Holiday reflections

Posted by Dr Andus
Dec 28, 2014 at 09:45 PM

jaslar wrote:
>did you in
>fact make significant shifts in your outlinersoftware application tool
>chest or use of it?

Season’s greetings to all!

The main changes in 2014 for me:

I’ve decided to gradually wean myself from iOS. I still use my iPad 1 for PDF reading and annotation, and my iPod Touch 4th gen. for accessing Google Calendar, Contacts, and WorkFlowy todos when out and about, but otherwise my HP Chromebook 14 has taken over for most things I used to use iOS for (and I might try Android when my iOS devices become completely unusable). This has led to an increased use of Google Sheets for keeping track of things, organising things, and so on. I use the Caret app for writing plain text notes and save them on Google Drive, and the WorkFlowy app for to-dos, outlining, and note-taking.

I’ve been using my Olympus digital voice recorder more often to take notes when on the move, and then transcribe them manually, when back home.

My system on the PC is fairly settled now. I use different tools for the different stages of the research and writing process, so not all the tools are used all of the time. ConnectedText remains the central database for most things, although I keep web page captures in Surfulater still. I write in WriteMonkey using basic Markdown for formatting, and then do the typesetting in MS Word at the very end. Outlining is done in CT, WorkFlowy, Freeplane, Gingko, and VUE, and for specialist jobs I do take out Bonsai. I also use Noteliner on and off.

A while ago I have also added handwriting to my workflow via the Boogie Board Sync, as discussed here:
https://drandus.wordpress.com/2014/12/22/latest-enhancements-to-my-connectedtext-ecosystem/

Recently I have found myself increasingly deciding not to upgrade to newer versions of some of my software, as older versions ran better on my ageing system and quite often the ‘innovations’ either broke some existing functionalities that I desperately need or have not offered anything new to my uses.