Tag: Podcasts

Categories
Links Roundup Writing

The Roundup for December 16-22, 2017 Edition

Picture of a illuminated maple leaf
Canadian Heart by Christopher Parsons 

My less-busy times this week were spent writing out notes, cards, emails, and other correspondence to some of the most important people in my life. It’s been a challenging year; the world seems to be falling apart due to changes in American politics, deaths and illnesses by family and friends have been hard to take, and the tempo for high-quality professional work never really slows down. And so I took some time writing to the people I’ve most closely worked with, supported, or been supported by to thank them for just being present and active in my life.

I find writing these sorts of messages of thanks, encouragement, and praise challenging. They’re not the kind of thing that I have ever really received much of throughout my personal or professional life; it’s just not normal in my family to communicate our deep feelings for one another, and in academe the point is to move to the next project (and subject it to critique) instead of dwelling on past projects and receiving accolades for them. But as challenging as I find writing these messages they have a profound personal impact: by pulling together my thoughts and writing them down and sending them, I’m humbled by realizing just how blessed I am to be surrounded by the kind, funny, supporting, and amazing people in my life.

There used to be a time when a lot more holiday cards, notes, and messages were sent back and forth between people this time of year. And many people still send cards, but don’t take the time — five, ten, or even twenty minutes — to handwrite a real thought to whomever the recipient happens to be. But those are the cards and notes and emails that people carry with them for years, packing them carefully away as they move from one physical or digital home to another. They don’t cost a lot of money to produce, and in the case of email are almost entirely free, but they show that you’ve spent time thinking about a specific person. And that time, in and of itself, is indicative of someone’s importance in your life.

So before you go out and spend money on another present consider taking that time and, instead, writing a letter or note to whomever the recipient is. Chances are good that they’ll remember and treasure the message you left with them for longer than any material possession your might give them.

Some of the bigger news in the Apple world, this week, has focused on changes to how Apple treats older iPhones which are suffering battery degradation. While the majority of the reporting is focused on how iPhone 6 and 6s devices are experiencing slowdowns — which is the change Apple has imposed as of iOS version 11.2.0 — iPhone 7 devices are also exhibiting the slowdowns as they suffer battery degradation.

I’m of mixed minds on this. I see this as an effort by Apple to avoid having to replace batteries on older (but not THAT old) devices but in a sneaky way: the company’s lack of transparency means that it appears that Apple is trying to pull a fast one on consumers. This is especially the case for those consumers who’ve purchased Apple Care; if their devices are suffering known problems, then Apple should at the minimum be notifying owners to bring the devices in for servicing on a very proactive basis, and that doesn’t seem to have been the case.

So, on the one hand, this is Apple being sneaky.

But on the other it’s a semi-elegant engineering problem to resolve a hard-to-fix problem. We use our smartphones with such regularity and subject them (and, in particular, their batteries) to such exceptional abuse that degradation has to happen. And so I think that Apple stuffing processors into devices (at least in the current and last generation) that are excessive for daily use means the slowdowns are less problematic for most users. They might think that their devices are a bit slower but, generally, still be able to use them for about as long as they used to use them. And that length of use is what most people measure ‘battery life’ by so…maybe Apple is dealing with the problem the way users would actually prefer.

That Apple doesn’t change out batteries when they’re worn down, however, emphasizes that it’s a pretty good idea to resell your devices every year or so in order to get the best return for them as well as in order to enjoy the best performance from your iPhone. And I guess, as a byproduct, if you’re buying a second-hand iPhone you should definitely do a battery test before handing over your cash.

Inspiring Quotation

“Giving is about more than donating money. It’s about sharing your capabilities, content, and connections—and above all, giving others the chance to be heard, respected, and valued.”

– Adam Grant

Great Photography Shots

I’m absolutely blown away by the award winning photos for the 2017 Siena International Photo Awards.

Music I’m Digging

Neat Podcast Episodes

Good Reads for the Week

Cool Products

Categories
Roundup Writing

The Roundup – December 9-15, 2017 Edition

Winter Boardwalk by Christopher Parsons 

I have a whole host of things that I need to do in order to keep a chronic (very non-life threatening!) health condition at bay. Part of that is maintaining a pretty strict work-life balance. When I was doing my doctorate I absolutely failed to conceptualize of, let alone maintain, a real balance and as a result I suffered from a pretty problematic health condition for years and years. And because I didn’t have work-life balance (and ignored advice from those who maintained such a balance) a lot of unpleasant things happened in my life that didn’t necessarily have to and I prioritized the wrong things as being of importance.

I mismanaged relationships. I failed to take advantage of living in one of the most beautiful cities in Canada, if not the world. I didn’t develop, let alone maintain, many friendships at a time where I probably most needed them.

And in reaction to how my life didn’t work during that time, and with the privilege of having a full-time job where I’m not expected to be constantly on the clock, I’ve worked to maintain a balance in my professional and personal activities. The medical result has been that the condition I deal with has become an occasional inconvenience instead of a serious issue in daily life.

This week my carefully maintained work-life balance entirely fell apart. It’s still apart, right now, and that condition is on top of me once again. I cannot wait until the holiday break and the chance to hit the reset button and return to balance. I can only hope that things haven’t gotten bad enough to need to return to visiting my doctors…

A few weeks ago, Ming Thien wrote about the relative importance of the shooting experience that you have with your camera of choice. One of the key things he mentioned was:

… if a camera does not enable us to either translate an idea, preserve a moment or present something otherwise unseen: it isn’t very useful as a tool, no matter how pretty or expensive or high-resolving it might be.

This point really resonated with me. It brought me back to when I was trying to decide which mirrorless camera to purchase. I’d been using (and still do use!) a Sony RX100ii and, temporarily, a Fuji X100. I loved the Fuji but I couldn’t really explain why until after I’d relied almost entirely on the RX100ii for a full year.

While in part I missed the viewfinder, what I was really missing was the ability to rapidly change settings to get the shot that I wanted and, also, to learn what I had to do, to get the shot I wanted. Let me explain.

The Sony is a great little camera. I’ve taken photos with it that I’ve gotten blown up to be pretty large (36 inches by 24 inches) and which now hang on my walls. I have a series of photos I took while in Iceland, Hong Kong, Australia, and other places that I absolutely love. But the shooting experience has always been subpar. The inability to just turn this knob or that one to get exactly what I want, in a second or two, means that shooting with the Sony is often really frustrating. If I can plan a shot it’s great. If it’s in the moment? The shot is missed more than caught.

So when I was looking at different mirrorless cameras to purchase and supplement the RX100ii I was drawn to the Sony a6100, which had amazing specifications. But when I actually held and touched and shot with it I just wasn’t taken by it. It’s an amazing camera but just felt cold. The Fuji line was pretty great – I really wanted to get an X-T10! – but I found the glass to be expensive, especially when I started thinking about buying image stabilized lenses.

So I ended up getting an Olympus EM10ii, instead, and was initially sorta scared of it. There were a lot of knobs to turn and, while I wanted that, it was also intimidating. But as I’ve used the Olympus I’ve come to realize that it is definitely the right camera for me, now. It’s light enough and small enough that I almost always have it with me. It performs pretty well with prime lenses in mixed settings. And while I can lust over other mirrorless systems when they come out I don’t see anything that they do which I absolutely need given my abilities, shooting preferences, and devotion to the hobby right now.

Most importantly, the Olympus feels right in my hands. I’ve used it enough that I’m comfortable with most of the settings that I use1 while it still provides me with a lot of room to learn and grow. I’m pretty comfortable with my 50mm equivalent lens after exclusively shooting with it for several months straight, and reasonably comfortable with the 35mm equivalent that I use.2 In terms of the shooting experience the EM10ii is pretty great for someone who is interested in photography but certainly never expects to do much more than travel the world, shoot, and then make prints for personal or family use. I know it’s not the ‘best’ camera out there but, for me, the shooting experience is pretty close to perfect.

Great Photography Shots

I’m absolutely entranced by the photos that South-African photographer and visual artist, Elsa Bleda, has taken which emphasize the dream-like fluorescent glow from neon signs and lights. Breathtaking.



Music I’m Digging

Neat Podcast Episodes

Good Reads for the Week

Cool Products

  1. Of course, the camera is super capable at doing lots of things I’m not interested in doing. And as someone who doesn’t ever shoot video the relative limitations of the Olympus camera system over that of either Sony or Panasonic doesn’t bother me. ↩
  2. Perhaps curiously I’m the least comfortable using the kit zoom lens that came with the camera! ↩
Categories
Roundup Writing

The Roundup for December 2-8, 2017 Edition

It feels like everyone I know has led a more stressful life this year. Beyond the chaos wrought on the global psyche by the American president, there have also been more deaths, serious illnesses, job losses, and emotional meltdowns than normal. In my own case, the death of two parents and ongoing revelations of sexual assaults and abuses near to my life have been incredibly challenging issues to deal with.

So it was with great interest that I read a piece by Ankita Rao on how she has turned dealing with her personal stress into a kind of science experiment. The tests and activities she points to reveal the number of factors in our lives that amplify underlying stress levels as well as the means we can use to reduce stress in our personal lives. I’ve made a commitment since mid-2017 to actively, and assertively, maintain a particular work-life balance. That involves taking on consulting clients only when the monetary outcome is necessary to address particular fiscal stresses (see: student loans) and ensuring that I actually spend time working out, taking photowalks, and letting myself engage in non-productive play.

I haven’t always been successful. But on the whole I’m exercising a lot more, have taken photos I’m incredibly happy with, and am overcoming a longstanding guilt that playing games is somehow undermining my productivity. I have a long ways to go to ensure the balance I’m trying to achieve is a permanent feature of my life but I feel like habits are starting to settle in, and my overall stress levels declining as a result.

Just prior to Netflix’s release of The Punisher some critics argued that the show had an opportunity to — and failed to — respond to the tragedy of gun violence in the United States. I haven’t quite finished the series but I tend to agree that the show is definitely not directly addressing that issue.

But the show isn’t about gun violence. It’s about what losing family means and drives a someone (read: white males) to do. It’s about the problems linked to how soldiers of all stripes are asked to endure physical and mental hardships and then return home without society acknowledging their sacrifices or providing support for their wounds. Or about how even when support is provided that there is no guarantee that those broken humans will ever be whole again. The show is about how fraught relationships become when we are separated from those we relate to, either by distance, by death, or by betrayal. Throughout the episodes I’ve watched a repeated motif, which does pertain to gun violence, is how firearms can prompt the aforementioned hardships, either by killing in the name of one’s country or in the name of one’s personal ideology or simply by accident when weapons are nearby.

I entered the workforce ‘late’ in terms of my ability to save for retirement. Since I went to school until my early 30s, and lived paycheque to paycheque to try and stay afloat, and have loan obligations, it’s not going to be until my late 30s or early 40s when I can ‘really’ save for my retirement. And that assumes that I save for retirement instead of for a home or condo that I own.1

So it was with interest, and trepidation, that I listened to a podcast put out by TVO entitled “Creating Retirement Security.” The conversation they had about people in their 30s was strange to my ears, with guests relying on different baseline facts for their assessments and recommendations. And significantly, not one of the guests recognized that loan payments for student debt are higher than with past generations, nor that repayment periods are longer now than in the past. Several of the guests held an assumption that persons would be saving in their early 20s. While this practice might be true for Canadian Pension Plan (CPP) contributions it’s presumably less the case for Register Retirement Savings Plans (RRSPs) that can grow significantly over the course of 40 years.

Each guest called frequently for ‘financial literacy’. While educational approaches matter and have merit, at the same time such calls assume that retirement decisions should be individualized. Does it fall to specific individuals to ensure that they are earning enough, saving enough, and investing wisely enough to be secure in their retirement? Or is retirement and aging a collective action problem that is best solved as a society as a whole?2

As with many areas of expert knowledge only the barest of basics of financial literacy are likely going to catch on with the general public. Were we, as a society, to take some of the lessons from behaviour economics we’d realize that experts are needed to develop appropriate ‘nudges’ to compel savings,3 while also updating savings models to recognize the precariousness of the labour market for those under 35. That constant threat of un(der)employment, need to service student debt, and potentially provide assistance to parents who have insufficiently saved for their retirement are all pressures on the largest generation now moving through the Canadian workforce. And that’s to say nothing of the need for people to decide if they want to save for their retirement or save for a home that they own. Until all those variables and conditions are appreciated any advice from experts seems to just fall flat.

Great Photography Shots

Flickr released the best 25 shots of 2017 and they’re pretty amazing. The ‘best’ in this case is derived from social and engagement metrics, combined with curation by Flickr’s own staff.

1-Iwona-Podlasinska-800x533
“Say Goodby…” by Iwona Podlasinka, at https://flic.kr/p/ZYM6Hd
6-Albert-Dros-800x534
“Mi Fuego” by Albert Dros at https://flic.kr/p/Tbcpio

Music I’m Digging

Neat Podcast Episodes

Good Reads for the Week

Cool Products

  1. I actually do save every month to the tune of about 10-15% of my paycheque, part for retirement and part for an emergency fund. ↩
  2. Guests did spend some time talking about whether retirement savings should should be an individualized/collective problem. But the constant refrain that individuals need to be smarter means that individuals, first and foremost, are seen as the parties that have to assume responsibility for their futures and any collective action work is an idealized maybe-solution to aging in Canada. ↩
  3. To be fair, nudges were discussed, but the hard lessons came down on individuals having to gain literacy to make their own decisions. ↩
Categories
Links Roundup Writing

The Roundup for November 25-December 1, 2017 Edition

Photo made with iPhone 7 at the edge of Kensington Market in Toronto, Ontario. Edited in Apple Photos and Snapseed.

I’m a kind of obsessive consumer. Before I buy something I tend to get excited about it, and do a lot of research, and get super into whatever it is that has struck my fancy. When the iPhone X came out, even knowing that I wasn’t on a buying cycle this year, I still wanted it and so did dozens of hours of research. A few weeks prior I was looking at a particular Olympus lens. And before then it was a new Sony rx100 or Fuji x100.

But I’ve gotten to know myself well enough that I let myself wallow in the obsession…and then just let go. It’s a self-reflective defensive mechanism that kept my wallet pretty safe throughout the sales of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and one that more generally has helped to lift me out of consumer debt hell over the course of the past year. Consumerism is exciting, so long as you only enjoy the dreams and avoid crushing them by actually purchasing the item(s) in question.

During the Cold War humanity did terrible things to the natural ecosystems of the world by testing nuclear weapons. Bikini Atoll is one of the areas that most felt humanity’s ugly destructive impulses. So it was pretty exciting to learn that after abandoning that part of the world for about fifty years things seem to be recovering:

The research, López says, provides at least preliminary evidence that even if you destroy an ecosystem, it can heal with time — and with freedom from human interference. Ironically, Bikini reefs look better than those in many places she’s dived.

Despite the fact that the ecosystem is healing what’s there now remains dangerous to human life. The coconuts (and coconut trees more generally) hold huge doses of radiation, and the platter-sized crabs are presumably similarly radioactive because their primary food source is coconut meat. Despite the outward appearances of healing the atoll will likely remain hostile to human life: for the foreseeable future this paradise will only be accessible to animal life and off limits to human habitation.

In some exciting personal news, I got back a review from a journal to which I’d sent an article. While some revisions are required, work that I’ve been hacking on for the past few years is more than likely going to be public in one of Canada’s law journal’s next year! Unlike some other publishing experiences this time it was a fast turn around: submit in September, hear back by end of November, revisions by January, and publication in Spring 2018. W00T!

New Apps and Great App Updates from this Week

Great Photography Shots

Jenna Martin gave herself a challenge: go to an ugly location (Lowe’s) and get some pretty shots (success, in my opinion).

Music I’m Digging

Neat Podcast Episodes

Good Reads for the Week

Cool Products

Categories
Roundup Writing

The Roundup November 19-24, 2017 Edition

Photo made with iPhone 7 on November 2, 2017 in Toronto, Ontario. Edited in Apple Photos.

It’s another week closer to the end of the year, and another where high profile men have been identified as having engaged in absolutely horrible and inappropriate behaviours towards women. And rather than the most powerful man in the world — himself having self-confessed to engaging in these kinds of behaviour — exhibiting an ounce of shame, he’s instead supporting an accused man and failing to account for his past activities.

I keep going back and forth as to whether I want to buy a new Apple Watch; I have zero need for one with cellular functionality and, really, just want an upgrade to take advantage of some more advanced heart monitoring features. The initial reviews of the Apple Watch Series 3 were…not inspiring. But Dan Seifert’s review of the Apple Watch Series 3 (non-LTE) is more heartening: on the whole, it’s fast and if you already have a very old Apple Watch and like it, it’s an obviously good purchase. I just keep struggling, though, to spend $600 for a device that I know would be useful but isn’t self-evidently necessary. Maybe I’ll just wait until Apple Canada starts selling some of the refurbished Series 3 models…

While photographers deal with Gear Acquisition Syndrome (GAS), which is usually fuelled by the prayer that better stuff will mean better photos, I think that writers deal with the related Software Acquisition Syndrome (SAS). SAS entails buying new authoring programs, finding new places to write, or new apps that will make writing easier, faster, and more enjoyable. But the truth is that the time spent learning the new software, getting a voice in the new writing space, or new apps tend to just take away from time that would otherwise be spent writing. But if you’re feeling a SAS-driven urge to purchase either Ulysses or iA Writer, you should check out Marius Masalar’s comprehensive review of the two writing tools. (As a small disclosure, I paid for Ulysses and use it personally to update this website.)

New Apps and Great App Updates from this Week

Great Photography Shots

If tapeworms are your thing then there’s some terrific shots of them included as part of an interview with tapeworm experts. A few gems include:

Music I’m Digging

Neat Podcast Episodes

Good Reads for the Week

Categories
Solved

A Fix for Bad iPhone Battery Life

stewie.jpgFor the past weeks I’ve had outrageously bad battery life on my iPhone 7, running iOS 11. A lot of the battery drain was from the Podcasts app (approx. 24-33%) but I couldn’t figure out why the drain rate was so high: even when I only streamed over Bluetooth or Airplay I’d had the same power drain percentages, so it didn’t seem to be linked to powering the speaker on the phone (which can impact battery life significantly).

Then I realized that the application was searching for new podcasts every hour and downloading any that were available. My battery life has drastically improved after changing the setting so that the app only looks for new podcasts every 6 hours: I can now use the phone normally for a day and end up at about 20-30% battery remaining when it gets set down to charge for the night. Victory is mine!

Categories
Links Writing

On the History of Monuments

Monuments and plaques do not necessarily represent ‘history’ so much as a particular interpretation of certain events or aspects of a person’s life. A recent episode of 99% Invisible, originally produced for The Memory Palace, explores what should be on the plaque for Nathan Bedford Forrest. Forrest was a lieutenant general in the Confederate Army who built a fortune off the labour of slaves and who was, allegedly, the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. The episode is noteworthy for outlining the rationale for creating Forrest’s monument in the first place, the significance of reinterring Forrest’s remains, and for what should go into a plaque that is dedicated to his place in the world, today.

In listening to the episode it’s shocking just how the monument’s creation and erection were laden with racist overtones, and the episode is instructive in explaining what these monuments were (and are) meant to do: act as assertions of white supremacy in increasingly multicultural and diverse societies. The history of such monument is not linked to the events or persons for which they were erected, but in the rationales for which they were created and erected. Their history is inexorably linked the history of white supremacy, and this is a history that we can safely stop lionizing. Rather that destroying such monuments, however, they should be relegated to open museums and parks, which can be used to remind us of the horrors and inequalities associated with past ideological positions that we now acknowledge as being harmful and dangerous to the members of our societies.