The iPad after ten years

January 28, 2020
by Riccardo Mori
Tech Life

When I stop and think that the first iPad was announced ten years ago, it just feels unreal. Sadly, however, the next feeling isn’t Look how far it has come, but more like Look how little it has matured. Ten years later, the iPad is certainly not a revolutionary device, and it has been at best a somewhat evolutionary device.

When I had the idea of writing a piece to sum up my observations after ten years of iPad, I checked this blog’s archives first, because I don’t like repeating myself too much. Meanwhile, I got to read a few articles by other writers on the matter and, unsurprisingly, the one I feel closest to is John Gruber’s The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10.

It turns out that what I wanted to say today about the iPad, I already said in May 2019. The whole first part of My kind of tablet (that is, the part from the beginning up to the “21st Century tablet” section) pretty much sums up my views on this great-but-disappointing device.

If you have time, please do read my other articles referenced in My kind of tablet, because they outline in greater detail some other criticisms I have about the iPad and iOS-on-the-iPad:

As for my personal history with the iPad, it’s amazing how, over the years, its trajectory has progressively moved farther away from my interests, and it has become a much less compelling device overall. It’s quite interesting for me to observe how I couldn’t wait to get an iPad in 2012 (when it first shipped with a retina display) and how, about 8 years later, I don’t really feel like upgrading to the latest and the greatest iPad despite my frustrations with the now-sluggish third-generation iPad I enthusiastically purchased in 2012.

Back in January 2010, Steve Jobs started introducing the iPad by talking about a possible new device category wedged between laptops and smartphones:

…And so all of us use laptops and smartphones now. Everybody uses a laptop and/or a smartphone. And a question has arisen lately: is there room for a third category of device in the middle? Something that’s between a laptop and a smartphone? And of course we pondered this question for years as well. The bar is pretty high. In order to really create a new category of devices, those devices are going to have to be far better at doing some key tasks. They’re gonna have to be far better at doing some really important things: better than the laptop, better than the smartphone. 

At the time, I remember feeling in full agreement with Jobs, and when the iPad was finally unveiled, I truly believed it was going to be as revolutionary as the iPhone had been. The potential was utterly palpable. Ten years later, here I am, with a sufficiently large and advanced iPhone on one side, and a sufficiently compact and powerful laptop (the 11-inch MacBook Air) on the other. And the combination of these two devices has effectively neutralised any need I might have for an iPad. After ten years, the only area where the iPad has truly become far better than a laptop and far better than a smartphone is art creation. For that, it’s a really astounding tool. But being a tablet, and an Apple tablet at that, it’s also expected to excel at this. While truly revolutionary products typically have a lot of unexpected markers in their DNA.

Poor feedback during OS updates

January 21, 2020
by Riccardo Mori
Software

A friend got in touch with me a few days ago. He wrote: 

I finally had the opportunity to apply the latest Security Update 2019-007 on my 2015 iMac with High Sierra. The update was taking longer than usual. I know I have to let it do its thing. I usually grab a coffee and do other stuff while the Mac updates.

This time, after 30 minutes it just seemed stuck. On the screen, just the Apple logo and the progress bar, I’d say it was at about 80% or something. At that point I did something stupid: I force-rebooted the iMac. 

As I laid my eyes on those words, I winced. He concluded:

The good news is that my iMac didn’t get bricked in the process. The bad news is that I had to restore from a backup, and the most recent was from 5 days ago. I lost some work updates. I know this was mostly my fault, so don’t get mad at me… But man, what you see on the screen during a system update is really terse… I wish I had more clues as to what the Mac is doing… A way to understand if it’s working or stuck. 

Every time I update my Macs (or iOS devices), I never touch them, no matter how long it takes, no matter how frozen they look during the update process. And this is usually the advice I give others.

Having said that, I agree with my friend on that last point: visual feedback during a lengthy software update could be improved.

When installing older versions of Mac OS X, I remember the Installer going through different stages, telling you which system components it was installing and what it was doing during each stage, with progress displayed with an animated progress bar and measured in percentage. 

Mac OS X Tiger installation

Today we have a black screen, an Apple logo, an iOS-style thin flat monochrome progress bar and sometimes you’ll see something like “Installing [or Installation in progress]: About n minutes remaining.” Just this.

Mac OS X updating install

It’s not unusual that during a major update the Mac will restart on its own once or twice. But since the boot chime was removed a few years back, you don’t even have an auditory clue — sometimes you just see the screen go black, then the Apple logo and progress bar reappear. 

And the progress bar is at a different point than before. You see it go away when, say, it’s at about 65%, and it reappears at about 20%. Expert users understand that behind the scenes there is more than one thing being updated, so the progress bar doesn’t really indicate the absolute progress of the update process as a whole. There are stages, but what appears on screen is so little as to be confusing. The bar so small that you really have to look at it closely to detect movement during the slowest stretches of an update.

I don’t get Apple’s choice of such a minimalistic interface in a situation (a system software update) where ‘how it works’ is a bit more important than ‘how it looks’, especially when looks can be deceiving (Is it ‘doing its thing’ or is it stuck?)

My friend isn’t a Mac power user, but he is not a novice, either. If he decided to act, force-rebooting his iMac, I’m sure it was because he honestly thought that the machine was frozen, that too much time had passed without any indication of progress. I don’t think he acted hastily. And we still don’t know what was happening. Maybe his iMac did actually freeze.

I think a first step to improve things could be to revert to a more descriptive interface. Keep showing the black screen with the Apple logo and the thin progress bar, but make the text below describe what’s happening. It doesn’t matter if it’s technical jargon some people won’t understand — they will understand more clearly that the Mac is performing a series of tasks. It will convey the idea of progress in a less ambiguous way. And if a certain stage of the process needs a restart when complete, display something like Stage 1 of 3 – Updating firmware. The Mac will restart and continue with the security update.

Or have at least the Mac display a permanent warning during the whole update, like: There will be times when the update process could appear frozen. Please do not power off your Mac or force a restart.

We can debate the wording of the message, but I think you’ll agree it’s better than, literally, nothing.

People and resources added to my reading list in 2019

January 17, 2020
by Riccardo Mori
Tech Life

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!

A brief summary of why I’m less enthusiastic about Apple than I used to be

January 15, 2020
by Riccardo Mori
Tech Life

Revisiting the feedback I privately received throughout 2019, I’d say that most of it revolves around a central subject: what’s my beef with Apple? And why has my position towards the company become so critical recently?

If I were to explain things in detail, I would probably have to write a book. Or at least one of those academic papers filled with quotes, footnotes, diagrams, and the like.

But since I’m summing up a series of points I’ve already addressed here at length, I’ll just make a bulleted list, so that we can start 2020 with this out of the way.

  • The fundamental reason behind my diminished enthusiasm about Apple lies in the company’s change of direction and priorities after Steve Jobs’s passing. This isn’t a matter of Apple is doing it wrong and they should listen to me. It’s more like when your favourite rock band changes a band member and/or makes their music ‘evolve’ in ways you don’t like. In ways that make you worry they’ll lose a not-insignificant part of their fanbase. You rationally understand that some things have to change, but that doesn’t mean you have to like them. The big difference is that with a rock band you can simply stop buying their music, and that’s it. With Apple it’s not as simple; especially if you’ve been using their ecosystem for decades.
  • The worsening of Apple’s software quality. I’d like to say that this is mostly a Mac OS problem, but iOS 11 and what I’ve seen of iOS 13 so far have definitely made me a cautious iOS user as well. Apple seems to lack ideas for new, interesting and useful first-party apps. The ones they currently offer appear to be more in a state of maintenance than development. Old bugs in the operating system itself remain unfixed. Sometimes there seems to be an attitude behind the tackling of issues that feels like, This is too complicated to resolve, let’s wipe the slate clean, but that often solves the problem for Apple, not for the customers.
  • The diminishing of Apple’s hardware excellence. Don’t get me wrong, I recognise an engineering and hardware design feat when I see one (the Mac Pro), but the MacBook’s keyboard fiasco is too big to ignore. I used to purchase Apple machines and not even bother to get AppleCare, certain of their reliability. If I were to buy a Mac today, I would add the AppleCare option without thinking twice.
  • Apple’s increased hostility towards repairability. If Apple could sell you a completely sealed device with no user-replaceable parts, and handle all repairs themselves (meaning, they recycle your broken device and give you a new one), they would. And I still think this is their ultimate goal.
  • Apple’s increasing emphasis on Services. This wouldn’t necessarily bother me that much if their Services included actually good, worthwhile offerings and related apps. So far, it’s all weak tea. What’s worse, is that it’s weak tea that dilutes the whole Apple sauce (if you pardon these atrocious analogies). I still cannot shake the feeling that, in an attempt to be everywhere at all costs, Apple is spreading their resources thin and struggles to maintain a level of quality in all of their platforms that goes above ‘good enough’.

One of the most marked differences between Jobs’s Apple and Cook’s Apple, in my opinion, is that under Jobs Apple cultivated a strong identity and a way of doing things that differentiated Apple from every other tech company. Jobs managed to make Apple successful without necessarily playing by the tech industry’s rules. The essence of Thinking different was this, I think. Jobs was like, “Here’s our take on what a computer (or phone, or tablet, or accessory) should be and work; we think it’s better than the competition because we operate at higher standards”. It didn’t always work, and I’m aware that not every product manufactured under Jobs’s tenure was perfect. But it was crystal clear that there was a genuine effort to adhere to such standards nonetheless. It was evident in both hardware and software. 

Jobs’s figure was unique because, in a product’s life cycle, he was crucially present both at the conception stage and as a final user. He had a clear idea of how something should work, and that helped immensely in creating user-friendly products that ‘just worked’. I still see some of that thinking-different attitude and ‘Apple’s way’ in today’s Apple, especially when it comes to privacy and security. But generally speaking, Cook’s Apple appears to be less focused on what makes it a unique player in the tech industry, and more interested in doing things many other companies are doing, entering markets where the competition has clearly more experience and offers more compelling products. Apple’s reputation as main differentiator here can only work for so long.

A brief review of my 2019

January 14, 2020
by Riccardo Mori
Briefly

2019 was a strange year for me.

Looking at it superficially, nothing went wrong. I carried on with my life, managed to stay afloat, my translation work went somewhat satisfactorily, I was able to expand my technology horizons by getting to know other platforms better through the acquisition of new older devices; even the summer holidays went better than usual.

My interest in photography was rekindled: while I still love shooting film, the mostly unexpected and serendipitous acquisition of a few interesting digital cameras (Olympus E‑420, Pentax Q, Fujifilm X‑E1, Fujifilm FinePix F30) gave way to further experimentation — and that was a lot of fun.

From a personal workflow standpoint, in 2019 I was able to fully take advantage of my post-MacBook Pro setup — iMac as main workstation at home, 11-inch MacBook Air as mobile solution — and things have worked fantastically well. To the point that that iPad upgrade I was considering back in 2018 turned out to be unnecessary and has been delayed indefinitely. This happened thanks to the extreme versatility of the 11-inch MacBook Air, a machine I would never consider buying when new, which has now become, just a year after purchase, the second best Mac I’ve ever had (nothing beats my 12-inch PowerBook G4, of course).

But 2019 has also been a year of disappointment. I’m still very much interested in technology in general: the big picture, where tech is going, what’s being produced, and so forth. I haven’t really lost my enthusiasm and the ability to get excited over some new products or solutions. And I still am very deeply interested in subjects like design and usability in connection with technology. 

But a lot of the people in technology, how technology is talked about, the debates over whatever it is the latest silly topic du jour, etc., have been wearing me down considerably. Engaging in tech-centric discussions, whether online or offline, has increasingly felt like an exercise in futility, no matter how articulately you present your point of view. This, in turn, has led me to write less on this blog. And while I’ve always maintained that I shall write an article only when I feel I really have something to say — as opposed to just keep this space updated with filler link pieces and one-line commentary when I’m not inspired to write long-form — I am disappointed that I haven’t been able to write more. At the time of writing, the entire body of articles I’ve written in 2019 consists of the ‘Latest 30 Posts’ you can see in my Archives page. It’s a bit disheartening.

Even worse, 2019 has been a terrible year with regard to my creative writing and fiction. Not that 2018 was better, but there were different reasons for its terribleness. Here, it truly feels like a ‘lost’ year. All my projects have progressed little, if at all. This time, it really wasn’t writer’s block, nor laziness on my part; and yet I lacked focus and organisation. I simply let work and other stuff take most of my mental energies, so that little was left for writing fiction at the end of the day. Which is rather stupid, in retrospect, given that writing is what I do best.

I try to maintain a ‘glass is half full’ kind of attitude and, when looking back at 2019, I tell myself that, sure, it wasn’t a great year for my output, but was a good ‘input’ year — meaning I spent it mostly learning new things, ‘consuming’ more ‘content’, researching stuff and feeding my inspiration. But I can’t help feeling dissatisfied. I can’t help feeling that last year was a big waste of time, right when I’ve reached that middle-age phase when time is perceived as an increasingly precious resource.

My only resolution at this point is to write more; or rather, to revisit my priorities in order to put my writing back where it belongs — sharing first place with my daily job. I’ve been keeping creative notes here and there, but I really need to finish my first novel of the Low Fidelity series; I need to act on these notes I’ve kept nursing and write the short stories that should become the third book in my Minigrooves series.

2019 wasn’t a great year for me, but I am thankful for all the people in my social network who have been supportive, who have lent an ear when I needed venting on Twitter, who have helped me in a way or another. That’s always appreciated and never taken for granted. Here’s to a better 2020!