A quick resistance task:
- Google Gulf of Mexico
- “Gulf of America" is the top
- Click on the three little dots to the right of it
- Select “Send Feedback”
- Click on “Gulf Of America”
- Select “Inaccurate content”
- Select “Incorrect” and type in “The correct name is “Gulf of Mexico”
I made the write with rhythm picture real
I saw this clipping from a book when browsing threads one day. Many of us have.
An illustrated excerpt from Gary Provost’s 100 Ways to Improve Your Writing
I’m no writer, but I am more pedantic about writing than most. Growing up homeschooled does that to you. So when I saw this I thought YES. FINALLY. Somebody giving clear advice on how to make your writing not feel like corpo-chatgipitty slop. Save. Scroll.
Some time later I still thought about that post. It’s a nice idea, but how would I actually write that way in practice? The colors were so pretty in the picture, but no editor highlights sentences like that. Right? right?…
I use Obsidian. I can go off about how I use Obsidian later, but I use it. And I know that Obsidian is super customizable, like ridiculously customizable. It has a whole community plugin store where anybody can throw together a little code and change any aspect of the app, from adding entirely new functionality to simply moving a button or changing the color scheme. I can code. A little. I can read docs and I know someone who can help me out with the rest, lArGE LaNguAge mODEls.
A few evenings of messing around and ta-fricken-da I had myself a plugin.
Its not much. For a first-time Obsidian plugin dev I’m happy with it. I knew I wouldn’t make something perfect on the first go but I did want to make it good. The toggle is contained to individual tabs. It doesn’t change any of your source text. The colors are fully customizable, sentence length thresholds too. It’s nice.
I will publish Musical Text to the official community plugins directory and update here when it’s approved. Didn’t want to hold off on talking about it for the sake of listing it. You can check out the code or manually install from my GitHub.
Obsidian just added a web viewer and I’m now seriously reconsidering what a web browser is supposed to be…
My crack at gyeran bap
So let me get this straight… If I post from here (micro.blog) it goes to all my socials and my website that I own? I love the open social web!!!
Why media is good at product
In recent years, we’ve seen an interesting trend emerge: tech media personalities are stepping into product development, and they’re excelling at it. Meanwhile, established tech companies sometimes struggle to create products that truly resonate with users. What’s behind this phenomenon? The answer lies in the unique advantage that professional reviewers bring to product design: deep, articulated user experience.
Tech reviewers like Marques Brownlee (MKBHD), Linus Sebastian, and Michael Fisher (Mr. Mobile) don’t just test products—they live with them. Their entire professional existence revolves around using devices in real-world conditions, finding and articulating pain points, understanding the emotional impact of design choices, comparing hundreds of similar products, and communicating these experiences to millions of viewers. This constant cycle of use, analysis, and communication creates a depth of understanding that’s hard to replicate in traditional user research settings.
What sets these media professionals apart isn’t just their experience with products—it’s their ability to articulate what makes technology succeed or fail on an emotional level. This is why companies like Google have made strategic moves to bring in talent from the tech media world, such as hiring Dieter Bohn and Dan Seifert from The Verge.
These individuals don’t just understand what makes a good product; they can express, the philosophical implications of design choices, the emotional response to user interfaces, the subtle distinctions between good and great experiences, the broader context of how products fit into users' lives
Traditional product designers face inherent constraints in their research process, limited project timelines, fixed research budgets, small sample sizes, artificial testing environments
While designers work hard to understand their target users through observation, interviews, and collaborative design sessions, they’re ultimately bound by these practical limitations. Whatever level of understanding they achieve when the research phase ends becomes the foundation for their design decisions.
Tech reviewers turned product designers bring two crucial advantages to the table, extensive product knowledge, and experience with hundreds of competing products. Deep understanding of market trends. Awareness of both successful and failed approaches. Refined User Perspective. Years of analyzing user experience. Thousands of words written about product details. Clear understanding of what separates “okay” from “great”. Natural ability to think from the user’s perspective
The success of media personalities in product development isn’t just a fluke—it’s the natural result of their unique position at the intersection of user experience and communication. Spending every waking hour doing self-ethnography for years gives them an intuitive understanding of user needs that traditional research methods struggle to match.
As more companies recognize this advantage, we might see a growing trend of journalists transitioning into product development roles, bringing their unique perspective to the design process. I can’t wait to see how they change design along the way.
this post was totally a collaboration with Claude, exploring!
Welcome to blog.tynanpurdy.com!
Howdy folks! In the never ending journey of personal and career development, I figured I’d give writing a try. No promises on how often I’ll post or what I’ll write about, but expect to hear my honest thoughts on design, tech, life, robotics, and whatever catches my eye.
If you like my work and want to receive my writing as soon as I publish, you can use the RSS link below (post idea, why you should use RSS instead of depending on algorithmic feeds).