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photo credit: Jon Ottosson – Unsplash
Perhaps it was an app ahead of its time. Its vision involved taking on one of the big social networks, by allowing users to control and retain direct ownership of their content, while also hosting a community around the sharing of that content. I’m not naming the app out of fondness for it.

For whatever reason, it never gained enough traction to justify the expense of its continued existence. Thus, its backend was shut down, and its development ceased. The life of many apps do go down that path sometimes.

The app’s original version was fairly basic, but perhaps a little too ambitious to take on an encumber the in its chosen niche. Some of the community has remained loyal to the vision, if not to the developer themself.

I still see myself as a bit of a lurker when it comes to most of the online communities I choose to follow, and, despite things not working out, for that app, I still follow its developer, and that’s paid off a bit. The developer kept working on new ideas, and has even had an award-winning app following the failed one.

Persistence, when seen in action like this, is very inspiring. It must have been more difficult towards the end of the failed project for the developer to focus on working on the app, knowing that downloads had plateaued(it was free to use, but also had paid extras. The sad, but understandable decision was made, based on performance of the app’s sales, and its popularity waning, to put it out of its misery.

This seemed to be a case where the unpopular choice didn’t work out, but I’d hardly say it was wrong. I had made the choice to watch the developer, in order to catch when their newest project was nearing completion as well, since they’re very good at transparently communicating about their own development process. I’m really looking forward to a new set of characters and community growing up around “whatever’s next”. The latest project seem promising, and it’ also due to it going after an area of usefulness that many similar apps have fallen short of capturing.

We’ll see. 🙂

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That’s my word for 2016. I just realized it within the past couple weeks. The only way some long term goals, like fitness and learning a new language (Japanese, in my case) are going to stick, is if they become integrated in my everyday routine.

Successful people are simply those with successful habits. –Brian Tracy
they certainly have lots of practice!

I’m lucky to have pretty good resources to motivate myself, make myself accountable(but, I’ll enlist friends and family as we’ll), and to track progress, so I’m optimistic, and realistic. Continue reading →

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Sometime during the past year, I tried to quit caffeine. I did pretty well for a few months, and, as a result, felt pretty good, and even slept better.

I slowly, however let it back in. That’s a bummer, for sure.

Falling of that wagon has been a bit rough, but I’m working on it again. Luckily, I’ve got plenty of decaf tea, although I’d really like there to be more decaf coffee at work – I dig the flavor of coffee. Luckily, I don’t have an allergy to citrus, so quite a few alternative beverages are still open to me, when plain water won’t do.

This will be the year of better health, for good.

Happy Endings

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Back when I was a teenager, I had no chance keeping up with the latest fashions of my peers. There was no financial means to. It was far less expensive to wear clothes that looked like they were decades old instead of new, and not in the “what’s-old-is-new” cyclical style of the times.

Until I could really afford to get closer in sync by choosing, and paying for, many pieces of my own clothes, did I finally shake that feeling of not doing the best to be presentable. Some of that stuff, I truly don’t think even came around again to being a thing again, like corduroys, except in very careful combinations.

The combinations never appealed to me, so why should I expect it to attract positive attention from those I wished to attract. The funny thing is, it wasn’t so much that they were particularly loud. There was no clashing colors or flooding pants, or out-of-place loafers. It was the blandness of it all. I felt like I wore an invisibility suit during high school. Only those who shared my geeky interests, those similarly cloaked, my small group of fellow geeks, ever noticed me or were friendly. I suppose I was luckier than I felt at the time.

I’m not ungrateful, despite the above. I still struggle a bit with that feeling of never being quite sure about my look each day, but I am able to mitigate it a bit by, partly, leaving the recommendation decisions in the hands of somebody with a bit more creativity in that area than myself. Only in wild dreams did I think a stylist would be something I’d use, but there has been results, better than my own failed attempts. Yeah, a balanced wardrobe isn’t 99% t-shirts. I was so disappointed, until I got compliments instead of silence.

Fashion’s still a puzzle to me, but I’m more hopeful now that I don’t feel so invisible these days. I can also be a bit more focused on making intellectual connections, with a bit of the ice broken. I’m far less worried about it all now, decades later.

Was this a bit of a ramble? I’m sure it’s a bit shallow.

New Sensation

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Photo Credit: vicjuan via Compfight cc

I was, as of 12am Pacific Time, sitting downstairs at home, scrolling through Facebook posts of friends and family, liking and commenting on ones that my attention (i.e. ones the FB algorithm deemed worthy. After having been to various events over the years on New Years, from camping at the Rose Parade route, to midnight at Disneyland, I feel like I was at the place of my own choosing this time.

I might do something different at the end of this year, but that depends a bit on if there’s anyone I know doing something I can join in on (and am welcome to do.

Where were you last night at midnight? Would you have wanted to be somewhere else?

Source: Stroke of Midnight | The Daily Post

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Hello!

That’s how I would greet you if I were standing close enough to do so. The probe, named Voyager, was sent by the people of the planet Earth, but this message was composed by a single person, individually.

I make a note of this because the Voyager probe was built by a team, a large group of humans. That’s what we call ourselves.

I, and many other humans, are very curious about the world we love in and the wider universe. That’s why the probe was launched. It’s been sending information back to us during its long trip.

Before it grew too distant for a message to be sent to it, I was asked to write this note. I was not given a topic, so I apologize if much of this has been self-evident by the remaining co tents of the probe. It did contain items meant to convey information about the human species in general.

I’m nearly out of space in this, so I’ll wrap up by saying that I truly hope to see a return message during my lifetime, but even if it arrives after, it’s worth sending, so please do, and tell me about who you are.

Until then,

Ryan

Voyager’s Last Message
inspired by a prompt at Writing Prompts on tumblr. Image credit: NASA Science News

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Ah, 2015. It was a pretty good year, on the balance. I think I accomplished most of what I actively set out to do.

I am a bit bummed that I did kind of fall off on my exercise plans, but that’s easy enough to pick up again. I think I’ll do that more slowly, to build up the habit more easily.

We’ll see.

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What is service to me?
Source image: Dustin Lee on Unsplash

It could be a few things, such as that thing the guy does when you initially order cable for the first time. It could also be the thing you wait for when your car is broken and won’t go.

Perhaps it’s even all those things, combined, that the people who fight fires, take care of the ill, and fight battles overseas do to help make life better for the rest of us.

All of these things seem to be services to me. What do dictionaries say? Let’s see:

Service

noun

  1. an act of helpful activity; help; aid:
    to do someone a service.

[Source: Dictionary.com]

That also looks good, and pretty much all of the above, and more, fit that particular definition. It’s not the only one, and this is one word that is very versatile.

Inspired by a prompt at The One-Minute Writer

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Quote source.

Lots of things can be invaluable, but what’s invaluable to me? This is actually a tricky thing to figure out. Would it be something like my glasses, that help me to see without getting headaches from eye-strain?

Maybe.

Possibly, it could be something much larger, like the entirety of the internet. It’s a vast resource that often allows me to achieve feats of wizardry, as I pick up knowledge that would have been very fuzzy in accuracy back in the days before I had access to it. In those days, knowledge was primarily gained from ancient objects known as books, such as dictionaries and encyclopedias. Those were often bulky or far slower to find relevant information from. Back then, however, they were definitely invaluable, and their importance and continued existence and evolution are an important aspect of the internet.

A dictionary that pronounces words and has hyperlinks to synonyms and antonyms is super-awesome. That was an expensive way to go before the internet, which put it largely out of reach in any practical form for me.

That usefulness extends to my smart phone, an iPhone, and that also makes it an invaluable device to have. I literally have access to any part of the internet whenever I carry it and have cellular service or free wi-fi.

I do sometimes wonder when I encounter a person that actually struggles with finding information and yet, they also carry a similar device. Why don’t they try to use it to answer a question they have. Reliance on “group think” on the small scale (people actually present) can sometimes be error-prone, especially if nobody there has the relevant expertise or experience to properly field the question, so why not try getting the information from a larger, usually first-hand from those that deposit the information? Yes, sometimes bias creeps in, but, for the most part, for information that needs to be factual, with no room for opinions, there’s often no better source at hand than the internet.

I definitely don’t claim that sites like Wikipedia are perfect, but I do believe that sites like Dictionary.com, which pull from their traditional counterparts, can be very solid.

So, if you don’t look up information online first, or you still try to first memorize directions to a location without assistance, why is that so? Comment on that.