Says Jamie T. Rubin: “As a writer, I naturally want to spend my time writing. More and more I see tools getting in the way of writing. If that wasn’t the case, why do so many tools now add a “focus” or “distraction-free” mode? What choices can I make to simplify my writing ecosystem?”
My answer to that, considering the theme of this blog and how I’m writing it, is obvious. But the question is going deeper than that, and so should be the answer.
I’ve talked about Orgzly several times on this blog, but I haven’t dedicated a full post to it yet until now. Instead of describing my workflow again or just praising Orgzly’s usefulness in a repeated manner, I thought it would be interesting to reach out to its creator and ask a couple of questions instead. To my delight, he was happy to reply! I’m happy to present my first interview on this blog.
Every now and then I discover (or re-discover) a tool in Linux that does exactly what I need it to do. Some examples include ffmpeg, to shrink down my self-recorded webcam journal session while increasing the volume; abcde, to rip a classical music CD to flac and find its exact title and name; youtube-dl, which downloads any video online I need along with aria to speed these downloads, and more.
Today I want to praise a new excellent tool, this time for screenshots: Flameshot.
I’ve been using Linux as my daily driver for the last three years. I work with Windows on a daily basis and I support Mac issues all the time, but I don’t think I will ever go back to using either one for my personal data. As a matter of fact, it’s Linux which made an appearance at work: without my VM and Org-mode, I would probably be drowning under hips of emails, meeting invites, support tickets, and the constant in-person walk-ins into our work environment.
I had irreal’s post about mu4e for dummies on my todo list for a week before I decided to give it up. At first, I thought it was because setting the time and following through the guide was too much of a “cloud” in my head to tackle, so I broke it down. Then, as I looked at the individual components, I realized it’s more complicated then technicalities alone.
A few years back, I was an avid user of Evernote. That was a period of information “innocence” for me, before I knew much about Linux and switched careers to IT. Back then, Evernote was an amazing discovery. It was the first serious digital (and, to be honest, analog as well) system I built. I remember many nights where I drifted off to sleep thinking about how to tag and achieve my information in it. To this day I have plenty of memories stored away in its achieve files – though they have been since downloaded and converted from the App’s native format.
I recently tried Org-Gcal a second time just to turn it off again. I was following the (now slightly outdated) instructions on Mike Zamansky’s blog and managed to get it working this time, but I found the end result messy and cumbersome. This is mostly because of how I use org and my agenda to quickly get a view of what I need, not really a reflection on the tool itself. It made me understand how different the methodology of Google calendar and org-mode are.
After a few months of research, I finally upgraded my Audio system on my PC. As it turns out, it wasn’t as expensive as I feared. The renewed interest in music took me in rewarding directions of sound exploration I did not anticipate.
I always dislike it when I read a post explaining why there’s been a break in posting. It’s usually a sign that the next post will be the last if it will happen at all, and it’s always some excuse about being busy, life getting in the way, etc. etc. So I guess now it’s my turn to write one of these posts.
This past week has been a good example of emotional exhaustion. Because influences overall productivity, relationships, and health (both mental and physical) I’d like to discuss it here.