Alpha Efficiency

I still don't feel comfortable with my virtual assistants filtering my email. There isn't a lot of it, but I think that is the direction that I should take. At some point in future, I might.

Still need to develop a deeper relationship with my VA's, but I feel that this might be the route to go. I think that they have the capacity to go through all of that stuff and make smart decisions for me.

Somewhere along the lines, I've noticed people on App.net dissing Facebook home. First of all, it's on Android, so I won't get to use it. Second of all, it's nice to have even more competition in Launcher space, even for Android.

Variety is a spice of life.

There are numerous great launchers out there that greatly increase crappy Android experience, and having big players like Facebook creating their own isn't a big deal. They provide service, and some people don't value their private information, so why not let them pay up to Facebook?

That's why it's called free market. Perhaps you will call me one of those paranoid users that like to hide everything as much as possible, simply for the fact that I am like that.

But I can understand that there are people out there who don't give 2 square cents about it.

Bottom line

Functions are named freely by you, and seems like it's just the way you organize your code. But this way you can create libraries of code and call back onto them later on, when you need them.

When you create a function, you always need to call it yourself.

This is actually a genuine, complex problem, and I believe that Drafts app is only partially solving this complex issue in my work. This might be a journal entry, but as well it could be a perfect blog post for me to share. Still not aware how to approach it, so I start writing it in Drafts, and than later on I can decide where is it's best location, or sometimes perhaps multiple locations. Makes sense?

Now the crux of the problem

Here are some top entry points to my system:

Drafts app - understandably

Day One - for my dairy entries

Dropbox and plethora accessing .txt applications

Evernote - for collected materials

Somehow I have the urge to mash them all up in one bundled place, but not sure will it make sense after that. There is no neat way to follow my dairy entries, but also there is no sure-fire way to keep track of their dates in a neat and organized way that I am blessed with in Day One.

The second issue is markdown and Evernote. As Evernote doesn't have markdown support, it's ultimately broken for my writing workflow, and from what it seems, there won't be a quick fix for that anytime soon.

And only problem of Dropbox container is non-existing integration with other platforms. Not a Dropboxes mistake per se, but still something that is diminishing my user experience.

Dropbox proved to be quite powerful as well in the combination with Posterapp. It allowed me to publish my writing the moment when I finish it.

What would I really like

I'd like to have everything in one app, that does everything equally good, in terms of all functionality. An Evernote, where markdown works, coupled with great journaling capabilities and ease of Day One. But still don't see it coming.

Final thoughts

Wondering should I create my work in text files as so far, or start creating in Evernote. There is also another solution of keeping notes in my Dropbox as text files. Any route I go will create some level of pain.

But I believe that I will actually be going the Dropbox route this time. Of course I will keep using Evernote, but seems I will be routing a lot of my notes straight into my Dropbox. When we take in consideration that there are Lastpass and 1Password alternatives for "safe-notes" it creates additional problems.

My Evernote is a mess. And I intend to keep it that way. I have way to many tags, and a moderate shy number of 15-ish notebooks. Notebooks are fine, but tags are a mess, and it's going to stay a mess for a long while. Every once in a while I will delete some tags, that I am certain that I don't need anymore, but when it comes down to the whole lot of them, they are unmanageable.

But I do have a system on how I work my Evernote…

…I never let my Evernote inbox gets overfilled. I have just a couple of important notebooks, all the rest of them can be deleted, but these few are critical.

One of them is of course Inbox, and the other one is Archive. That's it. Only two notebooks I need. Everything I clip goes to inbox, and once I process the inbox, I just freely tag stuff and see wether something is for deletion or for keeps. I add some internal note linking, slap a few connections to wiki's that I ran, and I am done.

Reading this great piece on writing on Tim Ferris's blog. No matter how mainstream bullshiter I consider him to be, he never stops pushing ahead some aspiring long reads and amazingly deep intellectual thought provoking content. That is why I keep him in my RSS feed.

So what is the take-away from his latest article?

Well, it's a piece about writing, and how it affects the soul, in a sense. There are a lot of tangible experiences in this article, that will move you, and inspire you. That is a great writer in him, I'll give him that.

So basically, the ideas and stories behind this article are amazing takeaway. Long form writing is getting back into attention of wider audience, or at least I believe it is.

Should I read it?

As my ongoing anti-Google campaign is taking a full swing, I was debating a trade off of neglecting Google+ as the social network, and for the time being it proves to be an efficient way of redistributing my attention only to those things that actually deliver ROI.

# main social network

In my #googlefree transition, I've had to pick commercial service with server side rules, and iCloud got em. Some people stated that their spam filters improved, and that was also a good indicator that it is reaching the point of maturity.

Despite the challenges of non-perfect service...

I am willing to give iCloud a big chance as a keeper of numerous accounts of mine.

I've been using iCloud calendar since the day I've updated to iOS5, and never had any problems, but on the other hand, I am not very active calendar user.

Also I believe that people are giving a lot of hard time to Apple because of previous iterations of iCloud like Mobile Me, that was pricey, yet not that good solution.

Also one of the main reasons why I am going to use iCloud, is the fact that through the purchase of Apple hardware, I feel as if I already paid for the services used. I do know that there are "free" services out there that offer the same or better experience, but as countless times I've said so far, I don't want to support online advertising industries.

Server side rules

The fact that they've implemented these makes this change possible. If it wasn't for this, I am pretty sure it wouldn't work out for me.

Free your time, by stopping advertisements in 4 creative steps: ""

(Via Alpha Efficiency.)

Wondering how the rest of the text will look like, once I set it up with markdown.

Will the heading 2 work the way I want it to?