Category: Bits

The biggest revelation at the start of this year must have been my adoption of the Libby app. It is amazing how one little thing can completely revolutionize one’s information consumption, both for reading and listening.

Even though I had previously tried all the ebook apps (iBooks, Kindle, Hoopla, Overdrive, and Audible) I’ve generally avoided them due to a fear of the late night screen time keeping me rev’ed up into early morning, even though the real culprit for this phenomena is Youtube’s algorithm.

It took a confluence of quitting social media and the pandemic (which made obtaining physical books more difficult) to lay the groundwork. The specific spark was Tiny Habits. I really wanted to read this book and the only available copy at the library was in ebook format. I sucked it up and read the book on my phone. Not too bad. I followed it up with Death by Meeting which wasn’t even available in a physical format at the library. After that, my new habit was locked in.

Before the pandemic, I was skeptical about the Las Vegas Clark County Library District’s plan to emphasize digital holdings over physical stacks. Now I get it. I have a whole world of knowledge at my fingertips at anytime and any place (as long as I have a phone in my hands).

So what makes Libby succeed where others failed? First, it’s FREE! I have no interest in paying money for books when I’ve bought so many other books as taxpayer in my local jurisdiction. Second, the Overdrive lending model is well aligned with the standard library lending scheme. A patron is given a lending limit, set return dates, and a long hold queue that is super easy to manipulate now that everything is digital. Hoopla has a lot of media, but I find their monthly quotas off putting.

Libby has a simpler interface than Overdrive. You borrow a book and you start reading. Overdrive feels more complicated with no apparent payoff. Libby is a slick app that works with grace. It’s easy to tag stuff, borrow stuff, put stuff on hold, and it syncs up nicely between devices.

Put a bunch of whatevers on hold and these items magically show up on your phone as soon as they become available. Some of them had a long wait, but nothing worse than what it would take to wait for a physical copy. Plus you don’t need to take a trip to the building!

Libby’s audiobook integration is so good that it has essentially eliminated my podcast listening. I had previously assumed that books are too involved for proper listening, but in this busy life, doing chores is sometimes the only available moment to “read”. Libby also has a speed function and I’ve gotten used to modulating the speed in accordance with the density of the writing.

Again, I first started with self help audiobooks, but I’m now listening to more involved stuff. There is so much good stuff out there, written by experts and edited by professionals. Once you step out of current events, audiobooks and Great Courses Lecture series are clearly superior over podcasts.

Podcasts are great if you need immediacy, identify with a specific personality, or have an extremely niche hobby. Beyond those three reasons, it is hard to think why one shouldn’t just listen to a book on the subject. As much as I enjoy Cal Newport’s Deep Questions podcast, his advice is succinctly covered in his most recent book A World without Email.

Once I got into the habit, Libby has become the primary app on my phone. If I want to sit and read, open Libby. If I need to do chores, open Libby. If I feel like scrolling mindlessly and shopping, open Libby.

I’ve recommended this app to several friends and its icon is now in the main home screen bar at the bottom of my iPhone. Hard to give it higher praise than that.

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I still use Libby all the time, but I’ve started using an ebook reader as well. To be precise, I’m stealing time on my daughter’s ebook reader. I’ve slipped a couple of my books on her Kobo Clara, and I’ll read them right before my own bedtime. With a lightly backlit screen, I can read in the dark and seamlessly slide into slumberland.

I went on a binge, playing Innovation on BoardGameArena.com. This was the first week since finishing graduate school where I stayed up past 1am every night.

The implementation of Innovation on BGA is quite good and it is really convenient to have a community of players around the world. This is especially true when you join the “Arena League” where you are always just a few minutes from having an available opponent.

I think that a proper league ranking system would just give you a number, maybe some sort of ELO score, but that would be a bit too dry. Instead BGA created six levels to gamify the journey itself. Once you’re in the system, there’s always yet another rung on the ladder, culminating in the “elite” level with the final goal to reach number one.

It didn’t help that I lucked into a couple easy wins over “elite” players in my first few games. Like a good casino, this beginner’s luck sucked me in hard. Subsequent games put me back in my place, being properly crushed in most of my games against top ranked opponents. There were a few games where I was “just one turn away” from victory, but that is the point of competition at the upper levels. One wasted turn is what separates the elite from us mere mortals.

In the end, I made it to “gold” in that week, It was quite gratifying to know that my obsessive gameplaying against myself during the quarantine of early 2020 turned out to be decent training. Still, I must quit this Arena. It’s too easy to click play again, and again, and again.

This was a fun one week fling, but it would have made a bad marriage. I slept only a few hours every night and was on the verge of being chronically sleep deprived. The effort to become truly great would have been monumental. It’s one thing to use your actions wisely; a whole other level of to never waste an action. The juice isn’t worth the squeeze.

A few days after stopping BGA, I’ve started to feel a deep sense of relief. I had been in the grips of a addiction and didn’t realized it. Just like quitting Facebook last summer, I hadn’t realized how deeply this thing had dug its tendrils into my subconscious until after I stopped.

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It’s a little embarrassing to go on a run bragging about kicking digital addictions, and then admit how easy it is to fall right back into it. Even so, I am happy to report that I’ve stayed off this drug for the two months after that week of gluttony. I’ll log onto BGA on Friday nights to play with my friends, but that’s it. To be clear, this isn’t a feat of will power, but a consequence of getting really into the I Ching. It’s a good reminder that it is a whole lot easier to quit for something better.

A note for a friend and for everyone else, including me.

I popped on to Facebook and saw a post that you had just returned from being stuck in FB purgatory for a few days.  I doubt you did anything that deserved punishment from their idiotic moderation, so I’m not writing about that.

Instead, I wanted to drop some unsolicited advice about social media cause this shit is a parasitic a brain suck. I don’t think I’ll ever fully delete my account, cause I enjoy visiting once a month to skim quick updates…and occasionally find some cool stuff.

However, I’m really happy that I’ve made a concerted effort to severely restrict FB’s reach into my life. Quitting social has saved me a bunch of time and more importantly it’s freed me to be present with the kids. I didn’t realize how these addictive algorithms were constantly sucking a brain tax until I drastically cut myself out of their system. Seriously, quitting Facebook last summer was as difficult as quitting smoking ten years ago. 

I fully admit childcare is fucking boring. It isn’t fun to have an adult’s Ferrari brain stuck pushing tricycles around the house. But infecting oneself with social media isn’t a good answer. This is my one regret from my daughter’s early years – I feel that I half assed the childcare and got even less out of the experience.

One of the best quips about parenting is “the days are long, but the years are short”. Next thing I know, she’s finishing first grade. Soon she’ll be off hanging out with her friends.

Normally I would have kept these opinions to myself, but you’re a good buddy and I hope you’ll avoid my mistake. In the end, everybody gotta figure out how to run their own lives and decide how the internet will support such goals. I’m not going to judge anyone on how they use social media, but I thought I’d offer a little perspective for your consideration.

Be intentional however you choose to use these sites.  Make sure you’re using the tool, not the one being used.

Take care, and when this goddamn pandemic settles down, I hope we’ll get a chance to break some bread.

By the end of the 2000’s, it had become clear that the web is an ephemeral place. I was spending a lot of time on Boardgamegeek, and I didn’t want my sporadic deep thoughts to suddenly disappear due to someone else’s bad business decisions.

I had also gotten into reading webcomics and thought I’d try to make some myself. I didn’t have delusions of grandeur, but it seemed like a worthy hobby.

And it was just time. The web had been in our world for just over a decade and I wanted my own little niche on this place (the short lived geocities site didn’t count).

So I started this blog.

It was going to be a odd-concept web comic, pairing random drawings and poetry. I hoped this project would force me to draw more and finally get a grasp on poetry. That endeavor didn’t last long.

But now I had my own little foothold on the internet.

Along with this WordPress blog, I also created an online portfolio using Stacey, a light content management system with a simple clean look.

My first job after graduate school was for a small firm. It was a great experience but was not a career position. Even though an online portfolio is not required for architects, I thought it would be helpful as a calling card when I started the next job search. I didn’t need anything fancy, just a simple stable place to highlight some past work for prospective employers.

Stacey was easy to set up, but it wasn’t completely intuitive. So I needed to re-figure out the system every couple years that I wanted to update the portfolio. Meanwhile WordPress continued to upgrade and make itself easier to use. My sporadic forays into learning css became unnecessary as WordPress themes got better and more responsive.

Last year, my Stacey portfolio started to glitch. Recent PHP upgrades were creating error messages in the header of the portfolio site. It was still operational, but the end was in sight.

Last month, my daughter was taking an online art class and wanted to share her work, so I gave her a blog on her own subdomain. In setting up her blog, I upgraded all my subdomains to PHP 7.3.

This finally nerfed the old portfolio.

So I migrated the portfolio, and now I have three WordPress installations under my care. WordPress isn’t idiot proof and takes a little effort to maintain, but it’s free and hosting is cheap. Hard to complain about a product that costs nothing, has enough momentum to keep updating, and isn’t completely under the thumb of some mega-corporation.

But before I fully settle into this new WordPress-centric reality, I want to thank Mr. Kolber for his little portfolio. I’m not sure if anyone checked out my site, but the presence of my online portfolio made me feel more confident whenever I went out on the hunt.

Stacey made me look good on the world wide web for more than a decade.

Le roi est mort, vive le roi!

This morning I ended up falling down a youtube rabbit hole indulging in the little boy’s fantasy of arms and armor.

The first was in the classic youtube format of a nerd geeking out in front of a camera. The info was great, I found the conversation about swords where the sharpened edge on the inside curve very interesting. But ultimately it was a monologue with a few video accents.

The second was a bit more polished production about armor and weaponry. This must have involved a team, not only did it involve an archer and medieval armor, it also included a visit to the range with modern body armor.

And of course both were totally free, after a pre-roll advertisement. Shadiversity is clearly a personal project, nicely done, but not super polished, but I’m scratching my head what is the business model for the Modern History.

I most likely shouldn’t ask too many questions and just enjoy it.

We really are in a golden age of free content, it’s all out there as long as you have an internet connection.

Like most people in my demographic I haven’t figured out how to quit Facebook, though I won’t shed a tear for its demise. However, right now it has become my best spot for friends news, national opinion, and random art (since I refuse to go to IG).

I also have this blog which has become a repository of all my deep thoughts. Privacy? Aww, lets just make it 100% public!

So where does Twitter come in? In one of my better decisions early in this young year, I decided to completely overhaul my feed to be focused on the State of Nevada, in part due to my new gig and the legislature session happening up north.

I’ve kept two national figures on my feed – Bomani Jones and Atul Gawande – but otherwise it is all Nevada and local reporters, politicians, opinion makers, and government agencies. Anyone that is consistantly national with their perspective gets booted off the list (I’ll find out bout the most recent outrages in Washington DC via the Nevada Senators and House Reps).

It has been really nice to differentiate between my Facebook and Twitter feeds for their own own specific use-cases, and so far, twitter has functioned really well as a “local newspaper”. We’ll see how long this lasts, but so far, it’s definitely worth a shot if you have a languishing twitter account.