Beardy Guy Musings

For those using Apple devices there are a lot of choices for markdown apps. I’ve tried many of them over the years: iA Writer, 1Writer, Byword, Drafts, Ulysses, and Obsidian all come to mind. Of those iA Writer has been my favorite but for most of the past year I’ve settled into using an app called Taio. They offer a subscription or a one time purchase which works on iPhone, iPad and Mac. Of the various markdown editors available on the iPad, iPhone, or Mac, this is proving to be my favorite. It’s a beautifully designed app and they do a great job of supporting OS standards and features. Worth noting the app is updated frequently and supports the most recent iOS features. For example, they have already released their new update supporting the customizable iPadOS toolbar and new Lock Screen widgets for iOS 16.

Some of the most notable features:

• Above mentioned iPadOS 16 customizable toolbar
• Multiple tabs, easy previewing
•  A standard sidebar for folders, files, tags, etc
• The ability to add different file locations to the sidebar
• Tags, wikilinks, and back linking
• A built-in shortcut-like automation system for creating actions
• A built-in clipboard browser utility
• iCloud syncing of clips in the clipboard, actions, and files
• Highlighted focus mode
• Easy exporting to multiple formats

What it’s lacking for my particular workflow:

• Blog publishing. Of the other apps I have recently used, Drafts and iA Writer can both do this.

After spending the past couple of days working on a couple of documents for clients I wanted to share a quick note of appreciation for the Affinity apps by Serif. One of the documents was a newsletter, the other an annual report, both created in Affinity Publisher. What a joy to use! In fact, all three Affinity apps have become my primary apps for any graphic design. Affinity Photo is probably the least used but still very handy for photo editing in the context of images being used for design projects. Affinity Designer for smaller 1-2 page documents. And Affinity Publisher for newsletters, annual reports.

All three are excellent replacements for Adobe’s subscription apps and are really affordable as one time purchases, less than $60 each and available for Mac, Windows and iPadOS. The iPad apps sell for less and currently, Publisher, while announced for iPad, has yet to be released. It’s expected sometime in 2022. As I do most of work on the iPad I appreciate that the iPad apps are fully featured with nearly 100 feature parity to the desktop apps. I’m really looking forward to having Publisher on the iPad.

Something to note about the Affinity apps is that the file format works across all the apps with no conversion or exporting necessary. From Windows to Mac to iPad, an Affinity document opens up on any of the platforms, in any of the apps. It’s fantastic.

Also worth noting, Publisher has a feature called Studio Link that comes in very handy. In the top left corner of the Publisher app window are the icons for the other two Affinity Apps: Photo and Designer. If I’ve got an image in my current Publisher document that needs to be adjusted I can click the Photo icon and Publisher goes into a Photo mode. It doesn’t open up that app but the interface changes to match that app’s tools. If I’ve got an embedded/linked external Affinity Designer document in my Publisher document, say a vector infographic, I can click into the Designer mode and suddenly Publisher now looks like the Designer app and I have all of the tools found in the Designer app available to edit my graphic. With Studio Link, Publisher becomes those apps with the specific tools of those apps for editing images or vector assets. It happens instantly and seamlessly.

Of course, all that said, Publisher is quite capable on it’s own with many of the tools of those other apps already integrated. This is important to note because the Studio Link feature will only work if the user has all three apps installed. If you only have Publisher though you’ll still have many of the same capabilities.

A last note of something I first noticed years ago when switching to the Affinity apps and have appreciated over the years and that’s just how smooth they are to use. Not just in the above mentioned aspects of file compatibility across apps and platforms, but in terms of the speed of the apps. While fully featured they feel so well optimized. On the iPad the apps open in to a splash screen which then opens a recent files view. Time to open a file from tapping the icon in the dock is less than 3 seconds.

The usual middle of the night, half-awake mind meanderings down various rabbit holes. I think I might start using the new iOS 16 dictation to record those that seem potentially interesting. Be warned, what follows is unedited stream of consciousness. 😬

Let me describe the scene for you. It’s 4 AM and I’ve been woken up by my cat who is scratching on the wall. It’s chilly 60° and I have my windows open and a fan in the window. Just outside my window is an owl hooting every few minutes, keeping me company. My mind wanders, which is probably pretty typical for a human being in the middle of the night. Thinking about going back to sleep. And as is often the case, it’s easier to fall down and various rabbit holes of thought. In particular, tonight’s rabbit hole is a pondering about humanity and schemes and the nature of living as a human on the earth. Thinking about the point of living as an organism gathering resources to survive. We’re an interesting and special kind of animal, of course with seemingly complex life patterns, ways of being, ways of thinking, and always changing of course. Wondering about how much of human reality human experience is kind of scheming in an attempt to create security for present and future. The squirrel thinks about nuts and saving nuts for the winter, some animals store their winter food, other animals try to forage throughout the winter, and I guess some perform a mix of both. We humans are interestingly capable of ignoring the future, and at the same time planning for the future while overlooking certain aspects. For example, and not surprisingly given that I’m always thinking about climate change that’s one aspect of the future that many humans I have been very good at ignoring while they work at saving up, personal wealth to ensure comfort for themselves. For us I’m saying all this as a an American, whose family is primarily middle-class. When I look around, I see people who are obsessed with wealth and comfort. It is simplistic way though. I think it is accurate to say that in 2022 the humans I know, I’ve dedicated much their lives to the accumulation of small wealth and comfort. It’s personal and for family. Interestingly, in 2022 and in recent years, though, we’ve seen a creeping in of some thing that has always or at least recently sort of been at the margins and that is, larger belonging and identity. We create these things called states and nation states. We organize our larger communal identity and wealth into these states that have boundaries and which function like machines. The component parts, many layers of resource collection, and wealth generation in the form of individual humans Creating a matrix of organization which self maintains while also trying to grow again largely through wealth, generation, and resource extraction. And, of course, along with nationstates comes an attempt at security. Certainly in the United States, we see a nation state obsessed with security because it has been historically, also obsessed with wealth. Perhaps that is a part of the unique violence that we see threaded throughout the tapestry of its short history. Wealth, generation, and extraction seems to be interwoven with violence. Probably not unique to the United States, but certainly a primary thread of the tapestry.

 Having an individual identity in this larger social matrix has been confusing for me. On the one hand, I recognize the importance of social creation of shared, social, nurturing of the commune. I desperately want to contribute to the communal good and yet struggle, because in the United States, the commune has been Rooted in violence and wealth, generation, rather than human and ecological health and well-being.

What’s your favorite RSS reader? Reeder and NetNewsWire are popular. I’ve used both in the past but after trying Apple News I came to prefer a full screen grid layout as it seems a better use of space and I prefer the appearance. Currently using News Explorer.