Few more physical things about the phone before I can move into talking about the internals.

The power button on the right hand side is conveniently placed just a bit over halfway through the side. This makes it much easier to reach for it than having it on top. There is a slider to silence the phone in the traditional power button place in this phone. A feature that surely is useful, but I still prefer the control of profiles based on whether I'm wearing my watch or not.

There is so much new with this phone I have to continue from where I left yesterday.

In addition to huge display the body of the phone is quite sleek overall. The material is smooth which, in addition to it's size, makes it quite hard to keep at hand. It feels like it could slip out from my hand at any moment. So case is a must have with this phone. It offers double protection when you are less likely to drop it in the first place and protecting it even if you do.

Now that I have had time to play around with my new phone it's time to write some first thoughts about it.

First thing that is apparent when you pick up the phone is that it's huge. Or at least it feels like it. After all, comparing to my previous phone it's just few millimeters more here and there. But all that space is occupied by a gorgeous curved screen. There are no bezels, notches or even punch holes. It's literally all screen.

I don't know how many times I have started this post already. I don't know if this one will get until the end. But must keep trying until I succeed.

It's not that I wouldn't have anything to write about. Or that I  didn't know how or what to write about those ideas. It's not even that those would be something I wouldn't feel comfortable writing about.

Quite the opposite. After such an inspirational weekend I have way too much to write about and I'm having trouble choosing just one.

I usually work at the office on Fridays. I was planning to do so also yesterday. But knowing that I would have to spend the whole weekend in highly social setting, and knowing how draining that would be for me I instead decided to work at home. That way I had most of the day just for myself. No social obligations or interactions. The fact, that I had plans on working on a project with a colleague who would have been remote anyway also helped on this decision.

After starting to have issues with my old phone I was faced with the choice of my next phone. The options were wast, but after a moment I set my eyes on the upcoming Pixel 4. I had basically made my decision already there, but then came the official announcement which both didn't deliver as much as I was hoping for and also raised some privacy concerns.

Having options to choose from is a good thing. But having too many options might get you in trouble.

It's easy to fall into analysis paralysis trying to figure out the best possible option from all the available ones. It wouldn't be nice to pick the wrong one and then regret it.

Honestly speaking all those options aren't usually that different after all. The differences might be small and meaningless in the end. But if those are the only ones distinguishing the options they suddenly become a lot more important.

As I have been anxiously waiting for a new phone and especially the release of Pixel 4 I decided to watch the whole Made by Google event yesterday live.

Straight from the start I was impressed on Googles efforts for the environment. They have been carbon neutral since 2007 and are constantly pushing and supporting their supplier network to achieve the same. They are also looking into ways to make their products more sustainable: for example using recycled materials in Nest or removing the need to buy new devices all the time with Stadia.

I have a few different modes of listening to music. Sometimes I listen it more purposefully, some other times it's just something in the background.

When doing things that don't require that much thinking it's nice to have some suitable music playing in the background. It can give some rhythm to the doing or just make it a bit less boring. Good examples are things like exercising or doing chores. Picking some high energy tunes can make those tasks more enjoyable.

Whatever you do it's always connected to something else. You can't do anything in a vacuum.

Every system is made out of small pieces. And it's hard to focus on all those other pieces and dive deep into the one at the same time.

When getting your hands dirty it's best to focus on only that. Forget everything else around and just do whatever is at hand.

But on larger scale it's better to account all that is connected. To reflect how it affects everything around whatever you are doing.

In just two days, Google is supposed to announce their next Pixel phone. The one I have been waiting for after carefully comparing all the available options.

Sure, it's not guaranteed. There might be some qualities of that phone that can still change my mind, one of them being the missing 5G. Of course, it's still the early days of 5G and there aren't that much coverage on that network around here. But if I plan to keep the phone for at least 3 years, towards the end of that time they should already be quite common. And I don't even know if I'd ever need those speeds anyway.

"We need to save the planet!". It's a common statement heard often these days. But the truth is, the planet doesn't need to be saved by us. What it actually needs is being saved from us.

Earth is surprisingly resilient to change. It is us that might not survive those changes. Our planet has survived a lot worse, it just didn't turn out that well at the time for then dominant species. Where the current climate change is heading isn't even anything out of ordinary. We have just managed to accelerate it's coming from millions of years into mere decades.

As I have been essentially forced to come along without a smartphone for the past month it has made me evaluate the necessity of having one. I have managed to survive just fine without relying on it too much.

It would be nice to be able to live with a dumb phone instead. Those still have some essential features and such a device would greatly help me on my digital diet.

"Errare humanum est", to err is human. Wise words sometimes attributed to Seneca the Younger, a Roman stoic philosopher.  What's often left out is the follow up: "erseverare autem diabolicum", to persist is of the devil. Here persist meaning repeating those same mistakes.

It's ok to make mistakes. But those should be opportunities to learn, not something that should be repeated. And that, I think is the core of this whole phrase. Just making mistakes doesn't make us human, it's our ability to learn from them.

Where do ideas come from. And where can I store them until the time is ready for them to be made real.

They are surprisingly easy to come by. Anything can be a spark for a new idea. But not every idea is worth venturing further. It takes many ideas to find one worth realizing. But even those ideas not fit to manifest are important. They can be used to amend those that are.

Ideas are like seeds. They need a lot of nurturing to grow into something more concrete. Grouping similar ideas together will make them grow stronger. Taking cues from each other.

I was about to write of another milestone in my writing career. But then I realized I already passed it a couple of days ago. So I'm writing this now, two days late.

Waiting is always painful. I wish the clock would tick faster. But instead, it appears to be frozen in place. I close my eyes and slowly count to ten, hoping the hands of the clocks had followed my lead. But there has been only a few ticks and tocks.

Three months until Christmas. I cross over another day from the calendar and count the days. Wasn't that yesterdays count? Almost the same anyway. Still almost a hundred days to go.

Wouldn't it be great if it would only take 360 days for us to go around the Sun. It would be perfect to make each day exactly one degree instead of being just a bit short of it. That is just annoying imperfection.

At times I get an idea about the topic I want to write. But then I realize I don't know enough about it to write something sensible about it. And I do want to make things properly so I don't give out disinformation. It's a nice motivation to learn something new. It's not like I'd have any lack of such things anyway, but it's just one more of those.

At the end of this month I will be giving a presentation about Green Tech thinking at Drupalcon Amsterdam. I only have a twenty minute slot there that must include any questions afterwards, so I really squeeze down a lot of material in a compact package.

There is so much I could talk about this topic. It's hard to trim it down to fit into the given timebox. But on the other hand, it forces me to thing the topic critically. What are the most important things to say and how can I make the biggest impact.