Sabbatical Reflections from 2019

19/01/2024 Clicky Steve2019, reflections, sabbatical, thoughtsLeave a comment

As I prepare to head off on sabbatical later this year, I realise that while I posted my plans for my first sabatical, I didn’t actually share my reflections publicly on return. Instead, I posted on one of the many internal websites that we have at Automattic. Re-reading it recently, I thought that it was worth pulling this out onto my own blog for posterity. Below is what I wrote up back in June of 2019 for my colleagues, after going back to work (nb. that it has been slightly amended to remove references to a8c specifics).

Hello. I have returned from the sabbatical oasis. In many ways it feels pretty good to come back into fold, as no matter how great the sabbatical is, it still feels strange to be outside of the everyday Automattic community. That said, it is also a bit of a shock to the system; feeling akin to turning on a bright light in a room after you’ve been lying in the dark, so please bear with me over the next week or so while I catch up and readjust. It will take me a bit of time. 🙂

Before I went away, I was pretty disappointed that I would miss RightsCon in particular, as it is always a fairly motivational time. In retrospect I am glad I didn’t go, as it would almost definitely have limited what I got out of the block of time away.

As is customary, here is a recap with some details of what I got up to, as well as some general reflections, and thoughts about what coming back means. I had wondered about whether I should hold off on this until I had been back for a bit, but changed my mind. It is also a bit longer than I anticipated, so you have been warned!

Sabbatical observations

The first week I slept a lot, and felt guilty about it because I wasn’t doing very much, and didn’t want to waste the time. I realised though that my body was clearly just catching up on rest, and winding down to actually shut off properly. It doesn’t just happen instantly.

My life is usually so packed and rushed all the time that being able to just take the space to breathe and not rush things was great.

As part of that, I realised how many commitments I have outside of work, and how much time and energy they take up.

This also helped me realise what exactly I was spending my time on, and reassess things accordingly. In other words, cut down on commitments that were taking up a disproportionate amount of energy and space – as well as to make room for other things that I had been neglecting. I offloaded some responsibilities to other people, and didn’t feel the need to always stay up to date or in control of things as I usually would.

The first week I spent in Tokyo (which was just the second week of the sabbatical itself) was especially good. I was on my own, which I had been a bit apprehensive about, as I don’t really enjoy totally solo travel all that much. As it turned out, it was the perfect way to really begin the sabbatical properly. I would literally spend full days just walking for hours and hours, speaking to nobody, taking in everything. I didn’t have to be anywhere or do anything or look after anybody or answer to anyone. It felt like I had gone on some kind of silent retreat, and it was brilliant. Genuinely relaxed and free.

After three weeks things began to feel weird, as it was about as long as a significant holiday – but I knew I wasn’t going back any time soon. That caused some cognitive dissonance, which wasn’t completely unpleasant.

I realised that it was okay to have days where you don’t do much. You don’t need to be doing things constantly to make the best use of the time. That said…

I found myself breaking into a routine a couple of times – where I would just go to the gym, go to band practice, etc – and I didn’t want that to happen. So… I took the opportunity to say yes to things that I wouldn’t normally ever have time to do, or would put off (see more below).

What I actually got up to

Before I went away, I outlined the things I wanted to do over the three months. It really boiled down to allowing more time for the things that are important to me in life that I never usually get to focus on. Making music, reading, writing, travelling, and seeing friends. I deliberately kept them fairly broad to avoid tying myself into specific things and feeling bad if I didn’t get round to them. As it panned out, there were some things I didn’t get round to as much as I would have liked, but there was always something else that took its place. For example, I didn’t really play much guitar – but I did end up starting a new band and learning bass. I didn’t make much electronic music either, but I did rediscover a love for film photography, and developed a whole bunch. So it is swings and roundabouts. Either way, I felt like I made the most of the time I had as best as I could, which is what’s important.

Some specifics of what I did:

Spent a full month in Tokyo, which was amazing.

Bought a bunch of really nice cameras I had wanted for a long time, and learned lots of things about them.

Shot lots of pictures, mostly on film.

Started developing again, learned a bunch of new things, and processed 50 rolls in total. Also got a new scanner to replace mine… which was over 10 years old!

Shot on motion picture 500T film for the first time successfully (a bit more of a complicated chemical process than regular film).

Flew in a private plane across Scotland. Yes, I got to have a go at piloting, and no, I would not do it again. https://allmyfriendsarejpegs.com/2019/05/23/an-evening-in-the-sky/

Discovered lots of new music, and went to a lot of gigs – including a great multi-venue festival in Tokyo.

As well as continuing with my old band, I started a new one called Hog Wild, and spent a fair bit of time practicing with them, and writing some new tracks. An example here: https://soundcloud.com/hogwildband/matchbreaking-not-a-love-song

Did a few DJ sets, with varying levels of success. Lessons learned include always having a backup audio source, and checking that your laptop charger is actually plugged in properly.

Visited my parents in Canada, and spent the time touring vineyards, drinking cider, and lying in the sun with a book.

Went to the Islay whisky festival. Camped in the rain, and got a very nice exclusive bottle of Laphroaig. https://allmyfriendsarejpegs.com/2019/06/22/islay-whisky-festival-2019/

Posted and worked on a whole load of blogs (13 or thereabouts published)

Made time for some old friends I hadn’t seen in a long time, including a weekend down south. https://allmyfriendsarejpegs.com/2019/05/19/a-long-weekend-down-south/

Drove a friend’s band down to London to play a gig.

Read a whole pile of books (around 16), and enjoyed being able to just read for hours at a time because I enjoyed it again, as opposed to cramming it in for ten minutes before falling asleep at night.

Spent some time doing some legal academic work… including speaking on a panel in Edinburgh which was discussing defamation law reform in Scotland and meeting some friends from Twitter who were in town for a conference. I also finished off my second journal article, which I found out today has been accepted for publication by the European Intellectual Property Review.

In total I spent over half the time away from Glasgow, which I think is pretty good going. There are things I would like to keep up, and things I would like to start doing which I never did, and that’s actually okay. One of the points I had to keep reminding myself of was that the sabbatical isn’t the be all and end all – and not everything needs to be completed. There will be more time off in future!

Coming back

This is the trickiest part. Coming back from three months off is always going to be difficult, not least because of the catch up and changes to routine that are involved. Fears over how or where you will fit in are (apparently) normal, as are questions about whether you’ve fallen behind, and what the future will look like. I am personally very pleased and grateful that I’ve been able to take the time off at this point in my life; to spend it on existing, thinking, and creating. I am also glad to be able to come back to a community of people that I have a lot of respect for.

Over the next week or so I am going to take the time to gradually get back into the swing of things. Clearing out my e-mail inbox and pings will take a wee bit of time, but more importantly, I want to get a feeling for how things have moved on while I’ve been away, where the team is at, and where I can best contribute – including whether or not my role should shift to focus on different areas. I’m looking forward to the challenge.

My Second Sabbatical

14/01/2024 Clicky Steve2024, Automattic, blog, sabbaticalLeave a comment

Every five years, Automattic encourages its employees to take a three month, paid sabbatical. Different people make use of this in different ways. Some undertake once-in-a-lifetime journeys; others indulge in the realisation of passion projects; while others still ‘just’ relax and unwind. The breadth and diversity of these choices reflect the attributes of the folks themselves, and it’s always really fascinating to hear their stories and experiences when they return. Irrespective of any individual preferences, there’s no doubt that the sabbatical provides an incredible opportunity to pause, reflect, and ultimately explore the value and meaning of a precious commodity: time.

Prior to heading off in 2019 for my first sabbatical, I wrote a post on this very blog, talking about what I hoped to do, or ‘achieve’ (if that is the right word) over that period. As I’ve now been part of the company for over a decade (gasp), I am therefore eligible for my second – and will be taking it later this year.

As I started to think about what I wanted to do this time around, it struck me just how similar the goals and desires I came up with were to those that I had back in 2019. In fact, pretty much every single one of the 10 things that I laid out in my prior list could easily equally apply again now – and probably will actually – to a greater or lesser extent. Some people might find that boring, or even concerning. After all, why on earth would you choose to do or focus on the same things, rather than try something entirely new?

I do understand that inclination – and want to ensure that I allow space to experience and explore novel situations. However, I also want to really deliberately make time for those parts of my life that either bring me comfort, or which I am passionate about. The types of thing which I love doing, but rarely get the chance to sink into in the manner which I would like.

In some ways I think about this like deciding on a restaurant to eat at. Going to a new place can be rewarding, but also potentially disappointing – and sometimes you just want to go to your favourites. The tried-and-tested. The familiar and dependable. Often, you might realise that you haven’t even been there for months anyway. I’m aiming for some balance, with that in mind.

While the sabbatical is still a few months away, I wanted to outline in advance some of the goals, aims, and expectations I have, as they will help shape and guide the decisions and plans that I make. So, here they are:

Go places. Getting away from Glasgow to explore and experience different parts of the world might be a predictable entry, but one that is also really important. In practice this will mean returning to places I have been before and enjoy – such as spending a few weeks in Tokyo and Seoul – but also discovering others for the first time (such as Prague). I am hopeful that other opportunities will also present themselves along the way, and I’ll be in a position to grab them.
Enjoy Scotland. Somewhat in contrast to the above, I would like to savour the place that I live. Scotland can be an incredible place in the summer, and I haven’t really been around to make the most of it in years gone by. I’d like to enjoy that – whether it’s taking the dog to the beach, sitting in the park with a book, or taking a trip up North to areas that I’ve never been before.
See Friends. Rather than sit in the house staring at my laptop, I want to get out and spend time with people – particularly those that I may not have seen for some time, or who live far away. I would rather this be in more interesting or creative ways than just ‘getting drinks’.
Create. This is an important one. I want to dedicate time, energy, and space to making things – primarily music. Hopefully, this will lead to something I can actually share, such as an album.
Perform. This is related to the above, but I’ve deliberately split them out, as they are distinct. It’s been a wee while since I last performed live, and I’d like to do that again. However, it has to be the right opportunity. There’s no point in just doing it for the sake of it. Hopefully the universe will present some interesting possibilities.
Say Yes. One of the memories that sticks out from my last sabbatical was a friend dropping me a message to ask if I’d like to go up in a tiny private plane that he was transporting across the country early the next day. The realisation that there was nothing preventing me from just saying yes!! was incredibly liberating, and it was an amazing experience, that I wouldn’t have had otherwise. In a similar vein, I want to create the space for the serendipitous to happen, and jump on the chances when they come along.
Tend to the Garden. I am taking some artistic license here, because I don’t mean literally gardening. Instead, I mean reflecting, re-organising, and bringing more of a purpose to parts of my life that have perhaps been neglected. That might mean something like tidying out a cupboard that I’ve been putting off, but could also be more meta-physical.
Do Something Totally New. This is probably self explanatory, but I’d like to break out of my comfort zone. In some ways it’s linked to ‘say yes’. However, this is more a deliberate reminder to seek out and commit to trying something completely novel. One thing I’ve been considering for a while is training to be a Legal Observer for protests and demonstrations. Perhaps now is the time to do that. Maybe I’ll take an improv class. Who knows.

Most of all, I just want to embrace the freedom of not being bound to a particular schedule, or structure. One of the biggest frustrations I have had over the past couple of years has been the feeling that it is all too easy to get stuck in routine, and I want to make sure that I resist that where possible over these months. That will of course be easier said than done, especially given that my wife will still be working, and I can’t just up and abandon her or the dog – but it is a principle that I am going to strive for.

A concept that I’ve been thinking about a fair bit recently is the idea of being intentional. Approaching situations deliberately, and not just letting them slip by without consideration. Questioning what you want from an interaction or day, and then acting with that in mind. Squeezing the lemon. Whatever I end up doing, I hope I’ll bring that mindset.

I’ll report back afterwards.

Planting a Digital Garden

25/10/2023 Clicky Steveblogging, digital garden, expression, Notion, thoughts, what is a digital garden, WordPress, wordpress digital gardenLeave a comment

One of the cool things about working at a place like Automattic is that you are part of this global network of inspiring people that often think deeply, creatively, and publicly about expression. Unfortunately, it is incredibly easy to become blind to the verdure, as a result of the daily obligations that our busy roles require.

Over the past couple of days I decided that the thicket of ‘low priority’ e-mail notifications I had allowed to build up was becoming unreasonable – even by my standards – and that I urgently needed to wrest some kind of control back. As I hacked through the undergrwoth, I came across some posts on my colleague Cheri’s blog talking about the idea of a ‘digital garden’ – which immediately sparked some kind of mental wildfire.

What is a digital garden?

So what the heck is a digital garden anyway? I am well aware that it may sound dangerously twee, but bear with me, as I think there’s something to it. There isn’t a specific definition that I am aware of, but if I had to boil my understanding of it down to a simple summary, it would be:

An open, personal collection of perpetually evolving notes and other media, which eschews attributes commonly associated with blogs or other platforms such as presentation via chronological order based on publication date.

That’s quite a mouthful, but effectively what this describes is an approach to a website that has an assortment of different snippets on various topics, loosely organised. Kind of like a personal Wikipedia, or a public notebook.

The concept isn’t really new, even if the nomenclature is – and it actually strongly reminds me of the way that personal websites used to be, before the web became more structured, and often siloed through the use of social media timelines. An important element of such a thing is the reliance on contextual hyperlinks, to tie pages together in a much more organic and idiosyncratic way, as opposed to rigid categorical linearity.

Reimagining blogs

One of the things that we know people struggle with when it comes to blogging is how to keep their site active. Commitments to a regular posting schedule quickly fall by the wayside in the face of internalised pressure to have something ‘worthwhile’ to say, particularly when the output has to be the finished article. Even with the best of intentions, disillusionment can often follow, with the process becoming more of a chore than a liberation.

Despite my love for – and involvement with – blogs, I too feel this sense of inadequacy keenly. That should be self-evident purely based on the date of the last post I made here, which was over 9 months ago. However, I also currently have 71 drafts in progress over on my main photo blog allmyfriendsarejpegs. While I am constantly writing and updating, the nature of these and my own perfectionism means that I am often stuck in a constant state of false progress, working on articles that will potentially never see the light of day.

Preservation, not Presentation

I find fascinated by the possible reconception of blogging that the idea of a digital garden brings. Removing the finality of publication, as well as the perceived need for time based updates means that you can focus purely on the act of writing and collation – as opposed to chasing what effectively amounts to a kind of news update or dated diary.

Over the past couple of years I have struggled with a declining interest in photography – something that used to be central to my identity. As part of an ongoing period of reflection on that, I’ve come to realise that part of the reason may come down to a gradual change in why I take pictures. I think that I have probably become so concerned with getting the right shots for an eventual, theoretical blog post, that I no longer enjoy or engage with the process itself. In other words: my preoccupation with the final presentation of the work has supplanted the reason for participating in its creation in the first place.

As I’ve begun to explore this revelation, I’ve consciously shifted my approach away from a concern with the eventual presentation of content, to one of preservation, where I take pictures or shoot video to capture moments purely for the sake of doing so itself – not thinking about what I will necessarily do with them later. That simple adjustment has completely transformed my way of thinking, and reinvigorated a lot of the passion that I once had in these kinds of expressive actions.

The notion of planting and growing a digital garden which is more concerned with the ongoing as opposed to the culmination strikes a chord with me partly because of this understanding, and is one that I find incredibly exciting.

The Plan

Going forward, I am going to experiment with the idea on this site. As far as I’m aware, there aren’t any specific themes or established methodologies for doing so with WordPress, but it seems like fertile ground on which to explore.

My plan is to:

Move the date-specific blog portion of this site to its own dedicated area.
Create pages for specific ideas, notes, and musings that come to mind, as and when they do.
Replace the home page with a splash which will help people navigate this brave new world.

There are some challenges of course, including the fact that page updates won’t necessarily produce any kind of notification to readers, and it will be difficult for folks to track what is new. However, I am keen to embrace the chaos, and kind of like the idea of things sprouting up naturally in what may end up as a tangled, inter-connected suffusion. For that reason, I am not going to implement any specific automated systems of categorisation and sorting, as that would spoil some of the magic.

Irrespective of how this turns out, I am looking forward to breathing new life into this site, and perhaps feeling a bit less terrible about paying the annual domain renewal fees for something I rarely update.

Books 2020

04/01/202104/01/2021 Clicky Stevebook list, Books, readingLeave a comment

Growing up, I loved to read, and would gladly spend hours demolishing stacks of books of all kinds from the library. As the years went by and the afflictions of adulthood responsibility mounted, I found that I was giving over less and less time to reading, and that twenty minutes before I fell asleep just wasn’t cutting it.

Last year I decided to make a concerted effort to dedicate a good chunk of time to recapture some of what I used to love, and in 2019 managed to get through a respectable total of 23 books. I wasn’t sure if I would top that this year. However, after discovering that my colleague Andrew Spittle had read 72 (!), I doubled down, even upgrading my old Kindle to a fancy new one with a warm backlight that has been much easier on my ageing eyeballs.

Below is a list of all the books that I’ve finished in the year gone by. Not included are those that I started but discarded through lack of interest, or any kind of academic-only reading, as that falls into something of a different category. The last time I did this, some folks asked for more specifics on what books I liked best, so for this year I’ve added some notes at the end, which might be rough as I jotted them down as I went. Click through for those.

I was aiming to read 50 books this year, but only managed to complete 40 in the end. While that is 8 more than last year (you can find the 2019 list here), I’m pretty sure I could have managed 50 if I had pushed for it. That said, I did take up learning Japanese, and re-discovered both music and film photography in force during lockdown, which probably accounts for the gradual slowdown over the year. If you’re on Goodreads, you’ll find me as clickysteve.

Severance – Ling Ma (2018)
Golden State – Ben H. Winters (2019)
The Paper Menagerie – Ken Liu (2016)
Welcome to the Heady Heights – David F. Ross (2019)
Skin – Liam Brown (2019)
OddJobs – Heide Goody (2016)
Tune in Tokyo: The Gaijin Diaries – Tim Anderson (2010)
For Fukui’s Sake: Two Years in Rural Japan – Sam Baldwin (2011)
Range: The Key to Success, Performance and Education – David Epstein (2019)
A Lot of People Are Saying: The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy – Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum (2019)
Photographing People – A Guide for Shy Photographers – Kevin Landwer-Johan (2020)
Dark Matter – Blake Crouch (2016)
Recursion – Blake Crouch (2019)
Mohammed Maguire – Colin Bateman (2002)
The Wall – John Lanchester (2019)
The Photographer’s Playbook – J. Fulford (2014)
PRACTICE LESS, PLAY MORE: The simple, three-step system to play songs you love on your guitar from day 1 – Steve Mastroianni (2019)
Making Music: 74 Creative Strategies for Electronic Music Producers – Dennis DeSantis (2015)
Recording Unhinged – Sylvia Massy (2016)
Unlocking Japanese – Cure Dolly (2016)
Station Eleven – Emily St. John Mandel (2014)
Revenge – Yoko Ogawa (2013)
One Plus One Equals Three: A Masterclass in Creative Thinking – D Trott (2015)
Three Japanese Short Stories (Penguin Modern) – K. Uno et al (2018)
Striptease – Carl Hiaasen (1993)
The Guest List – Lucy Foley (2020)
The Parade – Dave Eggers (2019)
Not the end of the World – Christopher Brookmyre (1998)
Hardcore Self Help: Fk Anxiety – Robert Duff (2014)**
Photographers on Photography: How the Masters See, Think & Shoot – Gerry Carroll (2018)
Double Whammy – Carl Hiaasen (2005)
The Alcohol Experiment: A 30-Day, Alcohol-Free Challenge to Interrupt Your Habits and Help You Take Control – Annie Grace (2018)
Native Tongue – Carl Hiaasen (2005)
In Your Defence – Sarah Langford (2020)
Exit – Laura Waddell (2020)
The Courage to be Disliked – Ichiro Kishimi (2019)
Cult of the Dead Cow – Joseph Menn (2019)
How to Ikigai – Tim Tamashiro (2019)
Lockdown – Peter May (2020)
Love Means Love: Same-sex Relationships and the Bible – David Runcorn (2020)

Continue reading →

How I replaced everything with Notion

17/11/2020 Clicky Stevedatabase, Notion, Notion app, productivity hacks, productivity tips, productivity tools1 Comment

Knowing my penchant for a productivity tool, my good friend Pazy suggested I investigate one that I hadn’t heard of before: Notion. From what I could gather, it was a central place to store a whole manner of different kinds of notes.

I was initially a bit wary of diving head-first into Notion, as I have both used and built up a significant amount of content in Evernote over the years. However, the temptation was too much to resist, and I gave it a whirl. After just a short time, I was convinced. Notion is the promised land.

Coming from Evernote

While Evernote has been touted as the single place that you can quickly grab and throw all of your various ideas, links, clippings, and files that you come across on a daily basis – Notion takes that idea a step further. Rather than just acting as a huge repository with search capabilities, Notion encourages you to store information in a far more organised way, making heavy use of its own databases. At first, I found this a bit confusing, as my Evernote ‘save it all’ approach didn’t quite fit neatly… but once I realised that Notion involved a fundamentally different approach to data organisation, it made much more sense.

Databases versus Notes

I can already hear people turning off at the sound of databases. I was the same. Pazy is a database guru as part of his day job, so I just assumed he was naturally inclined to gravitate towards databases in his personal life too. However, Notion utilises and presents databases in a way that you wouldn’t even realise they were there unless you stopped to think about it. Essentially, rather than storing information in a text-note, you are gently prodded to put it into tables, with tags – all of which is presented in a logical hierarchical structure. Before you know what’s happened, you suddenly have the ability to organise, filter, and display your notes in a much more powerful and diverse way than would have been possible with the alternative.

To give a concrete example, as a musician I keep a note of tracks I have started working on, but which might not be finished. In Evernote, that looked something like this:

and here is an excerpt of how it looks in Notion…

Of course, Evernote can also present data in tables… but with Notion the key point is that the information is treated as a searchable database, rather than just text presented in a different way. With Notion, I can now quickly and easily see which projects are at which stage, and filter them depending on the different variables that I want to display.

For another example, I used to collect recipes to give me ideas for what I could eat on days where I lacked inspiration. In Evernote I would collect these by meal type, but in practice I found that the limited ways to filter these outside of just a plain search meant that I almost never referred to them. Now, they are stored in a dedicated database in Notion:

Looking for a vegetarian dinner? What about an egg-based breakfast? Maybe just a gluten-free snack… It’s as simple as combining the tags and filtering for desired results.

So much easier than sifting through a huge pile of text-note clippings.

Personal Workspace and Linked Databases

One of the other most useful features of the database storage model over using text notes, files, or simple tables is that you can create ‘linked database views’ in different places. In other words, you can have one central database for a particular purpose, and then filter that database to display the relevant data for the appropriate section you are working in. That sounds a bit convoluted, but here’s a practical example. If I want to compile a Reading List of different blog posts, books, journal articles etc that I want to read… rather than having different databases for each area of my life (work, personal, music, language learning, etc), I can have the main database like so:

and then under a specific page, I can have a dedicated ‘view’ of that same database, presenting only the relevant entries. For example, here is how I have the Reading List set up to display on my dedicated Japanese learning page:

Note that it isn’t just displaying a particular sub-set of the data (filtered by those articles tagged ‘Japanese’), but I can also choose how it appears on the page. There’s a bunch of different options including simplified lists, full tables, galleries, etc.

As you can see, rather than creating a typical file structure where you collect pages and files or notes within a hierarchy of folders, Notion encourages you to put together what are essentially ‘dashboards’ of data. This means that on the top level you can display the data from the various collections underneath it – not just act as a blank ‘storage box’. This is an incredibly useful feature, which means you can set up different workspaces for different projects, or for different areas of your life… even if just to separate out work and personal items.

Web Clipper

Evernote’s Web Clipper tool is known for its ability to grab almost anything from the web and squirrel it away for reference – whether it’s screenshots, selections of text, full web-pages, or whatever else – so Notion has a tough act to follow in that regard. In practice, it isn’t as configurable on the surface, which is a bit of a shame. However, it is deceivingly powerful. Here is how it looks when saving an article from a site:

As you can see, there aren’t all that many options. On the bottom right you can click and search for the page you wish to import the clipping to – but not much else. What isn’t obvious though, is that Notion will grab various fields, and import them into the appropriate tables of a pre-existing database. That means, that it will save the URL into the ‘URL’ column of your Reading List table. This is really handy, as it means you have to do less leg-work when it comes to getting different kinds of info into your custom databases. Unfortunately, the extent to which you can modify this is fairly limited… (as in, to tell the clipper to save the URL to a different table field, etc) but hopefully that will come in a future update.

UI and Page Formatting

The UI of the Notion block-style editor is particularly nice. Emojis are littered everywhere, acting as icons or nice little visual indicators, and you can customise pages with images pulled from around the web. There’s even an Unsplash integration, which is a pretty great way to directly get access to high quality images for free.

There is also a wealth of different ways to format the information on your pages and organise them as you see fit, including collapsible sections, different headings, etc.

Anyway, you’ve all seen rich text editors before… but it’s worth saying that the options here are far more fully-featured than I would have expected.

File Handling and Embeds

It should go without saying, but embedding content from other parts of the web like YouTube is really easy. However, at first I thought that file handling in terms of uploads might not be so great, based on various reviews talking about how great Evernote was at handling all kinds of different file types. In practice though, this wasn’t really the case. While you have to purposefully create an ’embed’ block first and then upload your file to Notion for it to display inline (if you just drag and drop, it will create a download link instead) – it is still perfectly functional, handling PDFs, MP3s, etc.

The one caveat here is that while Notion is free for personal use, uploading files larger than 5mb requires a paid account – which starts at 4USD per month for an annual subscription (or 5USD on a monthly basis).

How I use Notion

Years ago I helped create a Wiki style ‘portal’ for a company that I worked for. The idea being to serve as a central Intranet dashboard full of links, news, and other resources that folks might need. The software we used wasn’t exactly up to scratch, but it got the job done. If Notion had been available back then, it would have fitted the bill perfectly – and that’s one of its major strengths.

Instead of having all different kinds of data stored in different services that I inevitably forget about (Pocket, Evernote, Google Spreadsheets, etc), I now have a single personal ‘portal’ which displays a whole bunch of stuff that I need and use on a daily basis – or simply want to be reminded of. Links to commonly used sites, goals for the year, habits I want to track, articles I want to read, etc. There’s so much information collected and organised in the one place that it’s hard to show just what I mean, but here’s something of an insight…

Having everything I need organised and presented in this way, where I can see the status of a bunch of different ongoing projects at a glance, and dig in deeper into the sub-pages for more information as required has been really liberating. Instead of just chucking every little thing I find on the web which might be useful one day into vaguely defined categories in Evernote (which never really worked very well), I now have things much more neatly defined, and feel so much more organised. It has lifted some kind of low-level mental pressure around accumulating so much data that I would never be able to find again because of its haphazard nature.

Conclusion

I really didn’t expect to take to Notion in the way that I have. While it did initially take some adjustment to understand its core kind of usage philosophy, and a bit of time to set up and input my data in a way that made sense for me, it has replaced and improved on so many different areas of my daily workflows that I can’t imagine going back to Evernote.

Ultimately, the data that I save is now far more organised, far easier to access, and much more useful than it ever has been before as a result. I would definitely recommend it to anybody interested in keeping track of their digital knowledge base.

There is so much more to the app than I can squeeze into a single post, including the ability to manipulate or query the databases via scripts, etc… and so I’ll post a few follow-ups with specific use cases for more details.

Remaining Productive with Things: The Pandemic Edition

26/10/202026/10/2020 Clicky Steveproductivity, things, tipsLeave a comment

Back in March I wrote about how I managed my time using the task manager app, ‘Things’. The gist of that post was that rather than struggling to remember or stay on top of all of the various activities you want to complete (no matter how small) – you chuck them all into Things, and free up the mental energy that would otherwise be expended in tracking them.

For a while, this approach worked really well, but over time I found that I was confronted every day with a huge list of tasks that needed completed, and there wasn’t any kind of tangible satisfaction in completing them, as I knew at midnight the next day’s tasks would appear on cue. Rather than helping to alleviate stress, Things began to contribute to the overwhelming pressure of everyday life, which had come sharply into focus thanks to national COVID lockdowns and varying restrictions. Things I was ment to enjoy (like making music) were reduced to yet another tickbox to be churned through.

What made the above worse was that there were recurring tasks that I wanted to complete, but often failed to find time for. I didn’t want to take them off my daily list, but I didn’t want them to have the same mental load as other tasks.

Taking inspiration from this blog post, I followed Andrea’s lead, and changed the way I approach task management with Things. Rather than having one large daily list of jobs to get through, I now have them separated into their respective categories. The tasks that I definitely want to complete that day come in at the top, under ‘Daily Tasks’, and I try to keep this to a manageable load, so that I can always clear them out. Other things that I want to get done, but don’t necessarily have to get done that specific day are then available for me to work through, based on how I feel/what energy I have that day.

How my Things to do list is organised now.

This new approach has made a huge difference to my relationship with the daily to do list. Rather than feeling like I am endlessly fighting a losing battle to keep ticking off checkboxes, I can now see at a glance exactly what tasks need to be done that day. By keeping those separate, deliberately chosen, and manageable, I no longer feel like the other bits and pieces that I want to do are a chore. If something isn’t in the Daily Tasks list – it can be done another day… and ironically, since adopting this method, I’ve gotten even more done than usual, because I don’t feel the same pressure to complete everything.

Pomodoro

One other thing that I have adopted which is worth mentioning is the Pomodoro technique. The general idea here is that you split up your time into chunks of about 20 minutes, and deliberately focus on a particular task for that period of time, before taking a break and either moving on to something else, or committing to another 20 minute period of focus.

This notion isn’t anything new. I am sure I’m not the only one who sat in maths and thought ‘Okay just get through the next five minutes and then it’ll be another five minutes after that’. Plenty of people have written about this extensively elsewhere… but it’s not an approach that I’ve ever really come to use in any disciplined way. Breaking up my tasks at work was always too difficult, and concentrating for 20 minutes to then have a break and return to the same tasks felt too artificially scheduled for my liking.

However… since I switched up my approach in Things, I’ve had success using the Pomodoro model for my own personal projects – particularly those that I want to get done but struggle to get the motivation to start. For example, I am currently learning Japanese, but sometimes (often) the prospect of firing up the flashcard app for an indeterminate amount of time seems like too much of a chore, and I put it off. Before I know it, I haven’t done it in days.

Now, I sit down and say – okay, I’ll just do it for 20 minutes just now, and then go off and do something else. Knowing that it’s such a short amount of time means I can focus much more than I normally would, and I have been rattling through tasks like never before. This also helps me work out just how much time I actually spend or need to spend on certain activities to complete them, and it can be much less than I expected.

We’ll see how this mutates and modifies as time goes on, but for now… this is the approach.

Becoming a Coffee Snob

24/07/2020 Clicky Stevecaffeine, coffee6 Comments

Breaking ranks with the rest of the tech industry, I must admit that I have never been a huge coffee fan. I know. Sacrilege. The truth is that hot drinks in general have never really been my cup of tea (pun very much intended). Sure, I was partial to an iced latte, and the elaborate glass Chemex contraptions of the faithful were intriguing, but I just never really got it. I could easily have dismissed such geekery, but in actuality I was always a bit jealous. As someone partial to a wee dram, I know how amazing it is when you get past the initial stages of “this all tastes the same”, and can discover the variety and depth involved in something new.

Recently, I had come across a local hipster coffee shop which clearly took themselves very seriously, but for the first time I got a glimpse of the promised land. Much like the first time I actually tasted cherries in a red wine (no, not the Tonic), the coffee that these folks were serving tasted incredible. Rather than just being another cup of burned dirt water, it somehow tasted of caramel and raspberries – without any addition of sugar or syrups.

This damascus moment led to an insatiable craving, desperate to relive that delirious caffeinated experience time and again. It wasn’t long until I bankrupted myself and was in the process of selling all of my worldly possessions to return to that cafe every day and get my fix… until I realised that if they could serve something that good, perhaps I should do a bit of investigation into recreating it at home.

What I learned

In a very short space of time, I not only discovered the price of a semi-decent espresso machine, but I also realised that almost everything I thought I knew about coffee was wrong. I still know basically nothing, but here is what I’ve gleaned over the past wee while:

1. Buying ‘better’ coffee isn’t the answer

In my previous attempts to have better tasting coffee, I just assumed I could pick up a more expensive bag from the supermarket (you know, the ‘taste the difference’ stuff that comes in that tempting black bag), and that would be half the battle. However, that isn’t the case. Of course the way you brew it matters, but there’s far more to it than that. Wayyyy more than I expected.

2. Coffee goes stale. Quickly.

Coffee basically never goes out of date, right? Of course not. They’re just beans. Well… yes… but apparently to really get the most out of it, you have to drink it within about 30 days of when it was roasted. If you pick up a fancy bag of beans from a local roaster but don’t get round to drinking them for a month or two, you’re far less likely to taste all of the exciting flavours that the coffee has to offer. Note that supermarket coffee almost never has a roasting date, and you can begin to piece together why it all might just taste the same – even if you do buy the fancy black bags.

3. Different ages of coffee are better for different types

Not only does the date that the coffee was roasted matter, but the type of drink you make with it at what stage of its life-cycle within the 30 day golden period also makes a difference. I won’t claim to know the reasons behind why, but an espresso will supposedly taste better made with beans that were roasted between 12 and 30 days prior – whereas beans which were roasted between 6 and 12 days will be more suited for filter coffee.

4. Storage is important

What do you mean I can’t just fold the bag over and stick a peg on it?! Oxygen, light, and moisture all contribute to coffee losing their freshness quicker. If you want to get the best out of that expensive bag you picked up from the floppy haired barista who told you the beans were foraged in the foothills of Botswana by a rare breed of hogs… you need to put a bit of effort into storing them properly. That means using some kind of contraption that will keep oxygen out, but also allow the CO2 that the beans give off to escape. The protips I’ve found involve using specially designed vacum sealed coffee boxes, along with oxygen absorber pads.

5. Freezing is fine

This is a controversial one, but if you buy a whole pile of coffee at once without realising that you would need to drink it within 30 days (ahem), then freezing the beans will help keep them fresher for longer. The caveat here is that you need to ensure that they are stored in an airtight container before freezing. Using some kind of vacuum sealed bag with an oxygen absorption pad should do the trick. If you are taking beans out from the freezer to use immediately, give the bag 10-15 minutes to acclimatise to room temperature before opening it and re-sealing once done to help prevent moisture building up.

6. Not all grinders were created equal

I had a coffee grinder. A good one, so I thought. It cost me £20 damnit! But, apparently it’s pish. Totally worthless. Why? Because it doesn’t allow you to properly control the size of the grind, or manage the consistency. That matters as you will want a different consistency of coffee depending on what kind you are brewing. For espresso, a fine grind is desirable, whereas French press requires a coarser grind.

7. You’ll need a new kettle

Okay, maybe this isn’t strictly the case, but if you want to get into the world of fancy pour-over coffee (and at this stage I’m fully committed to this madness), you will probably need to use one of those gooseneck kettles that looks like something out of a Wes Anderson film. To be honest, they look so cool that I would want one even if I never drank coffee again.

The road ahead

Even from a brief foray into this highly caffeinated world, I can see why so many people are so religious about it. For me, I’m not sure what the future holds. It’s been a while since I had an entirely new area to get excited learning about though, and I’ll hopefully be able to at least enjoy the journey. At least until I get addicted to caffeine and curse this entire experience.

On inspiration

12/04/202011/10/2023 Clicky Stevecreative, creative people, creativity, inspirationLeave a comment

Something I have been reflecting on a lot lately is inspiration; where it comes from, what feeds it, and how to make the most of it.

Over the years I’ve found that I go through periods where I become very intensely inspired about specific things – to the point that almost all I can think about is the project or projects that I’m working on. This can be extremely rewarding, but also incredibly frustrating, with no obvious way to manage effectively. It seemed like there was never any discernible rhyme or reason for when these times would strike or how long they would last; it could often be incredibly difficult to satisfy the creative impulses that came along, and most maddening of all – I wasn’t sure how to trigger them consciously.

In addition, it also felt like this kind of all-or-nothing drive was often easily misunderstood – including by myself – as a sort of careless impatience, or worse, an erratic string of obsessions which would fade away just as quickly as they had appeared – rather than a genuine, lasting interest. There’s nothing worse than feeling like something you have been working on intently for months and are passionate about might just be some latest flight of fancy.

Managing Inspiration

Rather than just jumping endlessly from one new thing to the next, I realised that I was actually cycling through a few of the same creative outlets – focussing solely on one to the detriment of all the others. These cycles could run from days to weeks to months to years, and I had no real way to predict when they might end.

The nature of this meant that I felt guilty about neglecting my other passions, and inevitably made collaborative ventures especially tricky. For example, if I was currently deeply inspired about photographic expression, I found it almost impossible to garner enthusiasm for writing songs as part of a band.

The all-consuming nature of this kind of heady inspiration also means that you lose some objectivity in relation to whether what you are doing is actually any good – the constant desire to create pushing everything else aside. Even just considering this possibility was enough to drive me to despair. TL;DR I needed to find a better way to manage these driving forces.

It has only been very recently that have I begun to get something of a handle on all of this. Now, rather than simply waiting for inspiration to strike and abandoning all other projects when it does until the juice runs out, I can strike something of a balance. Here are some of my observations and tips.

1. Avoid the gaps

Rather than see multiple outlets as being in competition with one another, I’ve come to realise (with insight from wiser people than I) that they can actually support and feed each other. For me (and I think many other creatively wired folk), having lots going on at once is far more preferable to hitting a period where I’m unable to do anything. Having various different passions means that I can shift from one to another and keep up the momentum across mediums – rather than hitting a total expressive block. It is much harder to find inspiration after that than it is if you are constantly inspired in separate areas.

2. Take a break

There are piles of books out there that will tell you the key to getting things done is to commit to doing a little bit each day. This path-of-least-resistance approach can be a great tactic to help get you over any initial procrastination, and build longer term habits. If you commit to playing guitar for five minutes a day, you are bound to find yourself playing far longer. However, when it comes to expressive outlets, the danger here is that you turn something you love doing into a chore, with the idea that you must constantly be progressing at least a little for it to be worthwhile. That kind of feeling kills creativity, and sometimes in order to find inspiration you need to give yourself space to take a break from something and then come back to it – without feeling guilty. This will pay dividends.

3. Grab inspiration when it comes

Of course, sometimes inspiration gloriously swells up from nowhere, and you need to make the most of it while you can. I came across a quote the other day from Margaret Qiao (from this awesome book) which puts it better than I ever could.

When you feel inspired, or have an idea, stop whatever you are doing and follow the inspiration. It’s very difficult to rekindle the spark once it goes out and impossible to conjure up on command.

This inspired me to write this post!

4. Seek out inspiration

Sometimes, you have no choice but to work on something – whether that’s because of deadlines, personal expectations, or because you are part of a collaboration. In these times, if you find yourself completely uninspired, it can be an incredibly taxing and difficult process.

As I mentioned, I previously just rode the waves of inspiration, jostling on the creative seas with no way to control what happened. I presumed that was all just part of the tortured artist process and revelled in the misery of it. However, what I’ve come to realise is that there are actually ways to help trigger periods of inspiration – you just have to actively seek them out.

For me, this has meant that before I have to work on anything specific but don’t really feel like it, I’ll spend some time on related things that I think is really interesting. For example, actively listening to bands who have really great vocalists before I have to sit down and write lyrics; watching a Japanese TV show I like before I study some of the language; or looking through pictures from photographers I love before developing some film.

This might seem painfully obvious, but in practice it’s something that I never really bought into before as nothing ever clicked. However, that’s because most of the things other folks find inspiring or share online won’t work for you. To give another example I never used to care much for photo books, but have fairly recently discovered that having a collection of these I can browse through almost never fails to inspire me to get out and take pictures.

5. ‘Write drunk, edit sober’

It isn’t clear who actually said this originally, but it isn’t all that important. Rather than taking this literally, when you find yourself struck by an idea, squeeze as much out of that feeling as you can while it lasts – but don’t worry about finishing everything then and there. Get the bulk down on paper, canvas, on film, or on a blog while you are drunk on inspiration – and then revisit to apply the finishing touches later. The urge to publish quickly can be unbearable at times – and sometimes you should – but the important thing is to make a start will you have the drive to do so. You can always come back to it later.

Staying Productive with Things

26/03/2020 Clicky Steveproductivity, productivity app, productivity hacks, things, Things 3, To Do list, working from home2 Comments

More than productivity

I am a person that needs to have a bunch of different projects going on at any one time. Whether it’s making music, writing blogs, building weird keyboards, or restoring old iPods, if I don’t keep my mind busy, it quickly begins to turn in on itself. At the same time, my work involves managing a variety of disparate projects that can vary from day to day.

All of this has become increasingly difficult to keep track of over the years, and none of the various calendars, diaries or bits of software I tried really helped. However, about six months ago my colleague and friend Bryan convinced me to give an app called ‘Things’ a go, and it has pretty much transformed how I manage my time. As well as becoming far more productive, I have found that I am far less stressed out, and feel more in control. I had never appreciated just how significant the cognitive load of having to juggle so many tasks was, or how much anxiety I had internalised as a result. Now, I no longer worry about forgetting to do something, or lie awake at night unable to sleep while my brain organises the things I have to do the next day.

At the end of the day, Things is just a To Do list app, but it’s an especially pleasant one to use, with a really smart workflow. Rather than wasting what Bryan would call ‘brain cycles’ worrying about er, things, you let Things take care of them. In particular, it wasn’t until I found myself increasingly filled with despair about the unfolding COVID-19 pandemic that I realised just how invaluable Things had become for keeping my mind clear. Rather than allow myself to become consumed with the developing news cycle, I instead chose to rely on Things more, and focus on what I wanted to get done in the following days. While it seems trivial, this helped tremendously. So in this blog I wanted to share a bit about how I make use of Things, and what I’ve learned.

The Basics

Things is a beautifully designed to-do list app from Cultured Code which runs on both Mac and iOS. It doesn’t run on Windows, and (annoyingly) there is no web or Android version (though see this post for my workaround). The current version at the time of writing is Things 3. It is apparently based on the ‘Getting Things Done‘ methodology.

Boiled down, Things essentially just provides a very pleasant way to quickly create and manage tasks – the beauty of it though is the myriad of different ways that you can view and organise these. At its most simple, you have an Inbox where you can dump all sorts of to do items to be organised, and then categorise them into different subject matter areas or projects.

Tasks can be set to only appear on a specific ‘due date’ – presented in the ‘Today’ window. They can also be set to recur upon completion, or at set intervals.

For tasks that absolutely must be completed by a certain date, you can flag them up with a deadline.

Selecting an Area or Project on the left will display only the tasks that are associated with it, if you want to focus on something specifically.

If you have tasks that you want to get to, but they aren’t time specific, you can throw them in the ‘Anytime’ bucket… and for ideas that you want to explore at some point, they can be filed away under ‘Someday’ for when you get time. You can also tag any task to further organise them to whatever level of detail you want.

There are a bunch of other features as well which I won’t go into in any depth just now – such as the Logbook which keeps track of all of your completed tasks, the calendar integration so you see what appointments you have on any particular day, and the ‘Upcoming’ view which provides a longer term perspective of what’s on the horizon.

How I use Things: Workflow, Tips & Tricks

Everybody will use Things slightly differently, and I borrowed a lot of my approach from my sensei Bryan. However, here’s some of what I’ve found works:

Add everything – no matter how small – I literally add everything I need to remember to do as a task into Things. Whether that’s remembering to wash the dishes, or to chop carrots for dinner, I offload everything onto there so that I don’t need to think about it. At first this can seem pretty ridiculous, or like you are outsourcing your faculties to an app, but it frees up your mind to focus on other things that are more important. This also means that you have a mixture of things you enjoy as well as specific obligations – which helps to avoid dreading opening the app in the first place.

Make use of shortcuts – There are a bunch of useful shortcuts, the most important of which lets you very quickly add in To Do list items to your inbox while you are browsing the web, to be categorised later. Learn these, as the less friction you have in adding tasks or managing them, the easier and more natural it becomes – and the more you can focus on what you are doing at the time.

Only add things to your daily pile that you can actually achieve – It took me a while to realise that I would add all sorts of tasks to my daily list that I wanted to do, but which realistically I would never be able to get done. That ended up pretty demoralising, as I saw the same To Do items rolling over day after day, unchecked. Now, I only add things that I either have to get done, or which I have a reasonable shot at completing, and it has been far more effective.

Organise your tasks for the following day – Every night I look over the tasks I have for the next day, and organise them roughly by when I want to complete them, and ask myself what seems reasonable to do in one day. If it seems like there’s too much, I punt it to the following day. This ritual helps me organise my thoughts and get to sleep faster.

Set smaller goals, and be judicious with repeating tasks – It can be tempting to set a goal like ‘I will do one hour of Japanese study every day!’ and to add it in as a repeating task that appears on your list on the stroke of midnight. However, I found that this was actually counter-productive, as I began to just ignore these broad repeating tasks. Instead, I would manually set much more specific, one off tasks, like ‘Do 2 lessons on DuoLingo’ – which made them far easier to complete.

Use tags creatively – There are all sorts of cool ways you can make use of tags. For a practical example… I save lots of news articles to Pocket, but never actually get around to reading them. The same applies to YouTube videos. Now what I do is chuck them into Things, and tag them with the time they will take to complete – ’10m’ for example. Then, whenever I have a spare ten minutes and I’m not sure what to do – I can dip in and quickly find something to fill that time.

Separate out evening tasks – There’s no point having stuff you have to do after dinner wrapped up in the same list as everything else, and Things lets you specifically ring-fence tasks for the evening within a specific day. Make use of this!

Projects are useful! – I didn’t really utilise the Projects feature for ages, relying instead on individual tasks within Areas, but then I realised you could put Projects under Areas. Game changer. Now I use Projects a lot to manage groups of different tasks that add up to a larger goal, which is really useful.

Summary

…and that’s it. At first I didn’t really get what the big deal with Things was, and thought some of the practices were a bit bizarre and redundant, but I genuinely think that organising things in this way has made a huge difference to both my productivity, sense of achievement, and overall zen. It ain’t cheap, and they need to hurry up and just make an Android app already damnit, but I’m not sure what I would do without it at this point.

New Keeb – Planck Rev 6

07/01/202016/06/2020 Clicky Stevemechanical keyboard, mk, otemu sky5 Comments

Behold my newest keyboard, the Planck Rev 6:

I have had this project in the works for a while now, but only just got around to finishing it when I realised that all of my other mechanical keyboards had the loud-as-hell clicky style key switches. This was always fine when I worked from home in a tiny cupboard and could disturb nobody, but lately I’ve been sharing an office with my wife who is on video calls pretty constantly, and my delightfully clickety clackety Ergodox keyboard with Cherry MX Blues suddenly weren’t as charming as they once were (Well, they were for me, but probably nobody else.

Rather than bore you with all the geeky build details, here are the salient points:

1. What are the colours all about?

I had originally wanted to do one of these cool blue to pink gradients for the keycaps… but realised that the set I ordered didn’t have enough single squares to cover the full grid required – and I didn’t fancy having to get a full new set just for a few extra keys. The other problem is that while gradients look cool, they also make it a bit of a nightmare to find specific keys that you need at a glance. In the end, I decided to go with something a bit more practical. The yellow keys are modifiers like Escape, Enter, space, etc. The pink and blue rows are the letters, and the green keys are reminders of where specific keys I need for work shortcuts are.

2. Wait, why are all the keys square?

Aesthetic, innit.

This kind of grid layout is known as an ‘ortho-linear’ keyboard. There are a bunch of reasons people like this system… with the theory being that it keeps your fingers in a more natural typing position than the standard setup. To be honest though, I just think they look cool, and wanted to try out something a bit different (though this isn’t my first grid rodeo…)

3. But there’s only four rows! How does that work?

Err, yes. There is. In the mechanical keyboard world there is often a bit of an obsession to see how many keys you can strip out and still type just as fast as you would on a full size board. The Planck is the smallest board I have tried so far, with just 48 keys in total. The sharp eyed amongst you will probably have worked out that this means there isn’t enough room for a number row… and there isn’t. So how do you get access to all those keys that are missing?

The idea is pretty straightforward: Rather than have just one ‘shift’ layer which gives you capital letters and exclamation marks and all that good stuff, you have multiple ones. The blue keys to either side of the yellow space bar(s) on the bottom row let you ‘shift’ into completely different layers which have all the other keys – which you can program however you want.

For reference, here is my top layer, and then a couple of my additional ‘shifted’ layers.

So if I want to get to the number row, I press and hold down the blue key to the right of the space bar. Simple.

I am still figuring out what the perfect layout for me is (ignore that rogue right arrow on the top layer… I’m not sure what is going to end up in that space just yet) – but I already really like this board. It’s neat, and I have space for all of my weird custom modifier shortcut keys I have set up for work. The keys I use most are on the top layer, and anything I use less is just an extra press away. Of course it takes a bit of getting used to, but then all keyboard changes do – and I’ve adapted to the Planck far quicker than I have others in the past.

4. What kind of switches are in that bad boy?

Those would be the Outemu Sky 68g switches. They are ultra-tactile without being too loud to use around other folks.

5. What’s with this obsession with weird keyboards?

When you spend most of your life using one specific device, it’s good to explore different ways of interacting with it. Plus, the MacBook Pro keyboards are now so shockingly bad, that I will do almost anything to avoid having to use one. If you know, you know.

6. Nice USB cable.

Why thanks for asking. It’s a custom made one from CoolCable.co.uk.