Quoth the Elephant, Evernote

Something I forgot to bring up in my last entry about Amazon Prime was a little addendum about how Evernote is increasing its price by nearly twofold. It's gone from around 70 per year to 130. I was a little stunned by this. It's one thing for Amazon to want 3 extra dollars to take away ads on their streaming service, but this is a pretty big fundamental shift in the business model. I don't pretend to know all the goings-on at Evernote, but they do promise some major upgrades to the newer versions of their application. Most of these had to do with AI, which made me roll my eyes a bit. To be fair to them, they also offered better synchronization among devices, which is definitely something I've felt has been lacking. There was a glitch for some time with the scratch pad where it would "double" itself when I went from typing it out on the desktop to checking it on my phone. Rather than simply double post whatever I'd written, it would insert the copy in the middle of the text, which made copy and paste rather tedious. 

So, I'd write out what I wanted to say in the scratch pad on the desktop versi So, I'd write out what I wanted to say in the scratch pad on the desktop version, and then when I'd check it on my iPhone to copy and paste into something like Threads... on, and then when I'd check it on my iPhone to copy and paste into something like Threads... 

Irksome, isn't it? In any case, despite the sticker shock, keeping Evernote running is kind of a no-brainer. I've been using the application for years, though most of that time was in using the free version, and I still use it virtually everyday. It's where I keep track of my medications, probably the longest journal I've ever kept outside of Blogger. It's also my address book for when I send out my holiday cards. The point is I don't mind this increase. I just hope the synchronization is all it's cracked up to be. 

A Prime Example

In the interest of full disclosure, I am an Amazon slave. I've been a Prime Member for years, I have several Alexa smart speakers, I use Subscribe & Save, I use Kindle and Audible, and I even watch Prime Video (mostly for the Grand Tour or anything the old Top Gear crew is attached to). I know the company is evil, they treat their workers (especially their drivers) like garbage, their returns are a joke, and Jeff Bezos is dumping tons of methane into the atmosphere with his phallus rockets, to say nothing of that stupid yacht he tried to have a bridge disassembled over. 

Yet... I'm still paying. I can only offer so much in my defense. There's still plenty of small and local businesses I support, and there's certain items that I simply will not buy from Amazon if I can avoid it. If I can get it straight from the manufacturer, I'll go that route (especially if they let me check out with PayPal because that's just as convenient as Amazon). To me, Amazon offers a way to eliminate tedium. I don't have to haul bags of cat food, kitty litter, and sparkling water around in a cart, into my car, out of my car, and into my house. Now, all but that last step has been eliminated. It's one less thing I have to deal with. It's cruise control, not fully autonomous driving, if you follow. The point is if it all went away tomorrow, I'd be only a little bit bummed... for about five minutes, and then I'd move on to something else. 

Is it really an addiction if you're in control of it? 

Anyway, there's still the dilemma of supporting a terrible company, but the awful truth to that matter is that voting with your wallet is kind of a hollow promise. After all, there's no "vote against" just voting for something, and not voting at all. Moreover, if you know anything about how the company is structured, their main money maker is not their retail branch. It's all their web hosting. That's where this gets really scary. I heard once that all of Netflix's servers are owned by Amazon. That may seem like a massive conflict of interest, but it's actually good business. There's a similar sort of relationship between Apple and Samsung. Yes, they're rivals in the smartphone space, but if you were to open up your iPhone, you'd find Samsung's name on more than a few components. In fact, the iPhone camera is actually a Sony component. I find that funny because the camera on my old Xperia phone wasn't all that great, but the little iPhone 5c I got to replace it took damn fine pictures right out of the box. 

I decided to write this entry after receiving an email from Amazon that some of you may have read yourselves or at least heard about on social media. Ads are coming to Prime Video. Although they insist there will be overall fewer ads than television, it's more than a little disheartening that this is what they resorted to in terms of expanding their market share in the streaming space. 

Rather than create a new, lower-priced, ad-supported tier and bring in new customers, they'd rather punish loyal customers who have been paying for Prime for years (seriously, whatever happened to grandfathering?). Instead, they now offer an ad-free version of Prime for an additional fee. Obviously, this is about Amazon making more money. They chose this strategy because simply raising the rates would have deterred many from renewing, so they decide to raise the proverbial temperature of the pot of water instead of dunking us in straight away. As I said, I think they could have done more to draw in new customers than try to tiptoe around existing ones. 

As for what I'm going to do about it... very little. Ironically, most of what I've been watching on Prime Video of late has been through their subsidiary FreeVee, which is ad-supported anyway. There's also that practice of advertising their other shows before the ones I'm already watching. It's frustrating that this is happening, but I'm more mad at myself for not being more bothered. I feel like I should be cancelling my Prime membership as a statement, but I know it's not going to change anything and despite what I said about what I'd do if this all went away, I don't want to be the one to pull the plug. Given the scale, it would be cutting off my nose to spite my face. Then again, we're also living in a time when a comedy about Wile E. Coyote suing Acme was brought back from a fate worse than death for media. 

Maybe we're reaching a point where it's more than just the bottom line that a business can pay attention to. Yes, Coyote Vs. Acme got a big boost from a number of meetings being canceled, as well as the potential threat of Capitol Hill getting involved (one congressman compared the move to committing arson and insurance fraud), but it's still notable how much of a public outcry got heard. Hell, remember when the first Sonic the Hedgehog movie got delayed because of backlash against the early trailer? No calls for boycotts there, just plain, "Dear God, what is that thing!?" from a few thousand voices on Twitter. Yes, there was still a bottom line ultimately being threatened, but we didn't have to wait until opening weekend for the change to occur. 

I'm The Type to Block Things Out

I realized I've been lying to myself the past few months. I've been writing a lot about my keyboard of choice and my potential efforts to preserve the typing experience by buying a backup (made difficult by it being constantly out of stock at Logitech). What I haven't been very honest about is my alleged love affair with the sound and feel of the keys. 

I'm wearing headphones right now. 

There's even a dark ambient mix playing in a YouTube tab as we speak. It hasn't completely blocked out the G413 Carbon's Romer G tactile switches, but it has taken the edge off of them. I'm reminded of something Sir Alec Guinness once said about writing, how amateurs will go in full of enthusiasm only to get bogged down. The idea of a clicky, tactile keyboard always seems delightful... for about five or ten minutes, then you've got to get some real work done. 

There is an upside to this. As being clicky goes, the switches in this keyboard are something of a worst offender. Logitech's site has a comparison of the various key switches, including those in the G413's. Put simply, you can do a lot better for not very much in the realm of pricing. 

Speaking of blocking things out, I've learned something about WordPress that I feel rather embarrassed about. I had thought for the longest time that embedding videos was behind a paywall. In a way, it kind of is, but not to the extent I'd previously thought. If you want to upload a video file directly to the entry you're writing, that requires a plan. If, however, you're simply embedding a video from YouTube or Vimeo, there's a block for that. Maybe it's a newish feature, but I wasn't aware of it until a few days ago when I was trying to see what I could do with my current WordPress theme. It's not bad, but I'm not sure I like the way it's structured. It was chosen because it closely resembled the one I use for Blogger. You've got your main body of text, next to which is a sidebar with a few widgets and an index of all previous entries. My Wordpress theme is technically set up the same way, only there's a wall in front of it, so to speak. Instead of showing you the most recent entry in full and with the sidebar and widgets fully visible, it shows you a "highlight" reel of sorts. You see excerpts of the entries in chronological order, but with no sidebar and widgets. You have to click on an entry in order to get to a place that's closer to what I've got going here on Blogger. I don't know if there's a way to restructure that, but it's only really a minor annoyance. 

Speaking of mild annoyances, there's one thing I think WordPress does better than Blogger, and that's inserting images. Here, it's kind of a hassle to upload (I had quite a time with an entry from some months ago about old videogames) and once you've inserted it, it's another struggle to get it to fit in with what you're already writing. on WordPress, everything is separated into blocks. I don't have to worry about infringing on the caption of the photo I've uploaded. I don't have to worry about empty space above or below the image. I don't have to readjust the alignment of the text. Best of all, I don't have to adjust the size of the image based on some arbitrary "small, medium, large, or original" selection like I do here. It justifies it to the width of the text column. 

None of this means I'll be leaving Blogger for WordPress. There's still plenty of things I don't like about the latter. It also wouldn't feel right to simply migrate this site over there. Granted, it's not like I've built up some large, loyal following that I'd have to impose upon. I'm sure I have a few regulars and a few curious passers-by. Of course, when comparing WordPress and Blogger, one must consider who's footing the bills. Blogger is owned by Google, after all, and they don't have much vested interest in upgrading or overhauling it. In fact, I'm convinced the only reason they keep it around is it doesn't cost them very much to keep the servers running and it would probably be a small headache in and of itself to shut it all down. WordPress doesn't have such a sugar daddy. Automattic isn't the tech giant like Google is. It's not even close. Sure, a number of websites are powered by WordPress, but that still doesn't translate to the kind of figures that Google deals in. 

That's the dynamic. Blogger is a little clunky and outdated, but it's more or less completely free and full-featured for it (there are some paid features, but you've really got to dig for them). WordPress is a far smoother and more straightforward user experience (theme customization notwithstanding), but they try to nickel and dime you every step of the way. It's a little like with my keyboard; it's familiar, but clunky and not entirely pleasant. Other keyboards are more expensive, but they offer a smoother and more engaging typing experience. 

Not My Carbon

Logitech lied to me. I asked to be put on a waiting list to be notified when the G413 Carbon is back in stock. I recently received the notification and was all set to buy up my backup. When I clicked the link, however, I found it was only the G413 silver version. Similarly, they've made another G413 called the SE, which splits the difference between the silver and the Carbon in the worst possible way. 

The silver is the same keyboard as the Carbon under the bonnet, only with an aluminum faceplate and white backlighting. By no means an ugly keyboard, just not what I'm looking for. Also, I refuse to believe more people prefer white-lit keys to red. 

The SE is black like the Carbon, but uses white backlighting. There's also a TKL version that's still white-lit. As I said, I can't believe some people would prefer white to red when it comes to ambient lighting on their desktops. 

I only wish I could turn the LEDs on the Mac mini and SpaceMouse red. Guess I'm going for that 8BitDo keyboard sooner rather than later. That's not backlit at all, nor is there a number pad, but it will give my setup more of a vintage vibe rather than a Batmobile interior sort of look. I'll consider that a fair trade. 

I've never participated in NaNoWriMo. At least not in any official capacity. Frankly, the workload terrifies me. I once used it as a jumping off point for a shorter novella project I wrote some years ago from October until around mid December. It was released as an eBook for the exorbitant price of a whole dollar. I later made it free and even posted the first chapter to my DeviantART. It's probably aged far better than anything else I've written, though I'm sure if I took a good, long look at it, I'd end up sitting down and rewriting it from page one. 

There is another story of mine I thought of a few weeks ago that I might want to take another swing at. It was about someone checking themselves into triage by way of a robotic receptionist. It didn't have much meat on it in narrative terms, a quick jab at the bureaucracy of the healthcare system, the dehumanization of automation, and a cozy, wholesome interaction between a nurse and a patient. Now, years later, I want to make it a horror story, the robot now going haywire and posing a threat to everyone in the wing. I doubt I'll go through with it. My days of writing about monsters tearing people apart left me in around the end of middle school. We were learning a writing technique called "sensory imagery" which is best described as "Tell, don't show." Being the age I was, this meant an awful lot of gore and bizarre creature designs. 

Although November is now 2 days behind us, I do hope some of you consider continuing work on whatever writing projects you were thinking about during National Novel Writers' Month, even if it's only al sort of catch-and-release approach and it never moves far beyond a file on your desktop.