In general we all live roughly 4000 weeks on this planet. I have used up most of mine – 2531, to be exact – already and reading this makes me think of course.

Concerning that I already used up so many weeks, I am in a certain time of my life and the website states:

That’s likely a majority of the weeks you’ll see. The psychologist Erik Erikson suggests that at this phase of life you focus on the virtue of care. Spend your weeks “making your mark” by intentionally nurturing things that will outlast you, raising children, mentoring others, becoming involved in your community and organizations, and creating positive change that benefits others.

Well, I can state that I, at least in my opinion, already am doing this. I have three wonderful children, something I call my job, I have a true passion for – even though it is in a tough situation at the moment with what the pandemic caused – and I think with this, I also am making a mark, I am mentoring others and am creating positive change that benefits others.

I feel ok now.

I read this on a website by Lee Byron, which is a tribute to the book “Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals” by Oliver Burkeman, in case you also want to read it.

I recently watched a YouTube video on the channel of “Kurzgesagt” which addresses a similar topic. You can watch it (English or German) below.

English version: What are you doing with your life? The Tail End.

German version: Was machst du mit deinem Leben? Eine Perspektive.

I am not posting this to demotivate anyone or tell them that more than half of their life is over 🤣 … no, I mean it in a more positive way and to get motivated to use the time you have in a way that makes sense to you (and maybe even to others like your beloved ones).

Links:

• Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals” by Oliver Burkeman (Amazon affiliate link)
• Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals” by Oliver Burkeman (Thalia)
• Four Thousand Weeks – website as a tribute to the book above
• YouTube video “What are you doing with your life? The Tail End.” (English version)
• YouTube video “Was machst du mit deinem Leben? Eine Perspektive.” (German version)

When Danny Gregory spoke at my beyond tellerrand event in Berlin in 2016, he was telling me about his idea to start Sketchbook Skool. Lovely to see it growing and lovely to se their videos.

This one is about why you should “Love your sketchbook lettering”.

You changed your mind? You lettering can show how your mind has changed.

⇾ Visit: Sketchbook Skool – Love Your Sketchbook Lettering

Today the Kickstarter for Marcin’s book “Shift Happens: A Book about Keyboards” started and I was looking forward to it. And even though I swore to myself never again to back anything on that shitty platform, I did. Mostly, because I know Marcin, but surely not to give any more to Kickstarter.

Back in 2012 I invited Marcin to come and speak at one of my events for the first time. I had seen him speaking and was blown away by the passion he had for what he was doing. Ever since we stayed in touch and in 2018 I invited him back to beyond tellerrand in Berlin, where he gave his talk “The Abridged History Of Having Fun \/\/ith Keyboards”. Not only was it a great talk, but he also chatted to me before the event to [ask me to get a few old typewriters, as he wanted to prepare a few games for the attendees in the exhibition space](https://newsletter.shifthappens.site/archive/to-walk-among-keyboard-magicians/. And if you think, that this was enough: No, of course not. He also remote controlled the presentation with his shoes!! (He has written about it on Revue, but that platform closed. But I’ll ask him if he published it somewhere else and add it.) Here is the article about his talk and all the things about the shoes and around the talk.

Anyways, he started the Kickstarter for the book today and I backed. While writing these lines, it just hit the $200.000 mark. Wow. Congrats Marcin and I hope it gets even more!

If you like to find out, why someone wants to write a book about keyboards from 2017 to 2022, then you can read about this on Marcin’s website to the book

You can also subscribe to his newsletter, if you are not already.

Those who follow me on Instagram might have seen pictures and I already also told you about the Wonderwalls Exhibition in Düsseldorf. This week it is the last chance to visit the exhibition – and you should do so.

After this week the exhibition of Selim Varol, who was a guest in my German Podcast neu•gierig, is closing its doors. I have been there a couple of times and it always takes me back into my childhood and youth.

I myself am taking my kids to Wonderwalls in the NRW Forum Düsseldorf today (sadly my oldest daughter isn’t here today) and visit it one last time, before it comes to an end on Saturday. If you go, maybe you are lucky and Selim is doing one of his tours, which makes it even more special.

Information about Wonderwalls

When I joined Mastodon in 2018, I liked the concept and am always excited and curious to try new things. But like others described already, it somehow did not feel right. Maybe I wasn’t ready for the concept, maybe I was comparing it too much with Twitter – I don’t know. In the end it was something it did not bother to communicate through too much.

A couple of months ago, yes I think Musk has played a role here, Twitter, which somehow lost more and more attraction for me anyways, but the reason why would bee another blog post, Mastodon gained traction again and people started registering and – which is the more important part – using it. it felt different, but still I was asking myself a lot of questions and was sceptical. I tried different apps, Mastodon in the browser, but I wasn’t getting the “Yes, let’s go with it” moment. I did not feel it ;) I was using Mastodon, reading what other people said and also posting myself.

A couple of days ago, when I opened Tweetbot, I got an authentication error message telling me, I need to log in again. On my phone and my Mac. I checked the web if something was not working with in general, but Twitter seemed to be up and running. Just the apps I was using weren’t working anymore. It turned out that Twitterrific users had the same problem and actually any 3rd party app using the Twitter API. No one had information and an update on the Twitterrific blog stated:

Updated January 17th, 2023: We still have not received any clear communication as to why Twitter deactivated Twitterrific on January 13th. We have been respectful of their API rules, as published, for the past 16 years. We have no knowledge that these rules have changed recently or what those changes might be.

On the same day, Twitter stated, that they were intentionally blocking 3rd party apps like Echofon, Tweetbot and Twitterrific and wrote that Twitter is “enforcing its long-standing API rules” and that this “may result in some apps not working” on Twitter … well … that’s it with any 3rd party app.

Tapbots reacted and quickly used their knowledge (and party of the code base?) for their new app Ivory, which is an app for Mastodon and which was released in an early state yesterday (for anyone who wants to read a review about that version, here is a nice and complete one by Federico Viticci on MacStories)

Now, why am I writing all this and started with my feeling and experience of using Mastodon? Actually I can quote a Mastodon post of Marco Arment from yesterday, as it exactly expresses how I felt and how I feel about the release of Ivory:

Before @ivory, Mastodon felt like a Twitter clone that I wasn’t really “getting”, bouncing between apps and not finding any that fit me.
With Ivory, Mastodon became not only a drop-in replacement for Twitter for me, but an upgrade that’s actually so much better than Twitter that I don’t think about it at all anymore.

Language connects us. Language connects one heart and mind to another mind and heart. Through space and time. Language transports meaning between minds, sense between bodies, it can make us understand each other and ourselves. It can make us feel what others feel. Language is a bridge.

⇾ Visit: The End of Writing

Tweetbot was the app of my choice for Twitter for most of the time since I started using Twitter in March 2007. I think it always was a reason that I still use Twitter nowadays, as I was able to see a chronological timeline and could filter the content the way I wanted it. Event though some features of Twitter have not been allowed on 3rd-party apps, I preferred using Tweetbot over the Twitter website or any official app that ever existed.

Now, like Twitterrific, Tweetbot was announced dead by Tapbots:

We’ve invested over 10 years building Tweetbot for Twitter and it was shut down in a blink of an eye. We are very sorry to all of our customers who chose Tweetbot as their way to interact with Twitter’s service and we thank you so much for the many years of support and feedback.

It might just be an app, but I find this very sad, as with this I can’t see myself using Twitter as before anymore. Maybe it is time to move on, like many others did already. And maybe the loss of those 3rd party apps only shortens my time of still being kind-of active on Twitter.

Let’s not look back, but forward and be excited by what is coming. Like using Mastodon instead and Tapbots Ivory – even though I can’t tell you anything about it yet as I never had a chance to get on the early access program.

See you there …

I bet this is a version where Craig Hockenberry had people revising a lot already. Still you can hear the frustration of him, when he has written the blog post.

There’s no sense in clinging to the personal whims of a clown leading a shit show. Especially when his circus will end up being a $44 billion version of MySpace.

As I have written earlier last week, I can’t imagine how the people behind Twitterrific or Tweetbot must feel, after Twitter, without notice, cut off everything – well, a little bit as the pandemic was for me and beyond tellerrand, what Musk is for them.

This, plus the massive amount of layoffs makes me think a lot these days. And I am sorry for all the people who are affected.

Nice post by Ahmad Shadeed once more. This time about conditional CSS.

I like to think of CSS as a conditional design language. Over the years, CSS was known as a way to style web pages. Now, however, CSS has evolved a lot to the point you can see conditional rules. The interesting bit is that those CSS rules aren’t direct (i.e: there is still no if/else in CSS), but the way features in CSS work is conditional.[…]

⇾ Visit: Conditional CSS