2020 July

5

Working outside or in sunny areas made me appreciate light modes a lot more. It's nice how iOS forces apps to provide both light & dark themes of apps so every app supports it although I still prefer to just use dark mode on iOS as all apps look great and readable in dark.

On macOS though, light mode is essential to have especially when working in sunny areas. During the day, light mode is much more stimulating to look at and the text is much easier to read. So I decided to make use of macOS dynamic switching of themes (light during day, dark during evening). It's working amazingly well as most apps transition smoothly from one theme to another. Even Alfred nicely switches between my two favorite themes.

I hope Notion, Discord & Sublime Merge release ability to change the theme based off OS setting. Can't hack my way around it sadly. I submitted a feature request for it though, hope it gets implemented soon.

I will try design all the apps & websites I build taking into account both light & dark themes. With websites, you can use prefers-color-scheme CSS feature to know when to switch to a dark theme.

Perhaps in future, browsers can ship with a nice version of Dark Reader for sites that don't have prefers-color-scheme property but you are still operating with dark mode on.

I also find it annoying how some sites only implement dark mode and also implement it in such a bad way that text is hard to read. Quite annoying. 😞

Want to study design, typography & accessibility more in depth, it's all so important. It's great how most of these problems get solved by the platform. This is especially true on iOS I feel where if you design an app following Apple's Human Interface Guidelines closely, you get an app that is a delight to use (case in point Apollo Reddit client).

6

Watched a nice interview by a KGB Defector that talks about how modern propaganda worked and probably still works. Don't have many thoughts on it aside from the sadness that such atrocities happened just few years ago. And apparently still happening in China.

One of things I try to do is cultivate positive-sum thinking. Which in my eyes just means trying to empower everyone with knowledge and power to change the world. Where changing the world means being the best version of yourself.

If there's one take-away of the past few years -- it's that it's a practical and moral imperative to invest as much as we can in education. Education is the precondition for civilization.

Great little quote by François. And then we have the reality, at least in US, there were over 66 programs eliminated which includes education, health care. It doesn't make sense to me. And I'm not alone in thinking this. Only issue is that there's so much thinking and arguing taking place on Twitter/Reddit/.. but none of it is actionable.

There's more interesting things to talk about. Like tech. Art. Or keyboards.

8

This is seriously the best thing I heard. So calm yet stimulating. The device in the video is fascinating too.

Downloaded it and put it locally on Spotify to play. Let's see if I ever get bored of it.

Some humans are so cruel 😢. It's 2020, how is killing animals for food at mass scale still a thing.

I wonder how much power does government really have. If I was in power, I would put absurd tax on any product that causes suffering to any living being. Or better make it illegal to eat meat or any animal produce. How heartless.

Great interview.

13

So the answer for how long I can play my newly found same tune I like for 'focusing' was 3 days. It's remarkable how hard it is to find a song or sound even that can fade into background and be stimulating enough than pure silence or some white noise. And not get annoyed by playing this same sound/song after some time.

Carousel #3 is new and I love it.

My relationship with music evolved over the years. I realized at some point that pure act of listening to music should be experienced as a whole. It's distracting to try and do something and have a great and engaging piece of music playing in the background because it draws your attention and at least my brain has limited amount of attention I can use throughout the day and the current moment.

I was hooked on playing sounds of rain and train and birds. Varying from one sound to another because listening to one sound all the time to put your brain into focus mode makes you feel like a robot.

Enjoyed listening to an interview with David Ungar. It's my dream to work at Apple at some point in my life as I love its mission of making computing more humane. The call was about Self language and dynamic programming environments. Something I want to play with eventually.

17

Found David R. MacIver's insightful notebook & newsletter.

29

Took a nice break in Spain with family. Played some chess & spent a lot of time with the dogs/cats in the house. Quite strange to move from a place (NL) where masks are not mandatory to one where you will get a fine for not wearing one in public.

Read the statement of Jeff Bezos where he goes over the history of Amazon and how the way he grew up influenced his decisions in the future. It's inspiring.