Memorable VR experiences
AR/VR and XR have been around for years, if not decades. The most unique VR experience I was involved with was people wearing an immersive headset whilst snorkelling in a pool to experience being “weightless” whilst watching an immersive video. The second most interesting video 360 experience was a ZDF volcanic explosion where you could watch a volcano explode, as if you were in Pompei. You could follow the projectiles as they flew by you.
When Elon Musk bought Twitter he signed the start of the Social Media giant’s implosion. A decade earlier Murdoch had done the same thing to MySpace. In the end he sold MySpace for a fraction of what he had bought it for. We could cry, and bemoan the loss of Twitter but we could also look around, and see what has happened. For years I said that I wanted to leave Twitter, but no one else did, because despite all of its flaws, it had critical mass.
A month or two ago we had the chance to jump on the Substack wagon while it was hot and to ride the wave of new followers and experience a growing community. I could have joined in. I could have become one of those “I’m one of you people” but I didn’t. Substack Life
Substack went from being a newsletter to almost becoming a community of writers. I say “almost”, because for me to consider a community a community it has to behave like a community.
Twitter and Reddit want to charge people to use their API despite already wanting people to pay them directly. Twitter decided to drive users away and make itself more expensive. As a result of this the website is imploding, rather than thriving. Yesterday I read that Reddit, too, wanted to charge users to access its API and whilst this may make sense to some, it’s absurd. It’s absurd because Twitter and Reddit can already charge their users directly for use.
Recently I rediscovered my love of the game solitaire. It is the game we played on windows 3.1 and other windows operating systems, up to iOS and more. Solitaire is a simple game to play on a mobile phone, ipad or computer, whether laptop or desktop. I have found that a game of solitaire can last from two to four minutes between deal and win. It’s the type of game that takes a lot of focus when you’re learning to play it as a child.
For a few days I have been playing with Hugo with Markdown and HTML pages. It says that it is “the world’s fastest framework for building websites” and so far I do notice that it has a key strength that I like. Front Matter
That strength is that with small modifications you can take an existing static website and make it dynamic. Hugo requires that each page has Front Matter. Front matter is:
I like casual gaming. I like to play games on the iPhone when commuting or waiting for something to happen. The problem is that casual gaming is about seeing adverts at the end of every puzzle or challenge. For every game of solitaire, every game of Woodoku and more games, you see adverts. The problem with these adverts is that they’re awful, and they’re for games that are all paid for by adverts rather than by people who enjoy the games enough, to actually pay for the game.
For two weeks or so I have been using a safety razor rather than the usual electric shaver, or conventional three to four blade shavers. In the process I have had to become more attentive to what I am doing. The Usual Shave
With an electric razor you turn it on and you shave, until you’re happy that it’s done. With a wet shave with plastic razors you wet your face, get some shaving foam on your face and shave.
For years I felt comfortable tweeting as myself for two reasons. The fist reason is that we met up so often than tweeting under my actual name made sense. The second reason is that it was a network of friends of friends and we were seldom, if ever trolled. That changed during the pandemic so I chose to tweet under one pseudonym, before another, and then another. The reason is that I felt that I was going to be attacked by people online, if they knew who I was.
A few days ago I took twenty seven thousand steps in barefoot shoes. My feet did not suffer at all from walking that far in such shoes. I did some of that walking in the vapor gloves and the rest in the Trail Gloves. The beauty of barefoot walking is that you acclimate to such shoes quite fast. Within a matter of a week or two they become comfortable and feel normal.