Sawyer Paul's Blog, page 31

How to Shoot on iPhone

I’ve got to dig around on the Apple website more, because they’ve been adding all kinds of tutorials and helpful stuff.

I know the “hold spacebar to move the cursor” trick has blown up, but the How to Shoot on iPhone page has a ton of tips I didn’t know. My favourite: after tapping to focus, you can slide up or down to mess with exposure. That’s awesome.

Today I’m Reading

Paris Review
Aeon Essays
Marco.org
Book Reviews at the The New York Times

Nothing makes you miss the AirPods you forgot at work than having to fiddle with corded headphones with a fall jacket on the subway.

Nothing makes you miss the AirPods you forgot at work than having to fiddle with corded headphones with a fall jacket on the subway.

Morning, Computer

So I was reading Warren Ellis’ blog this morning, and he had this post about status pages. I don’t know how interested I am in the idea, tbh, because nobody looks at your website but yourself 99% of the time (even famous people. How often are you going to https://drakeofficial.com/, even if you love Drake?).

However, he linked to this Felix Krause’s status page, which is interesting in colophon explanations at least:

Trip data comes from nomadlist.com Mood data comes from my mood bot How do I travel? I live out of a suitcase

I got the most out of the last link, where he explains how he lives. It’s a fascinating walkthrough of solutions to problems I never thought of when you’re travelling just about every day, such as how he gets his physical mail. Spoiler: he uses a service that opens your mail and scans it to you.

I started the day reading the blog of a writer who generally gives great advice about staying offline and doing good work, and breadcrumbed my way to my latest dystopian nopenopenope.

More Things, November 19, 2018

With the help of an IFTTT recipe that turns what I save to Pocket into a Markdown link, I can easily make a linked list blog post again. Hence, the return of More Things.

Articles are ordered from oldest to newest.

The Winning Trick at the World Championships of Magic Might Fry Your Brain Like an Egg

What if the Placebo Effect Isn’t a Trick?

Instagram Can’t Hide Behind Facebook Anymore

My Apple Watch became an excuse to not take care of myself

MySpace Tom beat Facebook in the long run

What nobody tells you about documentation

I Found the Best Burger Place in America. And Then I Killed It.

Podcast Recommendations, November 19, 2018

Here are some podcast episodes I’ve enjoyed lately. Links go to Overcast.

Supercomputer - Smart Homery - October 25, 2018. Matthew smashes his buttons and Alex gets carried away with HomeKit aspirations before speculating about Apple’s Fall Event.

Do by Friday - I Fifteen Love You - February 1, 2018. This week’s challenge: do a magic trick.

Friendshipping - Gender is Weird in Los Angeles - October 18, 2018. In this very special episode, we consider how you can best support your non-binary friends. Discussion of pronouns, gender spectrums, and why we let boys run into the street but not girls for some reason. A million thanks to Ian and Maya for guesting!

Hurry Slowly - Who Are You Without the Doing? - November 6, 2018. Jocelyn K. Glei on our obsession with getting things done, and how a more “tender discipline” can unlock clarity and creativity.

Fran’s Not Here 31 - Robert has Left the Conversation

Trick or Like and Subscribe or whatever.

Fran’s Not Here is a show about Toronto, co-hosted by Robert Pilgrim. Subscribe via RSS, iTunes, Overcast, Pocketcasts, and Soundcloud. Listen to older episodes on Mixcloud.

I’m on vacation.

I’m on vacation. Listen to some lo fi while I’m gone.

Be well. Stay out of the dog park.

More Things, November 09, 2018

With the help of an IFTTT recipe that turns what I save to Pocket into a Markdown link, I can easily make a linked list blog post again. Hence, the return of More Things.

Articles are ordered from oldest to newest.

How to Identify the Basic Types of Anime and Manga

Reminders as My Day-to-day Lifeline (Powered by Shortcuts)

Farewell, FilmStruck: A Bittersweet Guide to the Movies to Catch Before It’s Gone

Tiny Books Fit in One Hand. Will They Change the Way We Read?

Netflix’s libertarian-fascist corporate culture is a hell no one deserves

The Crippling Cultural Ignorance of ’90s Film and TV

The Boring Truths I’ve Learned About Losing Weight and Keeping It Off

Here Is How You NaNoWriMo, You Ruinous Monster, You

A Day In The Life Of A Morgan Stanley First-Year Analyst Who Wakes Up At 3 a.m. Covered In His Own Sweat And Fear, Eats When He’s Allowed, Cries Alone In Elevators, And Fantasizes Every Day About Running Away

Getting the iPad to Pro

The Best Books of 2018 (So Far)

The Rules And Practice Of Cigarette Magic

There are some days where I think, no, my life isn’t interesting enough to post to my blog.

There are some days where I think, no, my life isn’t interesting enough to post to my blog. But then I remembered that it’s a blog, and it’s free, and I’ve shaved all these levels of abstraction away so all I need to do is type some words and hit one button and they appear on the internet, and I think, run-on sentences make for poor writing but this is my blog man, and sometimes the thought needs to get out of the way so a good thought can come through, a run-on sentence full of half rambling nonsense needs to get out of my head and onto the internet so that a better thing can get by later, and even if that later never comes I should still do the work just in case, because I should believe in the process, this idea that good thoughts and good writing follow rough thoughts and poor writing, typo-riddled and slapdash, quick, quick, quick, unfinished and unrefined.

But even then I go back and fix the typos.