IFTTT: Pretend Timewasting

I waste time. Say what you will about Reddit, it helps me do this very well. However, it sometimes turns up something worth taking note of. I normally lose these in the stream of information or bookmark them, never to be looked at again.

Until a few days ago, I’ve been using the iPhone 5’s native Notes app to take notes on whatever slides into my head. Every week, I force myself to clear this out, sorting ideas and answering questions. While working on this project, I realised that OneNote serves me better in this by directly transferring my notes onto my laptop, saving me from having to type them out again.

Combining these will hopefully make reviewing things of interest more regular and easy.

Some Thoughts (IFTTT, Campbell and Thorp)

While I like the idea, IFTTT is like being handed an enormous toolbox which contains more tools than you could ever need but not the ones you want. On top of that, you don’t know what tools you want. There needs to be a distinction between things that save time, and things that allow you to ignore information. With a lot of these tools, it seems like it would become very easy to consider issues dealt with, and forget about them.

Jim Campbell’s Algorithm for Computer Art is fairly ham-handed self-depracating humour, In my opinion. All art forms essentially consist of processing outside information into some new reality. It may be unsubtle, But it works as art if pointing this out is its goal.

The API seems monolithic in importance, and incredibly simple conceptually. The article gave me a huge sense of potentiality, a sense that so much could be achieved by standing on the shoulders of giants.