People and resources added to my reading list in 2019

Welcome to my traditional summary article commenting on how my previous year went with regard to online reading habits and people/resources worth sharing.

Since 2017, there has been a noticeable decline in what and whom I have discovered and found interesting enough to add to my RSS feeds, especially in the blog category. Concurrently, as I wrote in the past two summary articles of this kind, another depressing trend in my feeds has been the removal of people/resources failing to maintain my interest (or their quality). Between 2017 and 2019, the number of resources I removed from my feeds has been comparatively higher than what I added.

Tech blogs

Some tech people are funny: they routinely come up with triumphant declarations saying that Blogs aren’t dead, blogs are important, and we must hold on to them as they embody the original spirit of the free Web, then they proceed to revive their long-abandoned, mostly-empty blog or website to write just that, and then they go back to neglecting it. These types have indeed chosen the podcast or YouTube channel as delivery medium, or they have actually stopped writing regularly and prefer exposition and ranting via Twitter.

The result is that finding good-quality tech blogs (not tech sites/portals, mind you), that are updated with reasonable frequency is getting harder and harder, at least for me. In 2019 I’ve mostly read here and there, often following a link referenced in sources I already read on a daily basis; while I found a lot of well-written, interesting pieces, a subsequent visit to the author’s site often revealed a disappointing scarceness of content. In these cases my reasoning for not adding them to my feeds has been that if they write another interesting article, they’ll probably be mentioned by one of my sources. In the meantime I won’t be missing much, really.

In 2019, only three blogs have been added to my RSS feeds:

The Eclectic Light Company, by Howard Oakley — I discovered Howard via the always-excellent Michael Tsai — whom I already follow and highly recommend — and his name kept sounding familiar. Shortly after, I realised I had been reading Howard’s contributions on MacUser UK and MacFormat UK magazines for years. His website mainly features articles about Mac OS and articles about art and paintings. I’m interested in both topics, but if you only want the tech side, you can easily just follow his Macs section (he also collects Mac problem-solving articles in the Mac problems page). When it comes to tech writing and developing Mac utilities (check his Downloads page), Howard is both thorough and prolific. Most of his tools focus on the analysis of the OS and its security systems, and they’re definitely targeted to power users. The few I’ve tried out have worked very well for me. Howard is a great writer and is very responsive to feedback. I’ve asked him for advice on a couple of occasions and he’s been quite helpful.
The Entanglement, by Alex Roddie — Alex is a friend and a great writer and editor. Since he started focusing more on outdoor writing, however, I had been missing his tech-oriented contributions. I was very happy when he launched The Entanglement and I love the fact that it approaches technology from a broader perspective. But he explains this better on the What is The Entanglement? page. Read that first. If you end up being intrigued, then welcome to the club and follow the blog. Updates aren’t very frequent, but always thought-provoking.
Tyler Hall’s website and blog — I discovered Tyler in October 2019 when his article on Mac OS Catalina was linked by many of the sources I usually follow. I really liked it, so I checked his website and found other interesting articles. Looking at the archives I soon realised that Tyler wasn’t just writing the very occasional rant, and that his writings had become more frequent throughout 2019. So I added him. He’s a Mac/iOS developer, and I’m always interested in listening what Mac/iOS developers have to say. I find his writing style to be very enjoyable. Pay him a visit, and check out his software at Click on Tyler.

YouTube channels

YouTube is a productivity killer. During 2019 I started recognising the signs of a growing addiction to the site, and fortunately I’ve managed to contain it. What works for me is simply to grant YouTube a limited time frame in my daily routine, and only watch videos in that time frame. Some exceptions may be the occasional video watched on my iPhone when I get home by bus, or when I’m having a break at a coffee shop — stuff like that.

For the past year, I’ve been doing a lot of channel hopping on YouTube, watching several different videos from different sources, but keeping subscriptions to a minimum. YouTube’s algorithm has worked in my favour: even without subscribing to a potentially-interesting channel after watching some of its videos, the algorithm has periodically suggested more videos from that channel, and this has worked as a gentle reminder, or as a sort of bookmark if you like. So, even if I haven’t subscribed to a lot of channels, I keep having them on my radar until I decide whether or not to subscribe.

Ever since my interest in games has returned to the forefront, I’ve found a lot of interesting game-related channels, but I’m not talking about those so-called Let’s Play videos where you watch someone play games. Rather, I’ve found a few intriguing channels that focus more on game analysis, whether it’s from a technical or philosophical standpoint.

Here’s a small selection of YouTube channels and creators worth mentioning in this regard:

Nick930 — I already mentioned him in a post back in September, saying: “Nick produces terrific game reviews and game comparisons. He’s very honest and balanced, and keeps his reviews pleasantly short (8–12 minutes on average); but he also makes very nice documentaries about the histories of various game franchises. The material is well-researched and well-presented. I stumbled on his channel by chance while looking for videos about Tomb Raider, and found his great History of Tomb Raider (1996–2018). You’ll see that Nick has currently more than 146,000 subscribers [now about 195,000], and while it’s a respectable audience, I still think his channel is very underrated and that he deserves at least 5 times that number.”
Digital Foundry — This channel is definitely more technical, often talking about graphics cards, GPU performance, … Wait, let me just paste here their own description in the channel’s About section: Digital Foundry specialises in game technology and hardware reviews, using bespoke capture and analysis tools to provide a unique look at the way games play. Video is just one dimension of what we offer — check out http://www.digitalfoundry.net for all of our articles. If you’re passionate about this particular aspect of gaming, subscribing to this channel is a must, in my opinion.
Max Derrat — I found Max’s channel… not really by chance. Rather, for a while YouTube kept suggesting what is probably one of Max’s most popular videos, The Most Profound Moment in Gaming History, and one evening I finally decided to take the algorithm’s hint and check it out. And it was good! And so are his other videos on game analysis/criticism. But his range of topics is wider: as he says, he does videos on whatever he wants: “Those include video games, movies, philosophy, psychology… but I seem to be best known for my videos on autism and mental health.” So far, I’ve only watched his videos on games, movies, and philosophy. But I’ve no reason to doubt his other videos are of lesser quality.
Jacob Geller — And while I was watching one of Max Derrat’s videos, that sneaky YouTube algorithm suggested one video by Jacob Geller. Then it suggested the same video while I was watching a YouTuber play Control, a fascinating game released last year. At this point, I had to check this Jacob Geller out. The video in question was Control, Anatomy, and the Legacy of the Haunted House. After watching it, I was intrigued. So then I watched Museum Theft, and then Artificial Loneliness, and then The Decade-Long Quest For Shadow of the Colossus’ Last Secret, and then Judaism and Whiteness in Wolfenstein, and… I had already subscribed to his channel by then. Jacob is an intelligent, articulate storyteller with a lot of great insights on the subjects he touches. Unlike Derrat, Geller remains focused on games for the most part, but often the game is simply a starting point to talk about themes and subjects that are presented with well-written scripts and captivating narratives. He’s not a frequent uploader, but every upload is meaningful.
Ahoy — “He’s not a frequent uploader, but every upload is meaningful.” These words work just as perfectly for Stuart Brown, a.k.a Ahoy. His channel’s About page simply says, Insighful gaming videos, and while true, it’s also a tragic understatement in my opinion. I think the first video I watched was his short documentary titled FLATLINE: How the Amiga Languished, which is part of his RetroAhoy series (highly recommended). I was amazed by the quality of the writing, presentation, narration, and production. Stuart definitely knows how to write a story and how to read it as well, in his British accent and deep voice that somehow reminds me of BBC broadcasts of old. But he also knows how to give the presentation a visual design, a ‘feel’, a mood, an æsthetic that is just the cherry on the cake. The masterful 1‑hour documentary The First Video Game is presented as a series of old transparencies that slide away and come into view as the narration proceeds. On paper, this sounds boring and uninspired, but you really have to watch to see how effective that is, given the subject of the documentary. Also of note his recurring series of short videos called Iconic Arms: each video gives a brief history of a weapon or firearm, how it was popularised by movies, and how it ended up in videogames. Even if you, like me, care very little about guns, I think you’ll appreciate the minimalistic graphic style and transitions. The use of bold colours, silhouettes, and big Helvetica type reminds me of old manuals and brochures from the 1970s and 1980s. But enough with this verbiage — go check Ahoy’s channel.

Podcasts

Nuked. All of them.

In 2018, I wrote:

I don’t want to start another tirade about podcasts, but let me reiterate one fundamental criticism: there is simply too much supply, and too little time. I can’t spend my day listening to podcasts, as I find practically impossible to follow a podcast episode while doing other things. Music can be enjoyed even when it’s in the background. I can’t follow what people are talking about while reading stuff on the Web or working. It’s just interference. I have to make time for your podcast. And if I’m going to give you one hour of my time for an episode, you better deliver on the quality and content, otherwise it’s bye-bye.

As a medium for tech debate specifically, podcasts pose another problem for me: if you want to extract information to analyse, quote, criticise, respond to, the burden is entirely on you. You often have to sift through long, rambling conversations between two or more people, transcribe the bits that interest you, and respond on your blog. This gets tedious very soon.

Podcasts may not be trivial to record and produce, but it’s certainly easier to just chat about something instead of having to write an article about it. When more people wrote on their blogs more regularly, the debate was a bit more balanced. One took the time to write their thoughts, another could easily extrapolate, quote, and respond. But reacting to a conversation? Either you make the aforementioned effort, or I don’t know, perhaps you make your own podcast and respond accordingly.

In either case, a more extended conversation is difficult to maintain. In the best scenario, you listen to an 1½-hour long podcast episode, you patiently extract the parts you want to discuss, you let the interested parties know, they respond in the next episode, and so on. It becomes an awkward cross-medium back and forth. That’s why I often feel that some people have chosen the podcast as their preferred medium for expression to shield themselves from debate and criticism — at least in part. They know that challenging their opinions becomes more laborious, and it’s just easier to listen and move on.

Anyway, one day last year I simply realised I had no time for podcasts. No time to listen to them in a meaningful way. And certainly no time to prepare an adequate response in case I disagreed with something being said in an episode. I still listen to the occasional bit from some favourite sources or if someone passes me a link to a podcast episode worth listening, but I’ve unsubscribed from everything. I still recommend the podcasts I used to subscribe to, and you’ll find them in the past articles of this series (links are at the bottom of this post).

My RSS management

It hasn’t changed much from the past few years. I still use the same apps on my computers and devices. Because there’s no need to fix what’s not broken. So:

On my Intel Macs: Reeder, but keeping an eye on NetNewsWire 5. I’ll probably switch to NetNewsWire if and when I upgrade my Intel Macs to Mac OS 10.14 Mojave. (Yes, not Catalina).
On my PowerPC Macs: older versions of NetNewsWire.
On my iPhone 8, iPhone 5, iPad 3: Unread.
On older iOS devices: Reeder, and an older version of Byline.
On my first-generation iPad: an older version of Newsify, Slow Feeds (which is now called Web Subscriber), and the Feedly app itself.
On my ThinkPad T400 and ThinkPad X240 (with Windows 8.1 Pro and Windows 10 respectively): Nextgen Reader.
On my Windows Phone 8.1/Windows 10 Mobile smartphones: Nextgen Reader and FeedLab.
On my webOS devices (Palm Prē 2, HP TouchPad): FeedSpider. A really great app.
On my AndroidOne phone (Xiaomi Mi A2): the official Feedly app. It’s good enough, but if you have a better candidate to suggest, I’m all ears.
For my BlackBerry Passport, I’m temporarily using an app called Gazzet but I’m open to suggestions.

In conclusion, I’m disappointed that in the end I only added three written resources to my feeds. Let’s see if there’s really a renewed interest in keeping personal sites and blogs this year, and not just empty talk.

Past articles

In reverse chronological order:

I hope this series and my observations can be useful to you. Also, keep in mind that some links in these past articles may now be broken. And as always, if you think I’m missing out on some good tech writing or other kind of resource you believe might be of interest to me, let me know via email or Twitter. Thanks for reading!

Riccardo Mori

Writer & Translator