iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Understory 1.1 is now out! Changes: - left arrow now goes back in the navigation history - selecting multiple notes now shows all selected notes in the note viewer so you can read through them as a narrative Download: apps.apple.com/us/app/under... #mac #productivity #zettelkasten

"Understory: A Zettelkasten notes app for the Mac" with screenshot of a Mac app window below the text

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Allen @ussher.ca · 29/09/2026

I asked a tiny LLM what 2 + 2 is and it told me "2 + 2 is 2 + 2". Brilliant.

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Allen @ussher.ca · 25/09/2026

My notes app for the Mac is now available for download! Understory is a notes app that helps you connect ideas and give them shape over time using outlines and hyperlinks. apps.apple.com/us/app/under... #zettelkasten #mac #macos

Screenshot of a Mac app window with three panels, the left showing a tree outline of notes, the middle showing a note with an image of printing press blocks, and the right showing an outline of the note itself. Heading "The notes app that gets richer with every note. Discover connections, link ideas, and shape them into outlines"

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Allen @ussher.ca · 23/09/2026

It bugs me that "Roger Ebert" is a brand now. Not RogerEbert.com, but "Roger Ebert" the name. In the trailer for You Can See Everything is a pull quote attributed to Roger Ebert and I immediately thought, "isn't he dead"?

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Allen @ussher.ca · 23/09/2026

I just finished a long book and am now trying to get through some v. short ones as a break, but I also want to start on this thick bio of Sylvia Plath I found at a thrift shop the other day. Supposed to be very good. #books

Photo of book: Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath by Heather Clark

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Allen @ussher.ca · 22/09/2026

I finished reading Team of Rivals today and oh boy did the tears flow when I got to Lincoln's last day. #books

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Allen @ussher.ca · 20/09/2026

I really dislike how the Bluesky search page adjusts when the search box gets focus: 1. it immediately hides your old results (and shows Recent searches) and pops up a panel showing suggestions 2. the search field also shifts over to reveal a back button It's so distracting!

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Allen @ussher.ca · 19/09/2026

but now that all the "characters" are settled, getting through the narrative of The Civil War is v. interesting. Also, Lincoln, surprising to me, sounds like he was quite a funny guy.

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Allen @ussher.ca · 19/09/2026

Three-quarters of the way through Team of Rivals and thoroughly enjoying it. I have to admit the first 200+ pages took a while to get through as there are so many people to introduce and events to cover... #books

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Allen @ussher.ca · 18/09/2026

Don’t Make Me Think (About a Note’s Title Before I Start Writing) blog.ussherpress.com/2026/09/18/d... #ux #design #notes

blog.ussherpress.com

Don’t Make Me Think (About a Note’s Title Before I Start Writing) - Ussher Press

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Allen @ussher.ca · 18/09/2026

There are only NaN hard things in computer science

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Allen @ussher.ca · 18/09/2026

This subliminal tape set cover art absolutely rules. via www. ebay.com/itm/158205402092

Cover for a cassette case with the name "The Subliminal Winner" showing a pixelated businessman in a suit winking and a star gleaming from one eye

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Allen @ussher.ca · 17/09/2026

Thanks! I'm mostly fascinated with structuring knowledge in this way. I saw how other networked notes apps did it and thought there was a simpler, more elegant way to position notes that are related close to each other but still allow linking and transclusion to bridge "distant" notes.

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Allen @ussher.ca · 17/09/2026

I forgot that using TestFlight is confusing to people. I have some people who followed the link to my app beta and signed up and are stuck in the "Accepted" phase of TestFlight. They haven't actually gone and installed the app yet!

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Allen @ussher.ca · 16/09/2026

Want to try out a cool new Zettelkasten-like notes app I've been building for the Mac? Here's a link to the beta: testflight.apple.com/join/Zy6P486K #mac #productivity #zettelkasten #pkm

Screenshot of a Mac notes app with three panels. The left panel shows an outline with one note selected, the middle shows the selected note's contents including a picture of printing press blocks, and the right panel shows links and backlinks.

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Allen @ussher.ca · 15/09/2026

Claude is still so bad at writing or marketing. I guess that's comforting to know if you do either of those things.

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Allen @ussher.ca · 14/09/2026

Is the toolbar even more Liquid Glass-y in macOS 27? Is there a way to remove the shininess of the toolbar buttons? #macos

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Allen @ussher.ca · 14/09/2026

It's simulacrums all the way down

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Allen @ussher.ca · 14/09/2026

We’re still in a period where we’re all expecting a form to communicate quality but slowly even the form will no longer be a reliable signal.

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Allen @ussher.ca · 14/09/2026

We’re in an interesting era where we’ve had so much quality content that has followed certain “forms” causing us to trust that a form tells us something has inherent quality, but now those forms are so easy to recreate that they are used to wrap low quality content.

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Allen @ussher.ca · 13/09/2026

Been working on my Zettelkasten Mac app... After some user feedback, I decided to go with a more traditional tree outline for displaying the note hierarchy and it works so much better than what I had before. It combines elements of an outliner with networked notes apps like Obsidian and other PKMs.

Mac app window showing a Zettelkasten app with a tree outline of notes on the left, a note viewer in the middle, and an inspector side panel on the right showing a table of contents and forward links.

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Allen @ussher.ca · 09/09/2026

Very cool: Dirtywave M8 tracker is in the iOS App Store apps.apple.com/us/app/m8-mu... I doubt the touch screen would be anywhere as good as using key input for navigating, but this probably would be good from a marketing angle for the physical device.

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Allen @ussher.ca · 09/09/2026

Also smart to announce the iPhone Duo when the new CEO guy takes over

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Allen @ussher.ca · 09/09/2026

Speculating: It looks like there's room in the hinge area for the iPhone Duo screen to remain a nice curve so it doesn't crease when folded.

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Allen @ussher.ca · 09/09/2026

It's interesting that Apple decided that iPhone Duo is a great opportunity to redesign parts of iOS UI. I doubt the unique UI changes they've made make it to the iPad, at least not right away. Need to make the iPhone Duo feel unique. Smart move.

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Allen @ussher.ca · 09/09/2026

iPhone Duo would be great for a Nintendo DS emulator

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Allen @ussher.ca · 09/09/2026

I like the iPhone DS mode

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Allen @ussher.ca · 09/09/2026

"Writing an email and working with my calendar is sooo hard! I wish somebody made an AI to make it easier."

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Allen @ussher.ca · 09/09/2026

It's crazy how in 2026, calendar and email improvements are still being pushed in demos like it's some exciting thing

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Allen @ussher.ca · 05/09/2026

If you just listen to a YouTube video essay (don't watch the video itself), you really notice how truly awful a lot of them are at making a coherent argument. Video clips go a long way to distract you and make you miss out on the fact that there isn't a lot going on with the words themselves.

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Allen @ussher.ca · 01/09/2026

It treats each "rule" that it encodes in documentation as equal to every other one. There's no weighting and so it tries to keep all of them internally consistent when in reality, a lot of rules shouldn't have been encoded as a rules, and ones that were are meant to be broken.

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Allen @ussher.ca · 01/09/2026

That said, at least there's a little bit of value in seeing a rationale laid out even if you completely disagree with it. At least you can compare and contrast to your own opinion of how things should go, but that works best *if* you have an opinion to begin with (as you should).

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Allen @ussher.ca · 01/09/2026

Claude Code's value for design review and brainstorming is only as good as its opinions and I've found that as it adds more rules to code or its own documentation, its judgment just goes to shit. I've found that on one project I'm constantly disagreeing with it because it's built a castle of rules.

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Allen @ussher.ca · 01/09/2026

Likewise, just because Y is Bad in some dose, doesn't mean any Y is Always Bad even in small doses.

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Allen @ussher.ca · 01/09/2026

I'm convinced that some people have this mindset that if some thing X is Good, then a lot of X is Very Good. In reality, lots of things in small doses are very good but go beyond that and it's actually Very Bad.

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Allen @ussher.ca · 21/08/2026

You're right to push back. That point is load-bearing, and is exactly the kind of thing we were trying to avoid. That's the honest truth and it's worth talking about.

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Allen @ussher.ca · 19/08/2026

One kid who was passing through on his bike wanted to hang out for a bit, asking lots of questions and making chit chat, which was very sweet.

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Allen @ussher.ca · 19/08/2026

Went to practice riding my 36" unicycle in area with a lot of foot and bike traffic and next thing you know several people are stopping me and want to know more about it.

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Allen @ussher.ca · 15/08/2026

Interested in beta-testing a new Zettelkasten-style notes app for the Mac? Check out the link for more info: zettelkasten.ussherpress.com #macapps

zettelkasten.ussherpress.com

Waypoint

Waypoint is a Zettelkasten app for the Mac — a personal knowledge base of short, linked notes that gets more useful as it grows.

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Allen @ussher.ca · 09/08/2026

Testing with new users definitely helps, but even not using your own product for a little while and then coming back to it makes you somewhat a new user again.

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Allen @ussher.ca · 09/08/2026

It's fun to come up with elegant designs that more advanced users will appreciate but then that often ends up confusing newer users. It happens to me when I use my own product enough that I become an advanced user. I lose context for what a new user would know.

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Allen @ussher.ca · 09/08/2026

I think once you get better at designing UX, you can fall into the trap of being a bit too clever.

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Allen @ussher.ca · 08/08/2026

The 1-star reviewer from yesterday gave another review of the same app but on the iOS platform and this time he gave it 5 stars and gave praise to the responsive dev. So confused.

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Allen @ussher.ca · 07/08/2026

What if "This too shall pass" really just means "this thing you don't like will become completely normalized and you'll get so used to it that eventually you won't even notice the old ways are gone"

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Allen @ussher.ca · 06/08/2026

Lesson: people don't like change. If you use a technology for a while and then the maker moves everything around, you're gonna be pissed.

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Allen @ussher.ca · 06/08/2026

Yesterday I got an upset email from a user who didn't like some changes in the new version of one of my apps. I emailed for more details and he gave it. A few hours later he actually apologized for the tone of his email and said the new features actually did make sense in context after he used them.

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Allen @ussher.ca · 06/08/2026

Nothing like waking up to a 1-star review

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Allen @ussher.ca · 06/08/2026

There's lots of little usability things that make it easier to use than a lot of similar apps. For instance, no note titles or filenames required (it's not file-based). If you want to add tags to a note, just include them in the text. Assets and other notes can be embedded in the note text.

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Allen @ussher.ca · 06/08/2026

Working on my Zettelkasten app for Mac again. I think I've really built something special here. Organizing notes structurally is super easy and uses a tree-like navigation system but it's not an outline! You can create text links as well. Supports an asset library. iCloud and local notebooks.

Screenshot of a notes Mac app window with three panels: left panel shows a list of note rows with one selected, middle panel shows the selected note with a cityscape image and text of the note below it, and right panel shows a side panel with some more notes in a smaller font.

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Allen @ussher.ca · 22/07/2026

It's funny how there's no "foofoo community". It's all automated machines sending out emails. The "community" was thought up by some marketing arm of a company and there's no entity that's "sad" about me unsubscribing. The foofoo bucks are completely made up. (And yes, I know all currency is fiat.)

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