Euan Semple's Blog, page 3

Notes on my Apple Watch

All I want for Christmas is the ability to take notes on my Apple Watch. On my iPhone I can invoke Siri and say “Create a new note” and then dictate the note. But I can’t do that on my watch.

The reason I’ve heard in the past is that in order for notes to operate on the watch it would involve deciding what to do with notes that include images or sounds. But I can’t see that it would be that difficult to manage that or even identify the text elements of any note and sync them.

At the moment I’m still using drafts on my watch because that allows me to have little bits of information readily available with me on the watch. But it’s frustrating that I can’t do this with the native Notes app.

The scrambly bit from yesterday.

Blencathra via Halls Fell Ridge

A cracking walk in glorious weather with some testing moments to spice it up.

Dave Pollard on fine form

“There was an inadvertent mistake in the factory that manufactured the ‘Human’ line of products, and unfortunately it’s not fixable. They will all have to be recalled and taken out of service.”

More here

If you loved Siri like I love Siri.

There is a fashion these days amongst tech pundits to go on and on about how awful Siri is, but in my experience it’s not, it’s amazing. I use it all the time.

I use it mostly through my watch, where I have Raise to Speak turned on so I don’t even have to say the phrase “Hey Siri”, I just raise my wrist to my mouth and start speaking.

I use it for reminding myself to do things, checking how long it will take me to get to certain locations, setting timers, and triggering things around the house, like turning on lights or turning on the TV.

I also use it a lot for dictation. This has got slightly frustrating recently, but I suspect it is more because I’ve taken on my wife’s iPhone 12 and gave her my iPhone 15 so the phone has had less time to get used to my voice and also the processor is slower so it’s probably having to work harder. But even so, if I take my time and speak carefully, it is perfectly capable of allowing me to dictate text into messages or blog posts.

I even use it when I’m sitting at my desk using my iPad and have my phone on a stand which places it slightly out of reach. I’m able to control my phone remotely asking Siri to instigate phone calls or open particular apps and get those apps to do things without having to take my hands off the iPad keyboard.

The one thing I don’t tend to use Siri very much for is asking questions that require answers from the web. It’s not very good for that and I suspect this small aspect of Siri’s usage is what others get frustrated at.

The delusion of having a meaningful job

“Can you really be ‘passionate’ about digital marketing?”

I am really enjoying the articles in Unherd and this one in particular resonated.

Inconceivable

On my walk yesterday I saw a beautiful little roe deer standing maybe 30 yards away in long grass looking at me with its ears perked up. We just looked at each other for a while and then I moved on. But it was still there on my way back and I spent longer watching it grazing at the edge of a wood.

As I focused on it I found myself imagining that I was a hunter and that I was looking at it through the sights of my rifle.

Yet again I found it inconceivable that anyone in that situation can pull the trigger. What goes through their head as they look at this beautiful, innocent, calm, defenceless creature.

And then kill it.

The need for novelty.

If I do the same walk over and over my brain tells me it’s boring, I’ve seen it all a thousand times. But this isn’t true. The walk is different every time. I’m different every time.

At this time of year of course it’s in your face different with the explosion of greenery on the trees and bushes, all the blossom, the wildflowers.

The whole walk is utterly fascinating if I just open my eyes. And getting disgruntled about the perceived need to go further to find new walks is bizarre.

Alby giving me a stern talking to

He’s not happy that I wouldn’t let him out this late so he’s now harassing me from the edge of my bath!

Budgeting

When Penny used to ask me “Can we afford to buy this?” in the past, we really had no way of knowing. Sure we might know roughly how much was in our current account, and might know roughly what big items we had to fund before we next got paid, but really we were guessing. This didn’t matter so much in the past but now that we are in various versions of retirement, it is going to be nice to know just how much money we have to spend on particular things at particular times. 

I had played with the app You Need A Budget (YNAB) a few years ago and then let it lapse, but I recently started using it again and am finding it is making a real difference. It is based on the principle of “giving every dollar a job”. In other words when you have money coming in to your account assign all of it so some purpose, even if that purpose is savings or even a “not sure what to do with this” category. This means that when you look in the app at the various categories of spending, and how much is left in each, if there is nothing left you have to think about which other category you have to take it from, which might be the “not sure what to do with this category” but at least you have had to think about what you are taking, and from where. 

Contrary to what you might expect using the app doesn’t make you worry about money all the time. In fact it is the opposite. It makes you much clearer about what you are doing with your money and why.

The app has a steep learning curve but there are fantastic videos and podcasts available to help make sense of it, and to be honest, it has been great fun becoming a true budget nerd!