Combatting Email Spam

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Spam, Spam, Endless Spam….

It is just me, or is email spam getting worse? Last week, I noticed that I received a couple of hundred spam messages every day. It might have been especially bad because of Christmas, with vendors desperately trying to part you from your money. Of course, a few recent data breaches may also be to blame. But regardless of the cause, it seems to be getting out of hand.

Though it seems like a losing battle, there are some things you can do to minimize the amount of spam that you receive. One thing I do is have a fake “throwaway” email address that I use for those sites that require registration. It’s an address I never check and only use it in those instances where I don’t want to give out my actual email. I believe Apple’s iCloud mail now has an option to generate fake email addresses as well. If your provider doesn’t, then consider creating a new email address with one of the free services, such as Google.

Another thing you want to do is never respond to a spam message, and that includes unsubscribing (according to “spam experts”). All this does is let the spammer know that they’re sending to a valid email address, resulting in only more spam. As an alternative, add the user’s address/domain to your email client’s spam filter list. Most email programs offer the ability to add addresses of spammers to a spam list which then automatically moves any messages received from that address to the spam folder. That means you never see them — unless you check your spam folder.

My favorite method for eliminating spam — or at least my exposure to it — is using mail filters. What this does, is performs an action on a message that meets specific criteria. For instance, if a message subject contains a particular word or phrase, you can have your email program automatically delete the message or move it into your spam folder for you to verify later. I have a bunch of words and phrases that I use to filter my messages. Whenever an incoming message contains any of these phrases, it’s moved to my spam folder, and I never see it. Here are a few that I use (and I’m constantly adding to the list):

Sale
Bargain
Free
Last Chance
One Day Left
Black Friday
Cyber Monday
Time’s Running Out
Hurry
Deals

You can also use filters to automatically delete messages from specific senders so that they never show up in your inbox. Using filters, spam lists, and fake email addresses, I actually never see the majority of spam sent to me.

So though you’ll probably never eliminate spam entirely (I get a couple every day that manage to sneak in), using a few methods, you can significantly reduce the number of sales/phishing messages you receive.

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A Return to Physical Books (for the moment)

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Last year, the majority of books that I read were ebooks. This isn’t anything unusual for me. Ever since I purchased my first Kindle many years back, I’ve been reading books in this format. I read a few Apple Books here and there on my iPad, but mostly, I use Amazon’s device to consume novels.

However, this year things may change a bit. As I mentioned in a couple of previous posts, I’m doing the PopSugar and the 52 Book Club reading challenges. One of the main reasons I decided to take on the challenges was to get through some of the books on my bookshelves that I’ve purchased. Like many of you, there are a lot of unread books on my shelves that I keep meaning to get to. So with only a few exceptions, all of the books that I’ll be reading for the challenges this year are actual physical books that I own.

Now, this isn’t to say that I never read physical books as I do get quite a few of them from the library throughout the year. But they account for only about 20% of my overall reading. Historically, almost all my reading consists of ebooks.

This is funny because I constantly extol the virtues of paper books and talk about how much I love them, how there’s nothing like the feel/smell of an actual book, etc. Yet, when I examine my reading habits, I see that physical books make up only a tiny portion of my reading and the main reason for that is convenience. For instance, rather than carrying around a heavy book with me whenever I go to the doctor’s or another appointment, it’s easier to tuck my Kindle in my jacket pocket, and I have my entire library with me. I also don’t have to lug 15 books with me when I go on vacation, which is especially an issue given that I take a lot of vacations on my motorcycle. This all makes me think that perhaps I’ll write up a future post on paper books vs. ebooks. But that isn’t the purpose of this post, however. Today, I just wanted to mention that I’ll be making a massive change to my reading habits which will entail mainly reading paper books in the coming year.

I’m curious how I’ll take to it again. No doubt I’ll miss the convenience of my Kindle as well as the ability to quickly lookup words on the fly. But I will say that whenever I do read a physical book, I tend almost always to enjoy the experience of it. I love the feel of the book in my hands, the subtle noise of a page turn, and the immediate physical representation of how much of the book is remaining.

This isn’t to say that I won’t be reading ebooks this year, as I’m sure a few electronic ARCs will cross my path (though I plan on not requesting as many ARCs as usual). But my main focus will be on clearing out some of those titles from my physical TBR on my groaning shelves. I think it will be kind of fun to watch the number of books on my shelves dwindle as the year progresses.

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100 Things We’ve Lost to the Internet

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Today I wanted to share a book with all of you that I came across a few weeks ago that I simply had to pick up. It’s called, “100 Things We’ve Lost to the Internet” by Pamela Paul. This is a nostalgic look at all of the things that have disappeared from our lives — some good, some bad — because of the Internet.

What’s funny is that I’ve actually been thinking about this a lot lately, before the book ever came to my attention. We’re considering downsizing and moving to a condo which means we have to get rid of a lot of the crap we’ve accumulated over the years. Given that I grew up in the pre-Internet days, I’ve come across a lot of stuff that is no longer relevant such as a cordless telephone, a cassette player, a walkman, a paper address book, and empty photo albums. How about an old fax machine? I also stumbled across boxes of blank printer paper that I no longer use. It’s been years since I’ve used my printer except for printing out my Profit and Loss Statement each April for my accountant. Additionally, there’s a drawer full of binder clips, clipboards, paper clips, a paper cutter, and even a box stuffed with empty three-rings binders. It tickled me to see many of these same items mentioned in Pamela’s book.

Overall, if you’re a person of a certain age, you might enjoy this little excursion down memory lane to a time of kitchen telephones, Rolodexes, Filofaxes, handwritten letters, checkbooks, and the TV Guide. Oh, and how can we forget the blind date?

I thought this book was so much fun, and I believe young people will also get a kick out of this fun, light-hearted jaunt down memory lane — though a lot on this list has disappeared only recently. 100 Things We’ve Lost to the Internet is a jarring reminder about how quickly things change and lose their relevance.

While I think there are some things whose loss I regret — such as glossy, paper magazines — there are others that I’m glad are gone (like getting lost, for instance! I love my GPS).

How about you? What things do you miss that the Internet has taken away?

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Why I’m Moving Away from TV Shows

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Man watch TV image

I’ve mentioned a few times in various posts that I don’t watch a lot of television. In fact, I find myself watching less and less of it each year. Oh, there have been a few series that I’ve enjoyed and looked forward to, like The Wheel of Time series and Ted Lasso. But what’s funny is that I have to almost force myself to watch TV these days. It’s as though my brain is fighting me on it for some reason.

And I think I finally figured out why.

A little over a year ago, I watched season 1 of a new Netflix series entitled “Julie and the Phantoms.” I loved this series so much and thought it was tremendous fun. So the other day, I was searching online to see when the next season was coming out, only to disappointingly discover that it was canceled. That’s when it hit me — this was the reason I’m pulling away from TV series. It’s not that I’m bitter that networks cancel shows (though I am). It’s that my brain is full of unfinished stories.

I thought about all of my favorite shows that have been canceled and how all of these unfinished stories are still rattling around in my brain, waiting for their denouement.

I’ve mentioned a time or two that I’m a completionist, so being unable to finish a story — to not have it nicely wrap up — really bugs me. As a result, I’ve been extremely hesitant to start any new series — especially on Netflix, which is notorious for canceling shows after only a season or two. Instead, I’ve noticed that I much prefer to sit down with a good book where I know that if I soldier on, the story will conclude.

Same goes for movies — they (most of the time) tend to have a conclusion, leading to a feeling of satisfaction at the end. This is why I have more of a tendency to watch a film than get involved in a series. I’m guaranteed the movie will properly conclude. I’m not guaranteed that with a television series.

This revelation amused me, and I didn’t realize just how much those unfinished stories irritated me. It seems like such a waste of time to watch and invest myself in only part of a story — a story that abruptly ends without a conclusion. I guess that’s why it’s rare that I DNF (do not finish) books. Even if it’s a crappy story, I still like to see how it all turns out.

I recalled the other day when I went through my Netflix queue and deleted a bunch of shows I hadn’t started and no longer had any desire to watch. Now I know why.

So does this mean I will never watch another series? Not really. If a series is over and was concluded by the network, I might check it out. Or if there’s a series that I’m already involved in, such as Wheel of Time, then I have no choice but to continue on with it.

But as for any new shows — unless it is something that I really, really, really want to watch — the answer is probably no.

Especially if your name is Netflix.

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Happy New Year

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Happy New Year to everyone!

For many of us — as we cautiously tip-toe into 2022 — this is the time for a clean slate and new beginnings. So we create resolutions lists, goal lists and swear to ourselves that this year will be different from the last.

I used to make a list of resolutions every year, and most years, I would fail miserably at attaining them. Arg! Sometimes I wouldn’t make it past the first two weeks of the year before my goals fell by the wayside.

Last year, however, I did something a little bit different. I met all my goals.

I realized the problem was that I didn’t add any action steps to help me reach my objectives, nor did I hold myself accountable. So last year, I created a spreadsheet with each of my goals along with all of the actions I needed to take to achieve them. But not only that, I also set myself reminders in my to-do app (I use Todoist) to periodically check my goal progress to 1) ensure I was on track 2) to see what the next action steps were. I found that setting myself reminders was vital in me achieving what I set out to accomplish. As it turned out, this was the missing element for me.

Of course, everyone is different, and we all need to do what works for us. I just figured I’d share this tidbit of what worked for me because it just might be the missing element for you as well.

As for my goals, I am keeping them simple this year. I’m mainly going to focus on novel writing and piano practice. By the way, this was another ingredient to successfully achieving my goals: make them attainable and realistic. I remember those days when I used to have 30, 40, or 50 items on my New Year’s Resolutions list and would be so overwhelmed that I quickly gave up. Now I include only a few of the most important — and most attainable ones.

Here’s wishing everyone a healthy and happy new year — and may you attain all your goals!

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My Favorite Tools, Apps, and Services of 2021

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teen boy on computer and phone

People are always asking me about the tools that I use to be productive, so I thought I’d do one of those, “end of the year” type of posts where talk about my favorite tools, apps, and services that I used most in the past year. I’m sure I’m forgetting some, but here are the ones off the top of my head.

Tools

For tools, my iMac and my iPad Pro top the list. In the past year, I have used my iPad Pro more and more, especially since recent updates made the operating system even more powerful and more flexible. I do a lot of my writing on the iPad these days and typically only use my Mac when heavy lifting is required, such as photo and video editing (though I do plenty of photo editing on the iPad). Oh, and I suppose I should include my iPhone as well, given that it never leaves my side.

FieldNotes

Though I do a lot of work on the computer, I also enjoy analog note-taking/journaling. I’ve been a Field Notes subscriber for many years now, and I always have one of their notebooks with me wherever I go. I use them to jot down story ideas, bits of dialog I overhear, things I need to do, things I need to buy…you get the picture. They basically serve as a “brain dump” tool, and I use them for anything I want to remember later — those short-term memory tidbits that pop in out of nowhere.

For physical journaling, I use a Moleskine Classic Notebook XXL ( 8.5″ x 11”), and this is what I use for my bullet journal. This is where I keep all of my lists, trackers, calendar and daily to-dos. It’s also where I do my long-form journaling. I used to keep a separate journal for long-form writing but have since migrated them into one. These days, my long form basically consists of things that happened during the day that I might want to look back on or otherwise remember. I’ve also begun transcribing my notebooks into Day One, a popular journaling app for the Mac — which brings me to my next category:

Apps

Apps on phone

Without a doubt, my most used app is Ulysses, a markdown text editing app for the Mac. It’s the app I use to write novels, blog posts, and ideas — pretty much everything, truth be told. I used to use Scrivener for novel writing but have recently moved that to Ulysses, and so far, it’s been working out great. If, for some reason, I need to use a rich text word processor, I’ll use Apple Pages. Though I also have a subscription of Microsoft Office 365, I’ve been moving away from it recently and will most likely cancel it when it expires in the coming year.

Given that I’ll be moving away from Excel, I use Google Sheets for my spreadsheet needs. This is where I maintain my bookkeeping spreadsheets and any other ones related to my business.

I also subscribe to Adobe’s Photography subscription, which consists of Lightroom and Photoshop, my main photo editing applications, and it only costs $10 per month. I occasionally use a few other photo editors such as Luminar and Photomatix, but the Adobe apps are my main ones.

Another app that’s been part of my arsenal for many years now is DevonThink, a powerful database app for the Mac. This is my “storage” app, and I use it to store tidbits that I might need later. Once Evernote started charging $80 per year, I migrated over to DevonThink and have been quite happy with it.

There are a couple of writing tools that I use to check grammar and spelling and the like, and those are: Grammarly and ProWritingAid. They each have their individual strengths so instead of choosing, I subscribe to both of them.

My blogging platform is WordPress, and I’ve been with them from the very beginning. I’m using the self-hosted version of WordPress (wordpress.org) as opposed to the hosted version (wordpress.com) because I love tinkering under the hood. It truly is a flexible platform, and I love all of the options, themes, and plug-in available for it. I briefly tried Squarespace, but it didn’t work out so I went back to WordPress. Speaking of blogging, I use MarsEdit as my blogging editor. My process is: 1) Write the post in Ulysses 2) Copy it as HTML and paste it into MarsEdit 3) Add images and send the post to my blog. MarsEdit is another app that I’ve been using for many years, and I’m thrilled with it. Among other things, the lack of MarsEdit support was one of the reasons I dumped Squarespace.

I also can’t neglect to mention Todoist, my go-to task/project management app. I’ve tried many of them over the years, including Things, Omnifocus, Google Keep, To Do, and Remember the Milk, but Todoist is my favorite, and I always find my way back to it. It’s not only extremely powerful, but I love its natural language ability, making it a snap to add new tasks. I use this several times a day, rendering it probably my most-used app.

Services

I wrote a blog post a while back about how I seesaw back and forth between music services. Right now, my main music streaming service is Spotify, and it has been for quite some time. I always mange to find my way back to Spotify and have no plans to leave it anytime soon.

For TV/Movie streaming, I subscribe to a couple of them: Netflix, HBO Max, Disney+, Apple TV+ and Dekkoo. This is rather amusing given that I hardly ever watch television, usually preferring to curl up with a book. However, I recently have started watching shows while I’m working out on the treadmill so I can feel as though I’m getting my money’s worth from my streaming services. I also have a weekly movie night at home so I end up watching a few movies a month. I subscribed to Disney+ last year because there were a few things I wanted to see but will probably not renew it this year. I’ll stick with the others for the time being.

I also subscribe to Audible Premium Plus and Book of the Month, the original book box service. I’ve belonged to both of them for many years now and don’t plan on leaving anytime soon. I listen to a lot of audiobooks during the year, so Audible is a no-brainer. I listen while I’m cleaning, cooking, eating etc. so I manage to tear through at least a few books each month I subscribe to the 24 credit per year plan, which equates to less than $10 per book. I also love Book of the Month because it helps me discover books that I normally wouldn’t have read. Both are worth it, in my opinion.

For file storage/cloud storage, I use Dropbox. I use this service to store any files that I want automatically backed up in the cloud as well as anything that I’ll be sharing or collaborating on with others. I also have a 200 GB Google One subscription, a family plan, which I mainly use for photo storage and access to the Google Suite of applications. For cloud backup, I use BackBlaze which backs up my computer seamlessly in the background.

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Additionally, I use BitDefender and Malwarebytes to protect my computer against viruses, malware, and ransomware.

Those are the Main Ones

Those are some of the main tools, apps, and services that I use. There are many more which I’ll probably chat about in future posts (because I’m a geek and like to talk about this kind of stuff). I don’t plan on deviating too much from this in the coming year, but who knows? Last year I gave Notion and Obsidian a brief test drive but ultimately decided I didn’t need them. Though they are powerful and impressive, they didn’t fit into my workflow. Given that my main focus in 2022 will be novel writing, I’ll probably stick with what I’m currently using…but then again, maybe not.

How about you? What are some of your favorite tools, services. and apps?

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