Sunday link edition

Hi!

This letter is a little different than usual. I realized I had too many links that I wanted to share, and also that there really wasn’t time to write an essay this weekend due to family obligations. So, this thirtieth issue is all about links elsewhere.

As always, feel free to send your links my way. Just hit reply to this letter, or tweet to @tdh.

Linkage

🤬 There’s a .zip domain name, and it’s Google’s fault. Read this, and then make sure that you’re extra careful with links that look like zip files.

😷 Covid is over says WHO but it sounds more like surrender than victory.

🧑‍🎤 An interesting study on how much money Swedish artists are making on Spotify. Spoiler: It’s not good.

🏢 This Tom Gauld cartoon on writing dystopia hit home.

🌛 “I like the slowness of the night” – what a wonderful quote from this piece. Hear hear!

🧠 My friend Jesper on thinking cost. I have thoughts on this too, expect them in a future letter.

📵 More schools should probably ban smartphones, if this the Atlantic piece is anything to go by. I’m personally not against either phones nor tablets as a rule, there’s a lot of good things coming from them, too. But at school, there should probably be an idea, a concept, around them for it to truly work.

⛱️ Your phone is ruining your vacation is another one of those “let’s hate on the iPhone” pieces, but there’s some truth to it, as always. The same could be said about a book, however…

🦾 A wonderful stop-motion video of Lego droid assembly line.

🤔 Why we usually can’t tell when a review is fake.​

🚶 Whatever the problem, it’s probably solved by walking makes a good argument. I agree, I wish I could go for a walk right now, actually.

Got something I should read? Send it to me, either by replying to this letter, or tweeting to @tdh. Thanks!

That’s it for this week. I’ll be back with a proper essay next Sunday. Until then, take care.

— Thord D. Hedengren ⚡

Did you enjoy this issue of The Bored Horse? Feel free to forward it to a friend, or point them to the subscription page. Thank you! 🙏

TDHFTW, , SWEDEN
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Different cities, different people

Hi!

I’ve been in Berlin for the past week, visiting friends and enjoying the city. It’s been great in almost every way. The only thing that wasn’t good was the nighttrain back home to Stockholm. Abysmal in every way, including a three hour delay, which is unfortunate since trains are much better for the environment than flying. They clearly need to improve if I’m going to subject myself to that particular route again. Anyway, I don’t want to digress too long on negative things. We got home, let’s leave it at that.

It was interesting to see how Berlin differed from Stockholm. I’ve been there before, but that was over two decades ago, a lifetime, it seems. This time, I was struck not only by the different approach to city life, but also how the people was. Stockholm, and Sweden overall, is known for being a cold and harsh place. While that is true in terms of temperatures right now, it’s something people visiting Stockholm tend to comment on. And yes, I think there’s a hostility lingering here. This became even more apparent after visiting various parts of Berlin. Overall, it felt inclusive, everyone was nice and inviting, even in places where they didn’t need to be. You can’t really compare how people are based on the service you get at a five star hotel, for example. They’re paid to be nice to you, and while they might be genuinely so, it’s hard to tell. The corner shop attendant at midnight, a taxi driver, your waiter, or the guy making jewelry for nightclubbers, those are the people that, alongside people living there, will set the general vibe of a place. And I have to tell you, it was a gentle and kind vibe, more than I remember, and a lot more so than I expected. This was just as true in Neukölln or Kreuzberg, as in Charlottenburg – fundamentally different areas of the city.

Berlin has a natural influx of people. They might be there for the party scene or to work at a startup. Either way, they’re people from elsewhere looking to find a place in life, for a time. I’d say that’s a lot easier in Berlin than in Stockholm, at least based on my week there, the people I met, and the conversations we had. There’s no real reason for this, Stockholm is also a mix of people, especially tech workers coming here to work for companies like Spotify or Klarna, but it’s different.

One reason for this might be the different approach to alcohol and dining out. Despite the strong euro, compared to the Swedish krona, it was fundamentally less expensive to eat and drink in Berlin. This is due to heavy taxation in Sweden, and I do mean heavy. Case in point: I found a bourbon I like that costs north of €48 in Sweden, for €25 at a late night corner store. And don’t get me started on the price of beer. The availability of bars and restaurants, and the fact that they’re almost always available, some places never close, does mean that it’s easy to get stuck drinking more than usual. That’s the argument for the Swedish restricted and heavily taxed model. The problem is that the lack of said availability means less social spaces for people to meet, and, I think, an inherent stress when it comes to the social life outside home and work. We, in Sweden, lack the natural and relaxed attitude towards this, and I think this is due, in part, the controlled nature of the Swedish society. Whether that’s good or bad from a health point of view, I really can’t tell, but I must say that the novelty of a take-away drink from a nice bar was appealing.

My reasoning is, it all pools together. People act towards each other in a certain way because of what society teaches them. This makes two cities which, on paper, shouldn’t be so different, very much so when it comes to its inhabitants.

I really enjoyed Berlin. In a different life, I’d live there instead. Maybe I will, down the line.

Linkage

🦜 The New Yorker has a lengthy feature on Luis von Ahn, founder of language app (and more) Duolingo. Possible paywall on this one, sorry.

🤖 Geoffrey Hinton is dubbed one of the Godfathers of AI, and he fears for humanity. That sounds reassuring, doesn’t it? If you recognize the name, it’s because he recently left Google and a lot of outlets are trying to make it about the company’s failed chatbot, Bard, and the like, but according to this interview, that’s not the case.

💵 Facebook might owe you money, at least if you’re a user in the US. Yeah, it sounds like a scam, but it isn’t. This is part of a settlement Facebook, now Meta, made due to being asshats.

⌨️ Don’t like the sound of your keyboard? Try Klack, a fun app that makes typing clickity-clack. Mac only, I’m afraid. Personally, I prefer a proper mechanical keyboard, but that’s not for everyone.

📕 My Swedish fantasy novel, Automatonen, is now available in bookstores across our tall nation. I published the first chapter on the official site, if you’re interested. Again, in Swedish only.

Got something I should read? Send it to me, either by replying to this letter, or tweeting to @tdh. Thanks!

It’s been quite a week, fun and rewarding, and yet also taxing. We recently went to Nice, France, as you might recall, and now a week in Berlin, Germany. It’ll be nice to return to normality for a while.

Until next week, take care.

— Thord D. Hedengren ⚡

Did you enjoy this issue of The Bored Horse? Feel free to forward it to a friend, or point them to the subscription page. Thank you! 🙏

TDHFTW, , SWEDEN
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Hej! Du får det här brevet för att du skrivit upp dig för nyhetsbrev på Automatonen.se. Vill du inte ha fler brev så avsluta prenumerationen här.

Automatonen är här!

Jag ska fatta mig kort:

Min fantasyroman Automatonen finns nu att köpa i bokhandeln! 🎉

Det har varit en lång resa hit, det första utkastet skrevs för vad som känns som en evighet sedan, men nu är den här. Jag hoppas att ni kommer gilla boken och vill följa med på äventyret, för det har verkligen bara börjat. Du hittar den i din bokhandel, eller så klickar du på någon av länkarna nedan.

Stort tack till alla som varit med på resan! 📕✔️

Hälsningar,
Thord D. Hedengren ⚡

TDH For The Win AB,
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On keeping a journal

Hi!

My journaling app (Day One) says I’ve been updating it daily for 1,229 days in a row. That’s something, I dare not figure out how many words that amount to.

Keeping a daily journal is beneficial to me. Sometimes I look back, sure, but that’s not the primary reason I keep doing it. No, it’s because it makes me contemplate the day, and while doing that, I try to figure out how I’ve been. That includes physically, mentally, and towards my family and fellow humans.

I don’t want to rush through every day, never changing. I think I did that for a while, I’m sorry to say, and that certainly wasn’t good for me, nor, I’d wager, my relationships. It definitely made me lose focus of my goals, and I’m struggling with that, still.

Keeping a journal just to ask yourself if you’re moving in the right direction is reason enough for me. Doing it on a daily basis, even if it’s only a short note or a single sentence at times, works better than doing it irregularly. I used to do it weekly when I felt that the daily journal entries became too mundane, it wasn’t compelling reading and I had this idea that I’d enjoy reading my journal in the distant future. That’s all the wrong reasons for keeping a journal, I’ve come to realize, so now it’s dull and raw.

I have added extra data points for easy querying the past six months or so. They’re tags that notes different things I struggle with, or want to keep track of. It’s personal, but it could be things like working out or staying clear of an evening snack. To me, this works just as well, if not better, than the various streaks apps out there, and I’ve had success with them, too. This, alongside being able to attach photos, is the strength of a dedicated journaling app, as opposed to raw text files. It’s why I haven’t moved my journal yet, despite all my misgivings (see issue 22).

If you’ve been struggling to keep a journal, I urge you to give it another go. It doesn’t need to be an interesting read, you’re not writing for an audience. It’s the process, and being honest with yourself about your day, that’s the key.

And the crazy 1,000+ daily streak, of course.

Linkage

📓 David Pierce has had similar problems regarding keeping a journal, at least from a technical point of view.

💧 Microsoft’s web browser, Edge, famous for the new chatbot, and for replacing Internet Explorer, is leaking data to the Bing search engine, it seems. If you’re interested in privacy for your search, consider switching to Duck Duck Go.

📵 Mobile Phone Museum is a fun little site. I find it sad that all mobile phones today are so similar. There was a time when this and this could coexist, and while it wasn’t better in any way, it was at least more fun.

Got something I should read? Send it to me, either by replying to this letter, or tweeting to @tdh. Thanks!

I’m sending this to you from a lovely desk in an even lovelier hotel in Berlin, Germany. It’s been over 25 years since I was here last, and now I wonder why that was. Can’t wait to get back here, but for now, I’m going to see what the last day has to offer.

I’ll email you again next week. Take care.

— Thord D. Hedengren ⚡

Did you enjoy this issue of The Bored Horse? Feel free to forward it to a friend, or point them to the subscription page. Thank you! 🙏

TDHFTW, , SWEDEN
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If it takes less than two minutes, do it

Hi!

I’m afraid it’s a short one today as I’m (still) sick, but at least the fever’s down.

I’d like to talk about productivity, and the one rule that I stay true to. It has helped me a lot over the years, and while I can dabble and change various systems up, this one stays.

It is: If it takes less than two minutes, do it.

Can you answer that email in less than two minutes? Do it.

Will it take you less than two minutes to research something? Do it.

Can you read that piece someone sent you under two minutes? Do it.

The purpose is to remove things from the backlog. If you get an email you know you’re going to reply to, but you put it away to do later, the knowledge of a task in the future burrow itself into the back of your head. It’s another thing that takes up head-space, and those things add up. Suddenly, there are many things spinning around back there, you’re starting to get stressed.

My arguing is that, if you read the email and can tick it off as done by hitting reply, getting it off your plate in two minutes or less, then that’s a good thing. You won’t have to worry about it later because it’s done.

This rule has helped me a lot over the years. There are many things that reach me, one way or another, that I want to act on. They become tasks, sometimes defined ones in a todo list, but other times it’s something I know, in the back of my head, that I’ll have to do at some point. I have systems to handle this, and they work, but they work better if they’re not overloaded. As long as I don’t let potential two minute tasks interrupt me, but rather reach me when I should, say, check my email, and not as a notification while I’m doing deep work, it’s a good rule and system. Life, and work, is stressful enough as it is.

Linkage

📸 Camera site DPReview is closing, but it seems as if it might stick around a while longer anyway? As confusing as that sounds, it’s a shame. I’ve consulted reviews on potential purchases on said site many times.

🦃 Elon Musk continues to wreck havoc on Twitter. The legacy blue verified tick was removed in favor of one requiring the Blue subscription. The tick was later reinstated for high profile accounts, possibly to combat the movement to block people paying for the site, which would be the ones with the tick. NPR and PBS have both left Twitter due to “government funded” labels, but those have since been reverted. Oh, and policies regarding intentional misgendering was quietly removed, too. If we know one thing about Twitter, it’s that nothing’s certain.

🕵️‍♂️ Israeli actor Topol was a Mossad agent claims family. I bet there were lots of snickering about the James Bond movie, For your eyes only, he featured in.

🧱 Have you seen the Tetris movie? Then why not build a Game Boy out of Lego? I love these silly things.

🤖 What’s the point of reading writing buy humans is the title of an interesting piece on AI content. I’m not going to spoil it, it’s worth a read.

Got something I should read? Send it to me, either by replying to this letter, or tweeting to @tdh. Thanks!

I was too feverish to send a letter last week, and it was even doubtful this’d get done. Luckily the worst of whatever bug I’ve got seem to have passed, so here we are. Assuming I don’t get worse, you’ll get the next letter on time, possibly sent from Berlin, or scheduled beforehand.

Until then, take care.

— Thord D. Hedengren ⚡

Did you enjoy this issue of The Bored Horse? Feel free to forward it to a friend, or point them to the subscription page. Thank you! 🙏

TDHFTW, , SWEDEN
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On work/life balance

Hi!

I came back to snow and sleet in Stockholm the other day, from a short trip to Nice, France. Stepping out of that plane into a winter that won't ease up properly here in Sweden was, well, horrible. I don't think I've understood how much I've missed sunshine, having a drink outside, and walking on dry streets. Spring can't come soon enough.

Our trip was a short vacation, and the first time we went anywhere by plane since before the pandemic. It felt great to travel again, although it's troublesome for environmental reasons. I've missed seeing other things, new things. It's as simple as that.

Running a small digital agency means that there are no proper vacations. While you don't have to be on stand-by for things (unless you've planned things incredibly poorly), it's not like we can forget about email and things for five days in a row. This, the idea that everyone's always available, is a problem for most, and that's why you've got people talking endlessly about the work/life balance.

Let me tell you, work/life balance isn't something I've thought about for a long time. I wouldn't be writing about it in this letter if it wasn't for one of our clients who insisted we wouldn't work on our vacation. We're always there for them, and they're a joy to work with. That a client, who initially wanted help while we were away, is prepared to push announcements because of our vacation, speaks volumes to their idea of how you treat your partners. They didn't want us working when we had time off, and they didn't want us feeling that we had to be at their disposal at all times. It's a great client.

We did the announcements anyway, and a few other things while we were away.

Why? Because it is indeed all about balance, but not necessarily what people think about when they talk about work/life balance. To us, being able to help our clients is important. It's just as important, however, that we don't have to process upcoming things, adding stress to the back of our heads. I don't find it stressful to publish a press release at a certain time, with media assets and the like. It doesn't ruin my vacation that I have to sit down in the shade with my iPad, and copy-paste for a bit. If we had decided to push the release to the day we got back home, it would've added stress. It also wouldn't be in line with how we run our agency, it's not the kind of service we want to provide, especially not to clients who are respectful and kind towards us.

So, press releases, two interviews, and some minor other things happened during our vacation. Sometimes on said bench in the shade, at other times in the hotel room, or at a bar. Wonderful, warm and rewarding surroundings, all. The best office I've had in quite some time, I've got to tell you.

If that's not work/life balance, I don't know what is.

Linkage

🦤 Substack is launching a tweet-like Notes feature (without permalinks at the moment, and in beta), which means that Elon Musk’s Twitter decided to mess with Substack links. It’s silly and ridiculous, watching two locked-down platforms bicker. The Verge has a ton of (sometimes silly) posts on the matter. Key take-away: Start (and own) your own domain, blog and/or newsletter, and don’t rely on other people’s platforms.

🔐 MIT Technology Review argues that the new EU legislation for Big Tech (primarily social media) is making the internet a safer place. We’ll see about that, but it sure will make companies like Meta and Twitter more accountable for not acting properly on illegal content.

🤖 In AI news, a journalist at the Guardian tried to rely on ChatGPT for a week, which at least shows that AI will be a big thing for recipe sites. The AI art piece in the New Yorker is less flippant but still on a positive note, whereas the stream of shitty AI generated short stories to literary magazines further shows how AI is being used and abused.

📠 I don’t know, maybe it’s time to build a cyberdeck? Fair warning, this is a rabbit hole.

💸 Or take it a step further, like my brother argues in his piece on why he’s choosing to live in poverty, and is happier for it.

Got something I should read? Send it to me, either by replying to this letter, or tweeting to @tdh. Thanks!

The trip to Nice, and Easter, made this week a bit crazy. I'm in our cabin now, taking it easy. Next week will be hectic, but at least there aren't any small things piling up that I could've ticked off easily on my days away. I'm grateful for that.

Until next week, take care.

— Thord D. Hedengren ⚡

Did you enjoy this issue of The Bored Horse? Feel free to forward it to a friend, or point them to the subscription page. Thank you! 🙏

TDHFTW, , SWEDEN
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On getting older

Hi!

I celebrated my 43rd birthday on Wednesday this week. It was a nice day, I’d managed to move almost all agency work off my plate. I worked with things pertaining to my upcoming fantasy novel, Automatonen (in Swedish only, for now), including the cover reveal and release date announcement which went out on Thursday. You can find all of that on my Swedish blog, if you’re curious. I’d wager most of you won’t understand much of what it says, but there are mockups of the cover at least. There’s a small site for the book, too.

Anyway, this letter is about getting older.

Growing older is an interesting thing. Not the actual aging so much as the way we talk about it. The amount of times people said or wrote that it’s craaazy that I’m forty-three already amazes me. It’s because my age reminds them of their age, which makes sense when you’re talking to friends and family that you’ve know for a long time.

I’m writing this on Friday afternoon, and you’ll get it on Sunday. I don’t feel older than I did at the beginning of the week. Technically I am, obviously – time marches on – but I don’t feel it, not really.

Which isn’t to say that I haven’t aged. My body isn’t in the same shape or form that it was when I was thirty. My twenty year-old self would outrace me, but I’m stronger today. I’m also heavier, wider, with more meat (and fat) on my bones. It’s harder to get up in the morning, I don’t want to do all-nighters anymore, and while I can get into crunch mode as well as anyone, I tend not to. There was a time when I had so many projects going on at the same time because I just didn’t get tired. That’s long passed.

None of that has much to do with age, I think. I could’ve been just as thin as I was in my thirties if I’d prioritized that, but I don’t. I’d rather be strong and live a pleasant life. I could write all night, but I’d rather be sleeping. It’s not my age, or my body, that says no, it’s my priorities.

I keep hearing people, often developers and freelance creatives, saying that they were faster workers when they were younger. I don’t get that at all. I’m working less than I did when I started out, and yet I’m producing more value. For developers especially, as long as you learn new things, there’s just no way you were a better developer ten years ago. Hell, it’s likely you’re better today than you were last month.

Growing old isn’t scary to me. I don’t mind it, if anything it’s better than the alternative. While I have changed, I’m as silly as I ever was, and so is my wife. We’re goofing around daily, if you heard us you’d have a hard time guessing our age. I don’t remember my parents doing that, nor my friends’ parents, but this is probably due to the child’s point of view, and ignorance. Growing old might be more of a social construct than anything else. Except the addition of time, of course.

That’s my takeaway from the conversations I’ve had this week: That you are, indeed, as old as you feel. While your age is something related to the time you’ve spent alive, getting old is a state of mind. The same goes for being young, too, although it’s a moniker that only makes sense when talking about people of a young age. Or when people are talking about how they were, once upon a time, a sparkle in their eyes. That, I think, is the definition of growing old.

Linkage

Thank you all for your input on what to add to the letter. A, to me, surprising amount of you missed the links that I used to include, so they’re back. Less extensive though, I’m going to try to keep this section short and sweet. We’ll see how it goes.

🧓 The puzzling gap between how old you are and how old you think you are over at The Atlantic is strangely on point with today’s topic.

🤖 The age of AI has begun proclaims Bill Gates over at his blog. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Gates is thrilled with the prospect of AI, and what it can do to help tackle the health problems of the world.

🐌 The slow learning manifesto is pretty on point.

✍🏻 Blank Page is a simple writing app that lives in your browser. Save to download a text file. I’m liking it. Fun fact: I was involved in a startup with (almost) the same name. We wanted to help people write books. Unfortunately, it never really took off, and it’s now defunct.

Got something I should read? Send it to me, either by replying to this letter, or tweeting to @tdh. Thanks!

I should be sitting in the sun sipping wine when you get this. While my birthday was this Wednesday, the coming days will be a celebration of sorts, too. I’m in Nice, France, with my wife, enjoying some much needed time off.

Until next week, take care.

— Thord D. Hedengren ⚡

Did you enjoy this issue of The Bored Horse? Feel free to forward it to a friend, or point them to the subscription page. Thank you! 🙏

TDHFTW, , SWEDEN
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I used to review games for a living

Hi!

I started my first company on my eighteenth birthday with the brilliant business plan of “not getting up early in the morning”. Money would have to come later, I figured, and they did. This was 1998 and I had a somewhat substantial web presence with a growing network of sites focusing on role-playing games, entertainment, and the like.

My site, TVspel.nu (which translates to “video games now” in Swedish), started to get traction, and soon I pulled decent money through online ad sales. TVspel.nu was a pretty typical video game site of the time, with news and previews, reviews and feature articles. We got sent just about every game published for all platforms in Sweden, and reviewed most of them. There was an editorial staff of, at most, fourteen people, all doing it for fun.

Writing about, and reviewing, games soon became my job. I grew up with Commodore 64, and later NES and Super NES, and enjoyed playing games as a kid. That stayed with me, so making my hobby my job seemed like a good idea. A lot of people in today’s creator economy do that, with newsletters and ebooks.

It makes sense, doesn’t it? Do what you love, and get paid while doing it. A dream come true, right?

I think you know where this is going. The flip-side of writing about video games is that not all games are fun to play. There are deadlines to meet, so you need to rush through the games at times. An equal amount of time need to be spent on a poor game, as one you enjoy. When done, there’s rarely time to return to any but the absolute best games, if even, because there’s always another game to review, another deadline. Then, at night, you're fed up with gaming.

Doing what you love for work isn’t necessarily a good thing. You should obviously enjoy your work, but a hobby, such as playing video games, will change when you’re tacking business to it.

I don’t review games for a living anymore, that stopped in 2008. A decade was enough, I was so fed up with gaming that it took years and years until I enjoyed video games again. The hobby is tarnished, that’s the fact of it. I still play games occasionally, but I take my time, and drop most of them when I get bored. Which happens more often than not with video games these days. That could be an age thing, I guess, but I do think that every one of those game reviews chipped away at the joy of gaming. Who knew it was a finite source?

I’ve been exploring ways to expand and further develop this newsletter. Rebooting the website would be a natural first step, but I also want to create additional value. I’m not going paid subscriptions or anything like that though, but I do feel that there could be something more than the weekly essay. If you have thoughts, I’d love to hear them. Just hit reply and let me know what you think.

And with that, I’m off to a working Sunday. I’m getting ready to reveal the cover for my upcoming fantasy novel, Automatonen. It’s in Swedish which means that most of you won’t understand much, but I’ll put a link to the reveal in a future issue nonetheless.

Until next week, take care.

— Thord D. Hedengren ⚡

Did you enjoy this issue of The Bored Horse? Feel free to forward it to a friend, or point them to the subscription page. Thank you! 🙏

TDHFTW, , SWEDEN
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Single purpose device

Hi!

I’ve been struggling with my iPhone lately. It’s just not good at everything it does. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great device, but what is its purpose? It’s an everything box, a magical slate of glass that’s more than enough for most people. For me too, especially the iPhone 14 Pro Max I’m using. And yet, I’m not enthused with it.

I upgraded from my iPhone 13 mini to the 14 Pro Max because I wanted the best camera there is. Scratch that, the best iPhone camera there is. You see, I’d gotten bored with taking photos. The 13 mini wasn’t good, not compared to the 12 Pro I had before. My hope was that the 14 Pro Max would reignite my passion for photography.

Alas, it’s all so very processed, so overly tweaked by the machine, that I don’t like how the photos look. Granted, I can fix that with clever camera apps like Halide, or spend some time editing the ProRAW files in Darkroom. But that’s not what I see on the screen, right then, when I snap the photo. It bothers me.

I picked up my Ricoh GRIII a while back, and it was a whole different thing. There’s no zoom or flash unless you mount something, which I don’t on a small street camera like this. It’s just a camera, it takes photos. It can shoot video, but, I think, not well.

Suddenly, photography was fun again. I started carrying the Ricoh in my bag, and I took photos again. The only thing I used my iPhone camera was to remember things.

I’m writing this on an 11” iPad Pro sitting in its Magic Keyboard. To be honest, I’m not fond of the Magic Keyboard, but space is of an essence at this particular desk, so it’ll do. This, along with experimental drawing, is the only thing I’ve used my iPad Pro for the past couple of weeks. You see, I was supposed to sell my iPad mini 6, but I ended up keeping it for reading. Again, it’s just better than the otherwise superior Pro model at that particular task. But then, my Kindle Paperwhite beats them all when it comes to reading in the dark.

Lately, I’ve been eyeing my Punkt MP02 again. You might remember that I did a series on Switch to iPad where I paired that minimalistic phone with an iPad, ditching my iPhone. I wondered if that was the way to go, yet again. Unfortunately there are some things the minimalistic phone doesn’t do as well as the iPhone, where the iPhone shines, and it’s phone calls (!), texting (!!), and as a music player (that was expected). The MP02 is a lovely device, but it’s a sub-par phone in comparison to the iPhone.

There’s always the allure of the single purpose device. I love my vinyl player, and prefer it over playing digital music, despite it all going through the same hifi system and speakers. It’s the feel of things, I think, and the sole purpose for their existance. It’s why I have notebooks and expensive pens, despite the superiority of taking notes on an iPad. But, just like with music, there’s a place and time for everything. I’m not mocking up designs in small paper notebooks anymore, it’s faster and more versatile on an iPad, directly useful even. But not as alluring, at least not all the time.

The final nail in the coffin for single purpose devices across the board, is when you pack your bag for the day. I can’t be bothered to carry multiple notebooks and pens, a music player, headphones, cameras, computers, phones, and iPads. It’s too much.

The camera stays, however. And, down the line, maybe something else will cement itself as a single purpose device I can’t bring myself to compromise myself out of. I hope so.

You might notice that it’s Sunday today, not Friday. I’m going to switch to Sunday editions for a bit. There’s something alluring with sitting down with the newsletter on a Sunday afternoon, nurturing a drink, and writing this to you. Or editing, as it were today – this issue was written earlier this week when I had a rare opening in my schedule.

I’ll email you again in a week. Until then, remember to breathe and be kind to the people around you, but more importantly, to yourself. That’s hard, sometimes, so here’s your weekly reminder that you’re allowed to treat yourself.

— Thord D. Hedengren ⚡

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TDHFTW, , SWEDEN
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In praise of TXT files

Hi!

I had a scare a while back. Ulysses, the writing app I’ve been using for quite some time, decided that my subscription wasn’t valid, making everything read only. So, yeah, not that scary I guess, but deeply disturbing because I had work to do on a project there. This was, obviously, a bug which the developer acknowledged and managed to fix in a day or so.

It scared me though, as these things tend to do when they happen in closed silos. I’ve got whole novels sitting in Ulysses (yes, as backups too, I’m paranoid like that), and before that, I had the same in another writing app called Scrivener. Ulysses rely on text files, basically, written in markdown[1] and lumped together in their own library format. Scrivener, by comparison, does the same, but with rich text files[2]. The fact that the actual files are accessible means that you should be able to wrench your content out of the app’s propriety library files, should exports stop working. It would perhaps be a hassle, but at least possible.

Being someone who’s been writing in markdown for years, there isn’t any need for anything but plain text files. I’ve been relying on the likes of Ulysses and Scrivener over the years because they offer organization and various templates to easier structure large documents. By large, I mean books – I wrote the Smashing WordPress series in Scrivener, and I’ve written several novels and novellas in Ulysses. The apps are helpful when it comes to organizing the story, moving scenes around is a matter of dragging “cards”, or whatever metaphor you want to use. Theoretically, it’s a great feature.

However, I’ve come to realize that I’m old school. If I want to move a scene, I’ll copy-paste it. And if I want to organize my novel in chapters, I don’t have those in the same file anyway, it’s going to be different files, thus making moving them around as easy as changing their file names. My outlines are already all over the place, sometimes in text files, other times in whatever outlining app I’m curious about at the moment, but most of the time, they live in notebooks. I get no help whatsoever from any of these fancy writing apps for outlining work and the like. To bring things home, when a manuscript is done, it always gets exported to DOCX, the file format used by Microsoft Word (and others). This is where the editor will force me into using the Track Changes feature, and then we’ll send Word files back and forth. No getting around that one, and no help from fancy writing apps either. You’re stuck with Word, or a compatible word processor like Pages (which I prefer), for the editing work. Raw text files, wherever they might reside, are left behind, forgotten and outdated, from this point onward.

Why lock anything into a silo? I hate silos, I really do, but they’re hard to avoid.

I’ve got nothing against Ulysses (or Scrivener, which I left for the former), mind you. It’s a great app, it offers a lot of helpful features. I like the interface and experience. I’m less enthused by the subscription model it uses, but that’s beside the point, especially since I’ve been paying it since day one.

But the silo it creates, that I dislike.

So, I’m going to move my long-form writing out of Ulysses. Here’s what I’m thinking:

• Plain text, written in markdown, living in iCloud so that it syncs between all my devices.
• I’ll most likely write in iA Writer (which I’m doing for shorter stuff already), but I could use any markdown-capable app. There are plenty to choose from.
• Books will be folders, chapters will be files prepended by their number for easy sorting, and I’ll have sub-folders with other assets I might need.
• When I’m done, I’ll either use the merge feature in iA Writer, which lets me link files in a master file, thus exporting everything from it without having to do any manual work, or I’ll pull it all together manually/with a script.
• Exporting will probably be done by iA Writer, too. It’s great for giving me a range of file formats, and I can make them look good too. Or, in the case of novel manuscripts, format them in the standardized format.[3]
• Backup will happen automatically since I’ve got a whole system set up for that. Remember, while iCloud, Dropbox and the like might synchronize your data, that also means that it’s vulnerable from several sources. Sync is not a backup.

That’s what I’m doing. It’s a platform agnostic approach to my writing, and I like that a lot. I might even commit my writing to a git repository, it’s all TXT files so anything goes. I could publish it as a website by exporting them to HTML, the possibilities are, if not endless, at least numerous.

Yeah, I’m weirdly enthused by this.

It's been a week, I can tell you, and it's not over yet. As I'm wrapping this up, getting ready to send it to you all, I'm also thinking about the day's last meeting. Then it's wine time, let me tell you, I've earned it. I hope you have too, but if not, don't worry – you got this far, that has to account for something.

— Thord D. Hedengren ⚡

Did you enjoy this issue of The Bored Horse? Feel free to forward it to a friend, or point them to the subscription page. Thank you! 🙏

Footnotes

1. Markdown is a fancy way of adding some formatting to plain text. Characters such as the asterisk (*), brackets and the like are used to highlight, and, when exporting, convert the text into formatting or markup.
2. They use the enhanced RTF format, called RTFD, if I'm not mistaken.
3. Manuscript format is a thing, although which flavor (fonts, sizes, row spacing) depends on the publisher. Make sure you read up on what gives before submitting a manuscript, otherwise it might end up in the bin unread.

TDHFTW, , SWEDEN
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