For writing more, without worrying about losing or lending your pen Photo by the Author, taken with a still going strong iPhone 14 Pro I love writing lists and making plans using simple, practical tools. Tools like locally stored plain text, fountain pens, and mechanical pencils. As much as I love the feel and space...

It was a nice surprise to discover that Shottr can replace two apps! I’m slowly working my way through the list of the (Mac-only) Setapp apps I’ve used for years, looking for free or one-time purchase alternatives. Three apps I’ve started testing are Maccy (clipboard manager), Textshot (OCR), and Shottr...

On cautious, informed renting, and the lie of personal ownership Mum on the gas box at the house she and Meema lived in before moving to the cottage Lately I’ve been looking at the subscription software I use, trying to decide what should stay and what needs to go. The evaluation process is not as straightforward as...

A quest for simpler, more independent tools Recently I talked about the importance of owning your work, not just the app you used to create it. Another side of that idea is nicely put in this advice from Trevor Flowers — The best advice I have for new nerds: Refuse to pay rent. Don’t subscribe. Don’t lease. Don’t...

Hand written text by the Author, 1988 Today I discovered I Write Like, a browser-based Markdown text editor from Koding Robots doo. Apparently, I write like …Corey Doctorow. This is obviously not a comment on my use of expletives! I Write Like is free to use in your browser, with a one-time payment for premium...

On confidence and slop, and the words that still fit There’s no getting around it; Artificial Intelligence (AI) has ruined some phrases that used to work just fine. I can’t help caring about that, though I wish I didn’t! And so I am working on gaining the confidence to write whatever I want, when I want — the same...

How to keep your work accessible no matter what happens to the software you used to create it Could you complete your work today if your usual apps were inaccessible? Consider this your wake up call is to store your work in open formats, even if (actually, especially if) you are required to use closed format apps to...

Never lose a hard-won process again This week a potential customer asked me for an evaluation preview of one of my educational PDF ebooks. “No problem!” I said, “I’ll get that to you today.” Right! Time to watermark a lower resolution copy of the PDF and upload it to the files section of my website. This is a...

Recently I mentioned that all my to-dos get thrown into one text file, in the todo.txt format. It’s incredibly quick to add new tasks. And once you know some simple formatting rules, it’s also easy to see just the tasks you want to see, when you want to see them. By the end of this article you will understand how to...