It is finally that time of year, after a long back-and-forth-type of winter and spring, the robotic lawnmowers are coming out again.
When the word "luxury" comes up, one line of thinking heads toward expensive fashion, fancy restaurants, fine wines, and the like. Another line I sometimes think along is the luxury of putting ourselves in homes which we lack the time and or knowledge and motivation to maintain ourselves.
In one way, it is completely natural. Of course we do not take care of everything ourselves. Specialization is one of the big things about civilization. In another way, it is outrageous how much we take it for granted that we do not need to take complete care of our homes ourselves.
We should at least make sure we notice, and appreciate the fact to the fullest. Less "I can not believe I have to spend time thinking about the lawn again", more "I can not believe that I can get the lawn taken care of with this little effort. Oh, and I have a machine which makes great coffee for me, which I try to use less because I can easily get a lot more coffee than I should be drinking."
"Not listening" is more of ambition and vision than a concrete thing I have achieved, but I did take another very nice dog walk without anything in my ears to distract me. I was thinking - as so often - about "better" downtime, more time to relax and let my mind wander. It occurred to me that I sometimes seem to imagine that I could replace downtime activities with more active ones. More uptime. I guess? That seems … more than a bit naive. I want to do active things, so should I not assume that I start doing downtime activities because I actually need some downtime in the moment? Telling myself that I should be writing or checking things off a todo list or something will not charge any batteries. So, are there more actual downtime activities I could get into? Calm and relaxing, easy to pick up in many situations, and with plenty of room for the mind to wander?
Better downtime does not mean more uptime, news at eleven.
Fantastic fonts and where to find them
I try out new fonts in my various editors every now and then. Usually, the difference is small enough that I can get a new kick of novelty by switching back a few months later. I do not have that many strong font opinions, and the ones I tend to be appealed by all clearly fall in a pretty narrow range of style.
Well, my current choice is more of a difference than average. My current Coteditor font of choice is Atkinson Hyperlegible - a font designed for, yes, legibility and readability with low vision readers in mind. It is a truly shining example of how accessibility helps everyone, because suddenly my text just feels sharper and easier to read. You know all those times where you look at a password and wonder if that character is the letter O or the number 0, or whether that character is a capital I or a lowercase l. Some fonts make a decent effort at making it easy to tell those things apart. Atkinson makes a great effort at handling all possible instances, and the effect is so great that it just disappears. Of course I can tell everything apart at a glance, has it not always been that way? I feel like I make fewer spelling mistakes, and the ones I do make are definitely easier to spot.
Three thumbs up.
(I wonder how my website would look and feel in Atkinson …)
(Not that great, actually. Guess there is a perfect font size for everything.)