Lifestack

A lifestack is a list of things that help manage my life. These things can range from consumption items to tools, from digital projects to foundational principles of how to operate in private and public spheres. Jack Baty had an excellent model (and may have originated the name), but that particular page on his site has been down for some time. Ron Guest has an interesting lifestack on his website, one that Jack Baty also inspired.

Everyday Carry (EDC)

Computing

All of my computing machines have hostnames based on various literary and mythological owls. My main production machine is named after a Welsh strigiformean goddess, my workhorse laptop after a witching owl of the Hispanic Southwest, and so on.

Main production machine: Arianrhod

Laptop 1: Cailleach

Laptop 2: Lechuza

I have an updated Macbook Air for my teaching income stream, and while IT is generous with giving us admin privileges (mostly), I keep it completely separate from my other work areas. It does not have an owl moniker. It is connected to my other machines with a Syncthing instance to syncronize my ~/org directory and is included on my tailscale.

E-Reader

I use the Beta browser to connect to my Calibre server. I find the 10.3 inches on the Kobo Elipsa sufficient for most PDFs. I prefer Kobo given its native support of EPUBs.

Apple iPhone 13

Home server

Ascalaphus

Glimfeather

General Computing Services

General Software

Emacs

My digital life revolves around Org Mode. I keep things “simpler” these days by using Doom Emacs. I used to tinker a lot instead of doing linguistic research.

I do most of my programming in Emacs, too. Mostly Python, C, several scripting languages, and the occasional Common Lisp or Emacs Lisp.

I publish my private Zettelkasten-esque/Evergreen notes using Org Mode’s publishing system.

My public website is static and built with Hugo. Tailwind CSS facilitates the fun stuff, but most of the content files are written in Org syntax (and some, like this one, in Markdown). Almost all of the pushing, pulling, and gnashing of Git teeth happens in Emacs. It’s Magit.

Configuration Tools

Security Tools

Other Stuff

Server Services & Software

Website

Fitness

Hiking & Backpacking

I favor a semi-light approach to backpacking: influenced by ultralight principles but not beholden to them. Leave no trace and stay off the wildflowers.

Bags

Shelter and Sleep

Water and Food

Clothing and Footwear

Ditty Bag

Knives

Saftety and navigation

Home

Social Media Presence

Edification

Knowledge Management

Digitally, I use Org-Roam, Citar, Calibre, and Zotero to take notes, insert references, and organize sources.

I use a Moleskin to take analog notes, daily. These are considered fleeting but many get integrated into my monthly Org-Journal file.

I take longer fleeting notes within Org-Journal. Some become seedlings, which can eventually grow into “evergreens” (using Andy Matuschak’s terminology and method). Not all of these become public, but some are edited and placed on the Articles section of Phantisocracy.

Daily short-form entries are called “Actiones in diem,” and I have been consistently taking these since early 2022. It’s a short diary format that lists out my daily actions. It was actually inspired by George Harrison’s diary style in the late 1960s, with this humorous and curious entry the stand-out inspiration (“left the Beatles”):

George Harrison’s Diary Entry on 10 January 1969

When I was 12 or so, I began learning an alphabetic shorthand called Speedwriting (though I think I may have dabbled in Stenoscript, too, at some point). I use a bastardized version of this in my Moleskin and on other analog sources, though I’m very rusty and only use a subset of the possibilities.1

YouTube Channels

I subscribe promiscuously, but these are stand-outs for various reasons, serious and less so.

Podcasts

  1. I’m aware that actual psychophysical experiments have been run on various shorthand systems and that the results are highly mixed with regard to which system is best in terms of speed, comfort, coverage, capacity for re-transcription, etc. My interest at the time was simply to learn something new, and the way Speedwriting resembled longhand appealed to me, as opposed to, say, Gregg. The nerds on the /r/shorthand subreddit have some interesting discussions on the issue of speed, complexity, and recall. One of the commenters asserts that “The slow-motion film experiments that were done with Gregg proved that shorthand writing speed is governed by how quickly you recall the rules and construct the outline in your brain,” contesting a more simplistic view that a 50% reduction in word length correlates with a 50% in writing time. ↩︎