A 50-something French dude that's old enough to think blogs are still cool, if not cooler than ever.
https://thefoolwithapen.com
Sorry, I can't switch to Firefox, as I've never not used Firefox.
I used it already when it was called Netscape. Before that I used Mosaic, which itself is not entirely stranger to Netscape creation.
Also, FF is not "a great alternative to Google Chrome". FF is a great browser in its own right. (Almost) always has been. And how could it be considered an alternative to anything when it was there first (or second, right after Mosaic)?
As much as I can, I will use analog tools instead of digital.
No notifications, no update/upgrade, no recharging, no bugs and no temptation to go check something online every few seconds. 100% focus.
I'm not saying that analog is better than digital, just that it works best for me and since the better I work the faster I do the work and the less I have to work. The happier I am ;)
Is that normal in your opinion?
Imho, a better question to ask yourself would be to consider why you're giving up quickly?
If you give up because you realize you can't be bothered with whatever that activity is, fine. I tried a few things I realized had little value to me. No big deal.
If it's because you don't want to make the effort of learning to do it properly and/or because you can't accept that, as beginner at it, your not already good and get not success. Then, it's probably not a great decision.
I see two things our society as a whole (even more so when it is lived through social media lenses) tend to discourage younger people to reflect upon:
That's also how we learn to read and to write. By doing mistakes. Not by picking up our first pen and writing the next best-seller.
So, to get back to your question, if you give up on something because you would want to be good at it instantly, you're probably missing out on something.
Why don't desk chairs have seat belts?
Because unlike in cars there isn't much chair accidents? ;)
More seriously, no seat belt can help you sit correctly in a chair. What can help you, easily and cheaply, is sitting less. Regularly make breaks and get up, move do stuff that you can do standing up. This one is not cheap but using one of those sit/stand desks can help in that regard — I consider mine the second best health spending I ever made, the first one being: good walking shoes (another great habit for one's health is to walk as much and as regularly as one can).
To keep YT under control: Firefox is my web browser, with the uBlock Origin extension installed. So, all Shorts/Suggestions, 'News' and 'Related content' are now automatically removed from YT '(easy to achieve with uBlock Origin when using Firefox).
😍🥰 Firefox + uBlockOrigin
And whenever Google/YT suggests me some turd content, I dislike it and ask it to not suggest the channel/content anymore.
In the end, my feed is mostly made of stuff I enjoy watching, with so little noise that it can not be considered an issue.
None.
Countries don't have a unique identity I could like or dislike as a whole.
They can vary widely from region to region, city to city, block to block, street to street... heck even person to person. I may not like some people, or at worst some region because of this or that reason but that is all.
Anything 'collectible' has become a no-go for me. Simply put, anything that is collectible has turned into a business, with more or less artificially created scarcity and with entire businesses thriving on people gullibility, FOMO and with their obsession with making a quick and easy buck. There is no way I want to participate in that scam.
On a more personal note and experience:
I was a book and comics collector for many decades myself. I started as a book-lover teen and and then as a student, selling used books and comics as a way to earn money and then pay for College. It was a lot of fun, back then. Like really. And exciting too.
Then, as a young adult earning more than a decent living, I started spending serious money in rare and original editions, this time without any idea to make money out of it. It was just my hobby and I earned enough to not worry, and it was still fun and exciting too. At least, it was fun in the beginning.
Still, a couple decades ago I donated my entire library (3k+ books) to a charity because... Well... Money was king everywhere. And what I used to love was now making me feel so sad.
Sure, I should be happy as I had accumulated a small fortune on my shelves but I did not enjoy it the slightest. People (like myself) were not giving a crap anymore about content or the authors they once genuinely admired, they only worried about the books value. Realizing I was that kind of person myself made me feel very ashamed of myself. I wanted to get back to what really matter, the content, the text, the art. and not their fucking retail value as collectibles.
Getting rid of my entire library (save for very few books, not even rare) was liberating and, so many years later, still feels like the best decision ever. I don't care the slightest about those books potential resale value anymore. I barely own any books myself nowadays, I read most of them from the public library, and I've rediscovered the unadulterated and incomparable pleasure of enjoying reading.
I’m broke to self-host / or pay for a personal blog
There are free stuff like blogger.com (one of the oldest free way to start a blog, if you don't mind it being owned by Google), it won't look as shiny and trendy as other solutions, but it works. So is the free tier at wordpress.com (no self-hosting required, they manage everything for you). Both are 100% free but will only give you very limited options though, and will display ads.
Depending what you mean by being 'broke', you may also want to consider the annual cost of a cheap hosting + domain name (so you get full control on your blog). No ads and nobody to tell what I can and can't do. Also, not saying it's a necessity (it is not), but if you really want to encourage readers to participate, spending a little money in order to create a welcoming space maybe worth the cost.
I want at least get some views and get opinions about what I write.
Writing, no matter how good or genius you are, doesn't grant you any 'right' to getting any view and/or opinion. You may or you may not get them, the only way to know is to... start and keep doing it up until it happens, or not.
That said, correct me if I'm wrong here, since you have not started writing it's 100% sure you will not get any reaction. I mean, if you want a chance to get people to react to what you write, you first need to give them something to react to. Go on, start writing :)
Edit: you can always change your blog and make it better later on, when you see you enjoy doing it. But it wont ever happen if you don't start ;)
It may be surprising and it may not be a viable solution for many here but, as much as I can, I try to use... analog tools.
Analog tools have zero tracking, zero spying, zero code. They're also reliable, sturdy, long lasting, don't need daily charging, update, upgrade or subscription fees. They work great. There is no one to tell me what I'm allowed to do and to not do with my analog tool or how I must do it.
I don't trust brands, I trust their customer support.
Any device/product can fail, no matter how excellent it is. To me, what matters is how efficiently the issue is dealt with by the support.
Like, I trust Apple customer support and now, after approx. 40 years being their customer, their customer support is the sole reason I'm still buying Apple stuff (I don't like at all what they became and how they make their device unfixable on purpose, it's a shame for a company that so much pretend to care about being eco-friendly). I'm also a fountain pen user and a collector, but the brands I trust the most are not the most hyped and expensive, far from it, they're TWSBI and Lamy, because of their amazing customer support. Or, say, I mainly wear Merrell shoes for hiking (because they fit me well, obviously) because they have a fine customer support. And so on.
I have zero brand loyalty beyond that, and will not hesitate to change brand if they ever cut on their customer support.
So they named it Mozilla.
I had no idea about that.
I do remember how much I liked their various logos, be it those of Netscape and how madly I loved the old Mozilla t-rex logo — I still wear their old t-shirt from time to time, just because of that stupid but gorgeous head ;)
Although I must admit I would feel a bit embarrassed asking them as well 😂.
You, or someone else is paying for that prescription. There is nothing to be ashamed of in asking them to provide something readable.
My eye doctor is a very strange person as she uses that very novel piece of high tech called a computer and a printer, and never writes a prescription by hand. Oddly enough, nobody has difficulty reading what she writes :p
I don’t really understand all these articles explaining how to switch to Firefox. You install firefox and use it, that’s all.
They don't give a crap about the article usefulness, that's just more ads to sell.
Why do you think the web is so much riddled with crap content? More and more of it generated by clueless AI? It's not to be helpful to their readers, that I can tell you ;)
I actually have a sit stand desk. And do use it some. But I have some issues with my hips and SI joints. Standing without walking gets painful pretty fast.
It can sure get painful quickly. A few things worth considering:
I don't know about your specific situation so this may not apply at all, but getting back into walking also helped me immensely (as does help wearing good shoes: the day I switched to better walking shoes my endurance skyrocketed). That and healthier eating habits were key in me getting back into some kind of shape and health despite starting real low: I barely could walk at all.
Not exaggerating, I celebrated like if I was Armstrong stepping on the Moon, the first time I managed to walk down and back our street without being exhausted and without my joints, back and feet hurting so much for the next few days that I had to lay down (it was that bad). Nowadays, I walk up to 10 km daily, never less than 6. Sure, I'm no athlete and my health issues won't go away ever but what matters is that most of my chronicle pains have vanished almost entirely, even the most enduring ones that plagued me for... decades. And I can move around and use my body almost normally. I also lost a hefty chunk of fat, which is a neat bonus ;)
Sorry for that too long reply to your comment. It's just something I consider so worth talking about ;)
First, thx.
Then, to answer your questions:
The Zettelkasten was devised to be constantly updated and searched and linked, be it analog or digital. My index is the key entry point, next to the my many bibliographical and authors cards and then I simply follow the links from one card to the other(s).
I can easily update any entry by adding more cards to it, with a sub-digit ID linking it to its parent.
I'm not a huge fan of videos, but you could do worse (much worse) than watch a few on Scott Scheper's channel (https://www.youtube.com/@scottscheper/videos) the only real downside imho, beside the sheer amount of videos, is how much he insists on being hostile to digital. Even though I'm an analog user myself I find his constant attacks tiring (not necessarily all wrong, but tiring) and counter-productive. The same with his book (a really excellent understanding of what an analog Zettel is and how one could use it, with way too much anti-digital remarks). A more neutral and not less interesting reading would be Bob Doto 'A system for writing' (https://bobdoto.computer/) — reading it this very moment and not yet finished, but I like what I've been reading so far. The kind of book I would likely offer to a newcomer.
As for cost. There are many options to reduce it to barely nothing (say, much less than the cost of a cloud subscription to host your files for a few decades):
For storage, I have yet to find a decent filing cabinet. Living in France, I don't have access to the variety of new cabinets you have in the USA, or only at absurdly expensive prices. And used 4x6 filing cabinets are not that common. So, for the most part I've been using a (high tech) mix of shoe boxes (they work surprisingly well) and of those office index card boxes (plastic or metal boxes with a removable lid and optional separators). Both are ugly as fuck, that's for sure, but at least they do their job. One day, hopefully, I will get my hand on one of those nice and well-made cabinet :p
Edit: typos (part thx to Apple's autocorrect moronic decisions, part because I just suck at English ;)
:)
Thx, fixed
Indeed. But I will remain on the older computer-less models. My latest acquisition is a Typestar 220, that is a replacing another but worse Typestar. Loving it ;)
I hope Lemmy doesn't bow to the I want reward, I need my shiny recognition ribbon trend.
That's 100% infantilization of participants. Even on the few reddit subs I'm subbed to (on average, those have real high value content), I can see a few people focusing on that karma thing and that's sad to watch and, well, not flattering for them. It's also a lot of useless work more to do for those mods that try to maintain a certain level of quality, which is not a great thing.
Imh(and admittedly naive)o, people should post based on what they're interested in and based on what they think they can bring to the discussion and not in exchange of a tap on the shoulder, or some good grade — unless they're still kids going to school, doing homework and passing exams but even there... maybe one day, we will realize focusing our attention on grades more than on understanding/learning was a huge and costly mistake.
Edit: mistakes and clarifications.
Ah oui t’es un jlailu toi aussi, j’avais pas remarqué.
Neither did I realize you were too ;)
I do love my obsidian Zettel for one useless function: The graph view that looks like a brain with synapses etc 🤷🏻♂️
Obsidian has a lot of qualities. It's just that... I find it was incredibly overwhelming when I first installed it. I spend an entire week just getting familiar with it and learning its base procedures. In comparison, getting familiar with a pile of index cards and a fountain pen took me... a few seconds.
And then everything is flat on a screen, and intangible and stuck withing that limited screen. You can't touch it, you can't easily put it in whatever order — or disorder — you fancy or drop it wherever you want. I like to spread my cards on a couple tables and then mix them as ideas and connections start to fuse. I also enjoy flipping through those cards like I would flip through the pages of a book (it's generally when the most interesting surprises will happen) much more than I appreciate being able to Ctrl or Cmd-Search for an exact keyword.
The day I find a cabinet like that at the local “marché aux puces” I will probably do a paper Zettel as well. It’s beautiful and fulfilling.
Allow me to correctly rephrase that sentence of yours: "the day you find a cabinet like that at the local “marché aux puces” you instantly send me a message to ask me if I want it". Which I am, and I will thank you wholeheartedly, even though I had no idea where I could put it in our small apartment ;)
To be clear, Apple's Support has its fair share of drawbacks and always had — I've been their customer since the mid-80s, there never was a magical period where they were perfect ;) — but what matters (to me, at least) is that while the product is under warranty a customer doesn't have to worry too much on average (because, once again, there will be cases where support will fail the customer).
Outside of warranty, that's an other story but then the real issue is in the way Apple designs its machines to not be upgradable or not easily fixable, if at all. That's the real shame and that should be outlawed.
Clever 8^)
But I still have to install FF from time to time, like I did today — best way to spend one's Sunday, reinstalling the Mac :/
Speaking installation, whenever I do an installation Firefox is always the second app I install on fresh machine. The first one being my password manager.
You're welcome ;)
If you decide to give a try to a Zettelkasten and if I was to share a single advice it would be to keep it simple. Ignore all subtleties, you will know it when you need them.
Not the few communities I follow. Also I only read my Subscribed timeline.
I would love for a way to only see pictures if I click them, though.
Thx for the clarification.
Not sure to understand your question but if it is about finding local stores, here is what I do:
I strongly recommend to switch to Darktable. You need 2-3 youtube tutorials for your start, because at first it is not intuitive at all. But then it is so much faster, easier and your results will be better.
Thx for the suggestion.
I tried it, already (as well as its fork, Ansel). It's too complex and definitely not intuitive, like you mentioned, and it's also too powerful for my humble needs. Really I'm more than happy with something as simple as Apple Photos and would use its Libre equivalent if I could find it ;)
You mean use a custom avatar and add a short bio + links? I do, but if you're thinking of anything beyond that I would not know where and what to look for, sorry ;)
Yep, it would have helped a lot. Back when I was in university, we did not even had a single note-taking/research course. We had to figure it out by ourselves, which i know a lot of my fellow students did not bother doing.
As for Obsidian, do not hesitate to share a few insights as I have yet to see how it can help me better than paper does. I mean, beside a faster search inside my notes (which is not what matters the most to me). For example, the fact I cannot manually/freely reorder my notes, in a note-taking app, is beyond me and it's something I do all the time with my slip of papers. But I'm also willing to admit I'm missing out on something important.
Yep, as well as for writing I must say. I'm no stranger to high-tech but I have yet to find a digital writing tool tool that makes me consider retiring my fountain pens.
No subscriptions? Sounds to me like you’re deep into a subscription to big paper, old man.
Well, I sure do purchase paper (and ink) but, unlike with stuff I would subscribe to, even if I would stop buying any more paper today I would keep a full and unlimited access to the one I already purchased, for as long as I fancy, at no extra-cost (1). Try that with a subscription, my young fellow ;)
1: the same with purchased films, series, music, licenses, books, and so on... Stuff I see no valid reason to keep subscribing to (I used to subscribe to many services), and enough good reasons to not keep subscribing to them.
when you put them back in the boxes, how do you do it? Do you put them in chronological or alphabetical order?
Each card as a unique ID (it can take any form you fancy but it has to be unique) and I simply put each card back at its place following that ID, no matter the content of the card. What matters is the info you associate to each card, using its ID as a reference, in your index.
The index is a pile of cards alphabetically ordered that contain a list of keywords. Each keyword will then a have list of pointers to cards IDs and to other index entries to find any related content.
(For example in the D section of my index I will have a 'Dinosaur' entry and in my T section I will have a 'T-rex' entry. The Dinosaur index may points me to, say, the 222.1.1.10B card (in which I've written stuff about the latest attempts in recreating living dinosaurs) and to the 421.1 card (in which I have a few notes on my last visit at the natural history museum, where there are those great dinosaur fossils). It will also have refs telling me to go check the 'T-rex' and the 'Diplodocus' and so on index entries for more related cards, as well as say the 'Meteor' and 'Species (extinction)' entries.)
Using the index is akin to using Cmd/Ctrl+F to do a search on text: fast and almost instantaneous. This index is really the key to my Zettel.
Each of the card the index would have suggested I read may itself contain refs to other cards. Like you would have internal links between cards, using Obsidian.
Finally, I have my bibliographical references, an alphabetically-ordered series of cards. Those allow me to quickly find notes from any book and author I’ve read and to reference back to it, using its own unique ID. This also helps a lot when I’m reading to quickly take notes (on blank index cards, with that unique book ID written in one corner). So, while I’m reading it barely takes seconds to write down whatever idea or keyword I want to be able to find later on, plus the corresponding page number in the book. No need to reference the book itself, no need to write long comments or explanations (those will, or will not go later on in my main Zettelkasten cards, when I’m reviewing my reading notes) it’s really all about quickly jotting down a word or two + a page number, which saves a lot of time.
And when you want to find one again, do you have to search through hundreds of cards just to find the right one?
I use the index or the bibliographical refs, depending if I’m searching for an idea or a keyword in general or for some specific book annotations or author. Those point me to all relevant cards in my Zettelkasten. And like I told you each card can then also point me to other relevant/interesting cards on its own.
That said, at times I’ll randomly pick some cards and browse through them (just as a way to ’thought-provoke’ my own brain with random ideas and notions).
Regarding your first comment:
- Easy backups
I take pictures with my iPhone of all new cards from that day, those photos are then automatically converted by the scanning app into a PDF and saved to my iCloud storage, it’s real quick. All my iCloud being regularly and automatically backed-up on external drives.
The app I use is ‘Scanner Pro’ by Readdle (I purchased the license many years ago and the scanner still works perfectly with the latest iOS). It’s very simple aka quick to use, it does an impressive job at auto straighten the card no matter how poorly I present it to the camera, then it creates a PDF with all the day worth of images and then save it to iCloud, all by itself.
- No physical storage space required.
It’s not really an issue for me as my Zettel is not that large. That said, it does take space but I can use it without a computer/screen (which also takes space)… and for storage, old shoe boxes don’t cost much ;)
I might look up some tutorials next, but I don’t want to overcomplicate things. With any system there’s a point where you end up spending more time fussing with the scaffolding rather than just building the building, if you know what I mean.
100% agreed. If it works well enough, then it’s all one needs.
Watching a few videos to better understand the appeal of a digital Zettel myself, I realized it was something many ‘new’ users were not aware of and also something way too many video creators were not worrying enough about.
I mean, some of those videos are very well made but they’re also mostly empty chatting and/or trying to chase a unicorn by focusing on what to me seemed like insignificant details or an unrealistic desire for perfection. Doing so, they spend a lot of their time and energy, and a lot of their viewer’s time and energy too.
I do understand keeping the user watching as many videos as possible, for as long as possible, is the entire business model of making video on YouTube (more talking + more videos = more watching time = more ads viewed = more money) but as a user I don’t think it’s worth my time and efforts so I don’t watch them ;)
It's all about choice. And choice, aka diversity, is great.
It's like not having to eat a banana if you don't like them and having the ability to grow the fruit you would love the most instead. That's also why I've now (in the last 5 or 6 years) mostly switched from Mac to GNU/Linux. This Mac Mac Studio I'm writing on right now is the last Mac I own and I see very little chance for it to be replaced by a newer Mac when time comes to replace it. I like the freedom of choice and to do what the funk I fancy on my computer. Not just what some designer at Cupertino (or some wannabe designer, at Redmond) decided I should be permitted to do.
Also, where is the standard between incompatible different macOS versions or different versions of Windows? Or between incompatible versions of the same apps running on those systems? I'm not saying it's wrong, nor that it's great, just that we should not neglect all those 'standardization issues' that exist in every single system. Marketing should not be blindly trusted — Imho, marketing should never be trusted, and not even listened to but that's just me deeply allergic to bullshit ;)
What exactly would you call a federal government?
I would call it a (federal) government, not a country.
How would you call it?
I more than disagree with what our government is doing in my country (and how they are doing it), do you think I should dislike all the people living in it, and all the places of that country because of me disliking a bunch of politicians and their politics? I don't.
Like, you’re taking it as “people from a country” and trying to be high and mighty about it. When literally no one else is having that conversation…
Like, do you really think it's healthy to only answer what people are expecting?
and trying to be high and mighty about it.
In our days and age of constant hastily proclaimed condemnations, I can appreciate you taking the time to better know me before expressing your informed opinion on my person.
Nope. I simply refuse to watch ads.
Either the website or their author will have provided the means to support them directly, or I won't. And if they try forcing ads on me, I quit using their website.
I'm fine with spending money to support content or services I appreciate. I refuse to waste a second of my life watching ads. That's the reason why we have not owned a TV since the early 00s: my spouse and I realized we were screwed as, at least here in France, we were supposed to pay for watching TV but still would have to watch ads, more and more of them for that matter. So, gone the TV.