Changing where I sit an write really does help with my productivity, or with clearing my head and finding the words and ideas that I was looking for. Even choosing a different venue in the house. I look out on a different view, which seems to give me a new perspective even if I know the house well.
Well following my post last week about the new Reeder app, I have decided that it is not for me. For sure I will keep an eye on its development. I believe that through its production, developer Silvio Rizzi is exploring new ways that we can consume our online content, as is The Iconfactory with Tapestry. Tapestry will probably bounce on and off my phone as it goes through beta development. The jury is still out on whether I adopt it full time…I doubting it for the same reasons as Reeder, but I’ll reserve final judgement until it is a more mature app.
For now I’ll stick with using individual applications for the individual platforms. I simply find it easier to follow and keep track of the information that I want. Going back to the newspaper analogy that I used in my original article, for me it is like having a Sunday newspaper and making it last the week, consuming it at my own rate and in the way that I like to - sequentially, backwards/forwards, drilling down deeper into some sections.
I visited the Rinzai Zen Mission near to Pā’ia this morning for their morning meditation and service. It was a beautiful way to start the day.
Here is the closing prayer that we chanted.
FOUR INFINITE VOWS
All beings without limit I vow to carry over,
Kleshas without cease I vow to cut off;
Dharma gates without measure I vow to master;
Buddha’s Way without end I vow to fulfill.
🌬️ Yeh! It looks as though the Trade winds have returned. They are blowing through the open window this morning. After a handful of days of very hot, muggy weather, hopefully as today moves on through the conditions will be a little more manageable.
Spotted while out walking just off the shore line, at the end of last week. Someone or some people had been cleaning up debris that had washed ashore.
Seeing the work of these good people reminded me of a quote that went something like this,
You can’t throw things away. You can only put them where you can’t see them anymore.
Can weather conditions affect WiFi strength and connectivity?
I ask as yesterday some of my devices, all the same brand, lost connection with our home WiFi. Up until then they had been working just fine for the best part of six months. Tried as I might to reconnect them, the devices were not having it. Meanwhile everything else was working just fine. I rebooted our Wifi, no difference. All other devices reconnected, the rogue ones refused to.
Yesterday was very hot, humid as well. As we went into the evening the weather started to cool down quite noticeably and the humidity appeared to drop. Around sunset I found it more comfortable outside than in. By the time that I went to bed, two of the devices had reconnected. By this morning the third and final one had joined its companions.
I’m baffled. There might be another reason, but for now the weather conditions are all that I can think of?
The glow today is not from exercise, though I guess that it might as well be. The sun has been unrelenting today - the forecast said tops of 80ºF, though I would say it felt much hotter - and there were no Trade winds to take the edge off. Blue sky, little cloud.
I wanted to finish trimming a part of the hedge. Completing that would also see the majority of the whole hedge project completed (though still leaving a foreboding section to be tackled). I was busy all morning and didn’t start on the hedge until lunchtime. By late afternoon I had finished the task that I set myself. I headed indoors, hot and wet with sweat. To keep the sun off me I had made sure that I covered up.
So yes there is a glow - a glow of tiredness from exerting myself in this heat, and a glow from completing that section of hedge. I keep looking at it to admire the straight edge to the top.
But this is nothing. A house is being built at the end of the road. It has just gone six in the evening. The small crew working down there, only a couple of them, have been at it since eight this morning.
Quoted in the opening pages of Writing as a Way of Healing: How Telling Our Stories Transforms Our Lives by Louise DeSalvo. While I in no way claim the writing chops of Ray Bradbury, I can hear in his words a truth for me.
So while our art cannot, as we wish it old, save us from wars, privation, envy, greed, old age, or death, it can revitalize us amadst it all….
Writing is survival. …
Not to write, for many of us, is to die.
I have learned, on my journeys, that if I let a day go by without writing, I grow uneasy. Two days and I am in tremor. Three and I suspect lunacy. Four and I might as well be a hog, suffering the flux in a wallow. An hour’s writing is tonic. I’m on my feet, running in circles, and yelling for a clean pair of spats.
RAY BRADBURY
Zen in the Art of Writing
Well I have played with the new Reeder App for a couple of days now. I can’t decide what I think of it? And I wasn’t going to write about it…but I am 🙃
Some thoughts…
- The convenience of having everything in one place, I like that.
- The find the reading experience and navigation pleasant.
- I wish that there was more organization. The dedicated apps for me allow me that organization.
- My RSS reader will mark things read so that I am not left with an ever increasing list. Like for example NetNewsWire or indeed Reeder’s own Classic version does.
- My Mastodon app allows me to make use of filters, lists, etc to make things more easily findable and keep what I don’t want off my screen.
- Maybe some/all of this will come in time?
- And maybe to contradict what I said above, I also like the different layouts of different apps depending on which platform I am visiting. It lends to the flavour and mood setting of the platform as I go in to use it.
I am also on the beta of The Iconfactory’s Tapestry, an app that is exploring the same ideas as Reeder. It’s earlier days for Tapestry, and so I will reserve judgment there until it is a more mature app.
I found myself thinking of Reeder vs how I have until now consumed my online content earlier today while I was out cutting our hedge. My mind drifted to newspapers. I don’t read one on a daily basis anymore - mmmh, did I ever? - but they were a form of content consumption aside from news. I liked them. I miss them. By the time that the big newspapers arrive in Hawaii, most of the news has moved on.
So I’ll see where I end up. For now it will be the individual apps, as I also spend time jumping between apps comparing experience instead of reading content! 🤦♂️
🌧️ Rain stopped play. I was outside topping the hedge and this cloud out of nowhere and dropped a quick but heavy shower. That stopped almost as soon as it started, but not for long. The rain is falling and I can see no blue sky in sight. So I've come inside now and am just seeing what is happening online.
Sitting here listening to The Lark Ascending by Vaughn Williams and I am transported back to an English summer day. I’m sitting on a hill top looking out onto a view of rolling fields stretching into the distance. Blue sky and sun above, scattered clouds, a light breeze. The lazy hours of early afternoon as the heat of the day lulls the insects and birds into a quietness. An occasional tweet, the scratching of grasshopper legs, the popping of a seed head.
And then there is the song of the Lark rising above the landscape.
I did not realize that Vaughn Williams took as his inspiration for the piece, an 1881 poem by the English writer George Meredith. Williams second wife, Ursula, wrote that in composing the piece Williams had,
taken a literary idea on which to build his musical thought … and had made the violin become both the bird’s song and its flight, being, rather than illustrating the poem from which the title was taken.1
🔌 Last weekend we got through a hurricane, tropical storm and tropical depression with no power outages. From my experience here, that is not what I would have expected.
Today has been a beautiful day and it ends with the power going out an hour before sunset. An hour and a half in and still there is no clear idea when everything will be up and running again.
And then there is this evening’s rainbow, two if you look close. Two minutes later it started raining and the rainbow was gone 🌈
My 2020 13-inch MacBook Air running MacOS 14.6.1 is definitely crashing more than any Mac I have owned for a good number of years - I would almost say ever, going back to the 1990s. Maybe it is because I am running an OS that is pushing the Air to its limits, but I think not. I never install a new OS unless Apple declares that the machine that I have can manage it. I have had slow running computers because the one that I am running is being pushed to its limits because of the OS that I am running, but never crashing.
I’m going to make a guess and say that I think that the quality of Apple’s software has declined. If others know otherwise, or hypothesize other reasons, please put me right on this if I am putting the blame in the wrong place.
I might live to regret posting this commitment 🫠, but today I started using Duolingo to learn Portuguese. I realize that Duolingo’s Portuguese is Brazilian and those in the know tell me that there are differences, but I would like to use Duolingo to get me going. As a backup, I have another app that has European Portuguese, it just does not have an ongoing program.
About a year ago @jean shared some resources with me which definitely helped, Portuguese went from being a series of sounds to indentifiable words starting to shine through. However, I feel that I need a lower level commitment. A challenge, yes, but I need to change the pace of that challenge.
I’ll see where Duolingo can take me. Day one completed.
