We are at my neighbors' house for a simulated 7:30 PM ball drop. Fun NYE party!

My daughter’s cookie decorating skills are advancing! I’m so proud of her. 😀🍪

I started this blog in the summer, and since then I have published 30 posts, including this one. As far as output goes, I have met my goal, and I am happy with that.

Most popular posts

In the spirit of publishing year-end best-of lists, here are my top five most popular posts from 2017:

1. Ulysses, a peerless writing tool, a short essay about my favorite writing software. I love good software, and think way too much about what makes productivity software, well, more productive.
2. Choosing an iPad Pro Keyboard, in which I compare three of the main keyboards iPad users like me might be considering.
3. Comparing todo.txt and TaskPaper formats, which are two plaintext task list formats. I love plaintext, love productivity software, and love not having lock-in with proprietary software vendors. I have been using both formats for different planning and task management tasks at work all year.
4. Three ways to create nested projects in todo.txt, which addresses a common problem with the todo.txt format.
5. Contexts in Getting Things Done, in which I describe the challenges I faced dealing with contexts in the GTD system.

These posts reflect some of my main interests: productivity software and systems, and Apple hardware. I have also written a little bit about Android, the Essential Phone, and parts of the free and open web that interest me.

Thoughts on the writing process

One thing that I have learned this year, from writing regularly again, is how much work it can be to complete a blog post. I have a half-dozen incomplete blog post drafts in my Ulysses library at any given moment. Shaping them into something worth reading is a lot of work—work that I don’t often complete as quickly as I would like. Even a simple 500-word post has to be written and re-written three or four times before I think it is worth publishing.

The writing process is valuable to me, though. Writing is a lot different than analyzing data (my day job) or writing code (my nighttime hobby). Writing, re-writing, and revising help me think and help me focus in ways that my more mathematically-focused activities do not. Plus, it feels good to communicate to the world, and to own all the content I produce and publish it on my own platform, under my own name.

The future

I plan to blog regularly in 2018, both on this site and on mjdescy.micro.blog. I have even set up regularly scheduled reminders (Apple Reminders, naturally) to help keep me on track. Thanks for reading.

I don’t love how en-dashes (–) and em-dashes (—) look identical in Ulysses. I know it is because I use monospace fonts. I just wish Ulysses did something to differentiate them. I don’t know/trust that macOS is inserting the correct symbol when I type (dash) (dash) (dash).

It was a really close game!

I’m demoting TweetBot to page 3 of Spingboard. I’m not sure how long that will last.

🎬 This article is the best thing I’ve ever read about Star Wars.

📚 “Ready Player One” looks promising. I’m one chapter in, and it’s fun.

The 2017 news cycle has worn me out. I am looking for something purely escapist to read. I’m considering “Ready Player One” and “The Last Unicorn”.

I am vacillating between being lazy and productive today. It is a vacation day, so I shouldn’t be too hard on myself.

🎬 I am finally seeing “The Last Jedi” tonight. Hope it is good!

After an eventful trip to see family, we are back at home. Today is a rebuilding day: unpacking, grocery shopping, cooking, laundry, dishes, etc.

And when they say that all is lost All is not lost, all is not lost And when they say that all is lost All is not lost, no all is not lost at all

—OK Go “All Is Not Lost” Video

Merry Christmas everyone!

We are heading off to see family for Christmas today.

I made banana bread, too.

I baked Snickerdoodles for the family today. They are really, really good!

I bought Castro 2 this week because I like the design and it was on sale for a pittance. I am not sure I will switch to it from Overcast, though. Castro 2 has a better UI and better product focus, but Overcast has the better audio engine, which really is the most important thing.

I made a batch of Christmas cookies tonight with my daughter. Such fun! She pressed chocolate chips on top of sugar cookies that we rolled out together and cut—about 100 chips per cookie, I think.

A long lunch with the family was a great way to complete my work week.

So much of all programming, and really all work in general, is developing a common vocabulary, and after that, common goals. That is most of the work in a lot of the projects I work on.

I am up too late. What exactly is happening right now? 🙃

According to Dark Sky, a Christmas morning snowstorm may interfere with my holday travel plans. I am crossing my fingers that it doesn’t happen.

I’m relieved to have finished all my billable work for the week already. It was a tough week, and thankfully it is starting to wind down now. I am looking forward to a holiday break next week.

I wonder how many people still have to use VBA for Excel and Access automation at work, like I do. Googling for Office VBA how-tos feels like jumping in a time machine and going back 10 or 20 years. It is disappointing that Microsoft never added C#/.NET support to Office, but it is understandable.