2024.09.13.

Read “Brett McKay of Art of Manliness says “Just Use Email” – Just Use Email”

Their poor information management skills force them to rely on constant notifications from whatever apps they install and to which they nearly-instantly read or reply, never batch-processing anything in their life.

And they are perfectly fine with it. Oh, they might complain the way some people complain about the weather: “It’s colder than I thought it would be today”, but still not returning home to get a sweater.

And the systems which these types are involved in (jobs, school, groups, clubs) are kowtowing to them more each year. In fact, often those very same systems are run by the same types. It is, to them, unthinkable that anyone would “go rogue” and not have a smartphone lighting up their face 200+ times a day. They see well-managed, calm, distraction-free people (or those trying to be) as cabin-dwelling off-grid and out-of-touch people who are “missing out” on how “easy” life is if you just let everyone and everything ping you with every update.

My all time favorite is the text message about the “email I just sent you”. I know my darling, I keep my shit together.

2024.09.01.

2024.08.28.

2024.08.15.

Read “A love letter to The Archive”

A lot of folks use Obsidian for managing a system like this; I’m here to provide an impassioned and perhaps overzealous argument for my tool of choice, The Archive (macOS). Because what’s life without fighting for what you love?

I was in the habit of trying to find the perfect Zettelkasten app lately, but I’ve come to the conclusion that there is no app like that, so I’ll just keep using what I have, which is The Archive, iA Writer, and my Zettelkasten website.

I am also trying to simplify my “Zettelkasten” setup (Zettelkasten refinements) to be more like a journal rather than a knowledge base, which would require a lot of discipline to maintain. Instead, I want to capture ideas in a stream and see what will emerge.

Bookmarked “kindaVim”

Vim Mode for macOS. The mode you love in your favorite editor, now in your favorite OS.

I want to use something like this, but I don’t like that it is automatically enabled in every text view. Also, a subscription for this?

I remember the QuickCursor app from Hog Bay Software, which lets you select any text by pressing a keyboard shortcut, which would open the text in your favorite editor. Saving the file in the editor would update the text view. Sadly, it is not developed anymore.

These days, I select the text in the text view and use the “New MacVim Buffer With Selection” service. This opens the selected text in MacVim, although I have to paste the text manually back.

2024.07.12.

Read “Quick Tip: Change the Default App That Opens Files in iOS and iPadOS – Loren’s Blog”

Yes, you can change the default app associated to a file on iOS/iPadOS:

Since the new iPads were introduced several weeks ago there has been a lot of talk amongst Apple pundits about what one can and can’t do on an iPad. One of the complaints I encountered was about not being able to set a default app to open certain file types in iPadOS.

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned the same tip for the same complaint. There was no reply, so… 🙃

2024.07.07.

Read “Blogs as Modern Commonplace Books”

I rarely feel an urge to write about things I fully comprehend. More often than not, such regurgitation feels like a chore. I might do it to spread awareness on an issue, but rarely for its own sake.

Instead, I find it more exciting to write about things I don’t yet fully understand, where new information has become available or where I want to clarify my thinking. In other words, to “write so that I know what I think,” or to “write what I need to know.”

2024.07.03.

2024.04.12.

2024.04.07.

Read “What We Give Up”

Whatever regulation that required these kinds of policy-change notification emails greatly failed us. A notification is not enough. If a company changes their policies, individual user data should be made completely inaccessible to that company until that user explicitly agrees to the new policy.

Yes, this should be the default. However, companies would heavily exploit a rule like this, like they abused the cookie consent UIs on the web.

2024.04.01.

2024.03.26.

2024.03.18.

2024.03.16.

Read “Building a Stronger Web Without AI”

If we all build our own places, we can live the dream of the web, now. We can create the web that was always meant to be. By connecting our websites together by—spoiler alert—linking to the people who inspire us, we build a stronger web than a search engine can index, one that won’t be littered with content we can’t control.

Amen!

2024.03.05.

2024.02.28.

2024.02.22.

2024.02.20.

2024.01.13.

2024.01.06.

2024.01.05.

2024.01.01.

Bookmarked “Tofu · Amar Sagoo”

Tofu was designed to help you read text on your Mac.

Text is often very wide, making it hard for your eyes to jump from the end of one line to the beginning of the next. That’s why newspapers have narrow columns: it makes them faster to read. Another problem is that vertical scrolling can be disorienting, as lines of text all look pretty much the same and are hard to track as they move.

Fuck yeah, there is an update to Tofu!

2023.12.30.

2023.12.26.