Phil Bowell

I’ve several people linking to this piece by Sam Henri Gold for the same reason I am. It resonates with them.

I got my first Mac in 2004, I was 19 turning 20, and about to head off to uni. I was a slightly older version of this quote:

Somewhere a kid is saving up for this. He has read every review. Watched the introduction video four or five times. Looked up every spec, every benchmark, every footnote. He has probably walked into an Apple Store and interrogated an employee about it ad nauseam. He knows the consensus. He knows it’s probably not the right tool for everything he wants to do.

He has decided he’ll be fine.

Previously I’d been using the family PC, I’d done homework on it, I’d played Championship Manager and Civilisation on it, I’d used MSN Messenger to chat to my friends, and I’d downloaded music. Then my Dad said since I was going to study graphic design I should get a Mac since that was the industry standard. The only Mac I could afford was a white plastic G4 iBook, I got the 14 inch because a bigger screen is better but hadn’t realised it was the same resolution as the 12 inch.

I got that Mac in the August before I headed off to uni. It was the first computer I realised could be fun to use. My uncle gave me some copies of Adobe CS2 that he had got through work (he was a policeman and I’ll leave it at that) and I realised I could create stuff on it. I never looked back. A year later I bought an Intel Core Duo iMac because I’d hit the limits of my iBook.

The Neo reminds me of that iBook. It’s got compromises but it’s the first Mac I’ve seen in ages that made me smile. It’s the one I’m thinking to replace my 2015 MacBook Pro with. I know the Air is probably better for me, but it’s twice as expensive and I have an M1 Pro MacBook Pro (that’s a lot of Pro’s) from work. I know I want one, and it’s the first piece of technology that I’ve said that about in a long time.

This Mac could be many things for a lot of people. To many it will be an obsession. To others it will be an enabler. To some it will be an inspiration. To most it will be all three, just like that first iBook was to me.

Took the plunge and cancelled my Feedbin account this morning before it renews. I’ve been using Inkwell exclusively since I got beta access and it’s worked perfectly for me. No point in paying for something I’m already getting in a service I use everyday and want to continue to support.

A lovely take on the new MacBook Neo which continues to try and woo me.

Wonderful start to the day, mistyped my Mac password (one time) and it decided to lock me out for an hour. Currently trying to use my iPad do some Teams calls while I wait to get in.

Spent some time reworking my books page to become my shelf and only display what I’ve read. I’ve also built a new design as part of process, I’d love to be able to add some other data to the books but as far as I can tell there’s no way to customise the template micro.blog uses for books. This is all CSS and a fun experiment working with Claude Code.

MacBook Neo looks fun! I kind of want one to replace my 11 year old MacBook Pro.

The times it actually worked for me were the times I stopped caring about what went into it. My notebook is full of rubbish. Meeting notes, food orders, half-thoughts that trail off mid-sentence. It’s a mess, and that mess is exactly what makes it mine.

This. I’ve been through many notebooks and journaling phases over the years, but the last year or so have been the most consistent journaling I’ve done. It’s for the very same reason Greg says here. I stopped caring what went in it. My notebook became my everything place. No delineation between work and not work, they’re both life. Everything goes in it, my notebook is messy for the simple reason that life is messy. It’s not organised neatly into boxes, it’s not a performance, it’s the every day written down.

Finished reading: Mr Wilman’s Motoring Adventure by Andy Wilman 📚

Another book I got for Christmas and a fun read with a peek behind the scenes of one of my favourite TV programmes. I watched Top Gear from the first episode when I was in my early twenties until the final Grand Tour episode.

Susan Sontag’s Playground of Ideas:

Throw-out note-taking categories: Sontag’s notebooks resist categorization. They include quotations, like a commonplace book; they include confessions, like a diary; they include travel schedules; they include clippings like a scrapbook. Often, with notes, we can get caught up in labels (is this a diary or a journal?) but the truth is that once a notebook gets into an individual’s hands, those categories cease to hold as much sway.

This is where I find myself landing in my own notebooks. They are a mix of stuff, meeting notes, journal entries, book quotes, doodles, ideas for work, problems I’m working through. I used to have a journal and then a notebook, but over the last couple of years they’ve become one and the same. I think that makes the most sense and makes the notebook my most effective tool.

Fastmail and Kagi have a new deal so I’ve signed up for three months of Kagi to give it a real test and see how I like it.