Tag: nvALT

Perfect ‘Simple’ Note Making – Revamped

nvALT, my preferred text editor, has been the constant tool in my writing and note making setup for more than a year now. There have, however, been a few changes to both the way I write blog posts and the way I create and sync notes with my Android phone. Therefore, I felt a brief update was in order.

Syntax

While learning HTML syntax has helped me to build and customise this blog, it is not particularly easy to use when writing blog posts. What I prefer, is to write in plain text. To avoid writing out lots of HTML, I would write posts in nvALT and then add links, formatting and images in the WordPress browser-based editor. This was not the worst workflow but it was not ideal.

Over the last three months I have been learning to write using Markdown. Markdown is both a software tool and a simple syntax, created by John Gruber, that allows you to maintain your focus on writing. It works by converting plain text, formatted with the Markdown syntax, in to valid HTML.

nvALT has Markdown support built in meaning that I can write a blog post using the syntax, quickly open up a HTML preview to check that everything looks as it should, then simply copy/paste the HTML source code directly into the WordPress browser-based editor. After adding a title and tags all I have to do is hit publish. A far more pleasing workflow.

If you are interested in learning Markdown quickly, this video by Eddie Smith is definitely worth watching:

Epistle

A couple of months into learning Markdown I decided that I should find a text editor for my Android phone that supported it. Being a very specific search I quickly came across Epistle by Matteo Villa.

Epistle

Like nvALT, Epistle has built-in Markdown support. Which means I can write fully formatted blog posts on my phone, using the Markdown syntax. It has an elegant and minimal user interface. Note creation involves a single click and they can be organised alphabetically or by date. Also, you can select from serif, sans-serif and monospace fonts. After a couple of clicks, I had Epistle working in exactly the same way as nvALT. I was completely sold.

Getting in sync

However, there was a problem. Epsitle does not sync with Simplenote. Instead it syncs with Dropbox. Fortunately, I remembered reading a blog post demonstrating how to sync your notes in nvALT with Dropbox and Plain Text for iPad. Re-reading the post it was clear that I could do the same with nvALT, Dropbox and Epistle.

In short I switched to saving notes in nvALT as plain text files. Then I created a folder called “NV” and moved all my notes to this folder. Next, I synced the folder with Dropbox using MacDropAny. To complete the setup, in Epistle, I changed the Dropbox folder it was syncing with to the “NV” folder I had created. And that was it, my notes were synced across both devices.

Perfect and ‘Simple’

It’s almost a year since I first shared an insight into my note making and writing processes. In essence not much has changed. My setup and work flow remain perfect and ‘simple’; revamped but much the same.

Enough

It is almost three months since I took delivery of a Refurbished 11″ MacBook Air and I can confidently state that it is the best laptop I have ever used – lightweight but robust, elegantly minimal, powerful and fast.

Taking inspiration from my favourite podcast, I’m going to discuss why the Air is more than enough Mac for me, focusing on how I’ve set it up; the apps I’ve installed; modifications I’ve made; and what it’s like using and writing on Apple’s smallest laptop.

Setting up

To begin with I took a leaf out of Patrick Rhone’s book and completed a fresh install, excluding the additional languages and the majority of iLife applications (only keeping iTunes to manage music and podcasts). This saved me almost 8GB’s of space on the SSD. My intention from the outset was to use the Air for a minimal set of purposes: writing, reading, browsing and communicating. As such, I have no need for a photo management application and certainly don’t need audio and video editing tools.

Third party apps and utilities

Listed below are the only applications that I have installed. The first eight were tools that I use regularly on my MacBook Pro and I knew that I would want them on the Air. The last five apps I’ve installed as I needed them or learned about them.

  • Skype – For those face-to-face conversations
  • Kindle – I have this on both my MacBooks and my Android phone, keeps my reading in sync
  • Pages – For typing up and formatting MA papers
  • DoublePane – A Menu Bar utility that allows you to split the screen between two apps
  • Reeder – Synced with Google Reader, I’ve only recently added this but I’m loving the minimal UI and range of built in services.

A little tweaking

As I’ve done with every Mac that I have owned, I made some modifications to some of the built in features.

  • Caps Lock – I turn caps lock off on my Macs, I never use it, and it’s more than a little annoying if you catch it by accident.
  • Expose and Spaces – Both turned off as I never use them, I’m a one app at a time guy.
  • Dashboard – Turned off, it’s a huge drain on CPU/RAM and again I never use it, here’s how I did it:
    • In terminal type the following command and hit return: defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean YES
    • Then type the following and return: killall Dock
    • This will have turned off dashboard entirely, if you try to hit F12 to start the dashboard nothing will happen.
  • Dock – Hiding is turned on, positioned on the left and pinned to the bottom, here’s how:
    • First position the dock on the left. Then open terminal and type the following command and hit return: defaults write com.apple.dock pinning -string end
    • Then type the following and return: killall Dock
    • The dock will now be pinned to the bottom left of the screen.
  • I also restyle the dock removing the 3D glass effect. I prefer the classic 2D version, here’s how I did it:
    • In terminal type the following command and hit return: defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES
    • Then type the following and return: killall Dock
    • You should now see a classic 2D dock.

Desktop and Dock

  • Menu Bar – I remove any icons that I feel are not necessary, here’s what my Menu Bar looks like:

Menu Bar

  • Trash – Set to delete without confirmation.

What is it like living with 2GB RAM, 128GB HardDrive and an 11″ Screen?

A breeze! The Air cold boots in 12 seconds flat and apps open so quickly, if you blink you’ll miss them loading altogether. While I don’t do it very often, having multiple apps open has little impact on performance and switching between apps is instant. Because of my one app at a time approach the battery last as long as it says on the tin, regularly giving me four to five hours. What’s more the instant on/off feature ensures that…

In terms of storage, the one additional purchase I made when I got the MBA was a G-Drive Mini (500GB) external hard drive, this is where my iTunes Music folder is hosted as well as storage for Time Machine back-ups. As such the 128GB hard drive has barely been hit, as of writing this I still have 108.35GB available. I’m starting to think, based on my setup, that the 64GB model would have been enough.

The one feature that seems to have caused issues for some Mac users is the small screen size. However, I find the 11″ screen to be more than ample for my needs. As I use several apps (including nvALT) in full screen mode, the 11″ screen has little impact on the what I’m doing. It’s barely a compromise when considering the speed and portability that the Air offers.

And what about the writing?

The primary reason for purchasing the MacBook Air was to have a dedicated writing/blogging machine. I have been more than pleased with the way that the Air has served this purpose. Since taking delivery of it, I’ve written every blog post and my last MA paper on it. With a full size keyboard included I haven’t seen a single difference between typing on the Air and the MBP. The keys sit slightly lower but they make the same wonderful ‘clickity clack’ that I’ve come to love. Other MacBooks that I’ve owned have simply not been comfortable to use when rested on my lap but the Air is so light I can literally sit anywhere (sans-desk) and write comfortably. Combine that, the portability, and the focus that nvALT (in full screen mode) offers and it’s no surprise that I’m getting the writing done with far less friction.

The final word

The MacBook Air is light, minimal, perfect for writing, browsing, and communicating. It’s definitely more than enough!

Here’s a little eye candy… the bag is a Knomo MacBook Air Envelope.

Mac 1

Mac 2

Mac 3

Mac 4

In the wild and extended!

Brett and David (Elastic Threads) have just released nvALT 2.1, the latest version of their Notational Velocity fork. A number of updates have been included. A particularly  useful addition is the auto-pairing of matched characters. David has also developed extensions for Chrome and Safari, enabling you to create notes from a snippet of text or a whole page.

If you’ve already been using nvALT 2.0 you can up date from within the app, if not get it here. You can read more about the updates here: nvALT 2.1 in the wild, and here: nvIt – Chrome and Safari extensions for nvALT.

If you want to know why you should be using nvALT, read this: Perfect ‘Simple’ Note Making, and this: Notational Velocity – Freedom To Write!

Why this Apple fanboy loves his Android phone

Android Phone

Some of you will know that I am quite the Apple fanboy. I currently own a MacBook Air, MacBook Pro (my second one) and an iPod touch. Having blogged twice about the apps I have installed on the iPod (during the early days of this blog), I felt it was time to confess to the fact that the iPod has been relegated to the status of ‘portable entertainment centre’. It now gets charged and used on long journeys mainly having been replaced by a HTC Wildfire – my ‘productivity centre’. Even with my deep love of all things Apple, I am not missing the iOS user interface one bit. The Android UI is just as pleasing and the phone was half the price of the iPhone 4.

Mobile phones and I

While I am a self-confessed technophile I resisted owning a mobile phone for a long time. I love technology but I felt that having a mobile phone would be too big a distraction and would put me in a situation where I am too contactable. I did not want to feel guilty if I was called and chose to ignore it. I knew that I would because I view my time as being extremely precious. However, I found myself frustrated using the iPod touch due to the lack of 3G connectivity. I didn’t want to text or make calls but it was highly frustrating to have to rely on finding a wifi signal when I was out and about. The Wildfire was my compromise then, not invoking a terrible cost to my pocket, I set up a PAYG account with Orange and away I went.

I have kept myself sane by putting in place a number of rules as to how I use the phone. All notifications are switched off so that I am not distracted. If I am doing something really important, I turn the phone off completely. I do not give out my number; only a small number of people have it. And finally, I only reply to text messages if it is really necessary. The people who do text me know this about me so I don’t feel any guilt if I forget to reply.

What I have gained by owning the phone is immense. It is my personal productivity machine; fully integrated into my day to day life. To illustrate this I am going to talk through the 10 most used apps on the phone:

The five apps I can’t live without

Twitter for Android – The main reason I bought the phone was to engage with my Twitter PLN at any given time. I tried a few apps including TweetDeck and for a while Twidroyd but have happily settled on the official app. In my opinion as good as any third party and it’s OS and iOS equivalents. I can keep up with the various streams, tweet, retweet (new and traditional methods), DM, search, even manage my lists which you can’t do with Twitter for Mac.

Everpaper – As there is no native Instapaper client for Android, I experimented with a few third party apps. Everpaper is by far the closest in matching the experience of the web and iOS apps. It is feature rich while managing to maintain that all so important minimal UI. I save a lot of reading material to Instapaper – blog articles, essays, reports… the list goes on. If I am not reading a book I will catch up with my Instapaper during my journey to work. I will also read it while queuing at Costa Coffee or any other time where I am forced to be idle and do not have access to my laptop.

Kindle – I have been totally converted to the value of being able to sync the book I am reading across multiple devices. I mean, it makes so much sense right? So I now have the Kindle app on my MacBook Air, MacBook Pro and Android phone. I don’t think it will be too long before I buy a Kindle as well. I use the Android app almost every weekday morning during my journey into work. So far I have read the entirety of the following books on it:

Focus by Leo Babauta
Poke the Box by Seth Godin
Keeping it Straight by Patrick Rhone
Out of our Minds: Learning to be Creative by Ken Robinson

I am about to start reading Learning Futures: Education, Technology and Social Change by Keri Facer.

Calendar – This is one of the few built in apps that I use. Synced with Google calendar; all appointments, meetings and urgent stuff are added with ease. It is the only app where, when necessary, I have the notification reminders turned on for urgent deadlines, meetings and appointments. Things that it would be absolutely detrimental for me to forget. However, I do not add my ToDo list to my calendar. My ToDo list is a text file which I keep in nvALT; synced with Simplenote. As a highly organised and motivated person, there is rarely anything in my ToDo list that I would forget to do any way.

Gmail – Again synced with my Google account I rely on this app to check my personal email at lunch time. I designate times for a number of specific tasks and this is the case with email. I check my work email first thing when I arrive at work and again at the end of the day. I check my personal email first thing in the morning and at lunch time. I try to avoid looking at email in the evening unless I know there is something urgent I need to reply to and did not manage to do so during the day.

The five apps which are useful at very specific times (but not essential)

Internet Browser – I use the pre-installed web browser. I use it mainly on an ad-hoc basis, for example, if someone shares a link in Twitter, it kicks me out to the web to view the image etc. Other than that I rarely use it.

Google Reader – As previously mentioned I allot specific times to a number of tasks. Task number one every morning is to catch up with the RSS feeds I subscribe to. I read the short ones and save the longer articles to Instapaper. I only use the Android app if that didn’t happen for some reason and on the rare occasions I am not reading a book and my Instapaper is empty – i may save this activity for the journey into work.

Evernote – As eluded to earlier, I am using Evernote to maintain my organisation as I work towards an Masters in Education. The mobile app has been used for two specific tasks. Taking photos of long extracts from books where I have not been able to access and electronic version and to take photos of slides at meetings/conferences. With the auto-sync it is a fabulous tool. See Doug’s post here about how he has used it.

mNote – As with Instapaper there is no native Simplenote app for Android. mNote is my app of choice. I occasionally need to update something and so will do it here. My use of this app has decreased since I bought my MacBook Air. Due to the Air being so light, I am tending to now take it to meetings – using nvALT to make notes instead.

Dropbox – This one needs little explanation. I want access to my documents at all times. My most common use is to read PDF files which I can’t access from Instapaper or the Kindle app.

The one app that I could live without but I’m glad I don’t have to

Swiftkey Keyboard – The built-in keyboard to the Android OS was not very good and this was one of the first features that I changed. It is the only app I have installed where I have handed over money but it was definitely worth it. Swiftkey has (IMO) the most accurate and useful predictive text I have experienced between using the iOS keyboard on my iPod touch, an LG touchscreen phone, and the built in Android keyboard. Part of the reason it works is that the keyboard’s UI is so clear and not over-sensitive that it is rare to make mistakes when typing. This combined with excellent ‘learning’ algorithms, Swiftkey predicts correctly most of the time.

iPod touch with 3G?

I have been asked by a few close friends who have had to endure me waxing lyrical about the phone whether I would buy an iPod touch, should it be released with 3G. After all, I make little to no use of the traditional phone features. To be honest, I don’t think so. I have become accustomed to the Android OS and until Apple includes something in iOS that is so revolutionary, it makes the Android OS obsolete, I will be sticking with what works for me. Besides, I’m a firm believer in the ‘one thing well’ philosophy. My Android phone does productivity really well. My iPod touch does entertainment really well. I’m happy with that.