2020 Year in Review — TV Shows

January 1, 2021
3 min read

With nothing else to do in the spare time because of the pandemic, TV shows became go-to entertainment. The most interesting thing this year is that most of the TV shows I will be recommending were documentaries.

Ted Lasso

This is the best TV show of the year. Apple had some good shows in the beginning, but Ted Lasso is in the league of its own. If you think of the premise — comedy about American becoming a coach of the Premier League team which is actually based on the character from the ad — you’d think creators are mad. But it works on so many levels.

It is delightful, smart and compassionate in the time when we are all fighting and hating each other on Twitter.

I watched it from the begging to the end three times, I can’t think of a better way to recommend it.

The Last Dance

I’m not a basketball fan and this documentary didn’t change that. But I loved watching the story of Michael Jordan and Chicago Bulls. I knew about them since the childhood, but mostly about their existence, what I didn’t know was the story itself.

It is as much about motivation, teamwork and leadership, as it is about sports. Highly recommended.

Drive to Survive

After watching The Last Dance, I decided to start another documentary on Netflix. The first season, which actually came out last year was amazing, before it had a success it had and both Mercedes and Ferrari participated in the next season, which was good, but not as good. As this documentary is about current events it gave me a very nice reference point for races themselves.

I watched all the qualifications and races this year and actually enjoyed them. I would recommend everyone who is not a fan of F1 until now if you want to start — Drive to Survive is an amazing starting point. You will get to know teams, drivers, how it very uniquely combines team and individual sport. After that watching races is much easier.

Also, another thing that helped me was a friend who is a fan for a long time with whom I could discuss races and ask for clarifications if needed.

Tiger King

It’s hard to believe that it was this year when Tiger King blew up. It was everywhere. This is the most surprising documentary. When you think it couldn’t get any weirder — here you go, they show you some totally messed up shit.

The Office

Obviously, not something from this year, but we’ve watched an American version of The Office with my wife and enjoyed it a lot. It’s so much fun, if you didn’t watch it until now I would totally recommend you do, you’ll have to stick with the Season 1 because it’s bad, but after that, it gets much better.

Sunday Endorsement – 21.06.2020

June 21, 2020
2 min read

📺 Dirty Money – Payday

Because this is a series of documentaries, I recommend starting from the second episode, because the first one was very bad. I will write about it another time.

This though is very interesting. I can’t judge the example itself, looks like they were really misleading. But looking at the payday loan scheme itself, I think the companies providing those are not the only ones to blame. I agree that the rules have to be clear, but customers have to assume some of the blame also.

Oh, and also – the same way, half of banking industry has to be in jail because of the 2007 mortgage crisis, but I didn’t hear about a lot of sentences given.

📱 ExpressVPN

I’ve been looking for a VPN service for a long time. I’ve tried a couple and realized – first, you can’t get a decent one for free, second they don’t work well with streaming apps. This one is a great exception. I’ve been using it for half a year already and love it.

Believe me when I say Netflix in different countries is like a completely different service all together. In Latvia, I can still watch Friends and have all but last season of Modern Family, as well as a lot of Marvel movies, some just two years old. In USA, on the other hand I have The Office, Flash (which I’ve stopped watching) and more.

The ExpressVPN works great, I have it on my phone and iPad, as well as on Apple TV. I’ve had an issue once with Apple TV and Netflix, but support was very fast, they’ve explained the reason and gave me a timeline, how they are fixing it. It is pricey, but you get the great service in return.

Sunday Endorsement – 14.06.2020

June 14, 2020
2 min read

🎞 The Big Short

I wanted to watch this movie as soon as it came out, but somehow forgot and now found it on Netflix. I already recommended it probably dozens of times. It tells about the whole 2007 collapse in a very easy to understand way.

Although I didn’t care for the “almost documentary” style, the cast is astonishing – Bale, Carnell, Gosling, Pitt and more.

Also, there was Antoine Bourdain (a small link to my last week’s post).

🍷 Pasqua 11 Minutes Rosato 2018

Rosé are my favorite wines. They are just perfect, especially in summer. This one is rated among 1% wines on Vivino. I didn’t know it when I bought it, but I totally agree. Right now it is probably my favorite Rosé.

📺 23 Hours To Kill

I’ve been seeing a lot more stand-up specials in my Netflix recommendations. Not the funniest one I’ve seen, but a good one to watch.

💡 30-day Sabbatical From The Social Networks

Definitely recommend to do it. The idea is from the book I wrote about last week – Digital minimalism. After deleting all the social apps from the phone for 30 days you will realize how little you get from them. And it is true. On day 30 I reluctantly installed Instagram back on my phone, opened it and immediately unsubscribed from a lot of people – I didn’t even think about them in this month, so why should I follow their every step.

Sunday Endorsement – 31.05.2020

May 31, 2020
5 min read

📱 Tot Pocket

I was very skeptical at first. I mean, who wouldn’t be – €21.99 for a very limited note taking app. But after much consideration and keeping in mind the possibility to refund (yay Europe) I decided to give it a try. I’ve been trying to find an easy to use note app for a long time and nothing could come close to what I wanted. Notes.app was where I kept all my notes and didn’t feel like simple jotting app, I’ve tried Bear for a year, but it just replaced Notes and I never was a Markdown fan, I wanted something with rich text support. Drafts came close, but I always felt overwhelmed by it and after a week there would be tens of notes which I couldn’t remember what they were about.

Tot is light, colorful (it even changes the color of keyboard to match the dot and what surprised me most – even 3rd party keyboards get colored). I didn’t like icon at first, but recently they’ve added Mobius, which is now my favorite. I use all but one dots for something already and love it.

One disclaimer I have to add – I’ve had a data loss with the app. Just yesterday I was walking around town, listening to the audiobook and adding some notes, including citations I’ve transcribed myself. When I came home and opened an app – there was nothing. Just one word I’ve put as a placeholder when I created the note. And now I can’t shake the feeling of distrust. I hope it was a one time thing, but I’m not sure when I will be able to trust the application fully again.

I can’t recommend an app costing €21.99 to everyone, but if you look at screenshots and read the description you will know if the app is right for you. It is for me.

📺 Drive To Survive – Season 2

“Netflix are a bunch of cunts, aren’t they? I would love for them to play that.”

At the beginning of the season two they immediately let you know – this time it’s bigger, we have Mercedes and Ferrari now, but that somehow ruins it a bit. It became more pristine. The most controversial things were mostly when drivers and principals mentioned the documentary or Netflix.

But I still would recommend watching it. And I feel like it is much more interesting to those who have never watched F1, because otherwise you would already know what happened.

One additional note – I was the victim of advertising. After watching the show I went for a walk and had such a strong desire for a Red Bull I went to the store and bought one. Marketing works.

📜 Stratechery – The Google Squeeze

Half a year old article, but still very interesting. I never though how much advertising there is on Google. The screenshot which shows the results, where you have to scroll 3 pages in order to get to the organic results is worth the read alone.

I’ve compared the article with my own usage and it is the same in some instances and completely different in others. I hate the hotel module of Google. It always feels like some shitty websites want to give you a very bad deal. When I’m looking for a hotel I always go to booking.com. Always. And, as it turns out, that’s what they’ve tried to do – incentivize people to go straight to them. I guess it works.

⌚️ Pride California Watch Face

With the most recent update of the Apple Watch there are a couple of new Pride watch faces. One of them is California with Pride colors. It is my favorite watch face right now. I’ve been meaning to write about watch faces and how they all are bad for some reason or other. There are customizations, but it always feels like there could be more. But in terms of look – this one is just amazing.

One note – the process was a bit cumbersome. I had newest update on my Apple Watch, but new colors weren’t there. I updated my iPhone to iOS 13.5 and could choose a new California color, but it wouldn’t show up on my Watch. Only after restarting the watch did it work.

📚 Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike by Phil Knight

I’ve laughed a couple of times while listening to the book. It is probably the best memoir by a businessman I have ever read. It is more about motivation and drive and less about the decisions themselves. I’m sure that in order to build such a monumental company there have to be more controversial stories, but this book is not the place for them.

Ending is just beautiful. The book itself is very personal, but ending takes it to the new level. I didn’t want for it to end. One of the strongest recommendations I can give. Everyone should read it.

Sunday Endorsement – 24.05.2020

May 24, 2020
4 min read

📚 Samsung Rising: The Inside Story of the South Korean Giant That Set Out to Beat Apple and Conquer Tech by Geoffrey Cain

“Fuck Steve. He’s dead and we were right. Samsung was right.” – this quote says quite a lot about Samsung culture. The story told in this book shows what happens when a company becomes too big to fail. When the whole country is depended on Samsung doing well.

If you’ve never been to jail, you’ve probably not worked hard enough – could be the mantra of Samsung management.

There are very interesting anecdotes and stories. But by the middle of the book you realize it’s mostly stories about mistakes, investigations, corruption charges etc. and less so the story of the company. I don’t like Samsung as a company, never owned a Galaxy phone, because I felt like they were just copying Apple, but even for an Apple fanboy, this book is a bit too much.

After finishing it, I was not sure on the history of the company, but I sure as hell knew that the dynasty has fallen.

📺 Drive To Survive – Season 1

“To finish first, first you have to finish”

Great documentary with an outstanding access to the drivers and teams, in the middle of the season, I’ve had a longer review written here, but can’t recommend it enough. And I’m already looking for ways to watch F1 season when it comes back.

📺 The Last Dance

Another great documentary I’ve finished this week. Again, never watched basketball, but enjoyed it so much. It’s about personality, team and most importantly leadership. Very different in style from Drive To Survive. It talks about the history, while Drive To Survive is more similar to the reality TV.

🎙 Dithering Podcast

Two of my favorite people in tech blogging got together and created a podcast. I had a little bit of doubt before subscribing as it is a paid podcast and there is no “demo” or even one free episode, but decided to try it out, I can always unsubscribe if I don’t like it and loose just $5. But of course I liked it. I’ve now listened to all the back catalogue and am listening as the episodes get out – three times a week. If you know John Gruber and Ben Thompson, you probably will have a feeling what a podcast is about and it will probably be correct.

This paid podcast model is very interesting and the first one I’ve tried. Almost all of the podcasts I listen to are ad supported with some help from listeners in form of Patreon or something similar. This though, paid up front subscription with no ability to try it out before is something I didn’t see before. The one time I’ve paid for a podcast was with a No Agenda show, which is totally listener supported (they even call listeners producers), but it is optional. They call it “value for value” model and I like the idea of it.

📰 Halide – Year 3

I started using Halide long time ago, probably as soon as it got released and it was on my home screen ever since. And I love reading their blog. It is interesting and honest. Reading about the struggles that current situation has brought (who would have though that nobody is traveling and using photo capturing app) made me realize that I can’t even fathom the real impact the virus had on all of us.

📸 My Photo From Thailand

This week my photo (at the top), got picked by the editorial team of Unsplash and my stats got crazy for a couple of days. More than 300,000 people saw it and some of them even saved it. An amazing result which gives the motivation to take more photos.

[TV Show] Drive To Survive – Season 1

May 23, 2020
3 min read

I’ve never been a fan of F1. I’ve heard a lot that the cars are becoming more and more the same, so I couldn’t understand why would anyone watch the same cars go around the circuit. But after watching The Last Dance, I’ve decided to pick up another sport related documentary. And I now can say I was wrong. The cars are not the same, they do look similar, but there is a lot of room in engine choice and its calibration. Drivers are very different, with individual talents and styles. And as it turns out, what happens between the races, sometimes can be even more interesting. It’s like a soap opera.

What stood out the most comparing to The Last Dance – the access. Sure there you had all the major players from that time, but it was about the past, people are more open, at least 20 years had passed since those events and nobody from them plays anymore. Here, it is a series about current events and it is really astonishing what the drivers and team principals were saying, considering they see each other at work after the show airs.

The absence of two top teams was very notable. It’s like, yeah, we here grownups are racing and winning and you – afterthoughts. can have your silly documentary.

The F1 itself is a very interesting sport. There are competing teams, but that absolutely doesn’t mean the drivers work together. It is probably the most individual out of team sports. It happens, when two drivers from the same team crash into each other in battling for position. This is madness in close to any team sport, but not unthinkable in the F1.

It is a team sport in regard to mechanics. You can be the most amazing driver in the most powerful car, but when you stop in the pit and a mechanic doesn’t tighten the screw properly, you can finish the race early because of that, unbelievable. Imagine Michael Jordan not finishing the match because a guy doesn’t lace his shoes properly.

“To finish first, first you have to finish”

Regarding documentary itself, it was a bit too focused on drama. You see all the crashes, stops and loses of the drivers and after that you realize the team is in a third place. So it wasn’t all so bad, wasn’t it? As of right now, I am looking forward to the F1 season resuming, I want to watch races. Didn’t choose which driver to support yet, will have to take a look at the whole race. Which is my main concern right now – sure, I’ve enjoyed watching highlights from the whole season, but would the 2 hour race be as enjoyable to watch?

[TV Show] The Last Dance

May 18, 2020
3 min read

I’ve never watched a basketball game from start to finish in my entire life. I have never seen Michael Jordan play. This is still one of the greatest TV shows I’ve seen at least lately.

When I was about 10 years old my parents bought me a Chicago Bulls T-shirt. I knew it was an NBA team and I knew Michael Jordan was one of the greatest, if not the greatest player in basketball. I didn’t know those two were connected.

Imagine creating such a public persona, without even social media. He became famous by being the best at his sport (just look at the player stats from Chicago Bulls, he still holds almost all of the records).

I was watching this documentary and it was like living through those moments. I didn’t know the results of the games or series, so it was almost like watching live sports. Hell, I was just 8 years old when Chicago Bulls had won their last Championship (and I turned 1, when they won their first).

What I’ve learned is that Michael is an amazing leader. I actually enjoyed watching old time sport players, they know how to talk, they can construct sentences. This is a bit rare in today sports.

I agree with what M.G. Siegler wrote, there is too much emphasis on MJ being a jerk. I remember when Steve Jobs died and everyone started reading his biography, regardless of the interest in tech, it was the common knowledge he was the best leader there is. And a lot of managers, after reading a book, got only one piece of advice from it – in order to be great, you had to wear the same clothes all the time and be a jerk to everyone around you. It’s like they never read the part about his talent, about his hard work, inspiration for others.

The thing that stood out the most for me, was how often did Jordan say “it became personal for me”. Although the basketball is a team sport and Jordan couldn’t have won the Championship by himself, his personality still was bigger than the team.

The greatest moment of the documentary was when Chicago Bulls lost, MJ instead of having a vacation immediately got to training. He didn’t tell anyone to do the same, but “if the best player in the world trains so hard, you have to train at least as hard”. Leading by example. Although he is a jerk a lot of the times, he always was leading by example. He worked harder than anyone, he played to win and that gave him the right to demand the same from his teammates.

Sunday Endorsement – 17.05.2020

May 17, 2020
3 min read

Starting today I will write weekly post about things I’ve enjoyed over the week. It could be a movie, TV show, book, article, photo, app, experience, absolutely whatever.

This week is mostly about TV shows as I’ve finished a couple.

📺 Westworld – Season 3

I’ve finally finished the latest season and the thought I had throughout it stayed with me by the end – it became a victim of its own success. The story is a bit too much. Almost like a matryoshka, a story, in a story, in a story with “holy shit” and “turns out” moments all the time. A bit too much for my taste, but still the picture is great, actors are amazing. Worth a watch.

📺 Outlander – Season 5

We’ve started watching this TV show a couple of years ago with my wife. In the beginning it was great for both of us. My wife liked the love story and story about old times, I liked battles and violence. In the last two seasons especially there is just too much of a love story. Series became very slow, there are whole hour long episodes with nothing happening at all. Story became too simple and predictable. Although picture in 4K HDR is stellar.

📺 Narcos: Mexico

I’ve watched all two seasons in a couple of weeks. Great show, almost as good as the original Narcos. The one thing that surprises the most – it’s based on the real events. And it scares you all the time. I’ve caught myself watching the show thinking, “very nice imagination those writers have”, just to be surprised by a narrator and historical footage. I can’t even imagine people living the way it is portrayed in the show.

📚 Deadpool: The Adamantium Collection

This is a collection of all the comic books about Deadpool from the very beginning until the year 2016. 25 years of stories about my favorite superhero. After watching the second movie about my favorite superhero, I’ve bought the comiXology version of the collection. I’ve started reading it about a year ago, but somewhere along the line just stopped. Picked it up this week and finished all of it. This is the first comic book I’ve read as an adult and probably the first series I’ve finished.

I’m not sure this is the medium I enjoy a lot, but some issues were fun. Also, reading comic books on the 12.9’’ iPad is amazing.

Sincerely

April 21, 2020
1 min read

He is back. My favorite stand up comic, after two years of exile, is back and is better than ever (he even physically looks better). Religion, illnesses, travel, holocaust all the good stuff that are expecting from him. And yes, he faced the whole “thing” there as well, with humor, but not over the top.

Was this the best special? No, but it couldn’t be, considering the circumstances. But it was good as hell. It is the first one. It’s cautious. Can’t wait to see what he does next. 

On a more technological note. It’s not often in Latvia you see Apple Pay anywhere, so it was a blast using it. I’ve went to the website, clicked just one button and bought the special. The website thanked me by name and I got all the relevant links to my e-mail, never filling out any forms or registering. Just like that. Magic.

Bringing Order to Life

June 12, 2019
7 min read

As I’ve mentioned before, after listening to Cortex, I thought a lot about yearly themes. It’s an idea when you choose a theme for the year and try to do most of the things considering that theme. Looking at some aspects of my life I’ve decided that The Year Of Less would be a great start. Removing unnecessary things from life will become a great foundation for the future years.

There is just too much happening and I wanted to make sense of it and try to tame it down a bit. There was one day when I came home and just lied down and felt like my head is going to explode. The next day I’ve decided not to consume any content. Podcasts, Tweets, Instagram, blogs, news. I’ve just listened to the music. I felt much better after just a day. So that’s why I wanted to get some order in all of the content I’m consuming on the daily basis.

The biggest problem is, I’m a completionist and have big FOMO. I know this is the problem, but I don’t know how to tackle it right now. So I’m trying to first do everything I can to manage the amount of content I consume. 

TV shows

I’ve started watching a lot of TV shows. Mostly after I’ve had an operation and had to stay in bed for two weeks, I’ve watched a lot of TV shows. So I have to catch up with those. In the time when the greatest TV shows are made it’s hard to stop watching, everything is just too good. I track episodes of TV shows I’ve watched on MyShows. Right now, I’m watching those that are finished, so the amount of shows goes down. I’m trying not to start new ones, but sometimes I fail.

I’ve been able to change my mindset about that, as I think of this as not a backlog, but just a wishlist – I gather episodes I want to watch and just try to make the best of it.

Social

This one was hard. I’ve been feeling that social networks take up a lot of time and after all those Facebook scandals I’ve removed the app from my phone and almost don’t check it. I don’t miss much.

After iOS 12 came out and thanks to Screen Time I saw how much time I was spending on Twitter – I was shocked to say the least. I’ve immediately removed Twitter and Tweetbot from my phone and didn’t use Twitter for almost two months. I didn’t miss anything. I’ve recently installed Tweetbot back and am trying to make my feed a bit more useful and not so hateful. It’s hard. 

Instagram – that’s a mixed bag. I’ve tried to make sense of my follow list. Fortunately there is mute for posts and stories now, so I use it a lot. I’m trying to keep Instagram as my happy place and not make it a Facebook replacement.

I’m also posting one photo every day for almost a year now. This helps with practicing photography, which I’ve recently picked up as a hobby.

Blogs and News

Some time ago, when Google Reader still was a thing, I subscribed to tens of websites. I’ve had more then 500 unread items at any point in time. And, as with Twitter, I was a completionist. I used RSS reader to look through the titles and save everything that seemed interesting to Pocket. Which means the list of unread items also grew there. So I’ve unsubscribed from all the tech news sites (except of MacStories) and now I’m subscribed only to a couple of blogs, where the amount of articles is low (some of them save new items straight to the Pocket, so I don’t have to manage it in two places. I use IFTTT for that). 

The goal here is to read less, but of higher quality. I realized that in order to improve my own writing skills I need to practice and also read a lot. That’s why I’m looking for blogs that are enjoyable to read.

Podcasts

The one thing I think I got a lot better at are podcasts. I’ve had more than 200 unlistened episodes in Overcast and this number didn’t get any lower over time. So I unsubscribed from a couple of shows, started to triangulate more. Fast forwarded the parts that didn’t interest me. Skipped interviews with people I wasn’t interested in. And started to listen at 2x speed. As a not native English speaker, I’m pretty proud of myself. Although as I’ve mentioned before, I’ve went back to the normal listening speed, now that I’m pretty happy with the amount of shows I’m listening to.

I’m also trying to diversify my listening. There are podcasts in three languages in my list – English, Russian and Polish. I’m also trying to find shows other then tech related.

Photography

I’ve been interested in photography for a long time, but I’ve never had a camera. My parents had simple point and shoot that I’ve used sometimes. The first thing that was close to being my camera was iPhone 4. In combination with Instagram it was my first experience of sharing photos to the world (or probably 10 followers who saw them).

That is why starting with iPhone 6S Plus I’ve always bought the latest iPhones as soon as they came out – this was my main and only camera (or at least that’s how I’ve justified it to my budget).

A couple of months ago I’ve bought myself a real camera – Olympus OM-D Mark 3 and now I try to find every moment to use it and improve my skills. As a novice I take a lot of photos and I’m trying to leave only the best ones. At first I was hesitant to delete a lot of photos, but later I’ve realized – it’s much better if you have just a couple of great photos you can open and look at, than thousands of mediocre ones that you never see.

Games

The biggest time sink for me is FIFA and not even the latest one, but the 18. I’m just playing online World Cup over and over again. I’ve started to limit it (the correct move would be to delete it, but sometimes it’s nice to have such a mindless game to distract myself). Lately I’ve been playing more interesting games, like Read Dead Redemption 2, Spider-Man and Horizon: Zero Dawn. Games you can enjoy like a great TV show or a movie. Games with the story and with the ending. I’ve finished Spider-Man and got every trophy and I’ve enjoyed it more than a lot of the movies I’ve watched.

Stress

I’m trying to remove stress from my life in a couple of different ways. I’m using to-do and calendar apps more, so I don’t forget something and don’t stress out about remembering all of the time. 

I’m also more mindful, I’m trying to notice when I’m mad or irritated and analyze – what is the reason and what can I do in the future to avoid that. This is very slow process, but it’s enjoyable. Through such thoughts I feel like I’m learning more about myself and already making a change in my temper.

Overall, looking at the year I’m having so far, I’m satisfied how it’s going. I’m reducing the noise all over the place and I’m adding only those things I really care about. There is still a lot of room for improvement, but I have another half a year to work with.