Discover great authors from HEY World

Monokai Inspired Mona Theme

Hey, World 👋 I've enjoyed the Monokai colour scheme for a while and it was the inspiration for the colours used on this blog. Well, the dark mode at least, though I use slightly bolder versions. I think it's safe to say it’s an acquired taste, and I have a feeling it might be a bit of a 'love it or hate it' kind of situation. Whilst Iv...

My Default Apps

Hey, World 👋 My blogging in 2023 has been essentially non-existent, but if there’s one thing that will take me out of my self-imposed isolation it’s a good blogging trend. So, when I saw the default apps Inspired by Hemispheric Views 097 - Duel of the Defaults!, I couldn’t resist. Well, that’s a lie actually. I did resist for some time...

A Look At Artifact

Hey, World 👋 There’s been a bit of an influx of news aggregators and feed manager type apps recently. One in particular I hear a lot about is Matter. At its heart it’s a read-later app, but it also does a lot of work to help you curate a feed of content you’re interested in. Whilst I gave Matter a go, it never quite stuck with me. A si...

Dear Reader - Apple Arcade’s Hidden Gem

Hey World 👋 A long time ago I had the crazy idea of trying to write a daily review of every Apple Arcade game. I think I made it about six days before burning myself out. Whilst I don’t think it’s going to be viable to review then all I was keen to highlight some of the real gems, hidden or otherwise, of this great service. The first g...

The Denties - 2022

I started The Denties last year as my answer to Michael Scott's Dundies, and Upgrades Upgradies. In keeping with the new festive tradition, I've compiled a list of my favourite things from 2022. So, lets get right on with it shall we? Film of the year The Batman To be completely honest with you, I had to check IMDB for films released i...

Where I’ve Been

Hey 👋 World, Manton Reece, posting on his blog recently posted a short post about the places he’s visited in the past. This idea was then picked up by a lot of the excellent micro.blog community so I thought I’d get in on some of the action as well. It’s always interesting to look back on things you’ve done in the past. • 🏴 England (wh...

Micro Review - Alan Wake

Hey, World 👋 A very large part of my gaming time is spent playing competitive games such as Call of Duty, Overwatch 2 or Hunt: Showdown. Whilst I love these games, I also feel like I'm missing out on a lot of great single player experiences. A year or so ago I binged the entire Resident Evil series and really enjoyed breaking up the so...

Some Thoughts on The iPad Pro

There’s been a lot of iPad related discourse in recent weeks, following a pretty disastrous iPadOS 16 beta journey. I’m not going to wade into that territory too much, but the renewed discussion on the device has made me stop and think a little about my usage of the device, particularly the iPad Pro 12.9”. I adore the iPad mini for its...

It’s Okay to Enjoy Your Phone

Hey, World 👋 Greg Morris on Mobile Publishing: “ Publishing is my thing, and the fact I can do it all the time in situations where I might otherwise be bored or scrolling social media should be appreciated.” I like this post by Greg not only because I agree and relate to the the overall message, but also that it’s nice to finally see a...

Being an Introvert

Hey, World 👋 Robin Rendle: Take Care of Your Blog: “ Blog! Blog your heart! Blog about something you’ve learned, blog about something you’re interested in. Blog about cameras or HTML or that one browser bug you’ve noticed this morning or blog about the sky above you right this very second. How many clouds are up there? Blog about your ...

🔗 The Apple Watch Ultra Isn’t For Everyone, But …

Hey, World 👋 Matt Birchler, speaking in his latest video for A Better Computer: “ … I don’t think the Apple Watch Ultra isn’t for everybody, but I do think it’s right for anyone who’s intrigued by some of the differentiating features it has that aren’t just applicable to people that do those extreme events.” I couldn’t agree with this ...

The Apple Watch Ultra Is Not For Me, But I Love It!

I’m not an athlete, by a long shot. I’m not a hiker. I’m not a swimmer. I’m not a diver. In fact, I’m quite possibly as far away from any of those things as you could get. Apple promoted the Apple Watch Ultra as the perfect device for the various Sports enthusiasts that can make use of warning signals, a rugged design, depth tracking, ...

What a Week … [#2]

Hey, World 👋 (Photo taken by me, in near Paphos, Cyprus) Well, folks, another week has flown by. I hope you’ve all had a good one and you’re doing well. Here we are at the second edition of my newsletter. I’m not sure it really counts as a newsletter, what with the distinct lack of news, but we’ll go with this for now. I’m also yet to ...

What a Week … [#1]

Hey, World 👋 Since dropping my Ghost blog, once again, due to lack of posting (coupled with an enjoyment of using HEY World) I’ve been toying with the idea of creating a real newsletter. I’ve proven to myself that my consistency with things like this, coupled with a chronic lack of free time (that isn’t filled with games) would prove s...

Fortnite - The Best BR For Normal People?

Hey, World 👋 I’ve written about my current obsession with competitive multiplayer games a few times recently, so excuse yet another gaming post. Quite a lot of my competitive gaming time has been spent in Battle Royale games. I think, at this point, I’ve played the vast majority of those with any popularity. I’ve spent many frustrating...

How To Be a Better Writer

Hey, World 👋 On writing tips she learnt when writing books, Jodie Cook writes: “Reading as prolifically as you write will make you a better writer. You can’t drink from an empty glass just as you can’t come up with ideas, stories and new ways of seeing old concepts without consistently being inspired. Reading is a perfect muse because ...

Micro Book Review - Gerald’s Game by Stephen King

Hey, World 👋 I’ve read quite a few Stephen King book now, over the years, and one thing that never fails to amaze me is his ability to make even the most mundane setting thrilling, and completely blow away my expectations. The Long Walk is a good example of this. As the name suggests, it’s literally about a long walk, yet it’s an engro...

Dear Reader

Hey, World 👋 A long time ago I had the crazy idea of trying to write a daily review of every Apple Arcade game. I think I made it about six days before burning myself out. Whilst I don’t think it’s going to be viable to review then all I was keen to highlight some of the real gems, hidden or otherwise, of this great service. The first ...

Site Updates

Hey, World 👋 Historically, when I’ve sat down to write an update about the blog it’s been to put forward some excuses or justifications about moving my blog to a new platform. If it’s not a move, it’s a sob story about how I don’t know what to write about and that I’m giving up again. This time the post is about a couple of actual upda...

Is The iPad Exciting Anymore?

Hey, World 👋 Matt Birchler, of A Better Computer and Birchtree fame recently released another great video on his channel, posing the question Is the iPad exciting anymore? The video saw Matt, and a fantastic line up of known iPad power users, share their thoughts on the current state of the iPad and where this may go in the future. The...

Take Reminders Up a Notch With Remind Me Faster

Hey, World 👋 I’m on a bit of a ‘new app binge’ at the moment. I’m starting to get bored of using the same apps day in day out. That being said, one app I’m not looking to replace, thankfully, is my todo app. While I’ve dabbled in basically every todo app that’s come to market, I always end up back at Apple’s Reminders app. Along with A...

The Best To-Do Apps In 2021

Hey, World 👋 It seems a bit odd link posting to myself, but I had an opportunity to write a short article for Techradar recently breaking down some of the top to-do apps for your iPhone or iPad, so I thought I'd shamlessly share it here also. I'm still a big fan of Apple's Reminders app, but I always keep up to date with what the genre...

Give Yourself a Break

Hey, World 👋 I love following small and / or independent blogs, so I’m slowly filling up my RSS client with as many sites as I can. I enjoy hearing diverse voices and learning about people’s equally diverse views and thoughts on things. Something that I’ve started to notice recently, however, is a lot of people virtually beating themse...

My Writing in 2022

Hey, World 👋 As we slowly creep into 2022, I've read a few posts about people's plans for their blogs and their writing. Some of these got me thinking a bit about my own writing this year, and some goals or aims I'm going to set myself. I've said many times in the past that I want to simply write more. To some extent that happened, for...

The Denties - The Best of 2021

Hey, World 👋 Michael Scott has his coveted Dundies awards. Upgrade has its Upgradies and, now, The Dent has … The Denties! Welcome to the first ever Denties Awards, where I will pick my favourite things from various categories that I’ve experienced throughout 2021. Some of my picks didn’t necessarily come out in 2021, that’s just when ...

Addicted

Hey, World 👋 I’ve been a gamer for years, since getting my hands on the family Atari ST. My grandad killed that thing my ripping out it’s innards whilst trying to get a stuck disc out of the drive with a bloody great knife. He was a carpenter, so he was very gentle when he was working with wood. Anything more solid than that generally ...

You Are Not The Only Person That Matters

Hey, World 👋 For some time now I’ve not only dropped off listening to tech podcasts, mainly Apple focused ones, but I’ve actively avoided them where possible. For some reason, I think mainly because I’ve not got a good audiobook on the go at the moment, I dipped back into a show I’ve enjoyed in the past. The hosts were talking about th...

Micro Book Review - The Searcher by Tana French

Hey, World 👋 We’re four days into 2022 and I’m one book down in my reading challenge for the year. I’ve been tracking my reading via Goodreads for years, and more recently via Literal and, this year, I’m going to start tracking them via my blog as well by way of some short micro-reviews. Initially, for those of you that want to just ge...

Don’t Read This Article, Read Someone Else’s

Hey, World 👋 That’s a weird headline isn’t it? Why would I want a reader going somewhere else? To read someone else’s work when they could be reading mine? If you saw someone writing that you’d think it’s a bit strange, right? We all want people to see or use the things we make. If this blog was monetised, I’d want people to read it ev...

Making The Most of Content Online

Hey, World 👋 Chris Wilson on dealing with the abundance of new content to read online everyday: “We no longer have to strive to read every great article that is being published, instead we can be selective, knowing that there is more great content out there. When we accept an abundance mindset, we can cope with not reading everything. ...

Indie App Santa is Coming to Town

Hey, World 👋 If you’ve been an Apple person for a while I’m sure you recall fondly the ‘12 Days of Christmas’ promotion Apple ran every December from 2008 until it’s abruptly stopped after it’s ran in 2013. For those of you that don’t remember it, or maybe weren’t even around when it was running (which is a depressing thought) it was a...

Demands on Your Attention

Hey, World 👋 A huge reason, perhaps the reason I've regularly dropped away from blogging has been done to just having nothing to write about. I often wonder how people find so many things to write about, and a drive to blog so frequently. I recently came across a great post from Matt Bircher that not only shared a very interesting top ...

Year in Review 2021: Books

Hey, World 👋 The year 2021 has been a weird one in many ways. As my work life has changed drastically, so has my home and relaxation time. Before COVID took a grip on us all, my day involved a 3-4 hour commute every day. Whilst this took a toll on my soul, not to mention my lower back, it wasn’t all bad. One positive was that, after mo...

Are You The Product?

Hey, World 👋 As the big technology companies we know and lovetoday continue to grow, there are fewer and fewer facets of their businesses and models to differentiate them. Almost all of the huge technology companies today harvest us for our personal data (both knowingly and sometimes even unknowingly to help fund, and enhance, their of...

Less Than 100% is Still Valuable

Hey, World 👋 Whilst I’m on a bit of a streak right now, generally speaking my post writing is fairly limited and restricted. A large part of why that is, is because I constantly tell myself that I just don’t have time. Fairly often this is the case. I have a daughter and dog to look after, a job that keeps me very busy and a household ...

Cortado: Relaxed Reading To Your Inbox

Hey, World 👋 These days, there are a multitude of apps and services to help you both control your email inbox. There is also a trend, currently, for everyone and their dog to put out regular newsletters. There are quite a lot that I love a great deal. Often, these two things are at odds with one another. On the one hand people like to ...

Right To Repair: Be Careful What You Wish For?

Hey, World 👋 Today Apple announced that they will be offering Self Serve Repair starting in the US early 2022 and rolling it out in other territories the following months. Speaking of the announcement, Apple COO Jeff Williams said: ““Creating greater access to Apple genuine parts gives our customers even more choice if a repair is need...

Ghost Vs. HEY World

Hey, World 👋 A few days ago I moved my TheDent.net domain over from Micro.Blog to a newly setup Ghost based blog. I did so after I told everyone I was just going to stick with my HEY World blog and the unsurety has continued. Setting up the Ghost blog was free and fairly painless, so I thought it was worth a bit of an experiment. Ghost...

Blog Envy

Hey, World 👋 I've just gone through yet another blog migration, moving from Micro.Blog to Ghost (again). I was happily posting to Ghost a year or so ago, saw a nice looking blog on Micro.blog and jumped ship. I then sat there, not posting for half a year, before I saw Greg Morris' updated site over on Ghost and my blog envy kicked off ...

Apple Made a Gaming Console And You Missed It

Hey, World 👋 For years now, people have questioned why Apple hasn't gone all in on gaming, and created a games console. Games are a big part of the Apple App Store, yet the games don't have a console to thrive on. The thing is, Apple do have a gaming console. They have a load of them in fact, but no ones seemed to notice. Much as Apple...

I Use HEY But I’m Not a Douche, Promise!

Hey, World 👋 If you’re receiving this in your inbox today it may be a bit of a blast from the past. An unwelcome one at that. I’m not posting to address any of the various HEY / Basecamp controversies, however. Suffice to say I completely disagreed, and still do disagree, with Basecamp attitudes and opinions hoisted onto their staff. I...

How to Train Your AirPods

Hey, World 👋 Apple has released many products over the years, with many of them quickly becoming a pop culture icon. The iPod, the iPhone and now the AirPods. I’m a huge fan of the AirPod range and have some AirPods Pro and AirPods Max and use them daily. A few months back, Apple launched the spatial audio feature on Apple Music. This ...

Dented - Issue #1

Hey, World 👋 I hope you’re all well and keeping safe. Some of you may have signed up to receive my HEY World updates, and wonder where I’ve been for the last month or so. I’ve stopped using HEY World, and been concentrating on posting to my main blog, The Dent, instead. It’s been a fairly busy month of posts for me. While the quality i...

Reading List Blackhole #1

Hey, World 👋 One of my favourite things to look at in the various newsletters that I subscribe to these days are the links people share, from articles they’d read that week. These always include well written, fascinating reads which I will often add to my Reading List on iOS. The issue with this, however, is these links then join a lon...

The Sound of Silence

Hey, World 👋 For as long as I can remember, I’ve had a real problem with silence. I’m not sure what silence ever did to me to upset me so, but for a long time I’ve subconsciously avoided silence. If I’m popping to the shops quickly, my AirPods come too. If I’m driving, my podcasts are my co-pilot. If I’m walking my dog, some aural deli...

Some Initial Thoughts On HEY World

Hey, World 👋 I’ve been using HEY World for just a couple of days now, but I already think I’m going to stick with it as my blogging service of choice for the foreseeable future. If you’re at all interested in this service, I’m sure you would have already read through a plethora of first impressions and pros and cons lists, so I apologi...

The Tech Podcast Bubble

Hey, World 👋 I’ve noticed a lot of people, especially during the last difficult year, leaving or taking breaks from Twitter for the sake of their mental well-being. While I have, thankfully, yet to let the many negatives of that medium get to me, my own personal bug bear has been tech podcasts. Before the pandemic I had a commute that ...

Hey, World

Hey, World 👋 Well, here it is, my first post on my HEY World blog. Looking at posts that others have shared so far, it seems to be mandatory to use some form of ‘Hello World’ post title and who am I to argue? We’ve not had to wait long for this feature since it was hinted at / demoed by the HEY team, but I’ve been excited for it noneth...

When To Press The Button

Hey, World 👋 I’m starting to think that I enjoy the technology of blogging more than I do the actual blogging. My latest blog iteration is hosted on micro.blog. When I first started writing there I was posting regularly and enjoying myself. The enthusiasm started to dwindle, but a switch to a new service, namely Ghost, reignited my pas...