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Weeknote - 31 January 2021

This seemed like a really quick week. A lot of digging on things on the work side of things.

Read

A Day in the Life of Your Data from Apple is quite well done. The audience for it is more developers than the general public, but it can be a good handbook for them as well. Apple released this to help developers and application owners understand the impact the actions with data have on their users.

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It was great to read M.G. Siglar writes about location-based service Gowalla coming back to life, which was one of my favorite apps and used for location based service and recommendations. The t-shirt I got for them was adopted about 10 years ago as a night shirt and he still wears it. I’m happy he may get to understand Gowalla is and use it.

Listened

I used one of the Apple Music algo playlists “Pure Chill” to find some calming background music for work stumbled upon Zimmer’s self-named album Zimmer and the song Rey which I really liked, as it starts some with a light rhythm that builds a little bit, but in a way that it feels like a rising wave of deep emotion. It wasn’t work music (the rest of the album works rather well for that, and yet I’m pulling together this weeknote to it on loop just fine), but it was an amazing piece that washes over you. I don’t remember a song doing that before.

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I really enjoyed 99% Invisible’s Beneath the Skyway episode about the skyways in Minneapolis. Seattle and Spokane had skyways when I was a kid, but not an abundance, and they were deeply fascinating. Visiting Chicago, I found they had even more around Wacker Drive, then there are the underground path systems in Montreal and Toronto which are massive. But, learning about what Minneapolis’ skyway did to street traffic, the downtown use patters, but also who it included and shunned was a really good perspective.

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I was entertained and sent into a some deep thinking for a day or two from Postlight Podcast - Are Conspiracy Theories Just Bad Theories With Good UX?.

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Today (I normally don’t include the Sunday I’m pulling together weeknotes in the weeknote, but it was too good to push a week) I was listening to Jorge Arango’s The Informed Life - Kourosh Dini on DEVONthink podcast. I’ve pushed the meat of this down to the Productivity section below.

Food

Sunday steak and eggs is getting to be something of a ritual. Steak isn’t exactly the right term as it could be different cuts of beef, like: tri tip, hangar steak, strip steak, flank steak, etc. They are relatively inexpensive cuts just salted, garlic granules, and pepper, seared in a cast iron pan to medium rare (so 3 to 4 minutes a side) and taken out to rest and slice against the grain. Often some sliced or large diced shitake mushrooms are added to the pan with a little salt to cook down and get a little meaty just before I add the beef. After the beef is out, the pan deglazed with a healthy dose of red wine (Cote du Rhone has been the favorite go to if on hand) and a table spoon or two of Dijon (Trader Joe’s is a fav) mustard are added and the pan scrapped down and tipped to put a corner / side of the pan over the flame to reduce. The sliced beef is plated and thee sauce put over and a eggs quickly scrambled in a non-stick pan for large curd with chopsticks or spatula. Then my son and I just enjoy.

Productivity

I’ve long been a fan / follower of Kourosh Dini’s workflow models, as his OmniFocus tips and tricks changed how I used it for a long time (I’m not using OmniFocus at the moment, which is a longer discussion and nothing really to do with OmniFocus). I’ve started following Kourosh’s work around note taking flows and his are close to what I’ve been doing and tweaking where I use DevonThink (DT) to search and build connections. I’ve used DT for more than 15 years now and scarily all in one database. But, my use of tags with DT is light its search and AI driven search is so good normal use of tags isn’t quite needed, but I tag with project context (writing piece I’m using it in or for, as well as work project collection used in), author, source (if those two are highly relevant and not called out in the pieces well), and tag terms used that are not in the piece. The tagging is more meta as it is about construct of use for refinding in that context. But, I don’t take notes in DT, I point DT to where my notes are and index that location with DT or sometimes feed it in, but always keep the notes in their grouping.

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This week another IA and long time productivity cohort, Austin Govella dug into note taking and particularly evergreen notes. There are some interesting things in this and some really good links in it. I am still teasing this one apart and may post something mid-week or later.

Weeknote - 17 January 2021

Busy, but not overly productive week. I’ve been battling getting a replacement laptop actually functioning, so battling and not being productive. That scenario drives me absolutely up the wall. Going through the battles reminds me of how fairly seamlessly Apple does this.

Evenings have been trying to run errands, but finding stores closing quite early due to Covid and complications around the attack on the Capitol and Inauguration. This has left me rather tired, but also not sleeping well.

Insights from

I just read about Foxsy shutting from their CEO’s blog post about the company and product and his and their lessons learned, Moved on from my journey Foxsy. I was introduced to them from an investor as they were hitting an inflection point and needed help smoothing out some of the interactions, user flow model, and some language areas. The product was rather ingenious as it was a cross social platform chat service using AI to match people. Jin was in San Francisco and the rest of the team at that point and time was in Japan. It was great to read they kept going as I shifted to another project.

The glimpse inside a San Francisco start-up is rather typical from the doing everything to scrape by to keep the product going and get to the next level. I heard some of these stories when I was helping them and hearing it from Japanese guys was interesting as the story wasn’t that different from American guys, the French teams I know, nor the mixed teams from Eastern Europe and the Middle East. The small companies I knew / know in Europe, Latin America, and Singapore were a bit different, but the dedication and passion isn’t.

While I hate to see Foxsy shut, I know whatever each of these people do will be fantastic. Only a very small percentage of start-ups make it through to launch, through a few years or use, and then making money to be self-sustaining, and getting the investors some profit. Here’s to whatever is next Foxsy crew!

Read

Every January I dig out the Saint Mary’s Jan Term Catalog and look through was is / was offered. When I was at St. Mary’s Jan Term was something I deeply enjoyed. St. Mary’s ran on a 4–1–4 schedule with four courses in a fall semester, one course in January, and four in spring semester. January classes typically met for 3 or 4 hours Monday through Thursday for an intensive course on a tight subject. There are usually also travel courses for Jan Term, like religious architecture in Ireland or Italy, or sailing course in the Caribbean. My first year I had a Sports Psychology course and second year was on charisma and public leaders (this was amazing). My last year I didn’t exactly get Jan Term as I was doing a full term in Oxford at the Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Centre.

Every year I find new intriguing courses with good reading lists and I add the reading list and often start digging into a subject of a few each year. I’ve long wondered what a full school year of one month one class would look like. The Oxbridge tutorial system is somewhat similar over two months with intensive tutorials used to fill in gaps through guided self-learning, with that guidance being deep and good.

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I stumbled on this article from a couple people, ‘Rent-a-person who does nothing’ in Tokyo receives endless requests, gratitude. This concept is an utter gem! The guy in Japan is selling his service of not doing anything, other than “just being there” for a round $96 a task. People using him to walk them to a court house as quiet support. Listening to people talk through something that they don’t want others to they know to hear or to judge them on. The service of “doing nothing” is somewhat akin to renting someone in a mature relationship that is years into that calm quiet support that gives the deep relief of not being alone and some togetherness.

Watched

Modern Doctor Who is on HBO Max. My two favorite Doctors are David Tennent and Matt Smith. There were a lot of the Tennent episodes I missed and being able to fill in the gaps is wonderful. But, also being able to watch favorite Matt Smith episodes again is something I’m looking for.

Listened

I tend to listen to a lot of music that doesn’t have lyrics or English lyrics. I don’t often listen to lyrics when they are in English, even though I will sing along or sing the song with out music. But, every now and then the lyrics stand out as they are creative. Twice this week I hit this.

One instance was going back something I used to listen to a lot and listened to driving across country with my dad, it was A.J. Croce’s self titled album. The music and production quality are really good, but the lyrics also stand out as they are witty and creative.

The other was Olivia Rodrigo’s Driver License, which was in my short list of recommended new music for the week and I had it playing in the background and the chorus of “’Cause you said forever, now I drive alone past your street” that really stuck out and I scrubbed back and relisten. That was insanely well crafted lyrically as well as musically.

Food

El Charro Mexican Restaurant in Lafayette, California Closed for Good, which may be one of the odd Covid maladies I’ve run across that hurt, beside the people it has taken from us. This was my first taco. It was also the accidental spark that got my parents and I obsessed with guacamole. When I was born this wasn’t all that far from where we lived and it was a favorite of my parents. I don’t remember going here as we moved when I was about 18 months old or so. But, we always stopped here when in the Bay Area.

I went to undergrad at St. Mary’s College of California in Moraga, which is sort of next door via back roads through the hills. When my parent would come and visit we would often goo to El Carro for lunch or dinner. One of the things my parents loved was the small dish of guacamole that came with tortilla chips, as well as salsa. From the time I was a baby my parents tried to replicate this intensely flavored guacamole. We learned many different ways of making guacamole and had a few favorites that are still really good. But, it wasn’t anything like El Charro’s.

So one day we asked about the guacamole, with my parents explaining they had tried to replicate it for 20 some years when we moved away. There was a bit of confusion, but the waitress understood and went in the back to ask. He head cook came out smiling. He explained it wasn’t guacamole, but blue cheese, a little garlic, and butter all mashed together until the blue of the cheese was a green-ish spread / dip. I’ve never seen this anywhere else. The cook had said the owner knew it from Mexico and was a special treat in a small town there. Thanks to the confusion I’ve learned many different guacamole recipes, probably more than 50, but also how to riff with the basics.

Productivity

I’ve been trying to put something in a daily dump note. The book notes and idea notes are getting to be a decent habit and being able to easily search and build on an understanding is really nice to have. Obsidian has been proving to be an insanely great augmentation layer.

Talking with a couple people using Roam this week about Obsidian has been interesting as both lost network access and didn’t have access to their notes. This also got them thinking about how to exit Roam, and the lack of API and a common framework they are feeling really stuck. There is now an option to scrape Roam to pull the content into markdown files that can work with Obsidian, and it seems it will also work with block replication. Roam is slick and what the people who love slick, but don’t consider function and the basic use cases for every platform: Do I have ownership of everything I put in?; Do I have constant access?; How do I exit?

I’m thinking through these as I have been looking at Craft, an Apple OS focussed note system that is quite similar to Notion. I somewhat like Notion and its capabilities, but getting to things, feeding them, and searching when working on things (I have to go to it and perform search and moving content in and out for writing and other workflows has a lot of friction. One solution around it is an API, which isn’t fully there. Craft being more native and sync with iCloud or other would enable what is in it being found in a search. Notion for personal use is now free and Craft is pay, but only about $4 a month.

Craft wouldn’t replace anything in Obsidian, but could help with some organization systems. I use Notion most for pushing podcast and YouTube links into them and then annotate them for refinding and reusing.