I'm aware of the stillness of Sunday. There's a songbird singing just outside my window. Inside the house, it is silent apart from the quiet hum of the various devices plugged into the wall. The house is not empty, but everyone is busy being connected either to their laptop or phone. I'm grabbing a moment of chill after having spent the last hour playing our weekly game of PUBG. We didn't do so well today. No chicken dinner for us. We usually at least get some chicken nuggets that is to say we usually finish at least in second place. But the competition was fierce today. The afternoon is getting on. I want to get in at least an hour of reading in before dinner and the inevitable shift from weekend to work night when I'll have to start thinking about what needs to get done before I leave for Hungary on Thursday. I should think about packing, but that's never been my style to get ready too far in advance. I have the important stuff ready - a renewed passport, my Covid-19 passport, and the pre-booked airport parking. I don't have any euros. I still have to sort out travel insurance unless it's too late. And I have to think through what's going in my tech bag for this trip. I want to travel light, so I'll probably keep it to gear that can fit in my cargo pockets. I wonder how roaming charges work now post-Brexit. I still haven't sorted my micro-blogging platform out yet.
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It’s 05:55 on May 20th twenty twenty-two. It’s a normal Friday. I’m finishing up my first coffee of the day. I’m sitting in my recliner with my MacBook Pro on my lap. The overhead light bouncing off of the keyboard irritates me. The glare makes it hard for me to focus on the keys. I’m not a touch typist. Wanda uncurls herself from her “spot” on the couch. She jumps to the floor and immediately goes into her cleaning routine.
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Lately, to improve my writing as a microblogger, I’ve moved away from reading dry text where the author’s main intent is to teach the subject. I’m now reading more narrative text where the writer’s intent is to show their story and bring their world alive in the mind of the reader.
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This feels like a good place to play. I have to get back used to the mechanics of how the Drummer CMS works. From my previous experience, it can be a bit touchy sometimes, especially if you're not used to writing in outline form.
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Yesterday, I hit a wall. I thought it was a creativity block, but it turns out, it wasn't. In fact, it was quite the opposite. It was the pregnant pause that comes just before an idea is born. I had so much stuff brewing in my brain that it was beginning to get muddled. I was trying to force an idea that my extroverted thinking sub-personality wanted to pursue. But my extroverted intuition sub-personality had other ideas and so fought back which probably accounts for that hitting the wall feeling as these two forces opposed each other. Extroverted Intuition or Ni is my dominant cognitive function, whereas extroverted thinking (Ti) is my tertiary cognitive function. I completely skipped my secondary cognitive function which is introverted feeling (Fi). This is a common behaviour of ENFPs. My extroverted thinking side want to jump right to solution mode with considering how I felt about the changes I want to make in my direction of travel. It took a good sleep for my mind to realign itself (probably at the direction of my subconscious mind) and release the real solution. The real solution is this - the Naked Philosopher reborn.
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I didn't feel like spending another day trapped at my desk. I was in the mood for people, even if they were total strangers. I went into Leamington Spa to do what freelancers do, work in a coffee shop. I had a nice spot by the window. In between my work, I could people watch. The flow of people still hasn't returned to pre-covid days.
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Hmm...I forgot I have a Drummer driven microblog. I might dust it off and start using it.
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- Original tweets#
- Unwrap the present Let the past fall back inside Embrace what is new#
- I like to playfully poke holes in close-mindedness, especially when it's being passed off as maturity.#
- "Prophet!" Said I, thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil! - Take thy beak from out of my heart, and take thy form from off my door! Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."It feels like a Raven kind of day.#
- Hello, good people. Happy Monday. https://t.co/LcHk9k5QBg#
- Links#
- Whoa! What an incredible story. Hiroo Onoda brought new meaning to the phrase, no retreat, no surrender!The dude continued to fight WWII 30 years beyond the end of the war.youtu.be#
- But then again, it is Monday and Mondays tend to be bleak and dreary as the weekend high fades away...Then I remember what the thief said to Brian on the cross: and I smile and get on with my day.youtu.be#
- Mood: open.spotify.com#
- Replies#
- @EatMyHalo Did not disappoint. I enjoyed it. I didn't really know anything about Ben Fong-Torres beyond James Cameron's movie, Almost Famous.#
- @LocalFatsos Wow! Hope you're back on your feet in no time.#
- @blaz3_t beetroot!#
- @amandafclark Nice view!#
- RTs#
Since everybody is talking about Facebook at the moment, I thought I would too, but not for the same reason as everybody else. I was on a friend's Facebook profile page today while eating my lunch. As I was scrolling past her Friend's list section, I noticed there was a lady on her list that I had 29 mutual friends with. Now, I don't know this lady from Jane, but apparently, we have 29 friends in common.
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That got me thinking about the six degrees of separation concept which basically states that all people are six or fewer social connections away from each other. As a result, a chain of "friend of a friend" statements can be made to connect any two people in a maximum of six steps. Sites like LinkedIn are built on this premise.
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I once took part in a research project attempting to prove this concept. I was tasked to find someone I was connected to who lived in Germany. This was the days before social media, so i had to satrt the initial outreach through email. I never did make a connection, but I'm wondering if the results would be different now if I used Facebook to start the process off. Or even this blog post.
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If you're a stranger reading this, how did you come across this post? Who do we know in common?
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I bought the new 14" MacBook Pro today. I've been holding out for the machine for months. I was really impressed with the Mac Mini which I bought during the beginning of the first lockdown last year. I fell in love with the Mac Mini with a dual screen setup. My current MacBook Air is old. I'm 2 MAC OS's behind because I wasn't able to upgrade because the machine is just maxed out. I do a lot of video editing for work (when I'm on client site) and this Mac can barely cope. Shameful really. I've had to leave client site to go home on work on edits because this Air just couldn't hack it. I don't know if that's just me trying to justify the hefty price tag that comes with the new MacBook Pro. Anyway, It's currently in setup mode, should be ready in the morning.
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- I watched 'When You're Strange' a documentary on the Doors by Tom Dicillo. This is the second time I've seen it, but after listening to The End this morning in the shower, I felt like hanging out with The Doors today. Jim Morrison fascinates me. I love his poetry and love the music. I wonder what demons were trapped inside his head that he couldn't escape from except through drugs and alcohol. Or was he merely emulating one of his literary heroes -Arthur Rimbaud, the French poet who wrote in a letter to Paul Demeny: "A poet makes himself a visionary through a long, boundless, and systematized disorganization of all the senses. All forms of love, of suffering, of madness; he searches himself, he exhausts within himself all poisons and preserves their quintessence. Unspeakable torment, where he will need the greatest faith, a superhuman strength, where he becomes among all men the great invalid, the great accursed - and the Supreme Scientist! For he attains the unknown! So what if he is destroyed in his ecstatic flight through things unheard of, un-nameable..."#
I forgot how fun blogging can be once you tear yourself away from herd mentality and the death grip of marketing and content creation. The freedom of expression is tremendously liberating and tools like
Drummer further strip away the bondage found in mainstream content management systems. Thanks, @davewiner
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My computer ecosystem I was thinking about the ecosystem of computers I use. When the iPad Pro 2nd generation came out, with its USB-C port, I thought that was a game-changer. I'd been already transitioning myself to being mainly a tablet user and the iPad Pro with the USB-C port made that possible. But since the pandemic and my greatly reduced travel schedule, I have been using M1 Mac mini during working hours and my MacBook Air around the house when I need a change of scenery. I find myself only using my iPad Pro for surfing the Net, watching Netflix, scrolling social media, jamming to Spotify, and playing PUBG. Anything else, like blogging, editing video and audio, note-making, journalling etc, I do from the laptop or Mac mini.
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And now, with the new MacBook Pro coming out next week, I think I'll be firmly back in the laptop camp. I just find that I'm more productive on a laptop than a tablet. I use the desktop when I need the screen real estate that dual monitors provide.
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Oh yeah, I nearly forgot to mention my iPhone 12 Pro. It's my goto device for communicating via messaging, social media, photography, and on the go audio making.
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Actually, the iPad Pro does have one great advantage for me and that is taking notes in meetings using the Apple pencil and the
GoodNotes app. For that reason, I will definitely continue to carry it around with me along with my MacBook when I'm out working with clients.
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I have to figure out how to get the tabs to stay up top.
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I've decided I'd use this blog as a personal blog to capture the raw-ish thoughts I have throughout any given day. It'll be a supplement to my main blog over at
soulcruzer. There's also the
microblog though, from which I want to do my microblogging, so I'll just have to see how I bounce between the two.
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- I need to start thinking like a blogger again instead of a content creator. And writing this blog like I'm writing it right now, a personal note that others may choose to read or not. In short, writing primarily for myself.#