Indigo Spot

You are the star of your life story. Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, Instagram, and even Snapchat among oth­ers provide a place for you to share that story with the world.

Let’s face it, not every­one is a best­selling author. You can read this site for proof; how­ever, the bar for inter­est­ing mate­rial has fal­len quite low thanks to these social media plat­forms.

While the inanity of every­day life may provide the occa­sional chortle, the inflated tragedies of first world prob­lems are decid­edly bor­ing at best. There is no dearth of mate­rial on these net­works, but there is cer­tainly a lack of inter­est­ing con­tent. 

Don’t mis­read me. I love my fam­ily and friends. I care about what is hap­pen­ing in their lives. I’d like to think they care about me as well. Here’s the dilemma. Do I want to read com­plaints and triv­ial mat­ters all day?

No. I’d think that they don’t want to waste their lives on it either. I gave up on social media a cou­ple of years ago now. 

Should you? Do what is best for you, but I have a rec­om­men­da­tion. If what you are about to post isn’t note­wor­thy enough to phone your fam­ily and friends about, then can­cel the post and come back when you have some­thing worth­while to share. 

Better yet, only share things when it doesn’t involve com­plain­ing. Life is too short. 

In other news, it’s fun to watch our Basset hound puppy attempt to catch fire­flies on a sum­mer night. She’s adorable. 

After much cast­ing about and grum­bling over speed and secu­rity and var­i­ous other issues, it looks like WordPress is still hold­ing strong as the CMS of choice. Whether it is due to famil­iar­ity with cus­tomiza­tion or the ease of stick­ing with it despite some of my recent irri­ta­tions with it, I don’t know. I do know that I usu­ally don’t like meta talk on the site, but here it is any­how. On the topic of tools for pro­duc­tiv­ity, I have read sev­eral posts about an exo­dus from Evernote, my note-taking, every­thing box of choice, and in my opin­ion, the alter­na­tives are infe­rior.

Yes, Evernote has its prob­lems and issues, but for me, main­tain­ing orig­i­nal for­mat­ting is crit­i­cal for the “notes” I send to Evernote, and I have not found a ser­vice that is as good at it, nor have a I found a ser­vice that has as many inte­gra­tions to allow for seam­less import of notes. Microsoft’s OneNote comes very close, but still man­ages to man­gle the con­tent, and the UI con­cept of note­books and sec­tions (which have lim­its on the num­ber of notes in them) with tabs as well as the need to open a note­book and the lack of easy sort­ing of note­books on mobile make it a fail­ure. I real­ize that there is a push for search and that is a pri­mary way I find infor­ma­tion in Evernote as well, but I do main­tain an old sys­tem of note and folder orga­ni­za­tion in Evernote that makes it easy to browse and archive notes.

After much delib­er­a­tion and test­ing, WordPress wins the CMS con­test yet again. If I can offer one small bit of advice to poten­tial con­tenders in the CMS space, doc­u­men­ta­tion is king. If I can­not fig­ure out how to cus­tomize your pro­duct for my sites, then I will not cast about for very long attempt­ing to grok it and suss it out. I am old and cranky. So are most other peo­ple although they won’t admit it.

It’s well known that I am a pro­po­nent of Apple prod­ucts. However, I am typ­ing this post on a Kindle Fire tablet. The non-HD, 7” model, no less. Why, you ask? One rea­son is to test the WordPress and Ghost edi­tors on a small screen tablet, but another rea­son is that it is grow­ing on me and has been quite a plea­sure to use, screen pixel den­sity aside.

Even though I prefer Apple prod­ucts, I am heav­ily invested in the Kindle ecosys­tem with Amazon. Because of that, this Fire tablet has been amaz­ing for read­ing. I still have my e-Ink Kindle Paperwhite, but I have been tear­ing through books on this device. I’ve tried read­ing on the iPad, but it seems a bit too large and even at the low­est bright­ness, far too bright for a dark room.

This device is not per­fect, true, but I am enjoy­ing it. I would likely enjoy an iPad mini. However, this tablet was $40 and is handy right now. I may write more about it later.