As I mentioned in a previous post, I’ve decided to move to Joplin for my note taking needs. One of the last features I was missing was the ability for me to share a note with other people - as I do with Google Keep at the moment.

I’m not the only one missing this feature, there’s a thread on the forum requesting this that’s been open for a long time, and has a lot of views. So I decided to try and help develop it.

Up until now, notes that I make for work and personal purposes are scattered across a bunch of different places in an un-searchable, un-maintainable, mess. I decided enough was enough and I should do something about it.

I’ve been looking at what options are available for cross-platform notes, preferably that support Markdown and are open-source.

Recently I was talking to someone in a pub, and mentioned that I engaged in film photography. They mentioned that they did not personally approve of film photography, as it contains animal products. This is not something I had previously put much thought into, despite generally agreeing that meat is not a particularly sustainable source of food. Whilst, after a bit of research, I’m mostly at peace with the fact that photographic emulsion uses an extremely small amount of gelatin – primarily as it is making use of a by-product which otherwise would have gone to waste, and in of itself isn’t a driver for meat production.

In this world of Trump, Brexit and Fake News, you may well be wondering to yourself: How can I trust anything I used to take for granted any more? I thought I generally had a grip on these things, but maybe not! What else am I taking for granted that’s completely wrong? Am I getting out of bed properly? Am I competent to make the journey from home to work?

Photography is one of my (numerous and disparate) hobbies, and you may be perplexed to learn that I shoot quite a lot of 35mm film. Can you even do that any more? Isn’t that really inconvenient?  As it turns out, yes on both counts, but I quite enjoy it!

I have always been interested in documenting the world around me, and I was given a Nikon F-301 (35mm film SLR) camera as a teenager to learn with.  Almost from the start, I was what might be termed an “aspiring” photographer – more serious than your average “holiday snapper”, and not a professional, but always wanting to improve my skills and images.  I was rarely happy with taking the odd snapshot here and there and was always looking out for opportunities to record how I saw the world.

So this is how it came to be…