Author: Robert Schouwenburg

Little gift to myself

New art pieces

I just got these new two pieces and I’m super happy with them. They’re called “THE STRUCTUROID N°02” and “THE STRUCTUROID N°03” and made by Slavomir Zombek. I bought the art pieces online and they were shipped straight from the artist to me. The frames are by Frame It Easy – a new favorite of […]

Often things are by happenstance

Origin of rdschouw

Most platforms use email nowadays as your username. There are some notable exceptions like Twitter and Instagram. I like usernames better than email and real names for public personas. The idea you can craft your own identity and not necessarily use your own name, create a lot of opportunity. Finstas are a good example of […]

Wow! It’s expensive!

Ipad Pro

One of the things Apple and I seem to agree on in life is that the iPad is the mobile computing future. The portability and battery life are superb and the dual-use case of a tablet with a keyboard is super useful on the go. I’ve been trying to use the iPad to use as […]

It’s not hard at all

Replacing an iPhone battery myself

After a somewhat unsatisfying experience with scheduling an appointment at the Apple Store to get the battery replaced of my iPhone SE, I decided to try myself. I guess the Apple Geniuses are still overwhelmed with replacing phone batteries and keyboards. I ordered a kit from iFixIt. It’s only $20. It came in two boxes. […]

Not all products are treated equal

Feature vs mission

A couple of days ago, I wrote about Evernote. Once, Steve Jobs called Dropbox a “feature”. He was right in his own context. But I do belief mission trumps features. I rather use Dropbox than Apple’s iCloud, Google Drive or Microsoft’s OneDrive. Same goes for Spotify versus Apple Music or YouTube Music. I really wish […]

Ungoogling my life

Apple Maps

As part of un-googling my life, I’ve been using Apple Maps lately. When Apple Maps came out back in 2012, it wasn’t very good. Actually, it was quite an embarrassment for Apple. It routinely sent people to the wrong place, not great for a map and navigation app. Apple was forced though by Google because […]

A story of goodbye

Evernote

I’ve been an Evernote user since 2010. I’ve been a paying customer for as long as I can remember and I’ve literally thousands of notes in Evernote, but last month I had to renew and I decided not to. Evernote has been drifting for a while and leadership turnover has been high. It clearly shows […]

New members of the nursery

Bonsai

I’ve been collecting and nurturing Orchids for several years now and I seem to have the hang of it. Orchids are not the hardest plants to grow and keep alive. Recently, I’ve found myself trying my hand on Bonsai. I’ve been always fascinated by these “little trees”. They’re much harder to care for though. Each […]

It’s just a feature

First they ignore you

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win Last week, the news came out that IBM was acquiring Red Hat. On some random place, I stumbled on this photo. It made me smile: Even though it’s unclear where this quote comes from and probably not from Gandhi, […]

This is what keeps me up at night

Data integrity and privacy

One of the major concerns I have with regard to privacy is data integrity. With data integrity, I mean that the correctness of the data used. Now, today much of the data is used for serving you ads, but plenty of startups are working on using the data for other purposes like issuing loans or […]