When I started my YouTube channel in English three years ago, I thought it would be one of the most challenging things I’d ever do. I always wanted to produce my content in English, but fear held me back for years. Thankfully, I finally took the plunge.
Despite living in the US several times, I’ve always struggled with the language’s nuances and quirks. I’m sure you can easily remember at least one time I used the wrong pronoun, verb, expression, or pronunciation. I can clearly see my mistakes in older videos.
Yes, I do watch past videos, as this helps me do my best to improve with each new one, but English will never be my first language, and mistakes are inevitable. The bright side is that things are getting easier every day. Or should I say less hard?
But why simplify when you can always complicate a bit? I have published books before, but always in my native language. As some of you may be aware, I recently started writing a new book, but this time in English. Which, like the channel on YouTube, has been just as intimidating.
Thank you for your patience and support. You guys are spectacular! By the way, what’s something that scares you? Maybe it’s time to take the leap and do it!
PS.: This is the first video I published in English. However, the channel is not only about Evernote anymore.
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From time to time, I go on a quest searching for a basic macOS photos app that reads images from a folder on my computer, like Picasa did before Google bought and discontinued the app. I could never find a good option. Any suggestions?
I opened Mastodon, and suddenly, I’m reading posts about the Apple event from Threads, Flipboard, Microdotblog, Medium, and even Mastodon 😊. All in one place! The Fediverse and the ActivityPub protocol are mind-blowing. What a time to be alive!
How come a book weighs 1.1kg (38.9oz)? That’s insane. It is likely the 786 pages containing text plus four inexplicable blank sheets at the end. Anyway, I picked this one up secondhand because it’s out of print and there’s no e-book version I know of.
I love reading on subways, trains, and planes, but, as you can imagine, bringing this book with me is always a challenge. It’s like reading and doing cross-fit at the same time 😂. Not to mention how unbalanced it was to hold when I began reading it. Now that I’m reaching half of it, it’s easier to manage. But as soon as I cross to the other side, things will become unbalanced again.
That’s probably why it’s taking me ages to finish it, so I came up with a plan to make it more portable. I started testing my idea yesterday and just completed the process. I can now read it on my Supernote, and you can learn how I did it watching the video below.
On how am I rediscovering my creative freedom with digital scribbling.
The Supernote is helping me to rediscover the joy of handwriting my scripts. It’s like using magical paper to seamlessly capture and reorganize ideas.
Years before Evernote, I would write many of my first podcast scripts on any piece of paper I could get my hands on. I’d usually have the ideas after a run, like it still happens today for the YouTube videos. But even though writing them down was a great way to remember later, trust me, the final “document” was typically a big mess.
Let’s be honest, it’s tough to keep handwritten notes as organized as a bullet list. Ideas don’t always flow in a neat, linear way, so it can be a real challenge to make sense of them later. My drafts were often ugly and pretty challenging to understand because of all the small text inserts. On some occasions, I would use arrows and even a second piece of paper with numbers on both parts of a sentence to try to connect them. I suppose you can imagine that it was often difficult to decipher.
In hindsight, I’d say I’d moved to digital writing as soon as technology was portable enough, probably because of the impossibility of inserting new text in between lines on paper.
I frequently do that on my computer; however, typing comes with its limitations. For example, sketching can be difficult to integrate with typed text. That’s great on paper, but again, there are all the problems mentioned above. Furthermore, I’m not good at drawing, so I frequently have to erase and fix things as I go.
For example, the thumbnail you see in the image below was created at a much larger size. It was the first thing I did on that page. When I was happy with it, I resized it to fit the corner of the screen (paper?). All the text you don’t see — more on that in a moment — was rearranged several times as I was writing, just like the pieces of a puzzle slowly falling into place.
It’s impossible to do that on paper, but the Supernote brought back the freedom and joy I remember having many years ago, and improved the process. It is like having the best of both worlds. And the most convenient part is that I can easily send the final version to Evernote or Obsidian.
As for the hidden text, there’s no secret there. I’m just trying to keep a mystery aura because I have already started to produce this video and don’t want to spoil the surprise. But if you cannot contain yourself, the untouched drawing is available for supporters on Patreon and YouTube.
Anyway, I think that you can probably tell by the thumbnail and the other drawing that the video has something to do with sending content to the Supernote via Evernote.
I frequently hear people saying that the Fediverse is a lonely place to be. Help might be on the way. Flipboard is about to inject new life into the platform with a wave of new users. Learn how to easily follow them and interact with this growing community.
I have a new idea that I’d like to share with you. Yes, again. Changing things up, like I’ve been doing lately, makes me feel inspired.
I believe I’ve finally found a good way to use Obsidian Canvas. Instead of creating notes just to be able to filter them by tags, I’m trying Canvas groups for images or PDFs.
This approach may not work for everything, but the zoom in and out feature may make it easier to find the resources I use on my Maker and IT-related projects, especially when compared to sorting notes by tags. It’s a visual space, so I believe it will be easy to spot the item based on the color and format of the image or PDF. Time will tell, though.
For testing how efficient, or not this will be, I’ve created the “Maker Dashboard” Canvas that I’m using for everything related to my creativity process. For now, it has just a few notes (image above), and the following groups: macOS, Writer, Woodworking, and some loose content that I’m sure will end up being grouped with other future images or PDFs.
Side note: Keen eyes will notice that there’s also a “Palm OS” group, and, although it is not possible to clearly see, there are some images related to other vintage passions of mine next to that group.
And just like what I mentioned yesterday regarding the single folder for all my pictures, all these files can also be easily added to other Obsidian notes, or used from my computer file system.
With AudioNotes you can record & organize audio files with ease. It also transcribes on the go—even from WhatsApp audios—and creates content from your notes. But there’s more. You can set up automations to send transcriptions to other apps, like Notion. What about Evernote? Well, I’ve been exchanging some emails with the developer to help him build a thoughtful integration with the green elephant.
If you like what you see, please consider using my affiliate link when trying AudioNotes for free.
Since I am currently on a reorganization spree, I decided to experiment with an idea. At the moment, I have multiple subfolders for images used on my blog posts, Journal, Office, and Home folders on Obsidian. Maybe even others. One thing I always wanted to try was to have some folders dedicated to certain types of files, such as images, PDFs, etc.
Here’s the plan. I’ll consolidate all the images into one folder, which will serve two purposes. First, it will work as an album. However, it will also serve as a centralized storage space from which I can drag pictures to use in any of my notes.
And because of the way Obsidian works, those pictures will also be easily accessible from the computer’s file system if I need them for other projects. Below, you can see how easy it is to interact with the images using the Mac file system (Finder). By the way, the kids in the picture are my sister and me, captured during my first move to Boston. I absolutely love that city.
Another benefit is how straight-forward it is to save pictures there. I can simply use the “save as” option on any image editor and choose the “Photos” folder on the file system, which in reality is located in Obsidian.
I’ve successfully moved 40 images and am pleased with the results. But there’s a catch. Because of the way I imported some of my content to Obsidian, the creation dates of many files are all messed up. So, I’m also adding the date (YYYY-MM-DD) to the beginning of each file name (thumbnails above). This will help me see the pictures in chronological order by ordering the files alphabetically. I hope that makes sense.
If this works, I may try the same with PDF files. Stay tuned.