Where did the week go?
I had a few days to work on several projects but didn’t advance too well. I got distracted and ended up researching other topics that, while useful, were not related to the work I should have been doing. Specifically, I have been looking at changing my text editor.
For a few years now, I’ve been a user of the Ulysses app on my Mac. But earlier in the week iA (information Architects) released a new update to their text-based writing app. iA Writer V7. I’ve used it on and off for several years, and I’ve always been happy with it as an editor, even changing the defaults on macOS to open .txt files in the application for a while —that job has subsequently been taken on by BBEdit recently.
iA Writer is a breed of distraction-free writing environments that support Markdown text. If you haven’t used Markdown, I highly recommend you look it up and integrate it into the tools you use to write. Many feel it is targeted only for text that will end up on the Internet as a web page, but I’ve seen plenty of value in using it for basic note-taking. iA Writer has some tools to help you write, but this is not a review, so I’m not going to go into those. Suffice it to say it is an excellent app.
However, version 7 introduces a concept of Authorship, which, on the face of it, is like Word’s Track Changes functionality. But it is much simpler and efficient and now helps you work with text generated by LLMs such as ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot.
Their take on this useful, if flawed, tool is interesting and nuanced. As writers themselves, they see the value in those tools and their flaws. Authorship allows writers to combine, edit, and integrate LLM-generated text in a way that helps the author integrate those tools into their writing without losing the human aspect. Read their blog post about it here.
I haven’t road-tested it yet, but I plan on doing so in the coming days and weeks. What this version change has done for me, however, is to reevaluate what text-writing tool I am going to use going forward. And I have already switched to iA Writer. This decision is born out of a couple of thoughts and tests. Not only the Authorship functionality but also something I consider to be really important. Transportability and preservation of my work.
iA Writer works with plain text documents. Ulysses does not. In fact, Ulysses creates proprietary formatted text files and stores them in iCloud. Unfortunately, they don’t provide a way to extract those files easily and in bulk. Once the files are in Ulysses, they’re pretty much stuck there. That is not entirely true, but you get the idea. iA Writer allows me to create a folder on pretty much any storage system (Ulysses allows this too, but in a convoluted fashion that I never got around to exploring) and have that synched through that system. I use a combination of iCloud and OneDrive storage to separate work and personal writing. However, the beauty of storing only text files allows me to use DEVONThink Pro to index those folders and have all the text files included in its database. This enables a whole host of functionality within DEVONthink. Indexing, search, links, and much more. This combination is really beneficial to the workflow, and I see it as an enabler for me to take advantage of the notes and articles I write in a structured and helpful manner, something that Ulysses didn’t allow.
I’ll see how I get on with it over the coming weeks. Still, for now, I need to set aside time to export important files from Ulysses and save them to the folders assigned in iA Writer and DEVONthink, and the magic will happen automatically.
Reading
I’m still enjoying The Caves of Steel (Asimov). I’ll probably finish it this week. I did, however, sneak in another book last week on a private and important subject to me. I read that book in three days.Of note
Where do I start? I wanted to write about a certain childish billionaire, but honestly, I don’t have the energy or the inclination to add to the already available pile on the Internet. Suffice it to say, his outbursts are getting increasingly erratic and irrational. I’m unsure where this will end up, but I don’t think X, née Twitter, will survive.Some of the truth about Sam Altman has also started to appear. Recently, there has been news of what some would call dodgy dealings between OpenAI and a company that was set up with his money and a big order (promise to purchase) for the coming years.
On the same topic, the blow-up revealed and unveiled the stupidity and their downright cynical attitude. Despite the name, it is neither “effective” nor “altruistic”. Be very careful and strike it down wherever you see it. It is rotten to the core, and those who espouse it are similarly so. It is something I have been following for a while and is mixed in with another dangerous position: Longtermism.
Another rich dude got a bit of an Internet kicking when a prestigious university library cancelled their renewal of his company’s software after taking the time to understand where the person was coming from morally. Reprehensible is the word to describe his words. I’ll leave you to look it up. Finding it with the information I posted here would be trivial.
The last thing I wanted to write here is the brewing conflict in South America. No, not in Argentina, in Venezuela and in Guyana. A referendum is taking place this Sunday, and the result is all but assured for the reasons you already know. This referendum is trying to justify an annexation of approximately half the territory of Guyana. This is a complex situation and one that can’t be understood only by looking at recent history. It requires a lot more thought and research to understand the nuances. I’m only at the beginning of that journey. Maybe I’ll write something about it in the future.
Have a good week.
