Sebastian Abbott

Every so often, an internal unease about my blogging pace bubbles up inside me and I need to “do something” about it. That something usually manifests as an incessant thinking and testing and tweaking and resetting of my writing tools and environments, which, as an effective, comfortable and seemingly “proactive” form of procrastination, has so often taken priority over expending my energies on the actual content, on what I want to say. At least here, finally, I actually acted on that need, and ended up both writing and posting about that need. So, congrats to me….

Just write, right?

There are so, so many options - too many! And I’ve tried many, too many of them! I can boil the overall situation down to two key perspectives:

• the writing tool
• saving and sychronisation

These are joined (in both senses) by a third point

• the availability and accessibility of my writing data

Let’s start with this third one, whilst acknowledging that I didn’t mention the final step - publishing - since that’s another topic altogether (with too many options).

Where I write

I write in many locations on many clients, but this topic I can also condense down to two “locations”:

• on my PCs, and
• on mobile.

My PCs are:

• a Windows workstation
• an Apple laptop
• a Linux laptop that I occasionally dabble with (but which rarely strays from home)

Offline tools?

Yes, I’ve tried Word (which is now more onliney than ever) and LibreOffice - but I prefer the simplicity of those minimal writing editors, and not having to worry if my format will work OK in another app. I have opened Pages on my Apple laptop, but mostly, in the past, to let my then young youngest daughter type away without doing any damage to anything else I might have had open.

On the go?

So, what do I do when I’m not at my desk, or propped up by multiple layers of pillows on my bed with a laptop on my knees?

I long harboured the dream of being able to continue writing and editing when on my phone, or syncing at home and then continuing offline on the tablet - but, really, I write best, most fluently, with a physical keyboard. And the Windows tablet’s virtual keyboard is so truly terrible at this that it’s actually a clarifying attribute.

My solution here, which I still need to formalise, will be to read on the smaller, keyboardless machines, and to limit myself to jotting down notes in another app to apply later, when I’m back on a real screen and have a real editor in front of me. Working in this way is often better for the time to reflect and reassess those jotted ideas.

On the go can also mean having a web interface. Whilst I have for now rejected the online tools, I remain open to again trying out browser-based Markdown editors with access to Dropbox. This sounds pretty hairy when written out like this, but it’s true - sometimes I have the urge to edit a piece or write something new during a lunchtime break at work, and a quick switch to a web interface is the best way of doing that. I’m open to giving Stack Edit or Dillinger another go. Proton doesn’t offer any of these integrations, to my knowledge, as yet. That’s perhaps to its privacy and security advantage - I’ll have to research that a little more.

Where does that leave me?

It leaves me with my current setup:

• Dropbox having the edge over Proton for its integrations and availability on Linux
• Markdown being the perfect editing tool for me, with enough options out there for me to work on any platform
• On mobile, just reading and jotting notes for editing into the main draft later

It also now leaves me without an excuse for researching tools over writing (§).

Can I survive without that? We’ll have to see!

(§) No, it doesn’t

Spent the day in London yesterday, great to see the city again, and to enjoy two famous station landmarks: Platform 9 3/4 in King’s Cross and the Paddington statue on Platform 1. It all quickly became exhausting for our younger daughter. I eventually headed back early with her, and it was great to savour the quiet in contrast to the heaving masses of tourists to which we contributed!

Back home at my parents' house I browsed some old books to read over the Christmas hols, picking up Asimov’s Prelude to Foundation to see what enthused my teenage self. I hadn’t realised at the time how hopeful it is about the future: only 30k years or so to go until…

Walking is the best form of short-distance transportation. It’s the most convenient, the cheapest and the most healthful. Countless years of technological advance has not changed that.

or

…private vehicles are rare… Their use is not really necessary since we have Expressways and for shorter distances moving corridors. For still shorter distances, we have our legs.

As usual, though, they needed to create a city-planet to do it (Trantor here, without the simple flying repulsor-tech of Star Wars' Coruscant)

Having said that, gravitic shafts are an early attempt at anti-gravity lift, the lack of development of which is a clear early indicator of the beginning of the decline of the Galactic Empire

I finished a piece of music! It’s as slow as its creation, but the opening section, which I love, has been stable from the start. Just four instruments in total, usually just two playing at a time, 54 bpm, tons of reverb, made in Studio One. It’s called Reactiv, and it’s on Soundcloud

soundcloud.com/halledr/r…

Oh my goodness, this is pretty amazing: Karel Capek’s 1925 Letters from England start off with his impressions of London - streets, traffic, parks and so on.

It’s so quotable!

In {Czechia}, in Italy, France, the street is a sort of large tavern or public garden, a village green, a meeting-place, a playground and theatre, an extension of home and doorstep; here {in London} it is something which belongs to nobody, and which does not bring you closer to his fellows; here, you do not meet with people, and things, but merely avoid them.

A night ride back home from Ladenburg over over the weir in Heidelberg, after meeting up with colleagues from where I worked previously

Had a pleasant stroll along the river in Neckargemünd during a lunchtime break in our Musikfreunde rehearsals. Always good to get some fresh air and to give the ears a break, even if a river cruise ship isn’t the most silent form of transport.

(they’re a bit like a Porsche 911, where the noise really reaches you when their rear is facing you. I can’t think of any other ways in which these things are similar, apart from general ontological ways, of course…)

A return to commuting with the S-Bahn and the Brompton raised a smile, despite the gloomy, drizzly weather this morning. I should do it more often, even if the second train across Mannheim still isn’t due until the end of the year…

Somehow, I managed a 50 km cycle today, over two stints: to work, and back. I definitely struggle on the ride back, after a normal day at work, and (whilst probably only marginally) back upstream along the Neckar.

Still, Ladenburg is always a welcome sight: my photo was rubbish in the end, though, since I moved the phone whilst it was still taking the night-time shot. Kind of arty, but pointlessly so. The cloud layer over the illuminated water tower could almost (well, not at all) have been an aurora.

Somehow, I managed a 7 km run today, with only the last km being more of a walk than a run. I found myself switching styles as I ran, loosening up as many muscle groups as I could. It probably looked very strange, but it felt good!

Tony Judt talking to Timothy Snyder in Thinking the Twentieth Century

This, in my view, is the intellectual sin of the [20th] century: passing judgement on the fate of others in the name of their future as you see it, a future in which you may have no investment, but concerning which you claim exclusive and perfect information.

Last night I wanted to enjoy an evening G&T with my wife. She’d been back for a day already after visiting friends, so we had caught up personally, but she wanted to catch up on the news (flooding in Valencia, the execution of a German-Iranian in Iran, the upcoming US elections) and so she switched on the TV. I watched, for a little while, too. But as soon as they started reporting on stupid Republicans spreading doubt about the legitimacy of the vote and the security of the polling stations, and they showed a clip of their stupid candidate raging about something, I couldn’t take any more. Feeling viscerally disgusted, I left the room and went upstairs to finish reading the final chapter of Hillary Mantel’s The Mirror and the Light.

Those of Henry VIII were dark days, for most people: of an omnipotent yet inconsistent absolute ruler and his councillors, most from ancient ruling families who couldn’t countenance any move towards a less feudal system. Of the jostling between the great powers in Europe (France, the Pope) with no consideration or care for individual lives.

This is my visceral fear for today, of thuggish, childish, nihilistic autocrats returning to the fore: something dark that I - thankfully, but also tellingly - don’t encounter in my daily life and so don’t feel I can counter: I try to tune out that noise from the media, tune out those concentrated slugs of negativity bias, and be nice and courteous to the people I meet.

Thermal management in the autumn is tricky, but rewarding when out on the old Panasonic again

Last week I was at an offsite business workshop, where the key players gathered to hammer out the setup and highlight the hurdles for the next phase of our major PLM project. This offsite was in Ladenburg, that charming historical Roman town between Mannheim and Heidelberg on the Neckar river…

… though of course, our hotel’s location was in the industrial outskirts of the town, where the charm was of distinctly another flavour. I didn’t stay at the hotel, choosing instead to cycle there and back, a lovely ride along the Neckar (going past the spot I’d been recently on my Panasonic road bike).

The hotel even had a section dedicated to bikes in the garage, which was greatly appreciated.

One lunchtime walk to escape the noise of such a large group took me to the fields outside Ladenburg, with a view to an old-looking chemical factory. See, it does have its charm:

A new mobile phone is a good opportunity for a reset of our digital lives, too. Naturally, the whole ecosystem surrounding a phone is interested and invested in keeping us engaged and subscribed: that is why I like to avoid the whole “transfer my phone” business and start from scratch again.

Of course, it’s my own fault that over the 5-6 years with my Android phone I ended up with something like four different browsers and at least four different email clients - I am curious and interested in how different options provide the same functions in different ways and styles.

But it’s not just that: starting afresh without a podcast app, with only the Gmail app, no posting apps means I can view and review not just my online life, but also reconsider my priorities in life. I now bring a book to re-read with me on the commute, a small notebook and a pen, to concentrate on my own thoughts and reflections for a while, before my curiosity draws me back into the maelstrom of apps and diversions once more, for the cycle to begin again.

If you’re in a similar situation - enjoy it, make the most of it!

Great to get out on the old Panasonic road bike again, along the Neckar by Ladenburg. Definitely need to replace the old tape and hoods, though: they’re getting exceedingly manky…

Micro.blog broke down for me last week, on the 7th of September, something to do with SSL certificates, and my website is still not up at the time of writing this. Whilst I appreciate the work behind the scenes, I am beginning to wonder if it’s more hassle to stay or to move on to another, robuster service…

… or whether I can treat the frustration philosophically, use it as a reset for my own motivations and writing., and consider this week “off” (and counting) as a blip in the grander scheme of things.

I ended up taking a break from posting during the holiday, though not from reading, writing (well, drafting) and generally being more active than I had been at work: trips to the beach, swimming in lakes, visiting towns and family in North East Germany, by the Ostsee (Baltic Sea), all worked their magic, as did the second week at home, including borrowing a Bakfiets for a couple of trips to the tip.

I needed the additional break from posting during my first week back at work, as it is genuinely draining (though fulfilling!), and I’d been sleeping really badly, alas.

Yesterday’s trip up along the Rhein in a 1973 Alfa Romeo GTV was rather good (and, also, exhausting!)

Anyway, some visual impressions from my days off.