Sawyer Paul's Blog, page 17
October 31, 2019
Cura, November 1, 2019
Note: The playlist embedded above will always be the most recent playlist and might not match the list below.
Cura is my Spotify mixtape. You can listen to it and subscribe here. I keep it as one playlist so it’s easy to subscribe to. I update it fairly frequently, but I also keep an archive playlist so you don’t have to miss a thing.
I hope you like it. I made it for you.
Here’s the track listing for this week:
Gun to the Head By The Good, the Bad & the Queen
Far Away Truths By Albert Hammond, Jr.
Your Happiness By Compulsive Gamblers
Frantic Romantic By Scientists
dead girl in the pool. By girl in red
Mercury In Retrograde By Sturgill Simpson
What Can You Do But Rock ‘n’ Roll By Ezra Furman
October 27, 2019
Fran’s Not Here 43 - Doug
Listen to or download episode 43
Recorded live at the Free Times Cafe on October 9, 2019.
Dream Daddy has one too many daughters or whatever.
October 26, 2019
Logbook, October 21-27, 2019
October 21, 2019
I watched Ash Is Purest White, 2018 - ★★★. You can just call it after she meets the Ancient Aliens guy. They live happier ever after in their x files fantasy. I accept no other ending.
Y’all I need three new Pokémon GO friends. 9280 3997 2713 add me if you haven’t already.
I read How many outs? Baseball playoff graphics compared. Sports graphics are the strangest things. What is that spinning core they’re always cutting to in between games? Who lives there?
October 22, 2019
this is a good meme. https://t.co/1Xfxfd7c2F
Logbook, October 14-20, 2019 https://t.co/W7aVv9RWer
Cura, October 22, 2019 https://t.co/0LkriHogdS
October 24, 2019
It’s no Shane McMahon showing up on Nitro, but this is pretty weird. #appletv #roku https://t.co/dmPQzHhuvz
I think I’m actually getting worse at finding gifts. That or the mall only sells three things now.
Do you have a relative on Facebook? Help them start a website or, even better, a newsletter. Get them off that shit. https://t.co/1zw5yetAez
Very cool single-serving page: Toronto Public Library Dashboard. You can see what books are being taken out on loan in real time.
October 25, 2019
Good morning Twitter dot website https://t.co/Hk3NqWNYyN
Things 3 is having some #ios13problems for me. Going to switch to TickTick for a bit to try out a new thing. Current home screen. https://t.co/Q7W1C32t17
October 26, 2019
I recommend you read The 2010s Have Broken Our Sense Of Time.
Halloween, face unlock’s greatest enemy. Can confirm, giant fake mustache too obviously fake for iPhone.
October 27, 2019
I read Riding the Unicorn and The Mainstream Media Is Not Playing Games.
October 21, 2019
Cura, October 22, 2019
Note: The playlist embedded above will always be the most recent playlist and might not match the list below.
Cura is my Spotify mixtape. You can listen to it and subscribe here. I keep it as one playlist so it’s easy to subscribe to. I update it fairly frequently, but I also keep an archive playlist so you don’t have to miss a thing.
I hope you like it. I made it for you.
Here’s the track listing for this week:
Pressure To Party By Julia Jacklin
About Work The Dancefloor - Edit By Georgia
I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend By Ezra Furman
Looking For A Hug By unperfect
religion (u can lay your hands on me) By Shura
Honey, There’s the Door By Haley Reinhart
L.O.V.E, right? By Heavenstamp
The Gold - Nick Waterhouse Remix By Manchester Orchestra, Nick Waterhouse
October 20, 2019
Logbook, October 14-20, 2019
Actually pretty nice of the advanced voting booths to be open on a holiday.
Fran’s Not Here 42 - Dingling with the Dinguses https://t.co/gucqpPmbfi
October 17, 2019
I went to Therapy.
Look Into This, October 17, 2019 https://t.co/OVwub10R7o
2020 is going to bankrupt me. https://t.co/QQBu5Au0W8
October 18, 2019
I read Rejection is the norm for authors. So why do we hide it?, and The Ultimate Game Boy Clone Perfectly Plays Every Classic Handheld Game You Ever Loved.
I recommend you read The Things We Do for a Little Self-Preservation, and Ten keys to happier living.
October 19, 2019
I read Whiteness on the Couch.
October 20, 2019
I watched Things to Come, 1936 - ★. Rated on a 2019 curve, because the “good guys” celebrate their win over the barbarian hordes by doing a shit ton of fracking. On the minus side, this is misogynist futurism at its baldest. On the plus side, this movie has amazing typography.
I read Enough Leaning In. Let’s Tell Men to Lean Out..
I recommend you read Healthy Living.
October 21, 2019
I watched Ash Is Purest White, 2018 - ★★★. You can just call it after she meets the Ancient Aliens guy. They live happier ever after in their x files fantasy. I accept no other ending.
Y’all I need three new Pokémon GO friends. 9280 3997 2713 add me if you haven’t already.
October 16, 2019
Look Into This, October 17, 2019
New thing. Sometimes I’ll look through some magazines or blogs and come up with a list of stuff to look up. These things usually get lost to time. But hey, this blog is easy to update. Some of this stuff might be interesting. Some of it won’t.
Just Pervs - Jess Taylor
The Atlantic’s Daily Idea
Had it Coming - Robyn Doolittle
Above the Clouds, Below the Sky - at the Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Nov-14–Dec 6, opening reception Thursday, November 14, 6pm.
The Bridge Prize - National Short Story Award - go.uleth.ca/thebridgeprize
October 13, 2019
Logbook, October 7-13, 2019
This whole series will be useful for people who think the 2010s didn’t have music. https://t.co/tXYoslZq8g
#sunset #iphonexr https://t.co/dDEJB7Hxan https://t.co/oRbnvllmtg
October 8, 2019
What are the non-cineplex theatres in Toronto that plays first run films? I really don’t want to support that company.
Anyways come to Fran’s Not Here, the podcast about Toronto and maybe Dream Daddy who knows.
Unsubscribing from, like, 50 youtube channels feels really good.
September 2019 in Photos https://t.co/5Nzo7zJfvG
October 9, 2019
We recorded Fran’s Not Here live.
October 10, 2019
I recommend this podcast - A Guide to Genres: Part 1.
Nokia Lumia 1020 https://t.co/dkEI5RBFAp. Lumia 1020 Photos https://t.co/miwvEB1GFp
I read New Productivity — Benedict Evans.
I read We Should Replace Facebook With Personal Websites.
I read How To Talk About Games With Someone Who Doesn’t Play Them.
October 11, 2019
I read Mental Health Is for Rich People, A little poison never hurt anybody, and Why You Never See Your Friends Anymore.
October 13, 2019
I recommend you read I Microwave This Pillow Every Day, and Then Fall Asleep.
I read Writing is Thinking: Learning to Write with Confidence.
Fran’s Not Here 42 - Dingling with the Dinguses
Listen to or download episode 42
Recorded live at the Free Times Cafe on October 9, 2019.
I’ve got the best TV package or whatever
October 9, 2019
Lumia 1020 Photos
As a companion to my Lumia 1020 post, here are a selection of photos taken with the Lumia 1020, all from 2014-2018.
Nokia Lumia 1020
just like the Lumia 800, I wanted to write a little blog post about an old phone. This one was important to me.
The 1020 is the only Windows Phone that ever mattered. It was filled with compromises, as all Windows Phones were. It had fewer apps, it was a little slower than the competition, and the downsides of the camera (and camera bump, which in 2013 seemed ghastly but today seems quaint) were real. It barely sold. It barely mattered. But it mattered to me. And it’s the only Windows Phone anyone should ever remember, because it was audacious and insane. Other Windows Phones tried to fit in the market at the time. Similar specs as other android phones. Similar cameras to the iPhone. They tried to make them seem like equal choices. This failed. The 1020 failed too, but not for lack of distinction.
All Black Everything. I liked to remove colour from the screen on Windows Phone. Keeping things stark seemed to match the matte black of the 1020 (it also came in white and yellow. The yellow was ugly. The white was cool).
The Screen. OLED is cool, but you have to know how to use it. The iPhone X has OLED but nobody notices. Android has no idea what to do with it either. I haven’t noticed OLED since Windows Phone. OLED’s best trick is that the blacks are black, and it looks like the screen is off. Software shouldn’t fill the screen using OLED. It should utilize huge amounts of white space around its elements. Windows Phone did that. Long before light/dark modes became standard on iOS and Android, Windows Phone’s default was dark mode, with massive sections of white space acting as the chrome around content.
The Camera. This was the reason this phone mattered. At 41 megapixels (real output was more like 34, but, like, still) the files this phone created were and still are insane. That came with major caveats, though. For one, even though the phone had stabilization, your hands need to be fucking steady. The 1020 would take several seconds to take each picture, so if your hand moved at all, you’d get blur. But when it worked, it was always worth the trouble.
No, but the camera though. I’m still having trouble taking pictures as good as I did on the Lumia. I had a camera grip accessory for it, which added not only a nice bug button for focusing and shooting, but also extra battery life. That always helped things, and I feel like in retrospect it should have just been part of the phone. I’ll make another post showing off some of the better shots I’ve taken with the 1020. It was a finicky process, but when it worked, nothing could touch it.
Windows Phone always had limits. It had a lot of trouble catching up to Android and iPhone, and failed horribly. It succeeded whenever it went in the opposite direction. The less Windows Phone focused on apps and more on categorical actions, the better it was. So, it was terrible at facebook and twitter, but it was great at giving you a list of your contacts and showing you what they were up to across a number of social networks (at least, the social networks that were prevalent in 2011). Instagram never worked, but the experience of intermingling your own photos and everyone else’s (so long as they were on Facebook or Flickr) was superb. And while other phones made marginal photography gains year over year, Nokia leapfrogged. You can be the same and worse, or you could be different. It was nice, for a time, being different.
