space age madness
Bending Spoons acquires Evernote, marking the end of an era – I was all in on Evernote, and don’t pay for it any longer. I hope for the product and user base that this next chapter ends up being a productive transition.
It always makes me a little sad when a startup whose work I really liked spirals down.
Hard to believe that this little, under-updated, site is 25 years old today.
It would be hard for me to sift through my feelings about this, the world, and the web are very different places than they were in 1997. What I can do is express some gratitude for are the people and places that this little blog was a doorway to. Meeting the other bloggers at that very first SXSW has led to years and years of inspiration and a career path that I couldn’t have even imagined the day I made that very first post.
I can only hope that I can become a better steward of this site in the coming years, and update it more in what is really starting to look like a post-Twitter world.
This post is mainly a test of some new hosting that was put in place this week to make sure that things are still configured and working correctly. Still WordPress, these updates were mainly due to my hosting provider phasing out some of the gear that I was hosted on. I continue to want to migrate to some kind of static publishing system.
It’s been a very busy year for me, with a lot of work travel. I’m hoping to post more here this Fall as my work schedule gets a bit more manageable.
I wear a lot of black t-shirts. My family makes fun of me for the fact that I pretty much wear a black t-shirt and gray shorts/khakis almost every day. I’m not sure how it started, probably about twenty years ago, but I think a black tshirt and jeans/khakis are the perfect clothing base layer.
My t-shirt drawer is half printed t-shirts and half black T-shirts. I have, right now, black shirts from three different brands in that “varsity” set of shirts. In a lower drawer there is another half drawer of the “junior varsity” shirts.
In my opinion, people who review black t-shirts tend to do it all wrong .
T-shirts should be reviewed like books, worn until they are worn in, and worn out, until the end. Making sure that they hold up and keep themselves and their collar in good shape.
I tend to find a brand that makes black shirts that I like, and then slowly acquire a half dresser drawer full of that brand until the end of that shirt. Like many things in life, all good black t-shirts come to an end.
At one point that preferred brand was J. Crew, and then they went and changed the shirts, and I didn’t like them anymore, no longer recommended. Next was a company called Pact, which also had the advantage of being environmentally conscious. Then, for some reason Pact stopped making black t-shirts altogether for some period of time. When they started selling them again, the new ones weren’t good, no longer recommended. (I still have about 8 of the good ones, but they are starting to wear out, so sad.)
Currently, Ugmonk and Western Rise are the two shirts that I have tested/worn for a length of time, and will buy more of, slowly, these things aren’t cheap. The road behind me is littered with other brands that I didn’t like, or which didn’t weather well. Ugmonk are more like the Pact and JCrew ones of those salad days, and the Western Rise shirt is this awesome athletic fabric. If I’m going to wear the t-shirt under something, I usually pick an Ugmonk shirt.
I won’t throw shade at the other companies whose shirts I have tried and discarded, but there are a lot of those. I like the Supreme Tagless Tees Hanes shirts as a knock around, but wouldn’t put those in my varsity lineup. Got a shirt you think I should try? Throw me a line on Twitter, I’m @bump.
Here are some things I’ve been enjoying recently, in no specific order. I am not compensated in any way, even referral payments, for these links. Hope I turn someone else onto something they enjoy.
After years of being a devoted user of Paprika, I have completed converted over to Mela as my digital recipe keeper. Mela is from the same developer as Reeder, which is the RSS reader I have used, in conjunction with Feedbin, as my newsreader or choice for a long while now. Why did I switch? First, Mela just has a much cleaner user interface, feels more current and modern than Paprika, and is more in keeping with my personal taste.
Second, because this app comes from the developer of a feed reader, it has the same concept built into it. This allows me to add my favorite recipe sites to the app, and quickly be able to see the recipes that they have posted recently, then easily add them to my recipe collection in Mela. I like this workflow better.
Migration from Paprika was very fast and I haven’t found any issues with my collection of recipes. Once I purchased both the Mac and iOS versions, my recipes appeared everywhere via iCloud sync without issue.
Mela is $4.99 for iOS and $9.99 for the Mac.
I’m a big fan of sports. I’ve also worked in sports for the vast majority of my professional career now. I’m not sure where I found it, but The Sportsletter is just an absolutely great and completely free daily sports email newsletter. It hits my inbox every morning about the time I get out of bed, and they do a phenomenal job of giving a sports fan the news, notes, stories and schedules for the day. Here’s an example newsletter for your perusal. I think maybe the best thing about it is that it’s not junked up with ads.
While I am suggesting email newsletters that hit your inbox in the morning. I have to suggest this daily news email from The Week. They are a credible source of daily news headlines without a lot of bias. You can subscribe to this one here. It’s exactly what the title says, ten things in your inbox, linking to credible news organizations about the stories if you want further information. If you’re interested in getting a bit more information every morning, this is a good way to do it.
I wouldn’t consider myself a big EDC guy, but pens have been sort of a gateway drug for me into this world. The moment I saw the Notorious EDC Beer Bomb, I knew that I had to have one. (I borrowed this image from their site, sorry Tom.) It’s a bottle opener, a pry tool, and just a delightful little guy to carry around. I’m finding all sorts of uses for mine, and I kind of can’t wait for it to get beat up with use. Here’s a great little history of the object.
Now the bad news, getting your hands on one of these isn’t super easy, and it seems like it’s getting harder all the time because they have gotten so popular, come in different color ways, and have attracted a bunch of avid collectors who congregate over on a private Facebook Group. Your best bet, if you want to take on the challenge of purchasing one of these, is to follow them on social media, and get into the Facebook group.
Do you remember LePen? When reading my weekly Pen Addict member newsletter a couple of weeks ago, there was a link to a blog post from The Stationer about the tools Tessa currently uses. Lurking in that list was a pen that I had totally forgotten about, LePen. I remembered how fun these skinny little pens are, and decided to order some from her shop. These pens are just as fun to have around I as remembered, and I am now using them to add color to my Bullet Journal spreads. I especially like their Olive Green color.
Well, that’s enough for this post, more to come soon.