Exploring AquaMinds NoteTaker

All About My Secret Cyber-Life

As Yoda once noted, "There is another." And so it is with my bloggy existence--truth be told, I have another cyber-family across town . . .

CultureHack has been in mothballs almost from the day I established this little NoteTaker-based beachhead. Recently, however, I've applied the paddles to CultureHack and it seems to be breathing on its own again. Check out the "Honey, I'm Home" post over there for more details.

The point's this: I'm feeling pretty spunky over at my first blog--in the past few days, I've let a few rants fly that pretty much accomplish the same thing as Jack Palance doing warm-ups for his One-Arm Pushup Thing--and I'm extending a cordial, self-serving invitation to check-out what I'm up to. I've similarly sent the very patient CultureHack readers to pay a visit or two over here.

As for Exploring AquaMinds NoteTaker, have no fear--it'll still be around. The only thing that's changed is when I want to let loose with with an essay that has nothing to do with NT, I'll have someplace inherently designed to accept my highly developed brand of stream-of-consciousness. This seems like an eminently sane arrangement because in the course of a typical day, I have many more opinions about Life, The Universe and Everything then I do about tech tips and workarounds. And rather than begin to dilute the focus of this site--yes, the terrifying thing is that this site does have a focus (of sorts)--it's more orderly to say the really outlandish, hair-curling stuff over at that blog.

Plus, I gotta admit that Uma still hasn't contacted me, so I can only assume--however horrifying the thought may be--that She Who Must Be Desired is interested in things other than NoteTaker. Given this revelation, giving myself some more topical elbow room seemed a sound strategy in my ongoing campaign for Uma's heart . . .

See you soon--either here or there.

Oh, And One More Thing . . . A true tale of a NoteShare-assisted Smart Mob

When I was going up the stairs,
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today,
I wish, I wish he'd go away.
--Hughes Mearns

Hey, man, thanks for coming. No, no--I'm over here. Don't even think about turning around. Just act natural and pretend you're waiting for someone. I'm deep in this doorway and I don't want to be seen for obvious reasons--the next blog entry was going to celebrate my Official, Triumphant Return to this cyber backwater. But, natch, plans once more haven't panned out: I've got more NoteShare-related news I want to share sooner than later. So once again I'm in stealth mode. I'll try to make this a brief as I can, and with luck, just maybe I can get out of here without calling attention to myself . . .

Last time I was here, I spilled the beans about NoteShare, AquaMinds' new, forthcoming application, remember? Well, afterwards, I began to wonder if I gave the impression that using NoteShare demanded a rigorous, well-planned workflow. Because though it can certainly deal with more meticulous approaches, its real power is its flexibility.

Technorati Tags: Collaboration, NoteShare, NoteTaker, Web20

Pond Scum Spotlight: In Which Idiots Who Pollute Cyberspace Get the Level of Attention They Obviously Crave

Hi There. I’ve just spent the past hour or so scrubbing spam comments off this weblog. Big, dumb, robotic intrusions into a discourse space with the sole purpose of shoving unsolicited ecommerce past the eyeballs of unsuspecting visitors.

Let’s be clear: This is not the equivalent of email spam--which, loathsome as it may be, is merely junk mail with no barriers to entry. Spam comments, on the other hand, can only be compared to annoying, psychotic non sequiturs that interrupt conversation. Imagine yourself at a party speaking intensely with two other people about something all three of you care passionately about. Now imagine this asshole--slightly sweaty, bug-eyed, in a cheap suit--muscling his way in, screaming Excuse me! Excuse me! I want you to buy a prom dress from me!

Yes, ladies and gentlemen--we’re talking about Business Pond Scum here. People worse than those electronic stores that have 30-year-long going out of business sales; people more creepy than those guys with less than full sets of teeth, who want to sell you stereo speakers off the back of a U-Haul; impolite thugs who basically need to be bitch-slapped into silence and then sent to military school.

Any one who follows the arc of this weblog must realize by now that my politics are not those of the sitting government. However, this morning I had an epiphany: I could finally wrap my head around and fully get behind capital punishment--I’d like to see the cretins who spray-painted this weblog with bad, even misspelled self-advertisements marched before a firing squad. Up Against the Wall, You Mothers. . . Bam! Next?

Of all the guerilla merchandisers who visited like burglars in the dead of night, my personal favorite is the search page which promises “Search Without Junk.” Yeah, that’s right, the hypocritical bastards are spamming to promote an allegedly spam-free search engine. Do me, yourself and every other legitimate Web citizen a favor--don’t patronize this service provider--ever. Forget about some kind of metaphysical rationalization for a boycott--it simply comes down to lying in public: They are junk merchants who say they don’t abide junk. Uh, good luck with your next search with them--you know, that critical one on which your job depends . . .

Plays Well With Others: How NoteTaker Has Deepened Its Web Connectivity

More volts!
I'm sucking the juice from the generator
More volts!
More volts!

More volts!
"More suck at the duct" my dictu
More volts!
More volts!
--Brian Eno
“I Fall Up”

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
--Arthur C. Clarke, "Profiles of The Future"

As I become an increasingly middle-aged hipster, an interesting distillation process is occurring: The relentless march of time is acting like an acid bath on my world view--eroding the softer, more insubstantial portions of my conceptual framework and leaving the titanium-hard truisms.

During my significantly misspent youth, I often wondered why the Previous Generation seemed to cling to cliches--but now, having morphed from revolutionary to ruling class--I clearly see that in many cases, I mistook naturally evolving philosophic minimalism for intellectual ossification. In retrospect, it seems quaint: Like futile attempts to prove the superiority of baroque art over, say, Robert Motherwell. Lots of stuff going on is not the same as smart stuff happening. (The corollary is that pretty stuff does not imply substantive stuff--unless, of course, you happen to be Uma Thurman.) Put another way, philosophic minimalism done properly is pretty much like holding four aces--you can be forgiven about not obsessing about the other 48 cards . . .

As NoteTaker matures, I’m beginning to sense a similar sort of focus on its own conceptual verities--Gather, Organize, Share-- along with a commitment to be singularly powerful in each of these areas. It’s NoteTaker’s four aces. To be sure, there are other metaphoric cards in the deck but, at the risk of echoing Orwell, All Cards Are Not Equal. This brutal, Darwinian observation, while decidedly not PC, is absolutely true--just ask the Two of Diamonds. I suppose a more gentle way of saying this is to observe the Two of Diamonds suffers from a Court Card Deficiency, but the weather here is ugly and I’m not feeling diplomatically charitable . . .

Honey, Has the Blog Been Fed? Transforming Google Mail Into a Research Database Embedded In NoteTaker

Now time and distance
melt away
No digital delay
And some things
can be written down
that we're too shy to say
Send me an email
that says "I love you"

--Neil Tennant/Chris Lowe

Yesterday, I had one of those 2001: A Space Odyssey Moments. You know--like the ape, downstream of touching the Monolith, looking at a bone and slowly understanding its tool-cum-weapon potential. In my case, however, the Monolith wasn’t that minimalist piece of alien alloy (which, in retrospect, resembled a high-end kitchen counter top), it was Google, the new mothership in town.

While it's already becoming fashionable to look askance at the burgeoning ubiquity of the Big Polychrome G, I've always perversely enjoyed the early days of any first-class invasion—whether Pod People, cicadas or Windows v.3. There's something Very Casablanca that appeals to me—the whole "We'll always have Paris" thing, respectively recontextualized as Earth, Our Gardens Next Summer and Cupertino. And let's face it, Google is beginning to resemble Thomas Jerome Newton's World Enterprises ("I don't believe it. I can't believe it. You have nine basic patents here. Nine! That's basic patents. Do you know what that means?"). But like Farnsworth, I'm not looking the gift horse in the mouth, content instead to queue-up at Google Labs to eagerly use the inevitable next step of the Occupation (which for a brief moment was GoogleX—presumably before the Apple legal department stirred and woke).

So you folks over in the Resistance might as well save the e- cards and letters; I'm simply not ready to be Turned at this point: See me as a Digital-Age Louis—content to play both sides in a state of amoral grace.

Do You Wanna Talk About It? How To Run Your Mouth (Or At Least Your Fingers) Without Leaving NoteTaker

It was a quietly brilliant plan: Publicly proclaim my ardor for Uma Thurman and then--in the same post--make all six-feet of her swoon at the Indisputable Cleverness of my NoteTaker-as-metadatabase theory. After that, all that remained to be done was hunkering down by the phone on Valentine’s Day. (Yes, even the timing was given extensive thought.) But tragically, Uma failed to call. Granted, many of you did contact me about the Metadatabase Thing--and while I encourage you to keep sending those e- cards and letters, let’s be clear: None of you were Her of the Fabulous Face and the Non-Photogenic Feet.

And so, as the sands of Valentine’s Day trickled into the lower chamber, I felt a deep need to speak of my rapidly breaking heart: To reach out to others similarly scorned by Movie Stars Who They’ve Even Never Met But That Doesn’t Matter. After pouring my feelings into the Loathsome Middle-Age Diarist section of my NoteTaker notebook, I suddenly thought, Hey! This is a Swiss Army Knife-cum-Metadatabase. If I fail to use it as such, I’ve played to what was certainly Uma’s serious doubts about my discovery. Later, when she comes to regret missing this quicksilver opportunity to know me, I don’t want to have inadvertently handed her an easy excuse like “See? He opened up another application to find the solace of contact.” God knows, my failure to commit to a single application was the number one complaint of most of my ex-girlfriends--and as Yogi Berra once sagely suggested, who needs deja vu all over again?

And thus, for all three of you out there who regularly read these occasional screeds (hi mom, hi dad, hi sis!), let’s talk about the various kinds of online astral projection that are possible inside a NoteTaker notebook. However, at the outset, know that computer-predicated communications give lie to my geek stance, exposing me for what I really am--a digital dilettante; a gentleman tinkerer. Think of Thomas Dolby around the time of his first release; that’s me: She's tidied up and I can't find anything! All my tubes and wires and careful notes and antiquated notions. So yes--Science! indeed.

Pimp My Notebook: NoteTaker Metaphor Modification And Why a User Interface Should Be A Point of Departure and Not a Destination

Welcome to the Machiavelli Edition of Blogging With AquaMinds NoteTaker--it's Any-Means-To-An-End-Day, mousketeers! Particularly because the end in question is efficient, effective information capture and processing.

If you'll recall, just prior to my flirtation with the Talkies, I examined the myriad ways NoteTaker can be used as a database of other databases. Of course, this was a transparent and, in retrospect, pathetic plan to get Uma Thurman to notice me (which, by the way, forced her lawyers to rewrite the restraining order to include blogging). Desperately playing the Clever Card in my bid to impress her, I compared NoteTaker's ability to become a database of databases--a metadatabase, if you will--to those 400-plus special inserts that FiloFax sold at the peak of its Reagan-Era popularity.

And you know, I haven't been able to shake the appropriateness of that comparison--even if it was mine. It just goes to show you that Lust and Insightful Thinking are not necessarily mutually exclusive male modalities--despite what endless episodes of Ally McBeal would have you believe. I think I may have backed into one of those highly useful Idea-Objects--an abstract concept that, even though understood, can't fully be played around with until embedded in something that's generally comprehendible. (Those following along at home are undoubtedly bracing for the now-ceremonial wheeling out of the Richard Saul Wurman adage about only understanding something in terms of what you already know. And while this does have applicability, in truth, I'm intellectually strip-mining someone else this time around--Sherry Turkle, who talks about this concept in her book, Life On the Screen.)

NT Audio Blog Proof-of-Concept

Welcome to yet another crazed bit of research from the Bansai Institute in the wilds of New Jersey.

Those early adopters among you will clearly see where this little experiment is headed, but Baby Steps First is advisable. While I'm loath to over-promise, I think the chance of further forward motion over the weekend is good.

From my perspective, I see the glimmer of an opportunity to regularly assault you in ways that push beyond scrolling text and yet remain NT-predicated. As Henry Frankenstein might say, "It's Alive!"

I expect that as NoteTaker-driven blogs morph into talkies, it may be the downfall of many Silent Era authors. So sensitive was I to this fact--and so anxious was I to avoid the fate of John Gilbert in the early '30s--I considered doing the proof-of-concept clip with a Greta Garbo accent, based on the fact she both survived and thrived in the talkies. But then I thought First Impressions being important, introducing myself in Audio Drag was clearly Not a Good Idea . . .


MP3 File

Friday, March 4, 2005 10:47:24 AM

The Right Kind of Eyes: Hunter Thompson Has Left the Convertible (Having Nothing and Everything To Do With This Site)

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like “I feel lightheaded; maybe you should drive . . . “
--Hunter S Thompson
--Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas

This morning I find myself careening across the American landscape, a passenger in a driverless candy-red convertible called the Great Red Shark. Me and an embarrassing number of other writers. The grim news washing in with the East Coast dawn is that Hunter S Thompson is dead. Evidently, he finally decided to let others take the wheel.

If you want a NoteTaker blogging tip, you’ll want to check back another time. Because this post has nothing to do with the topic of this site, but--curiously--it points to the essence of the site itself. Without HST this site wouldn’t exist or, indeed, my decades-long, ongoing and dubious arrangement whereby people actually compensate me to screw around with words.

I want to talk about HST, but I’m loath (fine word, that ) to do The Profile Piece. For that, look no farther than this serviceable overview in The New York Times. Or simply Google the Thompson of your choice, God knows they’re all there: Sporting Editor HST, Rolling Stone HST, Drug-Addled HST, Scotch-Abusing HST, Counter-Culture HST, Iconic HST, Failed Sheriff HST, Woody Creek Denizen HST, Doonesbury Cartoon HST, Violent HST, Fearful HST, Arts-and-Letters Class Clown HST. All these and dozens more.

In his purposely smudgy 65/67 years, HST made Citizen Kane look simplistic. His Rubik-Cube personality makes the neat distillation of four or five facets impossible. Except that the Media will try to do precisely that--and, adding insult to injury, will couch the whole biased picture as Objective Reporting.

But, like HST, I don’t believe in objectivity--never have and never will. After all, even quantum mechanics holds that simply observing an event changes it. The genuine, albeit grim, fun will be to watch the Media profile Thompson in a way that proves they still don’t get it. HST once wrote, “No point mentioning the bats . . . the poor bastard will see them soon enough.” Except that the Bastardly Media won’t. And so, as Hunter also wrote: Fuck these people . . .

NoteTaker As Metadatabase: Oblique Strategies For Enhanced Information Management (A Conceptual Road Trip)

A meditation on metadata, Uma Thurman, multi-solution applications, the American Film Institute, search engines, Keith Olbermann, information management, drug-addled trips to Las Vegas, regressive databases, writer’s block, recombinant software features, Brian Eno, embedded Web browsers, technology-as-Meat-Loaf-songs, the nature of blogging, Hunter Thompson, WebKits, Citizen Kane, pre-blogging, Myst, Web notebooks, camera obscuras, live chat inside a notebook, Alice in Wonderland, templates, The Matrix, and--oh yeah--NoteTaker; definitely NoteTaker . . .(Did I mention Uma Thurman?)

It's poetry in motion
She turned her tender eyes to me
As deep as any ocean
As sweet as any harmony
Mmm - but she blinded me with science
"She blinded me with science!"
And failed me in biology
--Thomas Dolby

Go to an extreme, move back to a more comfortable place
In which the Author grapples with the present Work

A confession: As unbelievable as it seems, sometimes I’m at a loss for words. And since much of my living is predicated on my ability to stare at a blank word-processor window and conjure-up something, these Now What? Moments can be more than disconcerting. After all this time, I’ve never worked out where the words actually come from and thus, at the start of every new piece of jangled prose, there’s an instantaneous crossing-of-fingers and the hope that my mental tuner is still able to pick up WRIT (Good morning, Writers! You’re listening to All Inspiration All The Time, and this one is going out to Kevin Sheridan in Washington, DC!).

My regularly occurring scrutiny of the authorial abyss has, of course, given rise to a craftsman’s superstition: I keep a deck of Oblique Strategies on my desk. I got my first set of these cards in 1975 and they’ve since become a serious and pricey collector’s item. This cool factor has necessitated a stand-in deck for everyday use; an easily available reissue.

The creators of Oblique Strategies, composer/producer Brian Eno and the late artist Peter Schmidt, describe them as “Over One-Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas.” The cards are further categorized as “a set of possibilities.” They are intended to be used when a problem occurs in a working situation. I use them in this way: When I’m stuck, I draw a card and attempt to apply its advice to my work. The beauty of this ritual is that should every atom of my writer’s being rebel at what’s being suggested, I simply ask myself why the card is definitively wrong. Answering this involves articulating what the piece is about and where it’s going--which invariably jump-starts the prose.

Going Postal: Putting Email and RSS Feeds Inside NoteTaker

It’s snowing out there. Granted, it’s a Washington, DC kind of snow--so we’re talking about, what? two inches? In short, a Weenie Blizzard. But this is DC, an inherently multicultural town--and a city that also has traffic circles designed by a guy who really wanted to do Paris (architecturally speaking--to clearly differentiate him from Debbie’s very different relationship to Dallas).

So before calling me a wuss, let’s take a moment and plug all the variables into this brutal little equation: Newly minted diplomat from a sunny clime (with diplomatic immunity--ie, American laws--traffic or otherwise--don’t apply to him) while driving to his embassy encounters the first snow he’s ever seen and the first traffic circle (vicious merry-go-rounds of careening, high-speed metal-plastic-rubber). Comprehend? I like to think that driving in a DC snow storm has only one true soundtrack--Bowie’s Low, a CD that features “Breaking Glass” and “Always Crashing In the Same Car” (on reflection, there’s also “Sound and Vision,” sounding like ice-rink music).

Thus, when it snows in Washington, the city hunkers down, deeply afraid of itself. It’s time to make sure there’s scotch and firewood and a shopping bag full of DVDs (blessedly, the Age of iTunes has enabled me to continue shopping for music in white-out conditions).

Me, I’ve got Miles Davis’ Tutu angularly unfolding from the speakers, I’m staring at the steadily increasing amounts of snow outside the windows of Sheridan World Headquarters and, in the distance, I can hear the faint-but-tortured sound of colliding diplomatic vehicles. But I pay it no mind, for I am hard at work making NoteTaker even more useful for you--Reader Who Did Question My Fortitude With Regard To Snow Storms. This vehemently denied fact does not offend me because I know that by the end of this post, you will be so indebted to me, the guilt over doubting my steely resolve in blizzards will nearly drive you to suicide.

Pulp Blogging: Getting Stuff Into NoteTaker (In Which Mr Sheridan Takes An Inordinate Amount of Time Getting To the Point, Gambling the Tips Are Worth the Ride)

Well I got this guitar
And I learned how to make it talk
And my car's out back
If you're ready to take that long walk
From your front porch to my front seat
The door's open but the ride it ain't free . . .
--Bruce Springsteen
“Thunder Road”

The holidays are finally over and once more I’ve miraculously survived. True to tradition, the year-end celebrations often had dodge-ball dynamics. This time, however, I somehow managed to miss the commemorative Last Standing tee-shirts. They must have been handed out when I was in the middle of that six-hour drive to Philadelphia (usually a tad over two hours at my admittedly lawbreaking pace). Or while I was doing that weird Kramer dance around the strewn pieces of my nephew’s new Transformer army. Or maybe as I swarmed Fresh Fields with the rest of the free-range crowd on a kamikaze mission to pick up the turkey (no, wait--that was Thanksgiving; or was it?).

In retrospect, I’m actually thinking of pitching Fox on making The Holidays the premise of next season’s 24: Kiefer Sutherland racing against time, grappling with last-minute shopping, running out of wrapping paper, et. al. As an elevator pitch, I actually think it’s quite compelling . . .

But as usual, I digress. With all the festive horror behind us, it’s once again time to get down and geeky with all the blog-ish things you can do with v1.9 upgrade), here are the simple rules:

I cheerfully stitch together NT blogging solutions, often blowing up things along the way ("So You Don’t Have To" ^TM). The price I extract for this basically useful service is your acceptance of my luxurious disregard for linearity. After all, Time and Logical Progression are highly overrated concepts. As I see it, my mission is to ensure that this blog’s utility ultimately outweighs its off-the-meds, free-associative self-indulgence. In short, it’s pretty much the same implicit deal that’s struck when listening to a Robyn Hitchcock CD.

Wham! Bam! Bam! Bam! In Search of the Lost Shortcut

Here we go again, playing the fool again.
Here we go again, acting hard again.
All right!
Well, I'm beginning to see the light!
I wanna tell you, ooh-oh-oh!
Hey, now, baby, I'm beginning to see the light!
--Lou Reed

This is an instructive tale about hubris, human interfaces and hidden helpful features. But let's start at the beginning. My entanglement with Apple computers goes all the way back to Lisa. Say Hello, indeed. It was love at first sight and from then onward, the soon-to-be Mac OS and I matured together and even made some very cool side excursions like reveling in HyperCard. Because I love to tinker, the jump from OS 6 to 7 and from OS 7 to 8 were more traumatic then they needed to be. But as a result, I learned most of the nooks and crannies of Apple's operating system and the importance of backing up. While on no occasion did I ever proclaim myself a Mac Deep Geek, I confess I thought of myself in those terms--secretly smiling about my secret identity.

A few years later, OS X entered the picture and (flexible, if nothing else) I scrambled aboard as a beta tester. Though business sense led me to keep my magazine OS 9-based, I personally never passed through the OS Luddite stage of other Mac users. I embraced the new interface and was not philosophically bothered by Unix living in OS X's basement.

Truth be told, however, my Mac Deep Geek appearances have become infrequent and much narrowed, like a superhero in retirement--think Mr. Incredible. I did not grow up with Unix and so my relationship with OS X is less deep. For a number of reasons (all of them my responsibility), I am essentially under house arrest at the interface level. Not for me (until now, at least) the deep juju of the Terminal. After all, the last time I seriously interacted with a command line was the C: prompt in DOS.

Today's Tangelo Tip: Hybrid Solution or Devil's Spawn?

It's like this: I'm in the midst of overhauling the structure of my blogging notebook in preparation for the next installment to this, the techno-equivalent of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. And, as I was working out the pre-fab structure of my newly minted page-per-day approach, well, my attention wandered down to my desktop's dock. Lurking there was a brace of Graphic Visualization Stuff, including the NovaMind and the superlative OmniGraffle (which has produced most of the charts on this site).

I looked at the simple outline I was creating in NoteTaker and then at the GV Stuff. I looked at the GV Stuff and then at the NT outline. And even though I realized I was meddling with things Man Was Meant To Leave Alone, the urge clearly had me--there was no going back: I had to see my NoteTaker outline in glorious Technicolor and CinemaScope.

You Can Never Have Enough Dubious Insularity

A quick update--I finally got around to testing the most recent version the NewsFan RSS aggregator and it also failed my simple-yet-critical cut-and-paste test. Remind me to send a case of Scotch to the folks over at NewsFire in appreciation of their standing as the only rational news reader on my computer.

Coincidentally, NewsFire has just released a v.4 update which can be found here. If you agree with my frustration with RSS aggregators that do not support simple cut-and-paste, download NewsFire and give it a spin. The developer should be given all the encouragement that can be mustered.

Friday, December 10, 2004 12:00:04 AM

You Can't Get There From Here: The Dubious Insularity of Most RSS Readers

Accidental discoveries: You gotta love them. The possibly apocryphal history of Happy Accidents includes Ivory Soap, Silly Putty and the fact Ben Stein is funny. Unfortunately, however, there is also a long list of Uh-Oh Revelations: Asbestos-related respiratory ailments, the unintentional hard-drive havoc of a certain Apple updater and the possibly career-morphing trauma of the delayed understanding that Reply All isn't like Reply.

Add to this latter group the hypocritical insularity of many RSS readers. But before I lurch ahead with my idea-cum-rant, let's note the changed structure of this post. Usually our Quality Time here takes the form of an over-caffeinated episode of Columbo. I tend to shamble around the Observation Du Jour, rumpled and spouting seeming non-sequiturs. But by the end of the post, some previously uppity technology turns out to be the culprit--pretty much like Patrick McGoohan, if he were downloadable or thought to be a "solution."

I bring this up because I had originally intended to file one of these classic Colonel-Mustard-In-The-Library-With-The-Candlestick entries, but I tripped over a widespread, navel-gazing school of RSS content management. So let's approach this post in reverse order: First, the point I wanted to make, followed by the bloody nose meted out by most of my RSS readers.

Bell-and-Whistle Siren Song: Does the Street Always Find a Use for Things?

Now here's something that, like a fly in amber, may forever be encased inside the Intriguing Idea category. See it as a way-cool NoteTaker grace note; a toy surprise at the bottom of the AquaMinds box.

All of the semi-documented app-launching text commands in Safari work with the embedded NoteTaker browsers I've recently been exploring. By typing the following into the address field of an embedded NoteTaker browser, the self-evident applications are launched:

addressbook:// ichat:// sherlock:// ical:// mailto:ADDRESS

However, because NoteTaker is not designed to be browser-centric, I'm not certain how these techno-echoes of Safari can be turned to my very specific and esoteric blogging advantage.

But stay tuned: Much like that old playwriting example, a gun has been introduced in first act--and you just know it's going to somehow be used by the end of drama . . .

Wednesday, December 1, 2004 12:08:15 PM

Future Shock: Beyond Yesterday's Tomorrows

No Future.
Punk Manifesto, circa 1978

During Thanksgiving--no doubt abetted by the extravagant cigar and the fine single-malt scotch--I resumed pondering blogs and their overly defined place within the time-space continuum. Recently, I ranted about the crypto-fascist temporality of current blog structures, but somewhere between cutting a V into the cigar crown and searching for wooden matches, it struck me that blogs (as currently crippled) are not temporal enough for those who buy into their Reverse March of Time model.

A typical weblog is the ultimate review mirror: This is what I've previously written, in the order I wrote it. But it's pretty useless for signaling authorial intent. In other words, while it does a too efficient job letting you know what I wrote last Tuesday, there is is no elegant way to communicate what I plan to post next Tuesday--and the Tuesday after that. In order to do so, I'd have to create an instantly and automatically archived post about, well, the future. And while the National Archives building informs me that The Past Is Prologue, forcing visitors to dig through historical content to discover what next week promises is conceptually dissonant; a weird online exercise in Back To the Future.

May The Blog Backgrounders Be With You: Another Use For The Blog Book Concept

I've finally gotten around to exploring another promising use for the previously discussed Blog Book. Imagine the idea being brought to bear on a specific, potentially complex topic. The weblog and site references in this type of blog book would be tightly integrated aspects of a single argument. This variety of blog book would be less 3-D blog roll and much more a literal backgrounder that could be used to efficiently reference a complex topic without having to skim its surface within a weblog post.

No Getting Jiggy With the Architect: Assumed Blog Behavior As Weblog Reality

There are levels of survival we are prepared to accept . . .
As you adequately put, the problem is choice.
The Architect
The Matrix Reloaded

The most important thing is the thing most easily forgotten.
Brian Eno / Peter Schmidt
Oblique Strategies Card

And how could it be so wrong
When it was so right?
Lloyd Cole
"I'm Gone"

In the wake of my circumlocutious posting about Miles Davis, jazz authenticity, studio composition and--oh yeah--blogging, I've continued to ponder its implications. Which goes to show that even left-field rambling can trigger logical and argumentative dominoing that end at surprising destinations.

An embarrassing product of a Jesuit education (certain members of the Society are still blushing at the dubious achievement of me), I nevertheless had Big Intellectual Fun in school and am particularly grateful that the concept of Right Questions being more important than Right Answers was driven so deeply into me that it merged with my DNA.

It's a simple and somewhat obvious thing, but also enlightening in a Zen-like way: Perfectly correct answers to Wrong Questions paradoxically result in the self-satisfied adrenaline rush of being Absolutely Right at the same time you are Utterly Wrong. But being a pleasure-seeking species, we rarely look beyond that satisfied high. This goes far in explaining many--if not most--of humanity's screw-ups: Smartly reasoned responses to thoroughly stupid queries.

Archiving Revisited (Or How I Learned To Start Worrying and Love Second Thoughts)

I'm not predisposed to revisiting previous work. My relationship with writing is a bit bipolar: Massive focus up until publication and then, well, I wish the work luck and success Out There and turn my attention to the next nascent prose at hand, thinking little--if ever again--about the finished piece. I suppose my philosophy about my own stuff is like the old Frito Lay tag line: "We'll make more."

Earlier today, however, as I was preparing to add MarsEdit and BlogAssist to the sidebar resources, one of my earlier riffs caught my eye--the one that pointed out NoteTaker could also be used to archive the actual posted blog entries as proof against some sort of Blog Service Provider Armageddon. In retrospect, it's basically my weblog version of Dr. Strangelove's subterranean plan for survivors.

Confessions of a Utilities Slut:All Hail BlogAssist, King of Workarounds

I'm not a proud man--I freely admit that I'm a slut for utilities that are beautifully crafted, laser-focused one-trick-ponies. The guilty secret of my childless condition is that I gave away my first-, second- and third-born for mission-critical applets like FastScripts, MenuCalendarClock and DragThing.

NoteTaker's integration with Ecto2 and MarsEdit currently does not support on-the-fly HTML conversion of text formatting. In earlier posts, I managed to create multi-component workaround by using Tagging Service in combination with iPaste. It was admittedly kludgy, but it sure beat hand-tagging all the text formatting and hyperlinks. The constituent apps in this solution are excellent and I plan to keep using them as they were originally intended. However, I've been seduced by a more elegant solution to HTML conversion when handing off entries NoteTaker entries to Ecto2 or MarsEdit: All hail Dejal's amazing freeware, BlogAssist.

Blog Content and All That Jazz:NoteTaker and the Mixdown of Meaning

A major benefit of engaging in multiple projects is the instances of cross-pollination between disparate gigs. When not holding forth here, I'm involved in other endeavors both more and less Gonzo. One of these involves jazz titan Miles Davis--and most recently, I've been focusing on his so-called "difficult" 1968-75 period.

Time has been good to this stage of Miles' artistic evolution: What was once incomprehensible to many is now seen as groundbreaking as the other phases of his career. Central to Difficult Miles is his use of the recording studio as a compositional tool (something further built upon by Brian Eno). I explored this over the past weekend, by examining the 18 tape edits that give shape and structure to "Pharaoh's Dance" from Davis' Bitches Brew. (So no, my involvement with other projects is not to imply I actually have a Life.)

The Silence and the Fans

Can't you hear me talkin' to you
I'm callin' you one more time
All night operator
Dial me a better line
--Bryan Ferry
"All Night Operator"

It's all rather like an Ingmar Bergman film, isn't it? Those who are kind enough to leave commments on this site only to seemingly be faced with The Silence. Well, actually it's not like that at all.

Given the nature of this site, it's understandable that many of the comments focus on the nitty gritty of set-up and configuration. Because of this, I usually choose to answer my new best friends via email. To do so with a responding comment runs the risk of turning this site into a knowledge base affair, which means it would soon have to grow up and behave itself. After all, would you want tech support from a wild-eyed, Bryan-Ferry-Spouting eccentric with a tumble-down haircut? Nah--and neither would I.

To do with credibility would mean Growing Up. And in terms of this site, I'd simply rather traverse the universe in a police box, offering jelly babies and unsolicited ideas to anyone I encounter. (And indeed, you'll notice that no one ever asked the Good Doctor what precisely he was doing with that sonic screwdriver--so I rest my case.)

Oops! Off course yet again. The point is that all comments are answered--but many privately, where the fact that I don't always use Annoying Capitalization and overwrought italics won't be observed.

Are we clear? Good. Now would you like a jelly baby?

The composition of this entry was made possible in part by Ornithology from the album "Broadcast Performances" by Charlie Parker

Monday, October 25, 2004 12:30:28 PM

Pulling Over For a RSS Stop:In Which the Notions of Info Scrapbooks and Wannabe Wire Services Are Called Into Question

The half-dozen of you who regularly subject yourselves to this idiosyncratic mix of confession, ire, observation, pop cultural critique and--lest we forget--tech tips regarding the use of NoteTaker as a muscular weblog client have come to realize that while I love the concept of blogging, I am less enamored with its usual executions.

For various and sundry reasons--many of them strewn across this site like the debris field of crashed conventional wisdom--my take on blogging is that it has rapidly settled into an an ongoing, online ontological opposition of itself. (Three bonus points for that piece of grandstanding alliteration, plus an additional point for it actually meaning something in addition to going for the cheap laugh.) Translation for those of you awake for less time than me (and with less coffee): Blogs are houses divided, with their rapid techno-evolution juxtaposed to the bizarre fussiness of their seemingly instant, hidebound "traditions."

In the main, the capabilities of weblogs are expanding at an impressive pace, even while the actual act of blogging remains suspended at the point of its initial brainstorm: Hey, we can create online diaries or superseded lists of information with this! It's pretty much as if the concept of websites was still rooted in the online conventions that took shape at inception of the Mosaic browser--even though CSS, XML Java and were available. Okay, not really--but truer than not.

Blog Books Redux: Organization As Meaning

A couple days downstream of invention's white heat/white light, I'm considering blog books (think blog rolls on steroids) in a more tactical fashion.

If the main reason to focus the power of NoteTaker on blogging is to deepen nearly every aspect of that process, shouldn't the same be true of NoteTaker-based blog inventories? And yes, while the aforementioned proof-of-concept did an excellent, gleamy-spandex-and-ray-guns job of demonstrating that blog rolls could be Significantly Different and Flexible when fueled by NoteTaker, let's face it: In the adrenaline-rush of Hey, we can do this!, I'm afraid I opted for nothing much more than a gratuitous, tech victory dance in the blog end zone. And while "Ha! Top This, You Bastards!" does have a certain joie de vie about it, I think we'd all be better served by further examination under, ahem, Adult Supervision.

The Street Finds a Use for Things:Thoughts on a Multiple-Part, Distributed Blog

Even if you've skimmed random parts of this site, it's pretty obvious that I don't like leaving well enough alone. I like repurposing--no matter whether it's seemingly rigid concepts or straight-forward, narrow-focus software solutions. French philosophers call it "bricolage," but me, I think William Gibson's savagely smart one-liner, The Street finds a use for things, more directly gets to the heart of the matter.

And interestingly, when the Street has its polymorphous way with something, it often changes the paradigm in question. Think about spreadsheets. The Street decided that numbers didn't necessarily need to go in all of those cells and, further, words on spreadsheets could be more than signage--they could just as easily be content. In essence, the Street highjacked the spreadsheet and turned it into a powerful, sortable to-do list. And in doing so (1) Personal information management was born and (2) Excel, as if suddenly becoming aware of its hitherto unsuspected multiple personality, began to helpfully include list wizards that both blessed and domesticated the highjacking.

Rockin' Roll: Proof of Concept Blog Book

It's like this: I just can't let theories just lay there. To see precisely how it would work, I lashed together a proof-of-concept "blog book," leveraging NoteTaker's embedded browser feature and its ability to output an HTML/Java notebook.

So pretend that this is a weblog sidebar and right around where the (yawn) blog roll should be, you find this:

Page Through My Favorite Blogs Here

Thank you, thank you . . .For this evening, my work here is done . . .

Monday, October 11, 2004 6:08:48 PM

Cataloging Your World: Creating "3-D" Blog Rolls

Blogging with NoteTaker via Ecto2 or MarsEdit raises the question of how NT-driven weblogs work with NoteTaker's own ability to create web notebooks. The easy, knee-jerk answer to sagely intone "Right tool for the right circumstances," which implies that NT blogs and NT web notebooks can't or shouldn't be combined. Recently, however, I thought of a powerful, integrated use of the two.

MarsEdit and NT: My Blog, My Rules

Years ago--eons actually--when I was a callow college student, I hung around Washington's Old Ebbet Grill so much, I seriously considered having my mail forwarded there. It was two doors down from the inn where the British met to coordinate their plans to burn Washington during the War of 1812. In retrospect, I think that appealed to my insurrectionary younger self.

To be clear, we are not talking about the "new" old Ebbet Grill--an odd Hollywood set iteration of the original (which was finally torn down). The "new" Old Ebbet Grill is a hang out for yuppie scum and often featured in films and on The West Wing as a "Washington Hot Spot"--as if such a thing existed in the New York sense. My Old Ebbet, however, was a hang out for preppie scum and managed not to be historical, opting instead for a sort of Raymond Chandleresque ambiance.

I'd Tell You, But Then I'd Have To Kill You

Honey, I'm home. . . . Now someone much smarter than myself would simply reach for the Dallas Dream Season Stratagem: I could simply pretend that this was indeed September 1st and hack the posting dates to mess with your collective minds. But of course, That Would Be Wrong. Suffice it to say, I can't tell you what I've been up to in the past five weeks because many of my associates would wind up behiind bars or worse. However I can tell you that the seriously bent incident concluded with me waking up in the back of a 1954 Chevy in Rio with no clear idea how I got there. And there is the other small matter of a tattoo that says Res Ipsa Loquitur in the precise Old English typeface of The New York Times. Indeed. If I needed any further evidence that my Speedo days are over, this is certainly it.

And that takes care of that--or will have to until certain statutes of limitations run out. Now, in the immortal words of Pink, "I'm comin' up so you better get this party started . . . "

New Rulez for a New Technology

I recently had lunch with former coworkers from a couple of lifetimes ago. We don't do this often and so there's much to catch up on, both personally and professionally. At one point, the conversation turned to weblogs--or, to be precise, business blogs. (Remarkably,I didn't bring the subject up, preferring instead to keep secret my alternate identity as Blog Concept Guy. Doing so ensures that the front of my house isn't paint-balled by all of those loathsome Teen Diarists I regularly bang on.) One of my friends went slightly wide-eyed and said her firm was thinking of establishing a blog, but "What if someone said something bad on it? It would be up there forever for everyone to see!" (For once, the italics are not mine--they're hers.) Indeed, what would happen?

The wonderment was not ironic, and I sensed that no one around the table was humoring her with their well-what-are-you-gonna-do smiles. Quickly finding a nearby phone booth, I changed into Blog Concept Guy and came to her rescue. I suggested that perhaps people talking back online was not a bad thing at all. That there was a definite Zen to blogs and, begging the pardon of Bill Maher, New Rules--or, nodding to the online nature of the topic at hand, New Rulez. And that's when I got the humoring smiles absent when the table contemplated that if you spout an opinion (corporate or otherwise) in public (online or otherwise), be prepared for rebuttal (and, in certain dubious circumstances, the possibility of a broken beer bottle coming at you, held by someone shaped like a refrigerator.)

Before we go further, let's lay our cards on the table--yeah, all of them. If you're here reading this post on this weblog, you've gone through a multi-level process of self-selection: You blog or you want to blog; you use a Mac; you are a current or potential NoteTaker user (or the competition fruitlessly attempting to gather strategic intelligence), you are sufficiently advanced as a computer user that combining the functions of multiple applications is actually seen as Good Thing, and because of all this, the idea of people civilly commenting to blog postings is no reason for paradigm meltdown. On the other hand, you may simply be here because I use "Free," "Sex" and "Now" as metatags for all of these posts--in which case, please accept my apologies . . .

Making Like Ford Prefect: Putting NoteTaker/Ecto Blogging To Work

I'm home, Dear--did you miss me? Well, no matter. I can tell you did, regardless of that valiant struggle to remain as nonchalant as Zaphod Beeblebrox reunited with Ford Prefect on the starship Heart of Gold. So don't try that hypercool "Ford . . . oh, hi" with me.

I've been busy with Other Things lately--to paraphrase John Lennon, Life is what happens while you're busy blogging. Something true and more serious than clever when you ponder it. And downstream of Other Things, I've also been struggling with a monster post that's still not ready to be unleashed on the world. However, in the middle of bashing it into a more compact shape, I thought of something shorter and equally useful to say (which could also neatly serve to break Radio Silence). And so here I am--no doubt forcing some off you to make good on bar bets made to others of you regarding the rumors of my creative demise. So pay up and then listen up . . .

The idea of roving intergalactic reporter Ford Prefect, far from being a suitably arcane and annoying pop-cultural reference, actually has a lot to do with this post. I've come to realize that I need to pay closer attention to the "leveraging" part of the standing slug under the title of this weblog. There's stuff that NoteTaker inherently does that stands quite apart from the whole Blogging Thing; stuff that when disseminated via the whole Blogging Thing is amped up, creating a classic parts-greater-than-the-whole instance.

With Keystrokes, Less Is Indeed More:Another "Helper App" to the Rescue

Okay, I admit it: Keystroke Reduction corrupts--and absolute Keystroke Reduction corrupts absolutely. And if you're feeling uncomfortable about me revealing this Inappropriately Obsessive side of myself, just imagine how I must feel. But let's move beyond the mysterious ways in which I'm seemingly hardwired. Save your pity and instead help yourself to anything that's useful. (Proving that no-strings-attached generosity trumps neurosis--or at least balances the equation.)

As I was bashing out yesterday's post and wielding Tagging Service like the time-saving weapon it is, I found myself getting petulant. Sure Tagging Service is a lifesaver (and if you're using it on my recommendation, I genuinely hope you have deeply thanked the freeware developer)), but, Man, those letter/colon triggers--that's two keystrokes! Surely, I thought, we can do better than that . . . And with a little surfing, indeed we can.

I am now the proud owner of a highly affordable little app called iPaste. Here's the executive summary: It's a multiple entry clipboard which enables you to keep much-used inserts readily on hand. But the best thing about it is that it assigns a keyboard shortcut to each clipping.

Do I need to tell you what I did next? (Mwah-ha-ha! Keystroke Domination is mine!--Why does this come off as much more Dr. Evil than Auric Goldfinger?) Yup: I made each of the Tagging Service triggers a clipping. Now by simply hitting Ctrl-Opt-1 followed by Cmd-Shift-\, I have my beloved overwraught italics.

Can I imagine seamless, WYSIWYG input eventually? Well, yeah. But until then, I'm productively hunkered-down with the one-two combo of Tagging Service and iPaste--sort of Batman and Robin for minicoders like myself. Okay, I admit it, this pretty much has made my day--and in response to the inevitable superior laughter, I can only say, "Cut me some frickin' slack." It's hard being an evil blogging doctor . . .

The following music helped make this post possible: "These Foolish Things ( Remind Me Of You )" from the album Chet Baker In Paris (2000) by Chet Baker

Friday, July 16, 2004 11:50:09 AM

Armageddon Week Continues: More Fun With NoteTaker Archiving

Appearances to the contrary, I have not become a techno-survivalist. While I proudly practice "safe computing," I'm not particularly obsessive about it--a couple of backups a week and I'm good to go. Thus, I'm at a loss to understand why I'm suddenly having so much fun archiving my blogs with NoteTaker.

I suppose part of it is the fact that as a genuine NT freak, the clipping service feature has always been a full-fledged obsession with me. It's allowed me to cruise through cyberspace at adrenaline-pumping speed, happily whacking to a notebook page pretty much anything that captures my attention. I then review, weed-out, distill and reorganize at my convenience. Put it this way: The Internet is an information and knowledge smorgasbord, I'm wired to be perpetually hungry and NoteTaker, in effect, has given me an infinitely large plate. So out of my ways, boys--I'm going back for thirds! My dependancy on the NoteTaker clipping service is so total that I find myself trying to Cmd-click while reading the ink-and-paper interation of The New York Times.

And let's face it, while I call it "archiving" in the context of blogging, NoteTaker is simply doing its indispensable Clipping Thing. (In the words of newly fashionable Cole Porter, "do do that voodoo that you do so well.") Perhaps it's simply the fact that archiving is inherently Clipping With A Cause that fascinates me so. The psychological syntax of archiving is "saving this is useful," whereas with straight-forward clipping it's more a more a matter of "saving this may be useful." Whatever it is, all I know is that it's damn satisfying to archive--much as Northwest coffee satisfied Agent Cooper.

Dealing With Your Intellectual Kodak Moments:Building and Leveraging Better Archives

"Memories. You're talking about memories!"
--Harrison Ford
Blade Runner

Over the course of a multi-decade career, I've come to realize that, for organizations, there's something more toxic--and more insidious--than Not Invented Here: it's the proudly touted Invented Once. This is stealthily toxic because it gives the illusion of embracing innovation rather than resisting it--even as it poisons progress. It's the Hero Story enterprises tell themselves, hoping to once again catch lightening in a bottle--but in reality it has the hermetically sealed sacrosanctity of a religious reliquary. Put another way, if you think a prehistoric fly embedded in amber is wondrous, just ask the insect its opinion . . .

Oops--drifting already. If I ever needed proof of the massive resistance to caffeine that's I've built up over the years, this is it. Nearly a full pot of coffee in me and the patented Sheridan Drift Factor® is still in effect . . . What that first-paragraph amble is trying to say is that I've recently revisited my idea about using a NoteTaker blogging notebook to also (and very cleverly, I might add) archive final-draft posts as they appear on the weblog. Upon second and third thoughts, I've refined the concept. Call this Invented Again--the progress-friendly antidote to Invented Once. (Even though I do drift, it's usually in the right direction.)

Here, in no real order, are some additional observations on archiving posts within your NoteTaker notebook. (I suggest you revisit the linked entry cited above to refresh your memory about the mechanics of creating archival clippings.)

NoteTaker Support of Blog-Based Publication Structure and Workflow (Repeat After Me: The Web Is Publishing, Not Broadcasting)

Hey, wait a minute--yeah, you! The one who glanced at the head and said to yourself, "Jeez, I don't have an online publication; I'll check back tomorrow." Well, you don't want to do that for three reasons. First, your parents always told you to try new things to broaden yourself, right? Second, this posting is an meta-story--a natural convergence of NoteTaker blogging advice and many of the themes running through this site. And most importantly, it features a Full-Color Chart--and at the end of the day, who doesn't like a good full-color chart? So hang around--this posting might be up your alley after all.

But having said this, I also advise you to settle in. We need to take a philosophical side trip on our way to the tips. No, strike that---we don't need to, but we really, really should. It's always bothered me that most tech-tip resources are weirdly context-free. The supposition, brutally valid as it is, seems to be that the Enter key does the same thing whether you're writing the Declaration of Independence or Mein Kampf. Which is unfortunately true.