Andy Nicolaides on the outlook of some tech commentators:

For many millions of people out there, VR could, and already can to a certain extent, open their lives to opportunities they can’t currently enjoy and experience. We’ve all heard the laughs and sniggers about watching a concert with people virtually but for so many people, VR may finally give them a chance to experience something many others of us would take for granted. The argument for and against VR and a meta verse is always so black and white, but the world is rarely so easy.

I tried really hard to not open with a social media trope but — so much, this!

I am sick and tired of people that have an important voice and an influential following making these kinds of takes. Most of these boil down to “If it doesn’t work for me, it’s stupid”. Granted, I didn’t listen to the whole show, just the clip Andy posted, as I stopped to listen to this show a long time ago because of these hot takes. So, I may be missing some kind of grand explorer or inside joke, but I doubt it.

The fact that still people can’t think outside their box is frankly ridiculous. VR is 100% never going to be for me, and I laugh more than a little at the way Meta pitch it to users, but much like Facebook itself, I can’t still see why some people would use it.

I am not sure if this is just playing to the audience, as this ‘sad VR looser’ rhetoric is a tired joke at this point. Making comments along the link of “don’t you go outside” or “don’t you have friends” misses an entire section of the population that can’t. Missing the accessibility angle (this post is from three years ago about Connected doing the same thing) is absolutely unacceptable in this day and age.

VR is already helping people access parts of life that you take for granted and the fact you can’t even be bothered to look into this make me think much less of you.

After going backwards and forwards (as normal) with the photo sharing service Glass, I am enjoying using it lots. I post the best images I take to it. Although I can’t hold a candle to some of its skilled user base, it scratches my photo social media itch and teaches me quite a bit about the images people shoot.

Right from the off, the founders spoke about their desire to avoid the expected social app norms. You won’t find follower counts, like buttons or, my favourite, an algorithmic feed. Although, it feels to some as if they have rolled back their choice with the implementation of an “Appreciate” button. It’s not like it seems.

Extending my previous thoughts around social media likes, particularly on images, leads to looking at how to use the function positively. I was not alone in thinking that Glass could work in a way of giving small feedback prompts but not ruin the service completely. I had some ideas, but the team at Glass have absolutely nailed it. Although at first glance it looks like a dangerous slope, no public counts and no algorithm to game means much less attention-seeking rewards.

Even the word they use, appreciate, is a perfect fit for what I want to say about a photo. Even “I like it” is not enough occasionally. One of my favourite things about micro.blog is that people would respond to posts with “thank you for sharing” which makes no judgement or response, just an appreciation of taking the time to post it. A perfect fit for Glass. I am thankful that people pay £25 a year to show me the shots they are proud of.

As with everything, It’s not completely harmless, but I think it’s a good compromise. Take the image above. I was pleased with it and couldn’t wait to get it edited and posted. Only to receive absolutely no feedback. Is it rubbish? It is just not what people want to see? I have no idea because it just sits there on Glass for people to see. My reward is getting the shot I wanted and the process of producing the result — but not everyone is like that.

Of course, I don’t care. Others may do, but I feel as if the users that would care have other apps better suited to their interests. My takeaway from the update (I’ve been able to use it for a couple of weeks now) is almost all positive. Being able to leave a small token of appreciation will replace the hundreds of times I write “great shot” or “love this” and means the comments I do leave have more thought in them.

There is no getting around the fact that creating things consistently is hard work. It doesn’t matter what it is, making videos, writing blog posts, painting, crafts, it all takes time and effort to keep going. Particularly if you need inspiration to spark the content in the first place, something that comes in waves for me. The biggest thing that help to write more, is to read more.

Full disclosure, this post was inspired by similar thoughts and guidance from Matt Birchler on his content creation cycle. If anyone is to be listened to, it’s Matt, cause his constant stream of videos and blog posts are unbelievable. However, I have shared some guidance on my reading and writing flows previously to try to help.

This time I am going to concentrate on how I read things and how I then go from inspiration to publication. This will outline what apps I use, how I like to do and where I do to. Posting this hopefully will give you an insight into my creative process and perhaps help you start writing more too.

RSS & Triage

The internet is full of awesome stuff. So much so, it can be impossible to keep up with it and take nothing away but. A feeling of being overwhelmed. To combat this, you must remove any completionism you have. No one has the time to read and watch everything. So triaging the inputs you like is critical, and I do this mainly through RSS.

Using my favourite app, Reeder, I have loads of feeds set up to put in content from all over the web. I can then easily look at things being published on my iPhone or my Mac and fill a few moments. I hardly ever read anything in reeder unless it is a really short post, I give scything a quick scan and do one of two things.

• If it looks interesting, I will share it to Upnext.
• If it doesn’t, I will move on.

If I ever get to the point of feeling like there is too much to process through, I just mark all as read and move on. As compelling as things are on the web, nothing is vitally important, and good posts have a habit of popping up again anyway.

I do this a little with Apple News too, but it is filled with far too much crud to filter through very well, despite limiting what is shows.

Reading & Highlighting

I read everything in an app that I can highlight and share these with Readwise. This is absolute detrimental to me because I want to be able to read and retain the things that I highlight as fascinating. At the moment I am using Upnext for this, but I have also used Pocket in the past, as well and small dalliances with Matter.

All of my Newsletters are also delivered into Upnext, so I can highlight them as if they were web articles. Pro-tip, you can also get around some paywalled articles by saving them to relater services, but not all.

I open Upnext on my iPhone whenever I feel like it. Small instances of downtime in the day, as boredom relief, and then in larger periods at night on my iPad Mini. I don’t read every word of every article, nor do I highlight loads of things, but I adore reading and learning new things.

At any point if I highlight something really thought-provoking I will share it straight into Ulysses where I have a writing Kanban set up. This is the start of all of my link posts and many of my articles.

Listening & Thinking

There are four smaller areas that fall in here, all of which are important to my creative process. Upnext has the ability for me to listen to some articles, so when driving I sometimes consume these to fill the boredom.

I can’t go one without talking about podcasts, either. Although my listing has dropped dramatically over the last couple of years, there are a few shops I never miss and listen to these at work or when walking the dog. If anything in these episodes sparks some inspiration, I have a shortcut set up to type a few words into my Ulysses inbox. I have also done this with Notion in the past.

The third part of listening is being open and taking in feedback. There are many times I have written a post, spoken to someone about it, and then written again because my viewpoint has shifted. There is nothing wrong with this, and it is important to listen to feedback and take it in creatively. It also leads to some of the best conversations I have ever had about interesting topics. Be open.

Lastly, before anything gets published, you need to think about it. Just sit (or walk) and stew over the words you want to say and make sure they are correct. Establishing your true feelings and not rage publishing is something crucial, but it is even more critical to give yourself time to think about the things you consume. Just be alone with your thoughts and process everything.

Writing & Publishing

Every single word I publish comes from Ulysses, I am writing in it now. Having messed around with so many apps and wasted a considerable amount of money, I always come back. For the small price it is an outstanding app, providing a great experience to create everything from a short link post to a full on novel.

The corrections available in the app seem to catch almost all of my spelling and grammar issues littered through every post, and it actually makes me a better writer. It doesn’t matter where you publish your work from here, but the most critical thing is that you do it. I do it mobile from my iPhone, but I do prefer to sit in the chair and type away. It gives me a better environment to think about what I am writing and establish what I am trying to say.

There are no rules to writing, despite some believing so, and even less to blogging so publish away. Read more, write more and let’s converse more about the things we enjoy. That tweet you just threw into the ether, should have been a blog post.

Isobel Asher Hamilton on the demand by scientist to see internal research:

An international coalition of more than 300 scientists working in the fields of psychology, technology, and health have published an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg, asking the Meta CEO to open his company's doors to outside researchers who need to investigate the effects of Facebook and Instagram on child and teen mental health.

This is part of the problem with Facebook. The conclusions and opinions all boil down to “we think it does this”. We all know that Facebook knows, it has all the data, but it hides it away so everyone external has to guess. The company is the only one that knows what it is doing, both in terms of changes to its platform and the effects on its users, so there is no oversight.

Sure, it’s a public company, it can’t be expected to always acts in the population's best interest, and that is precisely why we need to be able to see inside.

This recent request for research into the harm of its platforms is unlikely to go anywhere. Facebook religiously blocks attempt to study digital harm on it platform, inclusive requests from ProPublica and New York University to name a few. The PR fallout from any absolute research would be sure to set a fire under the platform that would burn it to the ground, and clearly they already know the outcome.

Exactly two years ago, I was thinking about barriers. At the time it was to do with comments on my blog (I was moving it yet again) but this time it’s in my life. Although they are different topics, they both cover the same area. The intentional design of a barrier to restrict access to something.

Not entirely, just ruin the flow enough to trigger some thought or increase the motivation needed to complete the task. It is a pretty easy thing to do. Behaviour = Motivation x Ability x Prompt. The holy grail of those designing to keep you engaged and manipulate you to do desirable things. Whereas there are sometimes we need the opposite.

Take using my phone for instance. I know using it too much is bad for me, and intentionally bought a smaller one to put up a barrier to usage. Although I now don’t use my phone very much, there are days when I do. I get engrossed in something or am particularly bored, and I think to myself “I need a bigger screen”. When in fact I, as a person, don’t need a bigger phone at all. I know these things are internal, it’s not the internets fault, but a bigger phone will make me use it more. As such, I put up an international barrier.

I’d love to go back, but the reality is I require these things in place. In the same way someone who wants to lose weight might hide the sweet treats, I am putting my weakness behind as much of a hurdle as I can. Believe it or not, this is hard for me to do. I spend my life trying to make customers be able to do what they need to do as easy as possible. I want to roll this mindset out to everything, but being able to realise that barriers can be a good thing makes for better living.

There are so many things in my life that cause me to think about for far too long. I dwell on things that shouldn’t take me as much time as I do, and then make others based on sheer gut instinct alone. Hell, a good 70% of this blog is me talking to myself about a decision but framing it as if I am giving advice. In most of the situations, I know what I should do, but I don’t want to.

Take my photography for example. I know that I shouldn’t care about likes. I am also well aware that in fact I should delete my Instagram account entirely, but that is just never going to happen. I like people seeing my stuff, and my friends only seem to use apps developed by Meta. I like the little hit of dopamine that I get from a few likes every now and again. The answer to make me a better person is obvious, but sometimes despite knowing this, another option is also valid.

Instead, I’ll spread my photos around the internet like confetti and see what sticks. Waste my time doing all the things when I know what the ‘correct’ thing to do is — for me, at least. This expands into a lot of my life, I can never decide on which phone to get despite knowing which one I shouldn’t. I know I should really cut Twitter out of my life, but I don’t want to. I am sure there is some psychoanalytic name for it and some deep-rooted reason for this indecision, but at this point in my life I just don’t care any longer.

There are of course some things I know I have to do for the better that overcome this barrier. Eating well, meditating and exercising to name a few, that will never fall away despite me having a million and one reason to stop. But for everything else, I will continue to give myself a hard time about it, and that’s OK. I think.

Shot on iPhone 13 mini

Never one to be left behind, I am continually looking for a way to speed up my theme development. Call it desire to be cutting edge, or near of missing out, whatever it is I love to play around with it. One thing that gets loads of attention is Tailwind CSS, so naturally this was on my list to play around with.

They call it “A utility-first CSS framework” but what it actually means is you can style all of your classes right in the HTML. There are pros and cons with this, but here’s how to get it working on your Ghost Blog.

Before You start

Fair warning this requires a bit of command line work, and if you’re not comfortable with this back away now! You will need:

• A computer running a desktop OS (macOS, Linux, or Windows)
• A supported version of Node.js (at the time of writing this is 12.x, 14.x or 16.x)
• Yarn and npm installed
• A folder to do all your work in

Install Ghost Locally

First, start with Ghost CIL. In the command line:

npm install ghost-cli@latest -g

Now CD into your empty directory and run:

ghost install local

This will get ghost up and running locally on your machine, most errors are communicated daily well, but for extras do ghost help.

If everything looks OK you’ll have a site at http://localhost:2368/ghost. For more information on what this means, check out the Ghost docs.

Your Theme

This next part is up to you, either install a theme you want to use Tailwind with, or start developing your own using the Ghost Starter. You will need to put your theme files into your Ghost local install folder, content/themes. If you want to clone a theme from GitHub, or your theme is stored on GitHub (you should be!) CD into this folder and use:

git clone git@github.com:<your-github-username/.git name-of-theme

Install Dependencies

Your theme more than likely will use Yarn, the Ghost Starter linked above is the best example. Use Arm to install everything needed by Tailwind. In your theme folder, use yarn add tailwindcss and then add in the necessarily files npx tailwindcss init.

Gitignor File

Unless you want more than 5,00 new files committing to your repo, you’ll need a robust gitignor file. Most themes have these set up already to no commit files such as DS_Store on Mac, so make sure you add in node_modules to your file.

Import CSS

In /assets/css/screen.css add in:

@tailwind base;
@tailwind components;
@tailwind utilities;

This imports the tailwind classes to your main CSS. This may partly replace some of your CSS to the Tailwind classes, so something such as typography may change on your theme.

Gulpfile.js

Add in the following to your gulpfile.js.

1 - Under // gulp plugins and utils put in const tailwind = require(‘tailwindcss’)

Under function css(done) there will be a section for postcss( add in tailwind(), so it will look something like the following.

function css(done) {
 pump([
 src(‘assets/css/screen.css’, {sourcemaps: true}),
 postcss([
 easyimport,
 autoprefixer(),
 cssnano(),
 tailwind(),
 ]),
 dest(‘assets/built/’, {sourcemaps: ‘.’}),
 livereload()
 ], handleError(done));
}

Restart All The Things

Now that everything is completed, restart Ghost with ghost restart to make sure everything is being cached correctly. You should be good to go now and can get cracking with adding in new styling. When doing this, you will need to CD into your theme folder and run yarn dev to build the correct CSS.

You can also try out some themes that already have Tailwind built into them such as Ghostwind or Origin but I am enjoying working new classes into my website. For more information on using Tailwind, see their documentation.