Hodgepodge
A few short paragraphs about some things on my mind / things I've been doing this week.
Markdown Drafts
I already talked about this so not going too in-depth; but since my displeasure with SimpleNote's crummy captchca, I ultimately decided to just use good old Notepad to create my post drafts so that I can write in Markdown to just select all & copy/paste. I'm happy with this solution.
Notion
Notion was one of the apps I tried for post drafts; I decided it's not the app for me for writing. BUT it is great for databases. I have two very simple databases:
- Saved links
- Tracking my Spotify Daylists (more on that below)
For me this is the perfect use for Notion and it's better at this than Excel or Google Docs.
Spotify Daylists
I was recently turned onto this by a friend on a Discord server. Spotify has these playlists called Daylists that are updated throughout the day with different types of music. From the link:
Throughout the day, your mood changes, and so does the music you listen to. Last night might have been a windows down, thrillwave monday evening, while this moment is more of a ’90s rave rainforest late night. The point is, you’re ever-changing, and your playlists should be too.
I didn't read the whole thing but if I were to guess I'd say they're using AI to generate these playlists (and titles - I'm getting there), based a little bit on what you usually listen to at certain times of day and days of the week. I'm fuzzy on the details. In general the playlists seem alright, there's only one or two times I skipped entirely.
Now, the titles - that's where the true fun is and how I'm using Notion. I find them somewhat funny so I decided I'd keep track of the titles as they get generated throughout the day. Here's a sample:
I don't know how Spotify comes up with some of these titles...the descriptions of music genres are even weirder but it's too much effort to track those as well.
Phone Navigation
Android phones used to have a very basic form of navigation: three buttons. One for recent apps, a "home" button, and a "back" button. In recent versions of Android it's been replaced by a gesture system similar to Apple's swipe up for home & recent apps. But there are also gestures for "back" on both sides of the screen.
I enjoy this navigation method on my Samsung S21+, but sometimes the back gesture can be annoying (especially when cropping photos!). I decided to go back to the three button system, at least as a test to see if I do, in fact, prefer it to gesture navigation. It's only been half a day, and muscle memory keeps wanting to swipe up to go home / use the "back" gesture. I have to give it some time to remember how it works to really test it out.
That's all, folks!
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