Next Monday, Apple will be holding it World Wide Developer Conference for the year. It usually marks the time that I destroy my cell phone’s battery and complain about all my dropped calls and message malfunctions.
But every year, I find myself enjoying the prospects of something new.
This year, I’m looking forward to it but my expectations are rather low.
If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses
Maybe it’s because I am getting older or that I am fulfilled in other ways, but I don’t see much need in a lot of the promise that some of the newer technologies are offering.
I like having transcripts for my podcasts.
I like having more cohesive alt messages for my images.
These are good things that really help everyone.
No butts about it. And yes, I gave it two t’s.
I just don’t have any passion for the rest of it. Whether it’s AI, vision, or even an update to how to add contacts to my address book, I’ve been finding myself more and more apathetic to changes in my own technological stack.
I hate my landline. All I get is spam calls interrupting my day. It’s criminal the way these people keep calling and trying to take advantage of others. There have been several times that I had to help my parents with some kind of issue related to passwords and security.
I took fLaMEd’s idea of adding my XMPP handle to my about page. It’s part of the omg.log service that I signed up for a while ago.
I’ve got two people that I chat with using it. It reminds me of when I was in high school and instant messaging was the thing to do in my social group. It makes me feel a little nostalgic.
It’s a reboot of a show I would watch on Saturday mornings as a kid. Back then, the violence was hidden with lasers and characters that would die offscreen. The original did have some darker moments, but you had hope that things were going to work out. This version gives you that hope and then proceeds to crush it.
When I was younger, I would jokingly yell “Moooooooorph!” when a character I barely knew died. Call it immaturity. I was ignorant of what losing someone meant. Not to say I don’t still laugh at dark humor or that every dead character brings me to tears, but now I have more of an understanding that a characters death can and should have impact on the plot and other characters.
My only complaint about the show is that it runs through a lot of the different plots and themes that happened with the X-Men in the 90s. Plot lines that would take years would be addressed in a couple episodes and we don’t get a chance to sit with some of the changes for very long. If you are watching during the weekly release, I feel that it would be better so that you can really sit with what happens. If you are binging, you might feel you are missing something; like a stage in the grieving process.
Overall, this is a wonderful show that highlights that animation can convey themes with deeper meaning… even when there are big lasers.
The X-Men, a band of mutants who use their uncanny gifts to protect a world that hates and fears them, are challenged like never before, forced to face a dangerous and unexpected new future.
Last night I did an all-nighter and just kind of slept walked most of the day.
This view under the trees just looked nice.
Well, we’re at the end of the month and I did not meet my goal of having a post every day about mental health as I had set out to do. If anything, I probably posted less this month than at other times this year.
Apparently, I need to take the break from posting.
Still, there were a lot of great posts that came from this and would like to thank everyone who wrote or read a blog to think about joining communities like indieweb.org or adding themselves to Blog of the Day.
Blog of the Day is a small project created and maintained by James and Joe. I’ve been seeing them in various IndieWeb meet ups and they seem like pretty cool folks.
What did I get out of this?
My favorite part of this whole experience was seeing posts from other people. The small ones, the long posts. Things that were sitting in a drafts folder and even the posts with a simple “I’m only writing this to continue the streak”. I didn’t read everything but it was cool to see what options were available.
For my own writing, I come away with a feeling a little more confidence about posting links from other sites. People like HeyScottyJ and Leon, pushed me to get over the barrier of feeling like an imposter and that the value of me taking the time to find the links and adding my two cents is important as well. I’m not taking credit, I’m pointing the way.
Will I do it next year?
Yes.
Part of my posts were highlighting the importance of mental health and I do enjoy publishing things on my blog.
I feel that next year, I’ll include the entire blog instead of just a category and I might draft a couple posts in advance so that I can stagger the publication.
Mandaris
