I’ve made a few updates to what I’ve been using, mostly adding new categories. However, there has been one big change. For document creation, I’ve switched from Pages to iA Writer. Pages has done everything I’ve needed, but I wanted to go back to Markdown. My original reason for switching away from Markdown was the limited availability of things like custom styles that I prefer in lecture/sermon notes.

For example, having blockquotes in Markdown is great, but I need multiple styles when presenting. I’d prefer one style for quotations, another for scriptures. I also need to include things like stage markers and media directions, all with different formatting.

I had an original (to me, at least) idea this past week about utilitizing my lesser used headers (h4-h6) to accomplish this. For example, I use H4 (####) in Markdown for slide cues. Then using iA Writer’s custom templates functionality, I can export/print a file that is formatted to my preferences and makes sense to all involved.

I’ve also been using Claude more than ChatGPT recently. I’ve found it more enjoyable and usable for what I do. Through my work, I also have paid access to Google Gemini. I’ve used it for basic tasks, but I haven’t really run it through the paces yet.