Baroquem | 7 Quick Takes, Take 7

7 Quick Takes, Take 7

:::: 1 ::::

I’m inexplicably drawn to software that promises to organize, Get Things Done, capture my notes, act as a digital scrapbook, and/or help with the creative process. In the past I’ve tried things like DevonThink and VoodooPad, but I haven’t been able to sustain their use over time. Some of the products I do use regularly are Things, Scrivener, and Evernote.

Right now, though, I’m drooling over Curio, a sort of combination of scrapbook and mind mapper and project manager and presentation software and digital whiteboard. It looks amazing. And pricey.

:::: 2 ::::

I can’t believe that there are so many people out there who hate cilantro. How can this be? And yet I’ll bet that they all claim to like bananas, which are the supreme Fruit of Evil (assuming you’re a durian fan).

:::: 3 ::::

I’ll be spending the coming weekend on retreat at Mt. Saviour Monastery, a Benedictine house outside Elmira, New York. It’s a wonderful place: peaceful, quiet, and providing a flock of sheep for company. I’ve been going there off and on for 13 years. These days, though, there are only a few brothers left, and those that are still there are mostly quite old. Please pray for them.

:::: 4 ::::

I’ve decided to try to learn Indonesian. Selamat pagi. Apa kabar? Baik-baik saja, terima kasih. Kembali!

:::: 5 ::::

Kings on earth rise up and princes plot together against the Lord and his anointed: “Let us break their shackles and cast off their chains!”

Psalm 2 is very relevant these days. Just sayin’.

And now, kings, give heed; take warning, rulers on earth….

:::: 6 ::::

The Sony e-book reader left me cold. I feel no pull from the Kindle, except as an interesting user-interface problem to evaluate. I love the total book experience — sight, sound, texture, smell — and hope that e-books never completely replace print.

All that being said … I just read a complete novel (Sinclair Lewis’ Our Mr. Wrenn) on an iPhone. Much to my surprise, I didn’t hate the experience. It worked. It was comfortable. I can see use cases for it as a complement to regular reading. And since that particular iPhone app (Stanza) has, or had, outsold the Kindle, I’m very interested to see how the whole e-book reader market will play out. I’m surprised that the Kindle has sold as well as it has thus far, but I wonder if it’s sustainable.

:::: 7 ::::

The seventh of these quick takes is always the hardest one to fill. This is the first result that comes up in Google for the search ‘seven days poetry’:

Seven Days If I had seven days to live and you’d ask me what I’d do I’d spend my first six day with god and my last day with you