I have submitted to the cloud.

As I get older and juggle ndiverse projects I notice that my memory is starting to get worse.   My mind is incredibly active these days, full of ideas, snippets of poetry and song, meeting designs, half written blog posts/   I have had a mish-mash of ways of recording these ideas in the past: audio notes on an iPod, photos on a camera, notes in a Moleskine, or on a blog somewhere.

Recently I acquired my first iPhone, and this has made life easier but has changed a lot of my routines.   I now use Evernote for almost everything, taking notes on client calls, recording ideas, clipping web pages (that and Instapaper has replaced delicious for me).   I create first drafts in Evernote too, and record a daily journal.   It has become my source, and from it I post tweets, create documents, make blog posts and write poems and songs.  I can record audio and video and with my phone it’s all online and in the cloud.  All of my writing is tagable and searchable which is great for revisiting ideas.  There is even a plugin for Google Chrome that will search your Evernote notebooks, as well as returning Google results.

Added with fully using Google Calendar, Gmail and Tasks (with ICal and MacMail as offline backups on the phone and the laptop) I feel more organized, connected and free than I have been and less stuff is falling through the cracks.

Now every day is a cloudy day.

My poor Barmah hat has failed.  A nasty hole has opened up at the seam and my trusty rain hat, my portable shelter for four years or so now has given up the ghost.

So today searching for hope through the route of repair, I contacted Barmah’s Canadian representative, Brian Smith, who resides not far from me on the Sunshine Coast, on the west side of our inlet.  I sent him the picture and he commiserated and we agreed that at times entropy has to have its way.  But for being a good sport he offered me a replacement hat at a very good price, which I was happy to take him up on.  In the ensuing conversation we discovered a mutual friend.

So a new hat is on its way and my head will be dry and warm for the remainder of the winter and I’m left with a nice feeling of being treated well.  Thanks Brian!