Micro-Update: Quotes and Passages Page

I spend what is probably an excessive amount of time researching the art of studying, reading, and researching, driven by a desire to constantly improve not only myself, my skills, and my knowledge, but to also improve how I learn. Earlier today I came across the idea of publishing a “Quotes and Passages” page to my website while reading an article by Ryan Holiday. I skimmed through his implementation, and decided to begin implementing the same type of page here. My plan is for it to contain quotes from books, podcasts, etc than I find particularly interesting, inspiring, or noteworthy.

Micro-Update: User-Friendly Linux Mug

This is the first of what I’m referring to as “micro-updates”, based on the concept of micro-blogging. I occasionally have a short thought, or something I would like to share, but there isn’t enough content to create a standard-length blog post. So I decided to give this format a try.

Earlier this week, a co-worker sent me a link to an amusing mug on Amazon. I’m a sucker for things like that, and so it was added to my cart, purchased, and arrived on my doorstep in short order. While it’s not “accurate”, per-say, I can at times agree with the sentiment. As much as I love Linux, occasionally when troubleshooting something, it can be a tad annoying…

Asocial? A Life Without Social Media

In November of 2018, I logged out of Facebook and Instagram for the last time, deleted my Snapchat account, and removed the Twitter app from my phone. A few months later, I also shuttered my Twitter account. After debating it for many years, and attempting (and failing) multiple times, I was finally done with social media.

It’s been almost a year since that time, and so I decided to do a quick retrospective to answer the following question, something I wish I would have had to read before making my choice: what’s it like to be 30, in the tech sector, and not on any traditional social media platforms? In short, it’s both amazing, and also sometimes slightly annoying.

Leaving Android Behind

If someone were to have told me that I’d be leaving Android at the start of 2019, I’d have told them they were crazy. After all, when I switched to Android from iOS in 2015, I decided that I would be staying with the platform for the foreseeable future. And the further I got into that future, the more entrenched I became in the Android ecosystem, to the point that switching would be painful on both my pocketbook, and on my daily life. But here we are: it’s September, and I’m officially leaving Android behind, and switching to an iPhone. So… why an iPhone? After all, I’m a Linux user, right? Wouldn’t it make more sense to move to another Android-based system, or a Linux phone?

Abandoning Audible

Every year, when it comes time to renew memberships and subscriptions to various online services, I sit down and re-evaluate if they are still worth the amount of money that I am spending. It is relatively rare that something gets added to the yearly subscription list, and even rarer when a service gets removed. I’ve also found that, year after year, there have been a collection of services that I haven’t even considered removing. And up until this year, Audible was one of those services…

2018 Year in Review

“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” Gandalf

Well, it’s hard to believe, but another year has come and gone! I was told growing up that time flies the older you get, and I’ve generally noticed each year seeming to go by slightly faster than the one before. However, this year seemed to go especially fast for me. In a recent sermon from my pastor, I was challenged to look back at 2018 and what God has done in my life. And so, with that goal, here’s a brief recap of what I decided to do with the last 365 days!

Mycroft Mark 1

I have been dabbling in smart home technology and voice assistants for several years now. I was one of the first people I know to own an Amazon Echo (the original black tube), and used it until November 2016, when the Google Home first came out. Since I am an Android user, and I use Google’s services heavily in multiple areas of my life, I made the switch to the Google Home and never looked back. That is, until mid-2017, when the Mycroft Mark 1 Kickstarter was first announced.