The other day I wrote this:

Knowledge should reside in the notes, not in the software used to manage the notes.

I’m feeling like software has been hindering me more than helping me. I spend too much of my time building overly complex workflows in Emacs or Tinderbox or Obsidian or whatever. These crazy workflows often introduce dependencies and push the actual knowledge up into the process/software. This seems like a bad idea.

I try to name all of my files using the file’s creation date as a prefix. For example:

20230504-MyNewFile.txt

If I forget, it’s a pain to rename them, so I created a short AppleScript to do it for me.

-- Prepend Creation Date to selected files
-- Install Location: ~/Library/Scripts/Applications/Finder
-- Last Modified: 2023-05-04

tell application "Finder"
	set selectedItems to selection as list
	-- Loop through each selected item
	repeat with selectedItem in selectedItems
		set creationDate to creation date of selectedItem
		set fileName to name of selectedItem
		-- Prepend the creation date to the file name
		set newName to my stringFromDate(creationDate) & "-" & fileName
		-- Rename the file with the new name
		set name of selectedItem to newName
	end repeat
end tell


on stringFromDate(_date)
	-- yyyymmddhhmmss
	set _string to ""
	set _string to _string & my stringFromNumber(_date's year, 4)
	set _string to _string & my stringFromNumber(_date's month as integer, 2)
	set _string to _string & my stringFromNumber(_date's day, 2)
	return _string
end stringFromDate

on stringFromNumber(_number, _digitsToPad)
	return text -_digitsToPad through -1 of ("0000" & _number)
end stringFromNumber

I put the script into a Finder-specific folder, so it’s made easily available when Finder is the frontmost app: ~/Library/Scripts/Applications/Finder. (I use FastScripts to make things, er, faster).

Since I use DEVONthink Pro (DTP) to index and store my notes and documents, I sometimes revisit the idea of using it to create notes.

DTP includes a variety of built-in scripts for creating new content. These are mostly written in AppleScript. I was interested in the “Daily Journal” template. By default, running the Daily Journal template would create a new Markdown document containing a random quote and a list of the 4 latest headlines from the New York Times website. I was OK with the headlines, but I didn’t feel the quote was necessary, so I replaced it with the current weather.

It’s happening again. My love of powerful, complex software has overrun my ability to avoid tinkering.

For example, I’ve spent several hours this week working on my Org-mode agenda display. Configuring org-super-agenda is tons of fun. It can make one’s Agenda absolutely sing and dance, which is not ideal for me because I’ve spent way too much time trying to teach it to sing and dance. I could have finished all of the tasks on my todo list in the time I’ve spent getting them to display just right.

I’ve tried so many “read-later” services that I can’t remember half of them. They’re all basically the same: visit a website, click a button, and the article is saved to a list somewhere with all the other articles I’ve saved. Some newer services get fancy with recommendations, UI improvements, social integration, etc. but they all just gather a list of articles that I almost never end up reading. But, you know, just in case, right?

Ten years ago, Steven Johnson wrote The Spark File, in which he describes his process for keeping track of hunches, ideas, etc. in a single text file.

I, of course, thought this was a great idea and immediately started keeping my own spark file. It began in 2012 and I was reasonably consistent with it until 2016. After that, there was a lull, but it picked up again for a short time in 2021, after which I sort of forgot about it.

I’m tired of computers. I spent hours today rummaging around my notes and trying to figure out if I should write some new thing in Emacs or Obsidian or Tinderbox or what? It’s confusing and frustrating, and I need a break.

I’m typing this on my iPad Pro using the Magic Keyboard. I won’t lie, the iPad is too limiting for me under nearly all circumstances. But that’s exactly why I need it right now. I’ve gotta stop tweaking and start doing something instead. That something might just be watching Netflix, but at least that’s not going to make things worse.

I tried, I really did. The Wise Old Internet guided me into changing my film scanning process from a dedicated flatbed scanner to using a mirrorless digital camera setup. I did everything right. I bought good equipment and the right software.

I hated it.

To scan using my flatbed, I load the negatives, hit “Prescan”, confirm that things look ok and press “Scan”. I go do something else for a while and come back to a folder full of JPGs. I edit the files by adjusting contrast and cropping as needed in Lightroom or whatever and I’m done.

I use Notmuch in Emacs for managing my email. It’s fast, powerful, and (once used to it) easy to use.

There are a few oddities I’ve learned to work around. The first is with deleting messages. The manual for Notmuch states:

Notmuch does not support, nor ever will, the deleting of messages

Notmuch manual

I’m ok with this, since Notmuch provides a way to essentially bury deleted messages using tags. I don’t necessarily need to actually delete the message file. Any message tagged with +deleted is hidden from searches unless explicitly included. Ignored tags are set in ~/.notmuch-config like so: