Blot Gets It Right
I spent way too much time over the weekend trying to finagle my WordPress blog to work the way I want it to and I’m still not satisfied.
Blot, on the other hand, nails 99% of what I want right out of the box. Plus, my Blot subscription just auto-renewed for another year. Hmmm.
Blot’s Dropbox-based workflow is smooth like butter. Blot works the way I think. This reduces a lot of friction.
My one concern is the dependency upon Dropbox. We all know how depending on a third party API can go. Apparently, Blot can now publish based on a Git repo, which may alleviate that concern for me.
I post to WordPress because it’s easy and works with things like MarsEdit. I post to my Hugo blog because it’s all just Markdown files and a static site.
Blot splits the difference. I need to decide if the compromises are worth giving up the ease of WordPress to have a text-based publishing system that’s easier than Hugo for things like links, photos, and short posts.
Blot.im for another year
My annual Blot subscription auto-renewed over the weekend. I haven’t been using Blot recently, but I may, as I do, change my mind later so it’s worth the $20 on a just-in-case.
Setting up a new Mac
Whenever I get a new Mac, I start with a clean install and re-build and re-install everything from scratch. This is decidedly not the easiest path but it’s one that helps me think about what I need and also avoid the cruft accumulated from a year or two of use.
Here is the list of apps I install when setting up a new Mac. The latest of these was in August 2017 when the drive on my iMac died.
- Install Dropbox
- Install 1Password
- Install Alfred
- Install TextExpander
- Install Arq Backup
- Install Chronosync
- Install Tinderbox
- Install BBEdit
- Install Curio
- Install The Brain
- Install Plex
- Install iTerm2
- Install Setapp
- Install Ulysses
- Install Renamer
- Install Squash
- Install Sip
- Install CleanMyMac
- Install Gemini
- Install Marked
- Install iStat Menus
- Install Day One
- Install Slack
- Install DEVONthink
- Install Things
- Install Transmit
- Install Keyboard Maestro
- Install Affinity Photo
- Install VueScan
- Install MacTeX
- Install Xcode
- Install Monosnap
- Install Droplr
- Install ScanSnap Manager
- Install Private Internet Access
- Install Reeder
- Install Homebrew
That’s about it. It’s always a longer list than I think it’s going to be. Then I end up spending a day tweaking preferences and things like…
- Make sure all the right dotfiles are symlinked to where I keep them in Dropbox.
- Configure and make sure my backups are in order.
After this most recent re-install I swore that next time I’ll just use a Time Machine backup. Then again, I say that every time.
A Drastic Keyboard Change
Extended Keyboard II vs Magic Keyboard
I have always been a keyboard guy. For as long as I can remember, I’ve used big, clicky, important keyboards. The way a keyboard feels and sounds has always been, well, key to my typing enjoyment.
Then along comes the iPad and its Smart Keyboard. Now that I’m spending a great deal of time typing on the little Smart Keyboard, I’m finding that switching between that and my dear old Apple Extended Keyboard II on the desktop is a bit of a shock.
So, continuing my recent trend of making my desktop and mobile experiences as similar as possible, I’ve put a little Apple Magic Keyboard on my desks and retired the big Extended Keyboards. This is a dramatic change for me, but it has brought a few improvements.
- I now have way more room on my desks. Just look at the size difference in the above photo.
- It frees up a USB port (I charge it using an existing Lightning cable)
- It feels similar to the Smart Keyboard, reducing the shock of switching from mobile to desktop
- I can finally remap Caps Lock to Control. (The Extended Keyboard’s Caps Lock key physically “locks” when pressed.)
The down side is that I’m not sure I’ll ever be as good at typing on this little thing. Also, I’m not used to having no numeric keypad or Home keys, etc. I could get the larger Magic Keyboard with the extra keys but I’m trying to learn to live without them. Plus, how will my coworkers know I’m working if they can’t hear the loud clackity-clack of my keyboard? I’m quite sure they won’t miss it, to be honest.
It’s been a week since switching to the smaller keyboard, and I’m dealing with it, if not yet loving it. Eventually I hope I can learn to enjoy living like this and that the benefits outweigh the feeling that I’m giving up an important part of how I interact with these machines.
The Joy of Not Sharing
Gail and I - Manistee (2017)
I love sharing my photos. I joined Flickr in 2004 and after that just about every other service imaginable, with Instagram being (reluctantly) the latest.
Box O Prints
But recently I’m finding a sort of joy in not sharing photos. Specifically, I’ve noticed that I haven’t bothered scanning or posting any of my recent Polaroid or Instax images. They’re instant, analog, and each one is a precious artifact.
I haven’t been deliberately not posting them anywhere, but now that I’ve noticed it I like the idea. It’s surprisingly difficult keeping things to oneself these days, so having this private box of memories feels good.
Contact Sheets as Art
One of the great things about medium format film is that when you make contact sheets you automatically get displayable artwork. I make two prints of each, one for the binder and one for the wall.
Kindle 1st Edition
It was a bright, defrosted, pussy-willow day at the onset of spring, and the newlyweds were driving cross-country in a large roast turkey.
When my long-preordered first-generation Kindle finally arrived in 2007, it seemed like magic. One of the first books I bought for it was ”Skinny Legs and All”, which was my first Tom Robbins novel.
That first Kindle was weird and funky and not for everyone. Much like Tom Robbin’s novels, in a way, but I loved them both.
I’ve upgraded to the latest Kindle several times since that goofy original edition. The newest, “Oasis”, is a great reading device. I’ve already read and enjoyed every Tom Robbins novel. None though, neither Kindles nor Robbins, were quite as delightful and surprising as the first.
Culling Apps Because of the iPad
The more I use my iPad for “work” the more I like it. This is unexpected, and the trend does not seem to be slowing. In other words, maybe it’s not just novelty.
This means that in order to work easily in both desktop and mobile environments, I must rely on apps that work well in both. Taking that further, it means that I want to use the same app everywhere. My love for plain text files remains. It’s great being able to edit my files using any number of Dropbox-compatible apps, but using one app to edit Markdown on the Mac and a different one on iOS is beginning to feel like overhead I don’t need.
The drawback here, and it’s a big one, is that I may need to abandon some of my favorite things. At least the ones I live in, now that I live in different places. A few examples:
Tinderbox. God, I love Tinderbox, but there’s really no easy way to take advantage of it on iOS.
Curio. Curio is a wonder. There’s nothing like laying text, images, files, notes and what-have-you out on Curio’s big, beautiful canvas. But, no iPad version. I could export things as PDF or images so I can access them on the iPad, but that’s not what I’m looking for. I want to continue to work on the iPad, not just look stuff up.
Emacs/Org Mode. Ah, Org Mode. Org Mode does everything one would ever need. Tasks, project management, writing, publishing, outlining, and so on. But, with no good way to use Org Mode on iOS, it’s a non-starter. Plain-text as it is, it’s useless outside of Emacs.
So where does this leave me, app-wise? I have a lot to learn, but for the things I do most, here is what I’m using:
Ulysses for any writing. I can blog with it, take notes, write and publish documentation, you name it. It’s really good at what it does. I still need to get over the “but it’s in a proprietary database!” problem and run with it.
Day One. All journaling and “life logging” is going in Day One. I’ll miss my Tinderbox Daybook and Org Journal but Day One is great, seamlessly cross-platform, and meant for exactly these things.
Things The new version of Things works great. When not in my text-only mood and using Taskwarrior or Org Mode, I’ve always used OmniFocus, but I’m giving Things a try. So far it feels nice and strikes a good balance between complexity and ease of use.
There are a number of things still up in the air. Photo management is the big one. I’ve repeatedly tried using Photos and it’s never stuck. I’m addicted to a well-organized system of date-based folders for my images and it’s going to be tough getting over that. On the other hand, the seamless sharing and editing of photos using iCloud Photos is pretty compelling. I’m about to try an all-in experiment to see how it goes. The updates in High Sierra look good, too.
I’m just now digging into Workflow, which opens up a bunch of possibilities. I’m coming around to the possibility of not only making the iPad a part of my process, but making it my primary device, which is a complete reversal from my feelings about it less than a year ago.
Lots of new tricks for this old dog to learn.