Welcome to the 02022 Omnibus, the point of this post is to look back at previous posts and make various updates that we’ve noticed this year. We started this trend 13 years ago, all the way back in 02009. This is our 12th Omnibus article and things have morphed with time to focus on articles, communications, stats and the website.
This list is getting long, so we created an Omnibus category. That makes it easier to find all these related articles in a single place.
Past Omnibuses:
- 02009 Omnibus
- 02010 Omnibus
- 02011 Omnibus
- 02012 Omnibus
- 02013 Omnibus
- 02014 Omnibus
- 02015 Omnibus
- 02016 Omnibus
- 02017 Omnibus
- 02018 Omnibus (Did not post)
- 02019 Omnibus
- 02020 Omnibus
- 02021 Omnibus
Articles
We published 35 articles this year. 22 of which were weeknotes and 13 non-weeknotes. That works out to be an article every 1.48 weeks. The total 34,369 word count for the 13 non-weeknote articles averaged 981 words each. Of those 13, 4 were about internal topics, 2 about the company and 2 about projects.
- Yankee Candles Levels of Abstraction
- HALT Addiction Relapse
- Color Name Abstractions
- eSIM only iPhone
- Jomon Pottery
- Backups
- PIN Security Scheme
- Apple Remotes
- Link Rot
- Hot Chocolate Teabags
- 02021 Annual Report
- Pool Numbers
- 02021 Omnibus
There are 122 articles in the drafts folder, up 2 from last year. The list continues to grow faster than we can write articles, but maybe that’s a good thing? We set ourselves a publishing schedule and will do our best to stick with it. There is a nice blend of quarterly newsletters (Quarternotes), monthly newsletters (Good Morning), fortnightly weeknotes, and an article or two a month along with various social media posts here and there.
Here are a few updates to previous articles.
eSIM only iPhones
We heard from a friend that their work colleague bought a new iPhone 14 from the USA. When they came back to Iceland, they got burned by the eSIM only feature. The phone failed when trying to use the single sign-on system because without a SIM card, it can’t decode the encryption. We probably have less than 10 months before the next generation of phones in the EU are eSIM only as well. It will be a scramble in October/November to update A LOT of services (including the heath centers).
Paying for Contrast
We were visiting one of the libraries in Iceland to meet-up with some milliner friends who were in residence there. Part of the library is dedicated to rolling exhibitions. When we were there, it was for the artist Dieter Roth. We’ve written about him before when discussing the idea of Paying for Contrast. In the exhibition, they had photocopies of the same magazine we cited as examples.
Newsletters
This year we started a second newsletter. Our main quarterly newsletter was quarterly and focused mostly on the company. That felt a bit too egotistical and probably not that interesting to most people, so we split it into two newsletters. The quarterly version doubled-down on company news and the new monthly newsletter, ⪮ Good Morning, focused on 1 photo, 2 thoughts and 3 short links. After a year of sending ⪮ Good Morning, the reception was well received and we’ll tweak and continue to send it monthly in 02023.
Our goal is to continue to grow the newsletter. We don’t do it for money, fame or bragging rights. We are tending our garden, keeping a connection with friends and interesting folks, and giving something small back in the way of fun and interesting links.
Travel
In March, we went to San Francisco for GCD (Game Developers Conference). We didn’t attend the event, but had several meetings with other attendees. Things went well and we met again with some folks in June.
Some of the team went to London for a trade show, which took them quickly around the UK for meetings. Later in the year, they went to Tranås for a meeting with a supplier. These are all for a side-project within the company that’s not tech-related. It isn’t on its feet enough yet to bring it into the discussion.
What’s Next in 02023
After three years of not much traveling or conference presentations, part of us is happy to focus on work, while the other half does miss meeting folks and having very random chats. Conferences are a great way to cross-pollenate ideas with people who’d never normally meet or talk too. We’ll just have to see how this develops.
We want to continue the newsletters, improving the quality and readership. By refining the content, and also publishing it online, we hope to increase awareness of (optional.is) in general and our various expertises.
As for writing, we have a long backlog of ideas, topics, drafts and even old published content that we’ll continue to trickle out. It always takes longer than you think to write, edit, illustrate an article, so we sneak in the work during project downtime. It is all part of the philosophy of “Dig your well before you’re thirsty”. If projects stopped and we decided to start writing, we’d have to work the muscle to get good at it, then publish and promote it and by then, it is too late to get over the inertia of not writing and financially support ourselves in the mean time. It is more effort to always setting aside time to research and write, but it sure does make things easier in the long run – and that’s what we’re committed too: long now thinking.