I was reorganizing things in my office and found this stand I built for my wife many years ago. It happened a long time ago, but I still remember it as if it were today.
As we were rearranging her desk, she said she would love to have “normal” access to the ports and power button. ‘This is how it should be,’ she said, while putting it vertically on the desk.
I pulled out some leftover pieces of wood and put this together. It is not shown in the pictures, but the space between the feet was measured to accommodate the external hard drive below the computer.
There was no sophisticated measuring, perfect sending, Danish oil, or anything like that. The whole thing was built on the fly, with the Mini itself being used to figure out all the measurements. And yes, you should imagine it with all the cables hanging. But, remember, the point was easy access to the ports and power button. She loved my solution.
🤫 Please, please, don’t tell her about the new Mini power button.
I’ve been keeping the original Final Cut files of all of my YouTube videos, and I do occasionally need and use them for future projects. However, storage for this is starting to become a little too expensive, and I came up with an idea.
Keep the originals for a few months, then delete them and only archive the final video and thumbnail. The question I’ve been asking myself for the last couple of days is: how many months is a few months? Three? Six? One year?
If everyone who owns a domain name were to verify it as their Bluesky user, it would be much easier to tell which account is real and which is not. I’m confused as to why, especially corporations, organizations, etc., don’t do it from day zero. It’s so quick to do, and it makes all the difference.
I’ve been using the Penstar for a few days now, but it offers so many features that I decided to produce multiple videos, starting with an overview and my first impressions. If you have questions, please let me know below, and I’ll answer them in the video.
Don’t laugh at me, but I didn’t realize I could go to an open-source project at GitHub and add suggestions or ask for new features. I assumed that only developers could do this, and as a user, I was limited to reporting bugs. Thank you, Ivo, for explaining it to me.
Because of my YouTube channel, I’m constantly trying new software, plugins, etc., and almost always have ideas to share. This new superpower, which I didn’t know I had, changes everything. I’m so happy.
At times, the smallest of things can bring us the greatest joy. The Obsidian Web Clipper is great, but the fact that we can set it to always show highlighted text when we return to a webpage is such a nice touch. I 💜 it!
Today, I woke up to a milestone message sent by YouTube. It took me a while to do what big channels do in a day or a single video, but it means a lot to me. You guys are absolutely outstanding. Thank you for being there and helping me grow my channel.
Many years ago, long before the current Twitter drama, the company introduced an algorithmic feed. We were told that it was optional, but in reality, the app kept pushing us out of the chronological timeline. I remember hating that decision and implementation so much, and in hindsight, that was probably when my love for Twitter started fading away.
Threads’s approach is an even worse version of what Twitter started back then. That’s why I never liked it. Mastodon was my choice, as it had a chronological feed, but also because of the many cool things the ActivityPub protocol can enable.
Then came Bluesky. Why they didn’t choose to collaborate on the ActivityPub protocol instead of creating yet another one is beyond my comprehension. The good news is that the ATProto is also decentralized, at least as far as I can technically understand. But there’s more.
For some reason that I also don’t comprehend, people, institutions, and companies are recently choosing it as their new home. I know what triggered the move, but I’m not sure why Bluesky was the choice of so many people at the same time. Anyway, as I previously mentioned, that means that nearly half the users I was following on Twitter are now on Bluesky.
All the above means that I’m back to a feed that I absolutely enjoy. As you know, I’m a Timeline person. But I’m not only following posts happening in real time (a.k.a. in the correct order); I’m now interacting with others in a way I was missing without knowing.
By the way, I just created a Started Pack of some of the hardware and software I have in my Toolbox that have already joined Bluesky. If you don’t know what a Starter Pack is, please watch the video below.
There are a lot of configuration options in the new Obsidian Web Clipper. And I love it! For example, I set it to create the clipped note with the properties I always use. But there are many other options, such as choosing between creating a new note or adding to a specific position in an existing note. Anyway, it’s going to take me some time to test everything and then make a video about it.
I'm still perplexed as to why so many users are choosing Bluesky.
Please don’t get me wrong, I love that people are finally moving away from Twitter, and I do like Bluesky. However, I am still perplexed as to why so many users are choosing it at the same time. As I write this, Bluesky is about to reach 20,000,000 users, which in my case translates to nearly half the people I was following on Twitter. When I started using Mastodon, the number was considerably lower.
Speaking of which, I think Mastodon would be a better place for companies, news outlets, and institutions to be because of how servers work there, but perhaps Bluesky’s approach was a better one. Since there is currently only one server to choose from, it may be easier for people to understand it.
As for Threads, I don’t like the fact that they are constantly pushing the “For You” feed and are taking so long to properly join the Fediverse. It’s also important to keep in mind that it’s a Meta product.
I’ll still post on my blog first and from there automatically share on social media, but it’s great to see so much enthusiasm and so many people joining a decentralized platform.
Finally, if you are new to Bluesky, the video below will help you learn how verification works on the platform. Even if you are not planning to verify your account, I believe it’s important to know if you are actually following the real person or institution.
I’m having so much fun with NotebookLM lately. It behaves more like a companion AI as it uses the information and knowledge we have added to it to give the answers. I’m curious as to why there’s so little discussion about it. Anyway, there’s definitely a video coming up soon.
Bluesky User Count
I was considering the recent migration to Bluesky as a fad, but at the rate at which the Bluesky User Count number is growing, it will reach and exceed 19M users very soon. To give you some perspective, there are almost 11M ActivityPub users as of now.
Of course, if Threads was already fully integrated into the Fediverse, the situation would be entirely different. Which brings us to the question I’ve been asking myself for quite some time now: is Threads even serious about being part of the Fediverse?
Penstar sent me this device, and before turning it on, I was already shocked by how thin it is. It’s extremely thin, almost as thin as the USB-C charging port. Then, when I started the onboarding process, I couldn’t believe my eyes. The text is so sharp.
I literally got it out of the box now, and these are just my initial impressions. If you’d like to learn more about it, stay tuned. After playing with it for a few days, I’ll start sharing more thoughts and reactions on my blog and YouTube channel.
Bending Spoons was the best thing to ever happen to Evernote
The more I learn about how Evernote was operating before Bending Spoons bought it, the more I love how well it’s been taken care of now.
Although I began using Evernote in 2008, it was only in 2012, when I joined the Ambassadors Program, that I found myself gaining access to some inside information. But just like what happens today as an Evernote Expert, there was never full access to all the details, strategies, or plans for the future. For those, I’ve always done my homework, consuming every bit of public information and connecting the dots myself.
Things got slightly more complicated when they were acquired by a company I had never heard of before. That meant starting from scratch to learn all about Bending Spoons.
Like in the past, I found myself reading, watching, and listening to everything I could find related to that unknown company. And I mean anything. Even if it is about products unrelated to Evernote, like the recently acquired StreamYard.
As a non-developer, I don’t follow the Pragmatic Engineer Podcast because I wouldn’t be able to understand the majority of the conversations. But when I noticed a trio of executives from Bending Spoons in the same episode, I had to watch it and do whatever it took to understand what they were talking about.
Fortunately, the episode was not as challenging to follow as I was expecting. Everything that Luca Ferrari (cofounder and CEO) and Federico Simionato (Evernote product lead) said, I understood. But the many technical details explained by Francesco Mancone (CTO) meant pausing the podcast every few seconds to go learn about new terminology.
I had to watch it a few times because of his technical explanations. The first time was on a plane when I was going on vacation. Without the internet, there was no way to research anything online, but the one-hour-long episode gave me a good sense of how dense the material was. Back at my office, I could delve into it and “translate” all the technical jargon. The video below has my take on it, but that’s not the only thing I talked about.
I like to understand the reasons behind anything I’m learning, so it was incredibly helpful to listen to the cofounder go over the history of Bending Spoons. Not only that, but as I explained in the video above, the company operates in an unusual but fascinating way.
And there’s more. Being a fan of a lot of the Agile principles, I couldn’t help but notice some of them in Luca’s words. It would be wonderful to have him on my YouTube channel some day for a conversation about Bending Spoons.
Although I’m frequently in touch with Federico, there’s always something here and there that I’m learning from his appearances on podcasts. This time, it was the standalone app that will be released to showcase how great Evernote’s transcription feature is.
I have extensive knowledge about Evernote’s history, but it’s quite uncommon to get access to inside information. This is where listening to Francesco was instrumental in bridging certain gaps. When I contrasted the information he shared to all the moments I’m familiar with, I could realize the impressive amount of work the team is doing.
He was the one who helped me understand how much work is in progress to bring Evernote’s technical capabilities to the level of modern apps. And I’m not talking about new features; it’s about rebuilding almost everything under the hood. In other words, things that people don’t see, but that are instrumental to a seamless experience.
Now that I have a more in-depth understanding of how Bending Spoons operates and what is actually happening to my beloved app, I’m more confident than ever that Evernote is in great hands.
I make every effort to avoid these planes, but sometimes it is not possible. Before boarding, I already knew it. It is easily identifiable by looking at the turbines. If they have a zigzag pattern on the back of the engines, it’s a Max. This was a 737-8200 variant, but a Max is a Max. I would be lying if I told you I was not scared, but everything ended up fine.
Voicenotes Believer Plan, which is a single payment for life, will stop being offered at some point this week. The email they sent does not specify a date, but I just checked, and it is still available when I write this.
If you are still on the fence, this could be the perfect opportunity to buy it. And if you decide to do it, please consider using my affiliate link. You will pay the same amount, but I will receive a small commission.
The email also mentions some upcoming features that I’m really curious to try:
- Meeting note-taker with timestamps, speakers, and insights.
- Share notes with other accounts for work and personal use.
- Intelligent insights based on past notes.
- Desktop app & Chrome extension.
The inspiration behind the Timeline System
A brief history of the pitfalls and struggles that ended up leading me to create the Timeline System. And how Evernote helped me twice.
Years ago, when I worked for big corporations, I quickly realized how much of a problem it was not to have a good system for organizing information and keeping up with activities.
After trying many existing options, it became clear to me that they often felt rigid and unnatural, forcing users to adapt to the system rather than the other way around.
The closest I got to something that would work in a more intentional way was Agile, which I studied for many years. I ended up adapting some of its core concepts to Kanban boards, which I still use to help companies. But it is far from ideal for managing life. Anyway, this learning experience led me to Kaizen, which also heavily influenced the way I see mindful work.
Back to my journey. I knew my system needed to output information based on how we move things around. In addition to that, it had to do more than one thing with a single action from us, the users.
Some examples of the system accomplishing that are the auto-updated number of notes in the Action Containers and the dynamically created list of tasks, as shown in the video below.
Another important “discovery”, was the realization that time passes. In other words, there’s nothing we can do about it.
Time. Will. Pass.
The good news, is that it will democratically happen in the same way for all of us. However, if there’s no way to slow it down, accelerate it, or go back or forward, we are nothing but slaves to time. In other words, the most accurate representation of our lives is a timeline.
The third element was the recognition that human memory is much worse than many of us believe it to be. There are several great books on this topic, but there’s one I enjoyed the most: Memory Illusion by Julia Shaw. And that’s why I strongly believe that a system will only be truly efficient if it starts with good note-taking.
If we put all the above together, we have the Action Containers representing all the work in progress and, at the same time, clearly showing us the number of activities going on. Then, there’s the Static Containers, which help us with all the information we constantly need and wish we were able to always remember. Think of them as a memory caches.
Finally, there’s the Timeline, to where everything goes. That’s your long-term memory. It’s a representation of everything that happened in your life. And because it is chronologically ordered and categorized with tags, you can go to a specific moment and that will trigger other memories. Going there is like recollecting facts when someone shows you a picture of something you don’t remember happening. It’s almost a flashback experience.
If you haven’t, please watch the video below. It will help you understand the Timeline System dynamics.
Ditching the Kanban Board
Although notes are a much better way to store information, a Kanban board is unbelievably better at representing the current state of activities in progress. One might think that it is possible to address the problem by making cards as rich in information as notes. That’s technically possible using, for example, an Obsidian plugin that I tried for a while. However, it ends up creating another issue. We would require a multitude of boards to manage all aspects of our lives, which, in turn, makes the system excessively complex.
Notes it is
If you look back to my first videos, you will notice how I was struggling with making it work with multiple Filtered Notes Widgets on Evernote Home. I could never find a seamless solution, and Evernote made my life even harder when they removed Home from the mobile client. Yes, I’m aware that it is still there, but it is so many clicks away that it feels like it is not there.
Anyway, that forced me to go back to using the Shortcuts area to replicate the mess I created on Evernote Home. Little did I know that its constraints would push me in the direction of figuring out the solution that I had been seeking for a considerable amount of time. Interestingly, many years ago, after fighting with how Evernote organizes our notes, I realized how powerful chronology is.
Evernote’s features probably make it the best place to run the Timeline System, but I didn’t want it to be exclusive to one app. So the next step was to make it as simple as possible to enable it to run in as many apps as I could.
That was not an easy task, but to be honest, the hardest part has been figuring out a way to explain how the system works and all its benefits in a way that it’s easy to understand. After so many years, it all happens naturally when I’m doing things or teaching my clients. But putting that in words has been a challenge.
Anyway, after the first video explaining how to set it up on Evernote, there’s now the one below explaining how I’m using the system on Obsidian.
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Because it was the first time I asked AI to create an image for a post, I didn’t know if I could simply use it. So I asked for permission 😊. By the way, I always say please and thank you when I talk to Gemini.
(…) Thank you. Can I use this image in my article?
— Yes, you can definitely use the image in your article. As an AI language model, I don’t have ownership rights over the images I generate. They are intended for your personal use. Please note that if you are using the image in a commercial context, you might want to consider adding a credit line like “Image generated by Gemini AI.” This can help clarify the image’s origin.
— Would you like me to help you with anything else?
— No. Thank you.