I’m back to writing in a journal again. It’s not that I haven’t been writing or reflecting these past few years–it’s just that I’ve been using other formats. But it’s hard (impossible?) to beat the distraction-free mode of a pen and nice journal.
Rustic Ridge Leather makes a classic leather journal that I’ve been using this fall. It’s made well without an accompanying exorbitant price tag. My Rustic Ridge journal is 5×7, which is probably my ideal size–portable yet big enough to feel like I have a good amount of space on the unlined pages.
You can see in the image above that it’s got a leather wrap tie closure. When I was a frequent journal-writer back in the day, I used to avoid those ties as much as possible. But this one has grown on me. There’s something almost ritualistic now about unwrapping it to start writing and then wrapping it back up again when I’m done.
Here’s what it looks like inside:
The bleed-through is a little noticeable but largely limited, even with a Pilot G2 07 gel pen.
And check out the cool-looking binding (which, more important, shows its craftsmanship):
It makes for an aesthetically enjoyable writing experience: before, during, and after.
The leather–as leather–had some imperfections I didn’t love:
I’m no tanner, so I don’t know how avoidable something like the above would be, but I do understand that real leather has imperfections, so no worries, really. I learned from Rustic Ridge that my journal is “chrome-tanned” and has a buffed finish, which gives it its soft feel. There is not the oil finish sometimes applied to leather, so this journal didn’t have what I associate with a “leather” smell, but it’s just the applied oil that I’m not smelling. (Whatever treatment was applied did smell sort of chemically.)
Of course the leather journal lays flat right away, a question one might have with a hardcover journal. That’s a plus. And the cream-colored pages (acid-free) match the leather perfectly, so that the coloring is just right.
I am using the 200-page journal (i.e., 100 sheets of paper), but there is also a 400-page version (200 sheets). And, yes, I do hope to fill it up by the end of 2016! No need to look elsewhere for a great journal writing experience–this one has got me covered.
Find all Rustic Ridge’s leather journals here. They make other products, too, like photo albums. You can purchase the classic leather journal above using this link.
Many thanks to the fine folks at Rustic Ridge Leather for the journal for review! Check them out here.
The inside of a Baron Fig Confidant is exactly what I want in a notebook: off-white paper, perfect thickness (no bleed-through with my Pilot G2 07 gel pen), and an option for dot grid paper. It looks like this:
When I reviewed the Confidant notebook, I was generally impressed with it, but not with the aesthetic of the binding:
Today, however, Baron Fig announced a leather slip case for the Confidant. It looks awesome:
Screengrab from Baron Fig’s site
The Guardian notebook cover is here. (And here‘s my original review of the Confidant.)
PopClip appears when you select text with your mouse on your Mac. Instantly copy & paste, and access actions like search, spelling, dictionary and over 100 more.
PopClip is basically a Mac version of the iOS share sheet, which you can quickly get at just by selecting text. It looks like this:
What’s Awesome About PopClip
Its very existence is awesome. This short page shows you the extensions with which the app ships–fairly basic, though still helpful, ones.
But it’s all the Actions you can add to it that make it so great. Here are but a few, shown in the menu bar at right, where you can also rearrange the order to customize the appearance.
A few of my favorite things I can do with a single click:
select the title of a book from a syllabus and find it on Amazon
do the same thing on ebay
And then there’s some cool power-user stuff, too:
change selected text to all caps, all lowercase, or sentence case
calculate a string of numbers (i.e. 4*9+7 magically changes to 43 when I select it and click on the = sign in PopClip)
count characters and words in a selection (especially helpful for when I’m using OmniOutliner, which doesn’t have a built in word count feature)
That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Here are all the extensions you can add to your own PopClip, a process which is fast and easy.
There are some customizations, too. You can have PopClip not appear in certain apps of your choosing. You can change the size of its pop-up menu. And you can have it start up at login.
A Single Drawback
Just one: you cannot currently sync your added extensions between computers. So if you use two computers, you’ll have to configure evertyhing twice.
How to Get It
PopClip will fill in the gaps of many of your favorite apps by letting you quickly get information into them. It will save you time with things like its spell check, word count, and running a Google or Amazon or Etsy search on selected text. It can even automatically shorten Web links and randomly re-order selected lines of text.
PopClip is easily worth its $6.99. Find it on the Mac App Store here.
Thanks to the good folks at Pilot Moon for the review copy of PopClip, given to me for this review but with no expectation as to its content.
I haven’t posted about this in a while, but you can get 15% off any base package in Logos 6 through Words on the Word. If you order a base package through this Logos landing page, Logos feeds a percentage back to me, which I use to support the work of Words on the Word. So if you’re going to buy a base package anyway…
…check it out here, or just use the promo code ABRAMKJ6 when you check out with a base package in your Logos cart. My review of Logos 6 is here.
Well, one can get tired of seeing the same “Update YNAB” task every day. Or the same “Study Greek” reminder. Habits and tasks aren’t the same per se.
This may be splitting hairs, but since getting past my initial skepticism, I’ve been using one habit tracker or another for much of the fall. The interface of Streaks is unparalleled, and Productive makes a cool sound when you complete a habit.
Habit List, on the other hand, is the most powerful and customizable of the three.
Options Galore
Habit List takes the cake in what it allows you to do with regard to scheduling your habits. Every potential use I imagined I could accomplish with the app.
You can set up a habit with just about any frequency imaginable, whether certain days or x times per week, and set a reminder. If I want to work out three times a week, I can set up a habit for that, without it having to be the same three days in a given week.
I came to Habit List from another app and could easily backdate edit my habits-in-progress so I didn’t have to start at zero just because I was using a new app. This was unexpected and a great touch.
This also means that if you are completing the habit but forget to track it for a few days, you can easily make the manual adjustment in Habit List.
You can view stats for individual habits, presented in a variety of ways:
There is no limit (at least that I could find) to the number of habits you can track. So, sure, why not go ahead and add, “Take out trash Friday mornings”?
Here is a look at more app settings:
For Future Updates?
Marking the completion of habits in Habit List feels very much like crossing off a list. The interface is exactly that. You swipe your finger across a habit to signify you’ve done it. No filled-in circles, no animations, no sounds. This will be fine for many, but there may also be more aesthetically pleasing user interface options for future updates to explore–whether color changes, distinct habit icons, etc.
Maybe this is draconian or just Pavlovian on my part, but I found myself wanting more from the UI that would give me a sense of satisfaction when crossing off a habit. (I know… what do you want, people cheering??? Well….)
Final Words and Where to Get the App
TL;DR: Habit List doesn’t quite have the pretty layout of some other similar apps. But it has the most functionality of any habit tracking app I’ve tried. There are no limits on what you can track, as well as a great degree of flexibility. If you’re serious about tracking some specific habits and don’t mind a minimalist layout, you may have found your app.
You may know of PlaSmart from such toys as the PlasmaCar (a.k.a., COOL COOL CAR!). Turns out they make a host of other toys, too. In this post, my kids and I assess the Castletown Play Mat.
The mat measures 78″ by 46″, which is generally big enough for three kids to play on but not so huge that it dominates your living room.
Action shot
The mat can withstand cars, trucks, LEGOs, and probably even Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It’s highly durable. And its “coated EVA foam” means that when Ms. Three-Year-Old spills milk on it or Daddy spills coffee on it or Mommy spills wine on it (just kidding, honey), it will wipe up easily. Come to think of it… maybe I should just leave the mat on the carpet all the time to act as a stain guard!
It rolls up pretty easily, too, so you can store it in a corner of the room or throw it in the car on the way to a playdate, if you’re so inclined.
Here’s a closer look at the pattern:
As you can see, the pattern repeats but seamlessly links together–a fact that was not lost on my children, each of which had their own farm to focus on as they shared the mat.
Especially if you roll the mat up when you’re done and store it somewhere, bringing it out generally gets my kids’ attention, even though they are not babies anymore. I could see this mat being perfect for a one- or two-year-old, but even my eight-year-old enjoys flying his dragons over the castles and farms and breathing fire on them.
The roads are the perfect size for whatever plastic or metallic cars you’ve already got at home. DUPLOs and Playmobil also work well with the mat–really, any toy you have can find a nice home here.
The first few times we used it, it was hard to get it to lay flat without curling up a bit, but that phenomenon has gone away with additional play and use.
Rain for Root’s Waiting Songs releases November 10. You can pre-order it here now with a 20% off discount using code WotW.
Also, Rain for Roots is performing an online/streaming concert to celebrate the album’s release, about which you can learn more here.
Finally, there are a few more days left to enter to win a physical copy of the CD, courtesy of Rain for Roots. I’ll randomly select two winners from comments made at this link. For one entry, simply answer the question, “What is Advent to you?” For a second entry, share a link to that post on Facebook or Twitter, and come back to the comments to tell me you did. I’ll announce the two winners Thursday.
There are notoriously few tools for parents to use in engaging Advent with their kids. Rain for Roots this year offers a new and creative resource, Waiting Songs. The album is a joy to listen to, even as it draws out the difficulty of waiting, and helps the listeners to enter into the sometimes awkward liminal space of Advent.
The band explains the genesis of the album:
Here’s a brief, track-by-track overview.
1. O Come, O Come, Emmanuel
The album begins with a beautiful, stripped down version of my favorite Advent hymn. I’ve always taken this song to be the quintessential articulation of both Advents (so far!) of Christ. What better place to begin a season of waiting (“until the Son of God appear”) than with this classic prayer-hymn?
2. Come Light Our Hearts
The full band is in on track 2: guitars, piano, lots of great harmonies, bass, banjo, drums…. Sandra McCracken affirms,
For you, O Lord, our souls in stillness wait
Truly our hope is in you
It’s a compelling and reassuring waltz, giving language to those who wait.
3. Isaiah 11
Next is a twangy, string-bending, rollicking country-ish number. “A little child will lead them,” sing some wonderful mothers! Partway through there is a child reading from Isaiah 11:10, using Eugene Peterson’s Message. The song goes from, “A good, good king will lead them” to, “A good, good king will lead us.”
4. Every Valley (It’s Hard to Wait)
Have you ever wondered how to explain Advent to a child? This gentle bluesy, soulful song does a great job:
When you write a letter to a friend
And you don’t know when
You’ll hear back again
It’s hard to wait
It’s hard to wait
So hard to wait
When the one you love leaves on a plane
And you’ll know that she’ll
Come back some day
It’s hard to wait
It’s hard to wait
So hard to wait
BUT!
There is gonna to be a day
Every low valley he will raise
There is gonna to be a day
Hills and mountains gonna be made plain
There is gonna be a day
Winding roads gonna be made straight
Comfort, comfort, comfort, comfort!
I noticed it was getting awfully dusty in my room as that song played.
5. The Weight of the World
I’m not a lover of the kind of the stylized vocals that carry this track, but the song itself is—like all the others—a good one: memorable, meaningful, and singable.
6. Mary Consoles Eve
First of all, I just saw this “Mary Consoles Eve” image last Advent for the first time ever.
And now there’s a song that accompanies it perfectly:
Almost, not yet, already
Almost, not yet, already
And
Eve, it’s Mary
Now I’m a mother, too
The child I carry
A promise coming true
This baby comes to save us from our sin
A servant King, his kingdom without end
This whole album is so catchy and well-written–even more so than their previous album on the Kingdom of God, if that were possible!–and this is perhaps the song that will stick with listeners the most.
7. Zechariah
“Zechariah” is pretty funny, because not only is the story of Zechariah’s speechlessness kind of funny (in retrospect! probably wasn’t for him), but this song gives kids and parents a chance to talk and sing in a babbling, tongue-tied manner.
8. Magnificat
“Magnificat” is another catchy—if somewhat somber—tune. This track stands out less to me than some of the others, but that doesn’t mean I’ll be hitting fast-forward when it comes to track 8 on the album. Flo Paris Oakes’s vocals and Kenny Hutson’s guitar and mandolin work call to mind Lead Me On-era Amy Grant… which is, now that I think about it, the album I am going to listen to while I work on my sermon this morning.
9. Great Rejoicing
Yet more beautiful lyrics:
The troubles of this world
Will wither up and die
That river of tears made by the lonely
Someday will be dry
There’s gonna be a great rejoicing
Also, while playing this song with my wife and three-year-old in the room, I asked my wife, “Do you like this music?” To which my three-year-old replied, “I DO like this music!” The pedal steel and Skye Peterson’s lead vocals partway through the song are icing on the cake.
Don’t you want to hang out with these awesome people? Next best thing: put this album on repeat
10. Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus
Waiting Songs ends much as it began: with a beautiful, stripped down version of a classic Advent hymn. (Side note to worship leaders: yes, there are Advent hymns in the hymnal! And you should sing the few of them that exist as many times as you can in the four Sundays leading up to Christmas.)
Rain for Roots’s addition to the hymn will stay with you for days, even after your first time hearing it:
We are waiting
We are waiting
We are waiting for You.
McCracken’s “Hallelujah, what a Savior!” background vocals float above the “We are waiting,” bringing the album to a satisfying close. Advent purists ought to be able to overlook the use of “the H-word” during Advent here. Or does “Hallelujah” sung on top of “We are waiting for you” deliberately point to Christ’s third Advent, when he comes again in glory?
Final Thoughts and Where to Get It (or Win It)
I really love this record, not just for myself, but for my kids, and for any other kids and families that have the privilege of hearing it! Also, I’m totally going to teach some of these songs to our congregation during our intergenerational Sunday school hour this Advent. They’re excellent.
I was a big fan of Rain for Roots’s previous album, too–it is still on regular rotation in our house, especially on road trips. But Waiting Songs even tops The Kingdom of Heaven is Like This. It’s a remarkable record.
The album releases November 10. You can (and should) pre-order it here. AND… three more cool things for you before you go:
Rain for Roots is performing an online/streaming concert to celebrate the album’s release. Find out more here.
If you use the discount code WotW you can get 20% off the album when you pre-order (in various formats) here. That code is good through November 9, the day before the album releases. (EDIT: Should have clarified–the code is applicable just to the digital download option.)
Want to have a chance to win a physical copy of the CD, courtesy of Rain for Roots? I’ll randomly select two winners from the comments below. For one entry, simply answer the question, “What is Advent to you?” Or, you know, just say, “Yo.” For a second entry, share a link to this post on Facebook or Twitter, and come back here to the comments to tell me you did. I’ll announce the two winners in a week.
Thanks so much for the good folks at Rain for Roots for the pre-release stream of the album so I could review it.
Siri uses parts of Wolfram|Alpha when making computations. I’ve been testing out the stand-alone Wolfram|Alpha app for the last couple months. It’s sophisticated and impressive. Here’s the description from the App Store:
Remember the Star Trek computer? It’s finally happening–with Wolfram|Alpha. Building on 25 years of development led by Stephen Wolfram, Wolfram|Alpha has rapidly become the world’s definitive source for instant expert knowledge and computation.
Across thousands of domains–with more continually added–Wolfram|Alpha uses its vast collection of algorithms and data to compute answers and generate reports for you.
Parts of Wolfram|Alpha are used in the Apple Siri Assistant; this app gives you access to the full power of the Wolfram|Alpha computational knowledge engine.
These categories are included:
Math
Physics
Chemistry
Engineering
Astronomy
Music
Sports
Linguistics
Socioeconomics
And many more
Here’s what it looks like when you open the app:
That extended (and I mean, extended) keyboard tips you off as to its capabilities.
Unfortunately, my very first query did not go so well
Maybe that’s a protective measure?
Wolfram Alpha offers a ton of categories, which you can access in browse format, as well as see some display formats to get you going:
I had much better success with the app after my initial failed foray. How do you play the impossible-to-remember Dbmin6 chord?
Who was the tallest person ever? (Now over to the iPhone app.)
But you can do much more complicated stuff:
Per my wife’s bidding, I looked up the structure of acetone (she already knew it):
That’s just scratching the surface. Wolfram|Alpha is like Google meets a super-charged calculator, plus more smarts to boot. It can generate passwords for you, give you tide information, tell you the most popular boy names, and perform lots of other search tasks I haven’t tried yet.
The app has lots of nice little touches, too. You can use the share sheet to export the url link for your query, which you can then access via a Web browser or in-app later on. The app saves your search history, and even allows you to make favorites, so you can quickly access repeated searches.
Find the app (universal for iPad and iPhone) in the App Store here.
Thanks to the makers of Wolfram|Alpha for the free download for the purposes of review.
The last Innocence Mission release was 2010’s My Room in the Trees. I’ve been a big fan of the band since I inquired about my youth minister’s copy of Glow on top of the youth group boombox in the mid-90s. My Room in the Trees, however, stood out to me as one of their best. It featured the amazing “God is Love”:
God is love, and love will never fail me
God is love, and love will never fail me
If I’m driving there today
And I really am this afraid
God is love, and love will never fail me.
I’ve quoted it from the pulpit before and have sung it to myself not a few times.
I listened to that song and album in the midst of some dear friends moving out of our triple-decker community house (“Some birds I know are moving on this weekend”). I needed to hear “God is Love,” because we were in the midst of a major transition: our second child was soon to be born.
Without recounting the entire birth story here, I can simply say that his safe arrival left us in tears–more than the “usual” baby-being-born kind of tears. Some last-minute delivery challenges gave us quite a scare–but then there was baby #2, safely being cuddled by his mom and me. It may seem a small thing to The Innocence Mission to sing, “Stay calm… stay calm,” but that line from North American Field Song carried me through some shared moments of difficulty. I still think that is the best song they’ve ever recorded, and one of the very few songs I would ever consider calling “perfect.”
* * * * * * *
This Friday The Innocence Mission releases Hello I Feel the Same, their first album since My Room in the Trees.
If you are still, 20 years later, longing for the killer drums of 1995’s “That Was Another Country” (my second favorite track of theirs), or the opening track to 1991’s Umbrella, you will be left waiting again till next time. (Every new Innocence Mission I harbor a secret hope that Karen and Don Peris will ply their trade with a rocking band behind them. I’m long-suffering.) Mr. Peris does, however, lay down a sweet drum groove on “Barcelona,” the album’s fourth track. It’s like a fresh-water version of recent Mark Kozelek. The drums make another cameo before the album ends.
The first two tracks are classic Innocence Mission, with just a touch of drums and subtle bass harmonica (!) coming in a minute or so into the second song. Don Peris’s high-register guitar arpeggios and pleasingly breathy background vocals complement Karen Paris’s good-as-they’ve-ever-sounded vocals.
Track 3, “Washington Field Trip,” is this album’s “North American Field Song”–at least as I listen to it. Here is the band, only “wanting to be helpful in this life,” helping–whether they mean to or not–by laying down a devastatingly beautiful song with actually perfect piano tone. Never was a three-note melody in a chorus so haunting. The Perises, again, get into soul territory:
I do not want fear to hold me
I don’t want to be kept from loving at all
The longest song on the album is 3:43. Four songs don’t even reach the three-minute mark. You want all of these songs to keep going, but therein lies the duo’s approach and artistry.
Highlights include “Blue and Yellow” (what The Truman Show might have sounded like had Karen and Don Peris scored the movie) as well as the moving (and highly singable) tribute, “Fred Rogers,” which calls to mind Lancaster, PA (and, now that I think about it, maybe also heaven):
And you know I hate to drive
Maybe I’ll see you at the station
“The Color Green” features viola and violin and closes the album in a wonderfully fitting way–ascending piano with gorgeous melody in the right hand, joined by all manner of longing-inducing string parts.
And darn it if the song doesn’t resolve to the tonic at the end! One hopes The Innocence Mission will not make their listeners wait five more years to hear what’s next.
Hello I Feel the Same is another excellent effort from some beautiful makers of art and music.
Thanks to The Innocence Mission’s publicity team for early access to the album for the review. I’m sure it’s available on Amazon and iTunes, but why not support the band more directly? Check out the album at their Bandcamp page here.
But it’s all the Actions you can add to it that make it so great. Here are but a few, shown in the menu bar at right, where you can also rearrange the order to customize the appearance.
Words on the Word 