Once every few weeks, I randomly type in ‘tw’ into my address bar and hit return. Takes me to Twitter.com. I don’t know why I do this, because as far as intentional usage goes, it’s been months I’ve been on there. I really do like it better on the fediverse. Feels more like a social place. It protects my mental ... Continue reading →

It never really clicked to me how personal a keyboard is.

The way you push these buttons, the way you move your fingers, how much your fingers travel, how hard you push, where you find the apostrophes and where you hunt for the ellipsis to pause your sentence and your mind. Where you drop a semi-colon from while effortlessly knowing where to look for the currency you need to print on your screen five words from now.

I can never journal my day if it's not my keyboard. The one I am familiar with. I can't even do it on my phone with its touchpad… it has to be tactile, it has to be mine.

I need to know where to rest the palm of my hands when my mind pauses. For that gentle depression of the hand in this physical space to feel familiar.

I need to be able to travel places in my prose as quickly as I do in my mind. I want a 'tool' — something I can wield. Not something that feels like a coarse brick.

It doesn't have to be fancy. It just has to feel right. And anything can feel right to you.

I encourage you to get in touch over email by using the following convenience link for any discussion: comment via email.

It's funny this pattern keeps emerging over and over in our lives — complain about something, lose any built-up joy and expectation of it, and then come to like it and enjoy it gradually. For context, I was very critical of AirPods just a while back.

Of course I only use them in "controlled" environments, still, but they sound…pretty good? Spatial Audio isn't so bad, not even 'head tracked' which I disliked so much all throughout. A big reason I don't like those in-the-ear earphones is they disconnect you from the real world: a car honking, a loud bang etc. This is where this head-tracking stuff shines. It allows me to turn my head and have these real world experiences filter through pretty…naturally.

Switching between devices is easy too. The battery backup is fine for me.

That said, I almost lost one earpiece on a flight recently when it fell down and I couldn't locate it. Anyone could have just…taken it. Thankfully, the passenger behind me was kind. (The same two people I had let walk ahead of me when boarding. How cute that it was them!)

It's true that they are designed to be lost and designed to be wasteful — that's what still worries me the most.

I encourage you to get in touch over email by using the following convenience link for any discussion: comment via email.

Two things that frustrate me as a web developer when I see them on the wild web:

• Being unable to toggle a tick box by clicking/tapping on its label.
  • A label has a much larger surface area for tapping/clicking and keeps things "easy" for everyone.
  • Not to mention it is accessible for people who use accessibility features.
• Not having the right inputmode or type attribute on an input.
  • This breaks iOS auto-fill for one-time passwords received via SMS.
  • Suddenly I have extra mental load I may or may not have space for. It sure is work for me to use the number row on iOS since it isn't perma-visible like on Android, and isn't big and simple like the numpad can be.

I wish we lived in a world where we could care about things like these, but I can only sympathise with developers who have to put a rush on everything and are not even paid a living wage. I don't feel right accusing anyone of shoddy work when they couldn't care less… are not paid to care enough.

I encourage you to get in touch over email by using the following convenience link for any discussion: comment via email.

Since getting the Fitbit, I've been trying to walk 250 steps or more every hour. It pings me 10 minutes before an hour is to finish if I haven't already completed my 250+ steps.

Looking at my weekly averages, there are of course good weeks (5 of 8 hours on an average per day) and then there are bad weeks (2-3 of 8 hours on an average per day). I've been trying to build this habit for a really long time now.

I can start the day with a lot of determination, but something or the other during the work day stops me from "getting up." Sometimes I'm so engrossed in my work that I don't even remember the device vibrating to let me know I need to get up.

I try to listen to it, yes, but I probably need to do more. I don't think I've ever had a day that was 8 of 8.

Still, this is infinitely better than my previous lifestyle. It's a step up (that is an intentional double pun and I'm proud of it). I'll take it.

I encourage you to get in touch over email by using the following convenience link for any discussion: comment via email.