---
layout: post
title: From MacJournal to Journler
author: Steven
date: 2006-06-29 04:23:48
categories: 
- Musings
tags: 
- os x
- software
featured_image: https://www.stevenjaycohen.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/wsi-imageoptim-happy-mac-icon.png
---

	I know that I haven't posted anything new for quite some time. The semester at school was coming to a close among other things and that just got in the way of things like this. This time last year, I was coding Iridium and that took a lot of time and focus. This year, my design obsession has been helping out with a piece of software that has coaxed me away from MacJournal -- Journler!

	

	Journler is a wonderful piece of Freeware. I had been using an old freeware copy of MacJournal for this site. Whenever a new beta of MacJournal would come out, I would test it and totally enjoy the new features, but I could never justify the cost of the upgrade.

	

	Just as I was about to finally break down and pay for MacJournal v4, I stumbled across Journler v2. And now, I'm a convert...

	

	The biggest change from v1 of Journler for me is the ability to post to my blog directly from the program. It had a LiveJournal posting function in v1, but that just was not going to cut it for me. By adding the MetaWeblog API, I can now post directly to Sagefire and have access to all of Journler's great internal search and linking functions. it really has become the central way that I interact with my computer. I can link, search, and browse any document on my machine (including PDFs, music files, movies, MS Word documents). I can tag them and make smart folders to sort personal information from work stuff and see all of those places where one's definitions of such things begins to get blurry.

	

	If you've ever opened iTunes and made a smart playlist of your "jazz, recently played, but not bee-bop" you may be able to imagine just how useful this program is. I am as mentally disorganized as you can imagine. So, being able to have it find all snippets that mention a character or a concept or that i have tagged in a certain way can help incredibly.

	

	So, instead of buying MacJournal, I was about to donate to Journler. Then, I found a better way to donate than a few dollars. Journler's internal power was not matched by the sleekest interface. It's icons were still a bit rough and some of it's custom widgets could have been cleaner and more uniform. So, with the help of Gregoire Delubria (another Journler user), he and I set about submitting redesigned icons and widgets. I am pretty sure that our work will be seen in the v2.0.1 download when it is released.

	

	Once this bout of pixel tweaking passes, I need to get back to journaling and posting more often. And yes, please continue to ask me if I am actually still doing Morning Pages. It does help.