Joan Westenberg, in The Cult of Hard Mode: Why Simplicity Offends Tech Elites: …hard mode is where status lives. This is exactly what I’ve been thinking about lately. It hurts to hear it out loud. Read the article, but here are a few quotes that reminded me how far down the complexity rabbit holes I’ve traveled. And under it all is the same impulse: make it harder than it needs to be, so I can feel smarter than I am. ...
When a simple app “cleanup” on my Mac Mini went way WAY too far.
At $10/month, SetApp is a good deal, especially if you use more than a handful of the included Apps. I’ve been a subscriber since early on. I have two Macs, so the subscription is $15/month. Still a good deal, but I did the math and realized that I could purchase most of the apps I use outright for less than a 1-year SetApp subscription for a single Mac. This wasn’t always the case. For a while there, I had a couple dozen apps installed. My goal this past year has been to whittle that down to the essentials. Here’s what I ended up with as of this morning. ...
Folder Preview is a quick look extension for previewing the contents of folders on macOS. It’s $1.99 and worth every penny. (via Andrew Canion)
I’ve gone back to using Espanso for text expansion. As powerful as Keyboard Maestro is, every time I reach for it I feel like I’ve already lost a battle somewhere. Text expansion macros are about all I use KM for these days, so it’s not much of a disruption. I bookmark Espanso’s config folder in Emacs so I can jump right in any time. The expansion macros (“matches”) are contained in YAML files and can be as simple as: ...
I got big into TiddlyWiki around 2018, when I created my Rudimentary Lathe wiki. For a few years there, I put stuff into it daily. I sometimes drift away to something New/Shiny, but I always end up back in TiddlyWiki. Off the top of my head, here are a few things I like about TiddlyWiki: ...
Some former Nik Software people are building a new tool for managing photo libraries. It’s called Aspect. I’m a sucker for any photo-related software, so I installed the beta and spent yesterday testing it. I took some notes after using it for a day. First impressions were good. I like the ideas behind Aspect. It relies on the underlying file system, so it’s reasonably transparent. It organizes things for me based on dates and events. I can control the structure. I can even change it later, and Aspect will move things around to match. ...
All I want is Letterboxd for books. LibraryThing is the Craigslist of book trackers. Goodreads is icky. TheStoryGraph has a layout I don’t get along with. Bookwrym is decent, but doesn’t feel that great. Plus, I don’t care if my reading list is “federated”. I asked about this on Mastodon, and @johnke responded, suggesting Hardcover, which I’d never heard of. It was a good suggestion. I imported all of my books from TheStoryGraph, which I’d previously imported from Goodreads, and I was off and running. Here’s what it looks like: ...
I had fun today exploring my options for a browser-based workflow.
My SetApp subscription was scheduled to renew today, but I didn’t let it. I figured that if I buy the apps outright that I actually use, I’ll spend around the same amount as I would on a 1-year SetApp license for both Macs. The purchased apps would either come with lifetime licenses or a small annual upgrade fee. This means next year I’ll pay a much smaller amount for all the same software. ...
Today I learned about SilverBullet SilverBullet is a note-taking application optimized for people with a hacker mindset. We all take notes. There’s a million note taking applications out there. Literally. Wouldn’t it be nice to have one where your notes are _more_than plain text files? Where your notes essentially become a database that you can query; that you can build custom knowledge applications on top of? A hackable notebook, if you will? ...
Photo Mechanic is the fastest, most powerful tool for ingesting/browsing/exporting photos. It’s always been a little expensive, but I’ve had a license for many years. Before 2024, I could buy a license and use it until the next version came out. I paid $90 to upgrade Photo Mechanic Plus (the fancy version with catalogs) from version 5 to version 6 in 2020. That was four years ago. It’s not cost me a nickel since then. ...
Recent versions of the new Lightroom (Desktop, not “Classic”) have added features making it feasible for me to use.
I like the way Bear limits my options<
So far today, (as of 9:57 am) I have installed three apps that I had deliberately avoided installing on the new Mac Mini. MailMate because I just quit Hey but still wanted something different to play with. I’ve used MailMate on and off since sometime in 2013 I think. It’s a powerful, flexible, text/Markdown-first email app. TheBrain because I’m still looking for the “Everything” app, and in my experience, TheBrain has been the best at that. If I’d never stopped using it, I’d be able to find every single thing and everything associated with that thing. ...
Software doomsday scenarios take the fun out of everything
I’m just coming off a week using Obsidian. Obsidian is really good and powerful and easy to use and extensible and probably the correct answer to the question, “Where should I keep my notes?”. I love Obsidian for a minute because of what it does and the fact that it’s not whatever I’d been using previously. It’s refreshing and finding new plugins to play with is good fun. But it’s janky. Why don’t more people complain about it being janky? It’s just blech to actually live in. It feels weird and loose and sloppy to me. ...
Using Mutt for email is awesome, but it makes me want to do everything in a terminal
Canceling things brings mixed feelings
I spent some time in Obsidian again yesterday. I do this once a month or so just to see if somehow it’s changed into something I’d like to use. Obsidian is great software, in theory, but I still find it boring and unpleasant to actually use.