This has long been a joke within the technical world. Friends and long-forgotten connections reach out for help with their computers. These days its more based around iPhones, but occassionally you get a question about some ancient piece of hardware that needs some love. 

The memes that go around make fun of this. But I don’t mind at all. If I have the time to help I will, and if I don’t I’ve learned to say no. It also helps that I’ve used this on some of my medically inclined friends in the past. 

If you wanted to contact someone asynchronously, you sent them an email. If you wanted to chat with messaging, you both needed to be online simultaneously. Modern messaging is like a cross between email and instant messaging: you can chat, live, just like with instant messaging, but you can send a new message any time you want. There is no distinction between your being “online” or “offline”. You are just an identity with modern messaging, not a presence.

From Gruber’s fantastic post on ICQ shutting down. 

When I first started using the internet for communication I dove into ICQ, AIM, Messenger, and the likes. These were ways for me to find and stay connected with friends. I also used email to compose long letters to penpals.

I’d forgotten about the requirement of being online with these tools, somehow my brain imagined I could just send messages offline. 

Now I have a preference for hierarchy of communication. My favorite tool is iMessage. I can send voice messages, type from any device, and trust the service to show what I need when I need it. It’s the most reliable (although not always perfect) and the blue messages remind me of ease of communication. 

Next up are tools like Slack. I don’t love them, necessarily; but they are such a large part of my work life that they’re critical for getting things done. 

Beyond that I love using things like blogs, Mastodon, Threads, to bounce ideas around over time and space. Email is my least favorite since 95% of it is not personal. 

The Acolyte, a TV show in the Star Wars universe, comes out on Disney Plus tonight. I’m trying to avoid any spoilers and go in cold. I was so incredibly pleased with the first season of Mandalorian, and fell in love with Andor, but stayed away from other shows because of things I heard about poor writing. I’m looking forward to giving Acolyte a try though! Andor did such a great job of pulling me back into that galaxy far far away. 

I love to run, love to listen to podcasts and audiobooks, and love my AirPods Pro (2nd generation with Lightning). However, I’ve continually had an issue with them while running, where the AirPods have a pop to them with the sound. It’s intermittent; happens at least 50% of the time, and doesn’t seem to have any pattern. Imagine running for three miles and hearing a slight percussive bump every second (to the cadence of my stride) against the side of your head. Sometimes its in one ear, sometimes both ears. 

I’ve had the earbuds replaced multiple times, but can’t seem to solve this. If anyone has an answer I’d love help. It’s making me wonder if there’s something better out there. 

Julia and I had a fantastic chat last week, and we’re planning on having her on the podcast next week. I love her thinking on being a designer in today’s world, and making sure you’re taking care of your mind and body.

Perfectionism also showed up in my body. When I was at the height of my burnout, I had chronic, searing neck pain, stomach aches, and mood swings. 

Sometimes I’ve noticed that when I’m having a hard time with functioning, that it might mean I’m not listening to where my head is at with things. 

All of this came to a head when I decided to quit Spotify. It wasn’t just one event, but a series of long insufferable moments that lead to my decision. When I quit, I had no backup plan.

Julia’s just kicked off her newsletter with her own thoughts on being a freelance designer. Alas it doesn’t have a web link, but I highly encourage you to subscribe if this is your kind of thing. 

First, there are few must-play Steam games available for the Mac. That natural limitation would protect me from an ever-growing backlog and the back-of-the-mind burden that comes with it. Among those few games, fewer still are RPGs to keep up with. Minimizing my games-to-play and games-to-beat reduces my mental overhead. It feels like the time pressure would have a release valve.

I love the sentiment here from Jason. I have limited time now to play video games, and when I find one I often spent months going through it; often slowly, and really enjoying my time in it. I spent nearly a year beating Breath of the Wild, another six months with Assasins Creed: Odyssey, three months with Horizon: Zero Dawn, three months playing Witcher III, etc.

I don’t need a lot of games, I don’t even need them to be new games, I just want games that give me a little bit of relaxation at the end of the day. Heck, I still play Age of Empires II: Definition Edition, a modified version of a 20+ year old game. 

For me I’m often looking for whether a game will allow me to chill for a while, if it has a good hardship ladder to grow into it, and at the same time I don’t want it to stress me out too much. These are drastically different needs than someone in their teens with 10+ hours a day to play. 

For years now I’ve had a habit of immediately canceling a subscription service right after I start. Sign up for a HBO Max (Max now)? I spend the extra 60 seconds and cancel that subscription. I’d rather go through the ficiton of adding it back in in 30 days then forget. 

Thankfully most services I use do this (except you Adobe!) and it’s helped me avoid paying for things I didn’t want to.

In the rare event that I can’t cancel, I’ll set a todo on Things for 25 days after I signed up, to make sure I go manually cancel. 

Over the past decade I’ve written a lot. It’s fun. I feel like I’ve just started to crack the surface of what I want to be as a writer, what it means to find my voice and have an opinion worth standing by. 

To throw all that away for ChatGPT does not interest me. Does it mean I refuse to use it? No. I’ve been a premium member off and on since it became available. I test it weekly to see if it meets a use case of mine, throw ideas at it and tweak with it all the time.

But I have zero interest in using it to write out thoughts like this. Why would I give that up? It’s incredibly fun to run a thought from beginning to end and see if it goes anywhere. The joy for me starts in the writing. 

I’ve been scouring Content Management Software for years, trying to find the perfect system that captures everything I want to write about, and spits it out in a way that I like. 

The perfect software would allow me to quote others, occassionally include pictures, look amazing (very nebulous, I know), and available on any device I regularly use. Thanks to Mars Edit and WordPress.com’s app, I can now do this. But it’s not ideal. I wish there was something better. 

Oh, and I wish my posts could easily go out to a newsletter service of my choice. I’m trying to hobble all this together, but it takes time. 

For my entire life I’ve looked forward to new gadgets. Sometimes it’s a notebook, a pen, a case, a backpack, or something else made of soft materials. But, more often then not it’s a hardware gadget. I spend far too much time reading about things like the Playdate, Rabbit R1, Remarkable 2, and much, much more. It’s fun for me.

In the past I felt guilty, that I was too consumerist, and should learn to be happy with having less. That’s not necessarily wrong, but part of it is I just love tinkering with things and learning how things were made. It’s so fun to get a new piece of hardware and explore it, see how it fits into my life (or doesn’t) and dream again about something else. I love it. 

Often I think about something for months, or years, and rarely get everything I think about. But it’s fun, and that’s ok. Current thing I’m dreaming about? The Apple Studio Display. 

Unless you were hired to create a UX team from scratch, chances are you’ll have to adapt to use whatever software your company is using: Axure, Adobe, Figma, Sketch and so on. The one skill you’ll have to develop is the willingness to put as many ideas as possible on paper, and leave behind the ones that don’t work.

I LOVE this so much. Over the last decade I’ve adapted to different teams and work styles, different software and flows, but the common thread through it all has been my UX sketching. 

I somehow missed this news last month. LinkedIn is testing daily games. I used to think this was silly with the New York Times, but games like Wordle, and all-the-things from Zach Gage, are so delightful. I see this working well. 

People are wonderful and complicated. As I grow older (I seem to be talking a lot about my age recently, I’m really not that old) I’m seeing less black and white in the motives and actions of others. 

We have so much diversity of background, the history that brought us to the present moment is unique for each person. One moment I may be content, the next I may feel unnerved and worn out. If you talk to me in a lower moment you may think that represents me. It doesn’t, it’s just part of it. 

So I try to have grace toward others, knowing I’m seeing them in just a portion of what they represent; there’s so much more. 

Recently I attended the wedding of a dear friend. As I watched, and also partook in the event, I loved that the event mattered because it marked a moment in the couple’s lives where other people saw them. 

So much of our lives involves quiet moments, moving forward, doing things, and hoping we make an impact and matter. For short moments in between we hope to be seen, to be witnessed, to know that we were a part of someone else’s story in a way that left its mark. 

I have more of an appreciation for such moments. Yes they can come with stress and chaos, but that’s built in. We all need those tiny periods of time where someone else sees us and appreciates us.