What I have been hoping for is a really simple web site, so I can just edit text/markdown files, sync them directly to my server and be done with it.
I am trying to use my computer as little as possible, and not to need it for writing. I find the computer rife with distractions, and want it to be as minimal as I can make it. This is why I do things like use the Supernote or Palm M500 to type and edit text documents.
This new web site is made using a Flat File CMS called HTMLy. I tried a bunch of Flat File CMSs, and found a lot of taglines shouting about how simple they were, followed by me spending hours trying to debug and customize them, or discover that they didn't have a functional RSS option. Very silly.
I tried one more, HTMLy, and was shocked to discover that it worked very quickly and well the first time and just did what I wanted. Amazing!
I had been using Publii, which is a fantastic piece of software. It is a GUI-based static site generator, where you create everything in the app and then hit the sync button to sync it to your FTP server.
This is not a criticism of Publii, which is really good software. This is about me trying to find a good workflow to maximize my focus ad minimize clutter. because I wound up with drafts in text files, and then would get tangled up about which version to edit as I was posting. What I wanted was a system where I would edit the files directly, in their file structure, and then just sync that to my FTP server. And that's what I now have!
If I write on the Supernote, I have the added step of syncing the Supernote to Dropbox, and then syncing the Dropbox folder to the FTP server. If I write on the Palm PDA, I have to sync those files from the SD card too. But that's not bad. Things stay simple and tidy. I am using FreeFileSync as a nice GUI piece of software to sync the local files to the FTP server. It works nicely.
I got a new keyboard, the Logitech TypeAway, for my Palm M500. The old one, the Ultra-Thin folding keyboard was gradually becoming less responsive, so it was time to replace it. Fewer keys seemed to work each time. So that's no good.
I liked the Ultra-Thin very much, but the fact that one failed made me hesitant to get another of the same.
I generally like Logitech devices, so that's what I chose. It was new in the package, from EBay. Though of course the keyboard is 20-some years old, just unused.
The Logitech Typeaway is nice. It took a little fiddling to get it set up. In case you are wondering, you have to uninstall any old keyboard program and install the new one, then hit the reset button to restart the Palm, before it will register. The keyboard itself feels well made, but it is pretty small. It has a funky split down the middle where the hinge is, which feels a bit funny. I can type reasonably well on it, but some of the buttons are pretty small. I have medium-large sized girl hands. If you have larger hands or thicker fingers it would likely be too small to be very fun to use.
But what's great is the small folding size, so it's very portable. It does not require its own battery, so that's even better.
Since this is nerd stuff, here is a rundown of my technology.
Main computer: System 76 Gazelle running Pop OS 21.10.
It’s a great laptop, I’ve had for about four years, after buying it used on EBay. It works well. I like Gnome now (took me a while to warm up to) and it’s a nice machine. It’s a bit big and clunky so I don’t carry it around that much.
Backup laptop: 2009 13” Macbook Air running Ubuntu 21.10.
It’s slow, and the battery is lousy, but it fits in my bag more easily, so I’ll take it out to cafes some times for writing with fewer distractions. When I go to cafes, which hasn’t been that often for the last two years. (Oh my gosh. I am so ready for the pandemic to end. I’m vaccinated and boosted, so we’re done, right?)
Studio Computer: A desktop running Manjaro XFCE.
Runs well. Manjaro is my default second choice OS. For some reason I could not get this desktop to work with any Ubuntu-based USB installation medium. But it works well with Manjaro!
Phone: Pixel 3A.
I let my iPhone go a couple of years ago in favor of the Pixel and I appreciate being able to manipulate my data so much more easily, as in plug it into my computer and transfer files, do a simple text message backup, etc. I am no fan of Google, so I don’t have it connected to a Google account, and I use NetGuard to lock down some of the internet access on the part of various apps and system processes. I install apps using FDroid and Aurora Store. I hope that makes it a little more secure, but there is no easy to use phone that’s even semi-secure without installing your own OS, as far as I know. This seems like a bad situation, but I can’t fix it.
Ebook: Kobo Clara E-Reader.
It’s pretty good. I like that I can load EPUB (if they don’t have DRM) directly onto it, unlike a Kindle. I do miss the Kindle page turn buttons though. I always like more physical buttons. It works with OverDrive, so I can sync library books to it, which is what I use it for the most.
Distraction Free Typing: Alphasmart Neo, my favorite.
Simple for typing offline, with a good keyboard (better than any laptop). You plug it into your computer and it pours your writings into a text document. I love it for brain dumps and journaling.
RIP Tiny Netbook
Sadly, my 2009 Dell Inspiron Netbook no longer boots. I miss that little buddy for writing out in the world. I am craving a new tiny netbook to run Linux, but am trying not to be frivolous and ridiculous. Salute to my old friend Barry who is now suffering early Alzheimers, but helped me get that netbook set up as a Hackintosh, and dual boot it with Linux Mint. Such a kind, nerdy soul.
Other cool gadgets: Palm M500 and foldable keyboard.
![Palm M500 PDA with Palm keyboard and bonus, Wancai Mini fountain pen][1]
For writing offline, but with more ability to control multiple files. Also plays a few cute games. So fun and portable. It packs down into a little pen holder pouch and I take it in my bag on the go.
Music: A fifteen year old iPod.
The old kind with the wheel and the 250GB capacity, which plugs into a simple logitech speaker. That is the superior iPod, by far. Holds a ton of music and doesn’t fall prey to the nightmare that is apps, software updates, software obsolescence and so on, with limited harddrive space.
Cables Vs Wireless
Overall, I use cables as much as I can instead of wireless, plug my laptop into Ethernet, and avoid bluetooth. I do use a bluetooth keyboard once in a while with my phone, but I find that wireless is usually slower and more of a hassle to manage, so I just like to plug stuff in.
Okay. Tomorrow I’ll talk about how technology makes me feel insane, and maybe fountain pens and notebooks another day. Hasta mañana!
It’s been a rough year and a half, not even counting the pandemic. Not to go into all the stuff, but I’ve had a life threatening ectopic pregnancy, done IVF (through the bulk of it, but it’s a long process and still underway) and had a miscarriage. So not super fun. We are still working on this procreation project (not so easy as we were led to believe!), but feeling calmer and more grounded and better at taking care of ourselves in the process. I could talk endlessly about that experience and its lessons, but this is not the place.
However, I’m living through it and trying to reconnect with some creativity, painting, and fun projects for fun. Some of these random projects:
Escapism
I am deeply terrible at video games, and I married a dedicated gamer, so it’s a trick finding games to play together. Lately my husband and I have been playing a lot of Nine Parchments on the Nintendo Switch. It’s a coop fantasy monster fighting game. It was a cool advancement in my gaming skills to be able to press the right buttons most of the time, without having to stop and think which button does what. I know, pretty sweet. Nine Parchments is great because of the combination of looking at beautiful fantasy scenery and using fireballs and spells to fight monsters. Plus it doesn’t require too much button pressing precision, you just blow shit up. It is just delightful. Selius is my favorite character. I like to be the tank and just go jump into the mayhem. It isn’t open source or anything cool like that, just a fun, proprietary game.
Technology
I have been thinking about a small computer for writing out at cafes and outside. I just ordered a Palm m500 PDA from the year 2000. (Well, I ordered it from eBay, but you get the idea). That may sound silly, but I have been looking for a non-backlit writing gizmo for years. I thought the Onyx Boox would be the answer to all my dreams, but it was actually pretty bad and I sold the one I had. I have the Alphasmart Neo and I love it, but it is not so good for editing. So I am excited about trying this new PDA approach. We’ll see how it goes! Sounds very promising.
For computer use, I have been a very lazy nerd, for a while now. I still use exclusively Linux of course (currently Pop OS) but I want things to be simple, workable, and not have to do much of any debugging or configuring. I know that’s not very nerd-tastic of me, but that’s where I am. I haven’t done any distro hopping, sticking with a low-maintenance Ubuntu-based distro.
Same with my phone. I still have the same Google Pixel 3A. I use it without a Google account connected, and I try to use it as little as possible. I also keep Netguard turned on. For software I use FDroid and Aurora store. It is all pretty easy and works well.
I am still using Publii for my web site, and I think it is pretty good. Though I’d like to simplify the theme a bit. Too much visual clutter on the internet, and I don’t want to add to it. But I enjoy the simplicity of just writing and posting. I like a CMS with a GUI, and am not in the mood to fiddle with command line apps. I tried Hugo, Jekyll and some others but they were too fiddly and I always had problems and things to debug. Plus I love that Publii is offline, so I can do the work without internet if I want, and just upload my site when I’m ready.
I’ve been doing genealogy research for my family. It is fascinating, compelling, and so hard! I have some mysterious ancestors whose origins are so murky and I haven’t figured out where they come from yet. One day! My inner Miss Marple can’t resist. The intersection of history and my personal family is intriguing too. It makes history feel real and personal. For that I am using Gramps for genealogy records, and my beloved Zim for notes.
Trying to Get Away from Technology
Alongside my love of technology, I am also always trying to feel more grounded and clear out distractions. I still spend too much time on the computer and kind of wish I never had to use them at all. I would possibly be a better version of myself. But also I love technology? I know. It’s a contradiction. Really the goal is just balance and maintaining mental focus while using technology as a tool. Easier said than done.
I write a lot by hand, always using fountain pens. I journal every day, and use a paper planner, and rant to my notebooks when I want to clear my head. The tactile experience of writing by hand is very satisfying and grounding, plus it’s naturally “distraction free.” Favorite pens: TWSBI Eco, vintage Parker 45, Noodlers Ahab, vintage Platinum pocket pen, Delike brass pocket pen. Lamy Safari, Kaweco Sport and Moonman M2 are nice as well.
I may do some posting about fountain pens too, now that I’ve used them non-stop for a couple of years.
I’ve been reading Agatha Christie novels and they are so wonderful, witty and well done. I love the focus on details and human idiosyncracies.
Speaking of low-tech, I have been spinning wool, dyeing it with natural dyes and knitting it and it is very pleasant. I am trying to get the nerve up to knit a pair of socks. But that heel and toe is very intimidating. Regardless, it’s a calm, soothing activity, and my spinning is improving. I spin some on a drop spindle, and some on a spinning wheel that I inherited, as the family fiber arts person, from my husband’s grandmother’s house. It is wonderful.
I have again remade my web site using a new system. This time it is Publii (getpublii.com), and I am pretty excited about it for minimal web sites like this one. It's working well.
It is available as an .AppImage, .RPM or .DEB for Linux, and for other operating systems too. But Linux is the best one, obviously.
There are times when a database driven web site is needed and the right thing to use. Simple blog sites, however, do not need all that. Database sites like Wordpress (which I still use for more complex sites) are just too slow - both to develop and to use. And I don't think it should take image compression, content delivery networks and web site caching to deliver up the simple text in blog posts.
Publii is a static site CMS with a GUI. I have used Hugo, Jekyll and other static site generators, but call me a wuss - I like me a graphical user interface. Somehow with command line programs I always spend ages debugging one thing or another, and I'd rather focus on the writing I want to do.
The interface and setup is simple. You create blog posts, obviously, but also use posts as pages for use in the navigation menus. To make them into pages, you just add a link to them from the menu, and select to exclude them from the homepage, so they don't show up in the blog list.
There are paid and free themes, which seem quite customizable. I may look into building my own theme one of these days, but I'm going with the easy mode for now.
And when it's ready to go, you enter the server info, and sync it with your server - FTP, Github, or others.
There is the potential drawback of not having a web interface to access from multiple computers the way a Wordpress site does. But that doesn't bother me. I put my Publii site files in my Dropbox folder so I can use Publii on my home or studio computer, and that's all I need.
I love the speed and security of a static html web sites, and this system seems to be working well for me.
Zim Wiki : My favorite writing program. Great for journals and notes, and it saves the whole structure in plain text files so you can access them directly if you like. In every Linux distro software center that I’ve checked.
PS Notes – a charming, minimal notes editor that works with plain text or markdown.
I have a special addiction to pretty Markdown editors. My favorite is the Mac only, closed-source Ulysses (sorry). So the quest continues for the optimum thing. But these are lovely, just not the full writing suite that Ulysses is.
I know there are other note taking systems out there, but I don’t like anything I can’t edit in a different program, so that means I only like .txt or .md files. There are lovely ones out there, but they don’t meet that requirement, so I don’t use them.
Typora – Sadly, not open source. But this one is nice because it has a file list on the side, and you can edit the theme CSS files, so I can write in my favorite mono font.
RawTherapee – A nice photo editor for for detailed color and lighting adjustments. I like that I can save presets and apply them to each photo quickly when I’m touching up contrast and such on a bunch of photos. – In most software centers
Krita – Image editor.
GIMP – Image editor.
Music:
Pithos – A most excellent Pandora music player. You still have to go to the web site to do major station editing, but Pithos doesn’t play the ads (don’t tell anyone). – In the Ubuntu Software Center at least.
Finances:
KMyMoney – A very nice, solid finance program. In the Ubuntu Software Center.
ZuluCrypt - my current favorite, serves the same function as VeraCrypt.
VeraCrypt – Create an encrypted file bundle
KeePassX – Password manager
Internet Services
Posteo – Privacy-centric email service. Works great with Thunderbird or other email program.
Protonmail – Even more privacy-centric email service, webmail only at the moment.
Super Handy Utilities
GParted – Partition Management
Etcher – Making bootable USB drives for Linux installations and the like
Other Things
Open Source Astrology – if you like a little woo and want a Linux astrology program, this is great. It draws a nice chart, but leaves it up to you to know all the symbols. It’s possible this has been abandoned, but I’m leaving it up just in case.
A couple of weeks ago I installed Pop OS 20.04 on my System 76 Gazelle laptop. I had seen a fair amount of hype about it, and decided to give it a go. I ran Pop OS for some months a year ago, and liked it, but it became a big sluggish over time for me, so I went back to Ubuntu Mate. But I like the cute looks and polish of Pop OS, and I like System 76 as a company. They seem to be doing a good job. (Tangent: I hope they make a phone some day!)
![enter image description here][1]
I’ve never been much of a Gnome fan. It hasn’t been lightweight enough to suit me and I don’t like hamburger menus. But this OS is quite snappy, after I turned off the animations using Gnome Tweaks.
And it turns out, I really like Pop OS. I mean, I really like it! Who knew? It is quick, and smooth and runs great, and I haven’t had any weird glitches. I will wait and see whether it slows down over time, but so far I’m quite pleased.
There isn’t one specific feature that’s blowing my mind, but it’s generally smooth and does a good job. Which is what I want. At this point in my Linux evolution, I don’t want to try the most exotic distro, I want a low-maintenance machine.
I find myself strangely content with my technology situation. The phone is working well, computer is nice and smooth. I’m even happy with Jekyll for my web sites. That is good for my productivity in the rest of my life. In the ‘Planner community’ they call it ‘Planner Peace,’ where you quit fiddling with your planner and just use it to help you get on with your life.
Modern life is so complicated that we need all these fancy systems just to keep the basics together. Sometimes I just want to run off and live in the country and grow my own food instead. But in the meanwhile…
In order to make things more organized, efficient, and not so irritating, I am working on systems. When I feel disorganized and inefficient, instead of assuming I’m deficient or just bad, I am looking at where things don’t flow and where there is a question about how to handle something. Those decision making points are a problem. I need to have a smooth, well organized system to handle the thing, so I don’t have to think about it. Life has enough decisions to make without having to relitigate each individual piece of paper. That applies to real life and computer life. When I don’t have a good system, I keep fiddling with it endlessly and it’s annoying. But once I get a good one in place, it tends to keep working. That gives me hope!
There are still pieces which need a better system - syncing favorite photos with my phone, a more reliable local sync, and other details. And that isn’t looking at my house or my art studio. But most computer things are working pretty well. If I can find a better bookcase there’s even hope for an organized desk! I know, whoa.
While employees of big companies are striking, and articles online are saying how you should curtail your shopping to the essentials so as not to overload those workers. It sounds like large businesses are imploring us not to buy from them, and small businesses are trying to stay afloat. So I am doing my best to comply with their wishes! Because I am a helpful person, and only somewhat snarky and sarcastic.
If Amazon and Home Depot don’t want our business, small local companies surely do. Many of them have online shops right now, or are open limited hours, and are trying to stay afloat. A friend of mine runs Aloha Gardens, which just opened, and I was thrilled to shop there for a new trees, plants and potting soil, and they are happy for the business. Another local company, Powells Books, has had enough support in the form of orders to allow them to hire back some employees they had to lay off. I am lucky to have a local pet store for cat and dog food, and their prices are better than big pet shops. I sure wish we had a small local hardware store though. Home Depot is hard to avoid for house projects.
I have been able to avoid shopping at Amazon for a long time now. They have a terrible search function that makes it really hard to find anything anyway. I use eBay for random things from the internet, and it does the job just fine. I’d like to expand my list of good online small businesses. For my fountain pens and nice notebook addiction: Truphae, Jet Pens, Goulet Pens are all good. I’d love to find a source for more retailers like that. Googling for products brings up a million Amazon products, which is not what I’m after. But I digress.
My next goal is to start shopping locally for vegetables. There is a farm that accepts online orders and you can pick the veggies up from the farm, or from the farmers markets that just started up again now.
With the pandemic revealing the weaknesses in our system of centralized supplies and distribution, decentralizing is as good for real life as it is for the internet.
Our pup Olaf with some new trees from my friend's nursery
Palm m500 and portable keyboard
