The Flattening
The ongoing flattening of everything is really, really fucking us up. I can spend many hours researching a specific type of backpack. Things that may have been one guy’s fan...
phonezilla.net
Latest posts
The Recharge
My EV6, one of the things I’ve written about here and on tumblr (the prequel to this iteration of phonezilla), is very much at its lease end. Technically it was...
Last purchases
I started writing in this iteration of phonezilla talking about my Moccamaster. Last week I realized: this is probably the last coffee maker I’ll ever buy. I wasn’t being morbid...
Test drive notes: Hyundai IONIQ 9, Kia EV9
I recently did extended test drives of the larger Hyundai and Kia twins, the IONIQ 9 (I9) and the Kia EV9. These are “midsize” SUVs by class but in reality...
It’s getting hard to tell fraudulent calls from real ones
A few weeks ago my wife and I were doing some financial planning, and moved money from a HYSA account at Marcus to our checking account. The next day, both...
Delayed payoff
One of the things I dislike about our current streaming TV landscape: the complete mystery on when or if a show will come back. Think about LOST (please, won’t someone?)...
Big Yam Dreaming
The Denver Art Museum has an exhibition of Australian Indigenous Art, and one work that took my breath away was Big Yam Dreaming by Emily Kam Kngwarray. There were plenty...
Public EV charging: still awful, often
I was at a big parking garage earlier today searching for a spot when there it was: a place to park and charge up my car, with a sign that...
Keynote is my paste-up tool
In the 90s, Fun Graphics Machine (FGM) on the Commodore 128 (in 64 mode, unfortunately) was my jam. Here’s a review from COMPUTE! and the manual is up on archive.org....
No one who cares about usable software would...
No one who cares about usable software would ship something like this. Apple Music, Mac, search results screen. There’s so much wrong with it.
Slam to the (upper) left
At an agency I worked at long ago, they were very strict about security for a lot of reasons. If you left your computer unlocked while not at your desk,...
Sometimes simplest is best
Appointed, beyond creating my favorite not-cheap notebook, also produced a “studio calendar” that was gorgeous and equally not-cheap. It was spiral bound with lovely paper weight and typography. I loved...
Paywall
I recently watched a snippet of a MKBHD podcast video thing where he and his crew talked about the website RTINGS going full paywall. First of all, man, this video...
Heavy Rotation
It’s impossible to understate how influential Pandora was on me in the 2000s and 2010s. Yep. Pandora. The now shell-of-a-brand, shell-of-a-company, owned by SiriusXM was for a time an interesting avenue...
Camera
My father was a photographer. That’s how it started. I mean, he wasn’t a professional. But any school event or even just family get-togethers my dad would usually have his...
Notes from EV test drives
As noted elsewhere my Kia EV6 is rounding the bend on its 2-year lease, added to my household as a second car at a time when federal and state incentives...
Loose thoughts on the Jony Ive car interior thing
So many various thoughts on the whole Jony Ive Making a Ferrari interior that people are gettin’ excited about but a few loose thoughts before I compose them into something...
Oh-ee-oh-ee-oh
A number of years ago I was driving my coworkers from a successful client workshop. We were enjoying a fantastic streak of warm weather in the Bay Area so we...
Stop the presses
A few days ago an essay by Terry Godier made the rounds, examining why RSS readers mostly look like email programs and also asking why they have an unread count...
Inevitable
Earlier today I linked up a post on Mastodon by Marco Arment (developer of Overcast) that noted the US’s march towards requiring a phone app to enter the country – one...
27
January 25 marks the 27th anniversary of phonezilla.
A little professorial
A few years ago I ran a client workshop. It went well. Afterwards my boss gave unsolicited feedback and said, “You were a little professorial.” This was meant as criticism...
Brief notes on Vivaldi
Not The Four Seasons; the web browser. I’ve not been adverse to trying out new web browsers time and again. Since Safari is an ugly mess right now I thought...
Something to say
Many years ago a critical review I read of an R.E.M. album said something like, “Making nothing feel like deliverance is R.E.M.’s blessing and curse.” (I couldn’t easily find this...
Sources of inspiration, lately
I firmly believe saying “I am exiting a creative funk” is an aid in coming out of a creative funk. Here are some people that have been on my radar recently,...