Nicotine toothpics created by Wayne DeWitt" Nicotine toothpics created by Wayne DeWitt My good friend Wayne tried to quit smoking for a minute once or twice. He didn’t like gum so he invented cinnamon-flavored nicotine-infused toothpicks. I think this was in 1993. The idea was that having a toothpick soaked in nicotine in your mouth was more like smoking a cigarette than chewing gum or wearing patches and would therefore be more likely to reduce the urge to smoke.

When Google’s Gmail went beta in 2004 I desperately wanted to try it. So much so that I traded an extra camera (A Canon Canonet GIII, no less!) for an invitation. Gmail was doing something different with email and, at the time, the trade was worth it. There haven’t been many true innovations in how we deal with email since then. The plethora of iOS apps claiming to revolutionize email probably count, although I haven’t liked any of them.

I discovered Roam in December, 2019 and thought, “Wow! This is exactly the thing I’ve been looking for” even though it was buggy, less than pretty, and still too new to count on. And yet, the more I dug in, the more I liked it. I remember telling people that “this thing pays dividends on your notes!” I’d finally found the ultimate tool for my Personal Knowledge Management System. (I don’t call it a “Zettelkasten” for two reasons.

Org-roam continues to impress. I use org-roam’s “Daily Notes” feature every day as a frictionless place to put notes that may or may not need to be moved or otherwise dealt with later. It’s the Org-roam version of a similar feature in Roam. One thing about it I didn’t care for was that the Daily Notes .org files were starting to pile up in the root of my ~/org directory.

As you probably know, I struggle with where to keep my notes. For a few months now it’s been a battle between Org-roam and Roam. Org-roam has been in the lead, mostly due to Roam being unstable and (soon to be) expensive. Also, my infatuation with Org mode is on again. Using Emacs takes work on my part. It takes mental energy. I’m nearly always OK with that, because Emacs has Org mode and Org mode beats everything at what it does.

Once again, I am struggling with the decision on where to take notes. I apologize for making you sit through yet another round of this navel-gazing process, but I need to type it out. It helps me think. Let’s, for the moment, ignore journaling 1 and consider only the current contenders for my “Second Brain”, or “Personal Knowledge Management System”, or even “Zettelkasten” if we’re feeling fancy and want to abuse the term a little.

I was a smoker from 1983 until 1996. I loved smoking and I was good at it. I’ll probably start smoking again the minute lung transplants are an outpatient procedure. Me smoking and looking impossibly cool (mid 1980s)" Me smoking and looking impossibly cool (mid 1980s) It’s been so long since I smoked that I barely remember it. I hate to admit that what I do remember about smoking, I remember fondly.

Scanning film negatives with a flatbed scanner is a pain. All scanning software sucks. Every one of them. Fidgeting with negative holders is a joyless, tedious drag. And the whole process is slow. So very slow. I’ve been experimenting with scanning film using a digital camera. I’ve processed a few rolls this way and it’s working quite well. Here’s my setup: a combination of the MK1 Film Carrier and Negative Lab Pro.

Curio is one of the nicest, best-looking, useful, and thoughtful apps I’ve used. George, the developer, is insanely responsive and helpful. I started using Curio in 2006 and never stopped for more than a month or two at a time. Here’s why I sometimes stop using Curio: I think I’ll be going all-in with the iPad (there’s no Curio for iOS) I decide that plain-text only is the way to go What if I switch to Linux?

My unfinished painting of Iron Maidens Eddie" My unfinished painting of Iron Maidens Eddie I started this painting of Iron Maiden’s “Eddie” from their “Killers” album cover in 1981 and have yet to finish it. I’m guessing I never will, but it remains in my closet, just in case. I think I was afraid of painting his hair so I’ve put it off for going on 40 years and counting.

Wonderful, weird, powerful new record from Fiona Apple; and I’m very very happy about it. I resent you for having each other I resent you for being so sure I resent you presenting your life like a fucking propaganda brochure Seriously great. Whenever you want to begin, begin We don’t have to go back to where we’ve been. I saw Apple perform in 2012 and I’d love to go back and do it again.

I’ve finally gone and added TiddlyBlink’s modifications to my TiddlyWiki-based wiki at rudimentarylathe.org. This gives me a little of the automatic backlinking functionality of Roam but in TiddlyWiki This was inspired by Getting started with TiddlyWiki: a beginner’s tutorial. I’m not a complete beginner, but seeing TiddlyBlink’s use mentioned in the context of “getting started” made me feel a little more comfortable trying it. One of the cool things about TiddlyWiki is that content and feature enhancements can be installed by simply dragging and dropping from another wiki, right in the browser.