs more space for the keyboard if you’re doing common work. I know that for emails, messages and browsing the on-screen keyboard is fine. But to do a paper or report you can’t have the keyboard obscuring half of an already crowed space.

The Pixar of TV Shows

I know Steve Jobs nostalgia has very little to do with a succesful strategy. But pretty sure that if Steve were alive™, Planet of the Apps wouldn’t be one of Apple’s first series:

Carpool Kareoke on the other hand, looks exactly like something he’d share on a WWDC:

How Sonos will take on Alexa and Google: by integrating them

Sonos CEO Patrick Spence:

Certainly I’m sure there are people that have purchased a Google Home or an Echo instead of a Play:1, but I don’t look at that [and think] they’re dead to Sonos. There’s an opportunity to get into their living room and get into other rooms in their home with some of the interoperability work we’re doing.

Sonos devices sound quality continues to be significantly better than Echo’s and Google Home. Starting your smart home devices with a AI hub that has a good-enough speaker, and then adding compatible speakers with much better sounds, seems like a solid plan.

The Expanse: Season 2

I didn’t kill him because he was crazy; I killed him because he was making sense.

Although I read the books and liked season one, it wasn’t my favorite show. But three episodes into season two, I can’t wait for the next one. The characters and environments took shape, and now it’s pure story.

Apple used to care about iBooks

Daniel Steinberg:

I’ve joked that if Eddie Cue loved reading the way he clearly loves music, then iBooks, the iBookstore, and iBooks Author would be amazing. Not only aren’t they amazing, they aren’t even good.

In 2013 I helped out creating ebooks for a family friends. I first did the Kindle’s version, and it was a painful experience — similar to making a website in the early days. I left the iBook for last, looking forward to the experience. A few days letter, I was back using the epub generator and converting it to the Apple format.

Sad to hear not much has changed.

An adorable little chaos inside your home

My safety razor, brush and shaving soap always go together underneath the sink… or at least they did until my 14 month old son started opening every drawer and cabinet in the house.

So I moved the razed to a top drawer. To say that my organizational OCD had an issue with this is an insight of how much time I waste in every one of my workflows. But the raw fear of our small tornado finding my Merkur razor fought fire with fire in my mind.

A week later, I’m actually enjoying the new setup. The razor, the blades and the altoids’ container for used blades now sit together on the drawer.

Parenting keeps generating outcomes likes this. I don’t know if it’s Stockholm syndrome, or sanity complacency. But the end of your personal efficiency brings some fun practical shortcuts through the valley of chaos.

Deplete Inventories

One of my new year’s resolution is to be frugal. Which as a high level virtue sounds great, but can be difficult to practice everyday. The best trick I’ve found is to not purchase anything if I have some of it left at home.

For most stuff, this means running out of my preferred brand, and dusting off whatever was replaced by it. Shaving creams, aftershave, meat spices and even ebooks.

Curious how long can I last, but I do like that it feels like a rule that nudges me in the right direction.

The challenge of accepting the challenge

Sometimes you work with people that challenge you, other times, not so much. In most cases it has nothing to do with smarts, just the way a company’s processes work.

On occasion, you start to get challenged because you’re being left behind. You’re set in your ways, and don’t notice the changing landscape, attitudes and objectives.

Embrace the challenge. It’s not personal, it’s business. You’re getting a chance. Enjoy the gut feeling prism that has given you a new perspective.

Once you notice the challenge, take some time to figure out were the organization is going rather than running behind it. It’ll save you time later, and you might end up getting ahead in the process.

Atlassian acquires Trello for $425M

It’s a great exit for Trello. Would have preferred that it was Github the acquirer, but it makes perfect sense for Atlassian.

It’s no surprise then, that the company’s press release specifically cites Trello’s popularity with business teams in finance, HR, legal, marketing and sales and notes that 50 percent of Trello users work in non-technical functions.

Trello is not efficient, it’s flexible. It doesn’t impose order like Jira, and if you use incorrectly it can be chaotic. But for many type of users, it’s the modern shared spreadsheet perfect for collaboration.

Make it easy to succeed

Are rules supposed to persuade or dissuade you from something? Take the following question:

Did you write today?

I ask and track this question in multiple ways. Its objective is to encourage me to write. But it’s really a reminder type of question. The problem is that I don’t forget to write each day, I struggle with writing.

A question that’s supposed to help me write should make a habit out of writing. It should be easier to successfully answer it than not. It should pull me towards the goal.

In which case a better question is:

Did you write 1 sentence today?

Success is learning the lesson, not passing the test. Even when I’m my own teacher, I forget this.

Restrictions as minimalism

Back when I still had a Canon DSLR, my main lens was a nifty fifty. I love the concept of accepting its set of restrictions, and getting in return consistent beautiful pictures.

At the same time, knowing that it was probably the best bang for the buck, made me feel like a hip minimalist.

I need to apply this to other aspects of my digital life. My work MacBook Pro has many, too many, utilities and apps that replicate features the macOS already provides.

As I try to reduce friction in my workflows, I don’t necessary end up with increase productivity. I get endorphins from being smart about the workflow, which could come from the final work result instead.

I see a clean install in my future.

What Apple gives you for $100 as a Safari Extension Developer 

Turns out, however, Apple did eventually publish the extension — they just never told us. We don’t know when it happened, but it was likely around or after Thanksgiving, because we’d checked a few times since receiving that last email saying we were still under review.

There’s very few cool/new extensions for Safari nowadays. This dev makes the case that it’s a terrible experience for programmers. iOS/Mac codebase consolidation is likely the cause, and again, the Mac gets a downgrade in experience because of it.

Not sharing is uncaring

It’s amazing the influence social network have in our life. The topic of followers and how to get more came up more than once during our Christmas family gatherings.

How many posts are ok? What sort of content is best? These were questions that didn’t need much explanation across generations.

The basic utility that social networks have become in the smartphone era is probably one of the fastest adopted applications ever.

I do hope this oversharing phenomenon will become this decade’s bell bottoms. Something my son will shudder and laugh at in the future.

Extrovert and introvert

Most people would describe their first impression of my Dad as quiet, and of my Mom as fun. I have always enjoyed hearing that I’m certainly my mothers son.

For a long time I wondered: am I good fun? or bad at being quiet?

There’s two situations that have given me clues that I’m more of an introvert that I let myself believe. Big social events and personal conflict. Both of these extremes exhaust me. More than swimming 5k, more than doing an all-nighter. I’m knocked out when I get home, and I’m tired for days.

In both cases, my extrovert script fails. There’s too many interactions in which you can’t plan ahead… or think about it for a while. But I’m OK with this.

My concern recently has been that I feel a kind of regret when I let myself go off script. When I’m perfectly honest and spontaneous, I later look back at the conversation with uneasiness. Because I know it could have gone better somehow.

I’m planning to work on this on 2017.

Cooking is coding. Your guests are QA , they just don’t know it.

During the last year, I started cooking a lot more. Mostly because I got into sous-vide cooking, and suddenly a lot of weird complex steps had a methodological process with logical flow.

By starting with something that was also new to my wife — which is an awesome cook — I managed to defeat my initial fear of failure. That’s dumb I know, but smart I’m not.

In just a few weeks I noticed the benefits of cooking. Not only did I help Ana during the week, but in most cases I felt happier after I finished cooking. Even if you’re preparing a vinaigrette for a salad, all the work cruft that’s top of mind when you arrive home is pushed away.

As with every new topic, I quickly realized how much I don’t know. Yet, there’s many shortcuts that with a 80/20 level of effort, get you to some delicious meals.

Since I mostly did meats this year, I’ll close with the easiest one: temperature. So much anxiety in my past cooking could have been avoided with a thermometer. Some people might have a 6th sense with cooking times, but for everyone else, there’s a target temperature and you’re done with it.

Does key clickiness hold the key for ideas to click?

Of course not. But as I go through the list of chapters of The Elements of Eloquence, this was only polyptoton I could come up with today.

Still, something strange is happening with my reaction to keyboards. And my preference is changing.

When my 12in MacBook arrived, I had a common first reaction: the keyboard click is weird — and the arrows layout sucks. For a few weeks the keyboard in the 2015 MacBook Pro and old wireless keyboard felt just right and at home.

Then last week I borrowed the newest Magic Keyboard from the someone on vacation at the office. Although it has more key travel than the MacBook keyboard, it’s closer than the old keyboards.

By the end of the week, the keyboard of the MacBook Pro 2015, started to remind me of the keyboard of the MacBook 2008 I use as a media server. The key’s felt mushy and too far apart.

As I write this, I’d rather reach for my MacBook 12in than my MacBook Pro. Maybe it’s complacency or muscle memory. But maybe just maybe, the new keyboards are better.

Placing a pledge on micro.blog

Next week Manton Reece is expected to launch a kickstarter campaign for Micro.blog — his upcoming social network / mini publishing tool.

I will place my pledge without pause.

My past software pledges (Ghost and Macaw) have not been a great personal investment, but I felt strongly about both. Ghost is the most similar, and the biggest disappointment since it hasn’t become the cheap and easy blog platform I’ve hoped.

But Manton has been dreaming and working on this project for a long time. His attention to details — such as how links should work — make me excited about his vision for a service. And his experience developing against Twitter, App.net and Flicker is a good enough reasons of why he’d want an alternative.

Apple can make anything, just not everything

I’m in love with my AirPods. They’ve made me understand Apple’s priorities.

If Apple had to decide that in 2016 it would launch the AirPods or a new Mac Mini, I’m happy with the decision.

In just 1 week, small headphones without wires have changed how/when/where I listen to my iPhone. The effects of a sub $200 gadget are going to be significant in my behavior.

There’s no wire you can cut on a Mac that will have this effect.

Apple biggest constraint is opportunity cost. It’s a new MacPro vs augmented eyewear, it’s macOS features vs Siri features, it’s a new old thing vs a new new thing.

Holiday tidbits

→ Blade Runner 2049 Announcement I’ll allow myself excitement over this. The look is right and feel right — as in uncomfortable.

→ Shake Shack’s mobile app now takes orders across the US This could get ugly — and by this I mean me.

→ Spotify Updates Mac App With Full Touch Bar Support for MacBook Pro That was fast. Sadly no AppleTV or Apple Watch version in sight.

→ Duet Adds Touch Bar This is cool. If you have a 9.7in iPad, it’s fairly good Touch Bar test.

Top 5 2016 iOS Apps

I was planning to post this next week, but App Santa includes so many good apps, that I want to share early:

1. Castro: With the release of version 2.0, this is my new default player.
2. Tweetbot: The one and only. Likely I’d quit Twitter if Tweetbot wasn’t around.
3. Day One: I use this app everyday. Version 2.0 shows promise, but speed is lagging. Still, best journaling app out there.
4. Happy Scale: If you’re serious about tracking your weight, there’s no better app. I’ve tried them all.
5. Inbox by Gmail: There’s something about Inbox’s UX that just works for me. Still can’t use it on the Desktop, but on mobile it’s my default mail client.

Finalist¹:

• Launch Center Pro: I always return this app to my homescreen. Even without complex scripts, it’s faster than going through screens and folders (Castro, Tweetbot and Happy Scale are launched from this App)
• The Economist Espresso: At $2.99, it’s how I currently keep up-to-date with non-tech news.
• Morning Reader: For tech news, this site/App has replaced Techmeme as my source.
• Carbo: If it’s in a piece of paper, whiteboard, desk or post-it, I scan it with Carbo.
• Plane Finder: I love looking at planes on final approach or taking off. Even at cruising altitude, this app lets you check everything you’d want to know about the flight.

Encryption App ‘Signal’ Fights Censorship With a Clever Workaround

Andy Greenberg on Wired:

“Now when people in Egypt or the United Arab Emirates send a Signal message, it’ll look identical to something like a Google search,” Marlinspike says. “The idea is that using Signal will look like using Google; if you want to block Signal you’ll have to block Google.”

Smart. Since Signal is not as widely used as WhatsApp, blocking it doesn’t cause same uproar. This workaround ties its fate with Google, which is like using Godzilla for your canary in a coal mine test.