Nearly 16 years ago, my wife Merri and I sat in silence as we were told that our six-month old son likely had brain cancer. That Sunday afternoon changed our lives forever. Josiah underwent numerous operations, and then 18 rounds of chemotherapy at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. In the years since, he has undergone countless blood tests, nearly two dozen MRIs1, and an untold number of physical, speech, and occupational therapy sessions.
Category: Thoughts
The Field Notes Thing
This was an article sent to 512 Pixels members last month. Learn more about membership here.
At the end of every year, I publish a photo on Instagram cataloging the Field Notes notebooks I used over the previous 12 months. Here is the most recent picture:
Every year, I get questions about this. I wrote a bit about the topic in 2014, but I thought I’d do it again here. So, uhhhh, here’s an FAQ:
2024 Was One For the Books
It’s Top Nine time over on Instagram, so it’s also Top Nine time here on the blog.
Here’s my year, boiled down to nine images:
- The Vision Pro box & my original Macintosh, which turned 40 this year.
- Myke and I were given St. Jude’s Creator Achievement Award. Our community raised over $1 million in support of St. Jude this year.
- Merri and marked our 17th anniversary this year. That photo is from our wedding day in 2007. Sometimes I think about re-piercing my ears.
- This summer, we celebrated Relay’s 10th anniversary with a live show in London.
- A photo of my Tacoma and mountain bike, taken on my sabbatical in October.
- A comparison between the iPhone 15 Pro Max and the original model from 2007.
- The photo used at the top of my Vision Pro review on 512 Pixels.
- Another classic photo, this time from 2004. I had a lot of hair in high school.
- I was in San Jose for WWDC this summer and the town is overrun with Tesla Cybertrucks. This one was parked in a compact spot.
The Vision Pro taking two slots of this grid is pretty funny. It proved to be much more popular on Instagram than it has been in my life.
A Week With St. Jude
I spent the week with ALSAC — the fundraising organization at St. Jude — with half a dozen Relay folks and a few hundred other content creators who are using their platforms for fundraising.
(Most of the events were at the Peabody Hotel here in Memphis, so there were some ducks hanging around as well.)
Those creators ranged from fitness and health to beauty and fashion to gamers and us podcasters. We spent time hearing from folks at St. Jude about the hospital’s mission and the tools it is developing to enable communities to fundraise in new and existing ways.
Much Love to the Drang Family ⇢
Heart-breaking news in our community this evening from Dr. Drang:
Four years ago, my wife was diagnosed with stage IV endometrial cancer. Today, after many treatments — some quite helpful for a while, others that just did nothing for her — she passed away. She was the bravest and best person I knew, and I don’t understand how she could possibly be gone.
I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know Dr. Drang personally over the years, and this Mastodon post really hurt to read. Send some love in the direction of Doc and his kids this evening.
Dooce ⇢
There is some sad news in the blogging world today. Alex Williams at The New York Times:
Heather Armstrong, the breakout star behind the website Dooce, who was hailed as the queen of the so-called mommy bloggers for giving millions of readers intimate daily glimpses of her odyssey through parenthood and marriage, as well as her harrowing struggles with depression, died on Tuesday at her home in Salt Lake City. She was 47.
Let’s Find Out ⇢
Matthew Bischoff has written something that really encapsulates what I loved about my time in Apple Retail. They worked in Retail a few years after my stint from 2006-2008 was over, but this really grabbed me:
My training for the job involved being clapped at a lot while donning the signature blue T-shirt in a room full of folks learning how to sell iPhones and iPads and create Apple “customers for life”. Our teacher was a blond-haired, blue-eyed surfer-turned-computer salesman named JB who wore white earbuds as a necklace. As he taught from the printed material and screened Apple videos for the class, he kept harping on one point that’s stuck with me in the decades since.
A Lawless MacSparky ⇢
I’ve spent the last few months shutting down my legal practice. I’ve made arrangements for my clients to get to other lawyers that can take care of them. I’ve spoken personally to all of my clients to explain why I can no longer be their lawyer. I’ve spent a lot of time on this transition, but I wanted to end this phase of my life in the right way.
The ALS Tree ⇢
When I left the Apple Store in 2008, my team gave me a framed piece of art: a tree made up of these ambient light sensors from the iMac G5. We replaced a ton of parts in those machines and had these piled up everywhere.
During a move years ago, that piece was sadly broken, but I saved a bunch of the cables. I’ve had one framed to hang in my new studio as a reminder of those friends, including one who lost a battle with cancer within the last year. Andy, Ian, Kevin, Cole, Viki, Ryan, Kate, Zac, Steve, Brian and Marlena were the first people in my life who taught me that it was okay to be a big nerd.
Dreaming of WWDC
A few years ago, I started writing down my dreams in Day One. This morning’s entry shows what’s on my mind, I suppose.
We were all back at WWDC. Myke and I didn’t have press access, but several of our friends were able to talk Eddy Cue into it. This conversation took place near the theatre across the street from the middle school I attended.
We then went inside, and ran into Craig Federighi. He was tense and and seemed a little on edge. I asked him if he still got nervous before keynotes and he said he did. We then talked a little about sports and he brought out a soccer ball from behind the check-in desk.
On Digital Reminders of Painful Memories ⇢
Lauren Goode has published an amazing piece at Wired about calling off her wedding, yet being reminded about it over and over from algorithm-powered services from Facebook, Pinterest and even Apple:
I still have a photograph of the breakfast I made the morning I ended an eight-year relationship and canceled a wedding. It was an unremarkable breakfast—a fried egg—but it is now digitally fossilized in a floral dish we moved with us when we left New York and headed west. I don’t know why I took the photo, except, well, I do: I had fallen into the reflexive habit of taking photos of everything.