Disconnection

I have a rocky relationship with Facebook. There are things about it that I loathe. The impenetrablility and whimsy of its privacy policies; its UI and UX; the sometimes overbearing self-reflection. But I've always felt somewhat hostage to it. I've considered leaving, but I know that I would miss the content, the events, the random discussions, the connections to people which is its great redeeming quality.

I think I've found my best way past this. 

A couple of weeks ago, I deleted the Facebook app from my mobile devices. This has several important effects. Firstly, no notifications following you around. If I want Facebook, I have to go to it. It does not seek me out. Secondly, because I don’t log into Facebook on my work machine, this means I generally only check it when I’m at home (or if I’m carrying my personal laptop around, which actually isn’t all that often).

It has surprised me just how much of an effect this has had. At first, I found myself with the impulse to check Facebook when out and about. This quickly dissipated, to the extent that it has now become almost an afterthought. I enjoy using it a lot more, but I don’t feel compelled to check it on any given day (and will now regularly forget to, whereas before I used to sometimes automatically try to open Facebook while I was already on Facebook…).

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that we are slaves to social media, but the feeling has been oddly liberating. Facebook has become more enjoyable as a consequence. The one exception is when I'm travelling for more than a couple of days. If I'm on a different time zone, I like to have an easier connection to people!

The other thing I’ve started doing—or, more properly, stopped doing—is ‘liking’ things on Facebook. Nothing at all. It’s weird what an ingrained, easy reflex this had become. By not ‘liking’ things, I’ve forced myself to be more engaged with content (or not!)—it pushes me towards actually commenting, sharing, or just leaving it be.

Everyone I've spoken to about this—which started as an experiment—has liked the idea, and I've even induced (without much persuasion) some others to try the same thing. I found the whole thing entirely positive. It's made me realise that I'm not 'missing' anything (that can't wait or afford to be missed altogether).

PotW—Some Kind of Fairy Tale

I heard about Graham Joyce in the worst way there is to discover an amazing author—through the sad news of their death. Having heard some personal stories from people who had known or met Graham, I made a note to make a effort to read something of his in the near future. He sounded like a wonderful person. One of the great thing about art is that, even if you hear things which make you wish you had known them only after it’s too late, they have been decent enough to leave a part of themselves behind. 

Last week, I finished Some Kind of Fairy Tale on Audible. A woman returns home after a long, unexplained absence, and her family has to come to terms with this strange reappearance. As much as ‘modern fairytale’ is an overused tag, this truly is that. It enchants, sings; it touches and affects. It sparkles with a glinting light that will not let you be. Read it.

Air travel

What is the future of long-distance transport? I'm particularly interested at this point as I prepare to land back in London, having spectacularly failed to sleep for any appreciable amount of time.

Air travel is captive to the cost concerns of mass transit, making for a singularly uncomfortable environment (unless you're one of a fortunate few), and I don't see any real pressure for that to change.

Planes may evolve, but the drive for economy will always limit the amount of comfortable space for passengers, even as the technology evolves. So, what's the next step in consumer mass transit?

I guess the best hope is for super-fast long-distance air travel, so that, even if the level of discomfort remains, it is fleeting.

My bloodshot eyes look forward to seeing this future. 

Pick of the Week – Mechanical Keyboards

Last year, I had a few ‘App of the week’ posts, designed to be easily-digestable (and easily-producible) pieces of content to keep the blog ticking over. While I’m actually rather light on good app recommendations week over week, I still like the idea. So instead, here’s a ‘pick of the week’: a thing that has caught my interest in some way that merits sharing with you in short form. 

I've become a keyboard snob. For years, an enlightened few whispered to me of the joys of the mechanical keyboard. The consistency of the key-press. The joy of the 'clack' and the 'click'. I held out, disbelieving.   

Then, this year, I caved. My parents presented the amazing gift of a Corsair K70 Cherry Red keyboard. It still brings me utter joy every time I type on it. I feel like I am throwing my fingertips at the keys, rather than making timid little button pushes.

A month later, I ditched my spongy work keyboard as well. I couldn't stand it any more. Its mechanical replacement is not as nice as my Corsair, but it has still made my work typing so much better.

I'm visiting our San Francisco office this week, and I'm using a keyboard so spongy, it should have its own Nickelodeon show. I don't know whether each keystroke will elicit a result on screen or whether I'm just doing finger exercises. It sucks. I miss my stompy keyboard. 

If you type a lot, consider a mechanical keyboard. Sure, they're more expensive, but they should last you longer anyway. Figure out which type of switch is best for your need and typing style and go from there. Many are marketed as gaming keyboards, but don't be deceived. If you're a habitual key-tickler, they're for you.

Long haul flights

Long-haul flights are a curiosity of the modern age. In a time when we're generally over-stimulated, bombarded with media, communications, and distractions every minute of the day, being forced to confront our own sweet selves for upwards of eight hours at a stretch is somewhat of a terrifying anomaly. The fact that it is the only feasible means of long-distance personal travel is the only reason we’re willing to put up with it.

What’s more, we do everything we can to just get it over with. People try their best to sleep through it, or else cram back-to-back movies to pass the time in the least obtrusive way possible. That’s not a criticism; it’s a generally unpleasant environment to be trapped for that length of time, and people will do whatever they need to make it through. It struck me on this trip more than others, though, just how far apart it stands from every other moment of our regular lives. Maybe I’m worse at this than others, but suddenly finding yourself cut off from the ever-flowing stream of information that runs past our finger tips day and night is surprisingly jolting.

This is quite possibly a good thing—I’m not trying to say that being cut off from the internet or live TV for more than a few hours is some crisis of the modern age (it’s something I increasingly relish as a time to read, and occasionally, when there’s space, write). It does, however, throw the incessant nature of our lives (okay, I’m generalising—my life, at least) into sharp relief.

I try hard to cram a great deal of ‘stuff’ into my day-to-day life, and regard time when I’m not, in a broadly identifiable sense, doing something to be partly wasted. While it can be great, I am starting to find this somewhat unhealthy. I beat myself up excessively about downtime which is probably needed and don’t always set aside enough time to just be thinking. 

Long flights represent the best and worst of this—I variably see it as time to be filled as productively as possible (and subsequently curse myself for the amount of time that I could have spent reading, for instance, even though I felt like crap and sleeping was a better idea), or I allow myself that room to breathe. Each flight tends to have one character, though.

You may find all this deeply disinteresting, or, alternatively, intriguingly revealing of a character flaw. It doesn’t really matter. This was written to fill some time on a flight.

10 books that have stayed with me

I know this meme has probably been and gone and had its day in the internet sun (which is like our normal sun, but made of cats), but I thought it would make an interesting enough blog post (read: I’m light on content this week, but still wanted to put something out there). 

Because brevity is the soul of basically tolerable writing, I’ll restrict myself to three sentences on each at most, and not my normal kind of Inspector-Gadget-super-extendy sentences. 

In no particular order:

Ancillary Justice – Ann Leckie
A sci-fi tale told from the perspective of a former ship’s AI, the core conceit and narrative structure make for a very entertaining read as the reader pieces together the context from flashback and wide-reaching senses. Ancillary Justice received a lot of attention (and awards) last year, too much of which focussed on its approach to gender which, while interesting, was not what made the book so good. It surprised me that a character who, on one level, you would expect to be so clinical could be so compelling.

The Secret History – Donna Tartt
My long-time favourite book, despite the fact that I have only read it fully once, and not for some years. Maybe it stuck with me because it was a tale of classicists in a classic ‘greek tragedy’ style ; maybe it just made us seem clever, if not good. Regardless, Donna Tartt spins an intriguing, alluring, and rather distressing tale (as, I gather, many are now finding with The Goldfinch—I am yet to read it) that haunted me for a long time after.

Use of Weapons – Iain M Banks
Not even my favourite Banks book, but, like many others on this list, possessed of a haunting characteristic that won’t quite leave you alone ever again. A rougish type is hired by a highly advanced civilisation to do their dirty work. On one level, it’s a space opera romp where he displays his impressive and devastating capabilities, but it takes you to some dark and unexpectedly revealing places.

On Writing – Stephen King
This is one of the most-recommended texts for writers, but it it was far from what I expected. As time passes and I spend more time trying to improve my writing, the lessons it sets out (plainly and directly) increasingly click into place. The reasons come clear in and of themselves and I suddenly understand the 'why' behind them and wonder why I couldn't just bloody well heed them in the first place—but the points are all the stronger for being learned in this way.

The Left Hand of Darkness – Ursula K Le Guin
Sci-fi that adopts an intricate and interesting stance on gender (Ancillary Justice owes Le Guin more than a little in this regard). Above all else, it was a deeply revealing story about humans and the way we are. I only read it last year, and I long to read it again and again.

Smoke and Mirrors – Neil Gaiman
I can’t pinpoint the exact moment that I fell in love with Neil Gaim—errrr, fell in love with his work *cough*, but it was probably while reading Smoke and Mirrors. A catalogue of wonders and horrors, his spinning of fairytales (both in spirit and more literally) cemented my love of his work and was probably the first time I really saw the beauty of the short story in all of its glory.

Watchmen – Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons
Watchmen felt like the first time I had read a comic in real depth, and I see more each time that I read it again. There were things I encountered before it which merited as close a reading, but it was Watchmen that actually opened my eyes to this. It’s a timeless classic for a reason, and it deserves its place in the literary canon.

The Dark Knight Returns – Frank Miller
Another graphic novel, and one of the greatest Batman stories, despite the fact that exists outside the main canon. Bruce Wayne returns from retirement to save a city sliding into near-future chaos, confronting all the logistical challenges a long retirement from a demanding (*cough*) job brings. An examination of the concept of Batman as a ‘fascist’ vigilante. A classic in narrative and form.

The Neonomicon – Alan Moore, Jacen Burrows
A disturbing, horrible, and horrifying tale that marries the mythos of H P Lovecraft with Alan Moore’s brilliant, twisted storytelling. Dark, really dark, but darkly compelling.

The Gift of Fear – Gavin de Becker
I used to see this book talked about a lot, but it doesn’t seem to be as oft-mentioned these days, but something I think everyone would benefit from reading. The warning signs and precursors to violence, how to recognise them and, hopefully, avoid them. It may help you understand people better.

Atonement – Ian McEwan
A decent if too-long book that, as is the case with most books one studies at school, we did rather over-read. Still, the feelings of anger at injustice that the book inspired are surprisingly strong even now.

The thing that surprised me the most was how many of these are books I first read in the last two years. I am not sure whether that constitutes a better record/memory of what I've been reading, or a better ability to select good books.

What are some of the ones that have stayed with you?

What I wear

Wearables are the next big leap for personal technology. This is not news; anyone who follows technology news will have seen wearables talked about as the ‘next (next) big thing’. While I think that the hype machine is running with full steam and setting unrealistic expectations (I think it’s hovering somewhere around the ’Trough of Disillusionment’ mark on the Gartner Hype Cycle), I do believe that this is the next big area where consumer technology will make a real, positive difference to our everyday lives.

Jeremy Kemp. - Own work. The underlying concept was conceived by Gartner, Inc.
CC-BY-SA-3.0,2.5,2.0,1.0; Released under the GNU Free Documentation License.

Rather than going on at length around my thoughts on wearables in principle (though perhaps that’s something I will share in the future), I thought I’d take you through my own current set up. This year, for the first time, I think we’re seeing the emergence of wearables as truly useful, consumer-ready devices rather than merely interesting oddities, but they still seem to remain in the territory of the early adopter. A practical example of how they have improved (or, at least, changed) my day-to-day life seems more appealing and illustrative than a discussion of the theory.

My ‘personal area network’ is now made up of three wearable devices, slaved to my phone: my Pebble, my Jawbone UP24, and my LG Tone+ Bluetooth headset. This has grown up over the past month or so particularly in response to having a large phone. I’ve been curious to see the amount of interest it’s received, in sum and by parts, and that it has proved far more useful than I had originally envisioned.

The Pebble smart watch was Kickstarted last year and was, by all accounts, pretty good (the total amount raised at that link rather speaks for the demand...), but it only received the software update that really brought it up to spec earlier this year. The basic idea is simple: it’s a watch (with a bunch of changeable digital faces) which receives all the notifications that come to your phone. When a notification hits your phone, the Pebble lights up, vibrates, and shows some or all of whatever message you’ve received. Notably, it’s currently the only smartwatch that works with iPhones (upcoming 2015 products notwithstanding). It offers a lot more than that, including activity tracker displays, Evernote, vibrating alarms, music controls, and, as of last month, even step tracking through UP. It does most of these things very well, but the notifications aspect is where it really shines.

For some people, the idea of receiving notifications directly on their body is some sort of Borg-esque nightmare. Surely it’s invasive; a way of making our over-connected, over-distracted digital chains even more inescapable. I expected a little of that, but have actually found the opposite. While it might seem counter-intuitive, this more personal means of receiving notifications has actually untethered me a little from my phone, which now lives in a state of near-permanent silence and non-vibration.

Such a personal form of notification-delivery is actually, in my experience, less distracting. The act of checking a notification is changed from taking out your phone and looking it over to just glancing at your wrist. You can decide pretty quickly if it’s worth your time at that particular moment and dismiss it, or take action there and then. When in conversation, meetings, or the like, looking at your watch can still be a little rude, but far less so that glancing at your phone. If you’re expecting an important message or phone call, you know you’re not going to miss it, even if your phone is on silent and buried in a bag. In my flat, I can go one or two rooms over before the signal starts to get a little dicey, so even if I forget to bring my phone, I’ll still not miss what’s coming through.

The only downside right now is not being able to reply directly from the watch. That’s something that the Apple Watch will bring next year, but seemingly at the cost of battery life (I’m not sure those two factors are in strict trade-off against one another, but that’s where the Pebble has the edge—it can go a little over a week before needing a recharge).

The next device that you can see me wearing on a day-to-day basis is the LG Tone+ wireless Bluetooth headset. It is great; I was looking for a device to fulfil this function for a while, and I was finally inspired by @scubbo to properly look into one.

The Tone+ sits rests around your neck in a U-shape with slightly widened ends that house the controls and hold the earbuds, held in the tips by magnets. They’re never really invisible, but are at their least obtrusive when you’re wearing a shirt with a collar they can sit under. You can slip out the earbuds and be connected to a paired device in less than ten seconds.

The big thing for me has been having earphones you can quickly put on or take off with a minimum of fuss and cable-tangling. I’m a serial listener, and the ease of donning these has let me take advantage of downtime I wasn’t even fully aware of to press on with audiobooks and podcasts.

Stepping away from your desk to get some water or go to the loo? I would never bother wiring myself in with headphones just to fill those two minutes, but plugging into something that’s already around my neck makes it worthwhile. I can even leave my phone at my desk. Okay, so you’ll only get in a couple of minutes at a time, but if you’re doing that on every occasion, that’s a reasonable dent in what you’re listening to. Since it’s time you’re not using for anything that’s really productive anyway, it’s essentially ‘free’ time you’ve gained. You can even leave your phone on your desk.

The Tone+ is also a wireless headset, so you can take and make phone calls on it without ever taking your phone out of your pocket (the Pebble being a handy way of checking caller ID). If you’re invested enough in your Siri usage (other Personal Digital Assistants are available), you can accomplish all manner of small tasks without burying your head in your phone while out and about.

The last of my wearable devices doesn’t synergise quite so well as the other two, but I find it useful nonetheless.

My Jawbone UP24 tracks my steps and sleep through the day, sending them to my phone via Bluetooth. Honestly, this has less of an impact on my day-to-day, but I’m enough of a nerd to invest time in tracking these alongside my exercise and calorie intake.

I’m not going to argue that it’s a game-changer or worth the time investment if you’re not interested in that sort of thing, but I find that it’s an easy way to effect positive lifestyle changes. It’s certainly true that measuring or monitoring your own behaviour tends to change it, but tracking your food intake at the very least forces you to confront exactly what you’re eating (there’re how many calories in my Whale Lard Flavoured Crisps?!). It is a time investment to track this sort of thing full time, but there are apps and devices that make it easier. If nothing else, tracking these things periodically for two weeks at a time can be useful.

You on UP. Results not guaranteed.
Photo by BMclvr. License: CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

There has been enough convergence in the last year to make dedicated fitness trackers like the Jawbone Up less necessary. Pebble can now track these things, and iPhones can now track your steps as part of iOS8. I stick with my Jawbone, for a few reasons. Firstly, it’s a lot easier to wear all the time than my Pebble or iPhone, so you’re not missing steps because you don't want to carry a bigger device. Secondly, my rationale is that a dedicated device should, in theory, be better at tracking this sort of thing that devices that have had it enabled through software alone. I have no idea if that’s actually true, but it’s good enough for me.

There’s a paradox here—however much time I’m willing to put into experimenting with these sorts of things to make myself more productive, or my day-to-day life easier, the gains are offset by the time investment to get everything working ‘just right’. So, do me a favour, and if any of these things sound good to you, check them out, and let me know how you get on.

Do you use wearables? Does this sound crazy to you, or just crazy brilliant? Questions? Sound off in the comments below.

Pebble (other colours & Steel edition available)
LG Tone+ (other colours available)
Jawbone Up24 (other colours, sizes, and non-wireless edition available)