02-25-2023
Analog vs Digital
I observed my Royal Scrittore typewriter collecting dust this morn g moring and thought I would give it a go. Two sentences in and my fingers hurt. Compare this tothe keyboard on my MacBook Pro where every key stroke is effortless and does not hurt.
Do I want/need to sell this piece of ..antiquity? I love the aesthetic but it feels more annoying than. beneficial. And if it doe does not. inspire joy, then it is out the door.
Damn. Back to the Mac.
I have had a need to simplify my websites and the expenses that come with them. That changed today.
A year ago I transferred this website to a self-hosted instance instead, for simplicity and ease of use but I gave up too much control. Today, I transferred it to a Ghost server and have taken control back. This move will save over half of the expense, too. At the same time, I moved my photography website back and to Adobe.
Today is a fresh start for this site. I am in the process of moving all of the articles published previously to an Archives page. There was an unfortunate issue with migrating the data over resulting in the first ten years going missing or a corrupt .xml file. Now the records go back to only 2011. I’ll keep sorting that out as I don’t want to lose all those memories.
ChrisDenbow.com was rebuilt in a couple of hours but it is still not finished. It will take time to clean up the migration process, slap some paint on the walls and customize the site to my liking. For now, we’ll log this attempt at version 1.0
Update– Yes, everything from former website has migrated over smoothly except all the images in the previous posts. Those are broken for now. Eventually, I may go back to the more recent posts and add the images manually back.
My website has being going for over twenty years. In that time, technology has transformed my life and the way I write has gone through some pretty major shifts. What was first typed into a frustratingly slow WordPress installation can now be published from a variety of apps with surprising ease, and often now straight from my phone.
It’s amazing to me that I can sit in my car waiting, and type out my thoughts to instantly post online.
I love pushing the “Publish” button, and appreciate even more the ability to do so while I am mobile as opposed to sitting at my computer all the time.
It’s been about a solid week since re-using iA Writer exclusively, instead of Ulysses and I’m thrilled to be back. I’ve never stuck with iA Writer except for editing Markdown files but now I am using it exclusively to publish here.
I’m thinking I have too many cameras and one has to go. Eek!
After reading about the latest iPhone, Watch and AirPods I think I will…pass on upgrading this year. I’ve finally arrived to the point where I am content and this is a unique experience for me. That Apple Ultra Watch though…
The idea of using a manual typewriter is a nice one but I almost never use it because it is very loud. Satisfying but loud. (::::::)
I have stacks of notebooks with virgin paper to fill but I’ve been too lazy. This has got to change or they go out the door.
I’ve decided I am going to do one more portrait session with the film cameras and then I’m going all-digital for awhile. Film prices are outrageous right now. Ten years from now when the film market is abandoned, I’ll dust off the 35mm cameras and be a hipster photographer.
Lately I’ve been playing ping-pong in my brain about changing platforms. I set myself up on a 14-day trial to host this site on another server and within 14 minutes decided it was too much of a struggle.
I’ve spent hours, months and years to get this site where I want it.
As a geek, however, I have the prerogative to change my mind at any time and without notice!
Following up on a previous post, I have too many unused paper journal notebooks in the form of Field Notes©. I need to frequently remind myself to use them, and this post intends to do just that. During the day, I’ll come to a point where I am exhausted sitting behind a computer screen and type. Then outcomes the pen and paper. Although some days lately I am getting more interested in paper rather than screens, but with both analog and digital, I can still create.
Digital notes are clean, minimal, and organized, whereas notebooks are scribbly, messy, and disorganized. That’s ok. They’re both aesthetically pleasing to me. Although I do realize that with doodles and strikethroughs that my paper journals are more mine than an app will be. Software note developers box you into a certain set of parameters, but in your notebook anything goes. You are in charge.
Notebooks don’t rely on batteries, an internet connection and no subscriptions. No forced upgrades and the format is time proof. It will still be there waiting on you to jot down your notes and doodles. If it is preserved properly, the journal will outlive you.
A paper journal will never require notification alerts and have a tactile feel that digital note-taking doesn’t. That feel of your writing implement against the uneven surface of the paper is more real than fingers string the keys on a screen.
Paper notebooks allow the ability to end and fold. You can chew it, set it on fire, cut snowflakes out of it or paper airplanes. Try that with any screen, and you’ll end up replacing the screen.
I’d rather draw marginalia faces, spirals, tacos, or flowers in the margins rather than rely on emoji in a straight line to express myself.
While I do find myself oscillating back and forth between analog and digital, the computers almost always wins out. But it is nice to know that if they fail, I have a wonderful backup device in my paper journal and typewriter.
“Being a writer is like having homework every night for the rest of your life.”
– Lawrence Kasdan
This quote could also be used for any hobby endeavor we choose such as photography, crochet, micro electronics, Ham radio, etc.
A hobbyist is constantly researching techniques, going over best practices and learning how to apply them. You don’t just sit down at your keyboard and start cranking out paragraphs without research on the topic. You learn to see the world through the lens of your hobby and wonder how your craft fits into it, or what you can glean from the world to use it. A hobbyist is always shooting, writing, sewing, tinkering and noticing. A photographer is constantly tilting their head looking for angles and composition or color coordinating. Then act on it. A writer is frequently attaching verbal descriptions to a situation and then document it.
“To write, I first must world”
– Laurel Schwulst
Any experience that can be seen as possibly mundane suddenly has meaning, such as grocery shopping, sitting in traffic or walking through the streets. This means they are alert, focused, awakened and deliberately taking their findings to be applied later as homework. Though this homework is not graded, it does help advance our self-induced education, and we are all the better for it.
If you think technology will solve your problems then you don’t understand technology – and, you don’t understand your problems.
Laurie Anderson
Find the best tool for a specific job and stick with it. This is better said than done for me since I enjoy trying all the new shiny tools to play with out there. I am getting better at this and narrowed them down to a select few for writing, post-process photography, etc.
“Nothing about the Internet is fixed, permanent, or inevitable. It is malleable, shape-shifting, and constantly evolving. And it increasingly comes with more responsibility and risks for guarding our own data and taking charge of distributing our words and images.”
EI Skyers
This sums up nicely what I’ve been referring to when it comes to owning your platform. Build a blog, delete your social media account(s), dump Google mail and get your personalized e-mail address, and distribute your words and images your way.
Just about everything I write digitally- blog posts, to-do’s, notes, journal, code, thoughts, plans, etc get drafted in text format (.txt)
These are an extension of me, my digitized, quantified, extended memory of organized thoughts. I use them often for research, reference, and a log.
So you see, they are important to me. They are a log of my digitized life. Text files are reliable, long-lasting and flexible. Here are some examples how this is the case:
Portability
I’ve had text files around since I upgraded from a manual typewriter to a word processor (personal computers were too expensive for me in college.) Text files have been around for me since 1996. Those text files were backed up on 3.5” floppy disks from the word processor to Windows 3.1 to Linux to thumb drives to Android and finally to my Apple devices here in 2022. Twenty six years old!
Every device I’ve owned, including the long obsolete devices, and devices that have not been manufactured yet can read/write/edit plain text. It is ubiquitous, everywhere.
Non-Proprietary
Along comes an industry-leading company that says you should use their software, that just so happens to have it’s own unique format. You either buy the software or subscribe to the service to keep your documents in their format. Now you’re locked in. Boom. Your notes just lost it’s portability, flexibility and freedom for the price of “features and convenience.” What happens when that company goes belly-up? Your hard work is trapped in an unusable format. Your writing will outlive them. It will hopefully outlive you. Proprietary software is not an option. Plain text is universal, non-commercial and will be for another few decades.
Non-Internet-Dependent
No connection, no problem. Accessing your writing when you need it is best.
Independent
No need for Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop, Evernote, OneNote, Google, etc etc etc. Sure, I could make the documents prettier with Word, but then again, I am locked in and rendered useless. A basic text editor and plain text files are plenty. So is a pen and paper.
Convertible
Plain text is flexible enough to convert to other formats as needed such as Markdown files, HTML, JSON etc.
Final Note
Portable, non-proprietary, offline, independent, convertible, minimal, flexible and future-proof. Plain text will continue to be read for the next few decades. Plain isn’t boring.
