I process my 1.5K quotes from my Kindle, they’re mainly from 2014…2016, and I’m on the 2015 now. I do most of the job from my tablet or laptop, which means nvim. Some of them, I process them from my iPhone, which means Obsidian.
For some reason, Obsidian and iPhone give me the impression I’m trying to capture. That it feels like magic.
The process of processing is simple:
- I reread the file (one quote).
- Edit some typographic annoyances, such as lack of space symbol.
- Invent a proper title.
- Move the file up one directory, from
bits/read(old location for when I thought I’d keep a separate blog) to justbits.
An iPhone version file movement involves swiping up, and writing things involves me swiping on a screen. Which is how I type on my phone for many years.
This magical combination got me thinking that these days, we may impact real world by just swiping on a tiny screen (I’m holding iPhone 12 mini).
For some weird reason, the much more advanced of Linux + Neo vim, plus a set of custom programs to deliver all that, it feels differently: just a machine doing its work.
Which I like more, by the way.
Perhaps it feels different because I’ve got used to it, and iPhone is still a toy device for not serious tasks, and when anything serious is done with it, it feels like magic.
The whole point isn’t about iPhone though. Neither it’s its software or particular apps. It’s rather the surreal realisation that it impacts the real world so much.
When I was a kid, I thought, wrongly, that when you got to be an adult, you do something more serious. It’s surreal to think that even the world leaders do things with tremendous impact affecting millions of lives, by just typing and swiping something on their phones. That’s surreal.