I am BARRY's Microblog

The family watched The Super Mario Bros. Movie. The bits I saw seemed pretty good, but I just couldn’t keep myself awake for it! I guess I should get to bed. 😅

I’m so glad that I got two of these Tim Robinson Zip Line guys before they sold out!

Adam Wood’s (@adam) 2023 album list is out! That means I have plenty to listen to in 2024. Yay!

Over on the Pika side, worked the past day+ to update posts so that they no longer require a title. Fantastic! Thank you for the heavy doses of inspiration, @amit and @petebrown!

Steve Wilson has ChatGPT write a Christmas song in the style of Steven Wilson. December Skies.

Pika Pages have arrived! It’s still a little rough around the edges, but I can now run my personal site on Pika. pika.pika.page/posts/pik…

Listening to the preview of The Power Broker podcast and felt intrigued enough to consider reading the 1,200 page book. And now I’ve learned that it’s not availablee in digital formats?! Wow! Perfect book to not buy physical, for weight and highlighting reasons. Will have to think on it.

Giving Omnivore a try over Matter. Looks like a solid option with a nice sync-highlights-to-Obsidian feature.

I brought up desk treadmills in the past, but the roadblock in my mind is what do I do with it when I want too sit or stand? My office doesn’t have a lot of space. I can’t imagine many of them are designed to flip up on edge. Any practical tips are welcomed!

This week’s Pika status, along with some personal-site inspiration: Pika Gliding Along.

Wondering if anyone has this workflow (readflow?)?

Subscribe to site via RSS > Skim feed reader to decide what to/what not to read > Send “want to read” things to a read-later service (like Matter) > Only actually read via the read-later service

i.e. never read things in your feed reader.

For the rest of the month I’m going to try things like Play (https://marcosatanaka.com/#play) and Matter as a way to consume, adding things that I run into via blogs or conversations. That and the feed reader. Maybe I’ll get rid of some of these tabs as well…

I wrote this in my personal log, but then thought…why not write it here?

What if I stripped back to basics online for the rest of the year? Just my blog/my site? No socials? What if I asked others to do it with me to explore the world of email and blogging as our only form of communication?

Robin Rendle makes you think, with a perfect line: I am a poem I am not software. Of course Yay.Boo comes to mind as one of many ways to play with that idea. And of course this makes me think a little differently about Pika.

Explain to me how Apple has gotten away with its Calendar email notification implementation being broken for somewhere around a decade? (Well, ever since I started using it.) Loses/forgets that I’ve set an event for email notification over and over again. Also “helpfully” adds alert notifications.

I just learned that DICK’s Sporting Goods bought Moosejaw, which made me sad. Moosejaw emails and copy always make me laugh. Then I learned that DICK’s bought them from Walmart. So 🤷‍♂️? (Then I learned that DICK’s shut down a bunch of the stores, so 😞 again.)

After nearly 20 years I, with help from Good Enough, finally wrote blogging software. Now, now, Pika is just an alpha version, but it’ll grow into something special. I can feel it! Read more if you’re interested.

My Apple Music Replay is completely fictional. When Tina Turner died I probably listened to 10 songs. She’s my 2nd artist on Replay at 1,989 minutes. Ike & Tina add another 1,020 minutes. What the heck?!

A fascinating review of the new Garth Brooks release.

Call him the James Harden of country music.

We plan to open up an alpha version of our blog software later today or tomorrow morning (US). It will be very basic to start, and the next significant developments probably won’t happen until early 2024. Still, if early adoption (and influence) is your jam, keep your ears open!

Snack time. A favorite that came home with us from Japan.

I’m ordering 4 tickets to a medium-sized college basketball game. It’s through AXS. 4 tickets, $76, and only $4 of AXS fees. How is that possible?! If it’s possible, why can’t big time artists negotiate reduced fees?!

I’ve had my iPad mini for a month or so and must say it hasn’t been as life-changing as the YouTube algorithm implied. Barely using it. Though if it kept a charge for a month rather than a few days, I think I’d be more impressed at those rare moments when I want to pick it up.

That feels good. Only 13 years after getting the standing desk!

Trying on the IBM Plex font family.