Landing on a sabbatical plan

Next month will be my five year anniversary at my my current company, Wealthsimple. We already get 20 days of PTO but at five years you become eligible for a sabbatical of an additional 20 days (so roughly a month in calendar days. They have to be taken all at once and can't be combined with another period of leave. 

This is a pretty cool opportunity. Normally to get this much time off you have to be in between jobs. If that time is not by choice, then it's a stressful time where you're looking for work. If it's time taken by choice, you're likely coming down from the stress of the last role or you're mind is thinking about what you need to do to prepare for the next role. This is not that. I'll return to the job I'm doing now and I'll be getting paid while on the leave -- nice!

The next time I'll have chance, either the next sabbatical or time in between jobs, I will likely have kids and won't be able to be such a free spirit.

Since the start of the year I've been toying with several different ideas

  • A worldwide tour of cool transit systems
  • A Euro-centric tour of cool transit systems
  • A big UK train trip
  • An Asian transit trip
  • A China transit trip
  • The east coast trail in Newfoundland

But I settled on one of my favourite activities, just leaving the house and going for a walk. But, like, a really long walk. I've nixed the transit ideas because it's actually something that doesn't require a ton of PTO (at least not an entire month) and doesn't require me to be in a specific physical shape. I'm in relatively good shape now and my legs work. Who's to say what happens between now and retirement.

My tentative route looks like this:

A combination of the Great Lakes Waterfront Trail and the Trans-Canada Trail. The exact route isn't shown, it's more of an approximation.

Yesterday I headed out on a long walk within Toronto, going from my house to the airport. Google Maps has the most direct route at 23.1 KM. My meandering route took me 26.3 KM (segment 3) over about 5 hours. It was a good test. My legs were getting quite tired about 15k in and the last 2k were quite the push. It was made harder by the super pedestrian-hostile environment that is the Toronto Airport. If I can get myself up to 35k/day then doing the whole trip in about 2 weeks should be no issue. Ideally I could pull off some 40k days. Granted, my test route required me to carry very little gear and was an ideal 20-24 degrees with no rain.

Managing owned music

My music owning experience in life has been a story of jumping from one monolith to another. It started with iTunes. Buy from the store or rip a CD, all in iTunes and then synced to device. Then it was Spotify and a variety of other streaming services.

Now you have every single analogue/anti-algorithm/minimalist yelling, buy an iPod! Own your own music. And to be clear, I am absolutely one of those people. But wow, it's a rough experience to switch. Once you have all of the music it should be easy, in theory. I have a few thousand songs on my hard drive.

The metadata and file organization are all very weird depending on where you got the music from and how you imported it. So you're going to spend quite a bit of time managing that. Getting the music is pretty annoying too.

The last bastion of one-stop-shop is iTunes. You can indeed buy music there. The cloud locker service -- iTunes match -- still exists for $30/yr. But the default Apple Music app has gotten bloated and it's very pushy to get you to subscribe to streaming. I haven't tried to install Apple Music on linux but there's no support by default which isn't a great sign.

Bandcamp is fantastic, but the library of options is really limited. Qobuz has an iTunes sized library but the interface is absolute garbage and doesn't let you stream the music you own from their site.

I think this would all be fine but we're missing a killer *just music listening* app. Rhythmbox for Linux feels promising but it's not very feature complete and the external device syncing has been rough in my experience.

This is a bit of ramble, but I guess I'm surprised at how difficult the process of "I give you money, I put music on my device" is. It feels like we're full circle back to the reason the iPod was invented in 2001.

Franc Moody @ Danforth Music Hall

I went to see Franc Moody at the Danforth Music Hall on Tuesday. I bought the tickets only knowing one song:

But I thought it was such a bop and I don't mind going to shows knowing little or nothing. 

The show was good, not great, the first half I was pretty surprised by how low energy it was for an electronic heavy band. It really picked up in the second half and drove it home at the end with a keytar and cowbell coming out. The band chemistry picked up at the point, with everyone starting to interact with each other. For most of the show it seemed like everyone was enjoying what they were doing on stage, but separately.

Two big shoutouts, the drummer raided a thrift shop in Toronto and managed to find an old and pretty sick Labbat's/Bluejays collab shirt. The bassist/synth absolutely carried the team though. You can find she's pretty consistent with this in videos of other shows bouncing around the stage.

Two things really hurt this show.

The venue choice was not it. The Danforth is hands-down the best venue in the city. But I don't think it's the best setup for electronic acts, especially if your set is kind of bland. History or Rebel would have been better choices. 

Second, the flow of music was not great. There was a lot of dead air between songs and the audience interaction was pretty meh. I don't need musicians to be excellent story tellers or comedians, but you can fill that air with music that flows from song to song or interesting interludes. Those interludes are great moments for the band to interact with each other or the audience.

On a personal note, I had some reflection on how I refer to the different ratings categories while at this show. "Spectacle" and "Stage Presence" are the two most important categories (to me) for what makes a concert a concert. But the naming is off. What I really want to convey is "What makes this concert worth seeing over staying at home and listening to the CD" and "Does this show feel like something bespoke that is unique to just this tour and/or just this performance", respectively.

So "Spectacle" is becoming "In person only factor", "Stage Presence" is becoming "One night only factor". I'll probably change it a dozen times before I find the best way to word those.


The Ratings
  • Venue: 1.5/5
  • Audience: 4/5
  • Band: 4/5
  • Vocals: 2/5
  • In person only: 1.5/5
  • One night only: 1.5/5
  • Song choice: 2/5

Overall: 2.35/5

My Email is My Blog (Updated)

Updated: My email is no longer my blog, but I've linked to a copy. Turns out I really like posting to my blog via an email.

For several years I've been using Fastmail for my email and calendar. I love it! But the entire time there's been a "sites" feature to host a static website that I've toyed with but never really used. 

What I've really wanted to use it for all of these years is to host my blog. There wasn't an out of the box way to do it so I settled on paying for Posthaven most of the time and more recently moved over to Bear.

Going back to my more recent post of wanting to move away from subscriptions, this one became a surprisingly difficult one to shake.

Fastmail could be so easy, a blog is just static content. But if I throw in a bunch of markdown files, it just winds up looking like this..

That's a problem right?

Well, if you look at it as a directory listing, it is. But really, that's just a database. A bit funky, but it's clean and simple and pretty easy for Javascript to parse. 

You can still go to https://experimental-blog.noahkoch.com/blog/ to see that same directory listing. But on this page you're reading it's a bit of a magic trick. The URL has secret info in it (query params, for my nerds out there) that's instructing the browser where to fetch the contents and metadata (post title, date) from.

It's a fun little trick and means I have a blog hosting platform via a service I was already paying for. Yet another subscription cut out!

That being said, I really recommend Bear Blog, it's one guy and he's building a great thing. If I wanted to go back to a hosted blog, that's where I'd go.

Matt Andersen @ Massey Hall

Matt Andersen must be 300 years old. That's the only way to explain how one man's voice can sound like it had several lifetimes of experience.

Massey Hall was both the best and worst place to host this country-blues singer when my Fiancée and I went to see him this past Friday. On one hand, there's few places in Toronto that have the acoustics to do his music justice. Backed up by an incredibly talented band, every one of his slower songs just made you feel like you were a little baby being swaddled in a blanket of passion. 

On the other hand... when songs like Free Man were played, you just wanted to rip out the seats so you could dance. 

Two things I appreciated out of this performance. Mariel Buckley, his very talented and funny opener, was invited back on to the at the end of the show to do a duet of Bob Dylan's I Shall Be Released. I really appreciate when artists do this. It makes the show feel like something more put together and cohesive rather than a way to stretch time. It's a surprisingly rare thing.

Second, he didn't leave the stage before the encore. It's something I'm noticing more artists and bands do. The encore has become a pointless tradition. There's no surprise to it anymore, let's stop pretending, let the music play.

You can give Matt Andersen a listen on a recording. But truly it is nothing compared to seeing him live. I don't say that lightly. I enjoyed Pink Martini at Massey Hall but I wouldn't say you couldn't get an idea of what they're like from their recorded music.

I don't know if it's because he needs a better recording setup or if he just can't be captured well on an MP3. 

The Rating

  • Venue: 3.5/5
  • Audience: 2/5
  • Band: 4.5/5
  • Vocals: 4.5/5
  • Spectacle: 1/5
  • Stage presence: 4/5
  • Song choice: 4/5
Overall: 3.35/5

1984 + Brave New World

Our phones are Soma

Swallowing half an hour before closing time, that second dose of soma had raised a quite impenetrable wall between the actual universe and their minds.

A nod to subscriptions today

'Look at him working away in the lunch hour,' said Parsons, nudging Winston. 'Keenness, eh? What's that you've got there, old boy? Something a bit too brainy for me, I expect. Smith, old boy, I'll tell you why I'm chasing you. It's that sub you forgot to give me.'

'Which sub is that?' said Winston, automatically feeling for money. About a quarter of one's salary had to be earmarked for voluntary subscriptions, which were so numerous that it was difficult to keep track of them.

Communication is hard without big tech

The Verge’s Installer recently asked their readers to provide some details and feedback about their favourite devices and services from non Google/Amazon/Apple providers. I accidentally made a blog post in the email, attaching that below. 

----


Hey! Heard your callout for people dropping services from the big guys. (Top list at the bottom)

I’m emailing you from my Fastmail account that I started using back in 2018, that was my first attempt to de-google and later extend to de-apple. Every new years I try to live “more intentionally” so it’s largely a focus on getting rid of my smartphone but it also extends to thinking about how I’m using my data, what I’m subscribing to, etc. 

It’s been really hard. Where I’m at today is I have a small iCloud subscription for my fiancée and I; we cap our streaming services at one at a time. I use Ente for photo and video backups. For my personal documents, I don’t have a lot, so I just use the small amount of file storage I get through Fastmail.

I listen to music I own, I’m 31 so some of that is from the pre-Spotify days. The rest I’ve collected through Bandcamp or the library. Books and TV I largely get through the library. 

The hard part is not with ditching the devices and services. That largely one or two clicks away. It’s with communicating with others. We’re planning a wedding right now and Google Drive is the best place to collaborate on shared documents. Even thought I’m very comfortable with technology, I don’t want to mess with a home lab or NAS. Our shared calendar is through iCloud. I don’t mind moving it but it’d be a pain for my fiancée. WhatsApp needs a primary device like an iPhone or Android and that’s where my fiancée communicates the most as she has friends and family overseas. Even my rec leagues communicate through WhatsApp. 

I’ve generally accepted that I can’t fully move away from Apple or Google but I do what I can and try to do a bit more every year. 

My top list:
  • Hoopla & Libby from the library 
  • Fastmail - probably the most reliable service on the web right now
  • Ente
  • “nothing” - not the brand, but sometimes you get something in your life that you try to look for an alternative and realize nothing is a good replacement. I found that to be my case with an Apple Watch, I didn’t really need to be tracking every data point. 
  • Pocketable notebooks


Finding a Studio

I've tried a lot of fitness classes over the years and I've only found a couple things that I've enjoyed. My current one is Spinning. Yoga and Boxing are also up there but with asterisks.

Through trial and error I've figured out what makes me not want to do a fitness class:

  • Difficult to access -- if it takes me more than 30 minutes to get there and it's not on the way to something else (like work) then I will stop going
  • Evening classes -- I lose my motivation after about 11am
  • Any partner work -- this is where most boxing classes lose me
  • Not having a clear spot -- this is where yoga classes can sometimes lose me
  • Anything where I constantly feel in the way -- again, certain boxing

Spin I enjoy because it checks all the boxes. The studio I go to has two locations that are very transit accessible. You have your bike assigned before the class begins. And the only partner work to speak of is cheersing water bottles at the end.

The problem with Spin is it's only cardio. So I need to find something to build up the rest of me (in addition to spin!). Over the next few months I'm going to take every trial I can find that's reasonably close to me and seems like it might be enjoyable. Here's what I've found so far and will update this post after every trial is up.

I'm going to change my goal from 100 spin classes to 100 classes in general and include these classes in them.

Chains

F45

In progress

Barry's

Up next

Orange Theory

Soon

Local options

Soul Fuel

Soon

Recess Fit Club

Soon

Virtual Subscriptions

There's a tendency for me to want to try to find the new perfect thing to replace a whole host of things. I've now understood for a while that "nothing" is a very good replacement. Much much harder said than done. For instance, do I need a full fledged file management and syncing system? Or is just having a good photo backup service and using the very basic file storage in Fastmail good enough?

While my dad was still alive, he would time and time again caution us about "re-occurring revenue". This was back when you still owned your music, having a cell phone wasn't a given and most homes had cable. We actually "cut the cord" well before Netflix was a thing, just watching over-the-air programs.

I hate to say it, but my dad was right. Everything that comes out automatically becomes the price of what we need to live. I think that I haven't been spending too much one month on coffee -- and maybe that's true -- but it doesn't really matter because my floor has been set by the decisions I committed to months before.

Where I want to draw the line is on "virtual subscriptions" or things that don't result in anything tangible. Apple Music is intangible as I'm not getting sent a CD that I can hold nor own anything on there. Transit pass is tangible because it's physically moving me.

In an ideal world, I would have no virtual subscriptions.

My recurring payments of of this writing

This is literally everything that comes out of my personal or joint account on a regular basis

  • Kagi
  • Fastmail
  • Apple One
    • iCloud
    • Apple TV
    • Apple Fitness (Rarely use)
    • Apple Music
    • Apple News (I don't use this)
    • Apple Arcade (I don't use this)
  • Communauto
  • Carshare
  • TTC Monthly Pass
  • Koodo (dumb phone)
  • Fizz (iPhone)
  • SpinCo (gym)
  • Various donations
  • Set App
  • The Globe and Mail
  • NYTimes Games
  • Bear Blogging
  • Posthaven
  • Bikeshare
  • Transit App
  • Google Drive
  • Renters insurance
  • Pet insurance
  • VPN
  • Ente
  • The Verge
  • Betches Media
  • NPR+

That's a long list

I've been working on this post for a while because every now and then I'd remember something else. It's all so... automatic, it's a feature and the issue. Personally, I don't struggle with forgetting to cancel things I don't want. I audit this list fairly often but I do struggle with feeling like I need all of it.

But not everything on that list is the same. Let's break it down

The Basics

  • Hydro
  • Transit
  • Renters Insurance
  • Pet Insurance
  • Cell phone main line (Koodo)

Work expenses I get an expense fund through work, these are things I use for work and personal. If I didn't need them for work I probably wouldn't subscribe to these things at all.

  • Kagi
  • Setapp
    • I'm actually getting rid of this one and instead purchasing lifetime memberships to the few apps I do use
  • The Verge
    • Keeping up on tech news
  • NPR+
    • Again, news
  • The Globe and Mail
    • Once again, news

Non-essential, tangible

  • Gym (SpinCo)
  • Fizz (iPhone)
  • Donations
  • Bikeshare
  • Communauto
  • Carshare

What's going soon

  • Posthaven
    • To be replaced by Bear, need to migrate things
  • Google Drive
    • Started using Linux and this is easier to use as a holding place while I migrate between Mac and Linux. Plus there was a first year promo. Gone after this year.
  • VPN
    • Got it for a bit, thought about trying my hand at sailing the high seas but decided against it, gone in Feb
  • Transit App
    • Great app! But I'm using my iPhone less
  • Bear Blogging
    • I'm not actually getting rid of Bear, just going to buy the lifetime membership
  • NYTimes Games
    • Not renewing
  • TTC Monthly Pass
    • Cheaper to just pay as I go
  • Apple One
    • Getting rid of everything except for a smaller iCloud Drive tier
    • Most storage will move to Ente for photos, trying Fastmail for the few documents I need to keep backed up

Virtual Things Left

  • Fastmail
  • Ente
  • Betches
    • My guilty pleasure, U Up? Podcast, ad-free