Productivity

I’ve used Ulysses writing environment for months and I’ve come to really like the experience. It’s stable and nicely designed, iCloud implementation is great and it even allows adding external folders to work with (although integration with their database is not perfect). Ulysses may represent the perfect environment for most writers: pure text, pseudo markdown, clean interface and a distraction-free layout. However, I think I feel more comfortable writing on an App that closely represents what the final product is going to look like. In looking for alternatives, I tried several Apps and workflows, but none seemed to work for me… until I came across Bear App. Once I tried it out for a couple of days, I couldn’t look back: ...

In the last weeks I’ve spent quite sometime tweaking a Raspberry Pi 3 to be used as a travel photo backup device. It has now become a travel access point, media sharing device and a time-lapse controller for my Sony A7II. It’s really a wonderful and versatile little device. One thing that all these projects have in common is the Python programming language. In the last years, I’ve become a huge fan of it and have learned to use it to automate several tasks both at home and at work. However, programming in Python on the Raspberry Pi can be a less than enjoyable experience: the included IDE feels dated and moving around the OS GUI can be a bit frustrating when trying to multi-task. Additionally, all peripherals (monitor, keyboard and mouse) would need to be connected to the Raspberry Pi in advance, which is not really convenient if the device is being used as a travel computer. ...

It’s been a while since moving from Squarespace to using Pelican as a static site generator for this website. Squarespace is beautifully designed, very resilient and for the most part dependable (they experienced several DDOS attacks in the past). But it’s not flexible when it comes to deeply customizing your site or when writing content. Site generators like Pelican are extremely malleable. Since they process markdown files and images stored in certain pre-defined folders, the user only needs a text editor and an internet connected device to write and post. ...

I have been using the Taskpaper format for both task and project management for a while now. Its deceiving simplicity is its greatest strength. You might think it’s just text lines with task descriptions and tags, but that’s exactly what makes it tremendously malleable. You can use it for either simple task lists or for building yourself a nerdy workflow involving automatically run Python scripts that rearrange and sort your project tasks. Paired with the wonderful Editorial text editor on iOS and Dropbox, makes up a sturdy and reliable mobile project management system. ...

Editorial 1.2 is out and it brought a plethora of improvements to a text editor that was already - in my opinion - the best one for iOS. Out of the box, is beautifully designed and stable enough to be used as your primary text editor. If you dig deeper, you will find advanced features like Workflows (using built-in actions and/or Python scripts), templates, GUI design, Taskpaper support, Dropbox syncing and complete markdown support, just to name a few features. It’s so powerful that calling it a text editor is truly an understatement. ...