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What's making me happy 2017-07-02

By Nat Welch

I've been consistently failing to write these #happy posts. My excuses are long and varied, but none of them are good. Nor did their outcome compensate for the happiness these posts bring me. I'm starting a timer today while writing this. Just to prove to myself how long these take to write. So then, maybe I'll get back to my weekly schedule.

I've been playing video games with regularity again. The two games I'm enjoying are Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and Hyper Light Drifter. Hyper Light is just a challenging action game. So much of it is a mixture of strategy and timing. It can be frustrating because you get into battles with not enough health, and just get destroyed by one hit. Deus Ex is a series I have long loved. I find myself often stopping and staring at the scenery and taking photos. It's definitely not the greatest game because the story is super slow, but I love stealth games, and I love "cyberpunk-themed dystopia", so I'm generally sold.

I just finished the first three books of the Gentleman Bastard series. I read these because of Patrick Rothfuss's Review. I enjoyed all three, and would recommend them to people who enjoy fantasy. The common (and justified) complaint is there are no female characters. This is true for the first two books. There are some women, but they are few and far between. I look forward to the rest of the series (there are seven books planned).

I really enjoyed two Reply All episodes recently:

I'm also still loving the Stoner podcast. I'm a few episodes behind, but I really enjoyed Episode 11: Jake Lodwick, creator of Vimeo and Keezy.

There is a Rick and Morty Season 3 Trailer!

I'm just gonna embed a tweet I posted this week about my favorite online newsletter.

I really love Let's Encrypt. This list of Let's Encrypt numbers to know is a solid read if you're planning on using the service in production.

The Difference Between Fedora, Redhat, and CentOS was a decent read to remember all of the weird differences over in Red Hat land.

In the world of "Cyber", there were some interesting reads these past few days:

In the world of Economics and money, I'm still loving @matt_levine's daily column, like the post Uber Changes and Index Additions. He continues to be funny and informative.

Also, in the same world, the ETH-USD Trading Update from GDAX created some funny memes...

Seinfeld gives trading advice in a bear market

(I laughed, don't judge me.)

Retro ThinkPad is probably Lenovo's shark jumping moment.

Op-Ed with great title: Donald Trump is not well

New York Times employees stage temporary walkout to protest copy desk staff reduction.

13 Questions With Ina Garten is just simple and silly.

Cuomo Declares a State of Emergency for New York City Subway could hopefully bring much needed fixes to the NY Subway.

How to save online advertising is an interesting read by @doctorow.

Trumpcare is Bad News for Freelancers is a sad but real comic.

The Year I Didn’t Retweet Men is an interesting thought experiment. I probably need to think more about the content I'm sending out on Twitter.

At work we launched Topic and a new The Intercept. The Intercept looks exactly the same (new infrastructure, huzzah!), but Topic is a whole new site. Lots of great content on there.

I love retrospective writing. I haven't talked to Brittany in many years, but I’ve been in L.A. for a year was a nice look into her life.

I really enjoyed the Penguin Cafe Tiny Desk Concert.

Ok, that's it. Calling it done. Whole thing took me 51 minutes. So I guess I do need an hour to put these together... which is kind of tragic.

Happy Sunday, and have a great week.

/Nat

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