The past week has been crazy hot, the highest reaching 105ºF or maybe higher. I chose the wrong week to go on a walk, as I felt exhausted hours after the walk. And the hot weather/excessive heat warning continues onto next week as well.
Enjoying 150 Calorie Keto ice cream
The flip side of the sorching heat is the ability to enjoy ice creams. I have been enjoying Keto’s zero sugar added ice creams 🍦and lower 50 calorie ice creams from N!cks.
Happy 4th of July!
Attempts to watch the firework show in a nearby park was futile as there was just too much traffic. There were individual fireworks in a street nearby which was was a close up view and suprisingly very good.
Microsoft Edge 😵💫
I put myself through an uncomformble experience by thinking that for a short time(which turned out to be longer than I had thought) I could get away with using Edge on my Thinkpad running Windows. There were some compelling reasons for why I had to use Windows in the first place since I have largely been/am a Linux/MacOS guy.
It was a horrendous experience. The start page is just sooooooooo cluttered. Starring at it for few minutes could cause dizziness. There is just so much happening. Bing with AI integration is a whole different mess.
I can pin some of frustrations while using my thinkpad to using Edge. Oopening a new tab and looking at the start page causes my state of mind to change from calm to irritable. If I may Edge experience with its start page is worse than using Internet Explorer.
The startup page could use a face lift be default shouldn’t be so cluttered. The devs could literally look at any major browser out there and learn to keep defaults simple. There might be an option to turn the start up page. Didn’t explore that possibillty because I honestly didn’t think it would be this horrible. Some people might like having all those information show up but I am certainly not the target audience for it. Even if I did, I would like to create it myself.
Productivity Corner
It is no surprise in our world of gadgets, it takes an extra bit of effort on our part to not get distracted by the plethora of notifications that flood our devices.
And like you would might have guessed, the answer to the question of how to ward off these distractions is to keep clear from your devices. But there is donot disturb mode? Even so, our brains are so tuned to looking at devices that even when though we might have just checked our phones it has become a reflex to check again.
I noticed that keeping my iphone and iwatch away helped me stay on course with my time blocks and complete more tasks. I always pegged that my watch wouldn’t be a source of my distraction because it is always on donot disturb until earlier this week when I put my watch on charge and forgot to wear it.
The solution isn’t necessarily to stop using tech but we should be more mindful of the habits we cultivate when using them. If you don’t have the issue of constantly needintg check your phone or watch then putting it on do not disturb should do the trick.
But if you have the Phantom Phone Vibrations, to break away from it you could benefit from avoiding having them(distracting gadgets) around nearby or in the same room. Cal Newport suggests this on his podcasts too. Which is to have a designated place for your phone and if you wanted to check you would need to go and use it only in that place/corner.
Paddle shifters
When making the shift from a stick shift GTI to Mazda 3 automatic, one of the marketting traps I fell into was paddle shifters.
The best of both worlds promise. In the 5 years of Mazda ownership not once have I used the paddle shifters. And it simply doesn’t come close to the feel of driving stick shift/ manual transmission.
WHY?
Because underneath it is still automatic, there is no timing the upshift/downshift. Even after setting the gear to manual if you don’t upshift the automatic transmission takes over and it changes the behavior to ‘D’ 🤷🏻♂️.
I got the Grand touring model because it gave me a heads up display, paddle shifters, and a bunch of other features which on paper really excited me. 5 years later none of them became essential enough to justify my decission to pay extra🤦♂️.
Finance tip: When making purchases only pay for the feature you need. Don’t buy into the hype if you can resist it1.
On that note another waste of money was: paying for service/extended warranty. By default all the cars come wit 36k or 50k power train warranty which the manufacturer covers at no cost to the consumer. And the service money you pay is way more than if you actually did the regular maintance out of pocket(which on a new car is pretty much oil change and air filter change).
Random musings
Its been a few years since I have actively involed in the act of watching posrts live.
I follow Cricket(IPL, Indian national team), Football (English Premier League and Champions League- Chelsea fan) and Tennis. Over the years my enthusiasm levels to watch the games live has nose dived rather sharply.
Now, I don’t know if it because the stars I followed and admired have retired or if adulting2 is catching on to me. Or the team I support is 🤦♂️ <.< looking at you ChelseaFC.
TI(R)L
My html/css skills are atrophying. I had to relearn the “title” attribute in html tags.
In this post I added a css to blur text out. I wanted a tooltip for anyone who doesn’t already know how to see the text by adding a tool tip. I was googling css for showing a tooltip on hover for about 15 minutes with little luck only to be taught/reminded in one of SO threads that there is a “title” attribute to achieve just that without having to get into the css.
<p class="redacted" **title="text when you hover over the element"**"">
Through the lens
