My changing attitude about the iPad as a real computer
Jobs, in 2010, said “Touch surfaces don’t want to be vertical.” and I agree with him still. He was mostly right, anyway.
I’ve not been shy about dismissing the iPad as a “real” computer.
Sitting with a 12.9” iPad Pro on a desk with a keyboard has always been an exercise in frustration. Close, but nope. I find that having to reach up and out in order to do nearly anything on the screen is tiring and slow after just a few minutes. Those claiming that editing any significant amount of text using touch is a decent experience must be suffering some version of Stockholm Syndrome. Seriously, I hate it.
A touch screen’s 1:1 mapping between hand movement and what happens on the screen is heralded as “intuitive”, and it may be, but it’s also a lot of work. Using a keyboard and mouse or trackpad enables tiny movements of a couple of fingers or my wrist to have an amplified effect on what’s happening on the screen. I much prefer that to reaching up using my entire arm just to tap a button or scroll something.
I know, I know, I’m old and wrong. You don’t have to tell me that. But I’m also kind of not wrong.
This isn’t meant as yet another “get a real computer!” rant. In fact, it’s the opposite. iPadOS 13.4 introduced full-fledged pointer support and it’s fantastic. It’s transformed the way I feel about using the iPad. It makes me want to use it.
Most of what I do on a computer involves text. The ability to use a trackpad to select/move/copy text is world-changing. The implementation in iPadOS is terrific. What we had before was bullshit. What we have now is great.
I’m writing this using Ulysses on the iPad and I have no real complaints. I’m not even using a trackpad, I’m using an Apple Magic Mouse and it’s, dare I say it, very nice. I can’t wait to try the new Apple keyboard with built-in trackpad.
Of course I do lots of other, non-text-related things on a computer, many of which I don’t know how to do well on the iPad.
Now that I don’t hate doing the thing I do most often on the iPad, maybe I’ll be patient enough to learn how to do those other things. I’m going to find out which of those I can either learn how to do in iOS, which of them still suck, and which I don’t actually need to do (e.g. how can anyone live without a decent terminal at the ready?).
Now, if could somehow figure out how to use all those crazy, undecipherable iPadOS multi-tasking features I might be onto something.
YouTube TV and ads
Our family cut the cable TV cord last year, but we sometimes missed watching “what’s on” so I looked into TV streaming services. I had already tried Hulu, but heard good things about YouTube TV so I signed up.
The first thing I noticed was that it seemed like there were an awful lot of ads, especially for a paid service. So I counted. There were 14 commercials played during a single half-hour episode of Schitt’s Creek. Fourteen ads in a row during one show! I’m sorry, but that’s insane.
Subscription canceled.
Making Day One permanent
In Thoughs vs Records as Notes I didn’t address journaling directly, but I implied that journals fall into the Record category so work best as plain text. And for a long time I’ve used Org-journal, which is a fantastic way to keep a journal in text(ish) files.
Lately, however, I’ve been writing again in Day One1. You see, the thing about Day One is that it’s a really great app for doing one thing, journaling. I like images in my journal. I like the automatic location, weather, and health information. I like the “On this day” feature. I like occasionally dictating an entry, just to hear my own voice :). I love that I can create printed books from a selected period of time. Anyway, you get the gist. Day One makes my journal useful and fun.
Some of this is reproducible using Org-mode or other plain text formats, but none of it is easier or better in plain text.
But what if Day One goes away? That’s a great question, and it reminds one that there’s nothing like plain text for keeping records for the long term. Here’s what I do to alleviate that fear.
I occasionally print books from my entries. It’s so nice having a copy of my journal in book form. I’ve only made a couple of these so far but plan to print maybe one per quarter.
Books are pretty permanent, but what about search? On the first of every month, I export the prior months journal to PDF. I import that PDF into DEVONthink. Now that’s searchable!
I also export to JSON because that way I (or someone) could create tools to process the JSON files and make something out of them.
So if Day One were to disappear, my journals would no longer be as immediately useful or fun to play with, but I’d still have everything I’ve ever written in formats that leave me plenty of options, and nothing would actually be lost.
After a brief foray with Diarly↩︎
I almost forgot about blog-cli for Blot
Now that I’ve (re)fired up this Blot.im-based blog, I needed to go through the usual round of learning how to easily create posts for it.
I nearly always post from my Mac, so this leaves the command line as a good option. I’d almost forgotten that I’d forked a repo from @kahlil and tweaked it for use with Blot. (His works for other static site generators like Hugo).
My fork is here: https://github.com/jackbaty/blog-cli
Note that I haven’t done any work to make this generally usable, so you’ll want to tweak things somewhat. Probably starting with ./lib/template.js.
Then set the path and editor (see usage instructions) and it’s ready to go.
It’s nice being in a terminal and typing something like blog cli-for-blot and being tossed into my editor du jour, ready to write.
Theme change
I ran a quick poll to see which theme people preferred for this blog. Opinion was split, but since I was already inclined to use the Daring Fireball-inspired version, I applied some confirmation bias and went with that one…for a day.
After living with it, I found it hard on the eyes. I simply don’t like dark themes as much. Images looked awful and were displayed rather small/narrow. Also, other than the specific background color, it really did look like daringfireball.net and that just seemed weird.
So for now I’ve reset it to the default theme and will work on some tweaks to that. Sorry it’s so boring.
Apologies to RSS users, since none of this matters a whit to you :)
Wall for Blot
Wall for Blot from Amit Gawande and David Merfield.
I have been working with David Merfield on a little side project. The idea started simple - what if there was a simple posting interface for Blot? In extension, something that one can use to write and publish a post to Dropbox. Blot is simple as-is for writing and posting (it’s all files). But there are times when I do want to quickly post from my web browser. And for such times, I still need a simple writing interface.
Posting via simple Markdown files is nice and all, but sometimes one wants to just drop some text into a browser and be done with it. Wall helps with that.
Readwise
Readwise “…makes it easy to revisit and learn from your ebook & article highlights”
It does! I started using Readwise a month ago and I love it. I have highlights imported from Instapaper, Apple Books, Twitter favorites, and my Kindle.
Each day I get an email reminding me to review five random highlights. I can keep, favorite, or discard each of them. I’ve done this 42 days in a row. This is great because even though I often highlight passages, I seldom go back and revisit them. Readwise helps me remember the things I enjoyed reading.
The Readwise “Lite” plan is $4.49/month and has been very much worth it. The regular plan is $7.99/month and includes organization tools, timed repetition and a “broadcast” feature for creating what looks like a newsletter around my highlights. I’m using the Lite plan for now.
Blot revived
I missed using Blot enough that I’ve gone through the trouble of reviving it at baty.blog. This took a little work. For the record, here’s what I did:
- Moved DNS from DigitalOcean to Route53. All my active domains live in AWS.
- Created an S3 bucket to handle redirects from baty.blog to www.baty.blog
- Added CNAME record from www.baty.blog -> blot.im
- Created SSL cert in AWS Cert manager for baty.blog
- Created Cloudfront distribution with S3 bucket as origin. Use the bucket hostname as listed on the bucket. Don’t choose from the dropdown.
- Added baty.blog as additional domain in Cloudfront distribution
- Changed apex record so it’s an “Alias” and pointed it to the Cloudfront distribution
I think that’s it. Seems like a lot of fuss but it’s really not that bad.
The only thing to consider now is if I should change it to use copingmechanism.com domain and migrate my Ghost posts here. Not likely, but it’s being considered.
Good to be back using Blot!
I miss Blot
Since archiving my Hugo blog at baty.net and moving my blogging to copingmechanism.com, I’ve been feeling nostalgic for a simple, text-based workflow. By “simple” I don’t mean locally rendering a static site (ala Hugo) and syncing it to a server. That sounds simple, but really isn’t. It started when I “accidentally” opened my Blot folder in VS Code (don’t ask). There all my posts were, organized in folders, as plain text.
Mmmmmm, nice.
Blog posts fall squarely at the “Records” end of the Thoughts vs Records spectrum, so posts in plain text are ideal.
Blot has always struck a good balance between the simplicity of text and ease of use. I like using CMSs like WordPress and Ghost because the words are right there: type, save, done. Blot works much the same way, but with only plain text, on my local machine.
I wish I could say that I wasn’t thinking of reviving this blog for something, but I’d be lying.
I’m not ignoring the pandemic, I’m just not writing about it
People have been criticised for writing about trivial things during the Coronavirus pandemic. By “trivial” they usually mean anything not related to the current situation.
It’s true that the things I normally focus on aren’t important right now. I have found myself not posting about them because I didn’t want to seem uncaring or oblivious to current conditions. I am neither uncaring nor oblivious. I simply feel that I have nothing useful to add to the conversation. The Coronavirus topic continues to be covered thoroughly by others. If I have something personal to add, I will. Otherwise, I plan to continue writing as usual.
I am finding it nearly impossible to think about anything other than our immediate global crisis. Even so, it is therapeutic to distract myself by writing about other, more mundane topics.
My blog has perhaps earned its name.
Stay safe.