Nels Lindahl — Functional Journal

A weblog created by Dr. Nels Lindahl featuring writings and thoughts…

Month: August 2018

  • Day 229 the one where I just kept typing

    Day 229 and 230 the ones where I just kept typing

    Dear Reader,

    Today was a day that finished with some typing. It was the kind of writing that just keeps going. Maybe that last cup of coffee was the spark. Sometimes just the rhythm of typing is enough to keep things going. Last night I just fell asleep.

    This morning I deeply considered taking down my Functional Journal weblog. That would mean taking down almost 2,000 posts spanning 20 years of writing. Some of it is no longer relevant to the context it was written. Some of it was just poor writing. A few pages were probably thoughtful and ultimately epic.

    One of the things that I am considering is using Twitter or maybe Google Keep to just track all my notes throughout the day. Over the years I have accumulated a huge stack of notebooks that contain my thoughts, observations, and ideas. Something has to give here and what was done by hand needs to shift over to a more digital approach. Part of that will be focusing on primarily using my phone as a primary writing device.

    Right now the one note that was struck me in a way that was meaningful happens to be, “I need to pick something to focus on.” Picking one thing to focus on would be highly impactful. Really digging deep and creating a degree of depth related to one thing instead of farming increasing general knowledge breadth.

    Dr. Nels Lindahl
    Broomfield, Colorado

  • Day 228 the one with some wondering

    2018: Day 228 the one with some wondering  

    Dear Reader,

    Today is going to be one of those days where this blog post does not have a featured image. I’m just not in the mood to deal with that brand of randomness today. In some ways it is probably the randomness of it that makes me want to reject it. A photo should add to the content instead of just adding a visual distraction to fill a convention. I’m still not comfortable writing in the Gutenberg editor. Right now I am back over in a Google Doc writing for the sake of writing. For some reason writing in the Gutenberg editor just seems to offend my sensibility. Change in this case is not inspiring me to be more creative. It is just encouraging me to stay entrenched in my standard word processing routine.

    Today my thoughts and words are wondering around the point. Things on the edge of being useful are just in the shadow beyond any degree of imagination within this moment. Sure that sometimes happens. We move in and out of the moment. Being committed to the moment takes a certain degree of effort. Being committed to the moment is not inherent to stillness. Some degree of action is required to capture the moment.

    Dr. Nels Lindahl
    Broomfield, Colorado

  • Day 227 the one where I thought about using my phone as a computer

    Dear Reader,

    Using only my Google Pixel 2 XL smartphone for an entire week could be possible. Right now I’m writing on my ASUS C101P Chromebook. That is my primary writing device. Neither of my larger computers downstairs inspires me to write. For some reason sitting down at my office chair and hammering out page after pape just does not happen anymore. Earlier today I started to think about using my Pixel 2 XL for writing and computing. I’m pretty sure that it would be possible to connect a monitor, keyboard, and mouse via a dock. That dock in question has been ordered. Sometime next week a Satechi Slim Aluminum Type-C multi-port adapter will show up via the mail. With that new device it may be possible to power down my main computer and just use my phone to do everything for a week. Perhaps that would be a reasonable challenge.

    Dr. Nels Lindahl
    Broomfield, Colorado

  • Day 215 the one with some Gutenberg WordPress

    2018: Day 215 the one with some Gutenberg WordPress

    Dear Reader,

    You may or may not be surprised to find out that I have not been very excited about the new Gutenberg writing interface for WordPress. My writing routine pretty much involves opening a word processing application and typing. For years that was Microsoft Word and recently it has been Google Docs. Between those two applications my writing career is pretty much complete. Right now WordPress seems to be trying to get me to create using Gutenberg. That did not happen tonight. I’m writing write now in a Google Doc file and this passage of prose will be cut and pasted into the blog post you are reading. Working in that fashion does not appear to be the ended form of creativity for the new Gutenberg editor.

    Cutting and pasting this block of prose over to WordPress was really weird this time around. Instead of just dropping the text in and checking to make sure the formatting was ok things got a little bit weird. Apparently, the power of the Gutenberg visual editor is to take the things that I just wrote in this Google Doc and parse them into pieces and in the process of doing that make things better. I’m really not sold on this new writing method. Maybe being this stuck in my ways is a sign that things are changing around me faster than I am evolving. Perhaps this is just an example of how I should return to my original philosophy on blogging or posting content online. Way back during the end of the last century I had just wanted to drop files online in an open and unstructured way. At this point, it might be easier to just make a directory of word files and post them each day. Probably the main reason that has not been my writing method is that it makes the content less approachable and consumable.

    Dr. Nels Lindahl
    Broomfield, Colorado