Writing Tips: Just Write!

I add a new post to my old Writing Tips series of posts. This one focuses on simple tools to get the job done.

When I sat down to write this post this morning, I thought I was starting a new series. But then I looked at my list of about 3,100 blog posts here and realized I already had a series it could fit into: Writing Tips. So with a little bit of editing, I wrangled what I’d written today to fit that series. I do, however, want to start with a new introduction.

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I’m Back

I’m done neglecting this blog, at least for a while.

Shame on me. After blogging regularly here since 2003, I stepped away for more than 3 months. I can feel the air of neglect here.

Understand that my blog has always been a place where I share my thoughts, opinions, and ideas, as well as providing an account of what I’m up to. It’s not as if I have nothing to write about. I do. I’ve been keeping crazy busy this summer, with plenty to blog about: boat trips, new client jobs, writing for hire, exploring artistic endeavors in my studio, and even an unexpected road trip. I’ve been keeping very busy. But what I haven’t been doing is making time to blog about any of it. And that’s a failure on my part.

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Getting Sucked In to the Traveler’s Notebook Craze, Part 4

For the final (I hope) installment for this multi-part series of posts, I got lazy and just shot a 7-minute video.

My Traveler’s Notebook Saga:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4 (this part)

As I alluded somewhere in this blog, I’ve updated my Traveler’s Notebook solution by remaking the leather binder that holds the notebook pages. I wanted to blog about it, but I’ll be honest with you: I simply did not feel like spending a lot of time writing, photographing, and laying out a blog post show-and-tell when a short video could do the job a lot better.

So I shot the video.

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More Thoughts on Claude’s AI Summary of a Video Transcript

An update to my October 13, 2025 blog post about the Claude AI system summarizing the transcript of a video I really liked.

I’ve been thinking about the 30 Habits video I shared earlier this month a lot. Maybe too much.

First of all, I really do like the 30 “habits” listed in the video. Maybe not all of them, but most of them. I really think they are good things to make part of your life. (If you haven’t watched the video and are looking for little things to make your life better, please take less than 20 minutes of your day and watch it.)

I decided that in order to make them part of my life I needed to be reminded of them. The idea was to make myself a little cheat sheet that I could put in my daily planner and look at once in a while. No one can expect me (or anyone else) to remember all 30 things on the list.

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A Short Self-Improvement Video, an AI Summary of It, and What I Think about Both

I’m impressed by a 15-minute you tube video and surprised by how the Claude AI/LLM summarized it.

I’ll try to keep this short. Let’s see how I do.

As some people know, I often watch boring YouTube videos on my iPad in the middle of the night to help me sleep. The other morning — probably too late to get back to sleep anyway — this one was suggested to me. I tapped it and was soon pulled in by the concise way the creator presented 30 excellent tips in about 15 minutes.

If you’ve got 15 minutes to spare and think your life could use some improvement, I highly recommend watching this. (If you don’t think your life can use some improvement, you’re only fooling yourself; we can all improve.)

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