Make it rain. kthxbye

Hello friend. How are you? I’ve had a bike for a full week now and I absolutely love it. I also found it takes about the same time to get to the supermarket via bike as it does the car. So why even use the car? Ask me again in winter when it’s cold, wet and dark. I’ve got a waterproof cover for the basket. My backpack is waterproof. It’ll be fine.

I haven’t missed the outdoors. It brings a lot of complexity with it and it’s nice to not have to think about all that. Indoors is fine. Still, getting out on my bike has been wonderful. I’ve got quick access to my camera so I can whiz around taking photos again. My plantar fasciitis isn’t going away any time soon. I did a small walk today, 20 mins to the marine lake and 20 mins back. Agony for the rest of the day. The bike has given me some mobility back. The docs said it could be a year before it’s ok again. I haven’t worked out how I can do photography jobs on a bike yet. It folds small.

video

I started looking at old photos from Venice the other day and some thoughts occurred to me so I made a video. Abra-ca-youtube!

mental health

I was looking through some old notes and found this from 19th January 2016.

I was thinking about acceptance the other day after reading an article by Clare Eastham. Imagine if you could accept who you are, draw strength from your abilities and really make something great? Wouldn’t that be good? Instead we dislike who we are. But then that’s the road you take to better yourself. So in the end we’re constantly unhappy and unaware that we’re actually doing the great things.
Maybe. Right now I’m feeling unhappy and aware that I’m not doing great things.

I wrote that over 4 years ago. I’m still trying to accept myself so I can be a more productive version of myself. If I’m not ok with me how can I do anything good? How can I make good photos or write interesting stories if I’m not ok with being myself?

I think I’m slowly getting there. Slowly. But man, the list of things to be ok with.

Body image issues
Mind freaking out over nothing so you lose a day
Being open about mental health issues
Being open about being autistic
Being ok about not being ok

So many things to be ok with. I wear nail polish, bold colourful nail polish as a reminder to myself that I’m different and it’s ok to be different. It’s a sign that I’m trying to be ok with myself. To hell with anyone who thinks that’s a bad thing.

How do you learn to accept? I suppose its a form of CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy). It takes time. It takes a lot of testing the water to gain confidence. Bit by bit. You take a little step forward and find out that it’s ok. Another step. Before you know it you’ve hopefully built up some confidence and started to accept things.

I’ll let you know how I get on in another 4 years. Probably about the same as now. I accept that I’m rubbish at accepting myself.

How CBT Promotes Self-Acceptance

Interestingly there’s a review of the strange superhero show Doom Patrol that looks at it from the angle of acceptance instead of caped heroes saving the world. I feel I need to rewatch that show now. Broken people who save other broken people. I don’t like to see myself as broken but I do have a condition or two.

autism

Apple held is big World Wide Developer Conference this week which was more inclusive than every for the simple reason that they couldn’t limit the audience to those who could physically attend. I hope its a change that sticks around as it will allow more people access to developer tools and information which is a good thing.

One of the interesting things they announced was “Headphone Accommodations” for the new AirPods Pro.

Headphone Accommodations also supports Transparency mode on AirPods Pro, making quiet voices more audible and tuning the sounds of your environment to your hearing needs.

I don’t have AirPods Pro. They’re £250 and have performance issues after 18 months or so. My current 1st gen ones do. Anyway, the point is that this new feature could mean you can wear noise cancelling headphones, boost the audio of those you are speaking to and block out un-wanted bad audio. So for example. Right now I’m sat in my front room listening to music while my wife watches TV because our neighbour has loud music on. It’s not terribly loud but it is bass heavy and that bleeds through the walls. It would be nice to pop headphones in, block that sound and still be able to watch TV with my wife. Would it even work out in the world? It could be quite a liberating experience for people with sound based sensory issues like myself.

Out of curiosity I checked the app for my Sony WH-1000XM2 headphones and I was surprised to see that I could configure the ambient sound feature. I’ve used this feature from time to time when listening to a podcast so I can hear when my wife enters the room but I never considered using it to block out intrusive bass from our neighbours while being able to watch TV. I shouldn’t have to wear headphones all day but sound carries and I unfortunately wear them a lot. Hopefully this will help.

If you suffer from similar issues I’d advise you to take a look at noise cancelling headphones and make sure they have some sort of Transparency or Ambient Sound mode you can configure.

photography

Back in 2014 my wife and I were in Venice crossing a bridge. I noticed that on both sides there were people selling selfie sticks. In the middle there were people taking selfies. That’s knowing your audience I thought. So I spent a few minutes documenting the scene.