I’ve been very pleased at the built-in “Alex” voice on my iPad, enough to have him/her dictate my reading assignments within the Voice Dream app. It’s pretty great–I can get homework done while cleaning the kitchen etc.
Last night poor Alex got into a loop when he/she fell into the vortex of Walmart’s Sustainability Network, a diagram in one of the assigned readings. Undoubtedly Alex is not the first to have done so…
(In case you’re wondering, Alex did eventually recover, a little dizzy, to finish the assignment.)
You’d think that after 16 years of selling millions of sheets of I would be somewhat jaded by paper. I found out today this was (thankfully) not the case. In August I decided (impulsively) to order a new type of paper from a paper mill that I had never worked with before. Custom paper is not something possible on a small scale, so I was putting thousands of dollars on the line.
I knew of this mill only from a swatchbook given to me (by whom? I have no idea) about eight years ago. The feel of the paper was soft and stuck in my mind because it felt “arty” and “cottony” despite being a commercial, 100% recycled stock. In the intervening years I never found the occasion to order paper from them, though. When I started to think about doing this in August, I was so relieved to find this small Wisconsin mill was still in business–the last eight years have seen more papers mills shut down than stay open, it seems. I called them to get an up-to-date swatchbook, and (bless their hearts) they informed me that my eight year old copy was the up-to-date swatchbook. After a brief exchange of emails I rolled the dice…and then had to wait four weeks to figure out whether I had been totally reckless or not.
I could barely contain myself when the pallets of paper arrived today, and I really didn’t know what to expect. The paper was absolutely beautiful, soft to the touch, and made from 100% recycled, 50% post-consumer fiber. For some reason I ordered a huge squarish sheet, so one of the first things I did was tear it into a manageable size to take to the light booth. I heard someone quip, “Well, it tears well.” I wonder if I looked upset, but the opposite was true. It felt just right. I mean it felt just right, after all the waiting and uncertainty.
This is one mill I’ll be using again. I’m not one to keep quiet about a good thing, so I’m happy to recommend the Whiting Paper Company of Menasha, Wisconsin. Their specialty is small orders of recycled paper, so if you’re a printer you might consider making a house grade with them. With custom orders, you don’t have to involve paper merchant. Mmm hmm. And what a rush.
So my big news is that I’m starting an MBA program this month, at MIT Sloan. Realizing that I’ll need to take a lot of notes in the upcoming months, I hunkered down this last weekend to figure out how to stay organized.
I knew that I wanted to write notes in Sublime Text with Markdown (my usual method) but wasn’t sure how to organize these text files. Well, it dawned on me last night, Github of course. Once I figured this much out, it was probably inevitable that I would start running Jekyll to host the notes online. Man, this feels refreshing. After orchestrating the bloated rock opera of WordPress at work all day long, I can come home to the punk rock of Jekyll.
So with Github in the mix, I also had the crazy idea to post my class notes in a public repository. I’m honestly not sure if I will be able to take notes in a “public” manner–or in a way that others will understand–but I figure I’ll give it a shot. It makes me wonder if during the 20 month program anyone will fork my notes and submit a pull request. If that’s going to happen anywhere, I suppose it will happen at MIT.
I’m off to fire up 13 Songs and spend a few minutes getting my class notes looking nice. I’m thinking EB Garamond in the spirit of the evening…
