Dino’s Journal 📖

Totally did not expect that car to be the winner... but if you read through this highly detailed and descriptive article, you'll understand why that car won. Really good read, especially if you are a car enthusiast.

Link: 2020 Performance Car of the Year

When it came to lap times, we enlisted a licensed club racer with no Thunderhill experience: me. We did this for a reason, and it wasn’t to build my ego. Most of our readers are not pro drivers. When you buy a new car, a professional’s lap time at any track is an interesting metric, but it’s rarely reflective of a normal person’s experience. We wanted to stress accessibility and adaptability. How easy is it to get up to speed in a given car? How communicative is the car? Is it hard to learn the quirks? Under the watchful eyes of our testing staff, every PCOTY contender got a quick warm-up session to set tire pressures, then no more than seven timed laps. Just enough to establish a representative lap and suss idiosyncrasies, not enough to set a record.

I love that. More car magazines/publications should follow suit.

For my last music log for the year 2019, I'm sharing my top 3 songs as reported by Spotify.

The first song is “Throne” by Bring Me The Horizon. Apparently this rock band has been making music for awhile now, but it wasn't until their 2015 album “That's The Spirit” that I really started to take notice. This track is probably my favorite Bring Me The Horizon song, so I'm not surprised it is at the top of the list. However, there is another reason why this ended up being my top song for 2019.

Early this year, Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown came out and I was hooked on that game for months. During that time, I seriously thought about making an Ace Combat 7 music video using this song. I thought that the lyrics in this song, fits really well with some of the narrative in the game. So I kept listening to this song, constructing the scenes in my mind. Eventually I decided not to go through with it due to copyright issues, but I guess I listened to the song too much that it is now my top song for 2019.

This experiment was about going 1 – 2 weeks without using my Fitbit Charge 2. Here is what I discovered from this experiment.

Initially I felt like I was missing something without my Fitbit on my wrist. After a day or so, this feeling went away and was replaced by a feeling of liberation.

• I no longer needed to worry about whether I forgot my Fitbit or not.
• My business casual outfits no longer looked out of sorts. I could wear an elegant looking traditional wrist watch on my left wrist and there won't be a fitness tracker on my other wrist to spoil the look.
• It was easier to put on jackets without the cuffs catching on my Fitbit.
• I no longer needed to remember to charge it every week.
• I no longer had to worry about the occasional itch/rash that would manifest because of wearing a Fitbit.

The piece that separates this strategy from the increasingly popular digital-detox concept is that it’s not just about what you avoid but also about figuring out what you should do with your time instead. Stepping away from distracting technology while making no effort to replace it with something better invites backsliding. Seeking meaningful alternatives is so crucial that in Digital Minimalism I suggest that people map out detailed leisure plans to break down their goals, such as achieving a new personal record or finishing a craft project, into weekly milestones and daily habits.

Agreed. Can you imagine doing even just a weekend (2 days) of digital detox without any plans on how to entertain yourself during that time frame? It won't work. You'll be bored to death. Before embarking on any digital detox or digital minimalism attempt, you need to decide on what to do with your free time.

When I was trying to “declutter” my smartphone, one of the hardest battles was with the browser on my iPhone. An iPhone comes with the default Safari mobile browser which you cannot uninstall. You can also easily install third party browsers via the App Store if you like. This post is about restricting the use of mobile browsers on an iPhone. Why? Because I don't want it to suck up all of my time. The browser on my phone allows me to stay connected to the internet pretty much the whole time. To me, that is something that is very hard to resist. I touched upon this on an earlier post about Smartphone Addiction.

The Screen Time settings on an iPhone control a number of things, but the most important one as far as this post is concerned, is the ability to “disable” the Safari mobile browser on an iPhone.

Since Christmas is fast approaching, I'm sharing Christmas songs in this music log.

To start with, here is “Christmas Time Again” by Amely, a pop-rock Christmas song with a catchy tune.