Wiser Web Wednesday – a semi-regular link to posts of interest from around the web, by those far wiser than myself:

 

Cardiogram: What’s your ♡ telling you?
Perhaps I should be more interested, however I’ve never felt the need to track my incidental movement or exercise.

In cardiovascular terms, the drop in heart rate from 1000 steps/day to 2000 steps/day is significant: a full 3 bpm decrease. And as step count increases, resting heart rate steadily drops—until you reach about 5000 steps per day. After that—6000, 7000, even up to 10,000 steps—the curve flattens.

For those that do, perhaps the threshold for benefit is lower than first thought — or at least the minimum effective dose, in any event. Of course a reduced resting heart rate is only one benefit of increased movement — if you’re aiming for weight loss, the more movement the better:
Do you really need 10,000 steps a day?

 

WhiskyCast
Following on from last year’s request by the Scotch Whisky Association for Compass Box to remove age information from marketing materials:

Today, they took that fight to the whisky community with an online petition drive aimed at persuading the European Union to change the current regulations to allow whisky producers the option to provide full disclosure on the component whiskies used in a specific product.

It’s only transparency after all:
Compass Box Launches Scotch Whisky Transparency Campaign

An initiative then immediately endorsed by fellow distillery Bruichladdich:

We believe that our customers should be able to find out the age, provenance and proportions by volume of all the casks that make up the different vattings of The Classic Laddie, bottles of which do not carry an age statement.

Sounds fair:
Bruichladdich Stands Behind Compass Box in Scotch Whisky Transparency Campaign

 

Harry Marks on Medium
My favourite literary podcaster Harry Marks on filling those empty notebooks sitting on your shelf:

There’s only so much joy you can get out of looking at an unopened pack of notebooks before that joy is replaced with longing. Longing for stories untold and lists un-checked, for ideas and phone numbers and ephemera that whips across your face like a blizzard as you go about your day.

I’d agree, and argue far more joy can be had from looking at the worn spines and swollen pages of full cover-to-cover writings:
How Many Notebooks Do You Really Need?

 

MacStories
For anyone who follows Federico and Macstories, a piece such as this comes as no surprise.

The tide, however, is turning. Over the past year, it’s been fascinating to observe how, gradually, using an iPad as the primary or only computer has turned from a nerd chimera into an acceptable narrative.

One thing I have (I think?) noticed is a significant increase in iOS and iPad love across the internet since the release of the iPad Pro. A better iOS experience or just a bigger one? Of course those concepts probably aren’t mutually exclusive.

It doesn’t really matter, for the Viticci iPad train continues to charge along, regardless of screen size:
Working on the iPad: One Year Later, Still My Favorite Computer

 

Study Hacks – Cal Newport
Cal Newport on why you might need an “attention charter”:

And yet, in my own experience, I find that the occasions when I most despair about the tattered state of my schedule are almost always the result of the accumulation of a dozen yeses that each made perfect sense in isolation.

And an “attention charter” is?

An attention charter is a document that lists the general reasons that you’ll allow for someone or something to lay claim to your time and attention. For each reason, it then describes under what conditions and for what quantities you’ll permit this commitment.

I’m sure we all have some vague concepts or intentions in our minds, however perhaps a more formal approach to something like this might bring greater success in its application:
Write an Attention Charter

 

Diana Urban
Some straightforward advice on cutting a little cruft from your word count.

While this might not be the ultimate list of all words you should remove, these are the ones I look for when I’m doing revisions

Upon reading this, please don’t apply the concepts to any of my posts. I’ll improve – I promise:
43 Words You Should Cut From Your Writing Immediately

 

Sanspoint
I made the switch from OmniFocus to 2Do a couple of months ago, as I have mentioned more than a few times on these pages.

There have been times when I found OmniFocus too restrictive, and times I’ve found 2Do not restrictive enough in my short time with it. Still, for anyone else in the same boat, I offer you my brief guide to moving from OmniFocus to 2Do.

Far from being a recommendation for you to switch or even a negative reflection on OmniFocus itself, I merely find these types of posts useful. Perhaps you might as well:
2Do for OmniFocus Users

 

The Gentleman Stationer
Using fountain pens invariably leads to cleaning fountain pens — or at least it should anyway. I’d say I fall into camps (1) and (2) below, depending on how long a pen has been inked.

Pen cleaning is one of those things people do either (1) all the time, such as, after they finish every fill of ink; (2) semi-regularly, such as whenever they change colors or every 1-2 months; or (3) whenever the pen clogs up and stops writing.

Whatever the approach you may take, Joe has put together a great post on the different fountain pen filling types and the joys (or not) of cleaning them:
Cleaning Pens: Meditative, or Just Annoying?

 

Eclectidbits
I’m guessing most readers interested in this will be well aware of the sad demise recently of a 90-year-old fountain pen manufacturer OMAS. As good a tribute to OMAS as you’re likely to see — not to mention the images:
A tribute to O-MAStery

 

Pen Economics
Further analysis on the possible “why” of the OMAS decline:
Vale Omas

 

The Clicky Post
As someone who probably doesn’t really even have a “grail” pen in mind, I can only look on in wonder at these uniques sets of pens.

Maybe they only made a very small number and there are few surviving examples… Whatever your grail quest is about, it can be your own.

Exactly. Whatever it is — or isn’t, it is indeed your own:
When Grail Pens Become Grail Sets – Collecting The Impossible

 

Perfect Daily Grind
Since I’ve been experimenting with a little natural processing myself (a part 2 post is well underway I promise), all I seem to come across are articles on that very topic.

It’s always been a cheap, simple processing method: all you need is sunlight and a flat surface.

…yet it’s also one of the most difficult ways to produce good coffee.

Things generally turned out pretty well in my backyard experiment, which is of course, a far cry from specialty grade coffee processed naturally:
Processing Improvements: The Key to Specialty Grade Naturals

Also from Perfect Daily Grind, a handy guide to the coffee growing regions of Guatemala.

Guatemala: a tiny country of 108,890 square kilometers producing some of the world’s best coffee. Let me put that into perspective for you. That’s less than half the size of the UK. Less than a third of the size of Malaysia. And less than 1/70th the size of Australia.

Size isn’t everything:
Barista Guide: 8 Different Coffee Regions of Guatemala

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