dougist.com

Getting Ready for PlainText

Doug — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 16:49:48 +0000

I’ve moved almost all my notes out of my SimpleText folder. A few seasons ago I put them all in there when Hog Bay launched its free syncing service to support WriteRoom and TaskPaper for the iPhone and iPad. I did it because I thought I’d be notating and editing all sorts of items in the newly freed, on the go, mobile existence of the “i” revolution — no need for a heavy laptop for me. I was wrong.

New York State Writers Institute – The Summer Workshops

Doug — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 16:09:46 +0000

I’m baaack. It was fabulous. I was in Rick Moody’s masters section — life changing. I’ll write more as I process it all.

TaskPaper, Scrivener, and Note Taking on the iPad

Doug — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 15:01:55 +0000

TaskPaper, Scrivener, and Note Taking on the iPad We’ve been having a great conversation over on the Literature & Latte forums about TaskPaper, Scrivener, and note taking on the iPad. I’ve clipped

The Center Cannot Hold – Flarf in the WSJ

Doug — Tue, 25 May 2010 20:24:18 +0000

Sharon Mesmer, Flarf, The Wall Street Journal, Page One. There really isn’t any more that I can say….Poetry makes the big time. Click through for the evidence.

St. Lawrence University Commencement Address: Gomes trumps Sotomayor

Doug — Mon, 17 May 2010 20:35:40 +0000

At this year’s St. Lawrence University commencement, Reverend Peter Gomes of Harvard University delivered what could be described as the Gettysburg Address of commencement speeches. Almost a prayer for success, his short poetic comments encapsulate the totality of the modern university adventure.

Oh, a Supreme Court Justice spoke as well, but she didn’t have much to say, again.

The Madness of Art

Doug — Sat, 08 May 2010 14:38:37 +0000

Even if I didn't know Jim Kempner, and Dru Arstark, and the rest to the crowd at Jim Kempner's Fine Art, the opening scene in this mini-comedy of Jim crossing 10th Avenue against an onrush of cabs would still be hilarious. Then comes the reveal, because in the best parts of this show you start seeing situation in the art world that you've experienced before, or overheard, or wish you hadn't overheard. Watch the whole thing, then for god's sakes go over to Jim's and buy a piece of art, will ya...

The Influential Books Game

Doug — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 21:28:04 +0000

Everyone’s making a list of ten books. Tyler Cowen started it. I caught up via Ross Douthat’s article NYT in the New York Times. The drill is: stream of consciousness, from the gut, no great research, off the top of your head, what ten books most influence your world view. Here's my list...

The Whitney Biennial – The End In Sight?

Doug — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 15:14:40 +0000

Spending Friday at the Whitney Museum of Art’s Biennial was like spending an afternoon watching YouTube, except the Whitney’s installations were of a lower production quality and were vastly less meaningful — even when shouting their relevance at full volume. Room after room showed video after video in the show billed as the art world’s statement of what’s happening now, a statement, the Whitney will tell you, it has been making for over 75 years. But this version of the Beinnial’s statement is about …

SimpleText, TaskPaper, WriteRoom, Notational Velocity – Going minimalist with my notes

Doug — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 14:51:21 +0000

Going minimalist with my note taking tools has been a fantastic boon to my work flow. Using applications and tools that let me access my data set of files, without taking them over and making my work flow conform to the needs of those applications, has removed a whole set of steps, perhaps most importantly the one between capturing ideas and processing them to finished work. Before, there was always the PITA process of transiting from flaneur to writer, now they are one and the same act; in other words the technology is doing what it is supposed to do.

Chameleon In Chief

Doug — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 12:37:07 +0000

How could I have said such bad things about President Obama? How could I have said he was the leader of the grow-the-government-at-all-costs liberal wing of the Democratic Party? How could I, like Charlie Kraauthimer use the term Social Democrat, even when others were using the more pejorative Socialist? How could I have ever suspected that by taking over the auto industry, trying to take over the banking industry, writing legislation to take over the medical industry that Obama was really the candidate of fiscal responsibility and small government? Federalization? Heck no, we’re all Republicans here, now. The Left must be in horror watching Obama Reagan, just as the rest of us were when we watched Obama Marx. Jon Stewart is just fit to be tied, brutalizing the once deified savior of activist government, the New York Times is on suicide watch. Lord knows what Jessie is thinking. But the chameleon in chief knows...

My policy on email

Doug — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 13:03:09 +0000

I get a lot of email, I mean a lot — not as much as I did when I was in commerce, but still what could justifiably be called a deluge. Some if it is of my own making, most is not. Almost all of it demands a thoughtful reply, and each reply takes, for me at least, emotional energy, if the response is going to be more than the web 2.0 version of a grunt. In addition to the volume of mail I get, emailers have increasingly imposed their own ever shortening version of response times on that torrent. Besides whatever they wrote, they implicitly say: I wrote you. I want, demand, will extort, a reply NOW. Here's what I do...

Justus Rosenberg on rescuing victims of the Nazis

Doug — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 23:46:18 +0000

Justus Rosenberg was the youngest member of the team led by Varian Fry that rescued some of Europe's most famous artists, writers, and intellectuals who had taken refuge in France prior to the Nazi occupation.
I studied linguistics under Dr. Rosenberg at The New School in the Fall of 2008. This video tell his story from the 1940's, and in the post I tell a little story shared between us that fall.

Notational Velocity – Show in Finder

Doug — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 15:56:45 +0000

Missing in Notational Velocity is an apparent command to “Show in Finder” but it's easy to use Spotlight to do the same thing. Here's how I do it...(and why it matters to interface architecture)

myMFA – A two year writer’s development program

Doug — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 20:18:57 +0000

A few months ago a writing pal passed along a link to Dennis Cass’ post discussing his version of an idealized MFA program, an alternative MFA. Cass’ point of view was that traditional MFA curriculums were filed with blanks, specifically outside of craft development, as done through workshops, and outside (perhaps) literary criticism, as done through massive reading work. This struck a cord with me, it sounded about right, so I went off and built one of my own, what I call myMFA, it’s outlined in detail, along with the schedule of how I implemented it in 2009 and 2010, after the jump…

WriteRoom and Notational Velocity

Doug — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 18:07:17 +0000

A modification to WriteRoom’s SimpleText application has me looking at Notational Velocity again. What I find is a near perfect minimalist integration and text management system that supports long term data storage. My description of the applications, and how I use them in my infobase system follows after the jump.

Mr. Obama: Decline the Peace Prize

Doug — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 15:05:06 +0000

I heard this morning about the President’s Nobel Peace Prize. It was followed by laughter, and the running joke of the morning: “I thought I was reading The Onion” people said. The incredulousness is deep on both the left and the right. Mr. Obama needs to think long and hard about accepting this award. The vapidity of the criteria used for his selection could ratify in the public mind the vapidity of his prior and current achievements.

BusyCal, an iCal Replacement, is not quite busy enough

Doug — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 13:04:51 +0000

Last week I installed and then de-installed BusyCal, a new and hotly touted iCal replacement. It was the product of the development team that created David Pogue’s favorite calendar, Now Up-to-Date, and I thought it promising since there really is not another iCal replacement package out there unless you adopt Entourage which means being outside the Apple suite of apps with all their interconnected goodness. Here's what I liked and didn't like about the application...

The Right March on Washington

Doug — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 20:59:57 +0000

When I was young, civil disobedience was the tool of choice of the left. Now it has become the tool of the right. In August conservatives filled town halls. Today they filled the Washington Mall. While the right is not really comfortable, yet, with the tactics of Gandhi - they stand stiffly, wear pastels and khakis, their signs have none of the humor of the old 1960’s banners, they look like they are going to overheat in the sun, and no one burns their bras or even takes off their cloths - the crowds are big and growing. This must be bitter sweet for President Obama, our community organizer in chief...

Health Care Reform: It is a Lie

Doug — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 21:16:22 +0000

Yep it’s a lie. After the summer of discontent, and the President’s speech last night (with its heckling) I’ve written up my thoughts on the current health care debate. I wish we were talking about the issues that would actually solve the problem and stop all the lies. But then again, it’s not really about health care, right?

File System Infobase Manager

Doug — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 23:47:42 +0000

I've posted a complete outline of my File System Based Info Manager. It's the tool I use to manage all my writing, notes, reference material, bibliographies, and records. It's based on Alex Payne's architecture ideas, Noguchi Yukio's organizational systems, and input from my pals over on the Scrivener Forums. So far it is one of the most popular posts on dougist.com.