So This Is The New Year
I’m gonna gloss over the part where I attempt to explain or apologize for my lack of blogging and get right to it. You know.. before I don’t feel like writing any more.
Two-thousand and twelve is upon us. I am thirty-two years old. I’m relatively happy with the way things are going in Carlintown, but there are things here and there that could stand a polish. I’ve decided to be one of those people who hits the new year running with all sorts of “goals” and “resolutions” and “bullshit”. I thought I’d talk about a few of them here.
First up: Fatness Fitness
Some background: In February of 2010, I found out I was fat. While perusing some photos friends had taken at my “beer and cheese” party the week before, I came across one of a pudgy dude wearing a familiar looking shirt. The next two things that happened were: a terrible realization, and a phone call to a friend’s trainer and nutritionist.
I arranged to start seeing them regularly as soon as SXSW was done with. Over the next 8 months, I lost almost 22 pounds, dropped by body fat from 18.5% to under 12%, and learned a lot about eating and working out.
I’m pretty trim now, but I haven’t made any real improvement lately. So, for January at least, I’m trying a new approach, which I call “Too Much Structure”. Most of this structure has to do with diet. For the next 4+ weeks, I’ll be doing something called carb cycling. Basically, I’ll follow a three-day pattern of high-carb, low-carb, and no-carb days. My exercise schedule will follow suit, with vigorous resistance workouts on high-carb days, HIIT on low-carb days, and no workouts on no-carb days. If I get around to it, I’ll detail my diet and workout plans in another post.
My goal is to follow this schedule with no unplanned exceptions for all of January.
Learn French. Again. For the first time.
I took French in high school. At least, I think I did. I don’t remember the class any more than I remember how to properly introduce myself to a Parisian. I always excelled in school with little or no effort, but I couldn’t wrap my head around learning another language. Looking back, I have to assume this was largely due to a combination of a dry curriculum, an unlikeable teacher, and a fair amount of self-consciousness about trying to pronounce foreign words in front of my classmates. Now I’m learning at home with Rosetta Stone and it’s fast, easy, and as close to immersion as you’re likely to get without actually being immersed.
My goal is to take 4 French lessons a week.
Learn to play the banjo
I got a banjo for Christmas. It’s an idea that has popped in and out of my head for years. It happened to pop in while Claire and I were visiting her family and I was in conversation with her mom’s friend, who happens to own a fancy, boutique stringed instrument store in Palo Alto. His eyes lit up and he told me all about this one Banjo they carry. It’s affordable – way more affordable than it should be for the parts and build quality – and he’d be happy to get it to me for cost. I love a bargain, so I was convinced. Claire loves having the perfect Christmas gift idea delivered to her on a silver platter, so she struck first. It’s a beautiful banjo.
I’m taking banjo lessons online and practicing chord forms and rudiments on my own.
My goal is to play for 30 minutes, 4 times a week.
My progress so far
I’m happy to report that I haven’t fucked up yet. It’s only been three days, but I’m still pretty happy about it. I do have a trip to Florida planned for MLK weekend, which means a three-day break from all of the above. We’ll see if I can slip right back into being Superjason when I get home. I think I can.
Happy new year.
Making Gmail Work For You
Let’s begin with this: I love Gmail. When it hit the streets 5 years ago it changed everything from the way I communicate to the way I store information. It is, like most things, not perfect. Fortunately, there are things we can do to inch it a bit closer to perfection. I’ve recently made some changes to the way I use Gmail and I thought I’d lay them out here. Here are some of the tricks and tools I’ll be talking about:
- Google Apps For Your Domain
- MailPlane
- Better Gmail 2
- Multiple Inboxes
- Themes: Shiny
Using a non-Gmail email address (Google Apps)
I use Google Apps for both my personal and professional sites. This allows me to have a fancy custom email address without subjecting myself to whatever lousy webmail interface happens to come with my domain host provider. Sure, I could set up Mail.app and use POP3 or maybe even IMAP, butI’m a Gmail guy and I don’t want to give that up just because I’m not using a gmail.com email address.
There are three tiers of Google Apps: Business, Education, and Standard. You probably want Standard, but they don’t make it easy to find. Good thing I do: http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/group/index.html.
You may need to do a tiny bit of CNAME editing at your domain host to get set up, but the instructions provided by Google are clear and concise.
All done? Now you have a Gmail interface to your custom domain email address. Nice work, tiger! Oh, and don’t miss Gina Trapani’s great article on how to tweak your new Google Apps setup.
Website vs. mail app: The best of both worlds (Mailplane)
Gmail is subject to the same limitations as any web application. Although new tech like HTML5, CSS3 and web workers are squashing those limitations every day, they’re not gone yet. Additionally, a lot of folks think that mail tasks should happen in a mail tool, not a browsing tool. Academic? Maybe, but there’s something to it. Enter Mailplane.
Mailplane is a peculiar hybrid of web and desktop app. It’s essentially a smart wrapper for the Gmail web site, that provides some neat features like drag and drop attachments, multiple account support, formatted signatures, Growl notifications and an altogether more native feeling experience. I’ve been using Mailplane for a good two years with no complaints. Without it, I may not be quite so bullish on Gmail.
Mailplane is available for $24.95 (with a free trial) »
Gmail Labs: Multiple Inboxes
You may have noticed the Gmail labs section in the past, but it’s not unlikely that you skimmed the list and found very little of use. After all, it’s a big, long list of sometimes goofily-named items presented with no discernable order. There are some gems in there, though, if you look.
My absolute favorite is Multiple Inboxes. This feature divides your inbox screen into up to 5 boxes which you populate with search operators. For example, my main screen has the following boxes: Inbox, Starred, Projects, Drafts, Archive. This is invaluable in keeping my inbox at zero and my life in balance.
Here’s an official writeup of the feature »
Missing features? Not anymore! (Better Gmail 2)
I’ve recently made the move from Firefox to Safari 4 and, so far, I’m happy — but that’s a topic for another post. If you’re a Firefox user, you’ll want to grab Lifehacker’s Better Gmail 2 extension to seamlessly add powerful UI tweaks (row highlighting, custom icons, hide Gtalk, etc).
Make it pretty (“Shiny” Theme)
The “Shiny” theme for Gmail not only makes the whole thing prettier, but does a better job of setting apart the more important information. You’ll like it, trust me.
Putting On The Fedora
I’ve always been a fan of those colorful “business culture” turns of phrase you hear so often in conference halls and agency pitches. You know, the ones that seek to reduce complex social, fiscal and strategic concepts to snappy, often vulgar vagaries. As designers become entrepreneurs become businessmen, they’re more likely hear and use these handy devices with some regularity. Even so, I get the feeling that their heyday may have ended before mine began. A turn of phrase so descriptive and vaguely sexual as “opening the kimono” seems to have a long tail. Ooh, “The Long tail!” There’s another one!
As yet another tiny part of my plan to leave an indelible and vaguely offensively shaped mark on the world, I have decide to author my own business culture metaphor. I fully expect it to be uttered with at least the frequency and double the shit-eating-grinniness of such luminaries as “one throat to choke”, or “paving the goat path”.
I give you: “Putting on the fedora.”
But let me explain. This idea was inspired in equal parts by my work in technology product design and my life in and around Los Angeles (where fedoras have had a second heyday of their own as of late). The idea is based on two givens:
Not Justin Timberlake (photo by fuzzcat)
1) Justin Timberlake inarguably rocks the fedora. I don’t like it any more than you do, but he does. (Further: No one else does). (Even furthermore: An appreciation for the Timberlake/fedora combo is not an admission of homosexuality).
2) You probably wouldn’t want to be stood side-by-side with JT and have a jury of your peers compare the two of you.
If we accept the above as being relatively accurate, we can then safely extrapolate that it’s a good idea to not walk around pretending to be — or be like — Justin Timberlake, lest you suffer the cold, cruel truth of a direct comparison. So don’t put on a fedora, because you will not rock it.
And now to apply this concept to the trade: If you don’t want to be compared directly to Twitter, don’t make status your main game. Similarly, making business networking a significant part of your offering will likely cause comparisons to LinkedIn, which may be daunting to say the least.
This isn’t another article suggesting that you find a niche. Everyone knows that a blue ocean is the best place to find something new and exciting. This article is about not riding someone else’s niche — unless you’re truly prepared to compete.
I think what I may be suggesting is this: do it backwards. Have a steady footing based on more typical functionality before developing/promoting a niche sub-feature in a highly competitive area. You may lose your chance to make an initial impression as a trail-blazer, but you also reduce the risk of that initial impression falling short of “trail-blazer” and landing squarely on “me-too”. Maybe.
iPhone + iCal + SonicLiving = Awesome
These three components combine to put a list of every concert or show that may interest you right in the palm of your iHand.
SonicLiving.com is a great events site not too dissimilar from Yahoo’s Upcoming. It’s not quite as slick and easy to use, but it does have a few features that Upcoming is still missing, most notably, the Wishlist. This feature ingests your entire iTunes library (mine is 160GB) and keeps a list of every artist you listen to. It then creates a calendar / hCal / RSS feed of every appearance by any of those artists within a certain distance of your home. This calendar is separate from your “I’m Interested” calendar which includes only the shows you click to add.
Simply set up your account at SonicLiving, scan your iTunes library, and subscribe to the calendar feed in iCal. The next time you sync up your iPhone, you’ll have all the goods. This is all fairly obvious stuff, what’s remarkable about it is the List View on the iPhone.
This view just happens to be incredibly conducive to scanning through a bunch of upcoming shows and planning out your evenings. Also remarkable is the set-it-and-forget-it nature of event subscriptions. This thing updates itself, and is limited only by how often you sync your phone. I have honestly been going out more since I got my iPhone. I guess owe it a drink.
Amazon Redesign On The Way
It’s apparently not live yet, or at least it’s not visible to all users, but Amazon seems to be preparing to release a new version of the site.
I saw the new page briefly yesterday afternoon. After taking a few moments to appreciate the category menu and the realignment of the header, I clicked on the “We’ve been remodeling” link in the top-right corner. I was taken to a page describing the redesign, but with the old header and menu. Sure enough, when I went back to the homepage I was greeted by the old design.
The new look seems like a big improvement and I’ll be anxious to check it out when it goes live.
Sane Tagging in iPhoto 6
The new iLife suite is about to hit the streets, and with it comes an iPhoto update. This is good news for those of us who are both photo junkies and organization freaks. iPhoto is obviously the de facto solution for organizing your photos on a mac, but it’s not without it’s quirks (I’m looking at you, keywords). I’ve developed my own method for pseudo-tagging images in iPhoto that I believe to be a much simpler alternative to Apple’s wacky packed-in solution. It’s so simple, in fact, that it never occurred to me to write it up. Several people I’ve shown it to have actually found it quite useful, so I agreed to write this post. Then I forgot. Then they released a new iPhoto. Oops.
So, I give you, several years later than would have been helpful, Escapist’s Guide To Sane Tagging In iPhoto.
The Problem
So far, iPhoto has featured a keyword scheme that could most kindly be described as… “unique”.
To begin with, you need to predefine all of the keywords you plan to use across your entire library inside the iPhoto Preferences panel. This adds complexity to the simplest task associated with keywords: applying one to an image.
The next oddity is that you need to open up a special Keywords pane in the main view in order to apply or query keywords.
The ability to add and remove keywords from your search is very cool, but in my opinion, not worth all the tomfoolery. This truly is a new way of using keywords, but not really a suitable was of using tags.
I guess they got the terminology right.
The Solution
Since iPhoto uses OS X’s standard search-as-you-type, it’s quick and easy to find anything in your library with a descriptive title and/or comments. Adding verbose comments to each image is probably not the best option, but you could certainly toss some quick and dirty, descriptive terms into that there comment field and treat them like tags! Right away you’ve just bought yourself the ability to work with tags without going into your preferences or pulling up the special keywords pane in the main view. This process should seem familiar to anyone used to working with tags online at sites like Flickr and YouTube.
I prefix each of my pseudo-tags with a colon to help set them apart and to increase search accuracy. Searching for “:button” will only return items I’ve “tagged”, and not items that happen to have the string “button” in the title or description. Some of you programming nerds out there might recognize this as a fairly common way to be able to treat a string as a symbol without actually defining a variable. Turns out, that’s exactly what we’re doing.
For my most common tags, I set up a handful of smart albums that self-populate with certain tags. For instance, my “Buttons” album has a rule that automatically grabs any images which have the string “:button” in their comments fields. It’s basically a saved query and gives the same result as typing “:button” into the search field. This way, though, I get a list of all my most common tags and one-click access to each. All of this, again, without any need to dive into the iPhoto Preferences or open the Keywords pane.
So, that’s it. Now that you don’t need it, there it is.
Now let’s all go download our iLife 08 updates and forget any of this ever happened.
