Okay, this is smart. Using a Discourse forum as a blog of sorts. Keeping topics tied together. This eliminates the stupid date-based approach of a blog, without the hassle of a wiki.
Back to Dropbox with Blot
About 18 months ago I transitioned the publishing of this site to use Git. It was cool, but overly cumbersome for my needs.
I avoided posting here because of the overhead that Git created with respect to the publishing process.
At the same time, I didn’t want to install Dropbox on my computers because of its massive overhead, and I don’t use Dropbox for anything else.
I’ve got a solution now though. I can write in any app. On my Mac I can use Commander One (part of Setapp) to remotely connect to Dropbox without the client. On iOS I can install the Dropbox app, but alternatively I can use an action in Drafts, like I’m doing here, to write and publish in a single step.
2020 Retrospective
What are the rules about linking to my own post on another website I own?
Andrew Canion - 2020 Retrospective:
For me, the narrative that 2020 was a complete write-off is not fair. A lot happened in 2020 and much of it has been positive and transformational.
2020 Retrospective
The general world-view of 2020 is that it was shit. In many ways, I agree. However, living in Perth, Western Australia in 2020 had to have been one to the best outcomes. We have been largely unaffected by COVID-19 in terms of community transmission. We had a period of lockdown as a precautionary measure. However, thanks to a combination of geographic isolation, good government and civil obedience we have been able to continue a relatively good standard of life.
The year still seems to have passed by strangely though, without the typical beats that I might expect to see in a year. My mind was foggy about what actually happened in 2020.
I’ve taken the time to reflect on my diary notes and calendar to see what did happen in 2020. I’ve excluded the every-day work stuff, and the typical parenting, kid management things that are a standard part of my existence.
For me, the narrative that 2020 was a complete write-off is not fair. A lot happened in 2020 and much of it has been positive and transformational. The biggest personal change has been the development of me as a ‘podcaster’. I’ve listened to podcasts since around 2005 when Adam Curry hosted his Daily Source Code. To now be producing my own podcast content — a mere 15 years later — has been a blast.
I’m also proud to have established a weekly video call with my friends. I’m proud that I started it, but more proud of my mates for sticking with it. Every week, from March until now, we’ve caught up for a chat. It has strengthened our bonds and been a real highlight of a year that in many other ways has been highlighted with themes of isolation.
So, the following list represents my year in summary.
January
- Our Standard Poodle, Jeff, died.
- Holidays at a hotel and a caravan park.
- My last interstate airline travel for a work conference in Sydney.
February
- Outdoor cinema to see Jumanji: The Next Level.
- Outdoor evening event at Perth Zoo.
- Day at a public swimming pool and water slides.
March
- The arrival of COVID in a serious way.
- Bought my first podcasting gear.
- Started my own podcast, Keep Practising.
- Started a weekly COVID video call catch-up with my friends. This continued weekly for the rest of the year.
April
- Cancelled our planned trip to the USA.
- Took a bush walk in the hills of Perth.
May
- Recorded a podcast with Martin Feld and Lounge Ruminator.
June
- Attended a BBQ with friends. This wouldn’t normally rate a mention, but in 2020 that was something!
July
- Transitioned to a new employer, but doing the same work.
- Watched every game of The Basketball Tournament.
- Daily podcasts on NBL Pocket Podcast regarding TBT tournament.
- This kicked off my regular role on NBL Pocket Podcast for the rest of the year.
- Built a new friendship with the Trotter family.
- Visited my friend Craig in Bridgetown.
August
- Started taking Benji to my local coffee shop on a regular basis.
- Committed to regular strength training.
September
- Launched Hemispheric Views podcast.
October
- Vacation in Broome.
- Committed to a renovation of our backyard, including construction of a swimming pool.
November
- My wife Hannah was confirmed as an endorsed candidate in the upcoming Western Australian State Election.
December
- Death of my Dad, Gary Yates Canion.
2021 is go. No expectation that it will be a salve for 2020 but still taking the optimistic approach.
Dynalist as a Tool for Daily Notes
I’ve been consciously taking more and better daily notes. Part of this is to build a greater awareness of what I do and how I spend my time. Part of it is to be able to capture and later resurface information.
I’ve tried a number of various solutions to this. I experimented with Bullet Journaling (with a pen and journal) and using the Cortext Podcast’s Theme Journal. However, paper creates too much friction considering that I am usually in front of a screen of some sort and I want digital information in any case. I’ve used a range of software, from GoodNotes with an iPad Pencil, DEVONthink with a script to create a daily note everyday, The Archive, Obsidian, and I even trialled Roam Research for a time.
DEVONthink got the closest in terms of being accessible and leveraging its AI to highlight related notes (a feature that has no peer, to be honest). Yet DEVONthink’s text editing is anaemic. No niceties for drafting in Markdown as is my preference. No outlining, which I enjoy and find productive.
I needed a better solution.
Everything’s an Outline
It occurred to me that everything is an outline. Mind map? It’s an outline. Kanban board? It’s an outline. Chapters and paragraph styles? It’s an outline. Diaries and daily notes? It’s an outline.
So if everything at its essence is an outline, why not use an outliner? So here I am, using Dynalist as my everything capture tool. I decided on Dynalist after a short play with Workflowy. Workflowy is simple but has none of the features I wanted such as Markdown, linking etc. It is too basic for my wants.
Roam Daily Note
The great feature of Roam - as well as being an outliner - is that it automatically creates a ‘Daily Note’. This seemingly simple feature reduces the friction of having to create a document, or find a place to put text. Put it in the daily note, at least as a starting point.
This is why I created a script in DEVONthink to create a daily note text file at the beginning of each day.
I wanted to ensure that my Dynalist setup could also have a daily note, but it doesn’t come with this feature.
Steve Zeoli’s Daily Note
This is where I give thanks to Steve Zeoli at Welcome to Sherwood. He drew my attention to a simple Windows app that can create a list of dates that cover an entire year.1
I use the date file created from this application to pre-populate a year’s worth of nested bullets for my Daily Note outline.
Dynalist Day List
The great thing about Dynalist is that I can ‘zoom in’ (hoist, in old-school outliner lingo) any bullet such that it becomes the header for the page. So I can zoom into a week, or even a single day, and make notes nested under that particular header.
Dynalist supports backlinks and internal Wiki linking, so typing [[ will bring up an active searching letting me link one part of the notebook to another.
It also support dates by starting with an !. I sync these dates to a Google Calendar, which I subscribe to via Fastmail where all my calendars live, to give me another view into my dated tasks from other calendar-based applications such as BusyCal and OmniFocus.
Search and Discovery
I am still in the process of optimising my search settings, but I’ve devised a couple that seem to work well. Searches can be saved as a bookmark within Dynalist and they run when click on in the sidebar.
- ‘Open Checkboxes’ will show my any checkboxes in my outliner that are not checked off:
has:checkbox -is:completed - ‘Within 1 Month’ shows me any entries with date elements that are within one month ahead of now:
within:1m
Exporting Markdown
I’ve drafted this blog entry in Dynalist (with a couple of detours into Drafts to make use of Brett Terpra’s SearchLink service to create Markdown links). The lack of macOS Services support is one big downer with Dynalist.
The intent now is to export it as a Markdown file and publish it to the world.
Unfortunately, getting nice Markdown out of Dynalist wasn’t perfect. Exporting as plain text with dashes for indentation was the best I could do. This didn’t establish H1, H2 headings and nor did it ensure my graphic was exported. Each paragraph was adorned with a bullet, which doesn’t make sense for long-form writing, either.
It would appear others feel this pain too, as there are a number of threads about it on the Dynalist forum; with this one summing it up best.
So export to markdown is an area that needs some work. Perhaps it isn’t optimal for writing pure blog posts, leaving a place for iA Writer in my arsenal.
I did figure a way to do this on macOS as well, but I can’t remember how I did it! I should have taken a note!↩︎
For any micro.bloggers that play games - even rarely and recreationally like me - there is a Discord server you might like. I think this invite link dies in 1 day, but the channel is Micro.Blog Game Days. discord.gg/7agXe9fG
In the last few days I’ve been more successful writing daily notes with Dynalist than I have been with any number of previous software options. I think outliners are simply my jam.
Started playing Animal Crossing. It’s a game of nothing that somehow consumes your time like a ravenous time phantom.
I need to tidy my study. Make things more accessible, particularly my dSLR which has languished. It used to be a core hobby, now I never touch it. Actually, the whole idea of photography sort of seems like work. The rise of camera phones has devalued photography as its own thing.
I don’t have the energy to truly investigate Obsidian. It’s software that is raved about, but I can’t muster the care to try it. Between The Archive, DEVONthink, Dynalist, etc. I already have too many places to take notes. Even if Obsidian could be the one I can’t find the drive.
Thanks to @joshsullivan, @jack, @twelvety who maintain wikis that I enjoy visiting and reading. Consider me your wiki-lurker. Merry Christmas!
More Evidence Against Trickle-Down Economic Theory
Keeping tax low for rich does not boost economy:
From the Department of the Blinding Obvious, which has been consistently challenged by the Department of Vested Interests, comes a new paper demonstrating that Trickle-Down Economics… wait for it… doesn’t work!
Major reforms reducing taxes on the rich lead to higher income inequality but do not have any significant effect on economic growth or unemployment, according to new research by LSE and King’s College London.Researchers say governments seeking to restore public finances following the COVID-19 crisis should therefore not be concerned about the economic consequences of higher taxes on the rich.
The foundation of an effective and fair progressive tax system is one upon which successful nation’s can build. Trickle-down economics can be expressed another way as ‘hollow-out economics’.
Via: Kottke.org: 50 Years of Trickle-Down Economics Didn’t Work
I’m impressed with Apple Fitness+. The quality of the entire thing - presenters, set design, technology stack. All brilliant.
Waking up a sleeping M1 MacBook Air really is fast. Now I understand what Craig Federighi was talking about. Open the lid - bam, ready to go. Guess what, @Burk - my Intel iMac really is trash now.
Co-host of @HemisphericViews @martinfeld has taken the Milo discussion from our latest podcast episode to a new level. He has released Flavours of Feld, a video demonstrating correct Milo technique. Watch the video, subscribe to the podcast!
I’ve got a problem where calendars shared from Fastmail via .ics link to Google Calendar aren’t showing any events in Google. Is Fastmail providing a malformed URL or is GooCal borked?