Log
I’ve gone down a hyperfocus hole these past two days about finding a
cheap, handheld Linux terminal device. I was dreaming about setting up
a terminal-only environment on it, with things like a Beeper client, a
git repo for text notes, little python scripts, drafting logs here and
posts for my website.
I think what draws me to this idea is a feeling that the little apps
and utilities in a Unix system are like little creatures, with
personalities and quirks and behaviors that I can interact with. These
software-creatures are easier, because while they have personalities
to make them interesting and they “talk back” to me, they are clearly
defined, knowable. I can get to know them and be confident that I know
what buttons to push to get what results.
In real life it’s not so easy. Real humans are not so thoroughly
knowable, they are squishy and large and complex inside, real people
are infinite. That’s scary, so I try to retreat to my safe little
digital creatures. I look for this in places like
tilde.town, as well as in regular smartphone apps
and little obsessions like the current one. I want my safe, finite,
controllable digital creatures, that I can puzzle out and then once I
did, I can know them forever.
I tend to jump head first into rabbit holes/hyperfocus holes on ideas
of vague enjoyment and coolness instead of specific, practical
usecases. Like, say I get myself a BlackBerry Q5/10/20, set up Term49,
set up BerryMuch and now I have a handheld Unix-y device.
(I spent the last two days looking this up, so I’m confident this would
actually work.)
But now what?
The problem is that I don’t start with a problem to solve, a set of
things I want to do but don’t have a good way to. Like would I really
write Python scripts on the bus or at a cafe with this? I don’t write
Python scripts now on my laptop at home, so why would being “on the go”
make me do this suddenly? Same with communication. I don’t chat to many
people now on my iPhone and laptop, just having a weird terminal-based
chat application won’t change that.
The tool is not the answer.
And here is the crux of my problem: instead of defining my problems
properly, thinking through to their source and addressing that,
I run to picking up a new tool (phyisical or virtual) as a shortcut.
I feel overwhelmed and disconnected from my whole self at times? Let’s
make a new website, that’ll solve it. I feel disconnected from people?
Let’s buy a new gadget and spend days setting it up as an esoteric
text based system, that will solve it.
Usually what happens, is I get the tool, set it up, tinker with it in
and increasingly desperate and obsessive way, and then when it’s done,
I sit there and don’t have anything to do on it. At the end of the day,
I do the things I do already, regardless of what device or software
I have in hand. I will behave the same, feel the same on an iPhone, a
Linux laptop or a BlackBerry hacked to run Unix applications.
I will scroll mindlessly, on Facebook or the obscure Gopher protocol,
but I’ll scroll just the same. I scroll, I tinker, I obsess and that’s
all a great distraction from the fact that life is hard and scary and
fundamentally unknowable. I’m like a toddler handing on to his
pacifier for dear life for protection. The pacifier might make him feel
better a bit, but it’s just a piece of plastic and rubber, it won’t
protect him from the world. The world is here, all around, whether I
cling to my little piece of plastic and rubber or not.
As a photographer and especially as a documentary/journalism adjacent photographer I often feel like there are some subjects that are, to put it bluntly, bummers. I often lack the motivation or excitement to even consider projects that I feel are sad, hopeless. There are also many many projects on these types of topics out there, which can make it feel like there is no point in doing another one myself.
The trouble is, these are the defining topics of the current era and likely the defining topics of my lifetime. Poverty, nationalism, the climate crisis, the autocrathic shift in my country and many others and the people not just left behind but actively oppressed by the political and economic system, these are the stories that define our time.
But when I wake up in the morning and consider what I want to spend my day on, my month on, what I want to put my energy towards, it feels sad and disheartening and frankly not much fun to pick one of these topics.
It’s so sad, it’s so tragic, it’s so overdone, why would I want to do it then?
I think if I want to do something that matters, that really matters, then I have no choice but to work on these subjects. Accept the fact, that it won’t bring me fame or success or money, that not many people will get excited when I tell them what I’m working on and that I might live out my life feeling like I’ve tilted at windmills with these projects.
But these are the things that we need to document, that I need to document. Today it might not be popular or interesting to the general public, but some day in the future, when people will want to know what this time was like, these are the projects they’ll need to see. Even if I’m not good enough, even if my work is less good than what other, better photographers do, I can make pictures that 10-20-30 years from now will be valuable as a document of what it was like inn Hungary in 2024.
This is not a fun career, this is a sad, lonely, fruitless mission. The question is, do I care enough about doing something important to accept that I won’t be the fun, interesting guy at parties, that I’ll be the weirdo with the weird obsessions about things we consider to be tragic in a mundane, boring, things-are-as-they-are way.
Being a photographer, having the ability to document, to stand witness is a responsiblity. It’s not fun, I don’t get to wear cool scarves and make popular exhibitions, but it’s the thing that can make what I do more than a self centered hobby.
Well, anyways.
One of my regularly recurring hyperfocus subjects is how to collect digital things from the web. While I don’t do much structured research, I often do unstructured research. I tend to do this in two ways:
- basically surfing the web and collecting bits and ideas
- going down the rabbit hole on a specific topic, trying to find information or details (this often involves comparing things as well)
I have a tendency to want to collect, organize and archive the things I find: interesting websites, personal blogs, articles, notes, ideas, products, tools, ways of making a zine, all sorts of random things, depending on the topic I’m hyperfocused on at the time.
How to do this collecting and organizing and archiving is itself a frequent subject of my hyperfocus.
I tend to want to collect various types of things - articles, guides, scraps of ideas, quotes, images, personal websites of random people, things I see in the real world, my own thoughts and ideas, references, manuals, websites of tools and apps, PDFs, etc. I also want to collect things around a variety of topics - technology, website making, programming, note taking, zine making, photography, writing, ideas for creative projects, lifestyle dreams, methodologies for thinking, philosophies, taxonomies, etc.
These are all digital artifacts, most originating on someone else’s website or as a social media post (these have an URL) and some originating with me (these are image files or text, sometimes even audio recordings).
My problem is twofold: what tool to use to collect these things and how to organize/structure my collection.
Some of my requirements for my ideal collecting/curating/archiving setup:
- cross platform - at minimum available on iPhone, iPad plus a Mac and/or web interface
- quick and easy to add to from any platform
- easy to organize in folders/collections
- good previews - both for links and files/text, so I don’t always have to click through to see the content I’ve saved
- stable sync between platforms
- easy to export in a universal format - something like plain text, webloc, etc. so I can move things out of the system easily. Ideally should already store things in an open format.
- stable, fast apps - modern apps with a UI that is easy to use and fast to load/operate
- longevity - something that I can trust to be around for at minimum 10 years, ideally more. Either open source, based on an open format or a company with a long track record and a stable long term business model. Big tech is not an option.
- very cheap or free - no more than $5/month, ideally less or free
- link archiving - ideally should be able to archive a current snapshot of the links I save and store the files, text I add as well
Things I’ve tried so far and why they aren’t ideal:
- Safari bookmarks - cumbersome to organize, only stores links, no good previews
- Are.na - slow, buggy iOS app and web interface, cumbersome to organize, plus $7/month is a bit over my budget
- Anybox, Raindrop.io, other Apple-based bookmark apps - mainly just links, usually paid, not open format based, doesn’t feel like I can trust them to be around
- self hosted bookmarking (eg. Shaare) - links only, cumbersome interfaces, usually web only
- Pinboard - links only, single person business doesn’t feel safe in terms of bus factor
- Notes apps (eg. Apple Notes, Bear, etc.) - links are not first class citizens
So I keep searching for the perfect tool. I’m afraid, that I’ll need to make a compromise somewhere, but I still hope there is something out there for this that I can confidently use.
Well, anyways.