AppleScript assistance for automation of bash/iTerm?  read more »

Rule the Web show: Merlin Mann, Wednesday, July 18, 5pm Pacific

Forgot to mention that my pal, Boing Boing’s Mark Frauenfelder, recently was kind enough to have me on his Rule The Web podcast (which is a companion to his swell new book).

We talked about jobs, procrastination, clutter, and a bunch of other stuff. We also took calls from a couple people, dishing out advice on topics like where to park ideas and how to fight distraction.

You can listen on Mark’s site, download an MP3, or listen using the player below.

Mentioned in passing: del.icio.us, DEVONthink, Yojimbo, Mental Case (app whose name I forgot), In Our Time, and The Sound of Young America.

rooSwitch - Shuffle Your Settings Around

When you’re testing a new version of an application (or just being a little paranoid), it can be a pain to deal with protecting your “real” data from being corrupted or overwritten. While something like SuperDuper is priceless for backing up a drive to a disk image, you want something that’s not only lighter in weight, but that is smart enough to deal just with the settings associated with a single program. That’s where roobaSoft’s rooSwitch comes in.

rooSwitch’s smarts come in being able to recognize which Preferences, Application Support folders, and related files belong to an app’s settings (but, not — it should be noted — its documents), so that you can then backup, switch, and restore a group of settings whenever you need to. This can be quite a lifesaver.  read more »

Recent remaindered links you might enjoy:

• The best time to post to MeFi is between 2 and 3 EST. | MetaFilter - Great MeFi post on the best times to do certain stuff: to buy, to eat, to travel — even when to give birth.
• The Doorknob Condition ensures privacy - Geekologie - Clever design puts your need for privacy into stark functional terms.
• Nelson’s Weblog: tech / iphone / switches - "You can measure the disaster of cell phone UI by how many button presses it takes to silence the damn ringer."
• Getting Things Done, in Emacs - Emacs implementation of GTD [via Anarchaia]
• Parents’ stress and sleep deprivation can be a danger to children - "Always place something in the backseat…that requires you to open the back door every time you park." (scroll down) Life-saving life hacks in the sidebar for a tragic story.
• michael-mccracken.net » Processing Email - "[If] you’re really just tracking bugs, use a bug tracker. If you’re coordinating things in real time, use IMs or IRC." True dat, Michael. (and c.f.)
• ATPM 13.03 - Review: ScanSnap S500m - Ed’s review of the ScanSnap for OS X is thorough and includes great workflow tips.
• Roo Reynolds: Merlin Mann’s tech talk - Roo Reynolds has written up a detailed set of notes based on my Inbox Zero talk. Thanks, Roo!

Inbox Zero Tech Talk
7/23/2007
00:58:38

During the Q&A portion of my Inbox Zero presentation at Google the other day, an audience member stumped me with a question about how to manage action around mailing list distributions (the question starts at about 48:22).

He said he frequently receives email requests and questions that are also distributed to the other 20 people on his team. He describes a “waiting game” in which team members hang back to see if other people will respond first — at least partly out of not wanting to duplicate effort or flood the sender. I thought it was a really intriguing question, although I said (and still believe) that distributed email would not personally be my first choice to handle this kind of communication.

Well, based on the reaction in the room that day, I gathered that this is a common dilemma for Googlers. Funny thing is that, since the video went up, I’ve received a lot of email from people outside the Googleplex who share the same problem — a few of whom were aghast that I wasn’t aware what a huge pain this is for knowledge workers. And to an extent, I’ll admit those folks were mostly right.  read more »

TED | Talks | Jennifer Lin: Magical improv from 14-year-old pianist (video)

This video from the 2004 TED Conference is extraordinary for a few reasons. First, the prepared performances by then-14-year-old composer and pianist Jennifer Lin are lovely and technically very accomplished. And — wow — the improvisation she creates on the spot (16:45) is really something.

But, I also wanted to draw your attention to her thoughts on creativity and flow — discussing how she tries to beat distraction and gain focus in both drawing and composition. Her discussion starts around 13:31, but do stick around after for her improv based upon randomly chosen notes.

[via Metafilter]

intro from Kenny - gtd newbie  read more »

Automatically Repositioning and Resizing Windows  read more »

Quick question about Keynote (from a non-mac user)  read more »

creativepro.com - Getting Design Done

Interesting article here by our old pal, Keith Robinson, introducing GTD to creative types. This is a fascinating topic for me, particularly since I sometimes find it difficult to “crank widgets” when it comes to anything creative.

Keith’s an old hand with this stuff, so it’s not surprising that he’s developed his own tweaks for Getting Creativity Done. Here’s a novel idea:

Create a creative time and space for yourself. Make sure it’s free of distraction and get into the habit of going there as often as you can. When there, pull out your @creative lists and get to work. I find this is a great way to tackle smaller creative problems. It’s how I come up with — and get started on — most of my writing. This article is a result of my @creative time.

That’s an interesting way to think about contexts. Ordinarily, you’d think of contexts as representing access to a certain kind of tool or as a physical or temporal limitation, whereas Keith is using it almost like a project.

This is challenging stuff that my buddy, Ethan, and I end up talking about all the time. We both agree that you can use GTD to “clear the decks” for creative work — to move aside all the mundane workaday tasks that might keep you from focusing on blocks of time for creative stuff. But we, like a lot of people, both struggle with how (or even whether) to put truly creative work into our GTD systems. What do you think?

How are you using GTD for creative work? What do projects and next actions look like for a painter, a screenwriter, or a dancer? What’s your best trick for getting creative stuff done?

About to buy a Tom Bihn Empire Builder - Somebody stop me!  read more »

Recent remaindered links you might enjoy:

• The Telephone EXchange Name Project - This is the site I mentioned on MBW for finding your old-timey telephone exchange. Mine’s "OVerland."
• Wii T-shirt - Chris’s exploded isometric Wii "Tii" is the shirt I was wearing during the Google Talk. Always buys me tons of compliments.
• Popeyes Cajun Sparkle Recipe | Recipezaar - Now, here’s something I can really use: how to emulate Popeye’s Chicken’s MSG-erriffic packets of flavor.
• Portfolios that get right to the point - Collection of great-looking portfolios that put the work on one glance-able page. The results are striking.
• What’s new in the New Backpack - Additions include calendars and lovely enhancements to inter- and intra-page organization. Per-page feeds are smart as well.
• 43 Folders - AideRSS - Advertised as a way to find the best in RSS feeds, I’ll be using this as a badass ego-surfing machine.

newbie question about contexts vs. projects  read more »

Email Archive as Life Archive?  read more »

Inbox Zero Google Talk  read more »

Google Tech Talk: Inbox Zero

This is the video for my Inbox Zero talk I presented in July of 2007 at Google.

Is Inbox Zero an idea that your company should learn about in person? You can invite me to speak to your organization, live and in-person.  read more »

Undergraduate GTD  read more »

Macworld Feature: Connect with the world

Macworld Magazine asked me to pick out a few of my Mac Gems, and I was happy to respond with four favorites.

Default Folder, for example, is a PreferencePane that I’ve used and loved since Christ was a corporal:

Default Folder X (****½)

You can tell Default Folder X is a classic because you start missing it the second you sit down at a Mac that doesn’t have it installed. It reduces the tedium of a handful of annoying dialog-box tasks, and it’s worth its price solely for the ability to set a per-program default location.

Best virus protection to use  read more »

A reminder to any Googlers out there that I’ll be giving a Tech Talk on Inbox Zero today at 2:00 pm in the Seville room on the Mountain View campus.

Hope I’ll see you there. (And many thanks to Dick Wall for the hook-up!)  read more »

Faster Printing with Quicksilver

Mark Fisher shares terrific tips on how to use Quicksilver Proxies for faster printing:

Use this method when you want to print files that are on the Desktop or are all in the same folder.

1. Select the files that you wish to print by Command clicking them.
2. Invoke Quicksilver (by default, ?–SPACE)
3. Type the name of your printer until QS displays its name e.g. “Lexmark”
4. Hit the TAB key to select the next pane.
5. Type “open” and select “Open File”.
   • I recommend making “Open File” the default action for when you type “open”. You can do this by Ctrl clicking “Open File” and selecting ‘Set as Default for “OPEN”.’
6. Hit TAB to select the next pane.
7. Type “current” until QS displays ‘Current Selection’.
8. Hit ENTER.
9. Your files should start printing.

Also check out how to use the “comma trick” to print multiple files. Great stuff.

After the jump is the video for the episode of The Merlin Show where I talked about using proxies to access application menus.  read more »

lost internet connection but good ip  read more »

Brother P-Touch labeler help please  read more »