Welcome
Happy New Year!
Welcome to a new of shipping news, my occasional newsletter of things of interest. This is issue 19. Typical headings include analog, apple, cool tools, film and TV, in the garden, history, localism, nature, pen and paper, reading and writing, software and technology. And the interplay between them all.
Thanks to everyone’s who been reading, and liking and making comments. I hope you enjoy something in this edition.
analog - my new diary
January is the wonderful time of year when you unfurl a new diary; all those blank pages to be filled with a brand new year. This year, after a year in the wilderness, I went back to the legendary Hobonichi Techno , a beautiful Japanese page-to-a-day diary with even more beautiful paper.
The Hobonichi is infinitely customisable in terms of layout and usage, and can be further enhanced by a huge range of covers. They sell out pretty quickly, so you might struggle to find one now, but if you like a compact A6 style diary, seek one out.
I’m hoping that the blank pages and the great paper will get me drawing more too.
history - the strange history of movie world
History can be anywhere, I was reminded recently when I was pointed to a video history of Warner Brothers’ Movie World (1999-2024), lovingly created by long-time fan (nepotism alert: he’s my nephew) Alexander Gates). Who would have thought that there is a story in spin-off movie revenue.
You can watch the two hour extravaganza HERE or can see more of his highly original content HERE.
reading - my books of the year
I always like to look back on the books I’ve read over the last twelve months and try to choose a ‘book of the year’ from what I’ve read. This year I smashed my GoodReads reading goal of 40 books and ended up reading 56!, that’s 16,554 pages!
This year my favourite book was Richard Flanagan’s Question 7, a wonderful mixture of history, memoir, imagination and fiction, narrowly edging out James by Percival Everett and Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
You can read more detail about my books of the year, and some other recommendations, on my poetry blog HERE.
reading - LibraryThing
Have you ever thought it would be fun to catalog your book collection? Of course you have! Well, apart from setting it all up in Excel or going nuclear with Filemaker Pro (and, yes, I’ve tried both those options), LibraryThing is a great site for doing exactly that, and syncs nicely between all your devices.
LibraryThing is a social cataloging app designed for book lovers to catalog, organize, and track their personal book collections. It allows users to create virtual bookshelves, rate books, write reviews, and connect with other readers.
I personally don’t use the social side of it much, but there’s a strange pleasure in adding your new book to your own personal catalog (it will scan barcodes for easy entry) and then adding details like what room your book is stored in. Older books, pre-barcodes, take a little longer to enter but the experience remains soothing.
LibraryThing also has some nice graphs and recommendations as well as creating your own beautiful personal library catalog called TinyCat. You can get LibraryThing on the app store or online HERE.
tek - raycast
Raycast is a Mac application I use every day. In fact, according to the handy yearly summary they supplied, I used it 9188 times last year! You use it to open apps with the keyboard, a bit like Apple’s own Spotlight and the old kid on the block, Alfred.
But Raycast can do more. You can configure it to open specific folders or files, it’s a powerful clipboard manager, has a built in basic notes facility and can be power-charged with hundreds of extensions. Some extensions I enjoy are the schedule functions to link to your calendar, a guitar chord finder and nice integration to Spotify and Apple Music. Currently it’s still free for the non-AI version.
Wired said, ‘Raycast is the launcher wishes it made’ and the App Stories Podcast had it as runner-up in their 2024 Apps of the Year.
Thanks for listening.