Workflow

I wish I’d stop writing about the tools I use to write about the tools I use.

At the beginning of 2024, I had grand plans to Reduce & Simplify. I was also determined to use what I have. I’ve done neither of those things. It’s November. I tried for a while. Or rather, I tried a bunch of different times, which had the effect of making everything less simple. Instead of limiting the number of tools I use, I switched from one to another (in an honest but misguided effort to make things simpler). The result has not been the nice, clean, simple set of tools I had hoped for. Instead of having few dependencies and requiring little maintenance, my stuff is spread everywhere and littered with neediness. ...

I may have solved at least some of my problems caused by taking notes too many different apps. I moved all of them into ~/Documents/Notes, with subfolders per app. So… ├── Denote ├── Howm ├── Obsidian └── SilverBullet You’ll notice SilverBullet in there, my newest infatuation. But here’s the trick, I just point the default target for HoudahSpot searches at the enclosing Notes/ folder, and I can find most anything right away. You’ll note that this means I am restricted to apps that allow me to configure where notes are kept and that they’re kept in some form of plain text. That covers most of my tools. I had been using DEVONthink for this, but it’s been giving me trouble lately so I’m looking at simpler options. I’m digging it. ...

I’m tired of moving things around on my computers

How about I stick QR codes on index cards as a way to quickly find the original reference?

Reducing complexity is never accomplished by adding complexity.

A tactical, localized reset of my system(s)

I used to use Evernote as a junk drawer. Now what should I use?

Derek Sivers posted about how he handles backups and it got me thinking about how I handle backups. I feel like I’m mostly covered. I use Backblaze on my MacBook Pro for continuous, off-site backups of both the internal SSD and the attached “Media” drive containing my photos, videos, etc. I clone “Media” to a separate external drive once a week. iCloud syncs my ~/Documents and ~/Desktop folders, so that should be covered. The headless Mac Mini is also using Backblaze. The Synology is synced nightly to Backblaze B2 storage. ...

I’m just coming off a week using Obsidian. Obsidian is really good and powerful and easy to use and extensible and probably the correct answer to the question, “Where should I keep my notes?”. I love Obsidian for a minute because of what it does and the fact that it’s not whatever I’d been using previously. It’s refreshing and finding new plugins to play with is good fun. But it’s janky. Why don’t more people complain about it being janky? It’s just blech to actually live in. It feels weird and loose and sloppy to me. ...

When is trying to avoid futzing actually just more futzing?

It shouldn’t take so much time to keep my stuff running smoothly.

If forced to come up with a theme for 2024, I’m going with “Reduce & Simplify”. I haven’t formally defined it yet, but the gist of it is to use what I already have, remove things I rarely use, and rely on fewer, simpler things. Having many choices is great, until it’s not. I crossed that threshold a while ago and it’s not good for my brain. So, one app per task. One notebook. One bag. Less software. Consolidate and remove. Those sorts of things. ...

Generating yearly and monthly calendars using Pcal on the command line

I always come back to using TheBrain.

Let’s try the paper-based Emergent Task Planner again

When creating a new project folder (group) in DEVONthink, I often make use of Templates. Templates are just files in a folder somewhere that get copied into the DEVONthink database. For example, I have a project “starter” Tinderbox document named “Basic Project Template.tbx”. When inserting the template file into my DEVONthink project, it uses the same name as the original, which isn’t helpful. DEVONthink is very scriptable, so I wrote an AppleScript to rename the selected document the same as the enclosing group/folder. ...

I woke up from my trance and bailed on my disjointed bricolage of Fastmail->Gmail->Mimestream. Cobbling various pieces together just so I can use a single mail client on my Mac seemed…shortsighted. Mimestream is nice, but not that nice, you know? So I’m back in MailMate and/or Mu4e. Oh, and sometimes Apple Mail. But I’m thinking about switching back to notmuch from Mu4e. Now that I say it, I’m not sure this is any better :). At least I’m not relying on Gmail now, I guess. ...

I don’t get many emails these days. Nor do I send many. And yet, I spend an inordinate amount of time futzing with how I get and sent emails. I’m doing that thing again where I overthink my email process. The only hard requirement I have with email is that it uses my own domain name. Hence, [email protected]. Email is still the key to many things, so allowing someone like Google to control that key is a no-go for me. My wife still uses a Comcast address, can you imagine? I get hives just thinking about it. She gets a lot more email than I do, and never gives any of this a second thought. ¯_(ツ)_/¯. ...

For the few of you who’ve been following along, you’ll have noticed that I’ve changed blogging engines several times recently, even more frequently than my usual pace. The most recent moves happened over just a few weeks. I went from WordPress to Blot to Hugo and back to WordPress. I wrote this about moving away from WordPress only two months ago: Mostly, I switched because I don’t enjoy using WordPress. WordPress is powerful and easy and everywhere, but the editor is unpleasant and everything just feels heavy and overwrought. I also tire of plugins nagging me to “Upgrade to Premium!” all the time. I tell myself I can live with it, but in the end I never can. ...