Like everyone else nowadays, I’ve decided to delve into the medium that is the newsletter.

It’s a medium that has interested me for a while. I appreciate the direct connection between a writer and their audience, which I don’t feel you get from simply reading a blog. I can’t quite put it into words, but there’s a value to have peoples writing occasionally appear in your inbox. I think newsletters in general bring out the best of email. It feels as if someone has written out a long letter and personally delivered it to you.

I’m not sure if anyone feels the same way as myself about newsletters. But at least for my newsletter, I want to try and deliver something akin to a personal letter. I haven’t quite decided on the format yet. I’m currently thinking of a long-form story, with maybe a few extra pieces of news, but that may change.

The one thing I want to keep consistent is a focus on me writing to my audience, and not just treat this as a medium for advertising my projects or filling an issue with tons of links. That’s not to say link-based newsletters are bad, I subscribe to a few of them myself. But personally, I would rather share links directly on the blog, and write specifically for a newsletter.

The schedule I’m going with is monthly. That may seem a bit odd, since the most common seems to be weekly. But I think if I went that way, I would end up either rushing writing, missing weeks, and eventually becoming tired of writing it. This way, I hope I can build up some consistency, and get better at writing longer pieces.

The newsletter will be hosted here on the blog, and if you’re signed in, you will be able to see the issues on the website along with getting them delivered to your inbox.

I would like to say here that while this newsletter is starting off being free, it is an idea of mine to eventually either turn it into a paid newsletter, or at least have a paid option. But any option of that will be a while away, and any decisions will be posted on the blog.

If you like the sound of that, then please feel free to sign up to my newsletter. I will treat it as an honour to have access to your inbox.

Matt Birchler, over on his A Better Computer YouTube channel, released a video on unfair advantages, and why you should recognise them and make use of them.

It's fundamentally a simple idea, focussing on what you're good at. But it's true that it's probably not what we focus on. Instead, we think about what we aren't capable of doing, what our disadvantages are, and simply why things are difficult.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I do think there is something for everyone, and we each have our own advantages like Matt points out. It could be a personality trait, a collection of experiences, knowledge on a particular subject, etc. The only thing that matters is that it's better to focus on what you do well rather than what you do not.

In addition to the content here on my blog, you can sign up for my free monthly newsletter. If you don't want them in your emails, then you can either subscribe to the site's RSS feed, or read the issues directly on the website.

It's just one story a month, no nonsense, just myself going deep into a topic.

Delivered straight to your inbox on the 13th of every month. Because some people find that to be unlucky, and I think that's funny.

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Past Issues

• Issue 6: A New Found Appreciation for Control
• Issue 5: Weeds are Subjective
• Issue 4: Tricking Yourself Into Being Productive
• Issue 3: The Many Forms of Triage
• Issue 2: Playing Around With Experimentation and Challenges
• Issue 1: Life After the Pandemic

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I hope you appreciate the content I put out. If you have any questions, please feel free to email me.

Greg Morris, wrote a greate piece on why he's decided to take an optimistic approach for the future:

We are not The nEw NoRmaL but the hope I look up to is that we become something different than before. That I become something different. Working, Social and everything in-between is improved to a point where it improves lives and we are more community orientated. We look out for each other and build a community around it that cares and looks out for us in our times of need and is built of real relationships.

I totally agree. It's clear that the pandemic will have long-lasting effects on society, and our attitudes towards things like being social, having a good work-life balance, and many others. But that doesn't necessarily mean the future will be bad. Especially if we take responsibility for it, and take action towards changing things that we don't like, instead of hoping for someone else to do it.

Joshua Powell, a ZSL PhD student has created a short film about island conservation, called Saving Britain's Islands. The film explores the role of New Zealand and specifically an island called TiriTiri Matangi, in the development of island conservation techniques, and also how these techniques could possibly be used in Britain and other UK islands.

Radek Sienkiewicz, on the Sans-serification (Yes, I just made that up) of modern logos:

There is a trend in logo design that started around 2017-2018. It’s as if many companies decided that being unique was a handicap and that it was better to be like everyone else. Or at least, that’s how it feels to me.

The trend started with fashion logos. Many iconic fashion companies ditched their recognizable logos and switched to a bland and very similar version of a sans serif font.

The technology sector followed soon after.

This is a trend that is clearly visible, and I think is part of a bigger trend in modern design. In my opinion we see less personality and originality in logos nowadays. A logo used to be something, not just a brand name in a sans-serif font, a specific colour, styled with abnormal capitalisation.

One theory I have, is that it’s part of a brands evolution to progressively make their logo more and more generic. Because maybe they see that as part of becoming a more reputable brand, instead of a small childish company with a trendy logo. Whatever the reason may be, I think I would still prefer to see companies show some personality once in a while.

In a truly mesmerising short film by Maxwel Hohn, he shows the daily journey of western toad tadpoles through a lake in British Columbia. They all move as one across the bottom of the lake as a kind of carpet, so they can reach the more oxygen-rich and warmer shallow waters, and then they all move back to the deepths later in the day.

Metamorphosis is something that my brain can't quite get to grips with. Gradual evolution caused by natural selection I understand. But these tadpoles transform within a number of weeks!

Arun Venkatesan wrote a great piece on the various different historic watches that inspired the faces on the Apple Watch:

The Apple Watch is more than merely a smartwatch. In my review of the Apple Watch Series 6, I described how it sits at the confluence of design, technology, lifestyle, and watchmaking. This perfect blend of so many different disciplines and constraints puts it in a category all by itself.

Apple did this not by taking an age-old wristwatch silhouette and cramming some electronics in it. Instead, they carefully reimagined every aspect, from the user interaction patterns to the mechanism securing the interchangeable bands, the digital crown, the variety of cases and bands, and the use of watch terms like “complication” in the user experience.

In particular, the analog faces reveal what Apple does so well — taking the familiar and making it their own. Over the years, they have released quite a few faces with roots in history. Each one started as an iconic watch archetype and was remade to take advantage of the Apple Watch platform.

I'm by no means a "watch person", and if you simply showed me 10 iconic watches in person, I wouldn't have much interest. But I couldn't stop reading this. I find it fascinating how the various differences in watches came about, and also how much detail Apple put into their watch faces.

It's made me think of watches a lot differently, and while I don't think I'm going to go out and start a mechanical watch collection, I think I have a new found appreciation for watch face design.

Matt Birchler, writing about how how he splits his tasks between a Mac and an iPad:

I don’t enjoy using a Mac nearly as much as my iPad. Literally everything else I do, which admittedly is less intense “work”, happens on my iPad. Writing this post, reading the news, doing my email, doing freelance writing work, editing my photos in Lightroom, recording and editing audio, creating my newsletter, managing the tasks for my YouTube projects, watching YouTube videos, talking with friends, task management, and even coding changes to this very website all happen on the iPad.

He seems to have a very similar usage to myself, in that I use a Mac for my day job (which for me is programming), app development, and playing a few games. But everything else is on the iPad.

Mike Rockwell has similar feelings:

I’m pretty much in the same boat. I primarily use macOS for my work at Automattic and have a few personal applications/tasks that I use my Mac Mini server for — Plex, Channels DVR, and long-term local photo backups, to name a few. But the vast majority of my computing takes place on iPad or iPhone.

It seems to me that these devices have somewhat swapped roles. Whereas before everyone was asking “What can I use an iPad for?”, now it’s more “What do I need to use a Mac for”. I think the iPad has become the default device, and the Mac more of a specialised tool.