Mylio as a photo organizer
I received a nice email today from someone who’d seen my recent post about Lightroom CC and recommended Mylio for managing my photo library.
I’d never heard of Mylio, but their approach looks interesting.
Mylio is not a cloud service, so it doesn’t rely on the internet to sync or view your files. Your memories are available directly on your device anywhere, anytime
and also…
Sync thousands of files to your devices using a fraction of the space. You can then free up space on your device without losing access to your files.
If you’ve used Mylio, I’d like to hear about your experience with it.
Living with only Emacs and a browser
I was thinking earlier about trying to get by with only Emacs and a browser.
How much of my general daily computer work1 could be done primarily with those two apps? Not enough, but it’s a fun thought experiment that may turn into a real experiment.
After a quick pass through my Applications folder, here are the apps I (currently) consider must haves…
- Emacs
- Firefox
- Messages (Apple)
- 1Password (but 1Password X might not count as a separate app)
- Preview (I’m constantly dealing with PDFs and haven’t gotten comfortable doing that with Emacs yet)
- TextExpander (I could go without it, but I don’t want to)
- iTerm (because command-line apps don’t count as “Apps” so I cheat with this)
- Finder (I’m not sure this counts as an App, though)
- Keybase
So what does this long list-that-contains-way-more-than-just-emacs-and-a-browser mean I leave behind?
- DEVONthink
- Tinderbox
- TheBrain
- Bear
- Apple Notes
- MarsEdit
- BBEdit
- iA Writer
- Calendar
- Day One
- MacVim
- MailMate
I may try it for a few days and see what happens.
I’m not including photo or video editing↩︎
Struggling with Lightroom CC
I’ve been trying to use Lightroom CC exclusively for managing and editing photos. The intention was to go all-in for a while and determine if I could live there.
I don’t think I can.
This is me just thinking out loud after a few weeks of giving Lightroom a fair shake.
Overall, Lightroom CC is fine. It’s missing some “power user” features from things like Lightroom Classic or Capture One Pro, but it’s easy to use, fairly powerful, and “nice”. I love being able to view and edit photos on any device at any time. That alone is what lead me to try this experiment. I like that it’s pared down and simple. I like that it now has Faces and “Sensei” for searches. The cloud has some magic features, certainly.
But the magic of the cloud is also the dealbreaker. I just can’t get past the thought of having all my photos managed and hosted by Adobe…basically forever. I don’t like that I can’t even look at my photos without using Lightroom. I don’t like that I can’t manage file names. I don’t like that there’s still no “trash” and if I were to fumble-finger a deletion I could lose photos permanently.
It feels unsafe for me to trust my library to Adobe’s cloud. I’ve got nothing against Adobe, and their software subscription plans are fair and a good value. Storage plans, on the other hand, could get steep, and that’s only going to get worse as my library grows.
I’m learning (or possibly confirming) that I’m lost without a “Reveal in Finder” option. I don’t like not having control over the underlying files.
This experiment may be drawing to a close. I may have to crawl back and beg Capture One Pro to take me back.
Said I’d like to know where, you got the Notion
I keep reading that people love Notion.so, and I don’t mean to rock the boat, but I don’t get it. I tried kicking it around a few times and almost nothing about it clicks for me. Notion strikes me as one of those things that tries to do everything but ends up doing nothing well.
I can’t imagine using it with a team and them being able to keep track of what’s used for what and why. I couldn’t even get a team to manage a few todo lists in Asana.
If enough people keep raving, I’m sure I’ll give Notion another go. But for now, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Backlinks in TiddlyWiki
A nice feature of wikis is backlinks. A good wiki will keep track of which pages link back to a given page. TiddlyWiki does this, but does not display them by default. I set out to add them and it was way more difficult than I expected. I’m new to TiddlyWiki but, after a lot of trial and error, I figured it out.
I took notes on the wiki, naturally. Adding Backlinks to TiddlyWiki
Displaying Webmentions on a blot.im blog - Amit Gawande
Amit Gawande has posted some nice instructions on how to include Webmentions on your Blot.im-based blog.
Running Tiddlywiki on a server
I’m still tinkering with Tiddlywiki because I’m convinced there’s something to it. Version 5.1.18 was released recently and included improvements to the web server features.
The thing I’ve been waiting for is the ability to run the node version as read-only for anonymous users but editable by authenticated users. This worked great while testing on my local machine, but I had trouble when running it out on a server, proxied via nginx.
The problem was that even after I authenticated, the wiki was still in read-only mode. I think what may be happening is that the nginx proxy isn’t forwarding the proper headers and so Tiddlywiki doesn’t know that I’m logged in.
Another issue was that the node process would die after a handful of requests. I’d see a “Killed” message in the terminal and the app would stop responding.
So for now I’m still doing it the old-fashioned way. I’m editing locally and rsync-ing the results to the server. I created a little Makefile to make it easier.
PUBLIC_DIR=output/
SERVER_HOST=static.baty.net
SERVER_DIR=/home/jbaty/apps/wiki
TARGET=lightsail
deploy: build
@echo "\033[0;32mDeploying updates to $(TARGET)...\033[0m"
rsync -v -rz --checksum --delete --no-perms ~/Dropbox/wiki/batywiki/output/index.html $(SERVER_HOST):$(SERVER_DIR)
build: clean
@echo "\033[0;32mBuilding site...\033[0m"
tiddlywiki ./ --build index
commit:
git add -A
git commit -m "Build site `date`"
push:
git push origin master
clean:
rm -rf $(PUBLIC_DIR)
.FORCE:A quick tour of my Tinderbox Daybook
I’ve been keeping a “Daybook” using Tinderbox since at least 2008. My Daybook is basically a collection of outlines and notes. Here’s a quick overview.
The main sections are:
- Daybook - This is a daily log/journal, organized by month
- Meal Log - I log what I eat, when, the type of meal, and a quality score
- Media Log - I record books read and movies watched
- Weight log - Most days I enter my weight.
At the end of each month I export the Daybook outline for the month as Markdown, which I also then convert to PDF and print. From there it gets punched and put into a 3-ring binder.
Tinderbox outline
There’s a simple dashboard “Map” view showing aggregate metrics.
Tinderbox Dashboard
Tinderbox lets me add any metadata I want to notes. For example, the Media Log contains the following:
- StartDate - When I started a book or watched a film
- EndDate - When I finished a book or film
- Rating - I rate things on a scale with 1 (I didn’t care for it), 2 (It was fine), and 3 (I enjoyed it)
- Media Type - Currently this is either Book or Movie. I thought would include Podcast and TV but have not done that
- URL - Usually a link to Goodreads or Letterboxd
- Authors - Book author
- BookTitle - Full title of the book
- PublicationYear - Year of release
- ISBN - for books
- Genre - Fiction or Non-fiction
Tinderbox Media Log
Outline titles can show not only the note’s title, but any other metadata as well.
Outline metadata
Outline metadata
The thing about all this is that with minimal input, I can get all sorts of interesting output and insights. I’ve tried other ways of keeping a Daybook like this but nothing has come close to the utility and flexibility of Tinderbox.
My first ride on the Peloton bike
Once my house sold, I promised myself a Peloton bike.
Peloton Cycle
The bike arrived yesterday and I took my first “class” this morning. The class was a pre-recorded, 30-minute “Advanced Beginner” workout. It reinforced that I am in terrible physical condition, but it was also kind of fun.
The instructor was engaging and supportive, which is good because the group fitness aspect is the Peloton’s biggest selling point. There are more than a dozen “live” group classes available every day, along with nearly 5,000 on-demand classes. I have a feeling Leaderboard feature is going to be important. I finished in the top third of people who did the same workout, and found myself watching my ranking closely during the ride.
For the books, here’s a summary of my first workout.