Posts by JT
Using Evernote Like Instapaper
I’ll come right out and say it, I’m an Evernote junkie. My brain lives in Evernote: To-dos, bookmarks, records, receipts, notes, parking space reminders, beers I like; everything. It’s really great, and runs on every computer I use, my phone, and the web. I can get to it anywhere.
I also spend a large amount of time finding things to read on the Internet, but don’t necessarily have the time to read them when I find them. And even more often, when I want to read them, I have only my iPhone, and intermittent connectivity (commuter train, subway, etc.). For a little while I was using Instapaper to save articles for offline reading, but I had to think ahead and sync the Instapaper app before going off the grid. And frankly, another bookmarking service wasn’t something I was really into at all.
Now, Instapaper does this crazy thing where it magically finds the content of an article and formats it so that sane people can read it, but that wasn’t really enough to get me to keep using it. However, I also knew of another service called Readability which essentially does the same thing, minus the read-it-later aspect. And also, I knew that Evernote comes with a web clipper that shoots the content of a web page into your cloud-brain with a single click in the bookmark bar.
How great would it be if I could reformat articles and send that stripped-down version, with only the relevent content, into Evernote to read later? I’m always syncing Evernote on my phone, and I’ve always got it open when I’m on a computer, so everything should stay in sync really well.
Well, turns out that’s possible. Thanks to some helpful articles (which I of course copied into Evernote), I made a little bookmarklet which Readability-izes the current web page, then clips it to Evernote. Just copy the code below into a new bookmark’s URL field and put it in your shortcut bar. Click it on a page you want to read later, and it’ll pull the article contents, then launch the Evernote clipper (you need to install that first), and clip it.
javascript:function%20enClip(){EN_CLIP_HOST=%27http://www.evernote.com%27;try{var%20x=document.createElement(%27SCRIPT%27);x.type=%27text/javascript%27;x.src=EN_CLIP_HOST+%27/public/bookmarkClipper.js?%27+(new%20Date().getTime()/100000);document.getElementsByTagName(%27head%27)[0].appendChild(x);}catch(e){location.href=EN_CLIP_HOST+%27/clip.action?url=%27+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+%27&title=%27+encodeURIComponent(document.title);}}(function(){readConvertLinksToFootnotes=false;readStyle='style-ebook';readSize='size-small';readMargin='margin-wide';_readability_script=document.createElement('script');_readability_script.type='text/javascript';_readability_script.src='http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/js/readability.js?x='+(Math.random());document.documentElement.appendChild(_readability_script);_readability_css=document.createElement('link');_readability_css.rel='stylesheet';_readability_css.href='http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/css/readability.css';_readability_css.type='text/css';_readability_css.media='all';document.documentElement.appendChild(_readability_css);_readability_print_css=document.createElement('link');_readability_print_css.rel='stylesheet';_readability_print_css.href='http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/css/readability-print.css';_readability_print_css.media='print';_readability_print_css.type='text/css';document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(_readability_print_css);})();function%20timedCount()%20{if(document.readyState%20==%20%27complete%27){t=setTimeout(%22enClip()%22,600);}}timedCount();Some caveats though: be sure to turn off the Evernote clipper’s formatting, or you’ll actually wind up with a carbon-copy of the Readability page, with no wrapping text, and some colors and fonts that won’t look so good on, say, a phone. But once you sort that out, you’ve got yourself an Instapaper alternative that integrates with everything else in Evernote.
These Images
It was suggested to me recently that I describe why these square photos show up next to my posts, and why they often have little to do with the content of said posts. Simple, really: I do a Google Image Search for (usually) the title of the post, and choose an image from the first page of results. Naturally, I aim for the most preposterous of the lot.
And sorry, if you read this blog through an RSS feed, you’re not seeing the images. It has to do with how the site works – I don’t need to manually resize my images, but the tradeoff is that they don’t show up in the feeds. Sorry!
What I Like Most About My Job
Call me a narcissist, but one of the best parts of my job is watching the YouTube stats and comments on the videos I make. Good or bad, it doesn’t really matter; I like knowing that people are watching my work, and that some are engaged enough by them to take the time and comment. I work on these spots in relative isolation, so to see first reactions is refreshing, and pretty rewarding.
Plinky
I haven’t written here with much substance in a very long time–last summer, almost. And so, in the spirit of writing things, I’m giving something a try.
Plinky, recently acquired by Automattic (the WordPress people), is a site created to alleviate writers’ block. They basically provide an essay prompt every weekday as a way to spark blog entries. I’ll give it a try for a while and see how it works out. So if you see entries marked “powered by Plinky,” that’s what’s going on.
Also forthcoming: an entry explaining the images in these posts. I promise there is some rhyme, and maybe even some reason, behind them.
RE: My Luck
This past week was a busy one! Along with MDing The Three Little Pigs with the West Hudson Council for the Arts, we finished up the final project of the first year in the BMI Workshop. I got to work with the incredibly talented Jake Honoroff on a 10-Minute musical called Re: My Luck. We hassled some awesome performers into putting it on its feet, so many thanks to Jeannine Frumess, Patrick Gallagher, and Jon Fuller for their enormous help. Luckily, we have a video of the reading, so enjoy!
