Simon Pitt - OneZero: Years ago websites were made of files; now they are made of dependencies. And later… Perhaps this is the archivist in me, but this process of creating files and flinging them into an unsorted pot and then searching or hoping that the newest one is the one we want gives me the collywobbles. It seems like a rejection of our past work, to just sling all the files into a heap, immediately devaluing them as soon as something newer comes along.

From a “Relocated Items” folder (alias, actually) on my MBP desktop after upgrading… Some of your files had been in a location that is now incompatible with macOS security settings. These files were moved to the Security folder for your review. If there are any files you want to keep, you can move them to a new location, as long as it is different from their location before the upgrade or migration.

It’s amazing, and frustrating, to me when I can’t find some bit of information. It’s not as if I don’t have a place to keep things. Oh, no, it’s definitely not that. I’m well aware that it’s having too many places to keep things that makes it so hard to find stuff. Several times this week I went looking for information about something from more than a couple years ago and couldn’t find it.

I was reminded today1 of twtxt, “a decentralised, minimalist microblogging service for hackers.” It would be neat if more people used it regularly. My feed is at http://tilde.club/~jbaty/twtxt.txt if you’re looking for something to follow. It’s super simple and kind of fun. It was 0xroy’s post that made me think of it. ↩︎

Nadia Eghbal: Similarly, if producing ideas becomes a symbol of work (having to think about stuff all day), rather than leisure (freedom to think about stuff all day), I wonder whether basic behavior will start to become covetable. Instead of signaling how much we’re thinking, maybe we’ll start to signal how much we’re not thinking. Rather than a private coping mechanism or a way to unwind, basic behavior would become a way to display total unawareness of those who toil in the idea mines all day; a blissful unfamiliarity with the social signal factory.

I have a (5th Gen?) ThinkPad just itching to run Linux. I’m a decades-long Mac user also itching to try Linux. This combination meant that I’ve been experimenting with Linux for several months. But it’s over…for now. I’ve found running Linux to be death by 1,000 cuts. Things like… There seem to be 50 ways to remap caps lock to control but for the life of me I can’t get any of them to work consistently.

On August 22nd I wrote I took DEVONthink out of the rotation today. Too much overhead for how I use it (as a glorified file manager). HoudahSpot does a fine job of helping me find things. I’ll miss capture and inboxes, so we’ll see if it takes. It didn’t take. I’ve been using DEVONthink since 2005 and I should have known better. DEVONthink Pro (DTP) is a deep and powerful app that can masquerade as merely a fancy file manager.

Bastian Allgeier: Whenever there’s no package.json I know it’s going to be a good day. Whenever there’s one, Pandora is coming along the way with her fucking box. I’m happy that I get to work with some great developers so that I don’t have to be one myself. I couldn’t handle modern web development. (via Baldur Bjarnason)

Lots of neat notebooks listed and briefly reviewed in New York Magazine. One that sort of rubbed me the wrong way was: I had a hard time with the “I’m a person who carries around a Field Notes notebook”–ness that carrying around a Field Notes notebook signifies, but that’s perhaps my own issue. Yes, perhaps it is.

My iPhone 11 Pro shipped early and I love it. pic.twitter.com/rJsZVfGTbq — Brilliant Ads (@Brilliant_Ads) September 12, 2019 😂 I find the iPhone 11’s camera conglomeration to be rather ugly. Function over form is new for Apple, no? I could get used to it, but sheesh, it’s a shock to the system.

I would prefer seeing fewer aspirational posts/tweets/etc. I’m not terribly interested that you’ve started to read a book, but please do let me know how you liked it when you’re finished. It’s great that you’re planning to work out every day, but why tell me that? Intending to regularly write morning pages before breakfast isn’t actually writing anything, but I can’t wait to hear how it’s helped you after you’ve done it for six months.

For a time, I was using Dave Winer’s blogging tool, Fargo. After support for Fargo faded I followed up with his newer tool, 1999.io and loved that too. Dave’s a busy guy with lots of ideas, and he followed those ideas elsewhere, leaving 1999 behind. Supporting the tools he builds doesn’t seem to be Dave’s favorite pasttime, so 1999 languished. Still, it’s a pretty nifty blogging tool. It’s open, uses nothing but age old web stuff like OPML and RSS, and is relatively easy to install for someone comfy with server stuff.