Daynotes: Tuesday, September 23, 2025

Tuesday, September 23, 2025

Came across Notesnook in my RSS feeds and checking out the site I am asking myself, how many notetaking apps does the world need? Then I see their pro subscription is just under $5 per month and realize ok, these guys are at least competing on price.#

The U.S. Supreme Court seems firmly entrenched on institutionalizing the unitary executive theory. In light of this, if SCOTUS serves more than President Trump it seems they need to clarify the power of Congress over the Executive, for it seems to me that the Constitution invests Congress the power to write and pass laws, including the power to overturn a President's veto, and that the Congress says the Executive must execute the laws of Congress. It does not seem to me that the Constitution gives the Executive power to interpret a clear law, even if that constrains the executive. In other words, dear SCOTUS, please explain to me how checks and balances of the Constitution exists in the world of the U.S. Presidential monarchy that you are creating. #

Today Dave described a new way to read his stuff, via a timeline. At the end of the post he provides a link to a FeedLand Reading List that one can use to "subscribe" to his timeline in Feedland. So, I open my instance of Feedland, go to Tools, Subscribe to reading lists and enter his URL. I see the info and I see that I am subscribed, but now what? No documentation about FeedLand Readling Lists. Do the posts of the reading list get merged in to my news? Do I have to bookmark the news view page of the reading list to go back to it? Searched Scripting News for info, took another look at the feedlist view, saw the names of the feeds and that they are checked, went to my FeedLand feed list and see that the feeds were added.#

So, all this turns out to be a Note to self: a reading list is a way to share a list of RSS subscriptions that others can subscribe to for merge into their own feed list. #

Pairing Tablets With Back End Services#

Last week I bought the Viwoods AIPaper Mini and therefore I have been thinking about tablets and e-ink tablets in particular. While I appreciate the different companies pushing the boundaries of tablet use cases a problem is that there is no standard for data beyond PDF. I can save/backup my writing on both the Boox and Viwoods devices to PDFs but I can't search within those PDFs, all I can do is browse them. #
On the Viwoods I can't even search on the device for text that I write. The work around is to use the AI Text Conversion on the device then copy and paste the result in to Obsidian. The text conversion is not flawless but works well enough and the net effect is a process akin to converting a fleeting note to a permanent note. #
Boox does provide a way to search for text within handwriting of notebooks on the device and in their web app but the PDFs it generates does not include an index for searching. #
Ultimately what I want is how OneNote seems to work (or at least used to) on the iPad. Prior to buying the Boox Note Air 3C I wrote all of my work meeting notes on the iPad Air using the Apple Pencil in OneNote. I used the integration between Outlook and OneNote to create meeting note templates for each of the meeting and then wrote my notes in the resulting page. It seems OneNote does handwriting to text conversion in the background and embeds that result with the note so that I can be used for search both on the device and in the desktop version of the app. #
I can run and use OneNote on both the Viwoods and Boox devices, in fact it works better on the Viwoods, but it does not look like the Android version of OneNote has the handwriting to text conversion, so I can only search on titles and note on words in my handwriting. #
I understand that the constraints of the devices may make it difficult to include handwriting to text conversion, although it seems to work on the Viwoods, just not automatically. It occurs to me what would work well for me is if Viwoods or Boox or a third party provided a back end web app for storing the PDF versions of handwritten notes and can do the processing of text conversion and indexing to make them searchable. #
In doing a little bit of searching, I find Pen to Print that makes searchable PDFs but costs $180 per year to make 1000 PDF pages per month searchable. I could buy a month for $24.99 and then cancel. #

Tuesday, September 23, 2025

So, all this turns out to be a Note to self: a reading list is a way to share a list of RSS subscriptions that others can subscribe to for merge into their own feed list. #

Pairing Tablets With Back End Services#

Last week I bought the Viwoods AIPaper Mini and therefore I have been thinking about tablets and e-ink tablets in particular. While I appreciate the different companies pushing the boundaries of tablet use cases a problem is that there is no standard for data beyond PDF. I can save/backup my writing on both the Boox and Viwoods devices to PDFs but I can't search within those PDFs, all I can do is browse them. #
On the Viwoods I can't even search on the device for text that I write. The work around is to use the AI Text Conversion on the device then copy and paste the result in to Obsidian. The text conversion is not flawless but works well enough and the net effect is a process akin to converting a fleeting note to a permanent note. #
Boox does provide a way to search for text within handwriting of notebooks on the device and in their web app but the PDFs it generates does not include an index for searching. #
Ultimately what I want is how OneNote seems to work (or at least used to) on the iPad. Prior to buying the Boox Note Air 3C I wrote all of my work meeting notes on the iPad Air using the Apple Pencil in OneNote. I used the integration between Outlook and OneNote to create meeting note templates for each of the meeting and then wrote my notes in the resulting page. It seems OneNote does handwriting to text conversion in the background and embeds that result with the note so that I can be used for search both on the device and in the desktop version of the app. #
I can run and use OneNote on both the Viwoods and Boox devices, in fact it works better on the Viwoods, but it does not look like the Android version of OneNote has the handwriting to text conversion, so I can only search on titles and note on words in my handwriting. #
I understand that the constraints of the devices may make it difficult to include handwriting to text conversion, although it seems to work on the Viwoods, just not automatically. It occurs to me what would work well for me is if Viwoods or Boox or a third party provided a back end web app for storing the PDF versions of handwritten notes and can do the processing of text conversion and indexing to make them searchable. #
In doing a little bit of searching, I find Pen to Print that makes searchable PDFs but costs $180 per year to make 1000 PDF pages per month searchable. I could buy a month for $24.99 and then cancel. #

Last update: Tuesday September 23, 2025; 2:06 PM EDT.