I’ve done journalling in the past, but mostly in fits and starts. I started after my grandfather passed away – I didn’t want to let the things I think go flying off into the ether of memory after I’m gone. However, when journalling, you’ve got to do it long enough for it to become a habit, and I never did stick with it. I tried again after each kid was born, but there’s enough turmoil in a new dad’s life that trying to build a new habit is nigh-impossible, so journalling never really happened.

Enter Day One, and their associated Mac and iOS applications. This application makes journalling easy – fun, even! I like the fact that I can jot down quick thoughts anywhere, at any time. Day One’s got a neat feature on their iOS apps, too – it captures the local weather, and your location (pulled via Foursquare’s database). Not that it’s necessary for journalling, but it’s a nice way to add a context-based flavor to your journal.

The really awesome part of this came when I stumbled on Brett Terpstra’s project, Slogger. In a nutshell, slogger can pull from all kinds of social sources and add those entries into your Day One journal, automatically. It’s not for the faint of heart to install, as it requires a fair amount of hacking around to get it running, but once you get it, you can have slogger automagically slurp up your blog, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other entries, then push them to your journal. It’s neat to run back through the entries and see what you were doing and thinking at different times.

Thanks to Day One, I’ve been able to keep up the journalling habit, and it’s becoming ingrained now. Next up is writing ‘letters’ to loved ones here. Thinking it might be neat to write ‘letters’ to my kids, to be read at some time later.

Oh, and I imported all my old blog posts and social networking junk into Day One too. Rather scary… it found 11,530 entries, spanning 1260 days. Yikes. Some day, that data about my life might be important… or at least if it can’t be important, I hope it’d be interesting… to someone.

So, I attended the #ADNHackathon yesterday, at WeWork SOMA in San Francisco. If you know me at all, you know that I am NOT a city boy at all – I find the concrete canyons absolutely unnerving. Not being able to see the mountains to navigate freaks me out – and there are just too many different people there, if you get my drift.

For example, I’m usually “greeted” upon my arrival in the city by a bum relieving himself in the curb (I’ve seen both #1 and #2, and… yucko.) Apparently I got upgraded, because I got flipped off by a naked guy on a ten-speed bike. Awesome. Only in San Francisco…

Anyhow, parked the car at the giganto Fifth and Mission parking structure, mainly because I know how to get in and out of that thing, and walked the four blocks down to WeWork. Got greeted at the door by Andrew, Operations Engineer extraordinaire – he was playing bouncer. I sure hope someone kept that poor guy caffeinated.

On the way in, I saw a message from Brandon Mathis, lead dev of the blog engine I use to power this blog (Octopress). He needed a Mac Power Adapter, so I swung by my office briefly and picked up a spare – then sat next to him and chatted a bit. Really nice guy, and he’s been very helpful with getting things dialed in on Octopress – he even gave me a neat Octopress sticker, which now graces my Chromebook.

Met Paul Schifferer, and had a great chat with him – was great to put a name to a face!

Saw Steve Streza and his Google Glass. There were a couple other guys with Glass wandering around too. Strangely want one, but know that it’s the kind of thing I should never, ever try.

The architect of the whole thing, Dalton Caldwell, was wandering about, chatting with developers and getting to know folks. Was going to say hi but he looked like he was in deep conversations, so I didn’t bug him.

Spent about ten minutes chatting with Bill Kunz about his app, Felix. Awesome app and was a great chat with him. He’s doing some great work, and really pushing people’s ideas of how a user interface should behave.

Suffice it to say that I’ll be attending the next hackathon, if my schedule allows. A great time, all in all. Took a few photos of the trip, too, so I’m tossing them in here.

---

Doing some stuff, working on another Linux Journal article, and stumbled across a project that looks pretty interesting: git-annex. Not sure how I’d use it yet, but it looks like it MIGHT work as a open-source Dropbox, without needing anything more complicated than git.

Definitely something I’m going to be hacking around with. I’d still probably maintain Dropbox as I have too many iOS devices that JustWork(TM) with Dropbox, but git-annex might be a great way to track files (and copies of files) that I don’t want to manage in Dropbox due to space concerns. (Movies, music, and other media, perhaps…)

It just struck me that I’ve got an article in the current issue of Linux Journal! I wrote about installing multiple OSes on the Nexus 7 tablet. If Android and hacking around with things is your cup of tea, then be sure to read this article. If you don’t have a Linux Journal subscription… well, then, what kind of geek are you? You should fix this right now!

Louis CK may be really crude at times, but he hits the nail on the head occasionally with respect to people’s behavior. And after listening to a kid at Barnes and Noble complain about how slow her phone was, I feel compelled to drop this video in here. If you’ve never seen this – take a minute and watch. It’s hysterically funny, but incredibly appropriate for folks living in the 21st Century.