M. Caspian's Blog, page 13
January 22, 2017
Music Monday: Flight of the Conchords because I’m still not over Friday
Trump’s inauguration speech was fucking scary. Also, seriously? Seriously?
The White House LGBT page has already been taken down, along with any reference to climate change and civil rights.
If it’s any consolation, let Flight of the Conchords remind us one day this will all be over.
January 20, 2017
Go Kokuyo part 2: Jibun Techo cover review
In part 1 of this post I looked at the Jibun Techo by Kokuyo, a simpler and more compact competitor to Hobonichi planner.
Kokuyo also make a pretty ingenious trifold A5 cover, which not only will work for the Jibun Techo but also a Hobonichi Cousin, Moleskine, MD Midori A5, Seven Seas, Taroko journal, or any other A5 or A5 slim notebook. The cover is vegan leather (aka plastic) and polyester canvas (aka a different kind of plastic). It has three riveted ribbon bookmarks and closes with an elasticated band. There are outside pockets in both front and back, big enough to store my A5 shitajiki as you can see. One thing I appreciate is that the elastic band is so firm when it’s unfastened it doesn’t flop around, it sits nice and tight against the back of the cover (see right pic).
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The trifold design allows for easy carrying of the Jibun Techo 3 book system. In the photos I actually have a Hobonichi Cousin A5 notebook, not the Jibun Idea book. You can see how well it fits.
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The planner slips into the cover just like a Hobonichi cover. The Life book nestles next to it in the back cover. The Idea book or other notebook attaches via a clever split plastic sleeve, which swings out to give you the trifold. The same plastic sleeve design sits in front, although that one doesn’t swing out.
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The inside back cover has three horizontal slots for business cards/credit cards/sticky note holders, and there’s one more vertical one in the foldout sleeve.
[image error]Hobonichi Cousin A5 notebook attached to the foldout sleeve.
Bonus: the cover comes with a free spiral bound notebook, and the paper in it is surprisingly good.
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One big advantage of this split sleeve system is you can insert either a spine-bound notebook or a top-bound jotter pad/note pad into the space.
[image error]Rhodia jotter in Kokuyo cover
The whole thing makes a slim package convenient to carry or throw in your bag. The pen loop is elastic, and amply big enough for a Lamy Al-Star or even chunkier pen.
[image error]Even with the Rhodia jotter pad in it, it’s very manageable.
But not only the Jibun Techo set will fit in it. Look! This sucker will hold a large Moleskine plus a notebook, a Hobonichi Cousin with a Hobonichi notebook, or a Taroko Enigma by itself (just), meaning it will also hold a Seven Seas Writer/Crossfield by itself.
[image error]Hobonichi Cousin
[image error]Taroko Enigma
One thing I see a lot is people saying they love the design of the Safari, but dislike the khaki color of the A5. The Kokuyo A5 cover comes in four appropriately sober and businesslike color options.
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I got my cover, including the notebook, on eBay for about USD$35. Shipping was free. Compare that to USD$118 for the Safari A5, plus another $20 for shipping and handling. My experience with this seller was fantastic. The cover arrived in New Zealand from Japan in a week (and remember, that was with free shipping).
[image error]Hobonichi Safari Cousin cover
Yes, the Safari is better quality, with more pockets, and arguably will last longer. It’s more elegant, although the Khaki color is not to everyone’s liking. But you can’t argue against that price difference. If you’re looking for a sturdy, practical, well-designed and non-precious journal cover you should definitely consider the Kokuyo.
Go Kokuyo part 1: Jibun Techo & accessories review
Japanese stationery brand Kokuyo is an up and coming competitor to Hobonichi. You guys know I love Hobonichi, and treasure my Safari cover as my everyday carry, but the Hobonichi planner isn’t the right choice for everyone. Many people find the daily layout offers more space than they need. And the universe knows, white space waiting to be filled with brilliance causes anxiety at the best of times.
If you relate to this, the Kokuyo Jibun Techo might be a better choice for you. The full Jibun Techo “3 in 1 Life Log Diary” is a set of three books: a yearly planner, a ‘Life’ book to record personal details and events, and a ‘Idea’ book – a thin gridded notebook made from Tomoe River paper.
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The planner offers only a monthly and weekly view (plus personal info pages), on beautiful fountain-pen friendly paper. There’s a regular edition, with color pages, and a monochromatic Biz edition. It has two built-in ribbon bookmarks, in black and red.
[image error]The Shiba Inu bookmarks up top are by the artist A Cloud is Born, from Hobonichi
The Jibun Techo comes in A5 slim or B6 slim. The A5 slim is 17mm (2/3 inch) narrower than full A5. It’s a compact size, great for an everyday carry. You can buy each book separately, but if you get the set it comes in a handy clear plastic cover with two outside document pockets and six slots for business cards/sticky notes/accessories.
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The set also comes with a shitakiji which has a riveted elastic band to hold the whole lot neatly together inside the closed cover.
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If you don’t care for the idea of the elastic Kokuyo also make a separate shitajiki to use as a ‘Today’ bookmark.
[image error]A5 slim Jibun Techo (left) shitajiki photographed next to a Taroko Shop A5 for size comparison
Kokuyo makes sticky notes to fit into their boxes, but the Hobonichi ones work fine too. You would have to be pretty darn OCD to mind the 2mm overhang. They also make index stickers to add to your pages and make navigation easier.
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Belle Beth Cooper has done an extensive walkthrough of the Jibun Techo, and the Kokuyo website lists all the pages in the Yearly Planner and the Life book, with good images. Currently the Kokuyo website is only in Japanese, which makes ordering scary. There are some showing up on eBay and Etsy now, although the seller markup makes them pretty damn expensive. Do not worry about what cover color you buy: this is simply a trimmed piece of A4 (letter) paper slipped inside the clear cover. You can easily print and make your own.
Currently I’m trialling the Jibun Techo as a daily log, recording how I actually spend my time: all my time. Sometimes I don’t know where the hours go. Five days of recording down to the minute already tells me where I need to improve.
In part 2 of this post I review the Kokuyo A5 notebook cover, a well-designed and price-conscious choice which also works for a Hobonichi Cousin, Moleskine, Seven Seas, or Taroko journal.
January 17, 2017
The interwebs is coming for our brains
Facebook posted a job listing for a brain-computer interface engineer, along with a neural imaging engineer, for “DARPA–style breakthrough development.”
[image error]The interwebs is coming for our brains. I don’t think I’m even going to struggle.
January 15, 2017
January 12, 2017
Nuke-able journal
Pilot FriXion pens use ink that turns clear when heated to 60C (140F), so you can use any soft plastic or rubber as an eraser, by raising the temperature with friction. I use a Frixion pen as my everyday workhorse, so I’m always careful to never leave my planner in a hot car.
However the Law of Attraction planner turns that drawback into a feature (skip to 1:27).
I have mixed feelings about this. I’m not one to go back and read old planners, but erasing the past seems kind of . . . blasphemous? I know you can save it in the cloud first, but dude, you’re nuking your planner i.e. the actions of a human about to kill their spouse and grab a flight to Belize with a Samsonite suitcase full of non-sequential cash.
Also, better not live in Alaska. Or Maine on a bad day. At -10C (14F) all the ink comes back.
January 8, 2017
Music Monday: Kiwi legends Supergroove
In honor of today’s word count, I present Can’t Get Enough.
I actually wrote 2681 words today. That’s not terrible, but I still kind of hate myself right now. I blame the plethora of books with titles like 2K to 10K, 10K a Day or the completely impossible 5,000 Words Per Hour for my deep-rooted dissatisfaction. Let’s have some 90s funk rock to get me out of my malaise.
January 7, 2017
Surprising gender awareness from Noel Leeming
Noel Leeming is a Kiwi national appliance chain – arguably the most prominent. Last week I filled in their survey about my “buying experience” for my fitbit in November. I was surprised to find this for the gender question.
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I’d still prefer a gender neutral option, but it’s progress to have a big New Zealand brand start referring to the gender you “most closely associate with”, instead of the gender you “are.”
January 5, 2017
My top 3 writing productivity apps
Productivity apps can be an energy suck. You spend so much time getting organized and setting up systems you don’t move on to the “producing stuff” stage. Many apps don’t add enough value to be worth it. Here are my top three low-setup apps. These have genuinely helped me improve how much and how frequently I write, with no learning curve or extensive workflow system development required *cough* OmniFocus *cough*. I’m on Mac, so Your Milage May Vary.
1. Brain FM
BrainFM plays frequency- & amplitude-modulated music. The channel I use sounds like EDM with a weird, trippy bass. I cannot explain why BrainFM works. As far as I know, it’s magic. Kidding. It’s science. All I know is I turn it on and the ADD part of my brain goes all quiet and happy, tucking itself into a corner of my skull and tapping its toes happily, and leaves the rest of me free to write. It’s kind of absurd how well it works for me. I can set it for 30 minutes, an hour, two hours, or infinity. There’s a wide choice of music/sound types to pick from, and themes for focus, relaxation. or sleep. Best of all there’s no setup required. Put your earbuds in. Push Focus. Work.
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BrainFM asks you to rate your sessions and then tracks your progress. It costs USD $6.95 a month for a month-by-month account. I love it so much I splashed out in December for a discount $39.00 lifetime sub through BoingBoing: this is still on offer for another 5 days (or 1 year for $19; 2 years for $29). I’ve tried other focus music options like Focus@Will. This is also effective, but not to the same extent. BrainFM is the one for me. I’m hooked.
2. Vitamin R
Vitamin R is a flexible pomodoro app: it times you for the duration of a focused work session. The differences between Vitamin R and a plain Pomodoro timer are:
a) Before you start a focus session the app asks you to define your specific objective for this work session. This helps me stop focusing on “working” and start focusing on “completing X task in this project.” The app remembers your objectives, so when you pick up the next day you can easily see where you got to yesterday.
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b) The app then asks which other apps you’d like to close to minimize your distractions. It will remember your choices, and offer these as the default next time.
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c) Then you define your own session length, from 5 minutes to an hour. The app tells you when your time slice will finish, and also links to your google calendar/iCal to let you know what other appointments/plans are in your day view. When you feel like hell, but have to work anyway, it’s useful to just do a five-minute slice. Achieve progress, no matter how tiny. When it’s your prime creative time and you’re energized and alert, crank it up to an hour.
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d) As you work there’s an intermittent tick-tick sound (you can toggle this off) to remind you to stay on task. The idea might sounds annoying, unless, like me, you’re prone to distraction. Then not only will you understand, you’ll love it. The tick acts like the bell in meditation; it reminds me to get back on task (I can get sidetracked easily, just by the birds outside the window). There’s also popups/voice overs to count down your time slice, e.g. “ten minutes left.” Again, you can toggle these off if you hate them.
e) The app tracks your time slices. Over weeks you get to see more clearly when long slices work, and when you’re fed up and short slices work better. This helps me plan my tasks. My gut tells me I work best in the evening. My stats tell me I’m wrong: if I haven’t done it by 6pm, I’ll struggle.
There’s also a notepad, but it takes two seperate clicks to open it while writing and I find that annoying. Using Notes – or a scrap of paper – works more efficiently for me.
3. Day One
I have a problem with fear. My productivity is low because I’m terrified of being judged for my inexorable imperfection. 2015 was a sucky fucking year for productivity for me. In the months of April to November inclusive I wrote only 26,336 words. In February, June, and October I wrote nothing. On 29 November 2015 I started journaling, inspired by my friend Chris (I do not attempt the arty stuff she does). In December 2015 I wrote 34,976 words. In January 2016 I wrote 61,547. In two months, that’s more than three times the word count achieved in the previous eight.
I have a paper journal too of course, but for my writing productivity, I use Day One. The interface is super-clean and extremely simple. When I sit down to write one of those Vitamin R time slices I feel the fear well up inside me every fucking time. Who the hell am I kidding. I can’t write. My books are terrible and no one wants to read them anyway. I’m a joke. When I try, and inevitably fail, everyone will unfriend me.
Before I start writing, I can click open Day One and write all this shit down. Get it out of me, like carving out envenomated flesh. I tell myself it’s all right to fail. I am nothing special, and that is what’s important. We’re all just flailing around , tiny whirlpools in the great energy of life. I can write because I don’t know what I’m doing, not in spite of it.
I can also write through plot issues, when I’m stuck or not sure what happens, or how it happens, or how a character will react. Here’s where Day One beats a paper journal: if I come up with something good I can just cut and paste it, or tag it to find later. I can easily add photos, drawings, and pics of book covers. The Day One interface on Mac couldn’t be simpler: click the + and write, click Done when finished. You can keep multiple journals if you want, and sync between Mac, iPhone and iPad.
The down side? Day One is crazy expensive: currently USD $49.95 I believe (NZ$59.95 = ouch!). It’s definitely a luxury. If you have Evernote you can use that for digital journaling. You shouldn’t need to double up. I own Evernote. I shouldn’t need Day One. But for me, it works, and it’s worth it.
I’m still working on overcoming my fear. It’s deep-seated and will take time. This is my number one priority for 2017, hand in hand with producing many more books.
So, these apps helped me. If you find any useful, or if you’re aware of cool features I’ve missed, shout out in the comments and let me know. And tell me, what’s your favorite productivity app?
My top 3 productivity apps
Productivity apps can be an energy suck. You spend so much time getting organized and setting up systems you don’t move on to the “producing stuff” stage. Many apps don’t add enough value to be worth it. Here are my top three low-setup apps. These have genuinely helped me improve how much and how frequently I write, with no learning curve or extensive workflow system development required *cough* OmniFocus *cough*. I’m on Mac, so Your Milage May Vary.
1. Brain FM
BrainFM plays frequency- & amplitude-modulated music. The channel I use sounds like EDM with a weird, trippy bass. I cannot explain why BrainFM works. As far as I know, it’s magic. Kidding. It’s science. All I know is I turn it on and the ADD part of my brain goes all quiet and happy, tucking itself into a corner of my skull and tapping its toes happily, and leaves the rest of me free to write. It’s kind of absurd how well it works for me. I can set it for 30 minutes, an hour, two hours, or infinity. There’s a wide choice of music/sound types to pick from, and themes for focus, relaxation. or sleep. Best of all there’s no setup required. Put your earbuds in. Push Focus. Work.
[image error]
BrainFM asks you to rate your sessions and then tracks your progress. It costs USD $6.95 a month for a month-by-month account. I love it so much I splashed out in December for a discount $39.00 lifetime sub through BoingBoing: this is still on offer for another 5 days (or 1 year for $19; 2 years for $29). I’ve tried other focus music options like Focus@Will. This is also effective, but not to the same extent. BrainFM is the one for me. I’m hooked.
2. Vitamin R
Vitamin R is a flexible pomodoro app: it times you for the duration of a focused work session. The differences between Vitamin R and a plain Pomodoro timer are:
a) Before you start a focus session the app asks you to define your specific objective for this work session. This helps me stop focusing on “working” and start focusing on “completing X task in this project.” The app remembers your objectives, so when you pick up the next day you can easily see where you got to yesterday.
[image error]
b) The app then asks which other apps you’d like to close to minimize your distractions. It will remember your choices, and offer these as the default next time.
[image error]
c) Then you define your own session length, from 5 minutes to an hour. The app tells you when your time slice will finish, and also links to your google calendar/iCal to let you know what other appointments/plans are in your day view. When you feel like hell, but have to work anyway, it’s useful to just do a five-minute slice. Achieve progress, no matter how tiny. When it’s your prime creative time and you’re energized and alert, crank it up to an hour.
[image error]
d) As you work there’s an intermittent tick-tick sound (you can toggle this off) to remind you to stay on task. The idea might sounds annoying, unless, like me, you’re prone to distraction. Then not only will you understand, you’ll love it. The tick acts like the bell in meditation; it reminds me to get back on task (I can get sidetracked easily, just by the birds outside the window). There’s also popups/voice overs to count down your time slice, e.g. “ten minutes left.” Again, you can toggle these off if you hate them.
e) The app tracks your time slices. Over weeks you get to see more clearly when long slices work, and when you’re fed up and short slices work better. This helps me plan my tasks. My gut tells me I work best in the evening. My stats tell me I’m wrong: if I haven’t done it by 6pm, I’ll struggle.
There’s also a notepad, but it takes two seperate clicks to open it while writing and I find that annoying. Using Notes – or a scrap of paper – works more efficiently for me.
3. Day One
I have a problem with fear. My productivity is low because I’m terrified of being judged for my inexorable imperfection. 2015 was a sucky fucking year for productivity for me. In the months of April to November inclusive I wrote only 26,336 words. In February, June, and October I wrote nothing. On 29 November 2015 I started journaling, inspired by my friend Chris (I do not attempt the arty stuff she does). In December 2015 I wrote 34,976 words. In January 2016 I wrote 61,547. In two months, that’s more than three times the word count achieved in the previous eight.
I have a paper journal too of course, but for my writing productivity, I use Day One. The interface is super-clean and extremely simple. When I sit down to write one of those Vitamin R time slices I feel the fear well up inside me every fucking time. Who the hell am I kidding. I can’t write. My books are terrible and no one wants to read them anyway. I’m a joke. When I try, and inevitably fail, everyone will unfriend me.
Before I start writing, I can click open Day One and write all this shit down. Get it out of me, like carving out envenomated flesh. I tell myself it’s all right to fail. I am nothing special, and that is what’s important. We’re all just flailing around , tiny whirlpools in the great energy of life. I can write because I don’t know what I’m doing, not in spite of it.
I can also write through plot issues, when I’m stuck or not sure what happens, or how it happens, or how a character will react. Here’s where Day One beats a paper journal: if I come up with something good I can just cut and paste it, or tag it to find later. I can easily add photos, drawings, and pics of book covers. The Day One interface on Mac couldn’t be simpler: click the + and write, click Done when finished. You can keep multiple journals if you want, and sync between Mac, iPhone and iPad.
The down side? Day One is crazy expensive: currently USD $49.95 I believe (NZ$59.95 = ouch!). It’s definitely a luxury. If you have Evernote you can use that for digital journaling. You shouldn’t need to double up. I own Evernote. I shouldn’t need Day One. But for me, it works, and it’s worth it.
I’m still working on overcoming my fear. It’s deep-seated and will take time. This is my number one priority for 2017, hand in hand with producing many more books.
So, these apps helped me. If you find any useful, or if you’re aware of cool features I’ve missed, shout out in the comments and let me know. And tell me, what’s your favorite productivity app?
