Phil Nelson's Newsletter

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Phil’s Newsletter Volume 2 Issue 7
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Phil’s Newsletter Volume 2 Issue 7

Sit down son, we got some fat to chew

Phil Nelson
May 27
Share this post
Phil’s Newsletter Volume 2 Issue 7
phil.substack.com

Quick Hits

ACAB. Yes, all of them.

Go download Music MiniPlayer immediately and have your life improve by 1% or higher:

I Bought An iPad

I bought an iPad about a week ago. One of the new Airs with an M1 chip inside, along with a Pencil and Smart Keyboard Folio. I decided to write some first impressions here. We’ll follow up in a month or so to see how my thoughts and feelings have changed.

—

So… Why the iPad Air? Glad you asked. First off, I wanted a new portable that is smaller than my 15” MacBook Pro but much bigger than my iPhone 11. I have enjoyed working from home, but sometimes you just gotta touch some grass both metaphorically and literally, and getting the fuck out of the house on the regular has become pretty important to my mental health. I work a lot every day and being able to easily throw something in a small light bag and head off is very appealing.

I also wanted a better device for reading books, a pastime I once reveled in but now have a hard time doing, despite the piles of books around here. I don’t have a Kindle and I’m loath to give Amazon more of my money to be locked into their hardware ecosystem. I do have a decent Kindle library built up over the years, but… also a bunch of books from Apple’s own walled garden, and non-ebook-formatted PDFs. Since the Kindle app still works on iPad, it seemed like a good bet.

Smart Keyboard Folio, a case with a built-in keyboard, is the drizzling shits- just a horrible thing to type on. The keys make a sad thunk like a cheap toy keyboard from the 1980s. The keys are also too small and too close together. My guitar calloused fingers bludgeon two or three of them at a time and my right pinky is getting tired of that backspace key.

The pencil is interesting. So far my hands shake a little too much to use the Pencil very well for precision work, but the sketch-ability is pretty useful and solid. I’ve already used it to make up some documents and webpages I was giving feedback and notes on, and it worked well for that with the iPad Air screen size.

We’ll see if any of these issues get better thru use and practice. Here is one of my awful little doodles, which I have named “susbat:”

and here’s a self-portrait:

—

Phil’s Newsletter is free to read and subscribe to but you can support me by paying for this newsletter or becoming a monthly patron.

—

I Was A Speaker At Microsoft Build

Yep, I once again tricked a large corporation into believing I was competent and putting me on video. I was a speaker at Microsoft Build, the big developer conference. This year it was online only, again, which was the right choice. Seth Juarez from Microsoft and me talked about OpenCV Spatial AI Contest.

It was fun and I hope the video production company gives me a supercut of the Winnebago Man level of profanity that streamed out of me every time I botched a line.

  • Watch the video

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Here Is A Picture of Me Taking A Knee On The 50 Yard Line of Levi’s Stadium In A Colin Kapernick Jersey

Phil’s Good Links

Welcome back. There have been multiple mass shootings since I started writing this.

  • Gun Thefts Are Rising and Leading to More Crime, Including Sacramento Mass Shooting

  • Looking forward to checking out Vinyl Nation, a documentary on the resurgence of records

  • Clearview AI is now permanently banned from selling access to its facial recognition tool to US businesses + private entities. It’s a start! But we need a federal face recognition ban.

  • An extremely kickass modern open source computer with a round display

  • I need to go to this gas station, which has different sodas from around the world like Iraqi Pepsi

  • Tim Robinson as Ugly Sonic is… a choice I support

  • An interview with George Miller about his film ‘Three Thousand Years Of Longing’ and the upcoming ‘Furiosa’

  • Matt Stoller: There's a mismatch between financial returns and underlying economic activity. This mismatch deforms our society, and there's only one way out.

  • From the NFT files: Seth Green gets his ape token funged, possibly torpedoing the TV show he was trying to make about it

  • On Base Productions, the production company owned by my brother Charles, won a Telly Award for their video about a new beer

— Phil Nelson

Wizard Tower Gamma, South of Market, San Francisco, California, United States of America, Earth, Hell

05.27.2022

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