Category: jotter

Preserving a thought from the 13 August 2023 edition of my newsletter:

I feel like the term “media diet” just reinforces the current “content consumers” label for people who like to experience arts. “Content consumers” just summons the image of a trough full of gruel. Also, calling you a “content consumer” gives you a good idea of what they really think of you.

I’ve been on the whole “content” thing on and off in the newsletter for a couple years. It’s a term borrowed from the early web. Literally describing whatever has been wrapped in HTML and linked to. I recall Clay Shirky once saying somewhere, “it’s not content until it’s linked to,” and Susannah Breslin going off at him at some length about that.

I’ve used the term “media diet” for many years and I would like to retire it. I don’t like it any more.

My abiding memory of a few days in Utrecht remains that the side of town I was on was under reconstruction, and that they hadn’t put the pavements back yet.  And Google Maps hadn’t kept up.  So I walked into tangles of roads, spaghetti junctions and random traffic a lot. Oh, but they like their bicycle lanes, like good Netherlanders. In fact, in Utrecht, the cyclists are mad with power.  They want the bike lanes and the pavements now, and they will get really pissed off when you dare to walk on the pavement like a filthy primitive pedestrian.  I almost got run over at one point by a guy with a very well trained moustache on a wooden bicycle.  Do you know when the last time someone got killed by a guy on a wooden bicycle was?  The seventeenth fucking century.  It’s not right. They make Berliners look like the pure picture of politeness.

written 17 November 2017

I was watching some old episodes of STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION the other day.  The whole series popped up on Netflix, and I haven’t looked at an episode since the 90s, so I was curious. Patrick Stewart was an acquaintance, way back when – Sir Patrick Stewart, now, and rarely was a knighthood for craft better deserved.  And I was reminded of this:

One night, I went into London to have dinner with Patrick.  We were working together on a project at the time.  My daughter, then very young, woke from a nap to ask where I was.  STAR TREK TNG had just come on the television. Her mother pointed out Patrick on the bridge of the Enterprise and said, he’s gone to see this man – they’re going to work together.  And my daughter got incredibly excited.  Her mother assured her that, yes, really, Daddy’s going to be working with that man.

There was then, I was later told, a painful couple of minutes when it had to be further explained to my little girl that, no, I wouldn’t actually be working on the bridge of the Enterprise with him…

I have been a disappointment to her ever since.

Originally written 12 August 2016

FAYA DAYI, 2021

I read today that having an Instagram account means that I automatically have a Threads account, which means I don’t have to worry about anyone taking my handle, which means I don’t need to ever go to Threads should Threads prove to be a thing that persists past Xmas

I don’t even want the social media accounts I’ve got

About ten years ago, I had a Fitbit Flex. Used it for years – I think it finally died circa 2019? Used it for steps and sleep tracking. Steps, I’m not good at, because my job requires me to sit on my backside all day, but the sleep tracking was very useful. Now I’m entering another stage of life, my sleep patterns are changing, my physical activity is scattered and my hydration is imperfect. So I went to look for a new tracking band. I have an Apple Watch 2, but its battery life sucks and I’m not sleeping with it on. Also: I wear a watch on my left wrist, and the Flex went on my right wrist. It looked like a black band. I do not want to look like I’m wearing two watches.

I am, broadly speaking, shit out of luck. And am disappointed to see that the technology and product development has not moved much over ten years.

The Fitbit Charge 5 would seem to be the new standard. And, because it’s 2023, you need to buy a subscription product on top of the device’s cost for the device to work properly. (There’s also a thing called the Whoop which is notionally “free” but doesn’t work at all without the purchase of a £200+/year subscription, which is a shame because it’s got the unobtrusive form factor I would want.) It is, however, basically a watch. There’s the Oura Ring, but those are bloody expensive and have to be shipped from the US.

Also curious: all the new fitness bands have dropped altimeter functions that track stairs climbed.

Also also: I have so many questions about this one:

When did the bottom fall out of this market? Are people really wearing their Apple Watches to bed?