2020 in a nutshell and other news

I had an email from Google with my maps timeline for 2020, and it very clearly tells the story of the year.

I started working from home in March, and that replaced driving with walking. I’d say the walking is, if anything, an underestimate. I didn’t have a WearOS watch until September, and I’m still not sure whether it’ll be the one I settle on long term, so the walking stats will be based on auto detection from the phone.

I allow Google to do location tracking because the privacy trade off is worth it. I like the interesting stats, and the history has been useful for jogging my memory about places I’ve been. Having the constant updates also helps to make my presence detection automations more responsive.

Although I’ve given in to Google knowing everything about me, I don’t feel the same way about Facebook. I briefly considered moving away from Whatsapp on the recent news of privacy changes around data sharing, but on closer analysis nothing’s really changing. The UK is still currently benefitting from the European rules and it will be interesting to see how long that lasts. The problem with switching to any other messaging service, such as Signal or Telegram, is the user base. Sure, some of my more technical friends may be tempted to switch but most won’t. I use Whatsapp because that’s what everyone else uses.

Finally, in what is going to be one of my shortest posts, an update on my technical projects. The update is… there isn’t one. Despite time off over Christmas I just haven’t been motivated to work on my automations or any other projects.

The cumulative gloom of the news, coupled with the time of year, has left me without the energy to do much.

It will pass, things will eventually improve, but I’m not going to put pressure on myself. I’d reached a point where I was writing a blog post every other week, and at the moment I can’t keep to that schedule. Rather than beat myself up over it, I’m going to take a bit of a break from blogging and wait until I’ve built up some things to write about.

in Random Musings

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