TRST_Blog

I have so many text editors. Apparently, I collect them, like my grandmother collects crystal dolphin statues. We both have some issues to work out 😉

On a desktop, I tend to use only three: Ulysses for writing, VSCode for local development and Neovim for remote development.^[1] But as soon as I drop down onto iOS I can’t seem to help myself. Just on my homescreen I have Drafts 5, Drafts 4, NotePlan, Apple Notes, Ulysses. There are probably another 5 or 6 that I’ve yet to delete or use every so often that I am convinced I might need it eventually.

I’m not going fully minimalist, but I do think 10 text editors probably excessive. I’m going to keep most of the text editors on my homescreen, perhaps with the exception of Drafts 4 once I migrate everything over to the newer version, and I’ll use them for specialised roles within my life.

Here’s what I had in mind:

1. Drafts 4/5 is where I dunk snippets of text until I’m ready to do something with them; the first port of call to capture whatever nonsense is in my head.
2. NotePlan is where my workout plan and diary will live.
3. Apple Notes is for things I need to hold on to for some indefinite period of time (RIP Evernote).
4. Finally, Ulysses is where I write my love letters to the Internet.

Not ground breaking, but I think it should work just fine. Often what works better than fiddling around with an entire new setup or set of apps is just to create a simple system for what you have.

Great conversation on the discipline of video games. I’ve been trying to improve my bouldering fitness and there are clear parallels between the ladder of Street Fighter players and climbing grades. I doubt I’m at the equivalent of ‘Gold’ but focusing on minimising weaknesses is often the first major step to improvement.

I have a load of low-hanging fruit to pick with climbing. Perhaps, I ought to give esports more of a consideration as well.

I spent the weekend in Bath (in the UK for those unaware) and it was glorious. Sure, there's plenty of quaint shops and gorgeous places to eat or drink, but I managed to arrive on a cloudless day—the British equivalent of a miracle. My wife and I saw the crowds and headed the opposite direction. We walked up the hillside until we found an empty park and lay down for as long as we could.

We setup below this handsome fellow.

London is a tough place to live if you're the outdoorsy type. When the sun arrives, the grunge is laid bare, not to mention the smell of hot garbage the emanates from, well, everywhere. Sure, there are plenty of trees, but it's hard to find any real-estate—affordably, zing!—near a nice shady oak. But here in Bath, I made that connection, that peace of mind that comes from sitting at ease and in the company of bird song.

I had no idea how much I yearned to be outside. That’s the sinister effect of living in a concrete jungle. It’s now clear that being around or having close access to nature is a priority of mine, which I'm not sure I would have been able to say before I lived here.

I'll chalk this up as yet another reason to be excited for the jump back to Canada.

A month ago, I said I’d post to this blog every day. And today, I am able to say that I've done just that. It wasn’t too difficult either, so long as I was smart-er about how I wrote for the site. Perhaps the most important point to remember is that I enjoyed the process and I enjoy what my presence online is becoming.

I'm going to keep going then.

That said, there are a few things I wish I had done differently. Batch writing and future publishing was tricky—not the process itself, rather showing any sort of consideration for what I posted and when. I would like to have researched a little deeper and managed to unfold a “story” throughout the week. That entails holding back some posts until there's more to say/link and taking the time to find a narrative or aesthetic to my posting queue; time that I didn’t consider giving myself until reflecting right now.

I also presumed I would have posted more photos or drawings throughout the month. I tend not to have much time to myself during the week (worky-work, amirite?), so there are fair few photos I’ve taken, let alone any worthy of posting. For whatever reason, I also shrink at the thought of using photos from other sources without seeking permission. (That’s the nice thing to do, right?) As for the drawings, I just flat-out failed to do any. Zero. Not-a-one.

I think that committing to posting some longer-form pieces with doodles or illustrative work each week will bend me towards my goal. Ya, that’s it. So better fire up my task manager before I forget and make myself look like an ass.

TL;DR

• I wrote at least one tiny link per day for the last month
• I enjoyed the process
• I’m going to keep going because weblogs are fun
• I will put more thought into the theme of all my shorter posts
• I will commit to doing at least one personally-generated (whatever that means) post per week
• I will commit to putting my Apple Pencil to work for said special personal post each week

If you read this far and support what I’m doing at all, I love you.

Hugs and kisses,

From the human behind this weblog.