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New Year's pup! Also, I went blonde.

** The Bulletin ** – January 6, 2024

Hi everyone:

I spent New Year’s with one of my best friend’s, plus his siblings + their friends! It was such a great time! We got to hang out and play various Jackbox games—but honestly, I was sad when I had to leave on Wednesday, because they have a new Shih Tzu pup named Gwendolyn who is an absolute sweetheart. I’ll attach a pic for you below so you can see her!

While I was visiting, my best friend’s little sister bleached my hair, and now I’m back to what was once my natural hair colour: blonde. I think it looks fantastic—and dear reader, I’m honestly in love with it! I would’ve kept visiting if I could, but I have a few things here at home that need my attention right now… and let’s be honest, I’ll probably be back visiting again very soon anyways.

I started my playthrough of 2004’s Pokémon FireRed on Thursday night, by the way! Long time coming, and I’ve still yet to really develop my team’s movesets, but I’m just happy to be back at it with Pokémon after a little break. I’ve been falling in love with this series the more that my good friend Kolin has been teaching me! That’s — without a doubt — going to continue as this playthrough progresses, and as my journey through the series does, too!

This coming week is a little busy, so next week’s email will probably have a pretty boring recap for you since I won’t be able to discuss much. But I may share an update or two on my Pokémon escapades. So stay tuned for that, I suppose.

With that said and done, it’s time for the latest happenings in my world and beyond—all in this week’s Bulletin…

Buried Alive: The First Chapter (Preview) available next week

The first chapter of my new book, Buried Alive, will be published next week on Amazon and my website. The book itself is dedicated to my best friends Chantel, Max, and Kolin, and I can’t wait to share it with all of you later this year. I’m very proud of it and I hope you are too!

Some housekeeping for 2024

A handful of super quick announcements for you as we jump into our first Bulletin of the new year.

  • My book, “Buried Alive”, is launching this year! It’ll be available in two editions, Standard & Blue, on SladeWatkins.com starting June 7, 2024. Pricing and further availability to be announced very soon. I can’t wait to close that chapter of my life after all these years.

  • Slade’s Corner has a paid subscription! I’m probably not going to mention it a lot in articles/emails themselves, but I do have a paid subscription you can upgrade to and access additional benefits with. The first paywalled article of the new subscription offering will launch this month, and is being drafted starting this weekend—I expect that to be live for paid subscribers in a couple weeks or so. (FOR TRANSPARENCY: I do comp/discount the paid subscriptions of family/friends.)

This week’s question

Here it is: the question of the week! Each week, I’ll ask a question, and you’ll vote. (In the email, just tap on your answer!) In the following week’s Bulletin, I’ll ask another AND reveal my answer to the previous week’s question along with rough tallies from all of you~!

Sound like fun? I thought so. Please consider participating!

Last week’s question (and my answer!)

Last week’s question was an easy one—do you prefer iOS or Android? The results were equally as straightforward: 75% voted for iOS, and the remaining 25% voted for Android. As for my answer? It’s not a secret at all: I grew up on Android, and that’s what I prefer.

This week’s soundtrack

I’m kind of a Spotify addict, so I happen to listen to a lot of music. Here’s what I’m currently listening to—usually on repeat. Here’s what I’ve got for you, for the week of January 6, 2024…

Thanks to Songlink for making all these streaming platform-agnostic!

Things I found across the net

Oh no, here we go again with the mountain of links!

  • Microsoft adding new key on keyboards for Copilot: In “why?” news, Microsoft has announced they will be adding a new key to keyboards for Microsoft Copilot, their AI assistant that is now built into various Microsoft products (including Bing and Windows 11). I’ll admit—as someone who uses Linux and Mac quite frequently now, I don’t quite get why you need so many dedicated buttons on a keyboard for things. (Hell, I went to a keyboard without a numpad for that purpose!) But hey, maybe people who are okay with Microsoft knowing their every move and selling that info to the highest bidders will appreciate this extra button? I don’t know.

  • DeGoogle your life: Listen, there are some things you probably don’t need Google for — and some of these services meant to help you “DeGoogle” your life not only better respect your privacy, but they also include many more features on top of what Google offers at a lesser cost to your wallet (and sanity). Highly recommend reading through it and seeing what you could replace to be less reliant on one company for your entire workflow!

  • Clicks, a physical keyboard for iPhone 14 Pro and 15 Pro: If you’re one of those people with a fancy 14 Pro or 15 Pro/Pro Max, good news, you get to live the days of having a BlackBerry without compromise thanks to a new case called “Clicks.” I’m sad, because I have a 12 (and the case is fairly pricey as-is) but this is still cool and if I could get one, I would in a heartbeat. Trust me.

  • Installer: A newsletter from the lovely David Pierce over at The Verge, it includes a ton of goodies from across the internet—app recommendations from David, the Verge crew, and readers! It’s one of my highlights of each week, and I highly recommend throwing it a sub. Think my Bulletin, but with a very drilled-in focus on the world of tech! (For those interested, but don’t want to subscribe to the emails, posts go up on this page a day after they’re sent out!)

  • And on YouTube this week: Something bittersweet, along with some just utterly hilarious and fascinating stuff…

    • Tom Scott officially retired on Monday after ten straight years of weekly videos! I don’t know how this man did it, but he did. I don’t think he quite realizes this—but he absolutely helped push the YouTube platform forward for the better in more ways than one! He deserves his rest. Congratulations on your retirement, Tom! Not sure what you’re going to get up to with your newfound free time… but my hope is that you’ll use it to have fun! (Or get into some trouble, that works too! You’ve more than earned it as far as I’m concerned.)

      • Legend has it he’s still hanging off a harness in the sky, just flying around without a care in the world. He better be having a blast!

      • Oh, and, I highly recommend his weekly newsletter that goes out every Monday around 11am/12pm Eastern. Always some fascinating links in there to peruse! That man finds some weird stuff sometimes, too…

    • Steamboat Willie in 4K, anyone?: Yeah, I saw this coming with the public domain thing that happened last week—Steamboat Willie has been transferred from film to 4K and is now available to watch on YouTube. There have been a lot of projects announced that use Steamboat Willie’s Mickey Mouse—but I think this one is the one I’m the biggest fan of, if I’m being entirely honest.

https://instagram.com/p/C1qO9uWtJn9/

That’s it from me for this week! And as wonderful as this week was, I am definitely looking forward to the week ahead: it’s filled with Pokémon FireRed, tiny projects with the blog, and some other cool stuff I can’t talk about just yet!

As usual, I’m reachable at [email protected] if you want to get in touch. (Can’t wait to share more about those projects very soon, too!)

Going insane,
Slade

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