tools of the moment

Not YouTube watch history. When you turn off the watch history for your YouTube account (manage it here), your homepage becomes gloriously blank rather than cluttered with garbage served up by their algorithm.

Not WorkFlowy. One day I decided I was tired of splitting my personal and professional note-taking, task management, and documents between multiple apps and services, so I took everything out of WorkFlowy and moved it to either Google Docs or Apple Notes (for personal stuff and archived material) or OneDrive or Monday.com (for work). I’ve used WorkFlowy for over a decade and have really enjoyed its simplicity and structure, but I wanna try life without it for a bit.

Apple Reminders. I’ve used this off and on over the years, mostly for shared shopping lists between my wife and me. The recent update that suggests grocery store categories for items on your list and then automatically sorts them is a game changer.

June 25, 2024 Add Comment

Tools of the moment

An ongoing series

Not Spotify. The only reason I used Spotify was to listen to the Armchair Expert podcast, which was part of the unfortunate trend of podcasts going Spotify-exclusive a few years ago. But now it’s back out in the open internet, which means I can finally stop using Spotify!

Not Disney+. Last year we paid up front for a full year before the prices went up. Now that has expired and, despite having a four year old, we’re not renewing. Prices are going up yet again and we have a good collection of shows and movies on DVD (including, vitally, Bluey), so we just don’t see the need for it.

White noise phone shortcut. I learned about this from a random Instagram Reel: iPhones now have built-in Background Sounds (i.e. white noise) in Settings, which you can add a shortcut to in the Control Center. Quick, easy, essential tool with a three month old in the house.

Visual Look Up. Yet another hidden iOS gem. Take a picture of any identifiable landmark, sign, art, insect, whatever and it’ll detect what it is and show similar web and image results. I use it mostly for identifying bugs and other critters around our yard.

August 25, 2023 2 Comments

Tools of the moment

An ongoing series

Threads. I hopped onto the new app with the Cinema Sugar account on Wednesday evening when it was first going public. It’s been fun goofing off about movies and interacting with people in a new venue. Not so fun is the feed full of random accounts you don’t even follow. Hoping/assuming that will change soon.

Monday.com. My new job uses this project management software and it’s my first experience with it. Still getting acquainted but appreciate the clean interface and robust features.

Wireless vertical ergonomic mouse. I saw a coworker using one of these and got inspired to give this one a try. Once you get past the initial disorientation it’s a really nice experience and way more comfortable than a regular mouse. Also glad to eliminate another cord from my limited desk space at home.

A library Roku. My library circulates free Rokus preloaded with all the major streaming services. This has been helpful for when we want to watch some stuff on services we don’t subscribe to without having to pay. See if your library offers them!

July 9, 2023 1 Comment

Tools of the moment

An ongoing series

Pretty much everything from my last update.

Kindle Paperwhite. After years of holding out, we got one last Black Friday and I finally started using it. I wasn’t against e-readers before; I just usually prefer print or audiobooks. But the e-ink screen and appealing handling of the Paperwhite is quite nice.

Safari browser. I’ve been a longtime Firefox devotee since ditching Chrome, but recently it started throwing me error after unresolvable error that made using it on my MacBook Pro a nightmare. So I resorted to Safari and have found it much more enjoyable than I remember.

Not Twitter. Twitter’s ownership change was an excellent impetus for me to step away. It’s always been a time-suck, and I’ve mostly been a lurker anyway. Not fully deleting it since I want to at least hold onto my username, but happily finding other ways to use my time online.

February 23, 2023 Add Comment

Live Text, Reader View, No-Signup Tools

Three techie things I’m loving.

1. Live Text

Live Text, available in iOS 15 and beyond, feels not far off from magical. The ability to copy text from photos or through the camera app has completely transformed my book notetaking process as a print-book partisan but digital notetaker. I can just point the camera at a desired passage, hit the Live Text button, copy the text, and plop it in Workflowy (where I keep my book notes). And to think I used to have to take pictures of quotes to later type out manually like an idiot…

2. Reader View

Using the Reader view in Safari on iPhones makes reading things on the internet insanely more pleasant. If you come upon an article clogged with ads, unnecessary photos, and/or unreadable text, Reader strips it down to a clean, simplified, text-only version. You can find this feature elsewhere too; I use it often in Firefox on desktop.

3. No-Signup Tools

So that this isn’t an exclusively Apple affair, I wanted to shoutout nosignup.tools because at this point in my life I appreciate any digital tool that doesn’t require an account or credit card to use. Just free tools that work quickly and easily.

September 27, 2022 Add Comment

Tools of the moment

It’s been a minute since the last time I took stock of my notetaking/productivity apps, so here’s where I stand currently:

I still use paper. The reporter’s notebook I got last Christmas is good for my occasional work-based bullet journaling.
Feedly has been my RSS reader of choice for years now. To further declutter my email inbox, I also use Feedly to follow many email newsletters (shout-out to Substack and Buttondown for their RSS-friendly design; boooooo Mailchimp).
I went deeper into WorkFlowy, which has remained delightfully clean and minimalist even while adding a bunch of new features. I transferred my Book Notes & Quotes there, along with old conference session notes and other reference things that fit as bulleted lists.
Once I realized my files were awkwardly split between Google Drive and Dropbox, I decided to commit more fully to the former and put the latter on ice. Once essential, Dropbox now seems superfluous.
I stopped using Simplenote because other tools filled its role, and Apple Reminders because its syncing sucks.
I started paying for 50GB of iCloud last year before I upgraded to a new iPhone, mostly for photo backup.
I use the Office 365 suite for work. It’s fine.
My calendar situation remains annoyingly bifurcated between Google for personal and Outlook for work. The only place all my events appear together seamlessly is in the iOS Calendar app, which isn’t ideal.

See my other “of the moment” series.

October 22, 2021 2 Comments

My favorite notetaking apps

C.J. Chilvers wrote about the pros and cons of popular notetaking tools. Out of the four he features—Apple Notes, Evernote, Ulysses, and Bear—I have used two previously, and none currently. So, having already examined my favored podcasts and newsletters, here’s a look at the tools I do use and why I use them.

Paper

The once and future king of all notetaking apps. I keep a plain, pocket-sized Moleskine in my backpack for odds and ends, a larger journal as a daily diary and scrapbook (previously a Moleskine classic hardcover and currently a Zequenz 360), and a good ol’ composition notebook for my filmlog.

WorkFlowy

Dynamic, lightweight list-making with blessed few bells and whistles. Perfect for hierarchical thinking, tasks, and anything else you can put into a list. It’s built for marking tasks complete, but I use it mostly as an archive for reference, split between Work and Personal. Plus a To Do list at top for quick capture of tasks.

Simplenote

Good for taking quick notes in plain text. I often use it for first drafts of blog posts, taking book notes, and whatever else I need a basic text editor for. Helpful when trying to remove formatting from text you want to paste cleanly elsewhere—”text laundering” as I call it. Clean, simple, works well on the web and mobile.

Google Drive

For when Simplenote isn’t enough. Good for collaboration and as a document repository. Among other things my Logbook spreadsheet is there, as are lots of work-related docs, random files shared with my wife, my archive of book reviews, and my Book Notes doc filled with (at present) 121 single-spaced pages of notes and quotes from 108 books.

Apple Reminders

Used mostly for sharing shopping lists with my wife, because it’s easy to regenerate lists from completed items. Unfortunately it doesn’t sync well between devices without WiFi, which is a bummer when we’re out shopping.

Google Calendar

Google, don’t you ever get rid of Calendar. I mean it. Some former Google products had it coming, but you’re gonna ride or die with Gmail and Calendar, ya hear?

Dropbox

Essential for quick and easy file backup. Through referrals and other incentives over the years I’ve accumulated 5.63 GB in free storage on top of the 2 GB default. I’m using over 95% of it.

February 14, 2019 2 Comments

Why I love Kanopy, Hum, and System Information

Want to give some love to three services I’ve enjoyed lately:

Kanopy

Kanopy is a free streaming service available through your public library. (If it isn’t, ask them to get it!) Abundant with titles from A24, The Criterion Collection, and other high-quality providers, it’s rife with a delightful array of foreign films, indies, and documentaries to fill the FilmStruck-shaped hole in the hearts of cinephiles. My watchlist expanded pretty quickly once I signed up, much of it classics and Criterion titles I’ve been meaning to watch and want to get to before my wife gives birth. In the last few weeks I’ve watched Three Days of the Condor, The Seventh Seal, 48 Hrs., Ugetsu, Battleship Potemkin, and The Wages of Fear, with more on the horizon. Get thee to Kanopy!

Hum

I’ve been using Hum for a lot longer than Kanopy, but only recently realized how much I love it. It’s the perfect songwriting app. Super easy to quickly record song ideas, gather lyrics, and add helpful metadata. Beautifully made and a joy to use, though I really ought to use it more. Since I recently released the songs that comprised my 20s, I’m excited to see what will become of the song ideas currently residing in Hum.

System Information on Mac

I rediscovered this function while trying to clean out some disk space on my wife’s MacBook Pro and make it run faster. Previously I used Disk Doctor for this job; it’s a fine app that costs $2.99, but System Information is built-in and provides a more granular view of your files. It also makes deleting them super easy and satisfying. It’s a bit hidden, but well worth the hunt. If you’re a file hoarder or haven’t optimized your Mac in a while, you’ll be shocked by how much cruft builds up. Also by how large iOS backups are! (Seriously, my wife’s storage space more than doubled after I deleted those.)

January 15, 2019 1 Comment