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My travel coffee kit
I still use my original AeroPress to make coffee in my office, and for a long time, it was the one I took with me on every trip. When the AeroPress Go was released, I had to buy one and include it in the small š«£ kit that I always travel with to be able to brew my own coffee every day.
Back to the Source: Revisiting Weaving the Web by Tim Berners-Lee
To give you a sense of how long ago I read the book Weaving the Web, I still had a WalkmanĀ lying around, andĀ since I accidentally picked it up in cassette format,Ā that’s how I “read” it. Yes, you got that right: cassette tape.
Regardless, I remember hearing Tim Berners-Lee explain that his original concept for the Web was a more interactive knowledge-building and linking process. I don’t recall his exact words, but this was the idea. At least, this is what my memory tells me. Which reminds me of another great book, Memory Illusion by Dr. Julia Shaw. But I digress.
That stuck with me for a long time because, for many years, all we had were websites with static pages. No interaction at all. It was more like a one-way knowledge flow, but it was a start. Then came the blogs and the comments, but it still didn’t feel like what he meant in his book. When social media started gaining popularity, I thought to myself, “Maybe this is it.” Well, I was wrong. We ended up with a lot of “islands” and too much misinformation.
I don’t think a Web based on the ActivityPub protocol is precisely what he meant, but connecting all these online “islands” feels to me more like his vision. Another step in that direction, if you will.
Anyway, it’s been too long since I read it, and I’ll use the last week of 2023 to revisit it. It’s a great book!Ā Dr. Shaw’s book is also excellent, but it’s more recent, and I have already read it twice.
That’s it for this one. I hope you have a lovely day!
Future-proofing my online presence
My thoughts and opinions on ActivityPub and the Fediverse are numerous, and I am already working on an article to share them with you. For this one, the plan is to explain my strategy to future-proof my online presence.
If you donāt know what ActivityPub and the Fediverse are, please watch my recent video about this topic. But the most important information to understand is that one can follow and be followed, as well as engage, regardless of what social platform is being used.
Many services have been compatible with the ActivityPub protocol for a long time now, but I donāt think we can deny the fact that if large corporations adopt it, the chances of it becoming mainstream are higher. And based on the recent announcement by Flipboard and the tests being conducted by Threads, Iām pretty sure this is whatās happening right now.
Again, I suggest watching my recent video on the topic to understand the details and implications. For now, let us discuss the reasons behind my choice of Micro.blog and Mastodon.
Micro.blog
I believe that Micro.blog is a link between the old Internet, before social media, where people used to write on websites and blogs, and the new Internet that is all about sharing everything.
At Micro.blog, you can make a website with static pages and and also have a blog. The cool thing about the blog is that it uses the ActivityPub protocol. This means that anyone using any ActivityPub service can read and engage with your posts.
But thereās more, or, should I say, less? If you read Manton Reeceās book about starting a Micro.blog, or follow him online, youāll see that he is really into writing short posts. It is also evident in the company’s name and the blog feature on Micro.blog.
If one writes simple posts, such as tweets, they will be added to the timeline, like what happens on Twitter and other similar services. On the other hand, if a long-form text is created, that will become a blog post like this article you are reading. However, it will also be added to the timeline with a link to the article. And, once again, that timeline is compatible with ActivityPub.
All these means that someone, say, on Mastodon, can follow and engage with all the posts without ever being a Micro.blog user. You can use my blog to try it out. Just look for @vladcampos@vladcampos.com on your preferred Fediverse platform.
There are already many great interviews with Manton Reece about Micro.blog out there, but Iām thrilled to share that he recently accepted an invitation to have a conversation about all this on my YouTube Channel.
But if Micro.blog is both services in one, why would I need Mastodon? Well, a year ago, I tried using it alone, but I had no success. I left because of a design decision. There are no likes or re-posts on the Micro.blog timeline. To explain why I care about it, letās talk about Mastodon.
Mastodon
When I first heard about Micro.blog, I was already a Mastodon user, where I was building a new community after leaving Twitter. On doing so, I quickly learned how important likes and re-posts are. Because of them, I got to know so many nice people re-posted by someone I was following. The same thing happened the other way around. People re-posting me on Mastodon helped me get noticed by others.
Nevertheless, I fully understand Micro.blogs decision. The goal is to stimulate conversations, but, to be honest, I felt very isolated there. And at that particular moment, I did not have a significant number of people following me on Mastodon, and I still do not. Until these days, I keep discovering interesting people and communities through re-posts.
How is this future-proofing my online presence?
First of all, ActivityPub is a W3C protocol. Then, thereās the fact that major corporations are beginning to embrace it. But the most important reason is that ActivityPub-compatible social media allows you to move between different services and bring all of your followers with you. Letās say that in the future, Micro.blog adds likes and re-posts and I decide I want to leave Mastodon. Iāll be able to easily do it, bringing with me all the followers, whom, by the way, I prefer to call community.
This is such a win-win situation. Whenever and wherever it pleases me, I am free to move, and I donāt have to ask anyone from my community to move to a different social media platform. Furthermore, if they also wish to move somewhere else, thatās fine. As long as it is compatible with the ActivityPub protocol, neither technology nor CEOs will prevent us from keeping in touch with each other.
The Plan
My website has already been migrated to Micro.blog, but I will continue to post on Medium, which is, incidentally, also in the process of adopting the ActivityPub protocol.Ā
In December 2024 I started the processo of moving my site to Obsidian Publish. In August 2025 I moved back to Micro.blog
Regarding micro-posting, Iāll be doing it on Mastodon. So, if one wishes to follow only my articles or only my micro-posts, they can do so. Or, they can also follow both. And the best part is that anyone can follow and interact with me using any ActivityPub-compatible service. This is absolutely remarkable!
What went wrong with Evernote? How did we get here?
I expect negative comments on every video or article I publish about Evernote now. Sadly, talking about it makes me feel anxious.
I donāt think Evernote is doomed, but there is a profound shift in perception going on. It used to be that going to the Evernote ConferenceĀ was the most important moment I looked forward to every year. It was great to see my friends, clients, developers, and the Evernote team.
Furthermore, sharing news from the conference or anything else Evernote released throughout the year had such positive vibes. Now, itās difficult to ignore all the negativity out there.
But the mood didnāt shift at once;Ā it rarely does.
It all started many years ago
In July 2015, Phil Libin stepped down as CEO, and Chris OāNeill initiated a series of changes that made many of us, myself included, uneasy with the future of the company, or, in other words, our notes.
Evernote had a family of companion apps, and the new CEO gradually discontinued most of them, making many of us unhappy. But moving Evernoteās database to Google Cloud and the layoffs kicked off the first negative wave I’ve ever seen. At least, I do not recall anything similar during the Libin years.
I have to believe that from a financial standpoint, moving to Google servers was the best course of action.Ā Even Apple used Google’s service in the early stages of iCloud. And I think they still do. However, the publicās perception was distorted by the way the media covered all the other CEO decisions.
For instance, I recall reading articles that referred to Evernoteās headquarters as a āghost town.ā I was furious about that; it made no sense. Back when Libin was CEO, or, in other words, before the layoffs, I visited the company and can attest that the building was not fully occupied. As far as memory serves, floors one and two were completely empty. Not even desks! The idea was to have enough room to grow in the future.
Nevertheless, I can relate to the anger and frustration people felt. The way the story was told made it hard to tell the difference between noise and reality, which leads me to the topic of communication. Iāve always found Evernote to be terrible at conveying decisions to its users. And the problem is still present. For instance, I believe thatĀ transferring operations to EuropeĀ was an excellent decision, but again, the public perception was different.
When you are hosting peopleās memories, you donāt have the luxury of being as secretive as Apple or carless as a cable TV announcing the new version of its app. Every decision has to be over communicated.
Iām not sure why, but one thing that made me upset was the end of Evernote Market. Possibly because some of the products made it easier to organize things in real life, like we were used to doing in Evernote. Anyway, I was sad to see that go.
[!cite] Over the past few years, more than 800,000 Evernote Moleskine notebooks and 300,000 Jot Script styluses were sold worldwide. Through Marketās website alone, we sold nearly 20,000 ScanSnap Evernote Edition scanners.
Market gave us the opportunity to illustrate the true value of Evernote to folks who hadnāt yet considered a Premium subscription. In fact, nearly half of the folks who shopped the Evernote Market were paying us for the first time.
Ultimately though, Evernote is a software company.
Communication, communication, communication. I donāt have all the facts, and I believe all of us try to make the best decisions based on the information we have available at the moment. ButĀ the way the official blog postĀ was written suggests that the Market was successful, “but we are ending it anyway.”
As for:
[!cite] Instead of selling and fulfilling orders ourselves, on February 3rd [2016], we will transition the Market to promote Evernote-integrated products made and sold by our partners at Adonit, Moleskine, and PFU. We plan to continue adding partners and integrations that strongly and elegantly complement Evernote to that list.
The transition lasted for a brief moment. It didnāt take long before everything stopped being sold.Ā I have many items in my collection, but the Evernote Market was much bigger.
Recently, I learned in an interview with Libin that when he was the CEO, the Market was profitable,Ā but its benefits went way beyond that. I messaged OāNeill on LinkedIn months ago, inviting him to an interview on my channel to talk about his time as CEO, but I never heard back.
The last thing I remember from OāNeillās tenure as CEO was the fervor the company generated on social media to unveil a “fresh brand identity”. Once again, the issue of communication was affecting Evernote. There was a lot of criticism about spending time and money on a logo instead of addressing the problems with the app.
Regarding the old logo, did you know that the elephant trunk isĀ hiding the letterĀ e?
A frustrating web client
If you are aĀ subscriber to my YouTube channel, you know that I try crazy experiments all the time. Well, back in 2018, I tried to run my entireĀ consulting businessĀ on a Chromebook. The Chromebook paired with Google Workspace and Trello performed exceptionally well, but the Evernote web* client, which was limited at the time, ended up being a major drawback in my plan.
* It should be noted that the decision to oversimplify the web client was taken when Phil Libin was CEO.
My experiment and what was going on with Evernote (the company) at that time made me think about switching to a different app for the first time. MyĀ consulting businessĀ is about helping companies build mindful Kanban workflows using tools like Trello, so I thought Notion would be a perfect fit for my notes and Kanban workflows.
I moved some of them, played with Notion for a while, and made couple videos for my YouTube channel in Portuguese, but even though I love all the cool stuff Notion has to offer, the database vibe doesnāt appeal to me. If I were to switch to a different app, note-taking would have to be its main feature. Perhaps that is the reason whyĀ I am currently enjoying Obsidian.
Ahead of its time?
Sometimes I catch myself thinking about Evernoteās series of managerial missteps along the way, but analyzing events in hindsight is always unfair. Other times, I believe the problem was timing. It is possible that Evernote was too ahead of its time and didnāt find a way to use this advantage in its favor.
For instance, a couple of weeks ago, I decided to test theĀ Obsidian Map View plugin, and I couldnāt stop wondering why Evernote removed the fantastic map feature the app had back in the day.
Most people don’t even know this, but when we create a note, the app always attempts to save the coordinates of where the note was created. Evernote map view would simply show all notes with coordinates on a map. That’s it. We didn’t have to deal with any configuration.
It was a great feature, as were many others that were discontinued. In contrast, theĀ Obsidian Map View pluginĀ is difficult to set up, but at least it exists for people like me who want to see their notes on a map. Why? Well, you should watch the video below to be amazed by how many interesting use cases people can come up with this feature.
Evernote even had AI back in 2014, but the āAā stood for augmented. Features like context and handwriting OCR were among the many innovations the company came up with. To learn more about the challenges and the ideas they had for the future, I encourage you toĀ watch my interview with Phil Libin on this topic.
Even today, with so many of these marvels gone, itās still hard to find an app thatās both easy for non-tech-savvy people to use and that also packs in so many useful features.
But when a company stops innovating, others will take over. Steve Jobs famously said that if Apple hadnāt taken the iPod’s market share with the iPhone, other companies probably would have.
Do you remember?
Did you know that back in 1999, in the days of dial-up and DSL Internet, there was a service calledĀ Yahoo BriefcaseĀ that would create a āYā drive in our computers and allow us to synchronize files to the cloud?
Thatās correct; Yahoo had it many years before Dropbox. But I bet that young people believe that Google and other companies invented services pioneered by Yahoo. The book āMarissa Mayer and the Fight to Save Yahoo!ā has some chapters about how Yahoo missed the chance to be even bigger than todayās version of Google. Instead, it ended up as a Verizon subsidiary with a financial channel on YouTube.
Palmās path was much harder than Yahooās. They were inventing a new market, and if that wasnāt tough enough for the team to deal with, the company went through numerous ownership changes and never found its way to a stable future. Itās mind-boggling to me that an entire generation is unaware of the remarkable products this company invented.
If you believe that the idea of having a personal assistant in your pocket was created by Apple with the iPhone, here is a good book for you: āPiloting Palm: The Inside Story of Palm, Handspring, and the Birth of the Billion-Dollar Handheld Industry.ā
The Apple II was the first computerĀ I owned as a teenager, but my Palm PDA and Yahoo services were tools I used professionally for a long time, andĀ I still miss some of Palmās features.Ā I wish these companies had continued to evolve, but, as I mentioned before, market forces cannot be controlled.
A bright future?
The year is 2018, and here we go again. Evernote has a new CEO, Ian Small. Iād say his main accomplishment was solving a problem that no one else had the courage to deal with before him.
Evernote had apps for Android, iOS, Mac, Web, and Windows, but I always referred to them as āversionsā because they were so different from each other. The original management team had a reason for this approach, but in retrospect, it never worked well for us, the users. For instance, formatting a note using one of these āversionsā would, more often than not, break it in another. However, I believe the worst consequence was that it slowed down innovation.
Evernote 10 was a necessary evil that created so many complications for the end user. It had to be done. It was a long-overdue project. Furthermore, it took longer than expected, and it was hit by COVID-19. And, again, more features were removed from the app.
Can you see a pattern here? From a userās perspective, Evernote is constantly removing features and working to fix new bugs.
But for the first time, Evernote established an astonishing channel of communication with its users. The behind-the-scenes videos with the CEO, the blog posts, and many other projects created a new kind of collaboration between us and the company.
Smallās courage to rewrite all the clients was both bold and necessary. But it also means that from a technical standpoint, Evernote 10 was an entirely new app, and like every new piece of software, there may be several unknown bugs.
The good news is that 10 opened the doors to innovation. Evernote Home and its great widgets, such as the calendar and filtered notes, tasks, notes filters, and backlinks, came after 10 was introduced. Even the Real-Time Editing feature was being worked on by Ianās team for many, many months before the Bending Spoons acquisition.
There are frequent complaints about bugs, but the way I see it, Evernote had no other options. They had to deal with the multiple apps that were incompatible with each other. It was either no more innovation or dealing with some bugs for a while.
However, my concern is somewhat distinct. I think Smallās decision to move development towards the āAccomplish Anythingā vision was a great idea. The new features his team created brought our notes to the next level, and the way he spoke about Evernote was a clear indication that many more similar features would be coming. Unfortunately, I have no idea what Bending Spoons plans are for Evernote.
I am a fan of Small and his accomplishments, but what I hope to understand one day is why the company was sold. Was it his decision? The boardās? Was it an offer? What happened?
The Bending Spoons era
I have no doubt that Bending Spoons is working hard to fix all the problems they inherited, but they may be running out of time. The bugs, along with the layoffs, price increases, and other unpopular decisions, may be hurting Evernote credibility too quickly. To add more salt to the injury, the connection Smallās team built with the community by being so transparent is slowly disappearing.
I believe Bending Spoons has everything it takes to make it right, but only time will tell if they will be able to replace the iPod with the iPhone or end up like Palm, Yahoo, and so many other fascinating companies that are long gone.
Building your brand out of a domain name
TL;DR: Social media is a great space to become known, create authority, and grow your audience, but you need a home base that is yours. Buy a domain, create a basic website if you donāt want to spend too much time on it, and always, always promote it on all the social media services you are using.*
How having my own domain gave me so much freedom
Like many of us, I have grown tired of social media, and in recent years my posts have shifted to basically promoting the content I create and getting in touch with other creators and potential partners.
About 20 years ago, after using Geocities and other similar services, I decided it was time to establish a web presence by creating a self-hosted WordPress website with my name as the address. When that became too technical for me, I switched to WordPress.com. But I didnāt stop there. I decided to give Squarespace a shot long before it became the recognizable name it is today, primarily because I wanted a more professional-looking website.
Many years after that, I moved to Google Sites because I was already paying for it on my Workspace subscription. It ended up not working out for me because of some limitations, and last year I went back to WordPress to give it another try.
Between all the switches described above, I also tried Micro.blog and Postash.io for a while. More on this shortly. Finally, last week I moved to Obsidian Publish.
Despite all these transitions, people could always find me visiting my website. Having my own domain and using something called permalinks made this possible.
What is a permalink?
If you search for āwhat is a permalink?ā on Google, many of the results will be explanations based on the SEO benefits. Thatās a good reason on its own, but I also think they are a great tool for moving your website to another hosting service. Let me tell you what I mean by this.
This was precisely what I did when going from one service to another. Many times I used the moving opportunity to remove some posts and rearrange others. But because the permalinks were kept the same, rearranging pages in different places didnāt break anything.
Hereās an example:
For a long time, I have had a page listing some of the books I have already read. The address has been vladcampos.com/library since I created it. But when I recently moved to Obsidian Publish, I decided to rearrange parts of my website structure. I now have a ātoolboxā directory containing the ālibraryā and other pages, like one for my filmmaking gear. So instead of the address above, I ended up with:
vladcampos.com/toolbox/library
Because the page is now located inside the toolbox subfolder, I set vladcampos.com/library as a permalink. Now, if you type vladcampos.com/library, the website will present you with the correct page. In other words, old visitors and Google Search will still find the page.
Yes, you can set up permalinks on Obsidian Publish.
Why did I move to Obsidian Publish?
Back in 2014, a company called Postash.io released a service to create blog posts from Evernote notes. All one had to do was add the āpublishā tag, and the note would be converted into a blog entry. And, yes, removing the tag would unpublish the note.
Until this day, I still believe that this is a genius solution because all of my articles start with an idea that I write down and work on using an app like Evernote or Obsidian.
Postash.io is still available, but it hasnāt been updated in a long time and doesnāt have many important features a website need. Thatās why I used it for less than a year back then and quickly moved on. However, as a concept, Postash.io still makes a lot of sense for my workflow, and thatās why I recently moved my site to Obsidian Publish.
Publishing became so much easier, but there are many other reasons that Iāll explore in future articles and videos. Furthermore, having the original posts on my computer as notes is like having a backup of a backup, and this is pretty comforting.
What were the lessons we learned today?
Social media platforms come and go. Use them to your advantage, but make sure you have a home base ā a website with your own domain name. And if you wish to experiment with other hosting services, permalinks can help you keep all the old links working.
Without experiencing the unknown variables, itās impossible to organize efficiently
I believe the best way to organize things, whether theyāre physical or digital, is to accept the mess for a while. At least it works very well here. That’s why my strategy for organizing things is to always start with a messy environment, a blank canvas to play with. However, thereās a catch: I have to pay close attention to what Iām constantly searching for and using.
It is only after rearranging things again and again and learning my necessities that I am finally ready to begin building the system that will meet my needs. But, there is no doubt in my mind that that will not be the final version. The world around us constantly changes, and we must adapt to keep up.
The tricky part is figuring out the exact moment when the messy stage has to give way to some order. I like to use a concept I borrowed from economics: Transactions Costs. In other words, if the mess is making me less and less productive, itās time to pause and organize by choosing the best workflow Iāve come up with so far.
If you havenāt already, I encourage you to watch the video below. Itās about an Evernote notebook being built from empty to fully functional. It started out messy, and I added tags, links, etc. as I learned what I was constantly looking for and using.
And like I said before, itās a strategy that works in both the digital and physical worlds. Last week, I finally organized my workbench, inspired by the way I moved objects around when I was working on the Apple IIe restoration project. Iām pretty happy with the final result, but I already had new ideas for it.
The messy approach is also a way to foster creativity. There are many good books about this subject. Thereās one literally titled Messy, but The Click Moment and Algorithms to Live By also discuss it.
Moving things around forces us to look at a problem from a different perspective, which helps us come up with unexpected solutions. But it is important to keep in mind that the project on which we are currently working is not our sole concern. In my case, the messy workspace was also a project in progress.
Take a look at the shelf and the soldering station; they are all made from scrap wood. By the way, I love that cool industrial vibe. You can even tell from the black circles on one of the shelf legs that the piece of wood was once below the table glass. It was a test; I was trying to figure out how many crossbars I needed to keep everything stable, and I ended up replacing the studs with the thicker ones that are there now. As for the rest of the replaced pieces of wood, they were used on other projects.
But there are more repurposed materials. The desk itself is made up of the top glass of an old kitchen table, supported by some cheap Ikea trestles. As for that Chromebook, it will not get Chrome OS updates anymore, but it is still good enough for Google searches and the Evernote web client.
So, the next time you are working on a complex project, donāt be too hard on yourself. Every so often, a little mess is what you need to unlock a solution that was always there, but you couldnāt see.
By the way, switching to another project also works, but thatās a story for another time.
Generations
After helping me fix the issue with the ROM chips a few weeks ago, my son got to play Gremlins on the Apple IIe.
Is your computer truly yours?
It is remarkable how contemporary technology is built around the loss of control over our devices. In contrast, the Apple IIe, which is considerably older, is so open to experimentation and modifications.
One or two years ago, I wanted to try ChromeOS Flex and decided to install it on my old MacBook Air 2012. I enjoyed the process of installing it and had fun with the OS. Now I needed macOS back on the computer to be able to use it on the Apple IIe restoration project, but when it came time to reinstall macOS, things didnāt go well at all.
macOS Recovery
If you start macOS holding command + r, youāll be prompted to reinstall the OS. I was counting on this when I decided to try ChromeOS Flex. Anyway, I tried all possible variations of the command + r command, but at some point, near the end of the process, a glitch would always stop the installation.
Another issue was that the countdown to the end of the process would display a huge negative number, which would also result in an error message. I searched online and found out that the negative number was related to a network problem, but my network and internet connection were working perfectly well.
I also tried to reinstall macOS by holding the option key. This is how you tell the Mac to search for external drives when it starts up. However, I was unsuccessful there as well. I was probably doing something wrong because the system would never recognize the installation disk on connected drives. It is also possible that the bootable part of the disc was damaged during the installation of Chrome OS Flex. I donāt know. Regardless of the reason, I am puzzled as to why I was encountering such difficulty. After all, it is my computer.
Downloading macOS
We are provided with downloads of older versions of the operating system, but I challenge you to try installing it on a computer with a dead or new hard drive. One must go through numerous workarounds to make it work. By the way, during my saga I also learned that Apple does not provide any official instructions for how to install an older OS over a newer one. Even worse, it tells us that we cannot do it.
Carbon Copy Cloner
After jumping from one website to another and failing miserably, I remembered that my wife didnāt get rid of her old Mac mini from 2012. My new plan was to clone the Mini hard drive using Carbon Copy Cloner. Of course, I had problems there as well. First, I had to find an older version of the program that worked with macOS Mojave. Next, the mini drive is 500 GB, and the Airās is 64 GB.
To make a square fit into the circle, I created a new admin user (me) on my wifeās computer, and on Carbon Copy Cloner, I unselected her user and all the non-essential files before cloning. Of course, figuring out what are the essential files is easier said than done. After lot of trial and error, I was successful, but I would not be able to use this same strategy on a slightly newer Mac. My 2012 machine has a removable SSD, and I happen to have the correct USB enclosure. In other words, I could remove it from my computer and connect it to my wifeās Mini via USB.
My computer finally started, but the OS was extremely slow. It would take several minutes to boot, and the mouse was jumping all around the screen every time I moved it. Thinking that some issue could have occurred during the cloning process, I repeated it several times, but I had no success.
It was time to take a break, like I usually do when I get stuck.
The next day, I remembered that macOS has an Activity Monitor. I ran it, but to my surprise, the total CPU load was over 90%, even though no software or process was taking more than 5% of the CPU time. Back to Google!
Resetting PRAM and SMC
In the end, there wasnāt anything wrong with the cloning process. The issue was with the different computers. Using Carbon Copy Cloner to make a copy is like transplanting a brain from one person to another. The new brain in my MacBook Air was from a Mac Mini. To put it simply, I had to help it adjust to its new body.
I donāt have enough technical knowledge to explain this, but thereās a way to reset basic macOS configurations called PRAM and SMC. I reset them, and the OS started working like a charm.
Finally!
Anyway, all this was just another step in my Apple IIe restoration project. I could finally install the ADTPro software on the MacBook Air to copy old software to the IIe. Of course, I hit a new brick wall. But this is a story for another day.
A thoughtful gift for my father
Before smartphones, my father would always have a pen and notepad like this one in his shirt’s front pocket. Not only that, but he would use them to explain anything I asked him about, drawingĀ and writing every single detail while talking to me.
He always said, “You should write it down if you would rather not forget it." I guess it worked. It seems there’s no other explanation; I got into note-taking because of him.
Have you had the chance to listen to my conversation with Jon on the Triple T Productivity podcast? I am currently on the trip I mentioned, and today I came across this small notepad that I immediately bought for his birthday tomorrow. It’s not exactly like the ones he used to have, but I believe it will bring him good memories.
I switched to Google Tasks
I’ve recently switched to Google Tasks, and there are a few clues as to why in this post. But detailed information is coming soon. I’m currently working on a script for a video explaining the hacks I used to build my system and why it might be a better choice, depending on what Apps and devices you use.
And talking about tasks, there are many videos on my channel about Evernote Tasks and the tutorial below explaining how to set up and use the Obsidian Tasks plugin.
A captivating and enchanting language
Dogs can’t speak like humans, but they know how to make themselves quite obvious. It is only a matter of paying attention. And we should always listen because they have so many lessons to teach us about a mindful life.
For the past three years, I have been learning a lot about kindness, persistence, compassion, loyalty, friendship, and love. ā„ļø š¾
This is extremely embarrassing, I lost the Tile, not my keys.
The app shows me the circle on the map, pointing me to the approximate position of where it is. I know I’m close to it because I can see the option to make it chime when I approach the area.
For the past couple of days, I have been walking around that spot, staring at my phone and the ground below, as if I were chasing a PokĆ©mon that isn’t there. Despite walking the entire perimeter many times, I never received a signal higher than ‘Moderate’ and could never hear it chiming.
It is a gas station I usually go to; the app tells me I’m in the Bluetooth range,Ā and I even asked inside if they found it. The lost and found box has many keys but no Tiles. Which makes me wonder how people drove from the gas station after losing their keys. Anyway, I have my own problems.
Maybe it is inside a drain. I don’t know. But it’sĀ embarrassing that I lost the device that was supposed to help me find my keys, which I still have.
Evernote and other technologies I used when I was in Morocco
When we entered the boarding area, my wife realized that she had forgotten her phone. In other words, gone were all the messages the travel agency had sent her. Thankfully, Evernote saved our trip to Morocco. At that point, we were unable to go back home and return in time, so I opened my Travel notebook on Evernote to assess the situation. But before I go any further, let me provide you with some context.
Usually, I am the one who organizes our trips, but this time it was different. My wife was doing it. On my side, as I have already shown in past videos, I was saving on Evernote all that she was sending me. Also, I am not a WhatsApp user.
Back to the airport
I had our boarding passes and all instructions in offline notes, but hereās my question. Why would a travel agency send all the information to its clients using WhatsApp instead of email? Also, why would the clients trust WhatsApp with all that information? And Iām not even talking about privacy. Iām talking about access.
What is Markdown and how to use it
Markdown is a set of characters used to format text in compatible editors. For example, if you put one asterisk on *each side of a word or sentence*, the Markdown editor will show it in italics like this: each side of a word or sentence.
To use it, all one has to do is memorize a small set of symbols and use them in a compatible editor. Since there are not a lot of formatting options, dominating and using Markdown is not hard.
Another way to think of Markdown is as a simpler version of HTML, which is the language used to make the pages you access online with a browser.
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