Hjertnes

E-book readers for geeks and smut readers?

2025-07-15 00:00

Funny thing.

I’ve used Kindle since like 2010, and had a Kindle on and off since 2011.

And still to this day all the people that comment on me having a Kindle that isn’t a typical geek give me a look and ask what I’m reading, before the conversation switch to them using theirs for smut or something really filthy shit.

My usual list of Apple Shortcuts complaints

2025-07-08 00:00

I’m just bringing up some of my usual complaints I hope Apple will fix soon.

Have a timeout for when to clear the state of the Add action” UI (iOS/iPadOS)

Let’s say I have navigated to the Add actions UI, searched for Things, selected the app Things and first add a Find Items action.

Persist that state longer than until I added that action.

Because it is very likely that I want to add more actions from the same app. I’d prefer if it was persisted until I navigate out of the Things area of add actions or that I exit editing the Shortcut.

Re-usable sets of actions aka Functions

I want to be able to declare a function that takes these inputs and optionally return these values.

Fine you can do it with calling other Shortcuts. But it often takes less blocks to just duplicate shit than to deal with reading data from inputs and outputting things in the end

Better type support

All the actions declare their types and stuff and it is kind of integrated. Some places. It should just work everywhere. Like when I have a dictionary I should be able to set the type” column to a Things Item type

Defer / Schedule actions

We should be able to say Run this shortcut in 10minutes” or Run this at 10:15 today”

Shortcut widgets should not be based on folders

The widgets should not be based on folders, but rather be able to select them manually

Names should not be unique

I should be able to have multiple shortcuts called Fuck this shit” in different folders.

Run on different devices

I should be able to pick where something should run. Like Always run this shortcut where I triggered it” (like it is now) or Always run this on my iPhone” or Always run this on my iPhone or iPad Pro”.

My usual list of widget complaints

2025-07-01 00:00

I bitch about this every year

Let me pick the defaults

I always turn off suggestions and usually smart rotate. Let me just have that as a default.

More sizes

So we have the small 2x2, the medium 4x2 and the large 4x4 on iPhone; plus an extra large 8x4 on iPad.

  • I’d like a 1x1 for when you’re just using it as a button
  • Also 4x6 to fill the entire iPhone screen.
  • Plus various skinny widgets; both with width of 2 and 3

Adding stacks

  • When I add a new stack, don’t pre-fill it with junk, just let me pick by myself.
  • Let me turn a single widget into a stack when I long press

Showing widgets with data from other devices

We can do this with iPhone widgets on macOS. Let me do the same across all devices.

Using Noteplan

2025-06-24 00:00

NotePlan have slowly become my go to daily planning tool.

It isn’t perfect, but works in a weird way.

I use all of the different dated sections in it. But the main thing for me is the daily one.

A big part of being able to hold my ADHD life together is a combination of checklists and time blocking. So everything is basically blocked off in a structure I move and adjust as the day goes on.

It is to a huge extent driven my templates etc to make it easy to set up. I’ll typically do the main setup job the weekend before for the entire week, add all the large stuff the night before, and do more detailed plans for every 3 hours.

At the moment the time here is 08:49, so I’ll plan until noon when I’m done with this blog.

The structure for me is typically a root task that is the time block, and then either sub-tasks or checklists (usually a combination of both) under it. With some emoji to show me the category. And I love using that move completed to the bottom” feature to keep things neat.

For me time blocking is great for having realistic plans and keeping focus.

The slow progress

2025-06-17 00:00

The way my mind works everything become this slow progress where I try to move all the stuff I care about or have decided to work on a forward each week.

Instead of my old ways on hyper focusing on one thing and forgetting everything else for a while and jumping between fires.

It is much better for me in most ways.

But I think it is really important to have a way to show that slow progress in order to see it clearly and not getting into that I don’t get shit done” mindset when you don’t have any big progress ever.

Not talking about the same thing

2025-06-10 00:00

This is probably the single most important thing I learnt from taking a bachelors degree in Philosophy.

When people disagree, they could actually disagree, think that the other person don’t understand what they are saying or are discussing two different things.

Most recently I saw this because some nutritional expert had commented on need to eat food products with extra protein.

Most people who do a lot of weight training or anything similar that focus on getting a lot of protein (or water for that matter; I have heard the same arguments there) isn’t saying it is necessary for a healthy diet.

What they are saying is that it can have benefits to many different sides of your well being to eat more protein up to a point.

For me, eating a lot of protein keeps my body fat lower and my ADHD brain working better.

Is it necessary? No. But it can still have huge up sides, especially if you aren’t the most careful with your diet otherwise.

When there isn’t any downsides (within reasonable amounts) why not give it a shot? I fucking hate how we have to mix two different questions into one and present the other as wrong.

What people do, not what they say

2025-06-03 00:00

I have followed this rule for a long time. No matter if it is promises from managers at work, relationships or when people talk about showing understanding” for neurodiversity.

If you talk the talk, do you walk the walk?

As we all know: talk is cheap.

This doesn’t mean I expect people to succeed on everything they promise or say. But it means that I either need to see the efforts you are making if there isn’t any direct results yet.

Like if you in one meeting says that you try to be accommodating for my ADHD. Then we have three possible situations when some ADHD trait is visible in me

  • You give me shit / grief about it in some way
  • You acknowledge it without making it into a negative thing for me
  • Or you try to use it as an opportunity to understand what’s going on and ideally figure out how for the both of us to deal with it in the future

The first one shows me that you just like to say things like that without actually doing anything to back it up.

The second one is better, but not ideal depending on the situation.

The third is what I prefer, however if we have done a lot of this in the past, the second could be the better situation if it is what we have agreed on.

Calendar but different?

2025-05-27 00:00

The way I typically do planning is kind of like a calendar. But time isn’t that important. Duration is. And order usually is.

I just list of everything I plan to do in order and try to guesstimate how much time it takes. It is a decent way for me to make plans a bit more realistic than if I don’t include time.

I know how much time things take (most of the time), I know how many hours there is in a day.

Made with ❤️ in Bergen, Norway by Eivind Hjertnes