Thanks for your post about Daily Notes in Craft, @toddgrotenhuis. I’ve switched to Craft after trying Obsidian, and also being a Dynalist user.
Soul, 2020 - ★★★★★
A beautiful surrealist movie that was pitch perfect. Elements of Mr Holland’s Opus in the story.
Fixing the Big Sur proxy icon delay globally
I had previously bemoaned the fact that the proxy icon is now hidden behind a hover delay in Big Sur.
Listeners of Hemispheric Views will be aware of my love for the macOS proxy icon.
I am overjoyed to learn that macOS-magic-man Brett Terpstra has found a way to have the proxy icon ready for action without delay. Thank you, sir, for fixing what Apple broke.
Look at this wally, repping the @hemisphericviews merch.
Crap. I think I’m getting into Obsidian. Just when I thought I’d settled on Dynalist and DEVONthink.
Donnelly River in the south-west of Western Australia features kangaroos and emus that are not at all fussed with people.
I’ve discovered the ability to install GUI-based apps via Homebrew Casks. Saves mucking around with .dmg files, dragging and dropping to the Applications folder. Still fun to learn new things about computing!
Discovered my internet was slow. After factory restores and firmware updates for all my networking devices, I’m back to full speed. I wonder for how long my network had been non-optimal?
My Version of the MacSparky Status Board
Recently David Sparks has posted a number of blog entries about his status board creation1. This takes the form of a kanban board of significant projects that he manually updates, providing a graphical overview of his work and life.
I’m a big fan of tools based around the lean methodologies, so I was immediately taken by his idea. I’ve done similar things in the past, but David inspired me to build one with a new approach.
HyperPlan is my Preferred Software
Whereas David uses OmniGraffle, I have chosen to use HyperPlan. I have previously written about my love of HyperPlan.
What makes HyperPlan great for the construction of a status board is that it is data-driven and dynamic. David takes time each week to edit and change his status board in what is effectively a graphics application. By using HyperPlan, I can change database entries and the software intelligently reconstructs the status board. I have freedom to change the variables I want to ‘pivot’ the table around.
I can create and save ‘views’ of my data, which allow me to construct a status board that has the three key elements of my life: work, family, and me — and elect to view all or some of these. I can focus only on work by hiding the others, or I can view them all together in one kanban board, but still split by these roles.
The following image shows the card layout of a status board displaying key projects across all three of my areas of responsibility:
Whereas this redacted image shows my work projects, and demonstrates how the fields can be shown on each card:
System-based URLs for Contextual Computing
HyperPlan has the ability to add hyperlinks to each card. This enables me to adopt David Sparks' contextual computing linking. I am able to add links to OmniFocus projects, Hook references, or DEVONThink locations all within the relevant card. A right-click on the card allows me to jump straight to any of these locations.
Fun and Engaging
I appreciate David sharing his thoughts and ideas around the construction of a status board.
In building my own, it has been a reminder of how I can make work fun and engaging. The efficiency and pure project-processing of OmniFocus is great, but it doesn’t do visualisation. This status board is nice to look at, easy to update, and allows me to consider how loaded up my life is at any particular point in time.
I’m going to make this a key part of my personal management approach.
Frenzic
Frenzic: Overtime – Coming Soon to Apple Arcade • The Breakroom
All of us here at the Iconfactory have dreamt of creating a sequel to the original Frenzic, which first debuted on the App Store thirteen years ago. Thanks to Apple Arcade, that dream is about to become a reality.
Has it really been 13 years since Frenzic? I played it constantly on my iPod touch taking the bus to work. Excited to see it returning. I like this new approach from Apple Arcade.
Back to the Future Part II, 1989 - ★★★½
Not as tightly managed as the original but still fun. The Almanac is a classic MacGuffin.
World Autism Awareness Day
Today is World Autism Awareness Day.
Our eldest son, now 9, was diagnosed with autism at age 5. This was young enough for him to benefit from early intervention support which has made a huge difference to his life. It was not, and cannot be, a cure. There is no such thing, nor would I want there to be one. Being on the autism spectrum is part of what makes him, him.
Yet if you suspect your child of having autism, push for an early diagnosis because it unlocks help and support pathways. Most of all, it helps build an understanding of what is going on with your child’s lived experience.
Autism doesn’t go away. My boy continues to face struggles. Likely, these struggles will impact him throughout life. The effects often appear cyclical. We have good weeks and bad. The last few weeks have been tremendously difficult for him. It has been hard for him getting through a school day, without a rift appearing. It’s hard for us as parents to get the loving and supportive parenting right all the time. It’s not easy for anybody. For our son, emotional disregulation is a daily challenge. We have learned to always be on the lookout for triggers. That might be a loud environment, or too many stimulators inputs, or the need for him to make consecutive decisions.
We are sure to get through this current difficult phase, but we have the knowledge that this is a challenge that will always be present for him. Our job as parents is to equip him with the skills and tools necessary to be able to have a good life, whatever the definition of that might be for him.
We keep working at that. Days like Autism Awareness Day help remind us of this important task.
🎙Coming in at less than 7 minutes, a show that’s highly relevant to our situation today. I would go so far as to call it a must-listen. Hemispheric Views 024: The Truth about Big Avocado!
🔗 Link Post: "{macro}Dungeon"
“Up to 4 players take turns drawing cards and making movements through one of four caves in an attempt to outpace their competitors on the way to the treasure room.”
This board game has been designed by my friend Jason Burk. It’s on sale today; grab it while you can!
Hannah Beazley MLA
I am immensely proud of my wife, Hannah Beazley, who has been duly elected as a Member of the Western Australian Legislative Assembly, representing the District of Victoria Park. As the WA Labor Party won the State Election, she is now a member of our State Government.
While the result was known on the evening of the official polling day on 13 March 2021, the WA Electoral Commission cannot formally declare a result until it has done a full count and exhausted all the preferences of those candidates who did not win. This is a complex system so counting the complete set takes some time, at which point the election is declared.
For the District of Victoria Park, that time has come and the result has been officially declared and published.
Victoria Park was previously held by the State’s outgoing Treasurer, Ben Wyatt. Before him, the seat was held by Premier Geoff Gallop. Now, my wife, Hannah Beazley, has the opportunity to represent the people of Victoria Park in the State Parliament.
Hannah has worked for many years towards this goal. She has previously fought and lost elections, but never given up. Now, she is a winner, and it’s fantastic!
Result Summaries
The Archive
The Archive owes its heritage to nvAlt, which owes its heritage to Notational Velocity — a unique piece of software that broke new ground by integrating new note creation with search in an Omnibar. I’m old enough to remember using the original Notational Velocity. The Archive is true to the heritage of the OG, but moves it in a direction specifically suited to the zettelkasten philosophy of note taking.
What’s zettelkasten, you ask? It’s too much for this software review, but in short it’s a note taking methodology that sees the deconstruction of source material broken down into atomic facts/points, expressed in its own words by the note taker, and given a unique reference link such that it can be tied to other items of knowledge held within the corpus of notes.
A key to the zettelkasten, and thus key to The Archive, is the generation of a Note ID. Upon creation of a new note in The Archive it is given a Note ID which is a concatenation of YEAR MONTH DAY HOUR MINUTE. This ensures that every note can be identified as a unique item, because each note will have a different ID.
To tie these notes together, The Archive supports wiki-links, in the form of [[Note ID or Note Title]]. This makes it possible to create a web of notes, where each atomic note can be tied to others: a key requirement of a zettelkasten.
The app is a good Markdown citizen, and it supports the streaming API to Brett Terpstra’s Marked app. It can also be configured to use an external editor, should you have a preferred one. Given The Archive is quick and efficient, and supports typewriter mode, I don’t bother using an external editor.
The Archive allows you to generate and keep saved searches in a sidebar. This could be useful if you want to show all notes tagged with a particular #hashtag. I use it to break down my notes into years - by relying on the first element of the Note ID, which is the year.
A fun element of The Archive is the range of Keyboard Maestro add-ons that have been built for it. My favourites are the ones that search the notes corpus and allow for quick creation of wiki links. Make sure Keyboard Maestro has full disk access to guarantee some of these work, though.
The user community has built a range of alternative themes so the app is customisable to a point. It also supports multiple text corpuses (corpi?) but only one can be loaded at a single time. A corpus simply represents a folder of text files in the standard filing system, which means The Archive can be complementary to other Markdown/text editors. It doesn’t lock you in. While it doesn’t have an iOS app, the ability to work with files stored on a cloud storage platform means it works nicely with unrelated iOS text editors.
The Archive can be used as a replacement for nvAlt if that’s all you need. It feels more stable than that app. Of course, there is nvUltra in development - but that has had a very long gestation period, whereas The Archive is here and now.
I hit the basketball court for the first time in a long time yesterday. My free throw percentage was better than ever, but three point range was a struggle! 😩🏀
Fastmail
My mate Jason is digging into Fastmail, and liking what he sees.
Fastmail. Who Knew? - //Jason Burk:
Recently after a discussion about email on Episode 023 of Hemispheric Views, I dug into the settings and configuration of Fastmail and I was pleasantly surprised by how much more than a simple host they truly are!
I’ve been again trialling Hey for the past week or so, but I still don’t think it matches the combination of Fastmail & Sanebox.