For years, I’ve been using a Das mechanical keyboard. I like the feel and sound of mechanical keyboards. But, man, they can get dirty. This is what my keyboard looked like last night after years of pounding, and years of eating over my keyboard while I work: After I took that photo, I proceeded to…
Something changed recently with respect to keyboard mappings on my Mac. A few days ago, I was writing a post, and hit the Cmd-I key to put my editor in italics mode. Instead, the Mail App opened up and a copy of what I had written had been pasted into a blank email message. That…
Back in May when I made a call for suggestions on what to write here, one of the good ones was from Steve, who wrote: “Any thoughts or concerns you might have related to cyber security. Potential tips/processes you employ to protect yourself.” Ten years ago, when I was writing my Going Paperless series, I…
Note: December 9, 2021: I wrote this post in February 2021 after I’d been using Obsidian for a little over a month. In the 10+ months since, I’ve learned a lot more and modified my reading notes process based on lessons I’ve learned in what you see below. If you are interested, you can check…
Okay, okay, you’ve convinced me. I’ve been playing around with Obsidian (h/t to Matt Banks for initially bringing it to my attention) for a couple of days now. I think it is the notes system that I have been looking for all my life! I’m still getting used to some of the ins-and-outs, but I…
We have been using CrashPlan for our home computer backups for nearly 8 years. During that time, it has come in handy on a couple of occasions when I needed to restore a file, or was transferring data to a new computer. Mostly, it sits in the background unnoticed. Backup software is like that. It’s…
f there is a modern equivalent to a writer collecting typewriters, it is a writer collecting writing software. I have played around with lots of different writing software over the years. Among my favorites are tools like the versatile Scrivener, and the cloud-based Google Docs. This week, I have added a new tool to my…
spend my days writing. In my day job, I write emails, I write code, I write requirements documents. Outside my day job I write stories, and articles, and blog posts. Whether I am writing code, or writing a blog post, the result is something to which I can point and say, “Hey, I made that!”…
t some point, I realized that my iPhone had become a distraction, and I decided to take some drastic measures to cut down on the distractions. Here are a few things I did to help make my phone distraction-free. 1. Switched to a blank home screen Most of the apps I used most frequently were…
ropbox recently announced the demise of the Mailbox app. I was an early adopter of this app for the iPhone, and I am sad to see it go. I don’t send a lot of email from my mobile device, but I do manage my email from it from time-to-time, and Mailbox allowed me to manage…