Tech make-overs and underrated sci-fi flicks

THE STORY SO FAR

• I'm best known for the series Everything is a Remix.

• I'm pivoting away from free content creation for financial and personal reasons.

• I'm seeking financial stability and personal fulfillment in the second act of life. Current business candidates for my next phase are video production and turning the Remix site into a source for educational products.

• I'm thinking about all of this here. I might later revise, discard or ridicule any of these statements.

Happy Monday everybody!

First off, a question: are you a teacher or professor interested in helping me learn about how I could serve schools? If yes, please take just a few seconds to send me your info!

This week I’m putting business and life stuff aside and getting geeky. I'm going to talk about my software make-over and wrap-up with a few underrated science fiction films.

My Tech Make-over

Whenever I finish a chapter of life—like moving or completing a large project or y’know stopping doing the thing I’ve done for a couple decades—I always feel compelled to clean house in a variety of ways. I tidy up my workstation and do chores that have been kicking around for months. I organize my computer, archive old stuff, and clean up my desktop. Although even at the worst of times, gotta say my desktop is pretty dang tidy.

But the most impact comes from the improvements I make to my software workflow. Occasionally these changes don’t stick, occasionally they end up being horizontal moves, but mostly, they’re meaningful upgrades to how I work.

Here’s my tech changes from recent years. (Some of these are Mac only.)

The Switch
For writing I switched from the writing application Scrivener to the note taking application Obsidian.
The Result
Excellent move but Scrivener is great and might work well for you.

The Switch
For video editing I switched from Adobe Premiere to Davinci Resolve.
The Result
Entirely superior application, great move, many other video editors are now following suit. This also saved plenty of money. Everything after This is Not a Conspiracy Theory has been made in Resolve.

The Switch
For photo editing and graphics work I switched from Photoshop to Affinity Photo.
The Result
This also saved money and it works well enough for me because I don’t use Photoshop that much anymore. But Photoshop is still the best and if I did more graphics work I would switch back.

I've also made new additions, like the Mac-only application Drafts. This is where I do transient bits of writing, like important messages or posts, handy references, notes from meetings—actually I’m writing this newsletter in Drafts! (Obsidian is more like a personal library, a “second brain.” Drafts is more like a notepad.)

And I love Text Sniper for capturing bits of onscreen text. Can’t say enough good things about this application and I use it almost everyday.

Here’s the changes I’ve made in recent months during The Middle Age Pivot. Some of these are still on-going.

The Switch
For browsing, switched from Brave to the Arc Browser, which is still a beta.
The Result
It’s better, do it. You can probably find an invite in this Twitter thread. I made this video with Nick Milo about Arc.

The Switch
Although I’ve run a Mac for a long time, I didn’t actually use much Apple software or services. I didn't even have an iPhone. But now I’ve now joined the Apple Cult.
The Result
I realize this choice isn’t very exciting or original, but in my new dad life using Apple everywhere makes life easier. Everything works well, connects well and the user interface is consistent. I now use Apple Music, Podcasts and Notes regularly. I’m even trying out Apple News for news. I now have an Apple Watch. I love being reachable all the time by my family, and I often use it for podcasts, alarms and UV readings here in sunny San Diego. Nora got me AirPods Pro for Christmas and I love them so so much. Nora and I use Photos all the time for family photos and it’s one of our absolute favorite things. These all get synced up to an ever-ballooning iCloud account. (I tried to use Siri with my watch for a while and gave up.)

The verdict is not yet in on these current switches.

• Trying Spark email client for business email. I’ve used Gmail forever, but I’ve moved the Remix addresses to iCloud. This is just an area where I’m looking to freshen things up and have a feeling of renewal.

• I’m moving away from Notion, Apple Reminders and Asana and trying ClickUp for task and project management. The free plans have everything most of us will ever need.

• I’m likely switching to the very exciting, kinda geeky launcher Raycast, which would replace three apps: Alfred, TextExpander, and Default Folder.

• A lot of business and productivity books are padded and shouldn’t be 300 pages long, and I often find podcasts fluffy and meandering. I’m currently using Blinkist for 20 minute summaries. I still read the most important books, but for the next tier down, this is seeming like a great way to pick up some good bits.

And these old-timers hang in there year after year.

• 1Password for passwords.

• iStat Menus gives me system and network stats I sometimes need.

• Slack for messaging.

• Breaktime for focusing. I set it to 52 minutes, then take a break. I’m sporadic at this.

• Chronosync for backups.

• DropBox is still the best for online file storage. I like WeTransfer for sending large files.

• We need Excel for the business so we use Microsoft 365 or whatever it’s called this week.

All told, almost my entire suite of applications has been replaced over the past few years, including stalwarts like Scrivener and the Adobe suite. These changes have been overwhelmingly beneficial.

3 underrated science fiction films

While researching my final video, Artificial Creativity, I watched (or at least skimmed) lots of science fiction films looking for robots and rockets. These three are the most underrated.

3) Europa Report
Ultra low budget film about a research mission to one of Saturn’s moons, the ice-covered Europa.

2) Sunshine
This is gorgeous big budget sci-fi and still looks fantastic. There are definitely issues. I won’t spoil it by saying what they are but you’ll see for yourself.

1) Aniara
Based on a Swedish epic poem from the fifties, this film is about a massive, cruise-like spaceship taking settlers to Mars. A dark, dark masterpiece that should only be watched when you can handle an unrelenting journey into the abyss.

That’s it for this week folks! I hope you’re all well! We have COVID in the house, so this next while will be… ugh.

Don’t take any wooden nickels,
k

P.S. How about you follow me on all this shit down below?