Ambient on Dawnstar

Reducing Social Media Usage

Sun, 17 Jan 2021 19:32:06 +0000

In November, when the US election day arrived, I noticed I was getting anxious. When the result still wasn’t clear in the morning, I decided to take a break from all social media and news. As a result, I had two incredibly productive days at work and I felt so much better. The short break was enough to cure my anxiety but it tends to creep in every now and then, when I spend too much time on social media. By social media I mean mostly Facebook and Twitter.

That has lead me to think whether I should take another proper break, if not cut my ties with all social media for good. I’m still planning how to do it and how to spend the time I’ll be getting back in the best possible way. I could read more books and I could read more articles. I could also write more blogs posts and my diary, which hasn’t been updated in 5 months. I know a friend who’s writing email newsletters to give updates about the events in her life. That sounds much better than writing those posts in social media, where your data is always used to target ads to you.

Long time ago when I was still chatting on IRC, I remember having a two month break in spring 2005. During that time I finished my master’s thesis. I wonder what I could have achieved if I had learned to channel my energy towards useful activities and not waste my time in internet discussions and arguments. My brain clearly isn’t capable of handling the constant flow of information.

I’ll probably post an update here when I have made a decision.

The Internet Is Broken

Sat, 17 Nov 2018 20:53:17 +0000

The internet! The internet is broken! Our broadband provider Relish has usually worked just fine without any major long-lasting hiccups. Sometimes the speed hasn’t really met our expectations, but it’s a wireless 4G broadband. It’s not fibre!

Last Sunday, everything suddenly changed.

Constant hiccups! The connection dies, doesn’t work at all until the router gets rebooted. Speed drops below 56k modem level and frustration grows beyond the limit where it’s trying to make us crazy, constantly pushing the anger-o-meter to the reddest of the red hue of the spectrum.

Today we decided to do something about it by ourselves, as customer service wasn’t really able to detect any issues with our router. “It must be interference”, they said. Yes, they are probably right, but it doesn’t help us as we cannot track the origin of that inteference.

As I had not yet got rid of my old iPhone, we got a Vodafone Pay-As-You-Go SIM card and our internet now pretty much is provided by that loyal old companion of mine.

It’s obviously not a perfect solution and I still need to figure out how to get connection to my TV, game consoles and Sonos speakers.

We have roughly 2.5 months left in this flat so getting a DSL isn’t really an option right now. Originally we decided to go for wireless because the fastest available DSL connections were estimated to be only 11MB, which is ridiculous in 2018.

Sound that fills the room

Sun, 15 Oct 2017 12:31:59 +0000

There is music that sounds just awesome, regardless of the way you listen to it. Be it from a vinyl record, digital high resolution lossless file or good old C-cassette, we often give highest value to the song itself and the lyrics, not the media.

For audiophiles the technology seems to be more important than the music itself. It’s possible to spend insane amounts of money for audio equipment.

I value both high quality audio technology and great music. I’m not ready to spend thousands of euros in speakers and amplifiers though.

Sometimes you don’t have to. I’ve been very much satisfied in the sound quality of my two Sonos Play:1 speakers. They sound great, although the software is not really on the same level.

Sometimes you find a new song that fills the whole room and takes you on a musical trip.