Author: Joshua

  • Podcasts are personal

    I just caught up on a bunch of my favorite podcasts today while going around the house cleaning.  Podcasting has become one of my favorite methods of consuming information that I enjoy. That, along with listening to books on Audible, takes up a huge amount of my day.  If I’m not talking to someone, I’m…

  • Making an app

    I love the short form video that the folks behind Halide put together. They’re working on an app, and sharing the process behind that app. Their exploration of their process feels real, feels natural, and doesn’t seem to be screaming for me to give them attention. It’s just a few folks sharing about something they…

  • Icons

    I’ve been using iconfinder for years. Just saw a post on Mastodon calling out iconduck as an open source alternative. Consider me interested. 

  • Improving my audio for Zoom calls

      I co-host a few podcasts with friends, so I’ve been trying to figure out how to make my voice sound better over Zoom and in audio in general. I’m still learning, so I welcome any feedback on this.  For anyone curious, here’s my setup so far.  For my microphone I use a Yeti mic. They’re…

  • I’ve been considering a Ring doorbell for a while. Our house currently has no doorbell. We ripped it out during a renovation and never installed a new one. A few weeks ago I bought one as a Black Friday special. But I just couldn’t bring myself to set it up. I finally opted for something…

  • Self Publishing Plagiarism

    A recent post on Reddit has me incredibly frustrated right now. Now, before I go on, I’ll say that none of this has been proven yet. But I find it damning nonetheless given the evidence shared. A Redditor started poking around with Mark Dawson’s published books and checking into phrases he’d written that felt unique.…

  • Scars

    Many of us carry scars from the life we’ve lived so far. Some real, some invisible. As we move through life and experience new situations, whether in work or otherwise, we have to adjust in realtime to how things have gone before and try to figure out whether to accept a new situation or put…

  • Hard, not impossible

    Work should feel challenging. It should feel hard to do because it pushes our curiosity and comfort zones. But it shouldn’t feel impossible. We should feel safe, trusted, and capable. It’s so tricky to find the right balance of all these elements to make a difference and throw ourselves into the fray. When you find…

  • Energy for today

    For the past few months I’ve started to notice a trend. On the days where I put out a lot of energy, I often feel worn out the next day. I’ve learned to be more kind to myself and not try to force things. The rollercoaster of energy moves throughout the week, and the best…

  • Don’t be a correctness bully

    We don’t work along the lines of negative reinforcement. We work on the lines of positive reinforcement. We seek out things are beneficial, trigger positive emotions, and feel constructive. So don’t be a correctness bully. Great article.  I’ve been working on this. I used to do it all the time and now I’m trying to…

  • Is flat design over?

    Flat design became a thing and we saw an overnight shift in design approach for interfaces when Apple introduced iOS 7 in 2013. They certainly took elements that other manufacturers were already implementing but the impact Apple has on the rest of the industry (as a trend-setter) cannot be matched. iOS 7 saw a massive…

  • What we do with what we have

    We don’t always have the option to choose between the options presented to us, but we do have the choice in how we react to those choices, how we let it control us, how we let it fill our minds.  My heart goes out to those who are suffering, struggling, trying to figure their way…

  • Voice memos

    Years ago my brother started texting me with voice messages. It drove me crazy. I couldn’t process the audio as quickly, had to pause and listen to it, and it in general disrupted the flow of communication. It started up around the time he got into the Apple Watch. It was easier for him to…

  • Amateur presenting

    This article from Seth is on pointe. I recently hear a great presentation from someone, and was amazed at how well it was put together. There were even decently timed jokes, and a valuable message tied together. I thought after that I didn’t feel I could pull off that type of presentation, but I do…

  • Writing daily

    For a couple of years I wrote 1,000 words per day. I did that six days a week and wrote out hundreds of thousands of words. It was one of the best practices for unlocking my brain and removing the fear of a blank page. Now if I need to say something I let loose…

  • Sleep on it

    Some days I spend an innordinate amount of time trying to perfect a design. I wrestle with the tinest details, go over it again and again, iterate, and try to get it to a point where I’m happy with it.  Then I sleep on it, and in the cold light of the morning have a…

  • Listening to my books

    I like to write. I’ve written a few novels for fun and plugged away at them each day with a thousand words. For years I’ve tried to figure out a way to listen back to the words I wrote each day. Maybe I’ve missed something obvious, but nothing up to this point was working. That…

  • Nobody knows what they’re doing

    We’re all kind of figuring out life as we move through it. In my experience those who are the most brazen about their superiority and feigned understanding of all things are often the ones most uncertain themselves. I recently chatted with a friend, a generation older than me, about her own experiences on a topic…

  • Firing and hiring

    My friend, Michał, just posted a fantastic piece touching on what it feels like to get fired, or to use the corporate speak term, “laid off”.  Those tens of thousands of folks being fired from big techs aren’t just numbers. They are names and faces. It’s a known truth that the mass is easier to…

  • App Defaults

    Continuing on from the article Robb Knight posted. Here are the apps I use in each category.  Mail client: HEY web app Mail Server: HEY custom domains Notes: Notes.app, Bear To-Do: Things 3 iPhone Photo Shooting: iOS Camera Photo Management: Photos.app Calendar: Apple Calendar Cloud file storage: iCloud Drive RSS: n/a Contacts: Contacts.app Browser: Safari…