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Previously on Phil’s Newsletter: My grandmother died. It sucks.
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Today’s newsletter is the dawn of a new era and naming scheme for Phil’s Newsletter. I’ve always been a fan of what for lack of a better term I’ll call Magazine Aesthetics. This spans from the high-end glossy rags to the hand-printed out-there zines. I love the clear consistent editorial and visual voice of mags like The New Yorker, or for a much more modern example New Session which is a zine that arrives on Telnet. I’m swiping the numbering scheme from some of those zines of yore, and we’ll be doing Volumes from now on. Welcome to Volume 2 Issue 1.
You should read New Session btw, issue 2 just came out. It’s even got source code.
Working on my calendar stack
New Years Resolutions suck. Wanting to change is good and there no need to gussy up a genuine desire to improve your life. Get after it. I will support you in this endeavor. You don’t have to send me a Hallmark card about it with the branded slogan.
Having said all this, we gotta do something about my calendar, folks.
Dear Newsletter, My Calendar Is A Goddamn Mess
After years of using a Field Notes to keep track of my tasks and projects last year I decided to make a go of using a calendar every day and keeping it up and organized.
My brain hates this kind of work and will actively try to steer away. It’s not even that I find this specific task boring. I’ve played slow, builder/god type, games like SimCity or Evil Genius for thousands of hours. I play a genre of games from the 90s called “spreadsheet simulations” for FUN! Despite this, I have a really hard time with calendars and basically any time-based task I cannot knock out in one sitting. It was true when I was in school, it has been true for my entire adult life.
It is very inconvenient, then, that so much of my current job doing freelance media and consulting services is based on scheduling. I can say with certainty that 2020 Phil would have struggled a lot worse with this than 2022 Phil does.
So… I tried some things last year with regards to my calendar set up, some helped and some didn’t. I’m going to talk a little bit about one them here as a way to help articulate my own thoughts, and possibly help you if you’ve got similar brain worms.
Fixing Phil’s Calendar Part 1: The Calendar App Fantastical Is Pretty Good
The biggest single change to my workflow has been switching from the default Apple calendar app to Fantastical, a native iPhone and macOS app that takes a lot of design cues from those system calendar apps but extends them far beyond for people like myself who have busy work schedules, shitty brains, and lots of deadlines.
Fantastical’s clean but info-dense Day/Month/Year views are a big selling point for me, but it also has thoughtful user interfaces for finding times when everyone can meet, setting your own availability, and even templated repeating events. One big time saver for me personally is the ability to click in the macOS menu bar and instantly join my next call in Google Meet, Zoom, Teams, Skype, or whatever.
On the backend the app integrates with Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, your Reminders app and tons more, so you really do have a window into what your day looks like.
It’s also easier to add events, and even supports some natural language processing so you can type things like “Pick up the mail at 2pm” and it’ll create the event and an alert with the right date and time.
All in all, Fantastical was a pretty good change to my routine. The main downside is cost: It ain’t free. I pay them 3.33 per month to keep the lights on. I still have a squicky feeling about software projects charging a monthly fee- just let me pay up front. In this case my compromise is using the yearly “plan” to pretend I’m just handing over $60 a year.
The verdict: Fantastical was a good addition to my workflow. It’s saved my ass a few times and made me more likely to make and keep appointments. I’ll keep using it.
Part 2 of Fixing Phil’s Calendar coming soon…
The RetroStrange Shop
RetroStrange, now has its own self-hosted shop where you can buy patches, stickers, and t-shirts to support your favorite retro media concern. Get two stickers and a patch for just $5. We support Apple Pay, too. This newest plank in the RetroStrange deck (or porch) gives us a lot of freedom to sell… pretty much anything. Keep your eyes peeled for some new nifty low-run merch from us in the near future. If you make stuff, reach out and let’s chat about getting it on the shop.
The Good Links
I had to drop some of the good links because there were too many.
The Cease & Desist Grand Prix - which company will send a C&D for these obviously illegal logo uses? LET’S FIND OUT
The general tools coming out of the AI scene are really impressive right now, for example: Cleanup.pictures. Click or tap and drag to remove objects and people from images
Cannabidiol—the non-psychoactive cannabis compound better known as CBD—is a potent blocker of SARS-CoV-2 replication in human cells according to a new study
From the “good fuckin luck” files: The Banning Surveillance Advertising Act – sponsored by Reps. Anna Eshoo (D-CA), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), and Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) – prohibits digital advertisers from targeting any ads to users.
4am has released a game for the Apple II called Million Perfect Letters, for free on the Internet Archive
A thread on one of Vince McMahon’s wonkier ideas: The World Bodybuilding Federation
Talk about bait: Linux in a Pixel Shader
That’s all for this Monday. We’ll see you on the other side of the week.
— Phil Nelson
Wizard Tower Gamma, South of Market, San Francisco, California, United States of America, Earth
01.24.2022
P.S. My birthday is on Feb 1st. If you wanna buy me something here is my Amazon wishlist