Another Friday wrap… five in a row. And on a Friday, unlike last week.
Anyone notice weeks are really relative? We all know a week contains seven days. There are 52 weeks in a year. And so on. But what I call a week isn’t necessarily what you call a week. I work for a weekly newspaper – our work week is Wednesday to Tuesday. We print on Tuesdays, and everything from the past seven days is collected and put in print. Whatever fits prints. But that week doesn’t mesh well with the calendar week (Sunday to Saturday). Keeping the two weeks clear and separate is a challenge. Now add in my wife’s work week (four days on, four days off, eight day work cycles or weeks). Then add my two high school kid’s work weeks from their part time jobs and their traditional secondary school schedules. My Google Calendar cannot keep up.
Over the last year I have read a lot on how to get organized, stay organized, and tips to improve your focus. Give me a glossy book and I am there. Ooo look, a bullit journal – great. What I can boil all my looking down into is one point – I should have been the guy marketing this stuff, because I’d be rich from people like me. Clearly my current system of relying on my Swiss Cheese memory, reminders from my wife, and post-it notes is not working. My country for being organized!
I received a notice from a “geek thing” that Twitter is going to start charging companies for using it’s API. The API is like a magic back door that geeks write software for to do special things with that API. Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, and other apps use the API to manage your Twitter account for you. I used to use Jetpack for work and other websites, in part, because you could click a button and share the post to Facebook and Twitter automatically through the API. One and done. Then in January, I got a notice that said Jetpack will charge you, or allow you only 30 free shares before you have to pay. For work, that lasted a week. No way. Not paying Jetpack’s rates. So I started posting this stuff manually. It sucks. Both companies make posting really difficult and time consuming. My desire to share articles and other nonsense on social media has diminished. I noticed also that Twitter usage by many is down. Now Twitter wants others to pay to play. I think it’s time media orgs and others look at how much traffic they truly get from social media, and if it’s worth the employee churn to continue.
Speaking of churn, what the hell is going on? First Postmedia drops the bomb it’s axing another 11 per cent of its workforce. “Hello??? Anyone left? Anyone?”
Now QP Briefing had a bunch of reporters quit and there’s layoffs and more. Some of this is related to a story not being published, the rest belt tightening after the TorStar Super Awesome bust up. The Star has this story on it: https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2023/02/09/qp-briefings-editor-in-chief-reporter-quit-in-protest-after-ford-story-fight.html
Needless to say, the continual circling of the drain that is mega-conglomerate cost-cutting corporate monolith newspaper companies is getting worse. That’s what happens when things circle a drain, you speed up closer to the end.
Enough depressing crap, here’s a photo.
Wait, this is depressing too. Sea smoke, or sea steam, from -29C weather a week ago on the St. Lawrence River in Mariatown, ON. This photo I took with a long lens, with my car window rolled down for three whole seconds while I depressed the shutter. Then I quickly rolled up the window and drove to somewhere warm. I miss warmth, and summer. Each year I complain in winter that it’s too damn cold and I’ll never complain about winter again. Then in July I will curse the heat and humidity. The circle of life.
What am I reading this week? Nothing. No, not really. I was helping soon-to-be college-age son get his stuff together for a submission he needed for a college application. So I didn’t have a lot of time for reading stuff that I wanted, just his stuff. I have yet to crack the book “As I Walked About” by Phil Jenkins. A week’s worth of dust on the jacket makes it more difficult to do.