The single scariest moment in my life thus far was last Friday, when I went to the little fridge in my home office to find that there was, in fact, no Pepsi Max (Cherry) in there. The sadness and disappointment, combined with the shock and fear, resulted in an emotional cacophony the likes of which I had never experienced before.

This recounting may well be a little on the hyperbolic side, however, the resulting unravelling and discovery was euphoric. I went to the shop, and would you believe… they had no Pepsi Max (well, no cherry Pepsi) in my moment of disgust, and thirst, I grabbed some concentrate orange pop. Double strength, according to the label.

When mixed strong enough to hand to a cowboy movie hero or a knight of old, it was pretty good.

Now, I pay about a tenner for each tray of twenty-four cans of Pepsi Max (Cherry). I go through a tray a week when its hot (don’t start with me, there are no calories in it and I don’t give a wet poop about the dangers of sweeteners) so, taking advantage of whatever offers are usually on in my store of choice (Asda) I usually get a month’s supply for around thirty English pounds.

There is the mind-blowing thing though, instead of buying more Pepsi Max (Cherry) I investigated the orange dilute options. I found a litre of double dilute orange, with a twist of pineapple (the king of fruit) for one pound, sterling.

This absolute unit of a bottle will mix out to about ten bathtubs of cowboy drinkable nectar (this is not a scientific measurement).

I think for three bones of our dead monarchs (formally pounds) I can drink like a champion all month.

The orange pop contains less caffeine too, so it’s likely less bad for me (not good for me, but less bad than Pepsi Max (Cherry). If the fancy takes me, I could even try a mango twist instead of pineapple (the king of fruits), not that I would want to because pineapple (the king of fruits) is the king of fruits!

I explored the seasonal summer ‘please rip me off with overpriced tat’ aisle and found a four litre plastic barrel with a plastic yellow tap on the site for six golden nuggets. Now, my fridge is an exciting, inviting container of a container of orange awesome.

Money saved, beverage switched. ☺️

Last week, looking for something to watch while I ate a massive bowl of rice and vegetables (a new staple for me. I put a lot of soy sauce in it), I pressed play on the new Apple TV show, Murderbot.

I watched the first three episodes and loved it. It’s a science fiction show with a premise that is, frankly, genius. It’s from the perspective of a security robot who has hacked its mind to become autonomous and unrestricted. Its life mostly consists of watching bad sci-fi shows, being neurotic, shooting big centipedes and other (less nice) robots. All while trying to pretend it isn’t a rogue unit around the annoying humans.

I had no idea it was based on a book until I did the ritualistic “web search for the thing I like” and discovered the source material. The first book is All Systems Red. The author, Martha Wells, has previously written novels set in the Star Wars and Stargate universes, as well as a well-received fantasy novel. There are more, but I was too focused on The Murderbot Diaries to do any sort of deep dive.

I grabbed the first book on Audible because it was free with my membership, and I quite literally started and finished it in a day. This isn’t quite the epic feat it sounds like, as it’s a short book. It’s very punchy, and I didn’t feel the need for more than a short coffee break before reaching the end.

The titular Murderbot is deadpan and nihilistic in ways that are subtly saltier than in the TV show. The story is told entirely from a single perspective, but it often feels like a third-person narrative thanks to Murderbot’s use of remote cameras to fill in the narrative blanks.

Murderbot has been left on contract to protect some hippy scientists doing a planetary survey, but it mostly tries to ignore them while watching space-Netflix. When things get prickly, it constantly compares real life to the space adventures it’s seen on TV. It tries its best to be a good guy, but never quite rules out mass murder. Though, at times, it does feel like it’s trying to convince itself that it’s more aloof than it actually is.

The book and TV show diverge a few episodes in, but the overall plot seems to be following the same arc. Despite having finished the book, I’m still enjoying the show. I’d recommend both, unquestionably.

The delineating factor in the chapters of my life has often been tangentially linked to my beverages of choice.

On my first day of college—many, many years ago (1996, if you want to get personal)—I was a nerdy kid with very few skills, deeply self-conscious, and in deep denial about basically my entire personality. I had no idea what was cool, no social skills to speak of, and my main concern was not looking like an idiot. Pretty normal for a sixteen-year-old in the nineties.

I stood in line at the college canteen—a larger-than-expected room, filled with students who all looked more interesting and more at home than I felt.

The person in front of me (whose name I sadly can’t remember) was a long-haired guitar player who wore a lot of denim and talked fast. He was on the same IT course as me. His reason for enrolling? “Because computers are more interesting than music class."

Nameless Cool Kid ordered a bacon sandwich and a black coffee.

Panic hit. I had no idea what I was going to order. At school, I mostly drank Panda Pop and ate crisps because they were cheap.

I blurted out “Sausage sandwich,” because I didn’t want to copy him too blatantly. But when it came to the drink, I also said, “Black coffee, please,” and tried to act like it was totally natural.

The guy behind me ordered a chocolate milk and a large cookie. I was relieved I wasn’t following him instead.

We sat down, and Nameless Cool Kid loudly proclaimed, “Nice to know there’s another black coffee drinker in our group!”

I was stuck. Doomed to be one of the black coffee people. No problem, right? That’s cool.

Then I took a sip.

If you’ve never had coffee before, black coffee tastes like warm tar and smells faintly of ash. Until you eventually fall in love with it, that is.

Still, I drank black coffee for the rest of the year. And oddly enough, by the end of it, I genuinely enjoyed it.

Nameless Cool Kid dropped out about two weeks in. Later, I found out he got arrested for stealing his neighbour’s car. He might have been a loser and an actual criminal—but at least he was cool.

Years later, when I got married, I became obsessed with this 1970s coffee maker someone gave me. It made terrible coffee, but it looked fantastic.

When I separated from my wife, it sprung a leak. Poetic.

There’s a lot in the middle here that I’m glossing over, but I went through a multi-year tea phase—eventually abandoning it when I realised tea was making my teeth look like I’d just returned from a three-day heroin bender.

A couple of months ago (as I mentioned in another post), I injured my knee and then made it worse by falling down the stairs.

During my sad recovery, I drank a lot of mixed fruit juice and felt sorry for myself—almost constantly.

Ideas began to form as I nursed my knee, and strangely, last Saturday I went to a gym for the first time ever in my life.

I know plenty of people my age who haven’t been to a gym, but still, it felt odd. I’m 44 and had never once set foot in one.

I have a foggy memory of being in a gym-like place with my dad around age twelve, but I’ve decided to disregard that entirely. Might have been a dream.

Now, I’ve been to the gym four times and have thoroughly enjoyed it, so far.

I started drinking Monster Energy Ultra (sugar-free)—not for any deep reason, just because it was in the vending machine after my first session. It satisfied me. Now it’s tradition.

Exciting times, I know.

Incredibly, my knee pain has massively reduced in just over a week of gym visits. I suppose all those gym bros are onto something. Who knew?

Planning three fitness trips a week, church on Sundays, and Bible group on Wednesdays has—for the first time ever—left me with less time to write than I’d like.
But it’s giving me new experiences and more time to reflect. That reflection, no doubt, will end up back in the writing anyway.

I’ve spoken before about the changes in my life over the past few years. Every one of them has made me a little bit happier. Closer to bliss? Who knows.

But I’d like to take a moment to outline a few of them:

• On 23 June 2024, I was baptised. Officially a Christian. That has been entirely positive in my life. I love Jesus, and knowing Him has made everything exponentially better.
• Over the last few years, I’ve written about five books. I say about because the novella/novel distinction is something I still argue with myself about. Writing brings me joy—and a sense of calm I treasure.
• A little over a year ago, I got a dog. There is no downside to having a little fur pal.
• I started drawing. I’m still very bad at art, but I love using that part of my brain. It helps me see things differently—perhaps more deeply.
• I started playing chess a few months ago. I’m literally trash at chess, but there’s something about the precision of the game that I find beautiful—even if my own playing isn’t.

And now, on top of that, I’ve started drinking Monster Energy and going to the gym.

Imagine going back to pre-COVID me and telling him all this.

I’m not sure I’d recognise myself.

Let’s hope the trajectory of joy continues.

Also, for the record—Monster is not overrated.

Monster is dope.

Confidence carries people a long way in life, often before their skill is ever truly tested. It offers a unique kind of freedom from doubt and has a way of putting others at ease. Confidence is the tool of choice for many of the heroes we admire. When used appropriately, it’s a genuine virtue.

I’ve been thinking a lot about confidence as a resource lately, ever since I heard someone describe a genre of music as ‘confidence pop’. This catch-all term seemed intended as a slight, aimed mostly at artists like Meghan Trainor and Pink. However, I didn’t take it as the scathing critique it was meant to be — in fact, it struck me as quite a compliment. Since then, the idea of confidence as a resource has been quietly percolating at the back of my noodle stack.

In some obvious ways, I’m far less confident now than I once was. I used to make regular YouTube videos about Linux, technology, and gaming, often speaking with conviction about topics I only had a rudimentary understanding of. Yet, I still attracted plenty of clicks and, at one point, had almost 11,000 subscribers. Not exactly a huge channel, but certainly bigger than many who were probably more qualified than I was.

For a time, I was producing a video every day about different indie games, talking weekly about Linux as a platform on a podcast, and sharing my faux, shallow wisdom with anyone willing to trade a click. And honestly, I had a brilliant time doing it.

Over the last few years, though, I’ve learned to be more honest with myself about my value and skills. I don’t think I could bring myself to offer my unfiltered musings to the public in the way I once did. Now, whenever I write a post, I consider its audience, its value, and its intended impact.

My last update prior to this post was a sketchy drawing of a woman exiting a space pod, loosely inspired by the recent Blue Origin mission that had been all over social media. While I intended it to be topical, it was really just an interesting visual moment which I wanted to explore through drawing. The style was meant to roughly imitate the look of the classic Scottish comic ‘The Beano.’ The focus was on capturing playful visual forms, not creating a polished, serious piece. I wanted people to look at it and think, “That looks cool, that’s fun,” not take it as any kind of social commentary. And honestly, I think it was a success.

I’ve also recently posted short ‘micro post’ too— a collection of random musings about drawing software, pop culture, and writing habits. Each of these small updates was meant as a kind of noted musing, and hopefully, a future conversation starter for the few people who read my content here. Even the smallest of my posts has a purpose and intended value, however vague or modest.

In contrast, one of my most viewed YouTube uploads ever was titled “Raspberry Pi 3 running Ubuntu MATE” from back in 2016. It’s nine minutes and forty-four seconds long — and quite literally pointless. I was logged in via Remote Desktop to a well-documented SoC computer, using a well-known OS and desktop environment. There were probably a hundred videos better than mine posted months earlier. But in my hubris, I felt I would have some unique insight. That video now has 67,898 views and a 77% like rate. It is, objectively, one of the worst videos on the topic that exists.

However, a combination of my subscriber count and average view numbers meant it kept bobbing around people’s feeds because the algorithm decided I was a pretty safe bet. No one should have watched that video. They shouldn’t have pressed like. And they certainly shouldn’t have subscribed on its basis. Like most of my previous uploads, that video is now set to private on my channel, and I feel better for it.

To outsiders, my recent honesty about my history as a YouTuber — and my unwillingness to waste people’s time with future uploads — might seem like I’ve lost my confidence, or had some bad experience that warned me away from the platform.

The truth, however, is simpler: I’ve reached a place in life where I no longer seek validation through half-baked creative endeavours.

I always wanted to be the guy talking enthusiastically about the things he loved — but in reality, I became the badly informed, overly confident talking head with under-explored opinions, straw-man arguments, and almost no useful commentary at all.

When I explore my back catalogue of (mostly now private) videos, I’m often shocked at my bad takes, ashamed of my potty mouth, and regretful of my opinions.

Still, I don’t regret the kind people I met, the friends I made, or the strange chapter of my life where I genuinely believed I might make it as a YouTuber.

I’m quieter now. I’m more comfortable now — not being anyone of note. However small that notoriety once was, I’m better off without it.

I enjoy writing my books, overthinking things in my website articles, and feeling free to spend a long time unpacking a single thought (like this very post) without having to apologise for rambling.

This suits me better. It probably always did.

However, I have to admit — perhaps it is a confidence issue.

In a world where every YouTube video is lit like an art installation and shot on cameras that look like Hollywood movie rigs, I feel completely outpaced by what’s on offer. And honestly, I have no desire to sink my time into trying to catch up with a culture and a platform I don’t enjoy very much any more, and don’t actually think I could add value to. My time as a videographer has passed.

Confidence is at the root of it. Maybe it’s me who isn’t enough for the current YouTube landscape, and that I’m lying to myself just a little.

These days, I’m much more aware of my faults and weaknesses, and with that awareness has come a loss of the old confidence — the confidence to do things I know I can’t do well.

Perhaps there’s a fine line between a lack of confidence, and a confidence that I am found lacking.

For now, though, I’ll keep sharing my badly drawn art because I love making it.

I’ll keep writing my novels and posting my articles because I think I would go a little mad without this outlet.

And all the while, I’m confident that you are free to disregard my offerings — without contempt, without comment, and without malice.

That said, I’m also confident that those who do follow along, read, and ponder with me, will enjoy our time together — in this calm, pensive, and purposeful soup of ideas and noodles.

I write, and honestly, I think I write pretty well. I’ve written five novels (all available, for free, via the ‘My Writing’ button at the top of my website.) I am specifically commenting here on AI as a writing support tool.

AI has been a hot topic for a while now among creatives, hobbyists, opinionated internet dwellers, and news outlets. There’s absolutely an AI debate going on, and as with any transformative new technology, it’ll take time to figure things out. I think it’s been so high-profile partly because—for the first time since the internet arrived—we’re seeing a tech shift that could genuinely reshape a huge number of jobs in a way that most people understand with ease. I am not in any way against talking about interesting and probably important topics such as this.

But I’m not here to sell you on how amazing AI is, how bad it is.

There’s just one thing I want to say. There’s a lot of online noise right now in writing spaces—people loudly dismissing AI’s usefulness or demonising it in ways that are, frankly, a bit silly.

Recently, I’ve been trialling the Ulysses writing app (in fact, I’m writing this very post in Ulysses.) Whenever I try a new tool, I like to poke around and read up on it. That curious mood inevitably sends me down the rabbit hole of checking out other writing tools too. Which, of course, leads me to forums. And that’s where, today, I found myself growling at my screen.

I must’ve read a dozen posts where people ask if a given writing app has “AI baked in” like that’s a dealbreaker.

Now, remember—I’m a writer. I say that not as someone who wants to write a book someday, or who calls themselves an “aspiring writer.” I’ve written books. Plural. So I speak from an actual experience of spending thousands of hours using writing tools and software.

And let me tell you: I have never—not once—seen a writing tool force AI on a user. That would be ridiculous. Most writing apps don’t even enforce spell checking! Why on earth would they force AI on you?

Yet, every one of these forum posts is followed by comment after comment from people moaning about AI and declaring that they want nothing to do with it. And hey—fair enough. I would rather not read AI-written books, or AI-edited ones, or anything AI-outlined either. I want human voices telling human stories. But…

AI is a fantastic spelling and grammar assistant. It can proofread and suggest corrections in a way that’s really no different to Grammarly, LanguageTool or ProWritingAid—but it also allows conversational feedback, and it explains the reasoning behind its suggestions. Used sensibly, it’s no worse than the proofreading tools that have been baked into Word for decades.

So let’s stop pretending that avoiding it is some kind of noble statement. Plenty of writers don’t use spelling or grammar checkers—or only use them at the very end of a draft. I respect that. What I don’t respect is when people claim that “all good writers turn off grammar tools.” That’s just nonsense.

Personally, I welcome a bit of support when I make a typo or mangle a sentence like I’ve forgotten how English works. I use ProWriting Aid, rather than Apple Intelligence, but that will likely change one day.

Most software that offers writing support will gradually start to use LLMs. ChatGPT might become a universal spell checker. Apple Intelligence might finally start doing something useful. And if you’re unwilling to coexist with these tools, you may well be making life harder for yourself. Though, I agree it’s important to do so in a way which does not erase your voice as a writer.

You don’t need to check whether a tool has AI “baked in.” Just don’t use the AI features. Turn them off.

If, for some mad reason, AI ever does become mandatory, you can always go full George R. R. Martin and fire up WordStar 4.0. No one’s coming to insert Grok into the past on you!

Use it or don’t. But please — stop shouting into forums about how evil AI is. You’re not changing anyone’s mind, and you’re just irritating the people who are actually getting on with writing.

Edit: To be clear. I am talking about using AI as an editing/writing support tool. Not people who use AI to write scenes and entire posts. screw those people.

Since the advent of the modern desktop paradigm in the mid-90s, not a great deal has changed in how we interact with desktop computing interfaces. Sure, the tiling desktop interface has gained popularity in the Linux world over the past decade — DWM, for instance, has been around for about 18 years now. But for the vast majority of computer users, the desktop experience remains largely the same, whether you’re on Linux, Windows, or macOS. Even mobile operating systems have settled into a familiar design language: a swipe-accessible app launcher, and that little pill at the bottom of the screen for multitasking.

macOS has always leaned on a more formal virtual desktop system for handling full-screen applications — something that often confuses new users. But aside from that, it’s not drastically different from the well-established Windows standard that most people have grown familiar with.

That is, until 2022, when macOS Ventura introduced Stage Manager — a baffling, seemingly underbaked feature that’s remained largely unchanged since its debut.

Since owning a MacBook, I’ve found myself regularly toggling Stage Manager on and off, trying to understand the reason for its existence. It always seemed a bit of a mystery to me. On iPadOS, though, it makes perfect sense — it offers a way to multitask that sidesteps some of the platform’s limitations, allowing you to switch between apps more fluidly with a pointer.

One use case that’s worked well for me is when I’m using my iPad (a 13-inch M2 Air) on the Magic Keyboard - Stage Manager lets me have my notes app open alongside a floating PDF window — perfect for academic work — and with a quick tap on the sidebar, I can jump straight into an almost full-screen browser window. While Stage Manager does support more than two apps on-screen at once, I think its primary strength is in offering a more desktop-like way of switching between tasks. It just feels more natural when you’re working with a pointer. Personally, I rarely use it when my iPad is off the keyboard, but it’s definitely come in handy whenever I’ve needed that flexibility.

On the desktop, though, application switching already feels pretty intuitive without Stage Manager. I’ve long held the theory that it’s mainly useful for iPad-first users who want something familiar when they’re on a Mac — and I still think that’s a solid benefit for some.

However, I have to admit- I turned Stage Manager on by accident over two months ago… and I haven’t looked back.

Once I stopped thinking of Stage Manager as an experiment and simply started using it as my default setup, I noticed my workflow became cleaner. I no longer had to contend with multiple windows from unrelated applications cluttering the screen. Minimising or hiding apps isn’t exactly hard work — but with Stage Manager, it’s handled for you. It’s one less thing to think about.

The ability to group multiple apps together in a single “stage.” This has allowed me to keep related applications side by side in more intentional, focused ways.

For example, I might have Scrivener open next to a Safari window with a research topic open, or a few dictionary tabs, in one stage. Meanwhile, another stage might contain a Safari tab with my online banking open, paired with my Notes and a financial spreadsheet. Each stage ends up being defined by a kind of “TV channel” logic — each one focused on a specific topic or task — letting me stay in the flow without closing down or rearranging things I’ll need later.

I’ve found it interesting that all the benefits I’ve gained from using Stage Manager have been psychological rather than technological. There’s no task I’m doing now with Stage Manager that I couldn’t technically do without it — even without minimising apps or entering full-screen mode. macOS has always been excellent for multitasking. But with Stage Manager turned on, I’ve found myself operating under this “TV channel” logic: choosing a stage isn’t just picking a set of apps — it’s picking a mental mode. When I switch to a stage, I’m also switching into the frame of mind I need to use it effectively.

It’s something I now find incredibly useful — and, increasingly, something I think about less and less. Earlier today, I tried turning Stage Manager off just to see if I was still enjoying it or had simply developed a habit. I missed it almost immediately. That separation of topic, of mental space — it’s become second nature. I rely on it without even realising.

That said, it’s not all positive. One downside I’ve noticed is that I’m now less likely to properly close unused applications. If they’re not part of a stage, I tend to just leave them running. It’s not a major issue — macOS handles memory well, and background apps without active windows don’t really hog resources — but it’s still a shift in behaviour. To counter this, I’ve been using an app called MagicQuit, which automatically closes apps after they’ve been idle for a set time. It’s been a handy way to manage a minor task.

It’s interesting how Stage Manager shifts the focus — not just away from windows, but from the management of applications. It changes what I think about and how I interact with the system. Technically, good habits become things I just don’t consider.

There’s also a bit of a learning curve. It’s not steep, but it does require some rethinking. At first, I was only using one app per stage — which defeats the point, really. It was only after some time (and a bit of experimenting) that I started dragging related apps into the same stage and began building stages based on tasks or topics rather than applications.

It’s worth noting that Stage Manager hasn’t replaced my use of full-screen mode. I still fullscreen apps — Scrivener, for example — when I want a distraction-free, dedicated space. But generally, I’m now less prone to having lots of apps in fullscreen, which I suspect may be worse from a resource point of view.

It even has me wondering whether I should dedicate some time to using it more consistently on my iPad — to give myself the same chance to adjust, and maybe make it feel more natural there too. That would fulfil the expectation I originally had for Stage Manager: a unified interface across my two main Apple devices.

But the truth is, it still feels less useful on the iPad, where I’m usually focused on a single app at a time. It doesn’t quite fit the way I use the iPad, at least not at the moment.

While I wouldn’t recommend Stage Manager to everyone, I do think it’s easy to recommend to people like me — people who tend to have multiple things on the go at once. And even then, I have to admit: it’s taken me quite literally a year of experimenting before I reached a point where it clicked, and I saw real value in it. So suggesting someone “just try it” feels a bit odd — like saying, “Give this a year of casual fiddling and eventually you’ll agree with me!”

That said, Stage Manager can be a meaningful improvement. But you have to let go of overthinking it. As long as you’re actively considering Stage Manager, it remains a topic — something separate from your workflow. Once it simply becomes a feature — something you use without thinking — that’s when it starts to show its worth.

I’ve also noticed that Stage Manager doesn’t seem to be widely used — or at least, it’s not often visible in the wild. It’s rare, for instance, to see a Reddit screenshot with Stage Manager active. And when it does appear, it tends to become a talking point in its own right. That tells me it’s probably not a particularly popular feature — which raises a question about its future. Will Apple keep supporting it long-term? Or will it quietly vanish in a few macOS versions’ time?

It’s something to consider. And perhaps yet another reason why putting time and energy into learning to use it might not appeal to everyone.

Regardless of all that, I do think Stage Manager is something worth trying — at the very least. You might find yourself reaping the same benefits I have. And ultimately, that’s been the point of this post: to highlight the value of a feature that’s easy to dismiss without giving it a proper chance. t

Recent changes to products I use have left me suspicious of application pricing. This, coupled with the capitalistic obsession of locking users into services, has led me to overhaul almost all of the software I rely on for productivity. I’m mad as all heck about it, and I hope the following paragraphs serve as a warning to those who haven’t yet noticed this creeping trend.

I realise that what I’m about to describe is exactly why the free software movement exists—something I learned during my decade of running Linux. Somewhere along the way, I forgot that lesson. But recent demonstrations of greed from software I once adored have reminded me in no uncertain terms.

Case 1: GoodLinks

When I purchased GoodLinks, it cost £15. That wasn’t a subscription or a limited-time offer—it was a one-time purchase. The app was offline, server-free, and didn’t rely on ongoing revenue to function. At the time, nothing seemed off.

But this simple, seemingly honest purchase was the beginning of my distrust. It made me realise how easy it is to fall into the trap of assuming that apps will stay as they are.

GoodLinks lets me capture links and articles, saving them locally and syncing through iCloud. Then, almost a year ago, the app transitioned to a subscription model. It caught me off guard. Suddenly, I needed to pay £5 a year to access new features. The first feature? Article highlighting—something I’d genuinely wanted.

In hindsight, I would have paid for it, begrudgingly. Since I had purchased the app within a year of this change, the feature was unlocked for me. But the way this was rolled out lacked transparency, or feature roadmap and that left a sour taste.

Even more frustrating is that, in the time since, no new features have been added. Users are effectively paying £5 a year for a single upgrade. That feels disingenuous—an opportunistic move to extract a little extra cash from loyal customers.

Case 2: Reeder

Next on my list is the RSS reader, Reeder. For years, it was a shining example of excellent design and fair pricing. You paid once per major version, and that was it.

Now? It’s free to download, but costs £10 a year (or £1/month) to use. It has changed—dramatically. The classic feed-based layout is gone, replaced by a timeline-style interface that feels more like a social network than a reading tool.

I tried switching to News Explorer, but I didn’t love it. And so, reluctantly, I returned to Reeder—not because it’s better, but because I actually like the new timeline… Annoying!

The previous version, now branded Reeder Classic, is still available, but it won’t receive real development. This feels like a false compromise. The developer is relying on loyalty and nostalgia rather than improving the product.

While I don’t expect the subscription cost to skyrocket overnight, even modest annual increases (1–2%) add up over time. And that’s assuming the model doesn’t shift again.

The only upside? Switching RSS apps is relatively painless.

Case 3: DEVONthink

Now we come to DEVONthink. This is the one that really ticked me off.

DEVONthink isn’t just a notes app. It’s a document management platform—a digital brain. I’ve loved it. Trusted it. I paid over £100 for the app, and it maintained a stable business model for years. My entire digital life has been stored in its databases. It always felt safe.

Until now.

With the release of DEVONthink 4, the pricing model changed—and not in a good way. The update brought a confusing, opaque “modern” pricing scheme that hasn’t been properly explained. Users are being asked to trust the developers, but there’s been no clear communication of how much it will cost year on year.

You can opt out of paying and stay on the version you’ve got—but for someone who relies on this app for mission-critical tasks, that’s not a gamble I’m willing to take. macOS updates and hardware shifts make old software unreliable, I can’t afford to risk data loss.

Currently, the cost of staying “licensed” appears to be around £100 a year. That’s not pocket change. And it’s very likely to increase. For me, this isn’t sustainable.

Escaping the Madness

I depend on productivity tools for organising my life, work, and commitments. These recent changes have shaken my trust in proprietary software and made me reassess almost everything I use.

So, I’ve made some changes.

• I left BusyCal for Apple Calendar—and honestly? It’s actually quite nice.
• I left Things 3 for Apple Reminders, which does the job surprisingly well.

Yes, I know Things 3 is unlikely to go subscription-based—it’s practically legendary for resisting the trend. But I’d have said the same about DEVONthink a month ago.

The biggest change? Leaving DEVONthink. I explored every option. Most were subscription-based. The free ones could flip to paid. Even apps you “buy once” could pivot overnight.

Eventually, I realised there was only one viable option: Apple Notes.

It’s not a research platform. It lacks DEVONthink’s smart sorting and relational features. But it works. After migrating around 800 notes, my conclusion is: It’s fine.

I plan to stick with it. I’ll resist the temptation of shiny new tools and focus on stability. With an all-Apple setup, Apple Notes offers the most stable pricing model I can find (free with OS) as long as I stay on a Mac.

A Compromise: AnyBox

There’s one exception to my new anti-subscription stance: read-it-later apps.

Safari’s reading list isn’t enough for my long-term archiving needs. So I’ve stuck with AnyBox, which I paid for with a “lifetime” license a couple of years ago. The terms were very clear: one-time fee, full access, forever.

Yes, it’s a gamble. But until Apple offers something better—or Apple Notes adds clipping—I’m staying put.

Final Thoughts

I feel bad. My bad experiences with proprietary apps have made me less willing to pay developers—even those with good intentions. But I need a stable, sustainable workflow for my own sanity.

Have you run into similar frustrations? Have the tools you rely on shifted beneath your feet? I’d genuinely love to hear your experience.

While Apple Intelligence turned out to be less intelligent than we all hoped, my Magic Keyboard turned out to be more magical than I expected, once I changed a single annoying setting.

If you don’t care about the narrative and just want to know how I made my Magic Keyboard better, I respect that.

Go to: Settings > Accessibility > Keyboard, and turn off Full Keyboard Access. You’re welcome.

Right, back to the narrative…

Since getting a used Magic Keyboard for my iPad, I’ve been kind of middling on it. The keyboard itself is far heavier than I hoped—it makes my 13” iPad Air (M2) as heavy as my 13” MacBook Air (also M2). But, for me at least, in theory, when I’m traveling, the iPad does slightly more than the MacBook. I know, a mad thing to say at first glance—but I really like to draw and write. Once I’ve attached the keyboard, the iPad can do both. The MacBook just does the writing part—really well, but that’s it.

There was, however, a problem.

The first and most obvious issue: when I press ⌘+Space to bring up Spotlight, the first press of the spacebar doesn’t add a space—it activates selection.

And when I open Pages, the first tap of the spacebar puts a highlight around the active window. In Pages, this causes the whole page to go slightly yellow, with a stronger yellow border. After that first tap, things behave normally, but it’s… weird.

I assumed maybe my used Magic Keyboard had some minor fault. But then I noticed the same issue with a separate Bluetooth keyboard I use at my desk for art. The spacebar was triggering layer-naming or selecting windows entirely in Clip Studio Paint (CSP.)

At that point, I figured iPads were just a bit janky with keyboards. But how could that be? Loads of people on Nebula and YouTube use iPads as their main computing devices, and none of them mentioned this oddity.

So I went off in search of a fix.

Turns out it’s an accessibility feature, seemingly turned on by default (I certainly don’t remember enabling it). Under Accessibility > Keyboard, there’s a setting called ‘Full Keyboard Access.’ I haven’t researched what its exact use case is, but turning it off instantly fixed everything.

Now I can use space, arrow keys, and shift buttons like a normal person. No weirdness. And I’m honestly shocked I didn’t investigate this sooner.

If you’re having trouble with hardware keyboards on iPad, I hope this helps you too.

☺️

While i usually post my art on Niceferatu.net (see comic link in title bar) I had a random idea which I decided to draw last night.

Please note, this is meant to be taken as a cute (hopefully) lovingly drawn little cartoon, not theology!

I think I’ve said before that if asked, I wouldn’t describe myself as a creative person. Which is quite contrary to the truth when I look at the novels I’ve written, the badly drawn comic I work on almost weekly, and the years I spent making YouTube videos. I’ve never understood why I don’t feel like a creative type.

I think it’s because writing novels takes so long that sharing a finished product is infrequent — giving imposter syndrome a long time to settle in.

Despite all that, I thought I’d give my tens of followers a little update on what I’m working on. I’m hoping I can remember to make this a semi-regular thing — maybe every other month, depending on how the projects are going.

There are three creative projects currently in the works, and they are…

Writing Project 1: The Eternal Blonde

The Eternal Blonde is the working title for a short novella about a planet called Myth, which houses some odd secrets and a strange curse. It’s a science fiction story, but the planet itself has a fantasy-like feel thanks to lost civilisations, evil computers, and possibly even Olympian deities.

The story follows the adventures of an officer named Frank Krank, who arrives to take over the mining operations at a single, small outpost on the planet.

The project is about 20,000 words long so far, I’m intending to finish at 60,000. I’m aiming to present it in a similar style to The Chronicles of Ned — and, like Chronicles of Ned, it’s intended to be a setting I can return to for short- to medium-length stories that entertain without overstaying their welcome.

This project is expected to be released mid-year ‘25.

Writing Project 2: Denouement 3 - A Thousand years north

Denouement, Part Three has the working title ‘A Thousand Years North,’ and is intended to be the concluding chapter of the Denouement series I started a few years ago. While it’s the third numbered instalment, there have actually been two more releases set in the same universe (Week and Of Gods and Vampires).

I have to admit I’ve been putting off actually finishing it, because I don’t intend to write in this setting again after this release — or, at least, not for a long time. I’ve grown quite attached to these characters, and I think the idea of letting them go feels a little bittersweet, especially since I know not all of them are going to get a happy ending.

Still, the project is currently at 55,000 words — just under halfway done. Since it’s the final entry, I also plan to bundle it with a short story called Epistles, which will be formatted as a script rather than prose. Epistles will serve as the definitive final point in the universe’s timeline — the last thing I ever intend to write in this setting.

Drawing Project: Niceferatu

As many regular readers here may know, I started working on Niceferatu almost a year ago. It began as a one-off doodle, but over the following months, it evolved into a setting for random thoughts — really, a platform to learn how to draw. Eventually, it evolved again, and for a while now, I’ve been semi-regular in my output. (Okay, not that regular, but I’ve tried.)

Niceferatu is currently available on its own website, which you can find by clicking COMIC on the header of this page or by going to https://niceferatu.net.

I still consider this a long-term investment of time — both to learn Clip Studio Pro (my app of choice for comic book creation) and to improve my drawing skills. I’m hoping that by sticking with regular releases (and I am trying to make it weekly, going forward,) I’ll keep getting better at art. Now and then, I watch tutorials on webcomics in the hopes of picking up a tip or two.

I have two ideas for other comics that I’d love to produce and release in a more long-form format. One is about a teenager from the south of England whose friend invents anti-gravity technology, and together they become superheroes (I know, silly, but dang it, it’ll be fun!) The other — which is no secret — is that I want to adapt my Denouement books into a graphic novel.

Anyway, those projects are far off in the future. For now, Niceferatu is weekly.

Blog/website Project: Well, you are looking at it

I’ve already spoken about how I switched my public-facing websites over to Micro.Blog and discussed at length why I did it. There’s really nothing else to add. The current platform is sustainable, reasonably priced, and seemingly very reliable. I’m planning to stay here for a long while, at least.

It’s the content I post — rather than the platform — that I intend to refine. The more astute among you may have noticed that I’ve been working hard to improve the quality of my posts. This has been helped by a little bit of proofreading from Apple Intelligence’s Writing Tools. Writing Tools is a locally processed, context-aware grammar checker — and it’s surprisingly good at picking out issues. I still rely heavily on Pro Writing Aid (PWA) for spelling, flow, and style checks, though.

I intend to offer more book reports going forward, as well as the usual personal updates. I may even branch out a bit and talk about my experience learning to properly play chess.

I also have some Christian-themed ramblings planned. The issue is that while I’m well-versed in the Bible and Pentecostal Christianity, I’m not a scholar or theologian — just an attentive reader. I’ll present my Christianity/Bible posts as such, but I’m always aware of the risk of leading people to incorrect conclusions through bad writing. That’s something I’ll carefully consider before publishing any Christian-tagged posts.

That’s it! We’ve reached the end of all the updates I wanted to share. I sincerely hope you continue reading here — and don’t forget, you can get all of my books by clicking the BOOKS button in the header of this site. They’re available for free in PDF and ePub format, but I’m happy to provide other formats on request.

If you enjoyed this and want to shoot me an email or leave a comment, you’re most welcome to do so. I read all comments and reply to all sincerely written emails.

And remember the most important advice I have to offer you: no human should be on social media. Please don’t link my articles on X/Twitter!

I recently stumbled across an interview with David Mitchell which opens with him declaring that the internet is as harmful to humans as nuclear weapons. Two things to note: first, this is a five-year-old video; second, he’s a comedian who often uses hyperbole to sharpen his point. But in this case, there was a sincerity to his tone that I found haunting.

We all know that at least some people want a change in the way the internet is presented and used — this is most evident in the emergence of the fediverse but the meteoric rise and sudden fall of the Gemini protocol a few years ago also exemplified the widespread desire for countercultural change. (I understand that some individuals will claim that Gemini remains popular, but those people, unfortunately, are delusional.)

To be clear, my own stance is that the internet is past the point of redemption — in the sense that it will never return to the whimsical, low-stakes state it had when I enjoyed it most: the late 90s. I recall, years ago on a podcast (.XPenguin), screaming the mantra “the internet is burnt” while gleefully talking about my new text-only website and lamenting that HTTP had been the victor over the far more sustainable Gopher protocol. In short, I theoretically support the counterculture. However, I’ve never believed that federation was the answer.

It’s also no secret that I’ve been changing the way I use the internet over the last few months — a topic I’ve touched on in many posts on this platform. But until I stumbled upon the idea that the internet might be as dangerous as weapons of mass destruction, I hadn’t for a moment felt that I was actually right in making those changes. Until that moment, I had assumed I was just experiencing a ‘mood’ about the state of social media and the worrying trend toward the financial extraction of every possible penny of value from the cattle-like users of the modern web. Basically, I worried that it wasn’t the internet that was burnt, but that I was burned out with regard to it.

One symptom of this shift has been my recent habit of turning the Wi-Fi off on my laptop a few days a week (only turning it on for a few seconds about twice a day to sync email.) There was a time — probably about five years ago (ironically, when David Mitchell gave the interview I referenced at the start of this post) — when the idea of extended periods of offline time would have felt almost terrifying. Now, though, I bask in the freedom it offers. It’s usually the time in my week when I feel the most productive — and oddly, it hasn’t made me use my computer less, but more, because I can write and draw without distractions bombarding me.

I think in a recent post I talked about notifications being a thorn in my proverbial side, but now that I’ve pondered the topic more deeply, I wonder if the internet in its modern form really is dangerous. Is it actually causing real harm?

TikTok (which I have never used but somehow, through cultural osmosis, seem to know far too much about,) appears to encourage shallow thinking while tying it to strong emotions. YouTube Shorts have identical problems but seems to target a slightly older demographic (at least, in my experience of them.)

Facebook seems to encourage echo chamber discussions — but at least it reminds people of their auntie’s birthday, so I suppose it’s only 99.999% bad.

Twitter (X as it’s now known, I’m told) seems to have become a hive of scum and villainy, now traditionally featuring lewd replies on heavily right-wing skewed content.

Instagram appears to be 70% subtle advertising for creators’ OnlyFans accounts or dicey vitamin supplements.

Reddit has for a long time now been a place where people insult the intelligence of others — though now people also use it like a microblog, posting pictures of recent purchases and giving unsolicited opinions about politics on every Star Trek post they see.

These seem to be the main faces of the internet for most people — and between them, they’ve lowered attention spans, destroyed critical thinking, and eroded traditional morality (I accept that depending on your personal stance, you may think that last one is a good thing — I’m here to rant, not judge.) They’ve changed the winds of social evolution and made the person with the most followers or likes the one whose message is most virally propagated. For better or worse, the internet has affected the world outside of the internet.

There was a time when communities, geographical regions, and friendship groups developed their own jokes, thematic agreements, and — dare I say — culture. Now, though, the internet’s digital colonisation has disallowed disagreement, dictated what’s funny and what’s problematic, despite regional, historical, or personal differences.

The problem is rooted in whether or not you think this is a problem. You see, to many people, this homogenisation of ideas is good because it allows easier connection with strangers, a universal memetic mode of communication, and an equalisation of moral norms. And I partly agree with that.

There are also a lot of people who see everything in the last paragraph as the erosion of artistic freedom, personal politics, and individual identity. They see it as the defence of cancel culture and the hive-mind force of agenda-driven change. And I partly agree with that too.

You see, I don’t believe that I’m smart enough to navigate the internet anymore. I fear sharing opinions — which feels quite strange given that I don’t actually think I hold any particularly problematic stances. I feel like I have no idea how people will interpret what I say — but I’m sure they’ll do so in the least charitable way possible, twisting my words to make them seem as problematic as possible. Heck, I almost didn’t post this very article because I worried I’d said something that would lead to cancellation — and all I’m doing here is saying that I think the internet is problematic.

Also, I’m not on social media, which makes me wonder if I’m actually cancellable. (My posts aren’t even mirrored on Bluesky anymore, aside from my poorly drawn comic art, which is posted on Niceferatu.net.)

However, I’m aware that because I’m rambly and not very politically in-tune with the zeitgeist, I’m always having to think about what I post here. Despite having almost no internet presence outside of this very site, I worry about being taken out of context or interpreted uncharitably. And the very fact that I have this concern — despite being mostly reasonable, not making strong political statements, and being blissfully unaware of trends — shows how deeply rooted my fear of the internet has become.

The internet is no longer whimsical and lighthearted; it’s now a brutal and dark forest where rodents of unusual size and sudden eruptions of flames could strike at any moment. At some point, I began to fear the internet and the strangers who live there — which I am forced to admit, to me, proves that everything I’ve said in this post is at least true, for me.

I miss the internet of old and the joy it held in every strange little homepage I stumbled across. No matter how small the small-web gets, and no matter how federated the fediverse becomes, the internet is not the place it once was. It all became too real — and too harsh.

So why do I keep posting on this site? That’s a reasonable question, and I don’t have an answer. I think it’s because I like to write, and writing sorts out my thoughts. I don’t know what else to tell you — maybe it’s a habit I learned back when my ISP gave me “webspace for a homepage of my own!” Or maybe it’s the death rattle of a disillusioned soul screaming for someone to agree and make it all feel slightly better.

For many years, particularly during my teenage years, I secretly aspired to be like David Lightman. However, considering the pickle he found himself in, I can’t help but feel relieved that my efforts fell short. Besides, Cheyenne Mountain is quite far away. I suspect that WOPR has been replaced by a big ring now, which means I probably never stood a chance anyway.

This focus on grand aspirations led me to believe that WordPress would serve as the permanent home for Dandelion-Utilitarian.com. Its flexibility assured me that I could bend it into anything I envisioned without having to start from scratch, and its widespread popularity meant there were abundant guides and resources available. It represented refined maximalism and was a solid long-term choice.

I don’t naturally gravitate towards maximalism, because of this, I maintained a live mirror of the site’s posts through the Micro.Blog service on the dot net counterpart to my dot com site. Over time, I gradually realised that this straightforward mirror was the page I considered my main site. It offered the flexibility for quick, micro-blog style posts alongside full-length articles and extended musings. Despite its minimalist design, the blend of short and long-form content made it more versatile than the WordPress site.

The other day, I came to the realisation that what I truly desire isn’t flexibility; just a platform where I can post content accompanied by an RSS feed. In an almost whirlwind of activity, I decided to delete the Hetzner server that hosted my WordPress site and upgraded my Micro.blog subscription to the premium tier. This change allowed me to host multiple blogs, which was useful, as I wanted a separate feed for my ‘Niceferatu’ scribblings. The best part? By no longer paying for Hetzner, the upgrade didn’t actually cost me anything extra.

I spent many hours setting up my WordPress site, which taught me a lot about both technology and design. I don’t consider that time wasted, just a little educational project. However, I can’t help but notice that it only took me about 45 minutes in total to configure both of my Micro.blog sites to my liking. With a more minimalistic approach, greater flexibility, and less effort required, it feels like I made the right decision.

I’m excited to share my random thoughts, articles, and longer musings freely from now on. I hope you all don’t mind this change.

Unpacking the opening - For those who didn’t follow the first paragraph it was a reference to the 1983 movie ‘War Games’ which has a nerdy boy named David accidentally get involved in a global crisis with a confused chess playing computer. The computer in question was housed in Cheyenne mountain facility, which was also the setting of the 1997 TV show ‘Stargate: SG1’

After some consideration, tinkering, and general messing about, I’m pleased to confirm that Niceferatu.net is real! It’s just a place for my comic posts. It’s not a very good comic—but hey, at least I’m trying.

This project is mainly to help me improve my drawing skills, with the hope of one day creating something more longform (like The Denouement novel, but as a comic).

Anyway, this should keep dandelion-utilitarian.com safe from being overrun by badly drawn and very dry vampire comics.

I’ve transitioned both Dandelion-utilitarian.com and hexdsl.com to the Dandelion-utilitarian.net platform, powered by Micro.blog. This may sound a bit complex, but simply put, I’m a huge fan of Micro.blog and believe it’s the ideal platform for consolidating my content. While those of you who enjoyed the WordPress site might have mixed feelings about this change, I think it’s a better fit given my reduced focus on videos and other online activities. Micro.blog just feels like the right choice for where I’m headed.

I remember watching a Batman movie and hearing Alfred say something that stuck with me. It wasn’t even a good Batman movie—if I recall correctly, it was the 1997 offering, Batman & Robin. The film itself doesn’t matter, but the words did. I remember them as: “A gentleman never discusses his health or finances.”

I’m almost certain this wasn’t an original Alfred-ism but rather a phrase with Edwardian roots. Still, it resonated with me, and over the years, it became something of a guideline—not with close friends or family, but in everyday interactions. When asked how I’m doing, I am always excellent, and I never casually discuss financial struggles.

But this time, I’ve been on a health related journey, one worth sharing, and perhaps one worth reading about.

I had been undergoing physiotherapy on my leg for just over a month. My right thigh had a muscle issue that was causing knee pain. Then, one Sunday, I was feeling quite well—so much so that I finally tackled some chores I’d been putting off for a while. As you can imagine, I was in an exceptional mood about my recovery. A mood that was, unfortunately, short-lived.

As I stood at the top of the stairs, my seemingly “fixed” knee failed in its kneely duties. I slid down the stairs, collided with the wall at the bottom, crashed against the rail post, and finally landed—ironically—back on my failed leg. The term calamity feels appropriate.

Since then, I’ve been in a state of recovery. I spent six hours in the hospital’s A&E, only to learn that my leg wasn’t broken—but I had torn whatever it is that makes an ankle do ankle things and given my knee enough of a whack to make it balloon like a potato.

The hospital also ignored my shoulder, clearly recognizing my undeniable manliness and assuming I could simply power through the pain (that’s a lie—they said it was badly bruised and didn’t need treatment. But I know it’s really because of my manly beard!)

In the couple of weeks since my high-speed descent into danger, I’ve experienced some unexpected side effects. Navigating stairs with my problematic limb has been a challenge, and I’ve had to regularly elevate it to reduce swelling. This has unexpectedly left me feeling somewhat… less than.

I’m so used to simply getting on with everything that needs to be done in my life. But having to take an enforced time-out—unable to keep up with chores, walk my dog, or fully focus on my writing—has put me in a pretty shitty mood.

I realized during my first foray into voice chat with a friend—the day after my injury—that I was irritable, short-tempered, and taking quite literally everything as a direct assault. Thankfully, I had enough self-awareness to give myself a week-long time-out. Even after that, I remained cautious about my mood before returning to regular nattering.

So, I took a week off. Not from work—let’s not get confused here. A dude still has bills to pay. I took a week off the internet. For the first time in, quite possibly, my entire adult life. I stopped short of turning off the WiFi, but I closed Discord, stopped checking emails, ignored YouTube, turned off notifications and avoided all news feeds. Instead, I sat, played chess on my iPad, and watched Vampire Diaries (which is a masterpiece, no matter what anyone says! A masterpiece, I tell you!)

In the evenings, I listened to music on my DAP (a Surfans F28), read books, studied scripture, and had some early nights—while doing my best to ignore the pain in my ankle and knee. (I didn’t even think about the shoulder, of course, because of my aforementioned manliness.)

I was still mad at myself for the fall and frustrated that I couldn’t keep up with chores. I know this might sound odd, but I genuinely like doing tasks. I find housework meditative, and walking the dog, playing with the dog—being obsessedwith the dog—is a genuine source of joy in my life. It was hard to do that with constant ankle pain.

But here’s the thing—I found new joy, unexpected joy, in stepping away from the internet in such an intentional way. I’m not someone with a doom-scrolling or social media habit. In fact, I think I have a far healthier relationship with the internet than most people I know. But still, stepping away was wonderful. There was a calm to it, a sense of freedom.

I still used Netflix, Chess.com, and, occasionally, Clip Studio Paint (which I think was using an internet connection sometimes—though I have no idea how that actually works, I just know I like to draw things). But these connections demanded very little from me—cognitively or socially—and it felt great.

Focusing on scripture without notifications distracting me allowed me to engage with the passages more clearly than before. Drawing became more zen-like, and writing—when my throbbing foot allowed—held me in a deeper trance than usual. And, just to hammer this point home, I never even look at notifications. I just clear them and get on with my day… but the total absence of them was noticeable.

This got me thinking—if I, someone who doesn’t have a toxic relationship with the internet, found solace in stepping away from notifications, news, chat apps, and YouTube… then what about the people who do have a bad relationship with it?

I half wish I could just pull the plug for the doom-scrollers and TikTok-obsessed masses. Imagine how freeing it would be to get all that time back. I don’t even think I procrastinate as much as most people I know, but somehow, I felt like I had hours back each day—just from being intentional about my internet use.

My leg is on the mend now, and I’ve started reintroducing things. I’ve slowly returned to voice chats and begun saying good morning in my Discord group. But I’ve also kept notifications off, set my email to “on demand,” and removed a lot of apps from my iPad and phone. Going forward, I think I’ll be using less of the internet, not more. And if I were offline for a long time, I think I’d be just fine—maybe even, possibly, a little better in some ways.

I’d definitely miss the connections I’ve made with people, but I wouldn’t miss all the culture, content, or crap I left behind. Maybe I secretly strive to be a Luddite, or maybe I’m just getting old. Who knows? But one thing’s for sure—I’m a grumpy bastard when I’m in pain.

I Had an excellent evening of writing. It’s been about a week since I have managed to gather the focus required but I am starting to feel more like myself and generally returning to my usual Zen-like state. I will likely feel more equipped to return to usual activities in a few days.

Also, drafted a blog about health, moods, and personal goals. I’ll proofread it tomorrow and post it. If I think its worthwhile once I go through it again

The ghost sat alone in his chair as it slowly spun in the ambient draft of the cold office. He was contemplating the wasted hours spent playing video games, making videos, and trying to build a community. The ghost was alone because the body he had once been attached to was currently out in the world. He didn’t care where—it could have been anywhere, really. The ghost gave no thought to where the body had gone, only that it was absent.

The ghost dragged the mouse around the desk like a caveman dragging a rock along the wall of a cave to make rudimentary artistic etchings. The ghost had far less lofty goals; he simply scrolled through Reddit for a bit and then checked in on some of the more problematic social networks. After a while, feeling ghastly, the ghost decided to check the comments on his ghost-ship of a YouTube channel. The ghost still cared about the channel—the remnants of things that could have been. He reflected on the fact that he had once been a quadruple-Z-list internet person of interest. He wanted to feel good about that, to reclaim some of the faded glory and paint it onto his ghostly form in hopes of using it to become a body of his own—maybe even become somebody.

The body, blissfully unaware of the ghost, came home and sat down in the chair. To the ghost’s surprise, they did not merge into one entity as they usually did.

The body made himself a cup of coffee. The ghost hated that—he preferred tea. The annoyingly content meat sack then opened the computer and started tapping away at some writing he had been working on. After a few hours and another cup of coffee, the body, fatigued but satisfied, put his feet on the desk.

The ghost was thrilled; this was usually where he was needed. The melancholy of the room usually soaked in once the creative urge subsided. Being a persistent ghost, he began pulling memories from the “good old days” and dropping them into the body, hoping to steer things in the usual direction.

The task appeared to be complete when the body made a harrumph sound and waved the cloud of images away with a hand, as if dismissing a bad smell.

“This is it! This is where I get back in the driver’s seat,” the ghost boomed excitedly.

To his shock, the body had not slipped on the cliff-top of memories. It had not allowed the dirty wine of nostalgia to shove him off the ledge into the water and rocks below, as had happened so many times before.

Instead, the body simply pulled out his iPad and drew—badly—for a while. While drawing, he watched some TV and thought about how rewarding his terrible drawing felt. He had a pipe dream of one day being good enough to make a comic based on a story he had once written. He knew it was unlikely he would ever develop the skill or find the time, but, to the ghost’s dismay, there was no darkness at the edges of this vignette of a thought. The body was cheerful about having a goal, no matter how lofty and unattainable it seemed. He didn’t even mind that he had lost more time than he had intended and now needed to go to bed.

“Aha!” the ghost exclaimed, readying himself to siege the body’s dreams. This was where the melancholic dose of nostalgic poison would make the middling times pop like ’90s cartoons, and the sadness of unrewarding endeavours would feel like missed opportunities. The ghost sharpened his stick and sat next to the body in wait.

Dismay became almost a solid form when the body played with his dog for a quarter of an hour, then read a leather-bound book for a bit.

“Okay, I can wait!” seethed the spiteful ghost.

The body lay down, and the ghost looked over, stick at the ready. He lunged into the body and stabbed wildly, dropping nostalgic memories like napalm in the movies. He stabbed so hard that the stick broke. This didn’t stop him. He used the two halves of the stick like drumsticks and played a solo as if he were Neil Peart on stage, live in Tokyo!

The body snored happily. The dog farted and pulled the blanket over himself.

Maybe the ghost would like having a dog’s body… No, never mind, he got bit.

Morning came, and the body told the dog about his dreams of the good times. He then told the dog that the so-called “good times” were probably part of an ongoing depression—his dad’s ill health, his failed marriage, and his lack of direction in life.

“What changed?” the dog asked.

“Don’t even pretend you care—you’re a dog. Let’s go find you some breakfast,” the body said as the two of them raced down the stairs in search of better things, oblivious to the ghost.

That evening, the ghost again sat in wait. This time, the body had no plans and sat in the office chair as he often did. He worked on his writing and drank coffee, again to the ghost’s dismay.

This time, though, the ghost managed to push an idea into the body—just one little morsel of an idea, but it was something. The body stopped in its tracks, contentment evaporating like steam from a kettle. The ghost felt himself settling in again and embraced both the body and the sense of relief.

He was quite surprised, though, when the body moved without his consent. The memories began to backwash and infect him, like a dry sponge dropped into a bath.

“Oh, matey!” the ghost screamed as he was consumed for a time in the bubbles.

The memories that seeped into him were alien and disjointed. First came the memory of the hours spent making YouTube videos. The body, unlike the ghost, did not prefix the word “wasted” to the memory. The body was grateful for the time spent learning things and articulating thoughts. He knew that experience had built both his dedication to projects and his critical thinking skills.

The next memory was of building a community around the videos. Where the ghost had repeatedly said “trying to build,” the body was satisfied that he had connected people who otherwise would not have met. He had given a safe haven to long-forgotten servers and kept friendships alive. There had never been an explosion of bad feelings or missed chances. The body simply saw the community as something that had enhanced his life when he had needed not to feel so alone.

Then the body reflected back at the ghost the previous night’s drum-beating and nostalgia-stabbing, but without the framing of loss. The body had altered the memories, stripping away the sepia fade and the scented candles of overthinking. The body showed him the memories again—years spent tinkering with computers for the simple joy of it, years of playing video games as a way to pass time, and the strange desire to “be someone” through these endeavours.

The tinkering had not been wasted time but a source of joy. The decades of games were now looked back on with love, even if they could have been spent differently. And the body no longer saw the desire to “be someone” as failed—it was simply amusing. The body did not want to be anyone other than himself, for an audience of one.

The ghost sat stunned and frozen. All his hard work, all his rage, hate, desire, and lust had diffused—without the body even knowing how hard he had worked.

Then the ghost realised something that terrified him.

The final brick in the wall of his cold, cavern-like prison among the body’s distant, useless memories…

The body was happy now.

The body didn’t need the things the ghost had once offered.

And worst of all… the body didn’t believe in ghosts.

When I was a kid, chess appeared to be a game of magic. The mere concept of it captivated me. However, I must admit that this fascination was partly because of my limited exposure to the game, as I had primarily learned about chess through cartoon magicians, old fantasy movies, and this one artefact in my home.

The artefact in question was a small table, far too short to be useful. It was crafted from dark brown wood and had ornate, wavey legs. The top was so shiny that it resembled glass to me—it was a glossy, polished wooden chessboard. I distinctly remember that it lifted up to reveal a green felt lining that held the delicate chess pieces safe.

I have since been assured by my mother that the chess table was an ugly old thing with a loose leg and plastic chess pieces. It wasn’t highly polished at all; it was just slightly shiny because it was plastic on the top.

My dad taught me the basics of the game, although I don’t recall him ever having any interest in it. From what I understand, the table was more of a common early eighties home decoration than a sign of enthusiasm for the game. I had a feeling it was more often used to hold wine glasses it was than used to play on.

I have no idea what happened to that old table. It might be somewhere in the spider-infested loft of my home, but I’m not brave enough to embark on that quest.

I owe that table a lot because it was the catalyst for a promise I made to myself, a promise to learn chess someday. This idea has been lingering in my mind for quite some time now. According to chess.com, I created my account over seven years ago. I believe that it was the last time I reminisced about that table, and my dad trying to teach me how to play.

Over the past year or so, I’ve been playing video games less and less. This has left my mind craving something to occupy a small part of it that demands diversion. I have been writing more, learning to draw and even playing retro video games from my childhood casually, but none of this quite satisfied my craving. Then, a few weeks ago, I stumbled upon a chess video on YouTube by sheer chance. One video led to two and two videos led to five hours of chess lessons in the Doctor Wolf Chess tutor app. In these few weeks, I’ve learned more about chess than I ever have, in my entire life, until now.

I have spent time doing puzzles, lessons and games on chess.com and lichess.org and even purchased a cheap physical board to attempt to tempt my daughter into playing with me. I have been watching the currently happening freestyle chess grand slam, video tutorials and reading books on the topic. I’m having an amazing time with something I’ve been certain I would enjoy since childhood, but somehow, before now, I never quite made time for it.

I wonder how many of you reading have things like this in your lives—things you always thought you’d make time for but haven’t done yet. My advice to you is to give it a try. Make time for a new hobby or interest. Years ago, I could have been enjoying chess if I had just made some time for something I was interested in, instead of watching Netflix and playing video games that I can’t even remember the names of now.

LumaFusion is a video editing application, and in my experience, it’s pretty good. But what really blows me away is that it’s an example of a truly platform-agnostic app—at least within the Apple ecosystem.

I purchased it on my iPad (a 13 inch M2 iPad Air) for around £30. My main use case is editing short animation clips and using a proper video editor to manage transitions and link them together. While I’m very familiar with Kdenlive, I wanted something I could use on my iPad.

For my needs, LumaFusion is ideal. But what really impressed me wasn’t just the application itself—it was how seamlessly it adapts across different Apple devices.

It was originally designed as an iPad app, and it takes full advantage of the hardware. But it also works flawlessly on macOS, with full support for keyboard shortcuts, mouse interaction, and fullscreen mode.

I was also surprised to find that I could install it on my iPhone. While I doubt I’ll ever use it much on such a small screen, it’s nice to have the option.

This kind of cross-device compatibility feels unique to the Apple ecosystem. While I would never have switched to Apple just for these little perks, I have to admit—it’s really nice to have apps that don’t feel compromised on any platform. I doubt we’ll ever see a Windows application that installs on a phone as seamlessly as this.

It all feels like magic.

Humans make things. Whether this creative urge is unique to us or a common trait among all species that reach our level of social and technological development remains a mystery. It is also worth noting that the creative urge does not exist in all members of our species. Many people are perfectly content watching Netflix and eating cereal out of a box. Strangely, there has never been societal pressure to be creative. There is pressure to get a job and pay bills, get an education, and shower from time to time. But failing to find motivation to create does not cause any social issues at all.

Most of my friends create things. I know artists, coders, tinkerers, and writers. Most people in my life are working on a “project” or some other general creative task. I enjoy getting updates on their creations, even when I don’t entirely follow what they’re working on. There is something absolutely wonderful about listening to someone talk about what they are making. There’s an intimate passion that oozes from them when they speak of their “work.”

I have never thought of myself as creative—which is strange, considering my major pastime is writing fiction. I have published books, novellas, blogs, and even videos, and I have been doing so for years. I love storytelling. Writing has been the best way for me to do it.

And yet, oddly, I still do not consider myself creative.

This isn’t a self-esteem issue. I am proud of my writing. I’m happy to discuss my work with people. Genuinely, I think I’m a good storyteller. My prose may need tightening, sure, but the only way to improve is to keep writing—and I do.

I recently spoke in a post about learning to draw and how I was using the Niceferatu comic I post here as a platform for this endeavor. I have to admit, the postings of the comic have slowed recently. This isn’t because I have lost interest in the story or project. It’s because I realised that my art skills were not good enough to do justice to the story I wanted to tell.

While Niceferatu was supposed to be a platform for learning, it quickly became a platform for storytelling—one that my artwork was not yet good enough for. I even considered writing Niceferatu as a script or novella. Ultimately, though, the point of the character is to help me learn art.

So, to the gym I have gone.

There were a few things I had to remind myself of before I started, including, considering why I wanted to learn to draw.

I love writing. It is my main creative pastime. The only major downside to writing is that it takes a great deal of time to produce a finished work. I’m not naïve about this—I know full well that many people work on drawings for months. But I want to create basic art for a comic. I’m not trying to make high art or draft my visual opus.

I have watched hours of videos on composition, basic line art, and color theory. While I’m pretty sure some things I have drawn are “okay,” I have yet to create something that makes me happy. Progress is minor, slow, and very linear. But progress has been made. Sometimes, when I learn a new way of thinking about composition, it takes me a few attempts to work it into my flow—and often, I feel like I’ve taken a step backward.

I have come to think of this as a workout—a drawing workout. In fact, when I began to think of my art journey as a gym or a training regimen, I started aligning my expectations to a much longer timeline. In turn, my patience with myself has increased.

As I said earlier, despite writing a lot and telling many stories in the process, I don’t think of myself as creative. I think this is largely because my expectations of what it means to be creative are not reasonable.

I understand the process of writing well enough to recognize it as hard work—day after day, a consistent drive toward a goal. I don’t automatically consider this creative because I am distracted by the process and rarely reflect on the product.

With drawing, I have a different problem. I have always associated “being creative” or “artistic” with natural talent, but I am now at the point where I recognise talent as the end result of hard work. Maybe, one day, I will consider myself creative. But not until I finish my time at the gym of practice.

I wonder how many other people feel this way.

As I’m sure many of you have noticed, I have recently been on something of a cleanse. Ejecting things from my life which I feel are no longer relevant. Trying my best to live intentionally and considering what adds value to my life, and what are things which I use as crouches for someone I used to be. Towards the end of this year, I am hoping to be in a financial position where I can buy a camper van and have little weekend excursions with my dog. I one day hope to retire into a mobile home of some kind and visit Europe, assuming there is a way to have my dog come with me, that is.

This pipe-dream about a small space, mobile future has been leaking into the decisions I make day to day. While I am a fair way away from having to think about the practical things, I have something of a clear thought pattern. I have likely mentioned it here before:

If something won’t work as part of my van life, it’s going to have to go eventually, so why bring it into life, or keep it in my life now?

This gets condensed into far fewer words, the following is the more common: “Good for van?”

This idea about spending the next year(s) preparing for the future I want has been really good for me. It has created some complications, some clarity and some questions. I have enjoyed purging things from my physical space, reducing my power consumption on a day to day basis, and it has even resulted in me having something of a capsule wardrobe selection.

A side effect of this has been that I have been preoccupied with the internet, as a source of interaction. When I get to go on those road trips I am pretty sure I can power my laptop and iPad without any issues, but, whats the point in having a powered up laptop is there is nothing to use it for? 

A down side of spending time in a an is the excellent change of being without internet access. This isn’t something which worries me, but it is something I think about.

My writing won’t be effected as Scrivener is an entirely offline application. I have local backups of a lot of video media and my kindle contains my entire digital book library (I download everything I buy.) My Miyoo Mini has many retro games I can play, and I have my theology books in print. And, for those very odd occasions that access to an LLM would be useful, I have offline options for that too.

I recently purchased a Digital Audio Player (DAP (an MP3 player)) and filled it with songs which can’t be taken away from me by a timed out connection. I have to write an entire post about that, at some point, as I think, it is quite an interesting topic. (It’s a Surfans F28.)

All in all without constant internet access, I’ll be fine. I have enough squirrelled away for basically any road trip I could find myself on. 

This got me to thinking though. I am confident that I don’t ‘need’ the internet for anything major, but I have never considered turning off my WiFi. 

The reason for this, is in part, because my preparation for some time offline is rooted in some real goals. I don’t want to have to consider internet when I am out adventuring in a van, but I do want to read things, watch things and play things. I am not prepping for an imagined scenario or end of the world event. 

However… When I think about my offline time, it does not fill me with dread. It used to. A few years ago the idea of being offline would make me twitch. During lockdown, the internet was a lifeline, but now, I am not sure I wouldn’t miss it the way I once would have done.

I still want to talk to my friends, I would still need to get my Kindle online every so often to get new books. Sooner or later the backed up media I have would go stale. But, an intermittent connection would likely not worry me too much. I could stay in touch with my friends via Email (I already communicate regularly with one friend via email.)

But still, I never turn off my WiFi.

With this in mind, I have considered that perhaps I will spend one day a week without internet. on Thursdays I make a point of not socialising online, I jokingly refer to it as ‘my day off.’ 

I have a plan, that on Thursdays, going forward, I will turn off my internet connection. Save for two short burst. I will check my bank and email when I wake up, and around nine in the evening I will check email again. This time, in total will be less than fifteen minutes and it should stop me from having any anxiety that life has exploded and no one told me. 

This will also mirror the intermittent connection which I am planning for one day ‘copping with.’ I don’t know if this will be a long term experiment or if I will extend it to more days as time goes on, but I sincerely like the idea of having ‘time off’ from the constant stream of data coming.

The very fact that I even feel this digital fatigue is a little telling to me. I don’t regularly look at any social media and I only check news feeds in the early afternoon. I am always connected but I don’t feel that I am ‘terminally online’ in any way. 

Maybe the simplifying I have been doing has wormed it’s way into my subconscious and this seems like the next thing to do. 

I’ll up date you in a few weeks. I have a feeling that this is going to be interesting. 

I have spent some time reading the Cal newport book ‘Digital Minimalism.’ I’m not that far in, but I picked it up because I was feeling a ‘thing,’ the book, so far, has made me double feel that ‘thing.’ I need to write a full post about the ‘thing.’

The ‘thing,’ if anyone is wondering, is the realisation that I am unhappy with the amount of time I spend attached to the internet, and to my screens. I don’t even think I spend that much time on here compared to most people. I read a while back that the average screen time per day is about 6 hours. Which seems mad to me. My average is about 2 hours, and that feels excessive!

My laptop probably gets more, but that’s when I’m writing. I enjoy writing and don’t really think of it as screen time, despite it literally being that. I think of it as keyboard time.

the paradoxical thing is that I have been reading the digital minimalism book on a Kindle, which is a screen. - I suppose wen I tlak about ‘screen,’ I actually mean ‘internet’

Recently I was reading the translation notes in my NLT bible and there were a few lines which made me raise an eyebrow. This led me to go on a bit of a deep dive into all the translations which I read. 

I am not an expert and all information provided can be found online with ease. All I did was read and collate it with some thoughts. 

To be clear, despite this information, I believe all the listed translations are reliable enough to be inspired. This is a narrative on translation philosophy, not an attempt at critique. It is intended to be a research session in which I educate myself and share my findings. I believe they are all good translations for different purposes. However, I have preferences, which I will summarise at the end.

NLT

First Published: 1996 (second major edition was 2004) 

Copyright: Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. All rights reserved.

Type of Translation: Dynamic equivalence, “Designed to be read aloud,” according to translation notes page.

Translation basis: 

– OT: Masoretic Text as primary with comparison to Dead Sea Scrolls, Septuagint, Greek manuscripts, Samaritan Pentateuch, Syriac Peshitta, and Latin Vulgate

– NT:  The UBS 4th revised edition and the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece 27th edition (basically, the Greek NT)

Examples of translation philosophy: Gender-inclusive language is used where the editors believed that it was appropriate and deity pronouns are not capitalised. Plural pronouns (they, them) are used in place of the masculine singular (he, him) example of this is in Proverbs 22:6 (table below)

The tetragrammaton is rendered as “the Lord” (small caps, no idea how to do that on my keyboard)

– Weights and measures, money, dates and times, etc., are described in modern terms, with footnotes giving the literal translation. For example, John 6:7 reads: “Philip replied, ‘Even if we worked for months, we wouldn’t have enough money to feed them'”, with a note that the Greek text reads “Two hundred denarii would not be enough” and an explanation that a denarius was equivalent to a laborer’s full day’s wage. (Found on wikipedia but I checked the reference) 

– When the content of the original language text is poetic in character, NLT has rendered it in English poetic form. NLT sought to break lines in ways that clarify and highlight the relationships between phrases of the text.

– “ten shekels of silver” becomes “ten pieces of silver”

– “denarius” is rendered as “the normal daily wage”

Information sourced from: 

– [www.tyndale.com/sites/nlt...](https://www.tyndale.com/sites/nlt/faq)

– [www.bible-researcher.com/nlt2prefa...](https://www.bible-researcher.com/nlt2preface.html)

– [www.tyndale.com/sites/nlt...](https://www.tyndale.com/sites/nlt/translation-process)

– …and, Wikipedia, all claims checked. 

NIV

First Published: NT 1973 & OT 1978, 2011 update. 

Copyright: The Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

– Updated ‘gender inclusive version’ published 1996, but only in the UK and commonwealth publishing areas. 

– 1996, additional: An easier to read version, New International Reader’s Version (NIrV), was published in 1996. It was written at a third-grade reading level, to enable those with limited English literacy levels, the ability to read the Bible

– 2011: Many criticisms addressed and minor changes made. 

Type of Translation: Hybrid of literal and phrase-by-phrase.

Translation basis: 

– OT:  Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia Masoretic Hebrew Text. Other ancient texts consulted were the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Septuagint, the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Aquila, Symmachus and Theodotion, the Latin Vulgate, the Syriac Peshitta, the Aramaic Targum, and for the Psalms the Juxta Hebraica of Jerome. (Source: wikipedia, checked) 

– NT: New Testament was the Koine Greek language editions of the United Bible Societies and of Nestle-Aland. (Source: Wikipedia, checked) 

Examples of translation philosophy: The NIV should not be confused with the NIrV or the NIV-Gender-Inclusive-Version. I would encourage you to check all claims as these versions have been confused, often intentionally, online. 

– The 2011 edition of the NIV aims to avoid using “he” or “him” as the default reference to an unspecified person.

– “the Lord of hosts” and “God of hosts” have little meaning, this version renders them “the Lord Almighty” and “God Almighty.”

– The word προσερχόμενον – means “he who comes” and is in the male singular accusative case. Yet the NIV translates this with the gender-neutral “anyone who comes.” (nickcady.org) 

The tetragrammaton is rendered as “Lord” (small caps, still no idea how to do that on my keyboard)

– NT Wright commented saying:  “if a church only, or mainly, relies on the NIV it will, quite simply, never understand what Paul was talking about.”

– Mark Given (Missouri State University) commented saying “several inaccurate and misleading translations” since many sentences and clauses are paraphrased, rather than translated from Hebrew and Greek.

– Poetical passages are printed as poetry, that is, with the indentation of lines and separate stanzas

Information sourced from: 

– [www.christianitytoday.com/1997/06/b...](https://www.christianitytoday.com/1997/06/bibles-hands-off-my-niv/) 

– page 51: [books.google.co.uk/books](https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=6i2xvonpvMwC&redir_esc=y) (NT Wright comments) 

– Mark Given (Missouri State University): [web.archive.org/web/20161...](https://web.archive.org/web/20161012024005/http://courses.missouristate.edu/markgiven/rel102/bt.htm)

– [s45600.pcdn.co/wp-conten...](https://s45600.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/The-Development-and-Use-of-Gender-Language-in-Contemporary-English-Collins-Report.pdf)

– [www.thenivbible.com/niv-trans...](https://www.thenivbible.com/niv-translation-philosophy/)

–  [midmichigannow.com/news/loca...](https://midmichigannow.com/news/local/gender-neutral-2011-niv-bible-creates-controversy)

–  [web.archive.org/web/20090...](https://web.archive.org/web/20090906220811/http://content.usatoday.com/communities/religion/post/2009/09/bible-politics-a-new-new-new-niv-announced-today/1)

–  [www.bible-researcher.com/niv-prefa...](https://www.bible-researcher.com/niv-preface.html)

–  [nickcady.org/2018/06/1...](https://nickcady.org/2018/06/13/making-sense-of-different-bible-translations-part-3-gender-inclusive-language-and-the-niv/)

– …and, Wikipedia, all claims checked. 

NKJV

First Published: 

– OT: 1982

– NT: 1979

Copyright: The Holy Bible, New King James Version® Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.

Type of Translation: considered to be a word-for-word (complete equivalence) translation, which I found surprising.

Translation basis: 

– The NKJV is described by Thomas Nelson as being “scrupulously faithful to the original King James Version, yet truly updated to its clarity and readability. (wikipedia, source no longer available)

– A note from me: This does not seem to be totally accurate as different translational choices were made (as illustrated by footnotes and other consulted texts, however the core of the statement appears to hold.

– A word that occurs 11 times in the NKJV: “Hades.” In each of those places, the KJV has “hell” instead.

Examples of translation philosophy: Honestly, in this case its worth reading the Pronouns section of this site [www.tbsbibles.org/page/TheN...](https://www.tbsbibles.org/page/TheNewKingJamesVersion?srsltid=AfmBOoo2WzyTiFMMDujmGT7egxObeuYd7iOY4ddluq8g629dsfKaAJGH#Pronouns)  Because there is a lot there to unpack but here are the highlights: 

the KJV uses older English pronouns like “thou,” “thee,” and “ye,” which are singular and plural forms respectively, while the NKJV modernizes these pronouns to “you”

Specifically the NKJV replaces most “thou” and “ye” pronouns with “you” which can sometimes lead to ambiguity in certain verses

Tetragrammaton rendered as “LORD” in all capital letters

Information sourced from: 

–  [web.archive.org/web/20210...](https://web.archive.org/web/20210823082918/http://www.bible-researcher.com/nkjv.html)

–  [www.bible-researcher.com/nkjv.html](https://www.bible-researcher.com/nkjv.html) 

–  [www.bible-researcher.com/comma.htm...](https://www.bible-researcher.com/comma.html)

–  [www.gotquestions.org/New-King-...](https://www.gotquestions.org/New-King-James-Version-NKJV.html)

–  [byfaithweunderstand.com/2020/03/1...](https://byfaithweunderstand.com/2020/03/13/why-do-our-tr-only-brothers-reject-the-NKJV-with-such-passion-the-trinitarian-bible-societys-examination-of-the-new-king-james-version/)

–  [cdn.ymaws.com/www.tbsbi...](https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.tbsbibles.org/resource/collection/D4DCAF37-AEB6-4CEC-880F-FD229A90560F/What-Todays-Christian-Needs-to-Know-about-the-NKJV.pdf)

–  [www.tbsbibles.org/page/What...](https://www.tbsbibles.org/page/WhatTodaysChristianNeedsToKnowAboutTheNewKingJamesVersion?hhsearchterms=%22nkjv%22)

–  [www.paulkhosla.org/blog/ive-...](https://www.paulkhosla.org/blog/ive-shelved-my-nkjv-maybe-you-should-too)

– …and, Wikipedia, all claims checked. 

KJV

First Published: 1611

Copyright: Public domain

Type of Translation: considered to be a word-for-word (complete equivalence)

Translation basis: 

– OT: Masoretic Text, Apocrypha: Septuagint and Vulgate

– NT: Textus Receptus

Examples of translation philosophy: Its not modern English so you need to put some work in

– “T” pronouns are singular: Pronouns starting with “t” (thou, thee, thy, thine) always refer to a single person.

– “Y” pronouns are plural: Pronouns starting with “y” (ye, you) are used for multiple people

– Luke 2:33 is an example where the KJV and NKJV refer to Joseph, where other translations refer to ‘his father’ which actually lacks clarity while paraphrasing, which is the opposite of the intended purpose. there are multiple cases of this which are outlined in  [www.scionofzion.com/kjcompari...](https://www.scionofzion.com/kjcomparisons.html) ← honestly after reading through this, I have reassessed my thoughts on translations somewhat. 

Information sourced from: 

Please note the KJV is the only translation which has been referred to as a ‘new revelation’ and there are many people who a ‘KJV only’ – As far as I know most of these people do not accept NKJV as an option, despite its similarities and identical textual source.  

– [nickcady.org/2018/06/0...](https://nickcady.org/2018/06/06/making-sense-of-different-bible-translations-part-2-the-king-james-bible/)

–  [www.thebereancall.org/content/s...](https://www.thebereancall.org/content/september-1992-q-and-a-3?sapurl=Lys5MjZkL2xiL2xpLyt3dm44dWs4P2JyYW5kaW5nPXRydWUmZW1iZWQ9dHJ1ZSZyZWNlbnRSb3V0ZT1hcHAud2ViLWFwcC5saWJyYXJ5Lmxpc3QmcmVjZW50Um91dGVTbHVnPSUyQnd2bjh1azg=)

–  [www.gotquestions.org/KJV-only....](https://www.gotquestions.org/KJV-only.html)

–  [joshuateis.com/2019/11/2...](https://joshuateis.com/2019/11/25/the-history-of-kjv-onlyism/)

–  [www.scionofzion.com/kjo.htm](https://www.scionofzion.com/kjo.htm)

–  [www.scionofzion.com/kjcompari...](https://www.scionofzion.com/kjcomparisons.html)

–  [www.scionofzion.com/luke_2_14...](https://www.scionofzion.com/luke_2_14.html)

– …and, Wikipedia, all claims checked. 

Conclusion

While I have given you a somewhat confusing outline and comparison of each bible translation which were of interest to me, the attached web links give more context to each section. I read it all. and a lot more on top of that. After literally days, (and days) of reading I came some surprising conclusions (at least, to me.) 

Up until this point have favoured two translations they have been the NLT for group study and reading for enjoyment and the NKJV as a more formal source for studying. 

After all this research and consideration, I think there is a case to consider the KJV with more weight than I previously did. I also can not find a major inconsistency between it and the NKJV, as all NKJV printings offer excellent foot notes and translation notes where there are differences to the KJV. As the NKJV has promised, none of these are doctrinal in nature. 

Before all this I knew of some of the controversy regarding early NIV editions and have always taken it as a secondary source for study. I now consider this a wise decision.

Even assuming the absolute worse comments about all these translations are correct, I don’t think that there is a ‘wrong’ choice, however, can’t help but think more highly of the KJV now. But, I think there is a chance, that it is historical weight which has added to this opinion. 

Hyperbolic and overly confident opinion: NKJV maybe the best translation! and any translation which ends with something other than “Amen” is trash, because the poetry of Amen as the last word is too good not to use!!

The end of the year is looming, and we approach the dark, melancholic week which sets its home between Christmas and the new year. Like a troll on a bridge, the week of limbo must be defeated to pass into the glorious bastion of twenty twenty-five.

Which, is an overly dramatic way of saying that it’s the time of year when I reflect on where I am and how I got here. Nothing too deep, but I like to check in and think about some things.

Tagets?

I don’t believe that the tradition of “New Year’s resolutions” is healthy, useful, or enjoyable but these are the personal points of importance which I set myself in 2024. These were set at various points rather than on January first.

Write more.

This is the eternal goal. Write more. Then write some more, and, then, a little more. This year I have released two novellas. The Chronicles of Ned: Space to Breathe, and Denouement: Of Gods and Vampires. I have also partly written Denouement 3. I have to admit though, I could have written more. I have found myself distracted by many things over the last couple of months.

I think part of it maybe my workflow and tooling. While I enjoy Scrivener, at times I sense that there is a lot happening with the UI/UX which pulls my mind out of the actual writing. Not least of which is the fact that its typewriter scrolling is a strange, unpredictable beast. That’s not to say in any way that Scrivener has worked against me. I wrote plenty this year and I genuinely think that my writing has been, well, pretty good. But, ever since ‘Literature & Latte’ announced that they were working on a new writing application, I have been more willing to acknowledge Scrivener’s flaws. I don’t understand why that had any effect on me really. The result, though, is that I have been a little distracted by the flaws in my current application. I think Scrivener is actually, maybe, a little ‘long in the tooth’ in some ways. Also, I am dreadful at remembering to use the distraction-free mode, and that’s on me.

The main issue that has bugged me with Scrivener is that switching devices is harder than it should be. If I use iPad or iOS, I get a scary popup when I return to laptop, and it raises my irrational writer’s dread about losing words. It has never lost anything, but I have had to manually intervene with the sync. It just feels absurd that I have these problems with an application that has been around as long as Scrivener has.

Outside of Scrivener musings, I have had a lot going on this year with work. It has left me, on many occasions, too mentally drained to write with any gusto. That can’t be helped. And again, as I have said, I did release two things this year, so it’s not like I’m slacking. My personal aim to write more and write better, has simply not been met.

I think there have been at least a few months when I have been a little ‘down,’ generally. I don’t like writing when I’m not feeling ‘up.’ Actually, I should probably be a little more honest and say that I have been quite emotionally low, for at least a half of this year. I got out of myfunk, and it was nowhere near depression. Not at all what some people have to deal with. My ‘sad’ was not clinical or in need of professional support. But, I have been less than myself at times in 2024, and it affected my writing in ways I didn’t expect. I think it has to do with being quite lonely, over all, in life.

Have fewer subscriptions.

I set out with the goal of not subscribing to non-entertainment services in 2024. I know this is a convoluted way to say it, but I can’t get away from paying for streaming video services. I don’t have broadcast television, and I do want to watch TV shows from time to time. Paying for streaming services is just something I want to jettison from my life at this time. I probably will at some point, but right now, no.

I did however manager to not pay for Notion, Obsidian, task managers, storage solutions or other services for most of 2024. I jumped back onto Todoist as my task manger about three months ago because it made my job easier. After some reflection, I realised that Things 3 was fine for my personal life, but not ideal for work.

My solution to this has been looking at services like Craft/Notion/Click-up. Basically, if I can make a work dashboard, I can approach each day as a ‘task sheet’ rather than a task manager category. I am explaining this badly, but I want my task manger to be for my life, not my job. I want to look at it and see tasks that exist outside my work. This, in reality, means I have to subscribe to something specifically for work. I think it’s worth the cost to separate my two personas. I wasn’t too fussy which service and Craft had an excellent sale recently, so I went with that. I hope in 2025 I can be more clear with my life/work concerns and draw that proverbial line in the sand, mentally speaking.

While Todoist has made me more productive, over all, I have ended up thinking about work more than I care to, of an evening. This has been because I can see those tasks lined up for the following day. There is no profile switching in Todoist and it hasn’t been great to have it all in one place.

I think I have been more selective about subscriptions overall, and this has been good for me.

More exercise

In the summer, I walked my dog at least a mile every day and picked up heavy things before my evening shower. I did well. I lost weight and felt better. Winter hit me hard, though. He’s a short-haired Chihuahua, and they don’t do well in the cold. Without the habitual daily walking, my desire to pick up heavy things has also faded. I have a home treadmill, but for the last two months I have had a knee injury which has prevented me from using it.

I hope to get back to good eating and regular moving in the next month or so. I would rather not screw my knee up any more than I have, so I am being cautious as all heck.

Still, as soon as the cold goes, the dog will be back to his daily marching, and I’ll get a lot more steps in.

Simplify life.

I have had a year-long drive to simplify life. This was first evident in my desire to jettison subscriptions, then, became even more intentional when I started simplifying my physical space by aggressive decluttering my home.

I have even stopped using my computer monitor and external keyboard. My personal tastes are trending towards simplicity and minimalism. It has been really good for me and, I think, a large part of what pulled me out of that funk I spoke about earlier. Feeling more intentional has really made me happy.

I also have to accept that simplifying has taken time. Every aspect of my life has become more streamlined, and the physical decluttering took time. There is still more to be done, but I have come a long way. I have spent many hours packing boxes and cleaning cupboards. This is all time which could have been spent writing. The decluttering work is actually how I injured my knee, so it’s hilarious to me that I call it out as a source of joy.

I still want to jettison the last of my physical books and remove some other items from my life. This includes a plan to change my wardrobe contents and further clear my home office.

Religion.

For clarity, I attend a Pentecostal Christian church (an Elim Church.)

My time with the Bible has been the single biggest source of joy in my life this last year. It sustained me through the ‘sad bits’ of the year and gave me inspiration, resolve, and motivation to keep improving my life and myself as a person.

I have become closer with my church friends too, which has also been a source of joy. I look forward to our group meetings on Wednesday nights and always take a lot away from the time.

I know some people will eye role hard at the next paragraph but I feel like saying it is important to me because I wanted this post to be honest and clear.

I love God, and that is the simplest way I can say it. Jesus is the single most influential person in my life, and that should not be taken as a statement which is devaluing to the rest of the people. Jesus is the direction which I strive, and I am certain that it has made me a better man. It has certainly got me through the tough times, and no doubt, will continue to do so when required.

The unplanned persona change.

When HexDSL started the year, he didn’t intend to finish it as Dandelion-Utilitarian. It wasn’t planned at all, but as part of the funk clearing, I needed to make a change. Feel like the online persona alteration has resulted in a clear message that I am who I actually am. I think there was an expectation by many historical YouTube viewers that I would behave in a specific way and I disappointed them. I never made any promises, but the name change seems to have made it clear to them that I do not intent to behave the way they wanted me to.

Was 2024 a success?

Honestly, there have been some high points on this year, as well as some notable lows. The truth though has been that most of this year has been ‘bland’ for me personally. I have felt aimless at times and especially in the early part of the year, just not very ‘good,’ generally.

I think part of my overall ‘meh’ about the year has been that my daughter went off to university and that took quite a lot of my general routine and threw it away. This left me thinking hard about what I wanted, sans child and I don’t think I had a good answer for a while.

Now I’m approaching the final death rattles of the year, I can say with honesty that I currently have motivation, drive, and targets. I know where I’m going, it just took me a while to find the right map for the stars I was looking at.

2025 plans and declarations!

This is easy. Here is the plan, it’s so simple I can bullet list it for you!

• Become for financial stable, through better decisions. — I’m not terrible with money, not at all, but this year I’m going to be decisive with my budget and get the last of my historical debts paid off.
• Read more. — I read. I read a lot, but this next year I want to make it my default pastime when I am in that ‘what should I do’ mood. Reading more is never bad, not for any human. I would like to read more of the Bible too, maybe I’ll do one of those daily reading plans.
• Walk more. — with or without dog. As soon as my knee feel better (hopefully in the upcoming weeks) I’m going to try to log more steps each week. Doesn’t have to be massively more, but I want my average step count to go up each and every week for 2025. I may even buy a cheap step counting watch. Hopefully, Casio sell something super cheap that doesn’t need to be charged a lot.
• Write more. — I mean, there isn’t a lot to say here. I write more, and I feel better in my soul. I should write more. Likewise, I think I could do more on my website too.

There we are. Four bullets for a better me.

I also hope that in limbo-week next year, I will be in a position where I can talk about how I am finally ready to buy that camper van/motor home I have wanted for the last five years. I would rather not make ban financial decisions either, so I have told myself that I’m going to wait for a year. But, I think it maybe in good position to start shopping, this time next year.

Please tell me about your 2024, and plans for 2025, in the comments. Or shoot me an email.

Thanks for reading.

Dandy.

Recently I tried the dark mode on my Kindle for the first time since I have had it. It’s strange that I ever tried it at all, give that in the decade or more I have been using Kindles, it has never before occurred to me that dark mode maybe a viable option.

My verdict after an hour was this: Dark mode is awful. It’s a horrible way to read. The light text on the black backdrop makes the words lack definition and the whole thing feels oppressive.

Now, A Kindle is essentially a device with one purpose. It shows you words. If words are far, far worse in dark mode on the device which has one task, and its good at that task, then is there a chance that perhaps I have been wrong in my assessment of dark mode everywhere else?

As you know, I am a man who is not afraid to try new things. I went directly to my MacBook and pressed that ‘light mode’ button, for the first time. I then went to my phone and both my iPads and pressed the button for glorious sunshine! (Yes, I have, and use two iPads, don’t judge me!) 

Obviously, I hated it instantly. My computer didn’t feel like my computer and my phone felt like it had been factory reset. It just felt like things were failing to load correctly. It all felt wrong.

I ignored my inner petulance and kept on changing my applications to sunburn mode.

I sat all of yesterday morning feeling annoyed with my computer. It was like it had betrayed me somehow. I felt like I had taken a step back in ‘coolness’ and was betraying my cyberpunk dreams for a vista of white oppression.

But then, as the day went on, something happened.

I was feeling less eye strain and I didn’t even know I was getting eye strain before I changed! As the day went on, and I began working in lower light, it just felt more comfortable generally. I was still repulsed by the visuals, aesthetically. I just hate it. However, I have to admit, the light UI feels like less of focal point and the content feels like it just pops more. When I was writing I felt like the words were the main attraction, not the application assets.

I stuck with it and am now a day into my experiment.

I have no idea if it will ‘take’ long term, but I have to say, it does feel like it’s overall just easier to see, which makes me smile because I would have bee complaining about it being too bright a few years ago. Maybe it’s my 44 year old eyes and smaller screen size doing tricks. And, to be clear, light mode Discord looks literally broken!

I have always felt like people who use their computer in light mode were leaving it ‘stock,’ or didn’t know there was an option for something else. Now though, I have to re-evaluate this bias because they may be right to leave it the way it comes. Perhaps this is even why the default mode on most devices is the light mode. The manufacturers know, and, have been trying to tell us this entire time.

This isn’t to say I’m bashing dark mode in any way. I love the way it looks; dark mode is cool. I did some web searching (via DEVONAgent, because the web is dead to me… thats another topic though) and it does appear that there is no general medical, or specifically optometrical benefit to dark mode, there is a real benefit to correctly using brightness controls, but that seems to be separate to your preference in themes.

My plan at this time is to keep all my devices in light mode until the new year and then switch back and see if a major preference emerges. Honestly I’m rooting for darkness because I really like it, that said, if I can see more with less eye strain in light mode, I’ll use it.

Give light mode a try. Or, if you are already an advocate of the light side, drop a comment and let me know why. I would like to see as many opinions as possible regarding this.

I’ll update you in the new year.

I wrote a thing. For Christmas. It is not ‘Christmasy.’

When I say that I write it for Christmas, that’s not entirely true, it just happens that it’s basically finished, and it also happens to be mid-December.

‘Of Gods and Vampires’ is a short novel following the adventures of two characters from Denouement (the first one.) It’s a pop-SCIFI adventure novel which is episodic and at times high action. If you have never read a Denouement story, then you may not ‘get’ the setting but hey, give it a go, you may like it.

Ta’ra and Raf, our two heroes are covert operatives of an ‘active’ force which is part of a religious order. They try their best to stay out of trouble, but between turning into bats, defying gravity and fighting armies of werewolves, trouble is where they start. Also, there’s a dragon, which is pretty cool.

A little while ago I decided that making money out of my writing was not something which was a huge motivator for me, so I’ll be making it available on this site a few days before Christmas. As has become my habit with these things, I will publish the text here, as well as the PDF, but if you want an ePub you will have to go to Itch, where you can ‘pay what you want’ for it, starting at nothing. It will, eventually make its way to kindle, but likely not until the final Denouement book is released.

The novella will be posted on this site, at some point over the Christmas period. So… I guess this is a teaser post, which is very modern of me

I wanted to take a moment to than explain something which I have only recently realised maybe confusing. Both Dandelion-Utilitarian.com and Dandelion-Utilitarian.net exist.

The dot com, is my main public facing WordPress site. It is where you will find my curated articles and my Niceferatu comic posts. And, of course, my more long-form writing releases.

The dot net however, is a Micro.Blog powered feed. It contains all the main page posts from the dot com, as well as anything which you may consider ‘a stream of ideas.’ This includes photos, sketches, half written ideas, paragraph vibe tests, and lets face it, fully loaded nuggets of nonsense.

There is, of course, also my even less ‘sharable’ content over on Void. Which is mostly not designed to be read.

This has been your internet awareness update.

With love, Dandy. 

We all move on from things, and it often feels like a good move, it feels liberating and enchiching. I have had a lot of that feeling of liberty recently has I have been doing a very utilitarian decluttering of my home. Moving on from an online persona, however,  feels like a death, more than a purge. I have been known socially as ‘Hex’ since college, when the movie Hackers was the greatest thing my friends and I had ever seen and we were all very edgy witchcraft obsessed teens. In part the movie ‘The Craft’ is likey as responsible as ‘Hackers’ was, for the cyber-gothic ’90s brew we had fermented into.

I have vivid memories of being a teenager, sitting alone at night screwing with under-powered computers, playing Quake and listening to talk shows, on the actual radio. Whether or not I would hold these moments in my memory so lovingly if I had been more of a social critter, I don’t know. As it is, however, when I think of how I became the man I am today, it’s the combination of tinkering, thinking and desperately wanting to be as cool as Dade Murphy which forged me.

Later when I had my own house, I had been Hex for years. But I had taken a break from the internet, due to having a gown-up life. Those early adult years were hard and after a few false starts I was ready to return to my online life. Finally with the daughter sleeping through the night and enough money to pay the important bills, bills which included, fabulously, my first aDSL internet connection, I was back.

The BT Voyager 100 arrived in an unassuming brown box. I plugged it in to my cobbled together computer which was sat against the wall on a coffee table, as I didn’t have a desk. After poking at it for a few minutes I got the lights to flash a promising, healthy, green. I realised I would need a new email address. I knew I was ‘Hex’ but sadly that hotmail account was long since taken. I Looked at the little box on my coffee-desk and in that moment HexDSL was given life.

The bricks that made him, made me, filled in over the next few years. Hex liked to believe he was a free thinker while scooping up conspiracy blogs like they were pop-tarts. He also loved 80s movies and never actually stopped playing Quake

He was never very good at video games, he wasn’t able to think freely from his conspiracy laden RSS feed and he had thought ‘A New Hope’ was the best Star Wars movie. Which all proved that he was an idiot. I would like to point out that we are all idiots in our twenties, so please don’t judge him too harshly.

The years rolled by, and the baby turned into a teenager, the wife turned into ‘the ex’ and the coffee-desk turned into a home office with more technology than a Borg cube after a fresh assimilation mission. I loved Linux, I loved comic books and I loved ’80s movies… I guess that one stuck for a lot longer than some of the others.

By this time I was pretty sure that ‘Empire’ was the best Star Wars movie and my distro of choice was Arch. I took these opinions and insights along with me when I started my YouTube channel. I was under qualified to make a technology channel and not skilled enough to be a gaming channel. I talked about comic books for a bit, before I started asking the question, ‘does this run on Linux?’

The next few years were spent certain that Linux was the future, everyone would be better off leaving Windows behind and actually, the prequel trilogy was criminally underrated.

The final form of HexDSL thought Debian was the best distro. He thought Star Wars was mostly crap and was happy to book a day off work to play Stellaris with his friends and then talk about it on his YouTube based podcast.

Then one day, HexDSL died and he didn’t notice.

I started writing, and as I did, I realised that I needed a Windows computer to do that without any barriers. I started talking about things I had read rather than things I had played and I was pretty sure that Casablanca was actually far better than Star Wars.

The next two years rolled by as the corpse of HexDSL rotted away.

I didn’t care for YouTube anymore because the more talked about writing, writing-tools and systems, the more the HexDSL viewers complained. Sure, I picked up a few writing hungry viewers and even some people who wanted to know my thoughts about plot structure. But, most of them kept ‘subscribed’ for one simple reason – people rarely clear out their YouTube subscriptions list.

I got one particular comment, by email, if I recall, which was softly complaining about how I had changed and I think that was when I actually realised that HexDSL was dead. It was his funeral emotionally speaking.

I spent the next few months wearing his corpse.

I wanted to honor the persona of HexDSL, so I kept going longer than I should. I once told someone that I used to be HexDSL and it rang true in ways I didn’t expect.

I had known the term ‘Dandelion-Utilitarian’ was rolling around in my head for months. I had used it repeatedly in conversation and as a temporary discord name. I liked it and the images it conjured up. I really am quite utilitarian but anyone who has read this far into one of my posts also knows that I am something of a literary dandy. It fit well but I hadn’t realised it was more than an amusing nugget I liked.

Wing, my good friend, and Trendy Talk co-host, created a micro blogging platform called Void and as part of some friendly banter one of my other friends set-up his account in the name of HexDSL. He impersonated me for a few amusing posts and then offered to hand over the name to me.

I was surprised myself when didn’t care. It wasn’t that I had no attachment to the name, it was actually a relief to not be forced into that particular corpses clothes.

On Void I had picked up the quill and hat of the Dandelion and I liked it. I was Happy not being HexDSL. Dandy didn’t have any self imposed expectations. He didn’t have an agenda, image or opinion on things. He was just me.

A few more months rolled on. I had almost entirely stopped playing video games even socially and was happy plugging away at some project or another while my friends played games and we hung out in discord voice chats.

A few weeks ago now I decided it was time to stop pretending to be HexDSL. Hex liked games, and movies and tinkering with things. Dandelion likes writing, thinking and cares about his Kindle for more than his movie collection.

At some point I turned into someone else and because I had been dragging the corpse of my old self around the internet with me, I was starting to resent him. The truth is I cherish my time as HexDSL. I reflect on all the people he allowed me to meet, all the things he taught me and all the late nights fiddling with code.

I can no longer fulfill the implied promises HexDSL made to the people he touched through is videos, discord rambles and Steam library adventures. I have now filled in his grave and all but killed the HexDSL persona/brand and mission.

Who is Dandelion, thats the question which I now need to answer for myself. I know the following things about him.

He likes books about theology, adventure, detectives, and thinks perhaps he judged fantasy novels too harshly.

He has seen enough eighties movies and doesn’t think Star Wars is very good. His favorite movies are Mean Girls and Casablanca but he refuses to acknowledge the irony of that in the way HexDSL used to.

He likes to keep his desk, office and life as simple as it can be. He has a laptop on a desk. not an RGB gaming powerhouse.

He doesn’t care about the expectations that people place upon him. He is no longer seeing approval from strangers.

He likes to write his novels, stories and articles. But, where HexDSL asked you things and warned you that he was going to ramble. Dandy tells you things about himself, and the things he has noticed. he is aware that you are free to stop reading. He really doesn’t mind.

HexDSL dreamed of ‘making it’ in some way. He wanted to be a writer, a YouTuber. He wanted to be someone. Dandelion wants to enjoy life, and plans on retiring into a van with a small dog, he will fill his days writing, drawing and reading. He hopes he can meet some nice people along his travels.

Drawing, writing and sitting in the garden with his Dog are things that HexDSL did too, but Dandelion basks in them, enjoying the small things. He isn’t waiting for anything anymore.

All those people who are mad that HexDSL isn’t making gaming videos should move on now that I have made clear that HexDSL is over, dead, expired. They are welcome to stay if they care about the things I do now. I hope they do.

Up to this point this article is over 1600 words long. All these words are probably the least utilitarian way of saying this…

Hello,

It’s nice to meet you. 

Call me Dandy. 

The Outer Limits opening contains the now legendary words, “we will control the horizontal, we will control the vertical.” Like many kids, watching the scary black and white episodes through a half broken television, on a raining evening, the words were seared into my mind, along with pregnant tonal whistle which accompanied it.

This struck me as something magical as child, in the same way that the opening line of Neuromancer  hit me as an adult, “The sky above the port was the color of television tuned to a dead channel.”

Both of these play with the idea of television as an allegoric representation of control. With the Outer Limits we see absolute control by a nameless, faceless, force. Meanwhile, William Gibson conjures the random, wild field of static. Offering infinite possibility awaiting form. Though, as I said when I wrote about the opening line of this book, the modern world a television tuned to static is probably a solid blue screen, for some reason. But, if I accept that here, my already stretched simile falls down like the rain falling on the sprawl in the middle of the neon glowing night.

I think the reasons which these ideas resonate so much with me is that I have always been fascinated by control, by forces which pull the fateful strings that may weave my own life. This idea has manifested over and over in my tastes, in my selections of entertainment and in my writing.

Words with a way

The first example of this I can think of, save for the Outer Limits on that old television, which sported a wooden veneer shell, which somehow fixes the memory in time an space, was the narrative spaghetti of the ‘choose your own way adventure’ genre if book, which I loved as a kid. I never had my own books, I had to explore them exclusively at the school library, which thinking back, was really a small room with a few book cases and long curtains, never the less, that was where I first learned that stories can be lies.

Flicking through one particular book I realised, that the unwritten rule of following the story, starting over with each failure,  was a in fact a nefarious ruse. I was quite able to stick my thumb in one page while doing reconnaissance deeper into the book, seeing if my choices ended in death or another jump in the chessboard of chance.

This bending of the rules became outright breaking a few visits later when I learned that I could chart my path through, noting down all my choices. Fast-tracking my next adventure to avoid the endless chain of deaths felt like a miracle to me. It was only later that I discovered a new layer of complexity when the ‘fighting fantasy’ novels forced me to track my own health points and items.

The lesson I learned that day was probably the reason that I have always found cheating in video games to be a consumingly pointless endeavor. It’s the chance of loss which adds meaning to a decision. Once my choice to fight the dragon became an option, rather than a commitment, the dragon no longer cast its terrifying show across me. The enemy was a test of logic not a test of steel. Which path did the writer of the book except me to take, and which did that writer want to lead to success.

The next phase became reading the book and trying to glean the writers personality. What would they think was the coolest thing to do? could I use this to predict a safe path. Now even with cheating, I was doing battle. Learning how my adversary fought. It was only the final decision which really mattered. Was I right in my assessment of the wordsmith, or was I always to simply err on the side of awesome?

The books eventually felt like maps rather than narratives, but, a pattern was forming in my wants, even then.

Pulp Fiction fantasy

As I grew, I began developing a taste for a specific kind of fiction. Be it television, books, short stories or movies. I wanted to see the impossible be beaten. Science Fiction became my poison of choice and the things I loved, were universally the most trope steeped, Deus ex Machina fueled tripe that I could get.

I didn’t care how bad the effects were. I didn’t care how bad the acting was. I was there for the writing. And, there was a specific type of writing I was hungry for. I wanted something which let me see a little of the person behind the keyboard. Sadly, most of the stuff that my nascent brain found satisfying was commonly considered to be ‘shite.’

One film which I loved as a sixteen year old seeker of sci-fi satisfaction was the Rutger Hauer driven epic ‘Crossworlds.’ The plot of this movie was sheer pulp. At times is didn’t even make sense. The bones of it are as such…

Multiple dimensions existed along side our own. To traverse these dimension one simply needed to follow ‘paths’ between worlds. One example is that when we burst into our heroes ‘barn’ (I don’t remember, it was like an aircraft hanger, if I recall) you would find storage crates and dust. However, if you stepped between two oddly placed trees before opening the barn you would find him, in his own little pocket of reality. The movie then took this idea and added the time tested trope of a chosen-one who needed to perform menial tasks which led him to win a ten thousand year long war which had been raging between dimensions… although no one seemed to think it was that important until that moment… Also, there was a desert scene for some reason. I am likely, totally misremembering this masterwork.

The more well known movie Tron, also sated my desire for this cross reality story telling. As well as the TV show Sliders and load more movies you could probably list yourself.

I used to think I liked stories about dimensions and other worlds. But, as I said earlier in this confession, I think now that I was really just aware that stories were a patchwork of ideas, imagined places a writers tastes. These movies and shows about reality hopping heroically handsome hippies just sort of, hit me, in the soul.

As my tastes became refined further, I began to notice my own ‘narrative kinks’ and found media of higher quality to sate me. It was this thread which I realised was the reason I enjoyed anthology shows like the now repeatedly reviewed Outer Limits, the Twilight zone, and even monster of the week shows like Doctor Who was that they allowed the writers to write new and different, exciting things as and when they wanted.

As I got a little older I really go into Star Trek. At its core, its an anthology show with consistent and repeated framing devices as narrative shortcuts, to allow them to no- explain the entire of the setting every time (something Twilight zone really suffered with.)

Grant gets it

The comic-book writer Grant Morison has been telling the same story for years now. Flex Mentallo, Animal man, The invisibles  and even his Final Crisis run are all examples of the exact same idea. That idea being that fiction is a place. Because of this Grant, if you don’t mind me being so informal, is doing what I love in his Deux Ex Mechanistic marvels. He is allowing fiction to be fiction. He writes himself into the story in Animal man. In Flex Mentallo he explored the nature of reality, and, in The invisibles he proposes that time is a result of will applied to narrative. He wrote a book called Zenith where he traps an entire culture in a crystal that tells a story (Something I’m certain Star Trek just stole from him to house a Sherlock Holmes themed homicidal hologram.) He nailed it for me, but most people find some of his more intense works to be nonsense. For me, the nonsense is a result of treating fiction, as, fiction and using to to explore ideas that we really can’t in real life. I know, all writers say they do this, but Grant was willing to bend the rules by shift genre and allow the reader to be as confused as his protagonists. I adore his work because of this ballsy madness.

I read a series of books called Magic 2.0 a while ago which posed that all of reality was a simulation (original, I know) and the best option once you are ‘in on it’ is to move to medieval England and pretend to be a wizard. While only tangentially related, this is, for me at least, an example of a writer using fiction to ask how life would be, if life, was a fiction.

When I set out to write my own fiction, without even realising my kink, I added these tropes to it. In my first novel, Hunters Garden, I gave my characters a place to rest, the titular Garden. The Garden passed time only when it was convenient for the narrative. Something which the characters themselves knew, though, they didn’t frame it like this. It was something akin to the proposal by CS Lewis, that the characters continue on even when the writer goes on holiday, because for them, time only passes when the writing is happening. The author is free to move around time in a way which they are not. This includes the super power of revision.

When I started on my first real series of books, Denouement, I wanted to explore the idea that reality was new, though it seemed old to those living in it. I then inserted a character who was simply observing in the same way the reader was, who was able to see the odd errors in the logic and history of their normal. This led him to declare, ‘hey, this doesn’t make any sense!’ – Where would the story go from there I mused. Three books or so later, I have my answer.

The reason I am so able to see the thread that binds my tastes is because I have intentionally spent a lot of time thinking about writing, reading and reasons. I know why I like one story and not another. I know why I like things that lots of people don’t and I know this because the muscles I developed writing have allowed me to be thorough in my self-analysis. I also truly believe that most people don’t know why they like one thing and not another. I think in part this is why a lot of people enjoy things that are narrative turds. They don’t actually know what makes a satisfying story, they just know that the story on offer is presenting in a high quality framing. In part this, I think is why crap like Knives Out, Star Wars and a great many Marvel branded offerings do so well. No one realises that they are rubbish because they are so well made.

I don’t say this because of some pretentious desire to claim I know better or can sniff out art where others cannot. Not at all. Actually I’m pretty sure I have terrible taste in media. But, I know what I like and why I like it. I have spent time thinking about it. I watch some total crap. Things I would never recommend to anyone. But, I truly enjoy this junk. I am happy with this junk. The junk defined my love of junk. I am a product of exposure to ideas that are, trope driven shite. But, I know why I like the things I do.

Do you know why you like the things you do?

I’ve used a Kindle as my main book-window since the Kindle Voyage was launched in 2014 and since that time I’ve read many a controversy about the way Amazon manage the platform. Most of the reports are actually about copyright law, not Amazon, not directly. I thing which most anti-eBook/anti-Kindle crusaders point at is the time that everyone had their copy of 1984 taken away, one morning in 2009. Rarely does anyone bother asking why Amazon did this, they usually just point and yell. If you’re interested in the minutiae that surrounded this then I suggest you read more than one article as most people are still outraged about it.

The reality is that someone who didn’t own the copyright was selling the book and because of the law around the selling of stolen goods, when the problem was identified it has to get removed. I am all for using this event as a platform to debate the usefulness and fairness of copyright law but the reality is that Amazon didn’t have a lot of choice. They had already given the money for the purchases to the dicey dealer of dystopia, so it was not legally their responsibility to refund anyone. They absolutely should have paid everyone the couple of dollars they spent, I agree. As the business responsible for not checking copyright, they really should have held themselves responsible, yes. But they didn’t, and didn’t legally have to.

Since that time they have been actually pretty careful about copyright. I once had a problem having them list one of my own books because they thought I stole it… from my own website… which was confusing, for me, mostly.

I am no Amazon defender but I have used a Kindle as my main platform for eBooks since that Voyage, which by the way, was at the time, simply the best eReader on the market.

The reason I have always stayed with kindle has been because they have the highest quality devices, and have the most well stocked digital shelves.

It is rare that I have to go outside of the build-in book store for a purchase and when I do, it’s trivial to get the file to my device.

When I looked at alternative hardware in the past, it usually costs about the same and offered a less premium experience. This is less true in recent years if course, there are a lot of options out there now that are all very good, but now I have a large Kindle library as well as being exceptionally familiar with the platform, I don’t want to leave anymore.  I know, thats on me.

The DRM debate has always been an abstract argument to me. I read on Amazon hardware, and I use the Amazon store. I have never had to think about DRM in functional, real world terms. I only want to read my purchase on my device and it’s been fine, forever.

But, like all things which are ‘fine’ they are only ‘fine’ until they are not. The kindness of my Kindle finally expired.

I couldn’t figure out why I kept pressing the button to download the book I wanted to read. It kept going ‘dark’ as it does a moment before it begins downloading but then it would flash as if it was done, a moment later, without downloading anything.

I tried on different wifi connections, restarted my device and searched the storage list on the off chance there was a ‘bad’ download half finished or something.

It was only when I finally searched for it in the store, and clicked ‘read now’ that I got an actual error message. This message informed me that I had reached my device limit. To be clear I own two Kindles. A paperwhite and a Scribe. I also use the Kindle app on my iPad mini, from time to time.

I know, opulent!

The really frustrating thing here is that the platform has no capacity to actually expose this information to me outside of the store page. Something of an oversight.

I went to the devices page on the web and removed everything but my two Kindles and tried again. It would appear after some investigation that it was the iPad which pushed me over the license limit for this work. What is extra annoying is that of my large library, no other title has had an issue with my habits.

Now, I don’t know how astute you are, but it’s somehow worse to me that the book in question is the NKJV Bible, printed my Thomas Nelson. A book which is a modern translation of a public domain document, which was released in 1979, and is freely available to read online in at least five places I cant think of without Googling for more. Add to add to that, it’s the Word of God we are talking about here. You can see why I growled at my Kindle, I assume.

As much as I wanted to bark at Amazon, in the moment, I have to remember that it’s the copyright holder who has all the power here. But, before we shrug and blame old Tommy Nuisance for all the problems I had, Amazon make no effort at all to tell you there is a license limit when you buy a book. Actually you are not buying a book at all, you are buying a license to read a book. I am someone who basically understands this principle and doesn’t really object to it, not really, however a great many of the people who use Kindle don’t know or understand, and, that’s not their fault. Amazon doesn’t explain it at any point during the process of setting up a device, or pressing checkout.

Just because a purchase is digital it should not automatically be transient. Any ‘license’ or ‘rental’ or ‘limited access’ is essentially a subscription and we should expect organisations offering subscriptions to make it clear that you are buying access not ownership.

The scam here is the same as it’s always been. Sooner or later if there are enough copies of book in the physical world, everyone can get one for free by asking someone. But if you have a license, then every person who wants the book has to pay for it. You can’t saturate market when a product is tied to a person, and new people keep getting born. You can saturate a market when they can just read their mates book. It really is a scam.

I’m personally okay with this because I just want to read the book, not get involved in political discourse, but… Just because we live in a world where this is normal we should not act like it’s ‘fine’ because eventually its not going to be. That activation limit will lower as companies try to squeeze more money out of us all.

People should be given the chance to understand this before they can’t read their Bible anymore.

No matter how productive I can become, and no matter how skilled I become, I still have twenty-four hours in a day. Much like nothing exceeds the speed of light, no productivity pipeline will break the time barrier. This has never been more evident to me than when I started drawing.

I have been in the habit of writing for a few hours every day for a few years. While I don’t manage to actually accomplish this every day, the habit is formed. If nothing comes up in my day, if no events are happening, at around half six, I’ll start writing. On a weekend, I tend to write from around two in the afternoon. This is my default and I find it calming, productive and rewarding. I think my consistency has made me a better writer and I have, so far, managed to publish/share five (5.5?) books which, I feel, are of a reasonable and increasing quality; each better than the last.

Drawing, however, has been something which, over the past few months, I have greatly enjoyed. Drawing replaced video games as a pastime for me and slotted neatly into a timeslot which was previously for watching TV and playing games socially. I find drawing rewarding. It’s fun, I have progression, and I like it as a potential story telling platform, with my end goal to be one day making my Denouement novel into a comic.

This hobby was all going really well, then, like the goon I am, I started working on a little comic which was intended to be a ‘test’ of how to make a comic. Nicerferatu was birthed. Again, this was, at this point, totally fine, reasonable and enjoyable. I produced a few pages, which are of, I think, increasing quality.

Sounds great, what’s the problem?

Well, the problem, is that the other week, I had a terrible idea. I had the idea of making a multipage comic, something which extends out across around twelve pages in total. There’s no rush to get this finished, right… right? Nope. All I have to do is work on one page at a time, follow my storyboard and script, and receive joy at the end when it’s done. Great… easy.

Did you notice it?

Yeah, I missed it too…

All I have to do is follow my script and my storyboard. 

I’m a writer, not an artist, and certainly not a comic-book artist! Having a version of my story framework in my head is not something which works for a visual medium. I needed to think in images now words.

It took me a while to figure out how to make storyboards. An easy theory, but why not use the storyboard as an initial sketch layer? Well, then I needed to have a storyboard with proportions which match the final work. So that took time.

Okay, what goes on each panel or page? I have a vague idea what I want to accomplish, I should do what I know best and write something, ah, yes, a script! I know how to do that… For the following week, after this revelation, my writing time was not spent working on my current project, but on Niceferatu scripts. (For those who asked, yes, the current writing project is Denouement 3, with the working title, ‘A thousand years north.’)

Shockingly, my twenty-four hours did not stretch with my projects. One project suffered at the polite but merciless vampiric hands of the other. I am in a fortunate position of being someone who creates things as a hobby. While I would like to think I produce good quality writings, I don’t have a publisher to sate, or a release schedule to hit. But, the lesson is there, despite the aim of my drawing being to fill a time-slot, as soon as it became something I enjoyed, it leaked out of its temporal container and ate its sibling.

Much like entropy, no force can fight the universal rule of content creations:

Projects eat time. New projects eat the time of more established ones. 

The reason for this, in this case, is simple – a new thing feels more pressing than an old thing. My writing is an established habit that has a constant satisfaction and progress. This new project is about learning things and will only take a few weeks to have a sharable thing, something to show for it. Whereas writing takes months. Each project probably only see the light of day after six to eight months of thoughtfully tapping buttons at my desk. The appeal of a shorter term project is appealing.

The darnedest thing is, though, that amidst all this lost writing productivity, I am not mad at my drawing project. I have learned a lot, brushed up on script writing techniques, thought about characters in more visual ways and had a loverly time watching movies while I drew my silly cave rocks and goblin cats.

Making things is fun. While I will probably always consider myself to be a writer first and foremost, learning to draw has been hitting a different creative urge, and I am finding it immensely satisfying, even if it has slowed my writing down a great deal.

As I said in my last post, I have been using eBay recently for the first time in many years. I have even made a pretty reasonable amount of money in exchange for the things which were on my shelf gathering dust.

On paper, it’s gone quite well. Let’s have a look at a sample here:

I purchased a comic book collected volume about five years ago and thanks to the label on the front, I know I paid £8.99 for it. I got it from Forbidden Planet in Coventry if you are curious. I have had my enjoyment out of it as both a good read, and ornament and a dust cover for my shelf.

Fast-forward to now, when I list it on eBay for £6.95 and £2.30 postage and packaging, as guided by the tools in the app.

It sold, and now I have to wrap and send it.

I spent £3 on bubble wrap, £2 on brown paper and £2 on tape. This stuff will be good for probably six or more packages but the total cost seems to average out to around £1 per item for packaging.

Each package takes me up to, but rarely exceeding, 10 minutes to package and affix the label. Assuming I am sending more than one item per ‘session,’ then I am most likely spending no more than 5 minutes per package.

If we assume the source product cost is only the cost of the packaging and time to deliver the package to the carrier, including queueing because it is a dusty book which I don’t want, then we have a financial cost of £1 and a time cost of no more than 20 minutes if it is a single package. We are not counting fuel to get to the store here because I usually drop things off as I pass on the way back from work.

The minimum wage in the UK is £11.44 which is about 19p a minute, so the 20 minutes time has a minimum cost of £3.80. So a single package has a total cost of £4.80.

• Sale value: £6.95
• Total cost: £4.80
• Profit: £2.15

eBay is not worth the effort for anything with a sale value of about £16.00, unless you are selling in bulk or value your own time less than minimum wage.

Time to donate some stuff, I think.

The things.

It has recently come to my attention that a lot of the stuff in my office has dust on it. This isn’t because I fail to clean my house (I mean, in part it is. Who ‘dusts’?) but it is more that the things in my office are so infrequently used that dust builds up.

The last time I sat down and read a physical comic may have been almost two years ago. Yet, there are two full shelves of trade-paperback in my office.

The last time I read a physical book (other than those in the theology category) was… I hmm… I don’t know. I have had a Kindle for almost a decade and even when I have a physical book, I prefer e-books so usually end up reading the digital versions of things, despite owning the print copy. For reasons I don’t understand, I really like reading theology books in print. Outside of those… Nope, no idea. Yet still, there are books dripping from every shelf of my office.

The last time I played a game that wasn’t from the 90s was almost a year ago, but still, the steam deck sat there with its controllers, power adapters and network cable.

I never need to access my USB ports, but still, the USB dock sat on the desk, proudly at hand.

The butterflies.

I am a productivity enthusiast. I love to-do lists, task managers, calendars and notes. I optimise my workflow and review those optimisations regularly. I enjoy feeling like I am becoming a more optimal version of myself. It brings me great satisfaction. This is a mindset which I bring to my writing, more recently to my drawing, to my professional life and to my personal life. I love to feel that I am improving over time.

Recently, though, the word ‘minimalism’ has appeared on my radar more than once. Actually, it came up on YouTube a lot. I saw multiple videos about people depriving themselves of things to live simpler, save money, and they claimed, be happier. Mostly, I don’t believe them.

“A minimalist lifestyle is a philosophy that involves living with fewer possessions and commitments, and focusing on quality over quantity. It can be a way to reduce distractions, cut back on spending, and gain more clarity on what’s important.”

One example was the Nicholas Garofola channel. While I enjoy his videos a great deal, his way of life is not for me. Not at all. I also stumbled across a man who was trying to live his life from a single bag. I totally ignored that guy. There are plenty of people talking about the topic of living with less on Reddit’s Productivity pages.

I was recommended a book. The book was Everything That Remains which was written by podcasting duo, The Minimalists. I try to, at least, have a look at books which are recommended to me more than once. This one looked interesting to me, so I grabbed it on sale (on Kindle) and let it simmer for a few weeks. It soon became the book I would slowly read through while eating my lunch at work. The book recounted one man’s journey from active businessman, and excessive consumer, to becoming one half of The Minimalists. It chronicled how his life and attitudes changed, and then he shared the story of the benefits he reaped.

I don’t want to write a book review right now, but it’s well worth reading, mostly because it’s so incredibly well written.

Since reading it, I think I have gained an insight into what these minimalist enthusiasts are talking about. And then it happened. I noticed all the things. The comics, the books, the technology and the objects.

I considered if the stuff on my shelves was really worth the space, given that a lot of the books had a layer of dust across them.

Within a few weeks, I had started to eject more and more from my house. Anything which didn’t serve a purpose began being donated, traded, sold or binned. I used the momentum the book gave me to spark a purge of sorts. Clean house, clean mind. Or at least that was the plan.

The issue is that the more I ejected from my home, the better I felt. My bedroom is currently so organised that it feels like I just moved in, and instead of striking me as impersonal, the clarity of the spartan space has made its purpose more clear. I am sleeping better and generating less untidy things to clean up.

My office, however, has still got too much stuff, and this is in part a problem of practicality. I realised that I used to love comic books. The layer of dust on the top of them tells me that I don’t love them anymore. I don’t think I have for a long time. Many of them have enough value to make it worth an eBay listing, which takes time, so I am, slowly, ejecting them from their shelves and into the post office bag. The Steam Deck already went to CEX in exchange for a few hundred quid.

Not even the start

I doubt that the book, or ideology to which I was exposed on YouTube started something for me. In fact, I think I have been on this journey for a while now and hadn’t realised it. I wrote a post here a little while ago where I talked about value, time and productivity. I recounted my desire to play less games, do more fulfilling things and spend my time in ways which I felt that added to my life. I have always thought of myself as a utilitarian at heart, and perhaps he somewhat lapsed over the last few years. It it however loverly to feel once again that I am back on track with my time, my home and my finances.

You may have raised an eyebrow when I said finances but honestly the more minimalist way of looking at things makes you trend towards purchasing less and purchasing better. Something which I have realised has happened organically.

Using less YouTube, playing less games and reaping more from my time has been wonderful and adding a minimalist inspired lens to that has really compounded the clarity and I feel like I am on the path to something rewarding.

A lesson?

As much as I don’t imagine I will ever be a minimalist, I do think that there are lessons to be learned from the ideology. The lesson is to think about what comes in your home, and life, to consider how it will eventually leave.

Seeing the things I have moved on from lose all value to me has reminded me that things I may want in the future will also, one day, lose value to me. This has made me more frugal, generally speaking, as well as making me consider if a purchase is worth the utility it offers over time. It has also made me think deeply about the environment and I have realised that most of the things around me are there because they were useful, or wanted. Not because they are useful, or wanted. The more stuff I eject from my home, the happier I have been, thus far, without exception.

I think taking the time to google all the people talking about minimalism on the internet is well worth the time. Thinking about things like a minimalist, even when you are not one (and don’t want to be one) has an impact and makes you reflect on what you do want out of the material items in your life.

I plan on coming back to this post in a few months and asking myself if the musings which were in my mind as I wrote it are still in there, and report back to see if it truly took hold.

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