You see, I love email. It’s gotten a bad rep, and numerous services and startups have both tried to replace it, and make it work differently. To me, email was never a bad thing, not since we moved over from POP3 to IMAP. Sure, there’s better and more secure technology out there, but the fact that my email account will work, and synchronise, with any device using standard protocols is great. Amazing, really. I don’t need a specific app for a specific service, not as long as I stick with the open standards (i.e., no Proton or Skiff). You can’t say that about Slack, possibly the worst solution to “the email problem” to date. There, you are stuck with the Slack app, which is basically the same as running the service in the web browser. And it whines at you in real-time, breaking your workflow.
2023.11.22.
2023.11.17.
The myth and reality of Mac OS X Snow Leopard
I agree with this. We would be better off with a more “natural” update cycle on the Mac. It’s a slower-moving platform these days anyway:
Regardless of the motivation, the annual updates are more of a burden than a blessing to many Apple customers, including myself. I wish that Apple would drop the artificial schedule and let the major updates come more naturally. This isn’t just the attitude of a developer and so-called “power user”. Many “normal” users”, the proverbial moms, feel the same way. Actually, my literal mom told me she doesn’t like the ceaseless annual major updates either. She’s learned from hard experience that they’re not necessarily safe to install. Major updates can be very disruptive, creating new problems and wrecking old workflows. The press is always excited by major updates, because they give the press a lot to write about, but the public is not as sanguine. We occasionally need a break of 23 months, or more, from computing disruption. That would be another Snow Leopard.
Related to this: The Mac, The Myth, The Legend: How Snow Leopard became synonymous with reliability
2023.11.01.
Apple and journaling
Jason has concerns about the format of Apple Journal:
Like Apple Notes, the Journal app works without the Files app. Instead of your journal entries being discreet text files or similar that can be managed in the file system, they’re built into the app itself. It might work, like Apple Notes, using a SQLite database within the Journal app container.
I’m also moving into using more open formats for journaling, although I think there is a slight difference between a journal and a diary.
- Keeping a journal in general is a mindfulness practice for keeping track of what I’m doing throughout the day.
- Keeping a diary is more personal on the other hand. It helps us to write about our feelings and nice or bad things that happened to us.
- This is the reason why I like to have the On This Day notification from Everlog in the morning.
- This is the reason why I like to have the On This Day notification from Everlog in the morning.
Both of these practices provide a clearer picture, bringing us closer to the state of the past than just a simple memory.
Our memories give a false image because we can only remember the good things. This distorts the past and overvalues things that were not as good as we remember.
We can’t trust our memories, but we can trust a diary/journal, since it acts as a bookmark to the past, showing what happened in our lives. It functions as a backward tickler file, bringing things from the past to us. This retrieved information helps us to better understand ourselves in the future. We can see the difference between the past and our current state clearly, which can provide a new perspective on how we handle a current situation.
In essence: both of these practices allow us to compare our present self with our past one and draw conclusions.
So back to Apple Journal…
The only thing I see myself using Apple Journal for is the missing “add a description to multiple photos” app for now.
Sometimes I want to have a short description of an event that is stored in Photos, and since both apps are from Apple, hopefully, the integration will be better than duplicating my photos into yet another app as attachments.
Otherwise, I don’t see myself migrating away from Everlog in the foreseeable future.
2023.10.29.
Great choice of fonts. I would only add iA Writer Duo for writing, Source Code Pro for coding, and Verdana for reading.
2023.10.27.
The Handcrafted Artisanal Web – nadreck.me
I’m still a big believer in having expertise in something and sharing that with your peers.
The future is returning to an artisanal web, where you cultivate your niches and small communities, where maybe you don’t become a millionaire and a star, but you do feel a sense of belonging, and maybe make enough to get by.
But having enough money is what people forget to realize. You can get a nice online side business up and running relatively quickly if you have an interesting “product”. Making that a full-time job is yet another step, but you can still stay a niche without losing your soul.
My iPad Is My Computer Again – Jason Journals
The iPad is a big iPhone, which is actually a good thing:
Apple has taken iPhone simplicity, added Mac productivity, and balanced them together to create iPad modernity.
Never really thought about it this way before.
2023.10.19.
Avoiding Distractions in Modern Computing
Notes from Avoiding Distractions in Modern Computing:
Most of the upcoming generation will never experience “slow computing”.
Slow computing can be done in a “distraction” heavy environment like email. It all depends on how we set up our tools and what we let our computers do. I can still control a lot of aspects of macOS and iOS and I don’t feel them distractions, but simple tools.
It baffles me that people buy pricey phones and have no idea what these devices are capable of. All they do with them is browse TikTok and Instagram.
It is like a blank canvas with no outputs, just waiting for a command about what I would like to do next. At this point I might navigate to a blog directory and open a document with my text editor of choice: emacs. When done writing this post I will add it to git, my text versioning system. After this I do whatever I please with the text file. I might push it to my central blog repository where a static HTML file generates on a public area or I may pipe it to some other program. This is the Unix philosophy.
The terminal-based environment can feel like an island of peace. Not because apps are distracting but because it is a limited interface that is very easy to control.
Some people, like me, feel at home with a customized Unix prompt.
2023.10.13.
2023.08.09.
How I get shit done (or at least get started) while having executive dysfunction
I like these ideas, but especially gathering all information.
Let’s say I need to reply to an email. I start by reading the email I’m supposed to reply to. If there’s any more information I need to be able to answer that email, I go and get that information. I then dump all the information I have into an email draft for easy reference, and write my email from there.
I learned this behavior by keeping a Zettelkasten for writing. It is always easier to start with existing content rather than starting from scratch.
These days I even use journaling as a tool for getting started. If I have no idea what’s the next action on something, I begin to write about it in my notebook. Sooner than later, I figure out something by rambling about the problem in my journal.
2023.04.08.
Twitter Has Stopped Working in NetNewsWire
Looks like Space Karen caught up with NetNewsWire too:
Twitter suspended NetNewsWire today because, according to Twitter, “This App has violated Twitter Rules and policies. As a result, it can no longer be accessed.”
I still have a couple of feeds in Reeder, which are working for now, but I don’t expect them to be around that long.
Honestly, I don’t care about Twitter (or social media in general) anymore. I can do everything I want with this blog regarding publishing my stuff on the web.
I still POSSE my blog posts to Twitter using Micro.blog because some people still follow me there. I may turn that off one day because very few people are coming to this blog from Twitter.