Happy Birthday Booji!
9 years old today. My, how time flies!
Norwegians FTW
Norwegians are the best. Listeners of Hemispheric Views will already know of the esteem in which I hold fürstenberg; who is essentially Norwegian me. We have many similarities across our respective histories; it’s quite fun!
Now, I’ve got another Norwegian to thank: Erland. I discovered Erland through Mastodon, I think. Although he also has a micro.blog site, so it could have been there. Like myself, Erland also seems to have an interest in notetaking apps, and his favourite is Paper. He wrote a wonderful review of it.
I’ve looked at Paper in the past, but the sheer cost of the app prevented me from trying it. I have so many Markdown notetaking apps, I simply couldn’t justify buying another, no matter how nice it may be.
Now, though, thanks to the kindness of Erland from Norway, I am typing this blog post in Paper, as a way of testing. I’m using the Mac app now, but I also have the iOS version. How? Erland provided me with codes for the apps! This came about as we had a little discussion on Mastodon (still my favourite social network) about our notetaking app preferences. Typewriter mode was one such nicety, and I see that Paper offers that very feature. I have enabled it now, and it is very lovely—especially the slightly delayed scroll on each carriage return.
This blog post is the first thing I’ve written in Paper. I’m about to go back and add links and stuff. I’m using my new MacBook Pro which is lovely, but I haven’t yet installed Brett Terpstra’s SearchLink tool to automate link insertion, so we will see how Paper handles this next process.
The takeaway from this blog post? Firstly, Paper is a new app I’m trying. The main point though? Norwegians are great! I must visit sometime.
Defaults (2024)
It has been more than a year since Episode 097 of my podcast Hemispheric Views, where we held a Duel of the Defaults! competition.
Others have been updating their lists, one year on.
It seems appropriate that I should do the same.
If there is a change from my list last year, I’ve indicated it with a leading ✨.
| Change? | Category | Default | Comment on Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| ✨ | Mail Client | FMail2 & Apple Mail | Back to FMail2 app & no more MailMate |
| Mail Server | Fastmail & Apple Mail | ||
| ✨ | Notes | Obsidian for Work; Apple Notes for Home | Different apps for different contexts |
| To-Do | OmniFocus | ||
| iPhone Photo Shooting | Camera.app | ||
| Photo Management | Photos.app | ||
| Calendar | BusyCal (plus Calendar.app) | ||
| Cloud file storage | iCloud (plus OneDrive) | ||
| RSS | Reeder with FreshRSS | ||
| Contacts | Contacts.app | ||
| ✨ | Browser | Vivaldi (plus Safari) | Vivaldi is great, and Arc has been deprecated by the developer |
| Chat | Signal | ||
| Bookmarks | GoodLinks | ||
| ✨ | Read It Later | GoodLinks | I hardly read later anymore |
| Word Processing | Pages | ||
| Spreadsheets | Numbers (plus Excel) | ||
| Presentations | Keynote | ||
| Shopping Lists | AnyList | ||
| Meal Planning | AnyList | ||
| ✨ | Budgeting & Personal Finance | Actual Budget on PikaPods | YNAB became overpriced |
| News | Apple News (plus ABC RSS feed) | ||
| Music | Apple Music (plus Spotify) | I have access to a Spotify account for variety, now | |
| ✨ | Podcasts | PocketCasts | I left Overcast after the disastrous rewrite |
Six changes out of 23 categories. 26% of the apps have been changed. Yikes.
I’ve re-established the Pi-Hole on the home network. Ads be gone.
My crappy Dell monitor has died. Long live the crappy Lenovo monitor that shall replace it!
I’ve turned on cross-posting from my micro.blog account to my bluesky one. Not sure I’ll keep it, but may as well give it a try.
Notetaking app update: my experiment with Notebooks.app is over and I’m back to DevonThink, and for work, I’ve bought a month’s subscription to Obsidian Sync and will likely get it for a year.
Commiserations USA.
Inside Out 2, 2024 - ★★★½
A good rendering of anxiety, especially towards the end. Overall, though, this movie didn’t do it for me like the first.
Over 15,000 steps recorded by my Apple Watch before 2pm today. Well over my normal pace. That’s what gardening and packing a house ready to move will do for you.
Lonely Planet, 2024 - ★
I watched this 48 hours ago and have already forgotten it. Did not enjoy; it felt like a throwaway Hallmark movie.
🔗 Scripting News: Monday, October 7, 2024
interviews with star athletes saying the same predictable bullshit after being asked how it felt to do whatever heroic thing they just did. All of TV and news is like that, none of it is news, all of it is predictable bullshit.
News is no longer news, it’s just another form of disposable content.
It’s weird to think that globally there are millions of businesses using Teams. This is the best that the giant Microsoft can build? Is all of corporate society playing a game of “The Emperor Has No Clothes”? Teams is shit software and we all deserve better.
I borrowed a book using Libby from my local library. On comparing it with the Kindle sample of another book with the same name, it’s some kind of scammy AI-rewritten scam book. Fascinating. I think I will just buy the legitimate one.
At work I get barraged with email. I want to be able to compose an email without seeing my inbox. It’s an Outlook on PC situation. Let me guess, this is a whacky idea for normies and thus there is no way to achieve it. Am I correct?
As I recover from pneumonia, I cough, then hear my lungs crackle and pop as the airways pop open. It’s weird but kind of enticing. Like having a built-in bowl of rice bubbles.
Finished reading: The Barefoot Investor by Scott Pape 📚As a long-term envelope (YNAB/Actual Budget) disciple, I found some of this too non-specific. Although it has some good thoughts on longer-term financial planning.
It’s a couch, wine and music night.
Finished reading: Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami 📚 A slow-moving story that kept me engaged, but I’m not sure what I come away with at the end.