Seriously if you like this content you should become a member. Members get access to all my book notes and my courses. Back in Issue 053 I reflected on the state of taking notes, and today we’re going to do the same thing. It’s Less about the Software While I still get some email … | Continue reading
Today we talk about the AI hype cycle and how bad AI really is when someone tries to make it fail. Plus, VC’s want you to believe their hype so they make money, that’s why we’re hearing about AI. To read the whole post become a member. Members get all my courses.. | Continue reading
The Climate book by Greta Thunberg, is not a book entirely written by the named author, it’s a collection of essays requested by Thunberg. She shows up with her own writing many times in the books, my copy had her writing on darker pages which actually made them harder to read. T … | Continue reading
As I’ve been moving all my book notes over to my website I’ve needed an easy way to get my transclusions from my notes into plain markdown. While Obsidian shows them, when you copy a note normally you don’t get the text at the other end of a transclusion. This is where Easy Bake … | Continue reading
As we roll on to 2024 I’ve started to think about where I’m spending my time, specifically, how I can use time-tracking to see if I’m spending my time doing the things I want to be doing. I’m not talking about my work hours time-tracking, I sorted that out in 2012 and really don’ … | Continue reading
If you get value out of this newsletter consider supporting it by becoming a member. You can either get my weekly thoughts or all my courses and my weekly thoughts. You could also purchase a course if that fits your needs better. You can get this in your inbox by signing up. The … | Continue reading
On US Turkey day I worked lots at hard to understand high risk projects for work and at the end of the day felt like I had energy to spare. This contrasts with regular weeks when I feel spent. Today we talk about some ideas about what causes burnout…it may not be doing too much. … | Continue reading
As my friend Tom writes, someone has written your blog post. But I don’t write because I’m sharing entirely new things, I mostly write and do videos to help cement my knowledge. Much as Tom suggests. Writing for others is important, but it may be just as important if not more imp … | Continue reading
Since I work across macOS, Linux and iOS I need to use a task manager that supports all of those environments well which is why I’ve been using TickTick for a while. Most of it’s features are supported on every platform, and overall the function of the application is nice, but th … | Continue reading
Matt writes about using an e-ink screen to scribble on as a secondary screen with his iPadPro as the main device. The main issue he’s trying to solve is wanting to scribble on the iPad while it’s also his main screen for writing. I’ve solved this by having my iPad on a VESA arm o … | Continue reading
If you get value out of this newsletter consider supporting it by becoming a member. You can either get my weekly thoughts or all my courses and my weekly thoughts. You could also purchase a course if that fits your needs better. You can get this in your inbox by signing up. What … | Continue reading
The world around us wants us to believe that it’s our fault we feel overworked. If we just watch one more video from the currently hot productivity guru, we’ll be able to tame our task lists. Today we’ll talk about how the system built around us is built to overwork us, and make … | Continue reading
Much like Chris, I’ve been using my iPad more again with the changes in iPadOS 17. My biggest problem was Obsidian being slow for a while, but after some testing Obsidian is no longer slow on my iPad. | Continue reading
Since I’ve moved my control keys to the home row I’ve had an issue where I hold a key too long and accidentally reset all my monitors. That leaves me with a system that is unusable until I head back to settings and reorganize my screens. After some research today, the keyboard co … | Continue reading
Recently I engaged in a short discussion with Chris Lawley on Mastodon about Obsidian feeling really slow on my iPad. In short, I’ve been using my iPad less because Obsidian has been slow. I’ve been unable to scroll on notes and typing is possible, but painful. This doesn’t feel … | Continue reading
I’ve been using Espanso on macOS for a while now, but haven’t had the chance to git into it on Fedora yet because there wasn’t a one click way to install it. Today we’re going to go over the Fedora install instructions from the Espanso site. This was my first time compiling a pie … | Continue reading
If you get value out of this newsletter consider supporting it by becoming a member. You can either get my weekly thoughts or all my courses and my weekly thoughts. You could also purchase a course if that fits your needs better. You can get this in your inbox by signing up. Libr … | Continue reading
Today we’re keeping it short and we’re updating on some of the features that members get access to. We’ll start with an issue that stopping course supporter members from getting access to my courses. I was made aware of a bug in the membership access code yesterday that means you … | Continue reading
Casey Newton talked about how Notion Ai (it’s really LLM and calling it Ai feeds into the hype) will look at your data and let you extract content from it. So far this is the only thing in the current LLM/Ai hype-cycle that I’ve found compelling. I’d love to ask some questions ab … | Continue reading
Manifest V3 is coming to Chrome which means that ad blockers like UBlock Origin and Privacy Badger will stop working or be greatly reduced in functionality. This is good for Google as it continues to try and race blocking technologies with it’s tracker technologies, with V3 it lo … | Continue reading
I’ve made no secret that I’m a Vim user. I use it as my IDE and text editor and I’ve loved Vim key-bindings ever since I first figured out what they were. In general, I want to be able to operate my computer without touching the mouse. This is where Vimium C comes in, because […] | Continue reading
From Richard: Some people claim seeing your old notes and annotations when you return to a favourite book enhances the experience. I beg to differ. Whenever I re-read a book on my Kindle, I find myself constantly distracted by my previous highlights. Lovely chap though he undoubt … | Continue reading
From A Working Library: A lot of people have benefited from the association of Luddism with irrational technophobia. But maybe instead of avoiding the specter of Luddism we should reclaim it. Asking good questions about how a technology will impact people isn’t unreasonable and i … | Continue reading
Matt talked about his modifications, which add your control keys to the home row of your keyboard. I’ve been testing this idea out since just before he wrote the post and I do like it, but there is a downside. The big downside is that when I grab my laptop to go work somewhere el … | Continue reading
About once a month I’ll write a blog post and the idea will stick with me for a day or two. The most recent time this happened was with the post We Own Nothing – The Broken Promise of the Information Age, I think that idea has legs to it. I have a personal story […] | Continue reading
I still love my Framework laptop, but for some reason one of the fans has developed a loud buzzing sound. It would seem that I’m not alone and that Framework is sending out replacements. So my support request is in and here’s hoping a new fan is coming my way soon. | Continue reading
Andreeson Horowitz says that Ai companies won’t be profitable if they have to pay the workers for the content they’re currently taking for free. I find it galling that Ai companies think they should get input for free, and then sell the output of our own work back to us. It’s lik … | Continue reading
If you get value out of this newsletter consider supporting it by becoming a member. You can either get my weekly thoughts or all my courses and my weekly thoughts. You could also purchase a course if that fits your needs better. You can get this in your inbox by signing up. The … | Continue reading
The video above is by an excellent creator I follow called Beau Miles and is the story of a very inconvenient adventure to get to record a podcast. I particularly liked the line at the end about how we rarely do things that are inconvenient. But maybe we should. Maybe we should d … | Continue reading
If Books Could Kill just took a look at 48 Laws of Power and came to basically the same conclusion I did back in 2020. The book is mostly about how to be an asshat and not make any meaningful caring relationships. Just extract as much power out of people as you can. You can […] | Continue reading
Today we discuss how the Internet will slowly stop being so “free” and we’ll have to start paying for stuff because ads just don’t work. If you want to read this post become a member.. | Continue reading
I enjoyed this rant about how business focused/corporate the internet has become. Yes, most blog post prompts are all about business/traffic and it seems that more people want to turn everything into their full-time gig. Going down that road leads to chasing SEO, chasing hot topi … | Continue reading
Great post from Cory, as usual. You lost access to the API for your garage door opener because of a Private Equity roll up strategy. We need to start pushing the politicians around us to put out the proverbial rat poison that Doctorow is calling for. The tools are there, we just … | Continue reading
Paris Marx has an excellent look at the fantasy of self-driving cars. I particularly like the idea near the end that the longer we let ourselves be distracted by tech fantasies, the worse off we’ll be. I enjoy technology, but so much of what Venture Capital companies try to push … | Continue reading
Greg joined the trend of showing off your default apps, which I did a few days ago as well. But Greg’s is a bit different in that he uses the default apps for his system, and then apologises for it. There should be no apology from anyone for using what works for you and just […] | Continue reading
Okay his top pick at the end is one I want to try out now. Unfortunately like most ergo boards of this nature it’s over $500 Canadian so I’ll need to budget for it. | Continue reading
While I currently don’t store PDF’s, or really anything but text files, in Obsidian I know that many other users like to have everything in Obsidian. I’m still also not entirely sold on Zotero for my storage needs after leaving DEVONthink behind so let’s look into how Obsidian ha … | Continue reading
From Steph Ango Industrial fruit jam is filled with cheap ingredients and shelf stabilizers. Industrial software is filled with privacy-invasive trackers and proprietary formats.Google, Apple, and Microsoft make industrial software. Like industrial jam, industrial software has it … | Continue reading
I’ve had fairly large change in 2023 in that I no longer use macOS as my primary operating system. Now I’m on Fedora with my Framework 13″ laptop. Some things have thus stayed the same, but some had to change because they don’t exist on Fedora. | Continue reading
If you get value out of this newsletter consider supporting it by becoming a member. You can either get my weekly thoughts or all my courses and my weekly thoughts. You could also purchase a course if that fits your needs better. You can get this in your inbox by signing up. Some … | Continue reading
This is usually a members only post. To get all my notes on reading and research, along with my RAW book notes, become a member I watched the first 3 instalments in the Jason Bourne movies this week and generally enjoyed Matt Damon running around beating people up while he discov … | Continue reading
This is an excellent ergonomic keyboard primer from Dygma. I currently have a Moonlander, which I just realized I have never reviewed. I have no complaints about it, and don’t really need to switch but I have always looked at the offerings from Dygma and wondered what they’d feel … | Continue reading
From Animatronic Pumpkin: Remember in the 90s when we thought we were headed for an amazing Information Age? Instead we find the greatest engine of censorship ever invented. Streaming services disappear movies. Amazon can rewrite the books on your kindle. Best Buy stops selling m … | Continue reading
When you’re working on a single buffer on a widescreen monitor you end up looking far to the left which over the course of the day can result in some neck pain. Previously my solution was to split NeoVim and work on the right buffer via the :vsplit command. But recently I found C … | Continue reading
Finished software is excellent, but I don’t think that most people really want it. What they want is new features to learn, or some new software to try because it’s “better”. They want both of these things because learning new features or trying out new software makes them feel l … | Continue reading
I’m just catching up on the Apple M3 news from last night. Overall, things are faster and you can get more RAM in some models. I see nothing here that makes me want to upgrade from my main machine, a 12th Intel i5 Framework laptop. I see nothing here that makes me feel like I […] | Continue reading
Prompted today by finding Lost Subways of North America and Dark PR I first checked the local library to see if they had the books, which they didn’t. My next stop was the local book store where I pre-ordered Lost Subways but I also asked myself a question. Should I instead reque … | Continue reading
From Vox about Norway’s strong performance in electrification of their vehicles: Eye-popping EV subsidies have flowed largely to the affluent, contributing to the gap between rich and poor in a country proud of its egalitarian social policies. Worse, the EV boom has hobbled Norwe … | Continue reading