Jan9
Jesse Grosjean over at HogBay Software put out an update to his fabulous (and free) application, SimpleText, and the change log caught my eye.
The update specifically was to integrate the app (which is the sync system for WriteRoom for iPhone, eventually for TaskPaper for iPhone, and in fact any set of txt files you throw at it) with Notational Velocity, an iconoclastic and intriguing open source note taking data base manager that I tried and dumped a year of so ago because it stored all its data in a central database, obviating my architecture of ‘external to any application’ data files.
So I was trying to figure out how and why would SimpeText work with NV, when it dawned on me to actually go look at the NV application again (duhhh) and I found that in the most recent (Sept 09) release, NV now has the option to not only store data as TXT’s or RTF’s it can also access those files from an any folder, all via a preference option.
The lights clicked on.
SimpleText is a sync tool that reads a folder filled with txt files to a cloud server. There you can edit them in a cool minimalist web page, and from there they are synced to your iPhone. Jesse had just modified SimpleText so it could read and write to a list of txt files created or modified by NV.
So what’ the big deal? People who use NV get kind of religious about the design of the application. It’s an entirely different way to keep notes and manage text; not quite wiki, not quite shovebox. It is designed with the idea that a note once taken can be expanded on rather than recreated. When you create a new note in NV, by writing a new subject for the note, the application brings you to any prior note on the subject with a type along search process. You have to try it to grok it.
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Jul25
Buckminster Fuller had Journals, so do I…
I wrote about the recent revival of interest in Buckminster Fuller stemming in large part from a major show at the Whitney, and about my own small personal discovery about Fuller’s impact on the iconography of our day.
A second, and perhaps more important reflection came as I walked the halls of the Whitney’s fourth floor exhibition space as I spent some time looking at bound volumes of Fuller’s notes.
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Filed In: Art Best Of Productivity Visionaries
Aug31
I’ve posted a complete outline of my File System Based Info Manager. It’s the tool I use to manage all my writing, notes, reference material, bibliographies, and records. It’s based on Alex Payne’s architecture ideas, Noguchi Yukio’s organizational systems, and input from my pals over on the Scrivener Forums.
So far it is one of the most popular posts on dougist.com.
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Filed In: Best Of Productivity Web 2.0 Writing
Jan28
How could I have said such bad things about President Obama? How could I have said he was the leader of the grow-the-government-at-all-costs liberal wing of the Democratic Party? How could I, like Charlie Kraauthimer use the term Social Democrat, even when others were using the more pejorative Socialist? How could I have ever suspected that by taking over the auto industry, trying to take over the banking industry, writing legislation to take over the medical industry that Obama was really the candidate of fiscal responsibility and small government? Federalization? Heck no, we’re all Republicans here, now.
The Left must be in horror watching Obama Reagan, just as the rest of us were when we watched Obama Marx. Jon Stewart is just fit to be tied, brutalizing the once deified savior of activist government, the New York Times is on suicide watch. Lord knows what Jessie is thinking.
But the chameleon in chief knows…
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Filed In: The Annals of Protest
Jan27
I get a lot of email, I mean a lot — not as much as I did when I was in commerce, but still what could justifiably be called a deluge. Some if it is of my own making, most is not. Almost all of it demands a thoughtful reply, and each reply takes, for me at least, emotional energy, if the response is going to be more than the web 2.0 version of a grunt.
In addition to the volume of mail I get, emailers have increasingly imposed their own ever shortening version of response times on that torrent. Besides whatever they wrote, they implicitly say: I wrote you. I want, demand, will extort, a reply NOW.
Here’s what I do…
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Filed In: Productivity Writing
Jan19
Justus Rosenberg was the youngest member of the team led by Varian Fry that rescued some of Europe’s most famous artists, writers, and intellectuals who had taken refuge in France prior to the Nazi occupation.
I studied linguistics under Dr. Rosenberg at The New School in the Fall of 2008. This video tell his story from the 1940’s, and in the post I tell a little story shared between us that fall.
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Filed In: Institutional Conformity
Jan18
Missing in Notational Velocity is an apparent command to “Show in Finder” but it’s easy to use Spotlight to do the same thing.
Here’s how I do it…(and why it matters to interface architecture)
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Filed In: Productivity Writing
Jan11
A few months ago a writing pal passed along a link to Dennis Cass’ post discussing his version of an idealized MFA program, an alternative MFA. Cass’ point of view was that traditional MFA curriculums were filed with blanks, specifically outside of craft development, as done through workshops, and outside (perhaps) literary criticism, as done through massive reading work.
This struck a cord with me, it sounded about right, so I went off and built one of my own, what I call myMFA, it’s outlined in detail, along with the schedule of how I implemented it in 2009 and 2010, after the jump…
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Filed In: Best Of Productivity Writing
Nov9
Well, if this video doesn’t get you jazzed about being a writer, then nothing will….
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Filed In: Writing
Oct9
I heard this morning about the President’s Nobel Peace Prize. It was followed by laughter, and the running joke of the morning: “I thought I was reading The Onion” people said. The incredulousness is deep on both the left and the right.
Mr. Obama needs to think long and hard about accepting this award. The vapidity of the criteria used for his selection could ratify in the public mind the vapidity of his prior and current achievements.
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Filed In: The Annals of Protest
Oct7
Last week I installed and then de-installed BusyCal, a new and hotly touted iCal replacement.
It was the product of the development team that created David Pogue’s favorite calendar, Now Up-to-Date, and I thought it promising since there really is not another iCal replacement package out there unless you adopt Entourage which means being outside the Apple suite of apps with all their interconnected goodness.
Here’s what I liked and didn’t like about the application…
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Filed In: Productivity