2023.11.23.

I’m just testing if I can ping another post from MarsEdit using Webmentions.

This is the not-so-poor men’s version of backlinks.

Update: looks like it worked!

Screenshot 2023 11 23 at 09 10 52

Liked “MailMate”

MailMate is an IMAP email client for macOS featuring extensive keyboard control, Markdown integrated email composition, advanced search conditions and drill-down search links[…]

Sometimes, I wonder if I should try to use MailMate instead of Mail.app (at least for some specific tasks). It’s an app made for nerds.

I think it’s even have MacVim integration, and still makes emails available in the filesystem instead of closing them away for Spotlight only.

Related

Adding Safari selection to my “Respond on Decoding” shortcut

  • It is actually occured to me that I can get the current Safari selection in Shortcuts, convert it to Markdown from Rich Text, then Markdown to HTML, then I end up with a blockquote.

    • You need Drafts for the Markdown to HTML action.

  • Since all my respond type posts are created using one shortcut which decorates them with microformats, this makes me able to select text, and append it to the post.

  • On the long run, this will give me context on why I saved something to my bookmarks.

  • Here’s a demo video in action.

2023.11.22.

Interesting blogs

  • I think I’m going to start a new post series called interesting blogs.

  • I just want to save sites that I find on the web into a nice journal format.

  • It doesn’t necessary mean that I’ll subscribe to them using RSS, but can be a cool new tag in my bookmarks.

Read “I love email”

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.

I like email as well.

2023.11.21.

Bookmarked “Use plaintext email”

There are two main types of emails on the internet: plaintext and HTML. Many people, particularly in technical communities, strongly prefer or even require the use of plain text email from participants. However, your mail client may not have it set up by default. We’ll help you get it configured, and introduce you to the norms and conventions of plain text email.

2023.11.20.

Should I publish longer articles as one big post, or break them up into 2-3 pieces?

Advanced outline post format

  • I created a more advanced outline post format for my Bike based posts.

  • New entries will use a new bike-outline Stimulius controller which I originally created for my Zettelkasten, so I can have basic outline capabilities for Markdown lists.

  • It gets the post content and adds toggles to each outline row, so I can open and close them.

  • It also uses block IDs as row links, so each outline row can be linked independently.

    • I don’t use Bike outline IDs, but generate them on-the-fly using checksums instead.

    • This will change as I update the content, but it’s fine.

2023.11.19.

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.

We’re getting this little fella in the weekend.

I’m not sure what happened but I rarely listen to any podcast these days.

Sometimes I pick up an episode of something GTD or productivity-related when I’m doing chores around the house, but I stopped listening to the “6 hours-long episode of a couple of guys talking about Apple” style podcasts (except Mac Power Users).

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.

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.

2023.10.31.

TaskPaper as an interstitial journal

I mentioned that I want to find a use case for TaskPaper, because I adore the app. Turns out™ it’s actually pretty good at being a journal and an outliner app. I created a new file and started logging today’s stuff. This is what it looks like.

Screenshot 2023 10 31 at 16 32 41

It is a mix between a capture tool, a journaling tool, and a temporary task management tool. Basically the digital replica of my Field Notes notebook.

The first Apple event I haven’t watched live in 16 years was today’s one because you know… we were sleeping in Europe.

2023.10.30.

I love Apple Shortcuts, but there is no other important Apple software on the Mac which is buggy as this one.

And don’t get me started on the constant sync conflicts.

  • I don’t really care about the outline display now, because I exported it into Bike.

  • I can collapse, expand, and format it anyway I want.

  • Also, adding new rows/zettels is way easier this way, so I’ll create an export shortcut to Markdown and leave it like that for now.

  • Follow-up on 09:58.

  • Also, what if I migrate my outlining workflow to Bike and generate the outline from that file?

    • It is already an HTML structure and the workflow of linking zettels and inserting them into the outline is easier on my Mac than the iPad, because it has a bigger display.

  • This would mean that the outline can link to the actual file in The Archive locally, which can be replaced with a [[wikilink]] when generating the outline from the Bike HTML.

    • I can even do this using Shortcuts, there is no need for Ruby scripting.

  • Today’s project is to write a script which generates the Zettelkasten Outline page automatically, since I have zettel IDs present with the structure in note slugs.

  • I also want to make everything collapsed under level 3.