Currently reading: Attention Span by Gloria Mark 📚
On technology design:
Beyond individual action like restructuring your interface, friction can be designed into the interface that can lead to healthier technology habits–and longer attention spans. Infinite scroll runs counter to promoting goal-directed attention. By cutting it out people would have to do extra work to refresh the feed, and it can make nonconscious actions become more conscious.
Hey, that sounds like Micro.blog…
More autumn colors from my walk this afternoon 🍁
A treasured part of my everyday routine is writing Morning Pages. It gets my brain working, helps me to generate ideas, and sets the tone for the rest of the day. 🖋️
Currently reading: Attention Span by Gloria Mark 📚
Time wasting activities such as social media and games might be useful after all:
You may not have thought that low effort mindless activities could help your work. With mindless activity, we can let problems incubate in our minds, and thinking about other things that do not tax our cognitive resources can help us generate solutions. Because positive feelings are associated with more choices of how to act, if we glean positivity and can replenish from rote activity, then it can even potentially help us be more creative. It can reset our emotions back to a desirable state, and this can perhaps explain why we are so attracted to such mindless activity. It can help us achieve a psychological balance.
Perfect autumn weather today.
Just started Hour 1 of a six-hour piano teaching marathon this evening. I hope everyone practiced…
Currently reading: Attention Span by Gloria Mark 📚
The chapter on AI and algorithms is an eye-opener. I didn’t know just how deeply embedded our daily habits are in integrated into the algorithms of advertising and social media.
Japanese curry with Katsu chicken at Gyugyuya on Dundas. The perfect meal before an evening of teaching piano.
Harmonizing careers: music and mentoring - a profile from the University of Rochester Alumni publication on on my mentoring work with students and recent graduates. It’s really important for those of us who have been in the field for a while to to help young professionals as they embark on their careers.
Maggie Appleton: The Expanding Dark Forest and Generative AI
This is a fascinating talk and well worth the hour you’ll spend watching it.
Safari using 5GB of memory usage for 5 tabs on a brand new Mac with Sonoma 14.0 seems a little heavy. Even Arc only topped out around 2.5GB, even using multiple profiles.. Hopefully updates will address this issue.
Anne-Laure Le Cunff: The Surprising Benefits of Laziness
For everyone who’s excited about desktop widgets on MacOS Sonoma, it’s really nothing new. Here’s a screenshot of my desktop on Windows Vista back in early 2010.
Finished reading 2023: Harvey Pekar’s Cleveland by Harvey Pekar 📚
Finished reading 2023: Bix by Scott Chantler 📚
A charming short graphic novel about the life of Bix Beiderbecke. Chantler’s flow of the frames really captures the feeling of live music making.
Really enjoying Sonoma so far. What I like best after the first day:
- Reminders, particularly its sections and widgets functionality
- iCloud passwords working on other browers. This is one of the biggest game-changers and I’m making use of Arc much more than previously.
- Resizing PDFs in Notes. I still need to explore Notes a bit further.
- Screensavers and transitions are really sweet. It’s a small thing, but makes the overall experience much more elegant.
- Shortcuts, although I don’t think that much is different. I’ve been tweaking a few to trigger them faster from Raycast (much easier to use with Shortcuts compared to Spotlight).
Always nice to have a few minutes between appointments for an espresso ☕️
Quote from the RCM in Toronto yesterday: “To get to my studio, you walk through the atrium and rather than going up the stars like Kirk and La’an did in Star Trek, you’ll go down the stairs and to the end of the hall on the right.”
First commute of the academic year!
