Wordle - The Raven

Just playing with Wordle. Here’s one for Poe’s The Raven

Comments are out, Friendfeed is in

I’ve removed comments from this here blog. Not because of trolls. I get very few comments anyway so abuse hasn’t been a problem. Not because of spam. Disqus did a good job of preventing that. Then why? Because on the off chance I write anything interesting enough to comment on, most of the comments will likely end up on Friendfeed anyway, so why not just let them happen there instead? Friendfeed hasn’t fragmented the conversation, it’s stolen them completely. I’m cool with that.

Tinderbox as a Daybook

Inspired by the post at but she’s a girl..., I thought I’d jot down a few of my own notes on how I too use Tinderbox as a Daybook.

One of the more useful things I’ve been doing with Tinderbox is to keep a running log of things I do each day. This “Daybook” has become a way to track billable time for clients, record technical notes, and keep a basic journal.

Here’s what the overall outline looks like

Any decent outliner could do this, but Tinderbox lets me tweak things as much or as little as I want. Prototypes and Actions make all the difference. I have a few tweaks that help keep things in order for me. Most of these come in the form of the tremendously useful Tinderbox feature, Prototypes.

Monthly Worklogs - I create one of these manually each month with a name like “July 2008” to hold that month’s entries. It has the following OnAdd action set…

$Name=format($Created,"y-M0-D W"); Prototype="*DaylogContainer"

This causes any notes within a worklog container to have its name set as the current date. It also sets the new note’s prototype to *DaylogContainer

DaylogContainer - This prototype has an OnAdd action to force contained notes to use the *DaylogEntry prototype…

Prototype="*DaylogEntry"

DaylogEntry - This is the prototype used for each individual entry. It has a DisplayExpression set so that each entry inserts the note’s date and time in the displayed name. Showing both the name and date helps when scanning the limited Tinderbox search results window. Here’s the DisplayExpression…

format($Created,"m/d/y h:mm") + " : " + $Name + " " + $JiraKey

The *DaylogEntry prototype uses custom attributes set as Key Attributes for easy entry (Duration, JiraKey, and Tags). We use JIRA as an issue tracker and if I’m working on a specific issue I record the key with each note. Displaying it as part of the name in the outline helps when recording timesheets.  Here’s what a DaylogEntry note looks like.

The process of adding daylog entries starts by creating a container for that day. This is done by hitting Return twice to create the container (which is automatically named with the current date) and then Command-Option-O to open the container in its own outline. After that for each entry it’s a simple matter of hitting Return to start a new entry, then closing the window. Everything ends up named nicely and sorted by time of day.

Here’s a quick video demonstrating how it looks…

I’ve been doing this since the beginning of this year and have a total of 1235 entries so far with no apparent impact on Tinderbox’s performance. My Tinderbox Daybook has become a surprisingly valuable resource. It’s amazing how much information is available over time simply by recording minor events each day. I haven’t started mining this information in any formal way yet. Who knows what I’ll find!

UPDATE 2008-07-17: Fixed formatting issue with code samples. (thanks to David Phillips)

Wanted

Two words: Angelina Jolie. Finally, she’s back as Fox; exactly the type of too-hot bad-ass she was born to play. As for the rest of Wanted, just sit back, put your mind on hold and prepare for gorgeous, non-stop over-the-top action from start to finish. And for the ladies, McAvoy is almost as ripped as Jolie. This movie is why they coined the phrase “Summer blockbuster.”

I still don’t get the whole bullet-bending thing, but I don’t think that even matters. Recommended.

I love you Twitter, but I have to leave you

That’s it. I’m out. Twitter has lost most of its utility for me over the past several weeks. It’s like feature whack-a-mole. One day replies are disabled, the next it’s the “older” link. IM is pretty much always dead. I have been ramming Twitter down everyone’s throat since before it had an “e” in the name, but I quit. Between the whack-a-mole game and the FAIL whale it’s not worth it.

In the meantime, Friendfeed is pretty much always working. And they actually add features instead of the other way around. See you there.

In Bruges

In Bruges is pitch black, very funny and totally recommended. Colin Ferrell is awesome here.

Teeth

The movie Teeth, about a young woman with teeth in places no one should have them (vagina dentata) was funny, gross, interesting and terribly, terribly disturbing.

First things I install on a new computer

After getting a new computer I usually prefer to install everything from scratch. It takes a lot longer than just migrating, but I like how it feels to install things one at a time, without any of the legacy crap that typically piles up.

Here’s the list of things I installed on day one of using the new Air…

• Launchbar
• Tinderbox
• Things
• Dropbox
• TextExpander
• Adium
• Git
• MindManager
• Rails
• MySQL
• CocoaMySQL
• MarsEdit
• MenuCalendarClock
• MacVim
• TextMate
• MacTex

MacBook Air

I’ve wanted an Air since the day they were announced. So yesterday I bought one. But why? Well, other than the fact that I really wanted one, I do actually have a plan.

1. Sell the MacBook Pro. Let’s face it, 2 expensive laptops is one too many.
2. Move the 20” iMac from kitchen to home office. The iMac with attached 24” Cinema Display and Drobo will more than handle photo processing, video editing, etc.
3. Bring the MacBook Air everywhere.

I honestly don’t need the MBP’s power to do my job. The performance tradeoff of the Air is not insignificant, but I’m betting that it’ll be fine. And it’s just so damn thin! I’m writing this now from my recliner and it’s ridiculous how nice it feels. When it’s time to move upstairs or elsewhere I can just pick it up easily with one hand and off I go.

The Air doesn’t feel like a small laptop, it feels like a whole different class of device.

Vimperator

And speaking of VIM, I just discovered Vimperator. Might be enough to tip the scales from Safari to Firefox.