Simon Woods

I’m back!… ish.

About a month ago I moved my main site to a WordPress Hosted site and cancelled my Micro.blog plans. Basically: life away from the keyboard demands every penny that can be spared and ultimately that will make my full and proper return to blogging a lot easier. Other subscriptions were cancelled but that’s a story for another time. For now, here’s what is happening:

• Mumblings is now a WordPress Hosted site, with its feed plugged into my Micro.blog account.
• Considered Haste remains as an archive.
• Updates will now be posted on here, rather than as edits to the most recent post on Considered Haste.
• This site will stay in its current condition.
  • WordPress Hosted is inferior in a number of ways to a (paid) Micro.blog Hosted site, specifically in the areas of customisation. As such there's no point trying to recreate the proper version of Mumblings.
• I've dropped Twitter entirely. My recent posts on the matter continue to reflect my position, although I have come to the conclusion it is not a thing I want in my personal life at all.
  • Good luck to those who continue to make the choice to include it, though I would also suggest you at least take a look at Micro.blog and/or my current set-up as an alternative: free WordPress + free Micro.blog.
    • RSS is awesome! Emails, newsletters, and Slack can also help switch out the cesspool for, you know, your health.
• Other than VSCO and Vimeo, I am generally done with non-self hosted platforms. And I prefer both of those for their specialist use anyway, something more akin to enthusiast use as compared to my personal use of Micro.blog.
• Recent real life events have thoroughly kicked my arse when it comes to progress on my projects. However, things are working out well and so I will soon have actual news and actual activity from more than one project.
• For personal stuff, well, my current faves are: a new powered wheelchair for Claire (yay freedom!) and an addition to our back door in the form of a kitty door; that's right, cat flap installed!
  • Other things happened, some of which I'll probably soon detail on here.

So yeah, lots of things happening and the thing I am most happy with is the return to blogging. I’ll see you around Micro.blog.

Hello again. ✌️

SUPER MEGA FINAL EDIT: This post was used during a transitional phase of my site, when I didn’t have my domain.

EDIT: I have resumed regular blogging here: simonsmumblings.wordpress.com

This site will be inactive.

Considered Haste is usually set to swoods.net but due to unforseen circumstances I cannot maintain it at that URL for the foreseeable future. As such it will stay here, without any posts.

This is also true for my personal blog, Mumblings.

Until this situation can be resolved I will remain active on my social feeds and I am hoping to continue pushing activity to my projects; I’ll post about any such activity on Twitter.

👋

Over the past month I’ve learned yet another lesson in just how fragile momentum can be, especially when it is put under the strain of anxiety and the often chaotic nature of people in groups. Basically: fuck guns, fuck immoral politicians and their supporters, and fuck this shitty heatwave.

With that out of the way, my recent mental foray into the social web was followed by three weeks of decision making I am finally comfortable enough to consider stable… well, about as stable as you can get when it comes to the world of the web. With that in mind I have a few new profiles up and running:

• On VSCO;
  • a gallery for my general photography experiments.
• On Vimeo;
  • a record of my video photography experiments + host for embeds.
• On Instagram;
  • a gallery for limited posting of photos + network of photographers and non-enthusiast friends and family.

I’ve been reconsidering Instagram and Facebook, specifically wihin the context of a simple realisation: protesting the world by leaving it is not necessarily the most effective strategy to take.

Yes, I know for plenty of people you are not “leaving the world” or any such thing if you do not happen to use popular web platforms. But it is, in some part, true for me. Even if, in the future, I reduce my usage to basic status updates and linking only to that which I post elsewhere.

Consider this: not everybody lives the life you live, neither do you live theirs, and that is perfectly OK.

Anyway I have not returned to Facebook. Given the chance I will not be doing so, though I am far less willing to fight against that if it turns out I would be more effective at reaching my goals by returning to that place.

In the meantime, I have also applied a few updates to my two blog-based sites (this site and Mumblings):

• About page has been given minor tweaks, including slight design changes and updates to make it more useful and relevant.
• Now page has been edited into Markdown, making it even easier for me to update. Also updated to bring it up-to-date.
• Navigation updated with a 'social' menu, at the top of the site.

(Info about Mumblings can be found over there.)

That’s all for now. See you soon. :)

• You can’t stop writing about it.
• You care more about news-based commentary on here than, say, Twitter.
• You are willing to use a web app.
  • Even on mobile.
• You wonder if that new project would work well as a Micro.blog blog.
• You have decided to try journaling properly…
  • … with pen and paper.
  • And you care about the pen and paper.

Twitter. Facebook. Instagram. YouTube.

There are times in the day when I simply think "Why the am I even bothering to think about these things? Life is full of important things for fuck's sake."

Then there are times when I cannot ignore another thought: "What's the point in doing anything if you're not trying to show it to as many people as possible?"

Then I can never forget this: "These people are only on these platforms and not using them only serves to remove them from my life, which is bad."

I have no idea which way to go when it comes to using the different platforms, despite having strong feelings that better designed and curated alternatives are important. For example: Micro.blog

A mix of all of it is probably the best route, in the end, and life is too damned short to cut off your nose all because of hostile feelings towards your face.

Welcome to Considered Haste, version 2 of swoods.net.

Let’s start with the changes:

• Theme
  • Switched from a lighter theme to a darker theme.
    • Includes a new color palette.
  • Icon
    • The site's first icon, for bookmarks and your tabs.
  • Time
    • Removed 'estimated reading time' detail by posts.
• JSON
  • The site can now be read via JSON feeds.
• Taxonomy
  • Categories merged into tags.
  • Added a new tag, update, for shorter news-style posts.
• Streamlined
  • Removed clutter from the front page.
  • Especially at the bottom of the site.
• Pages
  • Updated About, Now, and Feeds.
  • Added v1.
• IndieWeb
  • Added plugins to support the following:
    • webmentions
    • semantic linkbacks
    • IndieAuth
    • rel=me

I’ve been quite pleased with the launch of this site, from November to now, specifically in its role as the stable presence of my online identity. Owning my identity via my own domain and investigating the IndieWeb has been a huge relief to the idea of depending on the big social media sites and the Closed Web, thanks in no small part to my account on Micro.blog. I recently settled my hosted blog on there as separate from this site but it is no less mine; Manton Reece and co. are quite insistent on avoiding simply replacing the Closed Web with another closed environment and I couldn’t be more grateful for their work.

This was my plan all along, although the recent stretch of inactivity on this site was unexpected (fortunately it was thanks to good news) but Micro.blog has provided an antidote to the hole of stress that is moving, having become a respite and source of inspiration for the past two months. As such, it remains as my personal blog and social feed, and regular activity continues over there.

I have more to come with this site, especially writing, and progress reports on new projects all of which are at least well into the planning stage; I am excited by each one and looking forward to rolling them out. In the meantime I am making sure the aforementioned changes have settled well, specifically those centred around IndieWeb improvements.

I’d like to thank a few people:

• Justin Michael and his excellent Core Assistance site, which I found via the also excellent Aleen Simms; having such vital advice so readily available made this upgrade a much easier experience than it otherwise would have been.
  • Aleen is also on Micro.blog as @Aleen, along with a feed for Core Assistance at @CoreAssistance.
• IndieWeb plugin authors Matthias Pfefferle and David Shanske, both of whom provide excellent opportunities for WordPress users to find alternatives to plugins providing third-party software that gives Closed Web parties the opportunity to invade your site.
  • Both are also on Micro.blog; Matthias is @pfefferle, whilst David is @dshanske -- David has been providing plugin support in the Micro.blog Slack.
• The community that has arisen on Micro.blog, who have proven to me that being optimistic on the web is not a fool's errand. You're all the best. ♥️

That’s all for now. Bye!

Now imagine all of the fake news, trolling, and negativity amplified a 100 times.

– Rajiv Abraham doesn’t want to see the toxicity of the Closed Web spill into the Open Web.

This is a valid concern and should certainly be on the mind of both the community as a whole and those who make the software upon which blogging lives.

However, the Open Web and especially the blog-based sections of it already have years of experience in dealing with these problems; a good example is the aforementioned Micro.blog, as an alternative to a commenting system is quite brilliant in its elegance – now as individuals we do not have to manage the comments on our site, whilst those who are either writing for a site in a group or employed to do so can either choose to manage the comments or not… or even better, turn to something like Micro.blog where the comments are a lot less likely to be poisonous from the get-go.

Of course this is also dependent on the development of platforms like Micro.blog; it could go either way. The point here is that we all know more now than we ever did and it is upon those of us who care to actually go to the effort to have community standards, including codes of conduct and active moderating where it is needed.

There is no doubt that the vitriol from which the big Closed Web media companies have been profiting is a different kind of beast from what we once so naively referred to as “Internet Drama”, and we should be vigilant lest it spreads entirely across the web but we have hope like never before be it from the experienced crowd of web users, the bright new minds of so-called digital natives, or those of us who have adapted to the ever growing blend of physical and digital. We are determined to not so easily lose this world before it has barely begun, certainly not to the likes of those who clearly care not for the people who have built their success whether that’s Mark or Jack, and most certainly not to the people who use their work to wreak havoc in our lives.

We can do better. And I think we will.

If my preferred Twitter client on Android (Flamingo) is made worse by the continued work of Jack and co. then I’ll be left hoping for, ironically, my RSS reader (Readably) to carry the activity of people who I like and only use Twitter for microblogging.

And that’s only thanks to Feedbin whose work with Twitter integration has rightfully been praised.

Swimming in the waters of Micro.blog have spoiled me; not only does the work of Manton and co. integrate well with the open web (one of their stated goals) but they are not philisophically opposed to high standards in a desparate rush to clone Facebook of all fucking things.

It’s time for me to take the hint and wind down my Twitter use to the point of nil, instead spending this type of energy on both reading the open web and fine-tuning my experience therein.

Congratulations Jack, Jack’s co-workers, and the Twitter users comfortable with eating shit; your contributions to the mediocrity that defines so much of this world are only increasing over time. 👍

The past few weeks have been, uh, interesting. As I mentioned in the last post on my site it’s been a period of Big Change personally and it’s safe to say that I’m learning about how the significance of such changes only increases with time. The move was… OK. Not perfect or even good in some ways but it could have been worse; we survived, which is important! However, I have a list of improvements for myself no matter how far into the future the next move will be.

This blog, my site, and even my Micro.blog account took a hit with regard to activity and even without the internet my writing has been non-existent. It’s been weird. Even writing this in a completely different building but on the same computer is unusual; for reference, this is the very first set of words I have typed since the last post on my site (or my last Micro.blog post, whichever was last) so even an unusual length of time has passed, at least by my 2018 standard.

The slow period is now over, thanks both to the relatively quick turnover by the Unpacking Committee (myself, Claire, and our two altogether loud cats) and the eventual activation of our broadband service. I continue to possess the notes for ideas previously considered worth noting and will doubtless be inspired to write in light of the move and its variety of consequences – for example: wow, is having a loft a fucking relief.

Anyway it feels good to have got this off my chest. Not only does it feel good to be writing again but I can’t wait to catch up on my web reading and the great community on Micro.blog.

The past couple of weeks have been an increasing number of stressful events, growing slightly up until the point where I realised that I haven’t written anything for the blog since… January? Something like that. I feel bad and in a good way; I’m annoyed at missing out on it, as opposed to any weird social pressure-type reason.

So that’s good.

However, it’s time to be truthful; I’m not going to post for at least another week. We’re moving in the next few days and time is very much up for my attempts to spend any serious time on thinking about a subject, let alone writing about one.

In the meantime I’ll likely be active on Micro.blog since it’s such a good reprieve from the chaos of moving home, as well as life in general. I encourage you to join, it is a lot of fun.

Bye!

Ed Cormany recently shared a link to a step-by-step tutorial for the Apple-owned Workflow app.

Not only was Ed interested in the existence of such tutorials at all but when I saw what the specific editorial was about I perked up; as a (happy) Apple Music subscriber I would definitely be interested in learning how to get quicker access, especially if the instructions are written out in what is likely an easily consumable manner.

Well, I can only assume.

Federico Viticci recently shared a link to a tip for the Apple-owned Workflow app.

Federico, like Ed, was interested – enthused even – to see such information being produced by Apple. It is in fact for the same thing and so, again, I thought this was good only this time I was hesitant to put much more effort into investigating.

You see, this editorial is only available to read in the App Store app on iOS. Whilst it’s enough of a shame to see such interesting and potentially valuable information locked behind such a closed door, it was also interesting to me to see that it was shared in both cases behind another closed door: Twitter. Whilst Federico owns and writes for the excellent Macstories, there might not be much that can be realistically done to stop Apple – or anybody else – from hiding such excellent writing and help away within their own closed spaces. Meanwhile Twitter continues to be the deeply flawed vessel through which this information is carried and given to… some people who would find it useful.

Yet another sign of just how limiting and limited the modern web is.

(Note: This was originally written in the Spring of 2017.)

I’m tired more often and I’m getting more work done. This makes sense but seriously: fuck time. Even as I finally get around to better organising my time, it refuses to do anything else but disappear. Kinda rude.

I’ve definitely hit a wall with this, where no amount of extra effort applied gets me closer to my goals. So, it’s time to apply some smarter work. I’m going to schedule work sessions at the beginning and end of every day, when I’m most likely to have full free time, and honestly when I feel high levels of motivation; maybe proximity to sleep is the key ingredient here. That will be helped by a dose of automation, specifically with the tech that I’m using; it’s taken a long time but I’m finally settled on a structure for the various pieces of software I use to stay organised, so now it’s time to set up some automated processes for them to run through.

Overall I’m happy with this approach. It’s a lot simpler than various previous efforts.

As far as the blog goes, there will be two new regular additions:

Post A Day That’s one guaranteed post each day. Will likely be mostly nonsense but we’ll see how it goes.

Selfie A Day Yep, I’m finally giving into the whole selfie thing. Basically, I need to lose weight and have lost patience with previous attempts to do so; it’s time for the public shame route.

These will be taken on and posted to Instagram, with a basic cross-post to here.

So uh yeah. Change is good.

(Second Note: Those two planned additions are still happening, in some way, but not necessarily in such a weird-fake-branding way. I have no idea exactly how bad my sleep was back then but it is certainly better now… I mean… wow.)

(Note: This was originally written in the Spring of 2017.)

Is it a motivator? I think so.

I’m sitting here, in a university class room, and despite the irrefutable quality of the subject and following discourse I just… I feel tired. It’s the worst. I know I am actually tired due to lack of sleep and other such usual factors but to be honest I am also totally fucking bored.

Why? I dunno. Could it be stress? There are medical reasons for my tiredness but I don’t know what they are right now. I know one for sure, though, and it’s that if I am confronted by activity of others for mentally draining exercises then my body just feels the need to sleep. It is more likely to happen with something that I am not involved, to the point where I am fairly confident there is a strong correlation between level of involvement and likelihood of sleep.

It’s a mess, really, but I have at least discovered one thing; feeling discomfort helps. I feel both actually awake and a desire to do something. Now that’s motivation for me. The funny thing is that it is physical discomfort that has sparked this motivation.

I’m fairly sure if there is non-physical discomfort that I’d just feel a wave of tiredness.

Huh. Weird.

(Note: This was originally written in the Spring of 2017.)

I wonder how long it takes for somebody to go from defensiveness to guilt. Or even if many people complete that journey.

When we get called out for doing something that another person has taken offensive at or deems wrong in some way, is it not a requirement in basic compassion to accept wrongdoing, apologise, and give the accuser the opportunity to reconcile the situation?

I have always assumed this is a natural process, something you would do without breathing. Certainly I strive to follow this path in such situations where I have been an ass; okay it’s not always going to be perfect but I’m talking about basic levels of compassion here, like not even difficult for a child to employ.

So what is it about grown men thinking there is more value in their pathetic pride than there is in actually contributing to the world with some basic compassion? What’s wrong, did mummy fail to give you the love you so clearly think you deserve?

Bleh. Fuck men and their bullshit egos.

Hello by the way! If you’re reading this then I am currently judging you hard. Feel free to tell me off on Twitter, since I’m not about to apologise here. :)

(Note: This was originally written on the 5th of February, 2017.)

What makes something worth our attention? A lot of money is invested in answering this question, in all of its various guises… a lot of money. As such the assumption is that the question has value and whilst that is likely true the fact is that it is much more interesting to consider a different, albeit similar question: what makes something interesting?

As is often the case, the quality of interesting being subjective makes it difficult to explore and therefore less popular in our world of interconnected musing and opining; there is no doubt about it, we vote with our eyeballs and the numbers on vague notions such as interesting are not good. Instead, let’s have a list of The 7 Most Fascinating Things For 2017!

And that’s okay. I mean, who has the time, right? Well, the fact is that the modern world of internet-centred living is simply too large for anybody to keep on top of; the idea of being up to date in the year 2017 is altogether ridiculous. Instead, the gems of the internet can be found if we instead choose to focus on whatever thing we care about in the moment and invest time in that above all others.

This isn’t easy and never has been, however, now in the age of data perhaps we can find it that much easier to see both approaches to living and thus gaining the perspective that is crucial to discovering exactly what it is that we care about… what it is that we find interesting.

(Note: This was originally written in 2015.)

So I was recently listening to Wil Wheaton’s ‘Radio Free Burrito’ podcast (full recommendations; enthusiastic even!) and he said this thing that had me pointing at his theoretical self in exclaimation:

“once you get it out you don’t want to make it”

… so I exclaimed and pointed “that’s it!"

There is a part of that in me and whilst this is a terrible example of excusing my laziness, I still feel okay about publishing this. Writing this is in itself an act of procrastination… although, since it is actually writing a THING and getting it out of my mind I’d argue that it’s not necessarily bad.

Either way, it felt good to hear it being said by somebody who happens to be such a good creator of things, and also gave me the chance to write this thing and thus increase the likelihood that I’ll actually do the things I should be doing.

Yay? Yay.