2 min read

Attempt at resumption

Attempt at resumption
Photo by Hasan Almasi / Unsplash

Dear friends,

One of my goals this year was to write at least one article a month. As of August 2022, I am far from on track.

I started writing about blockchain, cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin, in no particular order. While desiring to write about these topics, and through my employer, I discovered a better source of such information. From a better writer than I should, honestly, aspire to be. Hence, I strongly recommend you head over to Something Interesting if I am not meeting your appetite for these subjects.

My dear reader, I somewhat feel like I have let you down. If it is the case, and you, indeed, feel like I've let you down, let's talk about it. Email me or text me.

I am still convinced Bitcoin is tremendously important for us, humans. It is still a higher form of money and it is still separated from the state, just like church and state can be separated. It still has unique and exceptional properties, such as being a synthetic, predictably and inexorably scarce item. Still an open, transparent money network and still improving with time.
The energy consumption narrative has won a lot of hearts and minds. Reason and long-term thinking can help see through obfuscating headlines. But, energy use is intrinsically coupled to the exploitation of resources, which in turn, causes environmental impact. In the summer of 2022, all of these matters have become emotionally-charged. Thankfully, a few of my friends are being respectful to my conviction and they take a curious mindset to discussing it. Many have moved on from what they consider a craze or a bubble and stopped caring.
Additionally, and equally relevant, recent Bitcoin investors have taken the price correction in the face. It's a good time to write about other things.
Patience.

Now, despite content history proving otherwise, my intention with this space was also to offer (myself) a platform for discussing technology. Here are a few things you should know :

  • Food drone delivery has been a reality, around Dublin, Ireland. Manna has completed more than 100,000 delivery flights.
  • The Steam Deck is very impressive. It looks and feels like a bigger Nintendo Switch but it plays Steam games and it is a Linux system under the hood. Both Dead Cells and Apex Legends run smoothly on it. Dead Cells is, hands down, the game I've played the most in the last 12 months.
  • A lot of well known websites and web services run their own status boards. It is usually a single webpage displaying the health of their services. Some of us have begun our journey towards self-hosting. I recommend Uptime Kuma for  keeping tabs on how stable all your services are and which ones might have gone unresponsive. Professional-grade monitoring for free.
  • Not everyone will want to self-host their own tools but many are interested in reducing their dependence on a handful of big names like Amazon, Apple, etc. I have been enjoying PikaPods. Think of it like an app store for tiny services that are hosted for you. Uptime Kuma is one of them. Simple, inexpensive, dependable.