Family guy and web developer
Patrick Rhone’s plan for measuring his days in the future is definitely something I can get on board with.
One day, I hope not to measure my days in minutes or hours, but in miles walked and pages read.
And on that note I finished a book this morning and just finished an hour walk with Jennifer through the trees where we live. A great day so far by any measure.
Wally Bock shares an ideal model for present-day Christmas in a time when, there’s a demand and push for us to spend and consume beyond our means.
What I’ve always liked about the story is the way Dickens portrayed that dinner. Dickens had been poor and he didn’t romanticize the poverty.
Instead, he showed a family enjoying each other and the day. There would be time for work and old man Scrooge soon enough. They knew that Tiny Tim would probably die soon. But there was still joy and refreshment to be had.
It’s not a bad model for us today. For a day, surely, we can set aside our smartphones and turn away from the worries, maybe even turn off the news. For a day, we can enjoy some time away from stress and bathe in the joy of being with people we love and who love us.
And yes, my Christmas tradition of reading A Christmas Carol continues this year.
Kurt Harden shares his essential mix for Christmas. Perfect background music while I finish work today and get the house into some order.
Drew finished the Home Alone build a few days ago. It’s a fantastic build with plenty of detail. A great set for the holidays.
I finished today’s NYT Spelling Bee over some coffee and eggs. An excellent start to the day. 😀
Over the weekend, I decided to give Readwise’s Reader application a spin. After seeing several tweets about the product, I thought it might be a way to combine my Instapaper and Feedbin subscriptions. After exploring the product over the weekend, I’ve decided to stick with Instapaper and Feedbin.
There’s nothing majorly wrong with Reader. It’s a fine read-it-later product and has many great features. It’s still in beta, though, but there’s nothing there that would stop others from seeing the value in it.
My main gripe with Reader is that it tries to do this and several other things, all in the same product. Saving articles for later is known, but it also allows you to subscribe to feeds and newsletters, send emails to Reader and upload PDFs and EPUBs. That’s a heck of a feature set, and while it can do all these things, I already have these features covered elsewhere.
My Kindle and Books apps handle any books that I might be reading. Instapaper is my go-to read-it-later service. Feedbin is what I use to subscribe to Youtube channels, RSS feeds, email newsletters and Twitter lists. Finally, between Hey and Basecamp, I have places for keeping emails.
The main difference I found is that while Reader does all these things, I am happier with the products I already use. That might be harsh comparing established products to Reader when it is still in beta. I did find Reader tricky to navigate through, and it just didn’t flow for me in the same way that Feedbin or Instapaper does. I’ve no doubt that Reader will improve over time, though I’m content with the setup I have now.
I went out for a quick six holes with the boys this afternoon. Glad to see the boys still playing great.
The Lego Home Alone build is coming along nicely. Not much progress this week though as Drew has been in his bed with a virus this week.
Good to see Jason Kottke back at kottke.org.
I just discovered that the Bear blogging platform has its own discovery feed. Love this! It would be good to see a similar feed on Micro.blog.