Pat Dryburgh

Pushed a big update to my site last night. Blog posts now live on the site’s homepage rather than buried under a menu item. I improved how pagination on the blog works and brought back a few old posts I found hadn’t been transferred from my old blogging system when I transitioned to using Jekyll in 2016. In fact, this week I discovered hundreds of posts that lived in my old system and didn’t make their way during the transition that I hope to migrate over in the coming months.

I also updated the about page with more of my history and added pages showing some of the work from early in my design career. Projects for companies like Corona Light, Pepsi Max, and my very first client as a freelancer back in 2010, Grammy-winning recording engineer Tim Latham. I learned just this week Tim later went on to win a second Grammy for his work mixing the Original Broadway Cast recording of Hamilton: An American Musical, which has since remained on repeat in my iTunes.

I would love to hear what you think about the changes. Write to me at feedback@patdryburgh.com.

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Hiked to Norvan Falls this afternoon. Too chilly for a swim, but the mist was pleasant after a long walk.

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I’ve been struggling with this Siri problem for years and just moments after publishing my post figured out that pressing and holding the power button does what the Home button used to do. 🤦‍♂️

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Whenever I try to use Siri, I run into two frustrating issues:

Siri often misses the first few words I speak, despite waiting for the ding before I begin.
Siri often stops listening when I’m in the middle of my sentence or question.

The first problem is likely a bug, but the second is because I speak slowly to Siri and often need a few seconds to think of even very basic words.

Back when I could initiate Siri with the Home button, I could hold the button until I was finished my sentence and Siri would listen until I let go. Without the home button, I don’t know what to do.

Addendum: I’ve just discovered that if I invoke Siri by pressing and holding the power button and don’t let go, Siri continues to listen even when I need a few seconds for my words to come out. Not sure why that had not dawned on me other than that I had been invoking Siri with “Hey Siri” and by tapping my AirPods. I guess those aren’t options for me.

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Designer and musician Tyler Finck announced a song-a-week project called 2052 he’s been working on since the start of the year. The songs are purely instrumental and are released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license, making the songs available for commercial purposes with attribution.

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Elliot Jay Stocks has just launched a redesign and rebuild of his personal website. It features a beautiful new sans-serif typeface, a bold new grid layout, and a new portfolio of his recent work. I wish my cousin Amy was still around so we could geek out over the details.

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Received my first hug in three months yesterday. Forgot how good it feels to be touched.

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Scott Galloway explores the trend of online trading platforms taking advantage of the same psychological and hormonal processes that other tech companies have exploited to maximize profits:

The most recent crack dealers are online trading platforms (OTPs). What does endless scroll look like on a trading platform?

Confetti falls to celebrate transactions

Colorful candy crush interface

Gamification: users can tap up to 1000x per day to improve their position on the waitlist for Robinhood’s cash management feature (essentially a high-yield checking account on the app)

The platform that falls into this category in Canada is WealthSimple’s Trade app. I downloaded it when it was first released and fell victim myself to my excitement overshadowing my ignorance of how an IPO works. On my second trade¹ I got the confetti and then two days later lost 50% of its value.

Thankfully I did know enough to follow two important rules when investing:

Don’t risk more than you’re willing to lose.
Buy low, sell high.

These rules prevented me from realizing the loss in Slack’s share value because I did not sell the shares, which have since recovered roughly 50% of the value I lost in those first few days. I won’t sell these shares until they have netted a healthy return, perhaps years in the future, because I don’t need that money right now.

What Scott identifies is that not everyone joins the game with these rules in mind and the platforms are actively working to stimulate the same psychological stimuli as a casino or lottery to make even those who do have a strategy lead with their heart instead of their brain.

And much like with social media, the stakes can be life and death.

My second trade was a couple day’s after Slack’s IPO; my first was in Apple which as of writing is up 26.84%. ↩

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Just how rich is Jeff Bezos? Wait until you find out about his 399 closest buddies.

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Those who know me know I’m a mark for pro wrestling. On this week’s episode of The New Day podcast, WWE Superstars Xavier Woods, Big E, and Kofi Kingston are joined by journalist and activist Andreas Hale to have a frank and heartbreaking conversation about racial injustice and the experience of being Black in America.

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