Categories
India Misc.

New Delhi Smog Update: At Least the Temps are Dropping

So, what’s up with the air pollution here in New Delhi?

Here’s an update:

It’s still bad.

The PM2.5 reading yesterday morning was in the 300s. Which is not good.

But it’s not all terrible news.

Winter temps are here, which I love. Lows are dropping down to the 50s Fahrenheit, which is about 10 Celsius.

Sweater weather…just about! After nearly a decade in tropical Bangkok and Singapore, I am still giddy at the prospect of winter.

You take the good with the bad.

Categories
Humor Misc.

Story of the Day, Arkansas Pug Tuxedo Edition

The AP reports:

A former administrative assistant to an Arkansas county official has pleaded guilty to fraudulent use of a credit card after prosecutors accused her of using public money to buy personal items, including a tuxedo for her pet pug.

Lest you think all the purchases were frivolous, among them were not just diamond jewelry and “sequined throw pillows” but also pet insurance, the AP says.

So there’s that.

Categories
Misc.

Weekend Sketching: Pen and Ink is Therapeutic 

After sketching in pencil the other weekend — and toiling forever to get the angles right — I decided to ditch the graphite this time and go straight to pen and ink. 




It felt liberating. 

With ink, provided you don’t put down any pencil lines first, you have to just commit and draw. There’s much less belaboring of every little detail. 

There’s probably a metaphor for life in there somewhere. Stop tweaking and trying to be perfect and just get it done already. 

Categories
Misc.

Image of the Day: Map of China, Seen from the East

2017 05 22 china from east

Can’t say I’d ever contemplated the country from this perspective.

Via Marginal Revolution.

Christopher Jared, who apparently sent in the image, writes in the comments:

I have used this perspective of China for insight many times. Look at the proximity of Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and then what is in the middle? A large green, fertile patch… a middle kingdom. Whenever I am thinking about events in Chinese history, recent or ancient, it is this perspective that is most helpful to understanding.

Note: Taiwan would be grey because it was under Japanese rule in 1941, the date of the map.

Categories
Misc.

Why I’m Excited about Manton Reece’s Microblogging Effort

Silo

I’ve always wanted to find a way to easily include small bits of text or images here on Newley.com that I would otherwise post only on silos owned Twitter, Facebook or Instagram.

I’m talking about links, observations, snapshots — not full blog posts, which I’ll continue to write, but rather fun little snippets that I’d nevertheless like to have a record of here.

After all, this site has been my own, tiny little part of the web since 2002, before those platforms ever emerged. Who knows what they’ll look like in the decades ahead.

I want to have all my personal content hosted here, under my control, but I still want to take advantage of these social platforms’ reach.

So I was really excited to read recently about Manton Reece‘s new Micro.Blog effort, part of a successful Kickstarter campaign called Indie Microblogging.

2017 05 14microblogging

I’ve signed up for the service — I’m @Newley) — though visiting that link won’t tell you much about how it all works. It essentially provides a platform that pulls together micro-posts from individuals’ blogs.

The setup allows me to post here first, and then those items are pulled in via RSS to Micro.Blog, a central repository for such posts, and then they’re distributed elsewhere.

It’s all based on the “POSSE” concept: Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere.

The end result doesn’t change much for folks reading this blog — though you’ll likely see a higher volume of much shorter items — but it’s fun to think about my site truly becoming the default repository for my ramblings writings and photos, just like it was before the rise of social media.

2017 05 14windows

Anyway, you may have seen some of these microblog posts here and in the main Newley.com RSS feed of late.

(In WordPress, I use the Aside post type, which renders a bit differently than normal posts, with no title and a blue background. I also created a new Snippets category, with its own RSS feed that’s pulled into Micro.Blog.)

If you’d like to get my microblog snippets separately, that RSS feed is:

https://newley.com/category/snippets/feed/

Stay tuned for more. I’d also like to figure out a way to remove the microblog posts from my main feed, in case folks would only like to see my longer dispatches.

Categories
Misc. Snippets

Frightening observation of the day:

Fidget spinners have started showing up on EDC blogs. 

Categories
India Life Misc. Tech

The difference between saying something and actually doing it 

About a quarter of the time I take Ubers here in Delhi the driver asks me, when I get out, to give him a five-star rating. (Drivers must maintain a certain rating to ensure they can continue working on the platform.)

Usually I just nod my head and say “yeah okay,” and proceed to give them whatever score I would have given them anyway. 

The other day a driver did something different. 

As I was getting out of the car he said “sir” to get my attention, then pointed at his phone, where he had selected five stars in his rating for me

Then when he saw I was looking, he pressed submit.

When it came time for me to score him later, I also gave him a similar rating. 

He was a good driver indeed, but he also understood the law of reciprocity. He knew the difference between just saying something and actually taking action. And that I may well feel inclined to help him out too (since riders are also ranked). 

Clever. 

Categories
Misc. Sports

Is This Arsenal’s Year?

Alexis Sanchez just scored a panenka in the 98th minute to secure three points for #Arsenal and move into second place — after Arsenal gave up a foolish penalty just a few minutes earlier in stoppage time. 

Chelsea have a five point lead with a game in hand. 

But still. 
But still:
Could this be our year? 

UPDATE: Naturally, Chelsea won and the gap is back to eight points. As you were. 

Categories
Misc.

On Streaming Music in Low-Connectivity Environments

Living in India has given me an entirely new perspective on user experience challenges to streaming music services in emerging markets, where connectivity is often weak.

Never mind on mobile: Even at home, on Wi-Fi, services from the big players — Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music — are often difficult to use.

This actually has me considering using…mp3s (!) again.

Categories
Misc.

My Top 10 Posts from 2016

2016 12 30blogging

Here are the ten most popular posts from Newley.com this year, measured by number of visits.

I will refrain from speculating on the reasons. Food, tech, weird animals, soccer — the Internet, I learned a long time ago, works in mysterious ways.

  1. Recommended: Decker Barbeque, Texas-Style BBQ in Singapore — A report from what is, if you ask me, the best purveyor of smoked meat products in the city-state.
  2. My iPhone Home Screen, Early 2016 — There have been some tweaks of late. Stay tuned for an update.
  3. Rise of the ‘Coyowolf’ — Part Wolf, Part Dog, Part Coyote — This one has drawn a lot of search engine traffic. I’m not sure why. People seem to really love coyowolves.
  4. Why You Shouldn’t be Surprised When England Lose — This was written, I must point out, just five hours before the team…lost to Iceland in the Euros.
  5. The 10 Must-Have Apps I Install on Every New Mac — You can’t go wrong with a top ten post for Mac geeks!
  6. By Me Yesterday: India’s Paytm Sees Surge in Usage After Demonetization — This was merely an excerpt from a story of mine. I suspect many folks have been looking up mobile payment services here in India of late.
  7. Single, Individually Wrapped Bananas for Sale in Singapore — Truly an amazing food product.
  8. IPhone 6 Touchscreen Problems? You’re Not Alone — This issue persisted for me. And I was forced to ditch my device. More soon on that. I am not pleased.
  9. By Me Last Week: Facebook Asia-Pac VP Dan Neary Talks Growth in the Region — A link to my story.
  10. Book Notes — ‘Deep Work,’ by Cal Newport — My thoughts on the popular treatise on the importance of uninterrupted, complex work.

Onward to 2017!