I used up eight of my nine lives, but I am back.

This is a cross post that originally appeared on my Substack newsletter

Soon after that last post in July of 2024, I started a health crisis that lasted until February of this year. Other than to say I'm a lot better now, driving, and working, I will not gross you out with the details.

The other change I’m going to make is to post most everything I do here to my blog. The blog goes back to November of 2008. I’d like it to be a record of my writings everywhere.

I did not want to touch a computer for over seven months, but I had started on a project before I got sick and have resumed working on it.

And I learned about some medical tech, and how to use your phone to make yourself a better medical consumer. These will be in future posts.

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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...

Recording your own notes with Google Voice

Note : April 2016: Frankly I don't know if this works anymore. It is 7 years old. I stopped using this when Google Now became useful on my phone, and I could dictate reminders using it. I found a way a while ago to use Google Voice to record a personal note, transcribe it, and email it to me. A recent Lifehacker post "Five Things We'd Like to See in Google Voice" lists that need as their #5 request, so I realized what I'd figured out is not common knowledge. In GV's Contacts, create a Group "Special Transcription" To avoid listening to my standard voice mail when I call, I recorded a short voice mail greeting for this group simply saying "Record note now" I added a contact with my own cell phone number as the only number, and made it the sole member of this group. In GV's phone settings, I edited the settings for my cell phone. In the section "Direct access to voicemail when calling your Google number from th...

Your First Day with Evernote

I've written many times before about Evernote . I love this program. It is my brain's memory on steroids. I have over 6000 notes in it now. And I keep finding ever more uses for it. While originally written in 2009, this post has been frequently updated. New January 2012: If you like what I write about Evernote, check out my 136 page e-book, " Get Productive Fast with Evernote ". Just $10. Sunday October 11, 2009 I wrote about Evernote in my print column, Family Tech. If you are wondering what is Evernote, and why would I want to use it, start with the column . I promised in that column this post to help new users get efficient fast with Evernote. I thought I'd write a quick plan for someone's first day with Evernote. This is really meant for after you've installed the client to your computer, so this picks up after you've gone to Evernote's Get Started Page and created an account and downloaded and installed a clien...

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