Archive for March, 2010

I worry that this is one area where hiding the filesystem on the iPad could have detrimental effects on a user’s experience. If I am an average user, my experience has taught me that deleting a file from a folder doesn’t really mean the file is deleted; it’s in file-purgatory. If I bring this mentality to the iPad, though, it could result in devastating losses of data.

~ Pat Dryburgh

This is one thing I hate about the iPhone — and it looks like it is not going to get any better with the iPad. Why do they take the FileSystem away (completely). At least let some way to access is — not just by jailbreaking!

Permalink

Updated Desk 1.5

Apple, Design, Technology | Friday, March 26th, 2010

Last year in February, I published a post about my desk. Now I would like to get one update out there.

I added some nice things to the setup: New Music Equipment, one new Screen, an Day-Light lamp and I changed some things, the clutter under the desk is now much less and the two shelfs at the left are now both at the top directly under the ceiling. Now to the different changes.

The New Music Equpment

That one was quiet expensive but the sound is just phenomenal! I use two nEar 08 speakers made by ESI and one Terratec Phase X24FW (firewire sound card) to get the sound to those speakers. All in all I have to say that my music enjoyment increased like crazy! I now hear things I never have heard before the upgrade.

The new Screen

This is the newest addition. I added one more 23″ LCD to my setup. Now I have about 4640×1050 pixel of screen area! And am more than happy about that. To connect the second screen to the MacBook I use a Display Link USB graphic card which works just finde (well I can not few movies at that screen but that was predicted!).

The Day-Light Lamp

Especially great for winter light. The day-light-lamp gives some light which you mind thinks is sun light. But you need to keep in mind to shut the lamp of at night because other wise you will never get tired…

Conclusion

I now have some more digital space to work at and a much nicer music experience. Over all a much nicer desk!

And the last thing: An overall look at my new v1.5 desk:

Zenhabits posted about ‘How to Be a Positive Person…’ and I would like to quote the things I liked best!

Realize it’s possible, instead of telling yourself why you can’t.
Focus on what you have, not on what you haven’t.
Image that you’re already positive.

~ Zenhabits
Since I do change a lot in my life, and already posted about it, I thought this is really interesting. I knew about Zenhabits before but I just recently rediscovered its value!

Permalink

28 Days, No Movies

Personal | Friday, March 19th, 2010

Just recently I posted about my January Project about 31 Days. 31 Movies. which turned out to be a success. Now I tried something else last month.

I tried to watch as few movies as possible. The idea at first was that I do not watch a movie for 28 days. That turned out to not be possible for me. I than decided that weekends and vacation are excluded from this project. The reason for that was that I feel nearly depressed if I work all day and than I need to work in the evenings, even book reading most of the time feels like work to me! There fore I changed the rule!

Than it was a success. I did not watch one movie in 5 days work week and even the vacation was pretty much movie free.

Over all the project was not that great of a success but I can life with that! It was nice to try!

LSC: Actual Changes

Organization | Tuesday, March 16th, 2010

Fifth and — for now — last post of the series about my a life-style change.

So finally I want to finish this series of posts and write down what I changed and how I feel about it. First I want to start with the things I changed.

At first I started with shutting down all my projects which involved some kind of coding and to much thinking. Now I have never thought that is a good idea but it was one to get me to do other things.

Secondly I kept me doing some things like for example writing two posts per week here at the blog and I was doing pretty well with it most of the time (OK there have been some times where I just posted linked-list posts which are not that interesting but are a simple way to get something I like in the focus of you and to have something to post — if I had no or just to little time for the blog).

Thirdly I started some other projects over the course which are not too time consuming but give me some creative value. One of this projects is my iPhone Photography 365. It involves just a couple minutes each day but gives me some nice creative value of finding something to photograph each day.

Forth I focus more on school. Study more and spend more time with the subjects to get my certificate with some nice marks.

Fith I started to read more. Maybe I need to mention that I am a person who does not read that quick — most of the time I finished one book (excluding fact books) per year if not less. Now since September 2009 till the end of 2009 I read eleven of which five were novels and 2010 had a great start I already finished seven books which were pretty short reads and am now working through a book called LIMT and is by the awesome author Frank Schaetzing with 1300 pages.

Six I stopped reading my RSS every day and checking email round the clock. I now have a system for my RSS: read in spare time (on the way home from school) on my iPhone but never on my Mac. Important items get stared and are read at the weekend. Interesting reads in Twitter (also just read on my iPhone) get tagged via InstaPaper.com and that list also gets cleaned at the weekend. And what about email. The emails get checked just two times per day. Once right after turning my Mac on and one second time short before I leave my Mac to let it to to bed. That way I get less destructed and can focus on other things.

Seven was to motivate my creativity again and get something finished. I had one week of school — vacation — in which I finished the Project AIDvertisement.net — finally, I planed this one about a year ago. It was a quick thing to get done — one week of coding, designing and writing — but awesome to get me back from the frustration of not doing something I really love doing.

All this aspects are great — I think. Even though I need to adjust some things — it never ends. I am going to write my final exams in about 12 weeks which means that I need to focus on that most right now!

The things I wand to also adjust is the time I spend reading, I would like to get faster in reading but that is quiet hard to achieve besides reading more and more. In addition I would like to get myself away from my Mac some more (maybe a Mac-Free day or something like that.

Please feel free to give me your thoughts, I am interested!

This was the last post of the series about some life-style changes. I am not going to stop changing — which is part of being human. But this series is ended with this post officially. Maybe I will add one post in the future.

A really neat idea to get a quick overview of the stats. And it looks awesome too! The idea of a status board like the one by Panic — which is inspired by the status page published by Cultured Code — inspires to do something similar to use as my default-browser-home-page on my Mac.

Permalink

Counting Characters

Apple | Tuesday, March 9th, 2010

Just recently I opened my RSS-Reader and found a post by Chris Bowler regarding counting characters and using a script to do it system wide. Just some weeks ago I had the same problem and searched a script, found nothing to useful and cobbled something together my self. Since I use Quicksilver to launch apps, I also wanted to use Quicksilver to do the character/word and paragraph counting.

Now I do not want to share my own script — it was not that great — but after reading the post by Chris Bowler, I improved it a bit to work just perfect with Quicksilver and completely without Automator.

activate
tell application "System Events" to keystroke "c" using command down
set theInput to (the clipboard)
set theInput to (theInput as text)
set myCount to count (theInput)
set myWords to count words of (theInput)
set myParas to count paragraphs of (theInput)
tell me
activate
display dialog "Characters: " & myCount & return & "Words: " & myWords & return & "Paragraphs: " & myParas buttons {"Thanks"} default button 1
end tell

Download the Count_Characters_v1.0.scpt

What the script does is: It copies the currently selected text into the clipboard and counts the characters, words and paragraphs which are than output in form of a short text message at the display.

I hope that script helps a some people, I would like to get some feedback.

Since my last post about a nice-desk-collection was back in november, I thought I should get something up again. Here are 3 lists with a sum of 45 awesome desks.

Permalink

How to Backup your (digital) Life

Organization | Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

Just recently a someone who just found about my homepage via his daughter, asked me a question about how to backup pictures and other data nowadays. The question mainly was what to use: DVD? CD? HDD? Online? Or something completely different?

If you have the need — and I think that is one absolute must — to save your data in case something bad happens it is a combination of all the different systems (redundancy).

DVD and CD

I think that is one old method which should not be used because the safety provided by DVD’s and CD’s is not that great. You need to store them somewhere not to hot and not in sunlight in addition to that many other cases can cause harm to the data. In the end it is just a redundant method (to save your data a second time if you really feel the need to).

HDD — Hard-Drives

I would say that is most common nowadays. Hard-Drives are very cheap and come with many many GB / TB to store your files at. If you are lucky enough to own a Mac with OS X Leopard or Snow Leopard you also have the program TimeMachine.app which makes backing up your Mac and other external drives work like a charm. For Windows I would need to search something simple to use but I am sure there is something (maybe not as simple and shiny as TimeMachine.app.

Online Backup

There is a problem with online backup. Right, it has become very cheap nowadays and it also is save because you give the files to experts who do nothing else. They developed a system — and hopefully go on developing it — to store files safely and redundant. The problem with online backups is that you give your data to someone who you do not know. With some family pictures that may not be a big deal but for business it may be. I would say that most of the companies who provide that kind of online backup like for example CrashPlan.com should be trust worthy but you never know.

What I Use

First of I use a 1000 GB external HDD to backup my MacBook via TimeMachine.app. Also I have several external drives to mirror some data and to store some data externally. First there is one 60GB 1.8″ external HDD which I use as an mirror of important data to carry around. Secondly there is one 250GB 2.5″ external HDD which is used to save some data I do not need all the time on my MacBook (for example downloaded programs, movies and other purchases I do not need available all the time). Third there are two 3.5″ HDD one 300GB and one 160GB to again mirror some of my files (not the system and not on a regular basis but the important stuff on occasion. As an addition I use DropBox (free) for crucial files (mostly documents and some creative work). Also I just started to use CrashPlan.com about one month ago (the trial is near to its end) and am pretty happy with it. I seriously think about purchasing that service cause it makes it easy to backup (you do not even notice it) and are save to go.

And last but not least, I still use DVD/CD as a backup system but just in one particular case: client project is done => the data is burned to hand it — mostly in DVD/CD format — to the client and a copy of that is stored on DVD/CD in my archive (still the data is stored on my HDD’s but just in case).

Conclusion

In the end it depends on your needs and your wallet. If you travel all the time you may not be that well with online backup but still I would say you should backup some things online (important documents and works). But if you are at one place (like most of us) you can run a combination of the things named above. For example TimeMachine.app to an HDD plus online backup to CrashPlan or some other place. I think than you are pretty save that nothing happens and if something happens, at least you have your files on hand than.