Daily Links
Merlin Mann | May 7 2008
- Can You Become a Creature of New Habits? - New York Times - “The small steps in kaizen don’t set off fight or flight, but rather keep us in the thinking brain, where we have access to our creativity and playfulness.”
- How to answer the people who think you’re nuts? - “I’ve been doing a lot of radio interviews and I turn into a self-righteous bore when the host inevitably asks, ‘How could you let your son take the subway alone?’”
- Dear Shaun, at bluishorange - “My writing is not some fragile vase that is going to shatter the second I split an infinitive…” [via mathowie]
- Clutterers Anonymous dot Net - “Clutter is anything we don’t need, want, or use that takes our time, energy or space, and destroys our serenity.”
- Spark 35: Your Digital Legacy - I’ll be a regular contributor to the CBC’s wonderful Spark (podcast). My first segment with Nora Young is on the basics of backup. (Hint: Next Christmas, send Uncle Joe a DVD with those hard-copy photos)
- TwitterSnooze! v0.13 - “TwitterSnooze is inspired by a Merlin Mann post and was written by Andrew Parker.” Yay, nice!
I think silent “snoozing” should be part of every social app. Warning, though; if your snoozed friend is the brittle type, note that re-following them will generate an email that gives you away. Caveat Twittor. [via del/andrewdparker]
Merlin Mann | Apr 18 2008
NEAT Receipts Scanner - Sharp-looking receipt scanner for the Mac, coming soon. I tend to avoid one-off gadgets that have any kind of permanent footprint on my desk, but this looks pretty handy if it works.- Footers In Modern Web Design: Creative Examples and Ideas | Design Showcase | Smashing Magazine - Inspiring collection of ways to use the space at the top and bottom of a web page. The first advocate for this approach that I can recall is Derek, who always uses his footers to such lovely and functional effect.
- A Pattern Language for Productivity - Gah! I feared I’d waited too long. I’ve totally been meaning to start something like this on the 43f wiki for a couple years. (curses self). Nice start, here. Should be useful for folks.
- The Fishbowl: Twitterpated - I get a surprising amount of flack for not following more people on Twitter. Which dumbfounds me. It’s like being angry at someone because they aren’t watching enough TV. Anyhow, some of these hyper-following people strike me as either nutjobs or cynics, e.g. “in one case, 34,000. If you were truly following all these people, and they updated only once per day on average, you would be reading a Twitter message every two seconds.” Yeah. That sounds really fun and enriching. [via anarchaia]
- Word Spy - speed mentoring - “Getting advice in a series of short conversations with experts and other mentors.” I need me more of this.
 BENTWOOD by contexture design workshop - My gosh, what a lovely idea; a wooden bangle that turns into a coffee cup sleeve. Smart. [via Erika]- Ten typographic mistakes everyone makes | Life, Tutorials - Guilty as charged on a number of these. I think the one I’m laziest about is straight quotation marks (“"”) where I really mean inches (“″”). I do love that people care this much about this stuff (most of the time).
- Mac Mini Media Centre / journal / hicksdesign - Jon has been sharing how he’s setting up his Mac Mini as a home entertainment juggernaut. This post outlines his basic setup, the apps he uses, etc. He also has a companion Flickr set. I’d love to hear more from folks on workflow. How — hypothetically — an AVI from out in the wild gets downloaded, encoded when necessary, and then dropped into the “
~/Movies” folder. Maybe Automator? As a new Mini owner with the same goals, I’d love to hear your tips here in comments.
- Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations (Event Video/Audio) | Berkman Center - Clay’s book is justifiably hyped right now, because it’s just so damned good. If you enjoyed seeing the Claymeister General on Colbert, you might want to catch this swell talk, where he gets a bit more room to say his piece on a world where things get organized without organizers.
- Spark | CBC Radio | Disaster Preparedness Kit for your digital life - “…Nora and Merlin Mann (of 43Folders fame) are putting together a ‘Disaster Preparedness Kit’ for your digital life. Do you have a tip, trick, or tool that puts your mind at ease and keeps you from worrying about data loss?”
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Merlin Mann | Mar 31 2008
- Timbuk2 - Steve Sleeve - Timbuk2’s MacBook Air sleeve stylishly adopts the look of the interoffice mail envelope Steve demoed at Macworld. Very clever. I’m gettin’ one.
- persistent.info: Mail Trends - “Thus was born Mail Trends, an IMAP-based email analysis project. It can generate a bunch of tables, graphs and distributions based on time of day, senders, recipients, mailing lists, etc.” Mihai is a stone cold stud.
- Hivelogic: Offices and The Creativity Zone - “In the very same way you’d want to find the right time and place to read a book, creative types need to setup the specific conditions they need to enter The Zone.” [via DF]
- Clipboard History triggers unwantedly - If your QS Clipboard window has taken on a life of its own, try deleting and re-installing the Clipboard plug-in. Saved my sanity. Also: I’m kind of liking the adverb “unwantedly.”
- Leather Hipster PDA Case from Staples on Flickr - Handsome-looking $10 case available at Staples. (By the bye, Levenger, thumbs-down for appropriating the Hipster PDA name without attribution; not classy) [Flickr photo link via djohnson]
- Apple - Downloads - Dashboard Widgets - HostsWidget - “Allows you to manipulate your “
/etc/hosts” file quickly and easily.” [via siliconmeadow]
- Nothing Up My Sleeve: Twitter as a Moral Compass - Gordon shares how to use htaccess to alter a hotlinked image on just the one thieving domain. Man, I’d love to see Yahoo! do this to the Drudge Report (check the man’s code for imgs src’d from straight off yimg.com).
Merlin Mann | Feb 6 2008
- Kevin Kelly — The Technium - "When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied." That pretty much sums it up. I suspect this might be the most succinct, profound, and prescient sentence I’ll read this year. A must-read post.
 Dogcow - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - “The original dogcow was named Clarus by Apple employees. The sound she makes is ‘Moof!’”- Rands In Repose: Out Loud - “Developing a compelling presentation involves a series of decisions and exercises to align your head with the fact that you’re delivering your content directly to people. No internet. No weblog. Just you.” [via Daring Fireball]
- Quiet your Home with Ambient Noise - O’Reilly Digital Media Blog - Living in intimate proximity to a tribe of suburban Wookiees has made our family very familiar with white noise generators. They’re a godsend. (Most especially if you have an infant) [thanks, Gordon!]
- How to record a kickass podcast between two macs — and cheap! - I like the idea of using the Skype connection only as a “monitor.” I’d add that it doesn’t hurt to do a “clap” at the beginning so you have something common to sync around.
- Your Prep Card: Don’t Leave Home Without It - “Take a 3″ x 5″ index card and write down 3 key points you want to mention in simple clear language, nouns and verbs. At the bottom, give yourself 2 reminders to avoid your bad habits.” Good idea. Once you’re out of a comfortable environment and feeling stressed, your head starts to swim. (And by “you” I mean “me”)
- The Smart Set: Night Terrors - “Chronic sleep loss of even two to three hours per night held the potential to hamper body and mind functioning, not to mention quality of life.”
- Being Funny - Steve Martin: “About to pass me by, Elvis stopped, looked at me and said in his beautiful Mississippi drawl: ‘Son, you have an ob-leek sense of humor.’” [via MeFi]
Merlin Mann | Jan 23 2008
Writing a Book in Google Docs - Lucky bastard. I might (might!) have made it to the end if it weren’t for O’Reilly’s godforsaken MS Word templates. But, you know. Ours was not a project without its share of human error. What do you say, Brian and Danny? Would we have made it with the Google docs?- Sullivan nod - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - Oh, man. That waiter’s nodding trick Michael Ferguson taught me has a name. [thanks, Ben Durbin]
- Design View / Andy Rutledge - Falling Down - Beautiful essay. Go. Read. “What is uncertain is how you will respond to that stumble and fall and how gracefully you will descend and emerge from it.” [via del/fritz.bogott]
- frankschmitt.org / Creating a “Sub Account” with GMail and Mail.app - Clever use of Gmail labels to make life on your iPhone easier. [via del/frankschmitt]
 Wookie Roar | Ask MetaFilter - Very handy. I will totally use this until I get as good as Tracy Morgan. “It’s easier if you start like you’re about to let out a big, loud yawn, and then…go into a dry gargle.” (And, yes, I know the “correct” spelling; and, no, I did not write the headline. Thanks, Red 5, now back to Aunt Beru’s basement with you)- StuffSafe : Online Home Inventory Software - Okay-looking (weirdly-Windows-like) app for doing a home inventory. So, you guys: does anybody know an insurance-company-friendly app for cataloging your crap? Seems like everybody needs something like this, but not one of the apps I’ve seen (Mac or web) has floated my boat. How ‘bout you?
Merlin Mann | Jan 10 2008
- The Omni Group - OmniFocus - OmniFocus 1.0 officially hit the streets this week. So proud of all my hard-working OmniPals, who’ve made the app I always wanted. Kudos.
- Mother Tongue Annoyances › How to Attain Serenity Before Giving a Speech - “I find that when I am [speaking] from this ‘serene-state,’ for lack of a better word, my mind is as sharp as a tack, and my energy is channeled on the audience and the subject matter…”
- 10 ways to get the most out of Quick Look - (TUAW) - Most of these are new to me. Which probably explains why I hadn’t been using Quick Look too much. Good tips.
- RulesofThumb.org - I loved Parker’s RoT books, and the site looks like a fun, user-driven collection of these bite-sized bits of wisdom. - [via BB]
- Things - task management on the Mac - Haven’t spent much time with Things yet, but this looks like a beautiful and promising-looking app for doing GTD on your Mac. Very pretty.
- ThinkGeek :: SnūzNLūz - Wifi Donation Alarm Clock - “…everytime you hit the snooze button, the SnūzNLūz will donate a specified amount of your real money to a non-profit you hate.” You have to respect a Rube Goldberg device that’s attached to your personal sense of outrage. [thanks, overhang]
- Products [Merlin Mannerism Widget] - “The Merlin Mannerism Widget provides a different Merlin Mann quote each day from 1 Jan 2008 through 4 Jan 2009.” Oh, lucky you. [thanks, hongkongphooey] That said, if you enjoy this sort of thing, you can also get up-to-date (and very economically worded) Mannerisms from my Twitter posts. On the other hand, if you don’t enjoy this sort of thing, I’m sure you’re not alone.
Merlin Mann | Nov 30 2007
- Where I Go [Chris Glass] - One of those old-school “home page” conventions that I miss most is the once-ubiquitous links page. In addition to being my personal muse on all things visual, Chris Glass also posts his highly clickable list of favorite sites. Need to make me one of these.
- helvetica - ThisNext - Casting about for gift ideas for the Helvetica lover in your life? Not a problem.
- Graphic Design and typography - Swiss Legacy - “…a collaborative blog focused on typography, swiss graphic design and grid.” Grid pr0n, and that’s okay by me. (seems to be down just now)
- My personal war against Crackberry - “Here at the office, we’ve begun to make most of our meetings ‘topless’ (i.e. no laptops allowed). I’ve gone a step further by trying to ban any form of networked communication from the working meetings I put together.” Good on ya, Todd.
- And now it’s all this: Shortened URLs with Quicksilver - Python script lets you build a fast Quicksilver trigger for generating (and copying) a shortened url based on the the front Safari window. Really useful. [via Daring Fireball]
- What are the most intellectually stimulating podcasts? | Ask MetaFilter - I’m so overwhelmed by podcasts these days that I’ve pared down to about five, most of which are mentioned here. My single “don’t miss” right now is “Radio Lab,” which is kinda like This American Life with more science and less Yo La Tengo.
- WiiHealthy - [via MeFi] - I wonder what kind of hideous freak I’m becoming by playing an hour of Wii Bowling each night while a 12-lb. baby is footballed over my non-dominant arm. That seems like the makings of a pretty odd workout when I think of it.
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