I’ve been trying very hard to adopt the iPad as a tool for Serious Work since at least 2013. I’m not sure why. It probably started when Federico Viticci (@viticci) started writing about switching to using an iPad only. He claimed to love, and actually prefer it, even though his posts were full of ways he’d learned to work around shortcomings in iOS and how everything was “fine”. Still, it sounded fun.

Douglas Martin, The New York Times: “The rotary dial is a step backward technologically, but it prevents a drug dealer from paging a customer or runner,” said Steven Marcus, a Nynex spokesman, who said the change was made as “an absolute last resort,” since the phones cannot take advantage of many new services, like voice mail, that rely on push-button phones. I have to admit, I love stories like this.

There are tricks we use to convince ourselves to buy the newest, most powerful devices. I myself have an entire quiver full of these tricks. I’ve read a number of posts recently in which someone claims that buying the biggest, fastest iPad, iPhone, MacBook, etc. will “future proof” their purchase. I wish I’d have written them all down, but here’s one recent example from Federico Viticci at MacStories: My First 48 Hours with the New 12.

I tend to try each new generation of Kindle from Amazon and that remained true with the newest model, the 7" Oasis. I don’t love the Oasis. Its metallic finish feels cold in hand. And sharp, somehow. I do like the larger 7" screen. It has hardware buttons for turning pages, which is a requirement for me. I don’t have strongly negative feelings about buying from Amazon other than they’ve gotten a little big for their britches.

She cracked a smile, the first I had seen from her since I joined the line. And she happily found me a seat on the next flight. She was being rude. Yes. But that wasn’t the best version of her. Farnam Street

I keep project information in DEVONthink, organized like so… 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Clients |->ClientA |->ClientB |->Project One |->Project Two |->Tasks.taskpaper |->README.md Lately I’ve been adding Labels to indicate status (“In Progress”, “Inactive”) and collecting them into one folder using DEVONthink’s “Smart Groups”. One problem with this is that a project folder named “Website Redesign” doesn’t tell me who the client is when viewed out of context, so I started naming project folders things like “ClientB: Project Two”.

I would like to edit photos on my iPad more often. I’d be interested in using Lightroom CC on iOS and macOS to do it, but I switched from Lightroom Classic CC to Capture One Pro a while ago on the desktop and am very happy with C1. Even if I were still using Lightroom Classic CC, I’m not sure I’d be ready to switch. Lightroom CC continues to improve, though.

I’m having so much fun using Blot.im for blogging at baty.blog that I’ll be posting almost entirely either there or at micro.blog. Yes, I’ve been through this before, and here we are again. I may replace this page with a summary and links to everything else, including this site’s archives

I’m infatuated with TiddlyWiki again. I’ve tried it a few times over the years, but it’s never stuck. One reason was that TiddlyWiki is a single, self-contained html file, and Safari has trouble saving itself to the file system. In order to save the thing I had to basically do a “Save As…” each time. Too much friction there. Another snag has been that it’s kind of weird. Not weird in a bad way, but weird in a ‘what do I do with this thing?

Since setting up my Roon system, I’ve been re-ripping all my CDs to FLAC format. My Apple SuperDrive stopped reliably ejecting CDs so I ordered another one, which developed the same problem. Every 2nd or 3rd disk would fail to eject and I’d have to retry a few times. Finally, Slaughter’s “Stick It To Ya” (don’t judge me) simply refused to come out. When trying to eject the CD, the drive would click a few times and re-mount as if it was hitting something on the way out.

Kicks Condor: Beaker vs TiddlyWiki. ActivityPub against Webmentions. Plain HTML hates them all. I’m reasonably technical, but I am often confused by all the different indieweb components. Seems it’s not just me. Kicks Condor tries to sort things out.

“Holding Dear” begins with Steve Leveen telling the story of how he and his wife Lori started Levenger back in 1987. I’ve been buying stuff from Levenger for many years and Leveen strikes me as sincerely interested in providing “Tools for Serious Readers” The remainder of the book consists of short pieces by various people writing about “real” objects and what they mean to them. Examples: Kevin Kelly - a digital camera David McCullough - his typewriter David Allen - whiteboards Patty Smith - Levenger’s Jefferson Writing Desk The book was a quick, enjoyable read and made me feel a little better about being attached to some of my things.