This Old Notebook

This Old Notebook

This old notebook contains…

Design ideas and draft copy for a previous version of this site. (07.18.2005)

Notes from a David Allen online seminar titled Knowledge Work Athletics (08.18.2005)and the GTD Roadmap seminar I attended. (09.22.2005)

Notes from Ruth Haden’s Money for Couples class Bethany and I took prior to getting married. (02.06.2006)

A list of movies I wanted to see. Most marked as completed.

The first ever outline of my Dash/Plus notation system. (05.23.2006)

Journal entries from around the time of our wedding. (06.2006)

Then from the days we spent in the hospital by Bethany’s mother’s side as she lost her battle with colon cancer. (12.25.2006)

Then from our honeymoon to Spain. (02.23.2007)

Fortunes from fortune cookies that I found interesting. I would tape them in and date them. (06.01.2007 is the first of several)

The following haiku (10.12.2007):

Dark in the morning.
Dark at night when going home.
Work in winter sucks.

Beatrix’s arrival. Five pounds, seven ounces, eighteen inches. (02.09.2008)

Lots of fountain pen tests. (03.12.2008)

The desire to cultivate more simplicity in my life and belongings. (08.21.2008)

As well as countless dreams and schemes and lists and plans and diagrams and ideas and…

This is a snapshot of my life. The moments I felt important to capture at the time. So that every now and again I could look back and marvel at it all. That it has brought me to this empty page. To reflect before the next moment begins to write a new entry in another book.

I’m a full-time independent writer who works hard to bring you quality reading and ideas here daily. If you enjoy what you read here, please consider a free will donation of any amount.

Poster for iOS (A Brief Review)

Poster for iOS

Poster for iOS

I’ve recently been enjoying using Poster for iOS for publishing my posts here. It is far better than the official WordPress iOS app. The interface is lovely. It understands Markdown. It is easy to use. And it works on both iPad and iPhone.

Many people had asked me, when I published about my daily publishing workflow, why I was not using it. The simple answer is that that I had tried on a few occasions before. For whatever reason, I could not get it to work with this site previously. Not sure if it was an issue with the app or the install on my site but something was mucking up the works. I never bothered to take the time to contact the developer and get it sorted out. Mea culpa.

The app was recently updated to version 2.0 offering a bunch of newness so I decided to give it another shot. Very glad I did because it is working just fine now. Having it saves me a number of workflow steps when publishing from my iPhone or iPad mini (as I am right now). Beyond the already mentioned features, there is support for pulling posts directly from Dropbox (which is great because I still use PlainText for the actual writing), the ability to save local drafts before publishing, and the ability to post to multiple WordPress sites.

All in all this is a really great app. If you use WordPress and an iOS device, you should check it out.

A Time For Books

Beatrix owns at least a hundred books. Possibly more. Real books. Picture books. The kind five-year old kids have. Despite this age of tablets and e-ink, nothing has really matched the real thing for her. Most of the reading she personally does, or the things we read to her, are physical books.

Yet, while we have plenty of real books around the house ourselves — shelves upon shelves of them in our front entryway and the small library/den we have — these are all books we have already read. Most purchased before the age of iPads and Kindles. The books we actually read, the majority of any reading we do, are mostly on screens now. And though my wife and I read a lot, and read a large iety of books, periodicals, and other material at that, how is Beatrix to know?

I mean, we could be doing anything on the screen. And she knows it. She knows the Internet is sometimes on that screen. She knows that movies are sometimes on that screen. She knows that games and music are on that screen.

And, while she does know we can read books on that screen, even books for her, how is she to know the difference? How is she to pick up the physical cues that Mommy and Daddy read a lot of books? That this is what people should do. That it is something we believe passionately in. That it matters. That we believe she should read a lot of books too. Even when she is as old as we are.

I’ve decided that I want to start being very conscious of making sure to read real books as much as possible around her. That she not only see them closed and on shelves but also open and on tables and desks and their places being kept over the arm of a chair. I want to ensure that we have family reading time as much as possible and while one of us is reading a book to her the other is enjoying a physical book of their own.

This way, I hope she can see how important they are and make no mistake that reading books is something we believe in.

Bonus — Here are some of the favorite books (and mine too) in Beatrix’s extensive collection:

Update Bethany actually came up with the nightly family reading time idea, based on my concerns, and we proposed it to Beatrix yesterday morning. Tonight, Beatrix specifically asked for it and I was so excited and proud. Achievement unlocked.

Your free will donation of any amount helps to support this full-time independent writer of books. Real books. Thanks for reading!