Derek Peden

If at first you don’t succeed…

The say the definition of insanity is doing repeating the same thing but expecting a different result. Belkin consumed an hour of my time yesterday and are taking more of my time this evening with a replacement unit.

The Belkin Soundform Connect is a great fidget toy. You too could spend $99 to watch a white LED fade off and on and eventually turn red. The clue is in the name Belkin.

Not a bad view from the bar. Shame this was last week and not today.

3 days off, 2 days away. As great as they were, it just wasn’t enough. I’m still needing a break from 2021

There’s a reason you shouldn’t wear a hat when doing an interview for a global TV audience.

I started watching Dawn of Justice last night. I could only take about 10 minutes before I realised life is too short…

For the best of reasons, yesterday I broke a 4 year old streak and the mental burden of standing up for 1 minute, or more accurately getting it recorded that I did so on the watch. Now that I’ve done so I no longer feel I need to re-start this as I was doing just fine, regardless of what is recorded.

Rare white puffin seen on island off coast of Scotland reported by BBC News. It’s gorgeous.

I wouldn’t normally say this so publicly, but I’m ensorcelled by her…

Great result for Scotland. Not a victory as such but holding their own. A draw, just like the first game in 1872. ⚽️

Nice to get out and with people again. It feels like it’s been forever.

Nice story, but the video is adorable

Sweet dreams! Wandering elephants take a snooze

A herd of 15 elephants that has travelled 500km has been spotted having a nap in a forest. In recent months the group of Asian Elephants has travelled through many villages, towns and cities in south west China, captivating the county. It remains unknown why the animals decided to leave home. Authorities are tracking their movements.

My 3 year experiment with having a Wordpress site is coming to and end, with my domain directed to Micro.blog.

I signed up for Micro.blog in January 2018, and like the blogging attempts that preceded it I cast a few random thoughts into the wind. I’d already started to reduce my Twitter creation and consumption and I’m only on Facebook when I receive a link or was verbally told to check it.

Around the same time I found a work contact had registered their own domain, with a site hosting their CV and professional accomplishments. I managed to combine my mental model of how this might work with my micro blog, and convinced myself that my content should be on my Wordpress site not Micro.blog. I spun my site off in to subdomains for my Micro.blog entries, my “Professional” site with my CV and work related blog, and a handful of photos on a custom photo library. I fooled myself into thinking this was a good idea and sought out the tools to implement this, starting from a position of close-to-zero knowledge of domain registration, DNS, Name Servers or cross-feeds. To say nothing of the OmniFocus tasks on content management, and repopulating that photo library from zero.

The result was spending more time and energy posting, cross-posting shortcuts, and Keyboard Maestro macros than actually posting content. I spent even less time on Micro.blog reading any ones content. Plus I never actually connected the “professional” site to anywhere, included in an email footer or LinkedIn profile. It technically never existed.

However the real tragedy is that I never properly connected with Micro.blog community over those 3.5 years. At the time my Social Network use was declining nothing was taking it’s place, or at least nothing involving any kind of interaction with other people online.

This has concluded. I’ve downloaded my Wordpress archive (just to retain the words), and connected my domain to Micro.blog. The subdomain content can die, no one will miss them, especially not me.

My new, slimmed down online presence may be limited to Micro.blog, but it is unlimited in the depth, breadth and quality of the content and the interactions with the Micro.blog community. The simplicity of the path to short posts is matched by the ease in creating and editing longer form content. As I’ve only a single site I’m not managing multiple domains, deciding what goes where and more often than not posting anything as a result.

It’s a new dawn,

It’s a new day…

Mail from Expedia. Graphics looks familiar…

I feel like I’ll need to rewatch the Safari section… but that’s about it for the WWDC Keynote

As expected Apple are leaving plenty of scope for software updates in WWDC 2022.

WWDC Apple FaceTime’s new marketing line: Better late than never. But it’s surprising that Apple took 2019 and 2020 to catch-up with established features in Zoom and Teams.

Has a few interesting moments following the experiences of extras on a certain science fiction film shot at Elstree Studios in the long hot summer of 1976.

Watching The Social Network. It’s disgusting that company still exits let alone prospers.

Wondering why I feel tired for this early in the evening… then remember I woke up 14 hours ago

I’ve tried Microsoft Office extensively and I’d like my money back or to use what they use in Redmond, cause there’s no way they are actually using this crap.

Catching up: read that the stickers Apple puts in the box for the new iMac are larger than the chin. It’s wasteful that they still include them but making them bigger than the chin is insult to injury.

I’m trying to figure out my future blogging and domain usage.

So I’m very interested to hear views on use of a personal domain, in particular combined personal use and “professional” use (LinkedIn style, maybe with CV etc).

Currently carrying a largely unused Wordpress site hosted on Siteground but with my future online focus on Micro.blog. However my Siteground account also includes a work-focussed site hosting my CV and infrequent industry blogging.

My parents bought iPad stands which could support and power their 2020 iPads. Then found themselves bemused by the lack of compatibility between the iPads and the 30-pin connector on the stands. It’s laughable that these were ever being sold in 2021.