Long Posts
-
Clearly, I’ve not bought in to intuitive eating 100%. I’m still trying to lose weight and I still weigh myself regularly. If you want to learn more about intuitive eating, I recommend Rachael Hartley’s blog. ↩︎
-
I’m in South Carolina, y’all. Around here, sweet tea is the default. ↩︎
- Well… Five new and one reimagined.
- You could argue that Barclay was quirky, but he was intentionally annoying. Neelix was intended to be quirky, but he was really just creepy.
- What I’m working on
- Recently written
- Recent media favorites
- Active websites and profiles
- Social media accounts
-
Every third caller wants their team to throw more to the tight end.
-
Some of us never let RSS go.
- One of my professors told me that by working on my Ph.D. part time, I had the “gift of time.” Most people have to sprint through their program so they can get a teaching job. By not rushing through my program, I could get the most out of it and enjoy it.
- I’m going to keep writing at Sketchbook B, but the content will be mostly Adobe Creative Cloud tips.
- I’m using a trial of MarsEdit right now. And I really love the preview engine that lets me see how this is going to look, even before I post it. Looks like I’ll be purchasing a license.
- I don’t love how the superscripts mess with the overall line spacing. It just feels wrong. I may try to come up with another approach.
Reflecting on my first two months of being healthier
Solid progress
One of my goals for this year is being healthier. Eating better. Moving more. The hope was that by breaking some bad habits I developed during COVID, I could lose some weight and feel better. I wanted to post occasional updates to keep myself accountable.
Two months in, things are going great. I feel significantly better — that’s the “metric” I care about most — and I’ve dropped a significant amount of weight. I’m not doing any trendy diet or counting calories. I’ve adapted some principles from intuitive eating.1 I’m making smarter decisions about food and listening to my body. One example, I’ve pretty much stopped drinking beverages with calories. At Starbucks, I get a black coffee or hot tea. Unsweetened tea instead of sweet tea.2 I’m not drinking sodas. I’ve generally avoided alcoholic drinks, but had a glass of bourbon at our Valentine’s Dinner. My energy level feels more consistent through the day without the sugary sodas and extra caffeine. And I’m sleeping better. Wins all around.
Exercise wise, I’m just focused on movement.3 I’m walking regularly. My wife and I have started taking long walks on the weekends, exploring the trails that are literally in our backyard. I’m trying to walk at lunch and walk to meetings around campus. I’m not running on a treadmill — or running at all. I might get to that point, but that’s down the road.
I do want to address the tech side of this. I purchased a Withings Body+ scale, and it syncs my weight to my Apple Health account. I use Happy Scale to track weight because it does a nice job of showing averages instead of just focusing on the lowest weigh in. I’m tracking activity and workouts with Apple Watch. I tend to be a data person, and I like having all these metrics. I just need to make sure I’m not fixated on the metrics. Again, the main goal is feeling better and developing healthy habits.
Two months in, I feel like I’m heading in the right direction. I’m making long-term lifestyle changes, and I know this is just a start. I plan to check back in here every month or so with an update.
Bob Wertz is a creative director, type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina. And he’s trying to be healthier.
My five favorite new Star Trek characters
New Star Trek means new characters
Star Trek is all about the characters and relationships on the ship. With all the new series on Paramount+, they’ve introduced a bunch of interesting characters that I’ve grown to love. With Season 3 of Star Trek: Picard starting next week, I figured I’d share five new characters1 who I’m glad are part of the Star Wars Universe.
WARNING: A HANDFUL OF SPOILERS BELOW FOR DISCOVERY, STRANGE NEW WORLDS, PRODIGY AND LOWER DECKS.
Ensign Sylvia Tilly
Played by Mary Wiseman on Star Trek: Discovery. When Star Trek first relaunched with Discovery, Tilly was such a different type of crew member. For all of the great Star Trek characters over the years, very few were quirky and likable.2 Her relationships with Burnham, Stamets and Saru are wonderful. I wasn’t happy how they used her over the last season — eventually shipping her off to Starfleet Academy — but I hope next season includes a healthy dose of Tilly.
Rok-Tahk
Voiced by Rylee Alazraqui on Star Trek: Prodigy. If you haven’t seen Prodigy, you’re missing out. Rok-Tahk is my favorite character from the crew. At first, Rok appears to be a fierce creature, but once the universal translator kicks in, you figure out that despite her intimidating form, she’s actually just a young girl with an interest in science. Her relationship with the Janeway hologram was encouraging and nurturing and I loved every minute of it. I look forward to seeing how she interacts with Admiral Janeway next season.
Christine Chapel
Jes Bush on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. I know Nurse Chapel appears in the Original Series and a couple of movies, but Jes Bush’s interpretation of the character is so different and distinctive. Chapel is incredibly smart and capable. And yes, she has a crush on Spock, but their relationship is much more nuanced and complex. We know where this character is heading, but I look forward to seeing how this version of Chapel develops.
Ensign Beckett Mariner
Voiced by Tawny Newsome on Star Trek: Lower Decks. Lower Decks has so many great characters, but Mariner is my favorite. She’s a screw up, who also happens to be incredibly capable when she wants to be. Her relationship with her friends, her rivals and her mom are all complex and delightful. Depending on the episode, Beckett may create a massive problem — or she could be the one to save the day. The end of last season was heartbreaking when her mom and friends thought she’d sold out the Cerritos crew. Many of the relationships were patched up in the finale, but I wonder if there will be lasting repercussions.
Captain Saru
Doug Jones on Star Trek: Discovery. Look, I know Captain Michael Burham is the star of the show, but Saru is the captain I’d want to serve under. Intelligent, thoughtful and competent. His personal backstory is wonderful, and I’m really interested to see his relationship with the leader of Vulcan develop. I’m not sure how Doug Jones can express so much emotion through all of that makeup. It’s seriously impressive.
Finally, while it’s not a character, I want to give a shoutout to Lower Deck’s California class ships, especially the U.S.S. Cerritos. The idea that there are some average ships in the fleet is great. Other Star Trek shows focus on the glamorous flagship, but not every ship is the U.S.S. Enterprise.
Bob Wertz is a creative director, type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina.
Adding a "now" page
I decided to add a now page to my site. My challenge was deciding what to include on the page. I already had a pretty complete about page. After looking at a collection of now pages, I realized that there isn’t a single formula or approach. So for my first attempt, here’s what I decided to add.
I also moved the status of the fish in the header to this page. The fish changes from time to time based on my mood so that explanation makes more sense on my “now” page.
I’m sure my approach will change over time. Everything needs to be manually updated and I’m thinking I’ll update every month or so.
Bob Wertz is a creative director, type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina.
Medium length posts
I feel like I always write things that are either “tweet” length or “long.” I don’t feel like I ever post anything in between. This tendency isn’t new… I’ve always written that way and I’m not sure why. Most of my favorite online writers routinely share posts of various lengths, but I’ve never changed my approach. As I try to get back in the rhythm of writing, I think I need to embrace the middle ground. Opting to post reflections more than complete essays. Questions instead of answers. Paragraphs instead of pages. We’ll see how it goes.
Bob Wertz is a creative director, type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina.
Moving past commentary-driven media
Maybe it’s time for something different.
For years, I listened to local sports talk radio on my commute home. I live in the middle of SEC country, and — especially during football season — the talk shows were full of callers who were mostly annoying and overly opinionated.1 The host of the show was great and I really enjoyed his commentary, so I kept listening. One day, after a particularly obnoxious sequence of callers, I tweeted something like “I’d love a sports talk show without callers” and tagged him. He responded, thanked me for listening, but said that most people didn’t want to listen to him talk for a couple of hours. They tuned in for the callers. That was the format.
Audience commentary is part of every type of media. With newspapers, we’ve long had editorial pages, op-eds and letters to the editor. Radio has a whole sub-genre of talk radio that features callers giving their opinions and arguing with hosts. Television never really developed a feedback format because of obvious technical limitations, but developed something similar. Panel discussion shows are basically talk radio with a standard roster of characters, arguing with each other and representing viewer opinions.
The internet made commentary even easier. In the early days of the web, every news site and blog added comments to their stories to encourage feedback. The feedback quickly turned to meaningless noise, filled with extreme opinions and spam. Social media took it one step further. Facebook and Twitter are essentially just the comments section. Commentary became the media.
Some people love to read the letters to the editor and listen to talk radio. Many people — judging by ratings — watch television shows with a panel of guests arguing with each other about news or sports. There are people want to read the comments on news sites, although I don’t understand why anyone would subject themselves to that. And there are people who truly enjoy social media. This is all commentary-driven media.
I’ve realized that I don’t like any of those things.
I like to read articles that provoke thought. I visit news sites and blogs that cover my (many) areas of interest. I use an RSS reader to track all of these sites. I follow photographers, videographers and creators who make original art. I listen to podcasts that add value and knowledge. I follow people on social media who are experts in their field, but I rarely respond or comment on their posts. Yes, I want to be entertained, but I also want to learn and be challenged. In contrast to the commentary-driven media, I suppose this is expert-driven media.
The reality is that most people prefer the commentary-driven approach. They feel part of the conversation. They can contribute if they want. They want to hear the opinions of others and argue about topics. Our current social media landscape was designed for them. They want to feel that their opinion is a vital part of the conversation. That is the format.
Cultivating an expert-driven media environment is tougher and it appeals to a smaller audience. But there is a significant audience. There are plenty of people who want to read posts and articles from people who know what they are talking about. An ample audience of people who want to listen to podcasts and watch informative videos. We just have to design a system that prioritizes meaningful content and encourages sharing well-thought out responses over quick, thoughtless knee-jerk commentary.
With the implosion of Twitter, I feel like we have an opportunity to build something different. I’m happy with Micro.Blog right now and look forward to its continued development. I’m interested in the resurgence of RSS 2 and the momentum behind new indie-web protocols like ActivityPub. I’m encouraged that so many people are experimenting with different approaches to “social” media. I can’t wait to see what comes next.
Bob Wertz is a creative director, type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina.
Reset: 2023
Trying to find balance
I’ll be honest, I’m not sure I ever found my footing after the pandemic shut everything down. I’ve been trucking along keeping everything going, but the last half of 2022 was especially challenging. This rhythm and pace is not sustainable and it’s time to reset the balance between family, work and school.
Family is first, as always, but even more so now that my oldest is about to head off to college. I want to spend quality time with her before she moves out and heads to school. Work is going well, but is constantly busy. With graduate school, I’m taking the spring semester off to spend some time getting into a new routine.
For 2023, I need to focus on four areas: health, writing, organization and creativity.
Focus on physical and mental health
I’ve got a list of things to work on — from getting enough sleep to finding time to walk at lunch. I feel like I know what I need to do, but making time for a healthy life has been challenging over the last year. I need to develop consistent, healthy habits.
Write more
I’ve been writing for school almost constantly for the last year. And that’s great, but it’s come at the expense of writing for myself. I’ll still be writing for grad school, and hopefully getting some journal articles published this year, but I want to expand the type of writing I’m doing and improve my skills. Writing on bobwertz.com (via Micro.Blog) is going to be my primary personal writing outlet for the year.
Smartly organized
In general, I’m organized, but there are some areas that are an absolute train wreck. I’m working on some using the tools I have — like Notion and Tot — more effectively. There’s a fine line here, though. Time spent on getting organized is time that I’m not working out, writing or designing.
Rediscover creative endeavors
I’m a designer, but I’m not designing much right now. I have a bunch of projects, from stickers to typefaces that I want to work on. These always end up on the back burner when family commitments and grad school deadlines take priority. I need to carve out some time for visually creative projects that I’ve been neglecting.
I’m looking forward to hitting the reset button and restoring some balance to my slightly chaotic life. In past years, I’ve shared a check-in post at the midpoint of the year to evaluate how I’m doing on my theme and goals. This year, I’m going to try and post quarterly to keep myself accountable.
Bob Wertz is a creative director, type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina.
Hitting the pause button
Time to reset the balance
“I don’t know how you do it?”
I get this question a lot. I balance a full-time job, my family and grad school. I’ve been in grad school part time since I started my Master’s program in 2018 and I’ve become pretty good at carefully planning out and scheduling my time.
In 2022, I never really had a chance to achieve a balance. At work, there was a lot of change. My boss resigned in January and I assumed some of his responsibilities. I took over managing photography and videography staff again. We rolled out a new logo, which was — and still is — a lot of work. All of these things were positive developments, but required increasingly more of my time and attention.
At home, things were challenging. My wife tore her bicep in January and then had to have surgery in the summer, right as she was moving to a different school. My oldest started her senior year of high school and is trying to figure out where she wants to go to college, but then tore her ACL in a lacrosse tournament and also had to have surgery. My two youngest each started a new school, which changed our morning routine significantly. Everyone is doing great, but there is always a lot going on.
And grad school has been fine. I’ve done well. I’ve written lots of papers that I am proud of and had research accepted to a conference. I’m trying to get my papers edited and submitted to journals. Classes have been good, but honestly, I haven’t enjoyed grad school for the last year. And that has been weighing on me.
The balance is off.
I’ve been in grad school part-time for 4.5 years straight at this point — 3 for the Master’s and 1.5 for the Ph.D. With all the changes in my job and life, I wasn’t getting the most out of my Ph.D. studies.1 So I’ve decided to take the spring semester off. It’s a tough decision — I’ve been steadily working on my degrees one or two classes at a time — but it’s the right decision. I need to pause and reset the balance between work, home and school. I’m not quitting, just taking a break. I know I’ll start back up in the summer or fall, fully recharged and ready to continue to the finish.
Bob Wertz is a creative director, type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina.
Post Formatting
Testing out how I want to format my longer posts.
I haven’t had this Micro.Blog site for long, but I’ve written at my other site – Sketchbook B – for almost 15 years.1 Over time, my long form blog posts there developed a pattern. I had a basic structure with headers, footnotes, divider lines and a bio at the end. And I want to replicate some of that here and needed a post to experiment with. This is that post.2
I’ve already been using an H2 as a subhead and I like the way that looks. Like many writers, I often want to add footnotes as I write. Over on Sketchbook B, I used asterisks, but since I’m writing in Markdown, that’s kind of a pain in the ass. So I figured I’d go with superscript numbers, which is more conventional anyway.3 I continue to use divider lines to separate the body of the post from the footnotes, and a second divider line between the footnotes and a bio.
I’m not sure what I want to do with the bio. I found that most of my traffic came from Google, so the reader was dropping in on my site with no idea who I was. For now, I’ve decided to go with the shortest one sentence bio that I could and set it at the end in italics.
One aspect that I haven’t yet decided on is images. On my Squarespace-hosted site, each post had a preview image and I’d include a post image. So far on bobwertz.com, I don’t need a preview image, but I do think I want to create some type of standard post image to include under the subhead. I’ll keep experimenting, but I feel good about my basic post format.
Bob Wertz is a creative director, type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina.
2022 Favorite 8 Photos
My ❤️8️⃣ from 2️⃣0️⃣2️⃣2️⃣
This year was unexpected. Just about nothing went as planned — sometimes better, sometimes worse. Looking back over my photos, I took fewer “artsy” shots and mostly focused on my family. Here are my favorite shots from the past year, starting top left:
Evening snowfall. We don’t get much snow in Columbia, South Carolina. When it snowed in the evening in January, every thing was peaceful and serene… and then it was fun and chaotic, when all neighborhood kids came outside to play in the snow.
Norah’s prom. Our oldest headed to prom and had a great time with her friends.
Jill’s birthday. There are nine candles on the cake. Not the correct number of candles, but the perfect amount of light.
Soda City Market. We headed to our local market and took this picture as we were leaving. I’m not exactly sure what’s going on here — Jill hugs her kettle corn while Ryan proudly presents a giant carrot — but I love the shot.
Ryan playing the viola. Ryan started playing the viola this year and seems to enjoy it.
Sunrise at Hilton Head. Took a trip to Hilton Head with the family and woke up early enough to catch sunrise.
Lizzy’s birthday selfie. Here’s the thing… Our selfies are typically terrible and we have to take a bunch to get anything usable, but I grabbed this shot at Liz’s birthday dinner and we both like it. So it has to be one of my favorites.
Skee-Ball. I love skee-ball, and this beautiful skee-ball machine was at the arcade where we had Ryan’s birthday party.
This is the fifth year I’ve done a Favorite 8. You can see my previous posts from 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021 on my other site, Sketchbook B.
Favorite 8
Picking out my favorite pictures from the last year.
Back in 2018, Instagram users started posting their algorithmically-generated “Best Nine” — essentially the nine shots from the year that had the most likes. When I looked at mine, the images that everyone else liked weren’t necessarily my favorite pictures from the previous year. I enjoyed the process of digging through all the images from the previous year — many of which I had forgotten about. I curated and built my #Fav8 in 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021. If you are interested in learning more about the thought process behind Favorite 8, the 2018 post has the most detail.
This year, I’m not posting to Twitter, so I’m ditching the #Fav8 hashtag and just going with “Favorite 8.” Although on Micro.Blog, I’m thinking ❤️8️⃣ might be appropriate.
In the past, several friends have done this too, so this is just a reminder that it’s time to start working on selecting your Favorite 8 shots from 2022. I’ll probably post mine next week.
Time for another AIGA vision quest
“Re-envisioning AIGA Moving Forward Together”
Today, AIGA sent an email out to all members announcing the departure of their executive director and the beginning of a new attempt to reimagine AIGA. (If you don’t know, AIGA is the professional organization for design, formerly known as the American Institute of Graphic Arts.)
I’m been an AIGA member for much of my professional career. I was active at a chapter level for over a decade. Over that time, people repeatedly tried to reimagine the central organization, its chapter system and its funding mechanisms. No one was ever satisfied. They wanted to make it better, and then every designer would want to join and help change the world.
And yet, the organization got smaller.
AIGA has meant a lot to me and it definitely helped my career, but structurally, it’s been broken for a long time. It was built in a pre-Internet era. A time when the only way you got to see a legendary designer was to go to a conference or have them come to a local AIGA chapter. When networking was done primarily at the local bar. A time when being aligned with a large national organization gave you needed credibility and clout.
But now, YouTube means you can see all of your favorite designers deliver inspirational talks from the comfort of your own home. You can network with anyone, anywhere, anytime. The world changed, but the structure remained, and that was before the pandemic hit.
AIGA isn’t alone. Lots of member-based organizations are trying to figure out how to move forward. These organizations can bring value to their members, but they will need to embrace a different approach, building valuable online communities that may or may not be connected with local chapters.
In the end, we’ll see how AIGA’s latest re-envisioning works out. I’m optimistic, but time will tell if they are able to make the hard choices.
7 subscriptions I happily pay for
Worth every penny
It seems like everything is going to subscription pricing. I subscribe to a whole host of streaming services, bundles, news sites, and software. Many of them don’t always seem worth the money, but as I look at what I subscribe to, I realize that I don’t mind supporting products and creators that I love. So here are a list of services that I really, really like and happily pay for:
I backed the Micro.Blog Kickstarter and I’ve had a paid subscription ever since — even when I wasn’t using it every day. I’m happy to support a product with a viewpoint that aligns with my values, and Micro.Blog is that type of service. Now that Twitter is unstable, I’m glad Micro.Blog is my home base.
I’ve listened to Myke Hurley and Jason Snell talk about Apple and the larger tech industry on Upgrade since 2014. I listen to a lot of podcasts, but this is the one I listen to every Monday. Paying for the “+” gets me ad-free episodes and an extra segment, but, I’m just happy to support a show I love.
Jason Snell and Dan Moren write Six Colors. I get additional articles and an extra podcast on Friday afternoons, but again, a way to support writers that I like. (Dan also writes a series of science fiction spy novels that I like a lot. Check them out, too.)
A distraction-free writing app that lets me write in Markdown. I’ve used Ulysses for a long time and almost everything I write starts here (including this post).
I don’t spend a ton of time over on Fontstruct, but I love it dearly. Fontstruct lets you build modular fonts and export them. Tons of fun and a great community. It’s free to use, but the 5 euros helps pay the bills.
Notion is… a lot of different things in one package. I use it for tracking tasks, managing grad school projects, jotting notes and planning for the future. Well worth the $5 a month.
I’m a Ph.D. student. Zotero is a citation manager that lets me track all of the sources I need for my papers. It’s not the prettiest app, but it’s incredibly powerful. Free to use, but by $20/year gets me more cloud storage. In a couple of years, I’ll happily upgrade to the $60/year plan. Worth every penny.
Twitterless, Part III
Preparing for a future without Twitter.
I’ve been preparing for the demise of Twitter since long before Elon Musk made the offer to purchase it. In 2016, I wrote a post — Twitterless — about what would happen if Twitter “disappeared tomorrow.” I outlined a couple of key areas that would be problematic for me and possible solutions.
A year and a half later, I wrote a follow up post — Twitterless, Part II — that noted my progress on replacing the role Twitter plays for me, and the challenges that still existed.
Times are changing, though, and I honestly believe that we all need to be diversifying — and if possible, owning — our social media presence. Becoming less reliant on the big social media behemoths is the first step.
I ended that post with a promise to follow up on my progress, but as Facebook became more and more evil, I focused on moving away from Facebook. Replacing Twitter was pushed to the back burner.
Now that Twitter armageddon may or may not be here, it’s clearly time that I renew my quest to find an alternative. I figured I’d check back in on those questions that I asked back in 2016 and see how I’ve done:
I’d lose a bunch of contacts. Yep. I’m going to lose a bunch of people who follow me on Twitter. I’ve tried to connect with people on other platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram, but I can’t find everyone, and you know what, I’m okay with that.
I’d change how I watch live events. This is still a problem as I noted yesterday. Live events are fun to follow with other people, and Twitter is great for that. No other service is quite like Twitter for those instant commentary events.
I’d have to rethink how I find articles and stories. I use Feedbin as an RSS reader, but that’s not my only solution. I subscribe directly to The New York Times and The Washington Post. And — as shocking as it might seem — I also get a lot of value out of Apple News+, which I get with our Apple One bundle. My local paper, The State, is included in with Apple News+ and I catch a random assortment of articles from sources I don’t normally read. It’s a nice way to diversify the news I see every day.
I’d have to rethink how I share content. When I wrote this, I felt like traffic to my blog was coming primarily from Twitter, but over time, that lessened and most come through search engines. I’ll still create and share, but I’ll just use whatever channels are available at the time.
I’d change the way I use Facebook/Instagram. I once thought that Facebook and Instagram might provide a solution. I’ve mostly left Facebook, and Meta seems to only care about the Metaverse now anyway. I’m not that interested in Instagram now that it’s trying to be TikTok. I don’t feel any better about Facebook than I do about Twitter.
I’d try to find a replacement. I backed the Micro.Blog Kickstarter back in 2017 and I’ve had a paid account ever since. I originally connected Micro.Blog to my Squarespace site, which worked well over the years. I believe in the idea of a feed-based, open social media platform, but because I was still using Twitter, I didn’t fully commit to using Micro.Blog.
I’ve still got Sketchbook B and it’s still hosted on Squarespace, but I made the decision this summer that all of my future blog and short-form posting will be hosted on Micro.Blog, specifically, bobwertz.com. Why? I love the community, and the platform lets me easily post my content and crosspost to other services if I want to. It also lets me follow people who post on Mastodon, and they can follow me at @bobwertz@bobwertz.com. I like writing my blog posts in Ulysses in Markdown and the just post them directly to my site. I feel Micro.Blog gives me the best of all of the potential options and I’m happy with that choice.
Looking back, I think I’ve prepared pretty well for the potential downfall of Twitter. I’m not leaving completely, but I’ve got one foot out the door and I feel good about the solutions I’ve worked out for me.
If Twitter ceases to be enjoyable, I’ll leave. To be honest, I’ll miss it. I joined in 2008 and 14 years is a long time to use any service. It’s part of my daily routine. At the end of the day, though, if a service isn’t making my life better, I’m better off without it.