There was a chunk of time in my childhood — maybe as long as two years — where every kid at school was completely focused on marbles. Having first persuaded our parents to buy us each a large bag of them, the school yard was daily transformed into a huge marble tournament. I can't remember all the specifics of the games (dropsies rings a bell), but the overall sense of building a collection is still vivid. Every game in which you bested your opponent, you got to keep his or her marble. You save…
There are a few reasons I like Apple and use their products and services. A primary one is the experience: beginning to end, Apple has crafted a culture that makes for a positive interaction between them and the customer, whether it's online or in a retail store. They seem to understand that our culture offers too much choice and gives little regard for how you get to the end point (taking out your wallet). Here's a recent sequence of events in our home: * Thursday, March 17 6:30 PM — my wif…
I've seen a lot of people talk about Alfred in the past year. I don't use it — apart from a quick download/launch/delete I have no experience at all with it. Not because it isn't a great tool, but simply because I already have a better option in my tool belt. But whenever I see someone writing or tweeting about it, I wonder why more folks don't give LaunchBar [http://www.obdev.at/products/launchbar/index.html] a try. So many of us started out with Quicksilver. But, until quite recently…
Ever since Liz Danzico offered a separate version of her site in the latter hours, titled The Evening Edition [http://bobulate.com/post/1216102383/evening-edition], I've wanted to do the same on my own blog. A new design and a move to a new CMS was the perfect opportunity. I had no idea how to achieve this, but the solution was just a touch of javascript. There are a number of ways to attack this, but I went simple and created three separate CSS files. One for the global stuff, layout and all t…
Aaron Mahnke shared some thoughts [http://www.aaronmahnke.com/post/3702200164] on how the Internet and social media have improved our relationships, rather than causing people to become increasingly isolated. I'm giving his piece a large dose of summarization in saying that, but it's the essence of what I took away the post. > But then something happened. People started to question technology. They started pushing it in a new direction. And for all the snake oil salesmen and plethora of “gurus…
If you're an OmniFocus user, you need to give two [http://www.practicallyefficient.com/2011/03/14/Omnifocus-what-now-p1/] posts [http://www.practicallyefficient.com/2011/03/15/Omnifocus-what-now-p2/] from J. Eddie Smith IV a read. He's sharing his setup and usage of the application, but the real essence of his message is that OmniFocus is just a tool. And like any tool, it's usage is only as good as the execution of the one yielding the tool. I know that OmniFocus has a lot of power that I'm no…
It’s been interesting to see so many different approaches to improving Finder in OS X. There have been complete separate apps [http://cocoatech.com/] to give additional functionality, as well as utilities [http://totalfinder.binaryage.com/] that add features to Finder itself. Nothing has ever stuck for me, and I’ve learned to live with a combination of Finder and LaunchBar to do most things. Lately though, in the spirit of Minimal Mac [http://minimalmac.com/], I’ve taken to using Transmit [http…
The title of this post reflects my state mind and current relationship with Time Machine. But first, a few thoughts on backups in general. Go back a generation and backing up involved a rearview mirror in your vehicle. Today it denotes the need for an overall strategy to preserve the memories that are dearest to you, as well as archiving your business if you have one. And since we — or, I — like to focus on the life of a creative professional, that’s where my mind goes when I think about backin…