This is what I do with my photos, from originally taking the shot with my DSLR (a Nikon D90 » [ | : UK, US], though this pretty much all applies to any camera using memory cards), through copying the files to the computer (iMac » [ | : UK, US]), to importing them into my editing and cataloging software (Apple Aperture » [ | : UK, US], though much of it would probably apply in a similar way to iPhoto, Lightroom » [ | : UK, US] and others). It may not be the best way to do these things, though it works for me. I suspect, if anything, it tends towards a bit too much safety, and puts too much time and energy into doing things the ‘right’ way, making it all too time-consuming. I’m photographing as an amateur, though, and losing a day’s shooting won’t cost me in real cash. It might be too little safety if you’re shooting weddings for money.

I’m not saying anyone should copy all this, but there might be some ideas here if you’re interested in this sort of workflow geek-out.

Camera

I use 8Gb SD cards. They’re big enough to fit all I’m generally likely to shoot in a day, but still fairly cheap. I shelled out a bit more for a reasonably fast branded card this time, though I’m never entirely sure how much difference it makes. Figures from DPReview suggest it’s worth it if you value performance – my D90 can take pics faster with a faster card. I’ve only once ever filled an 8Gb card and had to move on to another, when shooting a wedding. For any normal day or outing, one card is way more than I need, even shooting RAW all the time.

I use a single card, to avoid the inconvenience of having to stop and change. My dad has always preferred to use two or three smaller cards for a day of shooting, so one accident or faulty card can’t lose everything. I’ve never had such a loss, so I don’t worry about it. I’ll probably regret that the first time I do lose a card full of images, but I used to hate having to stop and swap cards around back when cards were low-capacity and expensive.

Reading the Card

My camera mounts as a camera, not a mass storage device, which I don’t like. For that reason, I prefer to take the card out, and use a separate card reader. If the camera mounted like a card reader or USB memory stick, I’d probably just plug it in and use it that way. The card reader I use is the one built into the front of my printer. No reason: it’s just there, and it works ok.

Folder(s) for Images

I have a Photos folder. Inside this, I create a new folder, named for the date, and a very short description of the ‘event’, in the format ‘yyyy-mm-dd ‘. If I took a few pictures whilst wandering around Tiverton today, the folder would be called ’2010-05-07 Photowalk Tiverton’. The dates mean the folders can be sorted easily by when the pics were taken, and the short description means I can have more than one folder per day, if there’s more than one ‘event’. I used to just use the date, but a few occasions came up where I did two very separate shoots, and didn’t like throwing them all in one folder.

Events

Events? I use the term in a similar way to the way iPhoto uses it – any collection of photos taken around the same time. ‘Photowalk Tiverton’ is a pretty common name, as is ‘Canal’. It isn’t usually much of an event. I’m not overly strict on dates. A trip with an overnight stay might still be one event to me, so I’d probably just use the date of the first day.

Why Folders?

I could just import photos straight into Aperture, and let Aperture store them in its library. There are a few of reasons why I don’t.

• Matches older folder structure – this is how I’ve kept images since before I started using Aperture.
• Performance – I can keep the Aperture library on the internal HD, which is faster, while the images are on a slower external USB drive. Aperture’s work is spread over two drives, on different busses, too, which may give some performance gains (I don’t know if it really does). I don’t have room to keep all the photos on my internal drive.
• I can have some of the same images imported into iPhoto. I don’t use iPhoto much now, but have at times. This way, the same images can be in more than one program, without duplicating the images themselves.

If you’re looking at a new setup, have plenty of space on your internal drive, and won’t use other software for the same images, you might want to just push the pics straight into Aperture, and let it handle them. I may yet move the Aperture library to an external drive, and bring the photos in to it, at a later date.

Time Machine (Backups)

Once they’re in the folder, Time Machine handles backing them up. I don’t wait for this, usually, but unless they’re ‘scrap’ images, I don’t wipe the card until I’ve let Time Machine do its thing.

Wiping the Card

Often doesn’t happen until later, or even the next time I use the camera. My D90 can format a card using just two buttons, so I generally format it rather than just deleting the images.

Aperture

I import the images into Aperture, choosing the option to leave the images in their current location. Generally, I try to leave this to finish, then leave Aperture alone for a while afterwards; preferably leaving the Mac pretty much alone, too. Aperture is memory-hungry. Importing takes a while, and Aperture can be busy building thumbnails and previews for quite a while after that. Trying to start working on images before it’s finished can be frustratingly slow. Check the status bar at the bottom of Aperture’s window to see if it’s busy – you can click there to get a window showing you what it’s up to, and how much it has to do.

Tagging and Rating

I’ve been far too lazy recently, and skipped tagging all but the best images. I’ll really regret this later, I know. The best way is to tag all the images with relevant keywords before starting to do anything else. Don’t edit, don’t rate, just add keywords. Doing a lot at once is quicker, as you can usually apply the same keywords to lots of images at once. If you do this, you’ll be able to find images much easier later – rate first, and tag only the best ones, and all the others are pretty much lost for good. In practice, I often only end up tagging the ones I consider good enough to use, which means I’ll have great trouble finding any lower quality shots later.

When I export the images later, the tags I’ve set get carried over, so they’re important for Flickr’s use as well as my own searching in Aperture.

I generally rate anything as ‘reject’ if it’s really bad – out of focus, badly exposed, or just generally bad. I also usually reject all but the best of a ‘set’ of the same image. If I took five shots in a row of the same duck, I pick the best of them, and reject the rest. I then base the stars-out-of-five rating on this rough idea:

1. Competent, or worth keeping for some reason, but not good enough to share. Also, I often give one star to images I’m going to use in a ‘Photo Construction‘ or panorama.
2. Nothing special, but worth sharing – will be uploaded online.
3. Good image.
4. One of my best.
5. One of my very best. Rarely used – I only have eight images with five stars currently in Aperture, though I haven’t gone back and rated all my old images (yet).

Exporting to Share

I switch Aperture to only show two stars and better. It’s easy then to select all, and export them together, creating a new ‘event’ set in Flickr at the same time. I use the Flickr Export plugin for Aperture to do the exporting. For the little it cost, the ‘pro’ version of the plugin has been worthwhile. I believe the current version of Aperture exports to Flickr without needing a plugin, but I bought the plugin for a version that didn’t, so I haven’t really used Aperture’s own exporting feature.

Sometimes, I’ll export a few separately to add to Facebook. I usually do this with any shots containing people who I know on Facebook, or for any establishments/products/etc I ‘like’ on Facebook.

Aperture Vault

At the end of all this (or sometimes before the exports, depending how paranoid I’m feeling), I update the Aperture Vault. This is a backup copy of Aperture’s database held on another drive. There isn’t really any good reason to do this when Time Machine is backing Aperture up. I’ve always done it, though, and when I lost the contents of my internal disk, and Time Machine turned out not to have been working for a while, I was glad I had. So I keep doing it.

Current Usage

I use my D90 much less now than I used to. Most of my photos are now taken with my iPhone, often using Hipstamatic. The main advantage is that it cuts all of the above out of the process. I take a photo, wait a minute for it to process, and if I like it, push it straight up to Flickr. The phone gets backed up when I plug it in to sync. Every so often, I open Aperture while the phone is plugged in, and pull the new images into one big folder in there.

It’s a lot less organisation, less backups, and lower image quality. In return, though, it’s quicker, easier, and more immediate. That counts for a lot.

The Future

Eye-Fi have just announced that their cards will soon be able to connect to an iPhone app, and push photos from a ‘real’ camera to your phone in a few seconds. That would combine the performance, flexibility and image quality of the D90 with much of the speed, convenience and immediacy of the iPhone. It could be a winning combination for most day-to-day photography.

What are they?

Artist Trading Cards, or ATCs as they’re more commonly known, are a new way for artists to get to know each other and share their creativity. The only rules are that the cards must be 2.5″ x 3.5″ (6.35cm x 8.89cm), and the cards should be traded with other artists rather than sold – however, some cards are sold, and these are known as Art Card, Editions and Originals or ACEOs for short.

How are they made?

Basically, you take a 2.5″ x 3.5″ card, and decorate it according to your desire and whim. Anything goes – paint, fabric, punching, sewing, printing, calligraphy or plain and simple drawings. The card is the canvas, you’re the artist, it’s entirely your call.

Have you made any?

Yep! And here they are…

Work Kills!

An appeal on behalf of People for the Ethical Treatment of Artists:

[image:2629 size=small]

Affirmation

A bit of a personal one here. Trying to use my art to lift my spirits on a low day:

[image:2630 size=small]

Calling Card

Known in ATC circles as a ‘signature card’. Everything you need to know about me on one small card:

[image:2631 size=small]

Message to the Artist

Because all us creative types need a lift now and then:

[image:2633 size=small]

More ATCs

Check out these great ATC sites:

• DIY Planner – innowen on ATCs – all about ATCs and creative uses for them.
• Crissi’s Craft Room – a great UK-based eBay store stocking all manner of pre-cut craft bits, including blank ATCs. I bought some blanks from here recently and they come highly recommended.
• ATC Quarterly – a Canadian ATC print zine.
• Art In Your Pocket
• Emberlexi’s ATC Set
• Artist Trading Cards – A Collaborative Cultural Performance

Getting Started

Want to write every day? Chris Brogan says “The secret to writing every day is to write every day” – so just Write Every Day. He offers some tips on how to find the time to do a bit of writing, and you’ll probably find that if you do it a bit more often, you’ll get better at it.

Getting Better

• The Day You Became a Better Writer – Scott Adams says he went from being a bad writer to being a good writer in a one day course. Here he passes on the majority of what he learned. It’s surprisingly simple.
• Writing Tips from Paul Graham – How to Live.org list great writing tips from writer and entrepreneur Paul Graham. A good list of tips to get started (or re-started) with any writing project.
• Copyblogger’s Copywriting 101 – a short course in copywriting. Yeah, copywriting is for ads and things, but how much of what you’re writing is trying to sell something, even if it’s just an idea? Hey, I’m trying to sell you this free copywriting course right now. Full of the sort of advice that sounds really obvious once you’ve read it, which is usually the best sort. Starting with “Don’t Read This Post (or the Kitty Gets It)!” – how can you resist reading that?
• Everything You Need to Know About Writing Successfully – in Ten Minutes by Stepen King. He knows what he’s talking about. Ten minutes doesn’t sound like enough time, but he follows his own advice on getting to the point. If you only read one article linked here, this should be the one.
• George Orwell’s Politics and the English Language – a fairly long essay. If you’re short of time, at least skip to the bullet points towards the end starting “Never use a metaphor…” The whole thing is good, but those rules are the highlight for me.
• Angela Booth’s Ten Best Writing Tips – she’s been doing it for 25 years, and here she shares a few tricks and secrets. Tip Eight sounds especially good – keep writing and editing apart. When you’re writing, just write, and let it flow. Edit afterwards. “If you don’t have trouble talking, how can you have trouble writing?”
• You Don’t Need Permission to Create from Ripples – some good, practical advice for getting started and getting better.
• Writerisms and other Sins – a useful guide to overused and misused language.

Getting it Right

Grammar and spelling mistakes aren’t a problem in a quick email to a friend. In business emails, they can give a poor impression. If you’re trying to take writing more seriously, though, getting it right starts to become important.

• Do You Need a Grammar Brush Up? from the excellent Will Write for Chocolate comic strip. The strip hasn’t been going for too long, so it won’t take you too long to start from the first one and work your way through. It’s worth it.
• Paul Brians’ excellent collection of Common Mistakes in English.
• Paul’s collection of Commonly Misspelled Words.
• Paul also has a selection of Non-Errors – things that people will often tell you you’re wrong about, but which are perfectly standard or at least common enough to be ok.
• Also see Paul’s main introductory page to these pages.

Tips

• Chris Brogan says you should Front Load Your Writing – get the important point out there right at the start. Follow up with explanations, if you like, but a lot of people will only read the first line or two, so make sure they get your message too. The same point is made by Active Voice in the next article…
• Don’t bury the lede – make sure you get your main point across.
• Brevity – good.
• Writing for Busy People from Mozillazine. Just a few quick points – practicing what it preaches – good advice. (Via Lifehacker.)
• Elmore Leonard’s Ten Rules of Writing – via 43 Folders, where people rightly point out rule eleven in the comments – don’t centre-align your text
• Writing Tips for Non-Writers Who Don’t Want to Work at Writing – just as valuable if you are a writer, or do want to work at it, but this is an excellent collection of easy tips. (Thanks to Gary for pointing this one out to us.)
• Lazy Listing – by Angela Booth – using list-making to help you write.
• Poynter Online – Fifty Writing Tools – an excellent series of articles on tips and tricks to improve your writing.

Planning and Organising Stories and Plots

• D*I*Y Planner article about a book on using index cards for writers.
• D*I*Y Planner on Agile Plotting – using index cards to arrange your plot.
• Chris Brogan writes at D*I*Y Planner about Story Maps – a method of plotting the good and bad events effecting your characters.

Writing for the Web

• SEO – Search Engine Optimisation. My own take is that generally, you’re better off writing and designing your site with people in mind, and the better search engines get at their job, the better you’ll look. Leave it to Google to improve your results. That said, there are some great tips at SEO Copywriting Techniques that Readers Love – ways to optimize for search engines that make things better for people, too.
• Writing Content for your Blog from ProBlogger’s Blogging for Beginners series – some good stuff for everyone, not just beginners. I’m sure we could benefit from mixing our sources more, rather than just posting ten things in a row from Make:, then doing the same thing the next day from Boing Boing.
• Scannable Content – from ProBlogger – on making your writing easier to scan through without reading fully. People often won’t read a whole article on the web, so making your content scannable could at least mean they’ll get the idea of what you’re trying to tell them. Little things like using bits of bold can help
• Writing Gooder at ProBlogger – some excellent advice for writing. Aimed at bloggers, but just as relevant if you’re writing articles or even a novel. “Once you have the mad writing skillz, nothing will stand in your way of taking over the blogosphere.”

Fighting Writer’s Block

• 5 Ways to Deal with Writer’s Block from Sacha. Sounds like writing a quick blog post about how to deal with writer’s block is a pretty good way to deal with writer’s block. Meta.
• A great post from Performancing – aimed at bloggers, but most of the ideas should work for other writing too – How to Beat the Blank Page of Doom.
• A quick tip from Sacha – writer’s block? Just read for a while, then write about anything you read that interested you.
• Merlin on turning procrastination into a shitty first draft.
• Using a thesaurus to brainstorm – from Angela Booth.
• Beat the Block – a collection of tips from the Ink Shrink.
• Eliminating Writer’s Block – from Angela Booth again. Includes the neat trick of deciding not to write – then you’ll want to
• Angela Booth’s Psych yourself out of a writing block – a simple bit of mind-trickery to jolt you out of a block.
• Hack Your Way out of Writer’s Block, by Merlin Mann.
• Writing, Briefly, found via Merlin (again).

Inspiration

• Keeping a Journal can be a good way to get your writing flowing every day.
• Innowen suggests you get a little help from your friends – “Friendstorming, or the art of generating ideas with a little help of your friends has helped me generate ideas in ways that I’m not sure I would’ve found otherwise.” Not just a great suggestion, but a great new word too – friendstorming.
• Where do you get your ideas from? – the question all writers seem to dread. Neil Gaiman has a go at answering it. Turns out he makes them up. From his head. Good reading, actually, this.
• Use Your Imagination – How to get the story rolling in your head before getting it down on paper.
• Writing From Your Life – from Angela Booth. Some tips on how to get the best from your own experience and imagination.

Thinking of starting a journal? It’s a popular activity now, particularly among women, to help make sense of life by keeping a written record of thoughts, hopes and dreams. Here are a few tips and links:

Benefits of Journalling

• The main benefit of keeping a journal is the same as GTD’s – it’s getting stuff out of your head and onto paper.
• When keeping a journal you are your own audience, so your writing can be as wild and free as you wish. You don’t even have to write. You can draw, or collage… you call the shots.
• It’s a record of your life and your thoughts.
• You decide who gets to see it.
• You can swear as much as you like.

How to Start

• Get a nice notebook, Moleskines are a favourite here, but there are loads of great notebooks out there to choose from. Depends on what size you want, whether it needs to be pocketable, or whether you’d like to be able to do other stuff in it too, like paint.
• Start on an occasion, like a birthday, or a wedding, or a birth – I started my first journal on New Year’s Day, 2005. Starting on a new year is a good chance to review the year gone by and write about your hopes and dreams for the future.

How to Restart

• If you’ve let your journal go unused for a while, Working On Me has a great tip for getting started again – not just ignoring the gap, but not trying to jump in and cover it all either.

Other Tips

• Use whatever feels most comfortable at the time – pen, pencil, felt tip, eyeliner…
• Have you written something you’d be mortified with embarrassment about if anyone else saw it? Paint over it! Get out the markers and scribble over it. Turn it into a piece of art.

Handy Links

• Two Quick Journalling Techniques and a Hack – a couple of interesting new tricks to try and advice on how to fit it into a DIY Planner.
• Creative Journalling – helping you to turn your journal into your personal creative playground.
• The embodiment project 2007 – designed to inspire participants to contribute to their journal every day of 2007.
• innowen, journalling expert at DIY Planner, has a page on her own site on crafting a Tarot Journal
• Emberlexi has uploaded pages from her journal onto Flickr – some lovely examples of the possibilities of creative journalling.
• innowen’s Book of Countings a really nice way of actually counting your blessings and reminding yourself of the times when you’re a blessing to others. Thanks, innowen!
• Doug is quite literally writing the book on paper-based productivity, and he’s posted a draft of the first chapter on D*I*Y Planner – an introduction to journalling.
• innowen’s posts on Sketch Journalling, and Journalling Prompts.
• A good page about illustrated journalling
• An article explaining how journalling can help your health
• A collection of articles on journalling
• Personal Journaling Magazine
• DIY Planner’s Journalling Section
• Ninth Wave Designs on using a Moleskine Diary
• Illustrated Journeys thread on MetaFilter – starting with Kathrin2305′s amazing journals, but with lots more links in the comments.

In my journal…

I’ve recently started journaling again – using an A4 landscape Snowdon Cartridge “Fat Pad”. So far the book contains dip pen sketches, watercolour patterns, writing and a bit of collage. It’s a big colourful mess of a book, but it’s so much fun! Photos may come when I have a page I feel like sharing…

What’s in your journal?

Got pictures of your journal you’d like to share? Post links to your photos here in the comments.

Happy journaling!

I’m back with Emacs now, and trying to use PlannerMode for basic ‘GTD stuff’. If I can’t take my lists to work with me, though, it’s a bit less convenient. It’s much easier to have access to the lists there than to have to email stuff to work that I need to do there, or to home that I need to do there.

Today, though, I found what seems like the answer. I already tend to carry a USB stick drive thing around with me. Now, I can run Emacs from there, with all its data stored on a ‘home’ folder on there too. I got the idea of how to do it from this blog post from clmemo@aka. It relates to doing the same thing with a version of Emacs set up for AUCTeX, but it works just the same with standard GNU Emacs.

What you need to do is…

• Copy an emacs folder to the USB stick, just as if you were installing it – just an unzipping of the Gnu Emacs for Windows distribution (sorry – no idea if any of this works with XEmacs).
• Under the emacs folder, there should already be a site-lisp folder. In it, create a file called site-start.el, which will be run every time Emacs starts, before your .emacs.
• Add this code to site-start.el…

(defvar usb-drive-letter (substring data-directory 0 3)) (defvar usb-home-dir (concat usb-drive-letter "home/"))

(setenv "HOME" usb-home-dir)

• Create yourself a home folder in the root of the USB drive. Copy all your usual Emacs home stuff to there – your elisp folders, your .emacs, Plans folder if you’re using PlannerMode, etc.

If all this works as it should, when you run runemacs from the USB drive, you should find that the home path (~) is remapped to the USB drive within Emacs. For me, ~ in emacs is now ‘F:\home\’. All my Plans files, my .emacs, and all my elisp stuff can go to work and back in my pocket.

This solves a bit of a problem for me, and I’m sure I can’t be the only one with that problem – thank to clmemo@aka for showing me the answer.

Sacha is currently writing the book on Emacs. When it comes out, it would seem rude for me to not buy a copy and read it. And she’s a small powerhouse of infectious enthusiasm, which will drag me back to Emacs. So, I’m giving up early and going back now. I know when I’m beaten. I’d just got myself nicely settled as a Vim user, too…

Recently, I’ve been trying out a new way of doing GTD, and it seems pretty good to me. In the end, it was Emacs I couldn’t cope with using, but if you get on with Emacs, this could be for you. Let’s start with a disclaimer this time, though…

• This is one for the geeks.

It’s all based around using the Emacs text editor, which isn’t the easiest thing around to use, even just to edit a text file. It balances a couple of elisp programs on top of that, too, which let you do all sorts of clever things, using nothing but plain text. If you’re geek enough, though, and the idea of keeping everything in plain text appeals to you, this is one fast GTD system…

I should probably add another mini-disclaimer here to point out that I’m more of a wannabe geek than a real geek, so don’t think you have to be able to poo in C code, or reprogram your George Formby grill to pick it’s heat settings up as an XML file from your fridge. You need to be able to hack at text files, though, and not be too put off at reading manuals and learning a little elisp.

The System

Just so you can decide if it’s worth your while continuing, let’s start with a bit about the end result if you set up everything described in this article…

• You’ll be living in Emacs – all of your organizing will be done in Emacs.
• Plain text files will be used for storing all of your data. You could even edit the files with other programs, but you’d lose some of the automated stuff that PlannerMode provides – like duplicating tasks to a day page, a project page and a context page.
• Platform independent – you won’t have much problem if you decide to switch later from Windows to Linux or MacOS – they’ll both run Gnu Emacs and should be fine with all the other bits too. I’ve not actually tried any of this on other OSses, but it’s likely that most of the developers of the apps concerned aren’t running Windows.
• Create tasks in Emacs, by doing Ctrl-c then Ctrl-t. This will give you a series of little prompts for what, when, and projects/contexts.
• Daily Planner pages – every day has a corresponding page, listing all the tasks for that day, along with a section for scheduled things and a section for notes.

You can also get some idea of how the system will look in practice from eclair‘s screenshots, linked from near the bottom of this article.

Emacs

It’s all based on emacs, so you have to get that up and running first. There’s two options for this – Gnu Emacs, and XEmacs. Gnu Emacs seems to be used by more people, so there’s a bit more documentation around, and things are generally better tested with it, so that’s my choice. XEmacs integrates better with Windows, and has a nice simple installer, which is a bit of a help, but when you’re trying to get something running that you’re not familliar with, you probably want to go with whatever’s been tried by the most people. If you already use XEmacs, all this stuff should work just fine, but if you don’t use any Emacs at all, I’d go with the Gnu for now.

• Update: I’ve been using XEmacs more recently, and PlannerMulti, the add-on that makes GTD possible with Planner, doesn’t work as it stands with the newest version of XEmacs. It can be fixed by editing PlannerMulti’s code a little (thanks, Neilen!), but it might be another reason to go with the Gnu unless you have a particular liking for XEmacs. If you do carry out the linked fix, it’s the changes in the diff listed at the bottom of the post that worked for me. Entering tasks works slightly differently afterwards – instead of entering all of the contexts or projects you want to attach the task to with spaces between them, enter one at a time, and when you’re done, enter ‘nil’ (will usually be the default after you’ve entered the first one anyway). This may make more sense once you’ve read further on down, but it only applies if you decide to go with XEmacs and fix PlannerMulti yourself anyway.

Although Emacs is available for Linux and MacOS, I’m going to be assuming I’m talking to Windows users here. Hopefully most of it will be quite understandable for others too – most Linux users probably already have Emacs (or they use Vi and now they think I’m evil).

Getting

You can download Gnu Emacs from here – it’s the ‘emacs-21.3-bin-i386.tar.gz’ file you want (13Mb).

Installing

You need to unzip the file first, but it’s not actually a zip file – it’s a ‘.tar.gz’. If you’ve dealt with much Unix stuff in the past, you’ll probably be familiar with these already, but if not, they’re a tiny bit odd. It’s actually a .gz file, which contains a .tar file, which then contains the files you want. A decent unzipping program will handle these pretty easily, but you may need to open the .gz file, then open the .tar file inside it to get to the juicy bits upon which we wish to feast. If you don’t have any preferred unzipping software for this, 7-Zip does the job quite nicely, and it’s free. If you install that, just double-click the .tar.gz file, then double-click the .tar file/folder in the window that opens. In there, you’ll see the actual Emacs folder that we’re after- you can drag it from there to where you want it.

Once you’ve got to the Emacs folder, you need to copy it somewhere so we can run it. Although it should work ok pretty much anywhere, it’s really happiest somewhere without any long filenames – ideally, rename the folder to just “emacs”, and drop it in the root of your C: drive.

Under the “emacs” folder is a folder called “bin”. In there, there’s a program called “addpm.exe”. Run this, and you’ll get a nice icon for Emacs added to your Start menu.

Because of its Unix roots, Emacs will tend to refer to things relative to “~” – the Unix way of referring to your home directory. This isn’t set under Windows, and Emacs seems to assume it means the root of C:. Although this will work ok, it’s a bit inconvenient, and can mean a whole lot of messy files and folders all over the place. It’s a good idea to change this before we start. Right-click on My Computer, and select Properties. On the Advanced tab, click the button for Environment Variables. Add a new User variable, called “HOME”, with the value set to the folder you want to act as Emacs’ home. Personally, I put this under…

C:\Documents and Settings\pigpogm\My Documents\home\

…and just created a “home” folder in My Documents. This keeps it easy to get to, without cluttering up the root of C: any more than we already have.

Warning: Changing (or setting) the value of ‘HOME’ won’t affect many Windows programs, but you might find it upsets some. The only program on my system that was upset by it was The GIMP, which wanted to use the new HOME folder for it’s .gimp folder and font cache. When I started it and it started wanting to set up a new user, I just cancelled, and copied the .gimp and font cache files from where they were (under the docs and settings\pigpogm folder) to the newly created home folder. It then started again fine.

Setting the HOME variable isn’t needed to make things work, but if you don’t do it, don’t get all upset when Emacs does a poo all over your nice clean C: drive.

Learning

Emacs is not easy to learn. Even just being able to open and close files, and edit a bit of text is kind of tricky. Gnu Emacs does give you a menu in Windows, which helps, but to get the best out of it, you need to learn to use the keyboard for as much as possible. The best way to get started is probably to run the tutorial from the help menu. That will teach you most of the basics of editing, but you’ll need to spend a couple of hours going through it, at least.

PlannerMode

Modes

Emacs is always running in a mode. The main mode it runs in at any time is a Major Mode – which can also have any number of Minor Modes. Minor modes just change little things, like turning on and off font colouring, or changing how tabs are handled. Major Modes can change a lot more, like hiding some characters, making text display differently, or pretty much anything else. Many functions of Emacs can act differently depending on the mode it’s in. When nothing else is specified, it’s normally in Fundamental Mode. If it’s not, and you want to get back to normal, just switch to it by entering “M-x fundamental-mode” (and if that means nothing to you, you need to work through the tutorial).

PlannerMode is another mode. Planner, though, is based on another optional mode called Muse.

Muse

If you’re familiar with the idea of a wiki, Muse implements wiki-like functionality in text files.

Even if you’re not familiar with a wiki, that’s still what it does, it just doesn’t help you as an explanation

A few extra options for formatting are enabled, like beginning a line with a star and a space to make a heading, and anything in double square brackets is turned into a link to a file with that name. So, if you type the text “Write Article on PlannerMode » [ | : UK, US]” in a file in Muse Mode, the square brackets will become hidden, and the text will become a link. When you move into the linked text and hit enter, Emacs will open a file called “Write Article on PlannerMode”, in the same folder as the file you were editing.

If the file doesn’t exist, it creates it. The upshot of all this is that you can create new pages very quickly and easily, just by mentioning them elsewhere.

Muse can do other things too, like taking all the files in a project, and publishing them in some other format – like a PDF file or a web site – but the wiki-like functionality is what PlannerMode makes use of. Once it’s working, you can pretty much ignore Muse if you like – Planner will use it quietly in the background.

Getting Muse

Get muse from this page on the Emacs Wiki – I followed the link to the releases, and grabbed muse-3.02.93.zip.

You should go there to get Muse, to make sure you get the most recent release. In case there are problems getting it from there in future, though, I’ve attached the version I used to this article – there should be a link to it near the bottom of the page.

Setting Up Muse

To make Muse work, first you need to unzip the file you downloaded for it, and stick the muse folder from inside it somewhere (I renamed it from muse- to just “muse”). I put mine under the home folder we created earlier, in a folder called elisp (‘elisp’ is the language used for Emacs extensions). So, the folder for the .el files that make up Muse is “~/elisp/muse/lisp/”. ‘~’ is home, and the actual .el files are in a subfolder of the Muse folder called ‘lisp’. So, to make it work, we need to add a line to our .emacs file (the script that Emacs runs at startup). The .emacs file is in your home folder. At this point, you need to be able to edit files and save them again in Emacs without breaking anything. Edit the file “~/.emacs”. Add a line to the beginning that says…

• (add-to-list ‘load-path “~/elisp/muse/lisp/”)

This tells Emacs to look for extensions in that folder too. We could probably copy the lisp files to somewhere else that’s already in the load-path, if we wanted to, but it seems neater to keep them in their own folder. Anyway, this is what the documentation I found said, and it worked, so I’m not going to play with it.

You shouldn’t need to do anything else for Muse – we don’t need to make it load at startup, because we’ll let Planner do that for us.

Planner

Planner adds to the already nice bits done by Muse, and turns Emacs into a speedy plain text organiser.

Getting Planner

Now you need to download a copy of Planner – it’s available from the Emacs Wiki. Again, I visited the releases page, and I grabbed planner-3.41.zip.

(As with Muse, the version I used should be attached at the bottom of this page, but it’s only there in case of disappearing files – you’d be better off getting to most recent release from the real source.

Setting Up Planner

Very similar to Muse. Stick the ‘planner’ folder (rename all those version numbers away) in a folder under your elisp folder, then add a line just after the one for loading Muse…

• (add-to-list ‘load-path “~/elisp/planner/”)

Planner doesn’t use a lisp subfolder, so that should do the job. We need planner to load itself at startup, though, so we also need to add another line to our .emacs, after all the add-to-list bits. Make a couple of blank lines to space things out a bit, and if you want to add comments, do it on extra lines, and begin them with two semi-colons (so you could add a line at the very top that says “;; Set the Load Paths”, for example). Now add another line…

• (require ‘planner)

This tells Emacs that it has to actually load Planner (if I’ve understood this stuff correctly – do let me know if I’m wrong – I just know it works like this .

To be able to do GTD with it, we need one more thing – the extension that Sacha made for us that lets us use multiple ‘projects’ with one task. Without that, we won’t be able to use projects and contexts, so we wouldn’t be able to do GTD. Time for another line, after the previous one…

• (require ‘planner-multi)

Planner-Multi is in the folder with Planner, so Emacs already knows where to get it from.

This is probably a good time to create the “Plans” folder under your home folder – PlannerMode won’t start cleanly without it.

At this point, it really should be working, but it wasn’t for me. I’d have a try at this point, in case things work more easily for you – later versions of the files may fix this problem. Close and reopen Emacs, and do “M-x plan”. If planner starts up without errors, and gives you your “* Tasks”, etc screen, you’re good to go.

That didn’t happen for me, and the error tells you to look in the Planner manual. The readme tells you the wrong location for the manual, but I found the bits I needed to change on this page of the manual, on the current maintainer’s site. Once I’d added the lines listed there to my .emacs file, Planner started up ok.

Just in case the page vanishes (it’s not responding at the time of writing), here are the lines I added…

(setq planner-project “WikiPlanner”)

(setq muse-project-alist ‘((“WikiPlanner” (“~/Plans” :default “TaskPool” :major-mode planner-mode :visit-link planner-visit-link)

(:base “planner-xhtml” :path “~/www/Plans”))))

You should now be able to ‘M-x Plan’ successfully.

Using Planner

Planner is another Major Mode for Emacs, but you run it by typing “M-x plan” – this will always start PlannerMode, and bring up today’s page – if you’re already in a Planner page, it just switches to today.

When first run, it opens up today’s plan page – every day gets its own page, with three sections – Tasks, Schedule, and Notes.

You can just fill in the Schedule section yourself, in whatever way you like.

The notes section can be used the same way, but makes a little more sense if you follow a few conventions (start each note with “.#n“, where n is the number of the note, and number them upwards, creating newer notes at the top).

The Tasks section is where the magic of PlannerMode happens.

Tasks

Although the tasks section is just text, you can cause problems if you edit too much by hand – Planner provides shortcut keys and menu options for creating and modifying tasks.

PlannerMulti

PlannerMode has one limitation that makes it of limited use for GTD – you can only attach a task to a single project. The problem is that projects are also the only method available to implement contexts – so a task could be attached to a context or a project, but not both.

Fortunately, Sacha has hacked a way around this – PlannerMulti. It’s an add-on to PlannerMode that allows you to enter multiple ‘projects’ for each task. For GTD use, you can use it to attach a task to both a project and a context. If you followed through the ‘Setting Up Planner’ part above, you’ve already got this installed and working.

GTD

If you don’t already know about GTD, you’ll probably want to read my introduction before we go much further. It’s a way of organising all the stuff you have to do. You probably know about it, though, if you’ve got this far down.

Working the System

Open today’s Planner page…

• M-x plan

Create a new Task…

• C-c, C-t
• Enter the task description (“Look up Emacs on Wikipedia”)
• Choose a date…
  • Today: Enter – (the entry will keep moving forward if you don’t complete it, so you can treat this as can do, not must do, if you like.)
  • Tomorrow, etc: +1, +2, etc.
  • On the 14th of this month: 14
  • On Date: Type the date.
  • Undated: nil – (might well be a well-used one for GTD people – you actually type the word “nil”, then hit enter.)
• ‘Page’ is both Project and Context in GTD terms. Separate with spaces, so your projects and contexts can’t contain spaces. Examples…
  • SalesReport @Work-Computer
  • ServicingCar @Calls

Mark a task complete…

• Highlight the task (move the cursor into it).
• C-c, C-x
• Planner marks it as complete here and on any other pages on which it’s listed.

Viewing a Context – there’s a couple of ways…

• Find a task that’s in that context, put the cursor on the context name (should be a link) and hit enter.
• Open the context’s file – should be wherever your planner files are, usually “~/Plans/”, then the file is called whatever your context is called. So the @Work context is probably a file called “~/Plans/@Work”.

Working it Further

There’s lots more options – rescheduling tasks, modifying the projects they’re connected to, editing the title, marking as delegated, pending, in progress, cancelled, etc, etc. Rather than go through all the options here, though, you can find them all for yourself. Once you’re on a Planner page, there is a Planner menu – have a browse through it. It lists the shortcut keys next to many of the items. Experiment with what the options do.

To keep your data safe whilst you’re playing and learning, just keep backing up the Plans folder. The easiest way is probably to right click on it, Send To, Compressed Folder. When the .zip file appears (Plans.zip), rename it (maybe ‘Plans 2006-05-25.zip’, for example), and keep those copies somewhere safe. If things go horribly wrong, you can always bring the whole folder back to before you broke it.

Other Resources

Sacha

Sacha didn’t originally create PlannerMode, and doesn’t actually maintain it any more, but a lot of the work on the current version, including lots of the stuff needed to make it work with GTD, were done by her. You can find out more on her PlannerMode page – in the blog that she writes and updates directly through Emacs. She’s quite a geek, and creative too (she’s one of the writers behind D*I*Y Planner), which is a great combination.

Clair Ching

Clair’s old site has some pages with lots of good screenshots to show you what PlannerMode actually looks like in real world use. If you’re still debating if it’s worth the effort, check them out…

• Planner Newbie
• Screenshots
• More Screenshots

She had a new blog with more Emacs goodness.

Woodnotes Guide to Emacs for Writers

OK, so it’s intended to be for writers specifically, but this guide from Randall Wood (hey, his first name is my last name) is one of the best introductions to Emacs around for us Windows users. He explains a lot of the terminology that can otherwise be a shock to the system – like a window being called a frame, and paste being called yank.

(Thanks to Clair for the link.)

Genehack

More of a productivity-side view than geek-side, this is another good article on how PlannerMode can work in reality…

• PlannerMode at Genehack

Related

GTD and Productivity

There are a few articles in our Productivity section, but the most popular ones are…

• The PigPog Method – doing GTD without a project list, one next action at a time.
• PigPogPDA – not really a GTD system as such, but a simplified system using a Moleskine notebook.
• GTD’s Dirty Secrets – what GTD doesn’t help with.

Text Editors

• Text Editors
• Text Editors for Writers

A collection of tips for those keen strummers out there.

Playing Guitar

• Guitar Noise think they have the Best Way to Learn Guitar. They mix in real music notation along with the tab, which I always find a little offputting, and there doesn’t seem to be much on scales, but there are some very good lessons in the form of learning actual songs. If you want to be able to play a song or two reasonably quickly, or you’re more interested in rhythm guitar than lead, there’s plenty here. (Via Lifehacker, and as usual, there’s more tips from their readers in the comments.)
• ActoGuitar – a whole mass of online lessons. Nicely written, and includes some videos too. Could do with a few more diagrams, but a bit of searching can soon fill in that sort of thing elsewhere. Great stuff. Yes, obviously it was thanks to Gary again.
• Guitar Solo – Scales, Licks etc – A good resource of tutorials. Thanks again to Gary!
• Fingerpicking Guitar Lessons from Eltjo Haselhoff – Starting from the basics, like not cutting your fingers, but soon moves on. You’d probably want to suplement this with some other stuff, but there’s certainly quite a bit of useful info here. Thanks to Gary for finding this one.
• Guitar GAS – Things every beginner guitarist should have – Essential basic equipment for anyone starting out. The last one on their list is often the hardest one to find.
• GuitarGAS Tips and Cheats #1 – Barre Chord Avoidance. Perfect for those of us not blessed with long, slender, neck-friendly fingers.
• GuitarGAS Tips and Cheats #2 – Chord Sequences for Songwriters. Good advice on what chords work well together.
• GuitarGAS Tips and Cheats #3 – Knowing the whole neck. A guide to the CAGED system.
• GuitarGAS Tips and Cheats #4 – Another easy visual way of remembering chord shapes.
• The Zen Guitar Dojo – Learning and jamming with a zen approach. Thanks, Blue!

Modifying Guitars

• HowTo – Fit a pickup on an acoustic guitar – only to be attempted if you’re comfortable with the idea of taking a drill to your favourite acoustic. Via Make:
• Cheap and Easy Guitar Pickups – How to make pickups from junk. Via Make:
• How To Make A Guitar/Bass Pickup – making pickups from scratch for less than $5. Via Make:

Guitar Maintenance

• Changing Strings – it’s a stinker of a job but every guitar player has to do it (unless, of course, you have a guy to do it for you). Here Simon Lees offers a step by step photo guide on how to change strings. Thanks to Black River Blues guitar legend Gary for spotting that!

Guitar Accessories

• Credit Card Guitar Picks – make pickups out of expired credit cards, or those annoying fake ones you sometimes find in junk mail. Via ReadyMade Blog.

Fun Stuff

• God of Guitar’s Guide to Poses – How to pose when playing guitar. Follow these tips and you might just make next year’s Men With Guitars List – though you’ll need better wigs than these guys. Thanks go to the God of Steel Wheels, Darren Beniston, for this corker.

Tips from Sam’s favourite Man With Guitar.

• How To Solo…The Slash Way – From Total Guitar Magazine via Rik’s Velvet Revolver Site:

>RULE 3 >Invest in a good, big hat. Wear it.

• Slash On A Budget – from Total Guitar again:

>…A Les Paul Standard will sting you for a good £2,200, while a couple of Alnico II Pro humbuckers will cost about £90 apiece. Admittedly, Slash did have a signature model created for him – but only 5- were ever made, of which Slash had two (one of which was nicked) and another recently went for $7000 at auction. Stop daydreaming, pal – it ain’t gonna happen.

A fountain pen that still looks modern, though it’s been in production since 1966. It’s a piston-filler, so you have to use bottled ink, not cartridges, and the nib is quite a bit more flexible than most modern pens.

Looks

The 2000 is a great example of German Bauhaus design – simple, minimalist, with clean lines. The form seems purely derived from the function. It’s not a flashy pen, by any means, and you could probably use it almost anywhere without getting a second glance.

How you feel about it depends how you feel about such design. Personally, I love it. If you like a bit of ‘bling’, then you’ll want to look elsewhere.

Feel

The body of the pen is made from Makrolon – it’s the same stuff that’s used for the ‘glass’ in the front of car headlights. With the ‘brushed’ finish, it feels quite similar to wood – pleasantly warm to the touch. It’s a very light pen, which suits me well. Sam usually likes a heavy pen, but she found the Lamy 2000 quite pleasant to hold and use despite the lack of weight.

The piston filler is a little on the stiff side, but turns quite positively, and is still quite easy to operate. The nib is smooth. Mine is an Extra Fine, but Lamy 2000 nibs run very much on the broad side. The Extra Fine is much closer to what most people would describe as a fine, and even what some would probably call medium. Whatever nib width you usually prefer, go one finer with a Lamy 2000.

It’s quite a wide pen, and because it’s smooth all over, you can grip it wherever you like.

In Use

The first thing you have to do to use a fountain pen is get the cap off. This pen uses a pull-off cap, with two tiny lugs that locate into a slot inside the cap. They click nicely into place, and keep the cap on much more securely than you’d expect, yet it pulls back off again very easily. I’m often a little nervous with pull-off caps, in case the cap comes off a bit too easily – especially when I’m carrying the pen clipped into the neck of my t-shirt, with the pen hanging on the outside. In six months of use, though, I’ve never had the cap come off the Lamy 2000 unintentionally.

Filling

Filling with ink is easy – just unscrew the blind cap, dip the nib into ink, and screw it back down again. The piston pulls in plenty of ink, and gives you a good capacity to last a while.

The Nib

As for writing or drawing, I’ve found this pen well suited to either. The nib has a little more flex than most people will be used to, but it’s nice and smooth, and gives a nice wet line with a bit of variation. I’ve used it with a few different inks, including Pelikan, Diamine and Noodler’s, and it’s behaved well with them all.

Like many other nibs, this one will give a finer line when used upside-down. It’s a bit on the scratchy side, and it’s a very fine line. I wouldn’t want to try and write much that way, but it came in useful a few times when I needed a note in a tiny space, or some very fine lines in a doodle.

Ink Window

You can check the ink level through a set of little windows in the barrel. They are fitted perfectly smoothly into the barrel, and I can’t tell at all if they are actually different parts fitted in before the brushed finish was applied, or if they have somehow only blacked out parts of the plastic.

They’re a bit on the small side, so you do have to hold the pen up to the light, and tip it back and forth to get much idea of how much ink is in there. With a little practice, though, it doesn’t take long to check. I’d prefer bigger windows, but they’re not at all bad.

Flushing and Changing Ink

The piston makes changing ink much easier than it is with many pens, but it still takes quite a few flushes through with clean water before you get all the previous ink out. My Pelikan makes this quite a bit easier, but the Lamy is easier than most other pens.

Conclusion

I used this pen for six months. I say used because I’ve now sold it on eBay. That doesn’t mean it was a bad pen at all – it was my favourite until I got a Pelikan M600, and even then, it was very, very close. They’re great value, and wonderful pens to hold and to use. If you like the minimalist styling, I’d certainly recommend it. I bought mine new on eBay, and sold it for more than I’d paid six months later – negative depreciation!

Why might you not like the Lamy 2000? Well, if you don’t like the styling, it’s probably not something you’d get used to. If there’s an element of status symbol to your choice of pen, few people would think you spent so much on it. You may also want the option of using cartridges, rather than having to take a bottle of ink with you when you travel – if you don’t mind that, though, the Lamy will hold more ink than a cartridge/converter pen, and you don’t have to take it apart to fill it.

I’ve heard of some people who find the little lugs that locate into the cap annoying – depending on your grip, they could be where you fingers are. All I can really say is that they never bothered me at all.

If you like the looks, and you want a well made German piston filler, the Lamy is hard to beat for value. If you want something a bit flashier, I can certainly recommend Pelikans, but the Lamy 2000 is a beautifully simple pen that feels great to use.

• Update, 2010-10-03: I soon missed the 2000 after selling it, and ‘borrowed’ the OM-nibbed version Sam had. I didn’t get on so well with the oblique nib, but reground it down to a flat Medium, and I’m still using it regularly. With more time, it’s the Pelikan that fell into disuse.

• Review at But She’s a Girl

• Lamy 2000 at Cult Pens in the UK

Many of us want to be more creative in our day-to-day lives, so here are a few ideas to get you going – many of them very quick and easy…

Eleven Ways to be Creative with Art

• Check our Recent Posts about art, and make sure you’ve seen our Main Articles – you might get some ideas there.
• Find a way of sharing your drawings or sketches with other people – the feedback you get could really help. Try deviantART (see our review) – because it’s aimed at art more than photography, you’ll get more feedback than you would using a photo sharing site.
• Have a go at Tea Sketches (halfway down that page). You have to prepare when you drink tea, or splash some coffee, but you can build up a little stash of prepared cards. Turning one into a sketch doesn’t take long.
• Doodle more. All you need is a pen by the phone. Even at work you can doodle. Doesn’t matter if it’s any good or not, just doodle.
• Try out ArtRage – a paint simulator for Windows or Mac. The basic version is free (and the full version is pretty cheap if you get hooked and want the extra features), but it’s still plenty of fun. It’s even better if you have a graphics tablet or a Tablet PC.
• Try drawing something. Doesn’t matter what, or when. Just grab a sheet of A4 from your printer, and draw something nearby – maybe even the printer you just stole the paper from.
• If you do a bit of drawing already, try drawing with something different – if you usually use a pencil, try switching to a pen. Some people have found it gives new life to their art when they know they can’t keep erasing and correcting – it makes it more alive. If you usually use a pen, try pencil. Try charcoal. Try whatever you can find.
• Try this drawing upside down exercise – it tricks your brain and you’ll be amazed at the result!
• Learn to Draw or to Draw People
• Why not join The Drawing Club? You can join in with the Yahoo! Group and share your drawings with other people. (Update: the club is somewhat dormant these days.)
• Draw on something unusual – doodle on your food packaging, or whatever else comes to hand. A Sharpie is ideal for this.

Seven Ways to be Creative with Craft

• Try making a ‘sketch’ with Post-it notes and scissors. Cut the note into the shape of something, and stand it up by sticking it to your desk and folding just behind the glue.
• Get yourself to your local craft supplies shop, and pick up some card making stuff. Especially if it’s not the sort of thing you’d usually do. Make cards for people this year, instead of giving all your money to Hallmark.
• Explore craft supplies stores like Hobbycraft for all-in-one project sets. Gives you the chance to try out whatever you fancy without investing in large amounts of equipment.
• Bored? We’ve got a few papercraft projects for you to try.
• Keep an eye on Make: for plenty of unusual projects to inspire you.
• Get a few basics in that you can make anything with – Duct tape, some different types of glue, a craft knife, a metal ruler, string, and maybe a Swiss army knife or Leatherman.

Seven Ways to be Creative with Music

• Have a play with some of the toys listed in our Online Music page. Desktop Blues is great fun, and takes no musical skill whatsoever – even I can do it.
• Don’t have an instrument? Get one. It doesn’t need to cost too much – a cheap electric guitar or keyboard can be had for surprisingly little. If you’re in the UK, eBuyer have electric guitars for under £50, and you can get electric and acoustic guitars from Amazon in the US.
• Be brave. Go to a music shop and try out a few instruments. Most people who work there don’t bite, and if they do, it’s on their own time.
• Get everyone else out of the house. Lock the door. Take the phone off the hook. Put on your favourite album and rock out. It’s good for you.
• Sing along – the car is the best place. When you’re not stuck in traffic, it’s difficult for anyone else to see or hear your embarrassing wailing.
• Have a bang at the Virtual Drum Kit.

Eight Ways to be Creative with Photography

• Buy a photography magazine. In the UK, Practical Photography is my favourite. There are plenty of magazines out there full of ideas, though.
• If you’re not already signed up, give Flickr a go. You can share your photos there with other people, and see what other people are doing. Add tags to your pictures, then click the little ‘world’ icons next to them to see what other people have taken with that tag.
• Once you’ve tried Flickr out, try joining some Groups. There are groups for just about anything you can imagine, and if you can think of something that doesn’t exist, you can make a new group yourself. Groups can be really inspiring, as you start looking out for things that match the groups you have joined.
• Drool over toys at DP Review – they do the best reviews out there, and they get all the best toys.
• Think of a theme to take pictures of. Peter Bryenton has an ongoing theme of threes – anything that comes in threes. You’ll be surprised how much more you notice things, if you pick something good. I joined a group on Flickr for ‘Bright Colours on Gray’, and suddenly I was seeing bright things on gray backgrounds everywhere. Getting stuck in roadworks became a great photo opportunity.
• Try doing more of something you don’t do. If you normally shy away from photographing people, try snapping your family and friends. If you usually only do people, try pointing your camera at inanimate objects more often. Think of something you don’t do, and do it.
• Take 3 digital photos from your collection and turn them into a collage in Photoshop (or Paint Shop Pro, The GIMP, etc). Don’t try to join them invisibly, and feel free to use more than three. Have a look at my attempts.

Seven Ways to be Creative at Work

• If your job is sapping your creativity, it might be worth thinking about a change.
• Keep an eye on 43 Folders – Merlin is full of ideas for being more productive, and the people over at 43 Folders have a more creative take on the whole thing than most.
• Try a change. I change my whole ‘productivity system’ around three or four times a week, and I don’t recommend it, but if you’ve been using the same system for a while and it’s not getting the results, a change might do you some good. If nothing else, it forces a full review of what you’re up to, which can make a big difference in itself. If you’re all paper-based at the moment, why not try doing everything on a computer? If you’re using a computer now, why not try setting up a DIY Planner for yourself, and see how you get on with paper and pen?
• Suffer from the opposite problem? Like me, can’t you stop ‘playing’ with your system? Try forcing yourself to stick with something simple for a while. Just a few bits of paper, of a few text files, maybe. You might get some insights into more creative ways of using the simple tools, rather than just throwing more tools at the problem.
• Try mind mapping, if you don’t already. Just write the heading in the middle of the page instead of at the top, and start scribbling outwards from there. You can find this really frees up your more creative side, and can give you new insights.
• Keep something handy for making notes anywhere – never lose an idea. A folded index card in a pocket is enough.

Eight Ways to be Creative with Writing

• Have a look through some of the articles linked from our Improving your Writing page – there are lots of great ideas in there.
• Try switching methods. If you usually only write at your computer, try gabbing a pad and a pen, and sitting somewhere a bit more pleasant. If you normally use pen, try writing directly on your computer.
• Read more. Sounds obvious, but if you’re going to output, you need input. To write, it can help if you read. Sign up at Bloglines if you don’t already use an RSS reader, and find a few interesting blogs to subscribe to. Stick a book in the bathroom, and you’ll get at least some reading each day
• Why not start a blog of your own? It’s easy enough to get started somewhere like WordPress, Blogger or Vox, and it doesn’t have to cost anything. It can give you a bit of incentive to write regularly (though you’d be surprised how many blogs consist entirely of a post every three months saying “I should blog more”). If you hope to sell your writing, it can also serve as an easy way to keep contact with potential customers, and to make new contacts.
• Get a copy of Writing Down The Bones » [ | : UK, US] by Natalie Goldberg), and dip into it whenever you need a push.
• Set up a system for storing the little nuggets of information you happen on, and store them somewhere you can find them again. See my post on Storing Nuggets of Information for some ideas, but you probably don’t want to get too hung up on how – just stick them all in a folder for now (computer folder or cardboard), and work that out later.
• Keep a journal for the year. The only person you’re writing for is yourself, so you can just let go and get all your thoughts down on paper.

Twelve Ways to Mix ‘em Up!

Where the categories above meet…

• Write about your productivity system.
• Take photos of a musical instrument.
• Draw pictures on cards for people’s birthdays.
• Write about the day you took your favourite photo.
• Take a photo of a place you spent a happy day.
• Write a tune inspired by one of your photos.
• Make a musical instrument. Probably start with something percussive
• Take photos of your favourite productivity tools.
• Draw your camera.
• Make a case for carrying index cards. Clue: duct tape
• Draw something from your favourite fiction book.
• Buy a guitar magazine and draw your favourites.

Thanks to our bosses-to-be at Cult Pens, we are in a rather lucky position – being able to revew both the Pilot Capless (Vanishing Point to Americans), and the new Pilot Capless Decimo, which has just been released in the UK. Cult Pens have the first official stocks in the UK, and one of the first batch is right here to be reviewed.

• Pilot Capless at Cult Pens

We’re talking about two pens here – the Pilot Capless, and the Pilot Capless Decimo. I’ll just refer to them as Capless and Decimo to keep things shorter, but the Decimo is also a Capless. Because they’re both quite similar, I’ll cover them together for the most part, but where they differ, I’ll try my best to describe how.

What Are They?

Retractable fountain pens. With other fountain pens, you have a cap, which you either pull off or unscrew. Some people put the cap on the end of the barrel when writing (called posting it), others keep it in their other hand, or pop it down somewhere (Sam posts, I don’t). If you’re using a pen on and off for a while, removing and replacing the cap can start to get annoying, and if you don’t post it, it’s easy to forget what you’ve done with it, or end up with it knocked on the floor.

The Capless pens get around that by using a retracting mechanism, like a ballpoint. Because the nib has to be kept away from the air, though, there is also a little sprung ‘door’ that opens as you push the button, allowing the nib to side out.

I never saw removing a cap as being a problem, but when I stood leaning on the wall to sign for a package one day, with the cap of my Sheaffer Saratoga Snorkel in my hand, I found afterwards that I’d leaned on the cap, and made a set of gouges into the plastic. It was about then that I started to see the point of the Capless pens.

The Capless range has been around since the 1960s, though they have been improved and changed over the years. The Decimo is a thinner and lighter version of the Capless, but it still wouldn’t really count as thin or light relative to most other pens. I think the best way to see it is that the Decimo is the ‘normal’ size. The Capless is thicker and heavier, like an oversized version.

Looks

Pilot had a bit of a problem when designing the Capless. The reason fountain pens have the clip on the caps is because they really should be carried with the nib pointing upwards. So, if you’re going to take away the cap, but still have a clip, the clip needs to go at the same place your fingers need to go. The result is a pen that kind of looks the wrong way round. The nib pops out near the clip, with the button for retracting it at the other end. Because the whole insides slide up and down when operated, they are also rather thick pens.

With all the odd limitations they had to work with, Pilot have done a very nice job of the styling – they are definitely modern pens, and unusual looking pens, but very pretty. Looks are always a subjective thing, and I’m sure you’re drawing your own conclusions from the photos, but the finish is every bit as beautiful as it looks. The shiny parts are all very shiny, and the finish of the barrel had a subtle sparkle to it. If you’re really only into vintage-style pens, they may have no appeal to you, but if you didn’t have some interest in modern pens, you’d have stopped reading a while back, wouldn’t you?

Both pens came in very nice presentation boxes…

Differences

As far as looks go, there isn’t a huge amount in it. The difference in width and weight are quite noticeable when you’re holding the pen, but doesn’t make a big difference to the looks. The biggest difference in looks is that the Decimo is much more about straight lines, the Capless has more curves. The Decimo is a supermodel – the Capless is more of a ‘glamour’ model. Even after a couple of days, I’m not sure which I prefer – the lines of the Decimo are more elegant, somehow, but the curves of the Capless really do suit it.

You don’t often see them from this angle, which is kind of fortunate – from this end, they have a face like a guppy…

Another difference worth noting is the choice of finishes. In the UK, the standard Capless is available with gold or rhodium trim, each in several colours, and in Carbonesque and Raden finishes. Carbonesque is made to look like carbon fibre – it’s still a pattern hidden under a layer of laquer, so it doesn’t feel like carbon fibre, but looks pretty. Raden is the top-of-the-line finish – ten layers of Urushi laquer, hand applied, with tiny fragments of abalone shell set into it, in all different colours. The Decimo is only available in blue, grey or white. Ours is white, and it’s really quite startlingly different – not like any other pen I’ve seen – it’s a slightly creamy, pearly white, and as with the silver Capless, the white Decimo is a textured surface with layers of laquer over the top.

The white finish, only available on the Decimo…

The silver finish on the standard Capless…

Feel

The parts all fit together well, and the retracting mechanism just works. I expected the retracting thing to be a real point of interest – the most exciting part of the pen. The excitement of it wears off surprisingly quickly, though. By the end of the first day, it was just the way of getting the pen open. Quick, and slick, but no excitement there any more.

Fortunately, once its party trick wears thin, it remains a useful feature, and there is plenty more to like about the Capless and Decimo.

You have to unscrew the barrel to get at the actual pen part. The nib, feed and converter (or cartridge) are all in one piece, that can be removed from the barrel. In fact, you need to remove it for filling.

This leads to one handy feature of the Capless pens – these nib units are all interchangeable. You can pop the whole unit out of a Decimo, and swap it for one from a standard Capless. You can buy a pen with a medium nib, and later buy a fine nib unit to swap over. There are other fountain pens where you can swap the nibs around, but not many where it’s so easy, or where the nib units are so easily available. In the US, Richard Binder even sells custom ground nib units – off the shelf stubs and italics, and flex nibs ground to your own preferences.

In Use

OK, so the clicky mechanism got old fairly quickly – is there enough left to the Capless pens to still love them after the clickiness loses its excitement?

Yes. Definitely.

Both pens are comfortable and well balanced to hold. The retracting mechanism is quick and easy to use, and takes away the question of what to do with the cap.

The Clip

Some people have trouble with the clips. They don’t get in the way for me, but if you grip the pen in an unusual way, so there isn’t space for a clip between your fingers, directly above the top of the nib, you might have problems. Most people don’t have any trouble with it, but some do – especially left handed people. Try holding an existing pen with the clip between your fingers, and see how it would line up – you can probably tell if it will get in your way.

The Nib

Here’s the reason this pen is still so great, when the retractable mechanism gets boring – the nib is a joy to use. They’re much more flexible than almost any modern pen I’ve used. Probably not to the extent that vintage flex fans would even call ‘semi-flex’, but it’s enough to make writing feel slightly cushioned when you’re writing heavily, and enough that you can widen the line with a bit of pressure.

Left with the nib out, the ink seems to dry a bit quickly, and sometimes doesn’t start until the second stroke, but that’s less of a problem when putting the nib away is so quick and easy.

When you’re actually writing, the nib is smooth, responsive, and has a lovely feel to it. I’ve heard that these can be on the dry side, but both of the nib units we have are fairly wet.

One situation that seems to cause the Capless pens more trouble than most is when they’re held at a very shallow angle. I don’t mean by this that if you hold it quite low when writing, but when sitting up in bed making notes, with the pen almost horizontal, it can skip occasionally. Again, it doesn’t usually take much to get it going again, but most fountain pens won’t have any problem, as long as they’re pointing slightly downhill.

Both of the problems mentioned here probably have a common cause. The feed for this pen has to fit into a very narrow gap, so the nib unit can slide back and forth, and the nib and end of the feed can fit through the hole when retracting. Because of the narrow feed, there isn’t a lot of ink held right next to the nib itself. If you write with the pen pointing slightly upwards, there isn’t enough ink in the nib end of the feed to keep flowing for long, and if the pen is sitting uncapped, there isn’t as much ink there to keep the nib wet for long enough. Neither of these problems are likely to get in your way often, though, and the narrow feed is the price you have to pay for the retracting mechanism.

Nib Widths

It’s often said the Japanese pens have thinner nibs than American or European pens, so if you like a medium, you should order a fine, and if you like a fine nib, you should order a medium. That doesn’t seem to hold with the Capless. The pens we have are both medium nibs, and they write with a fairly standard medium line, certainly not a fine.

This has been discussed a couple of times on The Fountain Pen Network. In this discussion, Dillon says that the US nibs are different to the ones supplied in Japan – Pilot are sending out different nib units to match the market. User PinarelloOnly has posted a set of comparison photos, showing medium and fine Capless nibs against some other pens (VP is the Capless – they are sold as Vanishing Point in the US).

Filling

Here’s where you pay for all that clicky convenience. If you use cartridges, the Capless pens are no harder to fill than any other – push the cartridge into the nib unit. You do have to pop a metal cover over the cartridge, to take the strain of the springs, but it’s still quick and easy. If you use bottled ink and the supplied converter, though, it’s a bit of a pain. I think it’s worth it, but if you hate filling pens at the best of times, it might be a deal-breaker for you.

First of all, you don’t fill the pen, you fill the nib unit. Unscrew the pen, and take the nib unit out for filling. It’s then a fairly standard screw-action piston converter, but with a couple of tricks to watch for…

• The feed unit has an opening that’s quite a long way back from the nib. Filling from a tall Noodler’s bottle isn’t a problem (unless it’s down to about a third full, as ours is), but with a 30ml Pelikan bottle I had full of my own mix, this opening was out of the ink until the bottle was almost completely full. Even when almost full, I have to prop the bottle up at an angle to make filling easier. I keep a chamois leather handy, which works well for holding the bottle at any angle I need. In the photo above, you can see the nibs wrap around the almost-black feed. You need to submerge the nib in ink all the way up to the round metal part.
• The piston doesn’t travel the full length of the converter, so it never gets a really full fill. The trick to this seems to be…
• Fill as full as it goes.
• Hold the unit nib-upwards, and tap it gently. The air bubble should vanish from the bit you can see, so now all the air is at the top of the converter, next to the feed.
• Gently and slowly work the piston down (or up, as you’re now holding it), watching the hole at the top of the feed. You probably want to have plenty of tissue handy, and don’t do this part over a valuable antique rug, or that only copy of your quarterly report.
• As soon as ink appears in the hole, and before it starts dripping out, stop.
• Wind back a tiny bit, then give the unit a couple of taps to settle the ink.
• Try winding forward again. If the ink appears back at the hole at about the same point, you may have gone far enough, and got rid of all the air. Until you get used to how far you need to go, wind back and forth a few times, giving it a few taps. Sometimes, you actually have to push ink out until it’s almost ready to drip everywhere, then bubbles come through the ink, getting a bit more of the air out of the converter.
• Once you’re reasonably sure the ink that’s appearing in the hole is the top of the real ink, not just the top of a bubble, you’ve got rid of all the air in the converter.
• Now, turn it over again, and put it straight back into the ink, and wind the piston all the way back up.
• If you’ve got it right, holding the nib unit down, tap the converter a couple of times, and the bit of clear converter you can see should stay full of ink – there shouldn’t be any air to fill it any more.
• Once you’ve done it, you probably want to wind down enough to let a couple of drops back into the bottle, then wind back up – this makes sure there’s a little bit of air pressure to hold the ink in place, so it doesn’t drip. This step doesn’t matter too much if you’re about to do a good chunk of writing straight away, but if you’re giong to pocket the pen, it’s quite important to make sure it won’t drip.

That long explanation makes the process sound worse than it is – it’s not really much more difficult than most converters, but it’s a bit of an extra hassle.

Differences

When I finally got to try both of these pens out side-by-side, I was hoping for some sort of insight beyond the fact that the Capless is thicker and heavier than the Decimo. Unfortunately, that really is the biggest difference. Even the Decimo, though, is on the thicker side of average – about the same as a Parker 51, for example, or a Lamy AL-star. The full Capless is only slightly thicker, and about half as heavy again, but the difference is quite noticeable in the hand. If you usually buy pens on the thicker side, and still wish they were a bit thicker, the Capless will fill your need and your hand well.

I usually like light pens, but the weight in the Capless is mostly towards the nib end, which feels good to me – I only object to the weight when it’s towards the top.

The other difference really comes down to the clips. The Capless clip is relatively tall, and narrows at the point where your fingers grip, just above the shiny metal part behind the nib. The Decimo clip is much shorter, and flattens more than it narrows where your fingers are supposed to grip, and the flattened part is a bit lower down, closer to the nib. I find I have to stay a little further back for the sake of a good grip. If I slip forward to the metal part, the angle is too steep, and my fingers start to slide down every couple of sentences. Fortunately, because the clip is a bit flatter, it doesn’t matter so much how far up the clip your fingers rest.

If you actually use the clip a lot for keeping the pen in your pocket, it’s also worth noting the the flatness of the Decimo clip comes at the expense of some usability – it won’t fit well over thick fabric, and even sits a bit high in a shirt pocket.

Conclusion

These are both very nice pens, very well made, and wonderfully responsive nibs. As I said, looks are subjective, but they look good to me, and they’re unusual enough to get a second look from people, which I like.

Comparing the size with some other pens – click the pic to see it in Flickr, with notes to tell you what all the pens are…

Worth the Money?

That’s a tricky one to answer – they are expensive pens. They are clearly better quality than any of the cheaper pens I’ve tried, but you can only decide for yourself if you really want to spend that much money on a pen. If you have the money to spare, and you do want to spend it on a pen, I think you could do a lot worse than these. The retractable mechanism does make a difference, but even without it, the quality of the nib, and the overall feel of the pen, is excellent.

Which One?

That really is another tricky one. Considering the Decimo costs more than the standard Capless, the Capless would be my choice. If you find pens that thick uncomfortable to use, or just don’t want something so bulky, the Decimo is a great option, but if you like thick pens, and don’t mind the weight, I think the Capless is more comfortable to write with.

Where From?

• Cult Pens, of course.

Tried One?

Anyone out there tried a Capless or Decimo? What did you think? Was the clip a problem for you? Do you use bottled ink, or cartridges?

Living With the Caplesses

After Two Weeks

We’ve had these pens for two weeks now, so how are they holding up to use? For me, very well indeed. I’ve used it as my main pen for the entire time. When doing a lot of writing (handwriting out my college work prior to typing it up), I found the Decimo to be very comfortable. I tried switching back over to my previous favourite, a vintage Parker 51, and soon realised that I wanted to switch back to the Capless because I enjoyed writing with it more. Which is very impressive, considering how good that 51 is. I’m still carrying the Capless all the time, and it’s almost the only pen I use.

The fact that it occasionally skips when writing in bed is a bit of an annoyance – I tend to go through my notes in bed, and scribble down more things as I’m thinking of them. So far, it’s not enough of a problem to bother picking up a different pen, or even just leaving one by the bed, but it can be a minor irritation at times. I just have to keep the pen angled down a little more than I naturally would. This problem also seems to happen less since switching over to Noodler’s Walnut ink, from our own mix of Quink Blue-Black and Noodler’s Eternal Black, so the ink you use might make this more or less of a problem – along with whether you sit around in bed writing with your fountain pen

Sam doesn’t get on as well with them as I do. She prefers very firm nibs, and the Capless has a bit more flex than she’s really comfortable with. It’s still out and used a fair bit, but it’s not the first pen she’ll reach for. See her thoughts in Fountain Pen Field Test.

After Almost Six Months

I still love these pens, and they still stand out for their quality, even after trying quite a few other good quality fountain pens. The nibs are still probably the best I’ve used anywhere.

However, neither of them is my main pen for daily use. I bought a Lamy 2000 a while after getting these, and the day-to-day experience with that is slightly better for me. I like capped pens, most of the time, so the retractable mechanism was never a great selling point for me. The Lamy holds more ink, and is easier and less fussy to fill, with its piston mechanism. It’s lighter, which suits me better, and the styling is very minimal – that won’t appeal to everyone, but I like it. If you ever want to use cartridges, the Lamy 2000 would be no good to you, and if you want a pen in anything other than plain matt black, it won’t appeal, but it’s a very nice pen.

The Capless Decimo is still my second favourite fountain pen, and would probably be a better buy than the Lamy for most people.

Related

• Pens
• Capless and Decimo Photo Set on Flickr, with lots more pics.
• Comparing Caplesses from Dan, posted on FPN – mainly looking at the Decimo and the new Fermo, but he mentions the standard Capless, and some older models too – a very useful post if you’re trying to choose.
• Getting Used to my VP – a post by goodguy on The Fountain Pen Network, with quite a few responses and tips. User HDoug mentions the ‘syringe’ filling technique, which is pretty much what I’ve described above.