Welcome back Byte!

What is old is new again. Just took a look over the website for the reborn Byte.

Byte magazine was one of the first computer magazines. If you were in to computers in the 80's and 90's, you read Byte.

One of the highlights back then was Jerry Pournelle's column. Jerry is a science fiction author. Back in those days he had the money to have more gadgets then most of us and a tinker's delight at getting them all working.

I believe he wrote one of the first books ever written on a computer, and that computer is now in the Smithsonian.

His Chaos Manor columns talking about his never ending tribulations of getting 20th century home computing to work were always entertaining. I learned a valuable lesson from him, Pournelle's Law, to check cables first when there is a problem.

He always struggled to to get things working, that a wag once suggested Apple sponsor his columns and send them by mail to every Windows PC owner.

Started this in G+, and realized partway through I want it on my blog. This becomes my first cross post. I know I want to keep my blog, but G+ is a good medium for publishing too. How do I solve that conundrum?

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Notes Folder : My new note taking system

I'm in the process of moving to a new way to keep my notes. It would be best to make a separate post on my long time notetaking app, Evernote, and how it now disappoints me. Bottom line, I no longer trust the company behind Evernote since it was acquired. My first inclination was to finally look at alternatives. like Notion, Joplin, Obsidian, etc. I was not enamored with any of them, so I gritted my teeth and stayed with Evernote. The situation made me think about how I use Evernote. To keep up additional posts on this topic, search on the tag Notes Folder Updates : January 24, 2024 and in updates noted here. Most of the things I store are quick notes, lists, online receipts for online bills, that sort of thing; kind of an online file cabinet if you will. If I were a doctoral student though I could see storing PDFs of papers and research materials. If were working on a large project, then plans, communications etc. would all be there. Back when I began using Evernote way b...

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This blog post was set to publish exactly as the day begins on Tuesday, July 31, 2018. That is ten years to the day after my first Evernote post. With my second note, I was already getting down to business; recording the agreement I'd come to on the phone on a minor business matter. My affection for Evernote has not dimmed since that day ten years ago. Since then, I've accumulated about 7.8 new notes a day. Ironically, I have needed to pull up only a few notes a year. Yet, when I need them, I need them badly and am glad to have Evernote all over again. My philosophy of what to capture is simple : If you encounter something you might remotely want to see again, it goes into Evernote. from a blog post June 1, 2015 I've written here about Evernote than any other topic. Even wrote a now horribly out-of-date book. Don't get me wrong. If something better comes along that imports my Evernote notes well, I can be enticed to move. But in t...

Ideas from Mark Stout

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