How are you? I’m doing okay given the circumstances, and I truly hope you’re doing well at this crazy moment in history. I should mention that I am currently looking for a job in digital products and you can read more about my background on my LinkedIn profile. I’m long overdue for some sporadic blog posting, so here goes, here are some things I have enjoyed lately.
Something to Read: A great TechCrunch article by Darrell Etherington about improving your at-home videoconference setup on any budget. This article goes into a lot of detail and has excellent videos inline that help along the way. Even if you think you have a great setup, worth a read.
Something to Listen To: I really enjoyed the most recent episode of Switched on Pop, an excellent podcast about pop music. This episode, Why lo-fi is the perfect background music, covers the rise and origins of lo-fi music, including J Dilla’s influence on its origins and Adult Swim’s role in its popularity. I've been listening to a lot of this style of music for a long while, this was a lot of information that I didn't know, and was very interesting to learn.
Something to Listen On: I’m loving my $20 IKEA Frekvens Portable Speaker. It’s become the speaker that I take out to the backyard to work on some project or to the front porch to listen to something while I have a beer and relax. I don’t think you can order them online, but I highly recommend if you have a means of obtaining. The sound is really good for such a little speaker, and the device was created in conjunction with Teenage Engineering. You may have heard of them because of Playdate, but I’ve wanted an OP-1 since basically forever.
Something to Snack On: I discovered Honey Mama’s, I believe, through the Random Show, which is a podcast that Tim Ferris does with Kevin Rose. In any case, these bars, and I love love lovethe Mayan Spice flavor, are made with honey, instead of refined sugars, cocoa, and other ingredients depending on the flavor. The Mayan Spice are a little spicy and a little chocolatey, are a nice treat. I will say that these are not cheap, and take a little while to ship if you don’t have a store near you. Worth the price and wait, in my opinion, I just had one after lunch.
I continue to call this series of post "weekly" despite the fact that, based on actual data, it's really trimonthly. (Trimonthly is only defined as occurring every three months, unlike the confusing bimonthly.) I'm going to be stubborn about this in the hope that, over time, I will be able to make progress in making it more often.
I'm sure you've heard this from many others at this point, and, more than likely, you've already seen it, but, just in case, I can't recommend Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse enough. It's truly unlike any other superhero movie I've ever seen before, and I have seen just about everything. The animation style, and techniques are so cool. Also, even if you have seen it, this Twitter Moment is worth checking out, Bagel!. Every member of our family loved this movie, and I intend to watch it several more times. I was also lucky enough to get a pair of the sneakers from the film before they sold out.
I listen to many of the same podcasts each week, with only a rare few being "must listen" status where I never miss an episode. That's probably a good topic for a future blog post. One podcast that I have added to my rotation on a daily basis, however, is Techmeme's Ride Home. This show is great in that, most days, they have pushed the daily episode before I get into my car to leave for the day. With the way Overcast works, this means that this is waiting and ready to be played when I start my drive. Each episode contains carefully crafted coverage of that day's tech news, and it's never longer than fifteen minutes. It's allowed me to stay up to date on several stories that are outside of my interest area. They do a really great job, and on a week like this one, with bucketloads of CES news, it helps me wade through the cruft to get to the interesting stuff. The host, Brian McCollough, weaves his own humorous delivery into the stories, and that makes taking the medicine of tech news a bit easier as well.
I'm completely entranced by Reuben Wu's photography. He uses drones to create either objects made of light or to do the lighting for the photograph. This article by Ilana Herzig for Artsy does a good job of covering the basics of his vision and some of how he captures what he does. You may also be familiar with him from the music group Ladytron. (Wishing that I could afford one of his works, but I'm on a budget at the moment.)
It’s been a few weeks since I’ve done one of these. No excuses, but I’m also not putting too much pressure on myself. We went to the beach for a week, and I was at E3, which I should probably write something about.
Since it’s Summer and we went to the beach, one thing that’s been top of mind for me has been sunglasses. I’ve typically worn Ray Bans, which are $100+ a pair. Not all sunglasses look good on me, but the Wayfarer models usually look okay. Unfortunately, I have a horrible track record of scratching or losing them. At $100+ a pop, that’s shitty. Additionally, I have an iPhone X, and actual Ray Ban Wayfarers don’t typically work with FaceID.
Enter Goodr, I discovered this brand via a professional runner who I follow on Instagram. (I follow a bunch of fitness athletes on Instagram. It’s one of my strategies for keeping myself motivated and inspired to work out myself.)
Goodr glasses are roughly Wayfarer shaped, but they only cost $25 a pair. They also, although you mileage may vary by color, work with FaceID. So I can lose or damage a pair of these, and not feel like I wasted a C Note. They also make pretty rad holiday color ways. The most recent is the “Betsy Ross” pictured above, which I purchased for my 4th of July fun. (I’m not getting any referral credit or anything, I am just recommending these glasses because I think they are great.)
One other item I wanted to call attention to this week is the limited availability of new Hypercritical shirts from John Siracusa. As a long time fan of his reviews, blog, podcasts new and old, and social media, I own one of the original shirts, but was delighted that these were available, and in new colors. I went for the color pictured, but there are others. I have found that I have too many black t-shirts, and I am feeling the need to mix it up a bit more. These shirts are only available until June 29th, so better get hopping and get one if you’re going to want one.
Last but not least, the Andys are at it again. They will be conducting an XOXO Festival in Portland this year, and the registration application is currently available, through June 29th. I have attended three of the previous XOXO Festivals. All of them were great experiences, I met great people, was exposed to interesting ideas, and left inspired and refreshed. I could not recommend it more. Unfortunately, it doesn’t fit into my September calendar. We’re taking the kids to Walt Disney World for a week the following week. Hopefully I can still get some of those sweet sweet XOXO Field Notes if they make them.
