I read this post during my lunch a couple of weeks ago, and it reminded me of why I wanted to start posting more regularly on my blog. I want to a place where I can write publicly to try and develop my prose.

One of my favourite ways of to relax is by reading. I enjoy a good book and relish the opportunity to sit in a comfy chair and immerse myself in whatever world the author has crafted—a world they bring to life with their words, but which I bring to life with my imagination. When I approach a book with this understanding, reading transforms from a solo pastime (as many people believe it to be) into a partnership. You become the reading half of a partnership that happens asynchronously with the writer. The writer brings their ideas to life in words, but as the reader, you bring those words to life in your imagination.

When I realised this was the case, writing became something far richer and the type of writing I wanted to create became more meaningful. I realised I didn’t want to write purely to communicate an idea, I wanted to write something that connected with the reader. I wanted my part of the reading partnership to be more enriching for both the reader and writer together. I wanted to learn to write as a craft and to create prose that was enriching to those who read it regardless of the topic.

To me this is what makes a good writer: a person who can communicate an idea, tell a tale, or spin a yarn in such a way that makes reading a joy. They turn ten minutes into two hours without you even realising it. A person who can use words to carry the reader away from the troubles of this world and into a place that lets their imagination run riot.

We live in a world so focused on producing more, doing more, being quicker, and being so productive that the artist gets lost. Writing becomes instructional and functional such that it loses its whimsy or poetic nature. We must communicate what we want in the quickest way possible so that our short attention spans can cope and we don’t move on before the meat of a message is communicated. Of course there is an art to writing in this way, but I fear we are forgetting how to write in the traditional sense of writing. In a way that evokes emotions and engages all our senses. The best stories are the ones that use language to engage more than just our minds. We can smell what the character smells, hear what the character hears, see what they see, and our emotions connect with what they feel. We become part of the story as we turn each page and move from chapter to chapter. That is the kind of writing I wish to create and that is the kind of writing I wish to read.

I sat and watched the world go by this morning whilst enjoying a delicious cup of coffee. It was early on a Saturday morning, but people were up and about, beginning their weekend—perhaps going to work or running some early errands. I like people-watching; it’s interesting to think what people are doing. Why is that man rushing? Why does that lady, bless her, look so nervous?

This morning, what caught my attention was the clothes everyone was wearing, and in an incredibly judgemental moment I found my self wondering: when did we become such slobs? I include myself in this, but no one looked like they had paid any attention to what they were wearing. I had grabbed my jeans, a t-shirt, and a sweat shirt. There was a lady who looked like she was still wearing her pyjamas, a man in clothes that were three sizes too big for him, a girl in clothes three sizes too small for her, and a man wearing mismatched shoes. Not one person looked like they had made any effort to ensure they looked respectable before leaving the house. We are, generally, an under dressed society.

Recently, I’ve been watching some period dramas—one set in Austria in the early 1900s and one set in Yorkshire in the 1920s and 30s. I’ve also recently seen videos of London in this same period, and the one thing which stands out above everything else is how well everyone is dressed. The ladies all look fabulous; today, they would look like they are dressed for a special occasion, but back then, it was standard attire. The men, likewise, are all well turned out. Suits for all, overcoats, hats, polished shoes, pocket squares—not an open collar in sight. Effort has been made all around, and it’s clear everyone has checked themselves in the mirror before they’ve left the house.

This speaks, to me, of a general common courtesy and respect for themselves and the people around them. I know on the occasions when I get to dress up, I feel good; it makes me stand taller and hold my head higher. People treat you with respect, and you are more likely to put in the extra effort to show the same back. The world today is different, but I can’t help wondering: if we all made a little more effort to present ourselves to the world in a more respectable manner, perhaps we would all treat each other with a little more respect and kindness.

I’m trying out a new way of getting myself back to blogging. I miss it a great deal but I always find myself not posting when I am not happy with my setup or design of my site. So I’ve decided to try out a new thing.

For a long time my social posting, or micro-blogging, has taken place on Micro.blog. I share small posts, photos, some links, whatever takes my fancy and whenever I feel like posting. It has worked well for me. It let’s me have my own domain (philbowell.me) and works with the wider web both through federation and because it’s a normal website. My main personal site, or Macro blog if you will, has been hosted elsewhere. Since Wordpress got complicated and became more a CMS than a blogging engine it’s moved around a few times. Not long ago I landed back on Wordpress in an attempt to find something familiar. It didn’t work and my blog fell quiet once again.

Life is seasonal and so is blogging or writing in a public space, but of late I’ve felt that itch to find a way to build a personal site. So I’ve decided to host my Macro blog on Micro.blog to see if it gives me the impetus to build something that’s my own again. I plan to spend some time writing here, trying to understand the theming engine and how I can build my own design. I want to add pages for things I use and read, maybe my portfolio can find a home here as well. I feel like this is a good fit for me at the moment. I have a fresh file in Figma which I’m slowly crafting a new design in, and hope to begin translating that to code soon.

I’ve started to try and customise things already, and for the first time on my blog I’ve switched to a one post a page system. I’ve seen it work well on other sites and I like that it makes each entry feel individual as well as part of a whole. Almost like chapters in a book (which might give you a hint as to the direction my design is heading). For now we will see how I get on, and hope that I have landed on a space that I can make my own.

I don’t do these posts very often. In fact, it’s been many years since I wrote something like this, but with WWDC starting tonight and Apple announcing lots of new software features I’m actually excited to see what they bring. I thought it might be fun to have a look at my wishlist and then come back and see what Apple did against it.

One Siri to rule them all…

It’s long driven me mad that Siri is different on all my Apple devices. I have iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV, and HomePod minis with Siri on each device having different capabilities is maddening. It stops me from using it as much as I otherwise would because it’s such a frustrating user experience. Hopefully with the new Siri that looks set to be announced that will change.

“AI” that’s intelligently integrated

I’ve played around with both ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini over the last year or so, and while I’ve found some utility with it, what I really want is for my devices to make my work easier not do it for me.

I’ve no interest in my computer doing my work so I can do the washing up, I want it to do the bits of my work that are dull and repetitive so that I am free to do the creative stuff I enjoy. Plan my day for me by looking at my tasks in Things and my calendar in Outlook without me having to do it.

A smarter Health app

As part of the AI that’s intelligently integrated, I’d love to see Apple bring together all the elements of the health app in a way that will help me get and stay healthy. I have a recipe app (Mela) with nearly 200 recipes in it, I try to track my food intake with FoodNoms, my phone tracks my movement, and my smart scales track my weight. Take all of this information, work out that I’m trying to lose weight, and build me a food and exercise plan.

A coherent sports experience

When Apple released their Sports app I was really intrigued, it’s full of promise, but in the UK it’s not so great. I get my news from The Athletic and Sky Sports News, I use an app for live activities when Forest are playing, and I have another app for F1 live activities. The Euros are coming but there’s no sign of it in Apple Sports. I would love for them to bring all this together. Have the Sports app do live activities for football, bring the news for the teams I follow from Apple News into the Sports app, and make it my hub for Sports.

Reimagine tvOS

This is a long stretch, but reimagine tvOS to make it more useful. I have an Apple TV in my bedroom and rely on my TV’s apps for the living room, but if they could add more utility to tvOS I would look to add one for my main tv. Widgets would be a good start, but really I’d like to see it be more intelligent too. I’m watching NCIS at the moment, surface the next episode without me having to go into apps to find it. Display the weather on my home screen and give me more home controls. Make it the hub of the home. Make Siri absolutely sing on it. Steal Amazon’s x-Ray and add it to all apps that use the built in player. Let me tell the Apple TV I have a PS4 and have it surface the option to fire it up.

These are all unlikely, but if I can have one tvOS wish for this year, it would be the ability to attach an apps profile to my Apple TV profile so I don’t have to select who is watching in every single app every time I open them.

A passwords app

Last week I finally got tired of 1Password’s Safari extension never working and decided to move all my passwords to iCloud Keychain. I’ve yet to work move the one time password codes over, and I’m not sure how I’m going to work with Chrome for the times I need it, but it’s already been a nicer experience. It would be great to have a dedicated app that’s not tucked away in settings for the times I’ need to hunt down a password. This one seems like it might actually happen this year, but then we thought that last year as well.

Those are a few of the things I’d like to see Apple announce tonight. I’m not expecting many of them to make an appearance, but it’s a fun exercise and it will be interesting to revisit it and see.

There’s a strange pressure that comes with blogging which is created entirely by me. When I first started blogging, I used to post whatever I wanted to, no matter what it was. It was easier, and there was a kind of carefree nature to it. Somewhere along the way, that got lost. Whether it was the disappearance of the personal blog or the pressure to write something that mattered, I’m not sure. All I know is that somewhere along the road I stopped posting because I didn’t feel like I had anything to say.

I recently saw a post on Threads, I didn’t save it, but it said this:

Why does no one like my art?

I don’t post on Threads, nor do I ever reply. I think I saw it through Instagram, but my reaction was a simple question: why does it matter?

I’ve always viewed art as something created for the artist, not for the audience. The great masters didn’t paint for other people; they painted because they wanted to. It was for themselves. They had a compulsion to create something, and they did it.

Over the last week, I’ve wanted to write a post on multiple occasions. Each time, I’ve started and then lost my enthusiasm for what I’ve been writing. This evening, when I sat down to write something, I didn’t know where to start. That Threads post came to mind, and I realised what I’ve been trying to write hasn’t been what I’ve wanted to. It’s been about trying to look good, to be professional, to be intelligent. The honest truth is it wasn’t me. I’m not saying I’m not those things; what I’m saying is I should write what I want too regardless of whether anyone likes it or not.

I could easily say, why does no one like my blog? But the truth is that it doesn’t matter. It’s my blog, after all, just as the art is the artists. We should create because we want to, not because we want others to like us.

Over the last year or so, if not longer, I’ve been dissatisfied with my writing and note taking environment. I’ve been using Obsidian on and off for most of that time, but consistently leaves me frustrated the setup, especially on my iPad which is where I do the majority of my personal writing.

In that time when I’ve not been using Obsidian it’s because I’ve been trying another app out. Most of the time those have not stuck and I’ve ended up back in Obsidian. Last week though, I came across a blog post which made me have another look at an app I’ve previously dismissed.

Bear is an app that I’ve been aware of but never really properly invested any time in looking at. I tried the early versions but at the time I was using Ulysses and the feature set of Bear didn’t warrant a change. Consequently Bear disappeared off my radar, but after reading the blog post by Robert Breen I realised that Bear might actually be the app I’ve been looking for. So I’ve downloaded it, moved all my notes across from Obsidian, spent a little time tidying up the app and recreating my file structure with Bear’s tags. It’s going well.

This all begs the question, what’s wrong with Obsidian. It’s popular and the people who use it love it, why have I moved on?

On the Mac Obsidian is fine, its theme makes it feel like it belongs despite some of the janky behaviour but on the iPad and iPhone it’s a completely different story. Opening the app on those devices usually met me with a screen telling me that Obsidian was downloading and indexing my files. It would often crash and when it didn’t it would freeze and be unresponsive for a long period before I could open or create a note. Bear on the other hand syncs quickly, so fast that it’s not noticeable, and I can open or create a note without losing my train of thought.

Bear’s shortcut support is excellent and seems to be on a par with the level of shortcuts support in my task manager of choice, Things. In contrast Obsidian requires a third party app, some configuration, and once working a constant question mark over whether the shortcut will work or fail. This opens Bear up to better automation and integration with other apps I use on a daily basis, it helps the app to feel like it belongs and that it’s a good citizen of the platforms in which it lives.

I’m still in the early days of making this move and we all know that the grass is always greener on the other side. We’ll have to see how I’m feeling in a few weeks time and whether the shine has faded, but first impressions are good and Bear looks like it could be a keeper.

This is a post which I’ve had brewing in the back of my mind since September. This year marks the end of my 3rd decade, September will be my 40th birthday the end of what has turned out to be quite a hard decade. A look in the mirror and I can see how hard it has been.

At the start of the year I weighed myself and had a little bit of a shock. My weight hasn’t just gone up, it’s ballooned and I am the heaviest I have ever been by a large margin. What’s worse is that I look at photos of myself and am shocked at the size of my stomach and my physique. One thing is clear. It’s time to change and do something about it.

This week I’m going to begin a trifecta of things. I’m going to start tracking what I’m eating and how much. I eat a lot of fresh food, but also a lot of convenience food, so that needs to change. My initial aim with tracking what I’m eating is to make myself more aware and then to try and make some more healthier choices.

Secondly I’m going to drink more water. I have a large water bottle that can hold two litres of water. I’m going to build a routine of filling that up first thing in the morning and finishing it by the end of the day. If I want something sweeter or a soft drink I will go for sparkling water and a slice of fruit.

Thirdly, I need to start exercising. I optimistically joined a gym back in September and have been a grand total of once a month since. I’m going to cancel my membership and use the money to subscribe to Fitbod instead. Then I am going to add calendar appointments for workouts throughout the week.

I’m sharing this in an effort to try and build a commitment with myself. I plan to share my progress each month with how I’m doing on each of these three fronts. If I can establish some good habits in the next month I will start to share some of the statistics around my weight, but for now this is all I’m comfortable sharing.

One of my aims for this year is to try and develop some more healthy foundations or habits in my life. For many years now I’ve wanted to blog more regularly like I did in the very early days of discovering what the small web could be. It was a place of individuals sharing their lives and thoughts on their own websites. Comments were on, people linked to each other, and a feeling of community developed.

In the years since my blog has been through many incarnations, it’s been Wordpress powered, Jekyll powered, Micro.blog, and back to Wordpress. But one thing for certain is that posting over the last decade has dwindled to almost nothing, but with the odd renaissance here and there. The desire to blog has always been there but for one reason or another never lasted, or more accurately I was never able to form it into a habit like I used too.

Over the last year I’ve noticed a significant change in what I call the small web. I’ve found a lot more personal blogs who post regularly and, most importantly, interesting content. It’s sparked my creativity again, and so I’m taking some steps to start again.

One of the barriers that I’ve struggled with over the last years is that I’ve wanted my blog to be too complicated. I wanted to have small posts to replace twitter, links to be bookmarks, as well as a place to share my work, and write longer posts like this one. What I’ve realised is that when I enjoyed blogging in the early days (2007ish era) it was a lot simpler. To begin with I had one post type and it was a lot easier and a lot more fun. I realised that I needed to return to that level of simplicity if I was ever going to form a new habit of blogging regularly. So that’s what I’m doing.

I’ve installed a new theme that takes away the temptation to try and add new types of posts and instead places an emphasis on writing blog posts. So that’s what I intend to do with more regularity.