This is a screenshot from a High Interest savings account. Ask me about my personal investing strategy!

I’m always interested to learn how others use their computers. In that spirit, here’s a list of the services that I find valuable enough to pay for online. I think of it as a few dollars here and there, but with exchange rates it adds up to around $70/month Canadian.

The basics

• Netflix Standard Plan $14/month CAD
  I started with the cheaper “basic” plan, as the “HD” resolution didn’t matter much to me, but with a family of five, we wanted out of the 1-screen at a time limit and bumped up to the “Standard” plan.
• Spotify Premium $10/month CAD
  I got this originally to listen to music while I work, but it soon became a favourite with the kids. We limit screen time, but they can listen to music all they want. Apparently I’m too cheap to pay for the Family or Duo plans, so occasionally the my music will switch from Radiohead to the Frozen soundtrack when the kids get home from school.

Some extras

• BackBlaze Personal Backup $6/month USD
  This keeps a cloud backup of everything on my laptop. Most of my work is already backed-up elsewhere, but my photos and some personal documents weren’t. This is set-it-and-forget-it easy. I haven’t had to rely on it yet, but like most types of insurance, I hope never to have the need.
• Dropbox Plus $10/month USD
  We use Dropbox to share files in the family and to collect and share our family photos from my and my partners’ phones. I also pay the extra $39/year for the “Packrat (unlimited version history)” feature. Otherwise, if you upload a file, and then delete it, after 30 days, it’s gone for good. I don’t need this, but $39 for a reduction existential angst seems fine.
• Feedbin $2/month USD
  RSS feeds didn’t die with Google Reader! I love the Feedbin RSS feed reader service. It works as the backing for a bunch of apps, but lately I’ve found myself just using their fast and simple Web interface. I think the price has gone up to $5/month, which is still a good deal, but I seem to be grandparented-in at $20/year (thanks!).
• Washington Post ~$8/month USD
  I got tired of hitting paywalls while following the disastrous political drama in the US over the last four years. I also wanted to actually pay for some of the people holding politicians to account (as a Canadian, I can’t contribute to better alternative politicians in the US). I started with a cheaper first year, and stuck with it, as the political disaster never ended. I’ve cancelled my subscription for next year, as I find it an unhealthy consumption pattern (checking too often, worrying, not doing anything constructive about the news).
• TorGuard Anonymous VPN $5/month USD
  Sometimes you want to appear like you’re browsing from the US so you can watch a region-limited YouTube video. Sometimes you just want to be more anonymous. I’m looking forward to switching to the Mozilla VPN service when it is available on macOS and Linux.
• The American Values Club crossword $20/year USD
  Born from the ashes of The Onion crossword, which I loved, this is probably the most value I get from anything I pay for online. There’s a new crossword puzzle each week. They’re fun, funny, and sometimes include rude words.

Odds ‘n Ends

While not a regular contribution, I have donated a few dollars to the Slashfilmcast film/tv podcast on occasion as I’m often delighted by their podcast.

I had paid for Amazon Prime for a while, but decided I didn’t need to pay to make it easier to buy things online. Breaking news: I’m back on a free one-month trial around pre-Christmas shopping. I don’t plan to continue it beyond that.

Work stuff

There are also a few services that I get through my work at silverorange. Some of these I might pay for myself if they weren’t covered by my company:

• 1Password Teams $4/month USD
  I was a password-manager skeptic for a long time, having had concerns about creating a central weak link for all accounts. Once we introduced this at work, I was quickly won over by the convenience, especially now that my laptop and phone have fingerprint sensors.
• CodePen Pro $8/month USD
  CodePen is a handy services for prototyping and demo’ing front-end Web development concepts. I find it the quickest and easiest way to quick go from an idea to something working in a Web browser.
• Notion Team $10/month USD
  We use Notion for all of our meeting notes and internal (and soon, some external) documentation at silverorange. It would be overkill for me personally, but since I’ve already got it through my job, I use it to manage drafts for this blog.
• Figma Professional $12/month USD
  My primary design application, after moving through Photoshop to Sketch (both of which we still use and pay for), Figma gives me hope for the future of the Web as the primary application platform.

We’re watching from Canada as our US neighbors struggle with running a fair election.

I’m struck that gerrymandering and other attempts to suppress the vote, dissuade people from voting, or even to undermine confidence in the electoral system, seem to be employed openly and without shame.

In a democracy, any attempt to undermine the fairness of elections should be held in the same level of contempt as treason.

I would go so far as to put undermining confidence in the electoral system on the same level as talking about explosives on a plane, or the proverbial yelling of “fire” in a crowded theater.

I hope for everyone in the US, and for those of us watching around the world, that sense, science, and decency prevail (that means Trump and his enablers lose).

Oh, and Happy Halloween!

Have you ever:

• …changed the radio station to one you want the next driver of your car to think you were listening to before getting out of the car?
• …picked out what you think are your coolest clothes before a hair cut so the hair dresser will know how cool you are, and give you a cool haircut?
• …hoped a new song you’re enjoying on the radio ends up being by someone you think is cool?
• …sung along with a song you think is cool on the radio so those around you know that you know it?
• …caught your own reflection while wearing a mask and thought you look kind of cool in a mask?

Me neither.

When looking at the podcasts I enjoy, the topics vary from Web and technology (not surprising, given my career) to politics to music. Though I spend a lot of my time thinking about design, I haven’t found many podcasts about design that I enjoy. I think we designers tend to be insufferable when we talk about our ‘craft’.

What does connect the podcasts I love is simple: People talking to each other about things they love.

• The Shop Talk Show is two people who love the Web and love talking about front-end Web development.
• The Accidental Tech Podcast is three people who love tech (and cars?), and maybe most importantly, each other.
• The NPR Politics Podcast is a group of people who clearly love journalism, reporting, and telling stories.
• The wonderfully-named R U Talkin’ U2 2 Me podcast is two people who love U2 (and later, REM & Talking Heads) and dragging out a comedy bit to the bitter end.
• The Slashfilmcast podcast is about three people who love movies so much, I can enjoy listening to them review a movie I know I’ll never see.

While it may be obvious that people will tend to talk about the things they love, it is that love that I find so compelling.

It reminds me of something a friend told about about the band I was in back in high school. They told me they enjoyed our band not because we were good (this was said with love), but because we so clearly loved what we were doing.

So, maybe Interstellar was right. The fifth dimension is love!

I love playing video games but haven’t played many since I had kids about a decade ago.

In the past year, I did squeeze in a bit of time and replayed a few old favourites (like an older person who never gets past the music they discovered as a teenager, which is also true for me). I played through the Half-Life series and the StarCraft series. Both were filled with nostalgia and were fun.

I also got in a much newer (by my standards) game, Sayonara Wild Hearts – which I loved.

In addition to having more limited free time, I’ve noticed another change in myself over the last ten years: the idea of simulating shooting other people for fun feels deeply problematic.

What I enjoyed most about these games is the simple sense of progression and accomplishment. I’m not looking for an “open-world” experience where I can do anything – I get enough of that ambiguity in my life. When I’m playing a game, I want to be told what to do, do it, and then get a pat on the back for it.

I’m not sure it’s healthy to seek a sense of accomplishment from video games, but there are worse vices.

After finishing up a nostalgic replay through the campaigns in StarCraft II recently, I turned to a different source for the sense of accomplishment and progression: online web development tutorials.

I’ve come across a lot of talk of “gamification” in my work as a Web designer. I’m automatically skeptical when I come across a new term. I’m especially skeptical about gamification as it was often used as a euphemism for ‘manipulating people into using our thing’. One notable exception is Duolingo, which I see as a positive and effective example of using game-style achievements to help encourage learning a new language (disclosure: I have worked with Duolingo through my job, and they do make money when you use their service).

I’ve found that a simple Web development tutorial seems to hit the same spots in my brain that a good game does. I worked through the NextJS framework tutorial and the RedwoodJS framework tutorial. Each took less than an hour (which I did in 10 or 20 minute blocks with frequent interruptions).

I found the NextJS tutorial particularly well written and designed. It was written at a level that I could handle (my strengths are in HTML/CSS and design, not in JavaScript or other programming languages). It didn’t feel needlessly “gamified”, except for a goofy “points” system they encourage you to tweet about. This was easy to ignore.

What I learned here is that a well-architected learning pathway can be as engaging and rewarding as a great video game. There’s also less simulated violence.

Today I learned about the “birthday rule” in the insurance industry. As described in the Web interface to my health insurance provider:

All insurance companies use the “birthday rule.” The parent with the date of birth that’s earlier in the year submits the claim to their plan first. Then the other parent submits the leftover amount to their plan.

~ Giant insurance company

I’m pleasantly surprised to learn of such a simple consensus having emerged in an industry I don’t associate with simplicity (sorry insurance-folk).

I’ve run into an issue working on a side-project with the CSS Grid. I’m not sure if it’s something I don’t know how to do, or if it’s not possible given the constraints I’ve got.

I’ve created an example and explanation on CodePen. I’ve also posted the question on DEV.TO, based on the suspicion that the cool kids over there, not here on my blog.

This delightfully simple no name® branded cocoa powder made clear something I had never realized: The English and French spellings of cocoa / cacao just swap each “o” for an “a”.

Now you know.