I recently migrated this and my other blog to Hexo which is a very fast static blogging framework built on node.js. As when I used Octopress, this blog is still hosted from an AWS S3 bucket. However the deployers that I tried with Hexo failed because of dependencies that were incompatible with the OS X version I was running. Not being a node.js expert, and having no time to delve into node.js internals, I wrote a new deployer:

I’ve been moving to a tag-based system for organizing content in DEVONthink. All of my content for each database goes into a single group called “reference.” If I want to find something, I search the hierarchical tag structure instead of diving into some arbitrary list of groups.

But I still have groups that I’d like to collapse into the reference group. So I wrote an AppleScript to perform this action. Notably, most of the action is in the processGroup() handler which is recursive because we do not know how deep the group hierarchy goes.

To deal with the explosion of information available to us, we’re told to avoid the filter bubble by seeking out a variety of sources. Or we’re told to pursue a low information diet. But we’re also told that to be informed is one of the duties of citizenship. What are we to do? Here are some other options:

1. Stop caring about what doesn’t affect you. There’s apparently a Syrian refugée crisis in Europe. It’s unfortunate; but I won’t read about it. What good does it do? Nothing. So why bother reading about it? My sphere of interest should coincide with my sphere of influence. I feel bad about their situation; but all I can do it live my own life as simply as I can.

My main organizational tool DEVONthink Pro Office, a tool I’ve used for many years. I’ve written previously about it and how I use it to find things and how I synchronize databases across machines.

I’m a relative newcomer to Hazel though. Hazel’s tagline is “automated organization for your Mac.” Hazel works as an agent to keep folders organized on the Mac. It’s an engine that applies per-folder rules to take actions on files and folders. Actions can include tagging files, moving them to other folders, running AppleScripts, deleting them, etc.

If you’ve lived in the U.S. for any length of time, you realize that we have a national obsession with home ownership. Yet I’m beginning to wonder about this bit of American orthodoxy. I’ve owned 4 homes and none of them seemed like much of an investment to me. The last home that we sold was an enormous loss. We are now in a transition, anticipating our new move; so we are house-free (and debt-free!) So it’s an ideal time to unpack the complexities of home ownership.

In the popular sci-fi movie series “The Matrix”, a handful of humans discover that the perception of reality has been artificially engineered by computer software. By taking the red pill¹ a person can be released from the deception, thereby seeing things as they truly are. About material “stuff”, I’ve had the same sort of epiphany.

Three years ago, we decided we needed to build a house. We weren’t pleased with our previous neighbourhood; and we happened on a piece of land that seemed to fit our needs. We began working with a builder to design a house. Despite our intent to build a smaller house, the design ended up being considerably larger than the house we were already in. Everything was to be custom-designed and fabricated. All of the fixtures were selected. We had spent hundreds of hours thinking about the designs, going to meetings, reading books, looking at photographs. It was an enormous investment of time and a significant investment of money.

I’ve been a DEVONthink user for many years; it’s an amazing piece of software. Currently I’m using DEVONthink Pro Office because I use all of the higher level capabilities. Over the years, my database structure and workflow have gone through many changes. In this post I’ll describe my approach to finding things in DEVONthink.

Databases

At first, I dumped everything into a single database. Over time, however, I realized that finding things was difficult because of the number of false positives when searching. I roughly divide my databases between areas of responsibility. For example, I’m a director at two local music organizations; so I have separate databases for each of those groups. However, most of my material goes into a single database. It’s where all of the items of daily living go - bills, receipts, bookmarks, web clips, etc.

One of the great things about shooting with a camera like the Sony A7 that has an advanced sensor is that you can shoot astrophotographs with less noise that ever before. This comes into play with the inevitably long exposures you encounter when shooting the night sky. On a recent trip to view Kilauea volcano as we’ve done many times, I wondered if it might be possible to capture both the volcano and the star-filled sky in the same shot; so I began to research a bit on astrophotography. I’m by no means an expert; but I’ve learned a bit.

I recently shot a recital with my Sony A7. While it’s a wonderful camera for stills and it produces some excellent video too, cameras like this are not meant for continuous video recording. There are limitations that are imposed by compression algorithm licensing requirements. And, it seems, there are limits that are imposed by thermal issues inside the camera.

To make a long story short, my A7 ended up giving me two video files instead of one for this event. What to do?