If you book them they will come (Jin Morrison - Wayne's World 2 (1993))
8·Jun·08
Sounds like an ancient Chinese proverb: “beware scrap of paper on floor, could be butterfly.”
Ummm…. it’d be a pretty crap proverb I grant you, but it’d certainly resonate well with our situation at the moment..
6·May·08
I’ve been struggling with finding a way to work on files on a remote server, as if they were local. I use Textmate as my text editor and although I can control-click remote files in Transmit and open them up in Textmate, it takes a fair bit of trickery and patience to open up files in tabs, as if part of the same project, and be able to work on them properly — without dropping the connection and typically having to start the whole frustrating process again.
So it’s with great delight I’ve discovered this little gem: ExpanDrive.
Set up the details of your remote server, then ExpanDrive logs you in, mounting the remote server as a drive in the Finder to use as you would locally. Drag any number of files to Textmate, open them up in tabs, and (so far at least) it never drops the connection. Absolutely marvellous!
I’ll use this most often at the moment working with remote ExpressionEngine templates saved as text files on the server which I’ve previously been unable to do with any ease. I did try using Coda to do this but it drives me to distraction every time I trial it – I just don’t get Coda at all!
However, with all the dabbling I’ve been doing with Ruby on Rails recently I can see a time coming soon when I’ll be doing all my development locally in Subversion and deploying to a production server anyway. But for now, ExpanDrive looks mighty cool to me.
12·Apr·08
I’ve been really enjoying the BBC iPlayer on my iPhone recently. I was surprised to learn that it works perfectly well through the internet browser on the Wii too!
What’s even better is that, in homage to ‘The Tap‘, the volume control on the player itself goes all the way to 11.
I love those little details : )
3·Apr·08
Cat in a Hat. Our lovely (read: vicious) cat Jovis getting all cheftastic on our, er… ass. Or something.
2·Apr·08
“Home businesses know they must seem successful to become successful. So they play Thriving Office while on the phone. This valuable CD, which is filled with the sounds people expect to hear from an established company, provides instant credibility.”
Excellent! http://www.thrivingoffice.com
24·Mar·08
Nice service to check your internet broadband download speed courtesty of SpeakEasy.
Strange how my ISP tell me my speed should be up to 8MB yet I seem to be getting 1.8MB at best…
18·Mar·08
I’ve been trying to achieve the Holy Grail of keeping my Google Calendar and my desktop iCal calendar in sync with each other.
Of course it’s easy to subscribe to gCal within iCal itself, but having 2-way editing and sychronisation certainly isn’t built-in to either system.
I purchased a Spanning Sync licence almost a year ago, for the promise of 2-way syncing. Not once in the whole past year have I managed to get it to work. I’ve sent error reports a-plenty (the developers have been very helpful in trying to diagnose the problem) plus reset sync data on my Mac more times than I care to think about.
So you can possibly have even half a chance of imagining my sheer JOY at discovering BusySync. Get this: this amazing application (currently just $19.95 per computer – that’s just £9.93 in old money…) syncs both. Both ways. Completely editable calendars either way. No fuss. No messing.
Bliss. It’s the only way I can describe it. THANK YOU BusySync!
UPDATE: Seems I’m not the only one to be loving at a bit of BusySync action…
15·Mar·08
I’ve been this close to writing up an account of how I’m ‘doing’ GTD for many a month now. I’ve been hindered by the fact that my methods of doing GTD change as fast, frequently and furiously as it seems they do for many other willing GTD practitioners.
It’s a disease, and it’s catching!
Sure, the theory is sweet, but the practice is more difficult, especially when so much of the focus seems to be on the tools to make it happen, rather than the philosophy itself (David Allen consistently downplays the importance of the tools required to make GTD happen).
But throughout trying many, many, many, many such tools, I always suspected and fully understood that, once I’d found the dream GTD tool that worked for me, the day-to-day practice would flow (some would say like water…)
If you do GTD, and you’re on a Mac, you must grab a copy of Things – now. It’s free at the moment (and just $39 when released this Spring). Go on – go get it right now, I’ll be waiting…
It’s everything I’d ever hoped for, and more. Gorgeous, beautiful UI that I just want to be in all day. Highly intuitive in operation. GENIUS implementation of tags for contexts (or whatever you’d like, really). An eminently clickable dock icon. And just an all round ‘just right’ implementation of GTD on a computer – not too much or too little but just right.
The fact I’ve been using it for well over 5 months solidly (fully and properly with every day usefulness) speaks volumes about its effectiveness and quality. If you’re on a Mac, and have stuff to get done, get Things.
15·Mar·08
I work too hard. I work too many hours. I find it hard to fully switch off.
There – I’ve said it.
Call it the consequence of running my own business from home. Call it a consequence of always having far too much to do, and waaaaay too little time to do it. Call it a consequence of really, really loving what I do (I know – sick isn’t it?!). The fact is, I’m in danger of being burnt out and frazzled by my own enthusiasm a good deal of the time.
I first read about the 4 day working week back in 2006 in this great article by Ryan Carson on A List Apart. Ryan makes a great point – there will always be way too much to do – embrace that and find time to relax, before the endless pursuit of perfection kills you. Hmm… I gave it a half-hearted go and failed miserably.
Fast forward to March this year and up pops a timely post from Jason Fried about how 37 Signals have implemented a 4 day working week as standard. Interesting…
So I decided to give it a go, with today being my first Friday off of the new regime. Has it worked?
Well… I think ‘sort of’ is the honest answer. I actually had a very important report to finish writing that just didn’t get done yesterday, so I got up at 6am to finish it so as to actually be OFF by 9am — but actually still was writing it at 11.30am. Not good!
I’ve kind of been a little twitchy about email too, never far from totally not resisting the temptation to just quickly check in and see what might have landed on my inbox-shaped plate.
I think it’ll take a couple of attempts to ‘re-frame’ my notion of what the working week is — 4 sensible days as opposed to 6 (or 7) wildly crazy days of 10+ hours each. All in all, I’d say it’s looking promising.
15·Mar·08
Having finally got a sneak preview of the goodness that will be ExpressionEngine 2.0 I have to admit that I can barely contain my excitement.
As basically a non-programmer, I chose EE as my CMS system of choice way back in 2004 as it was emerging out of the ashes of pMachine. I was really attracted to the ability to provide custom fields for clients and do pretty much anything you wanted with them across any templates.
The system has just gotten better and better ever since, meaning that at Definition we can meet just about any website content requirement you can throw at us.
The new version is set to blow all expectations out of the water.
Check out the first preview video run through here. Roll on the summer!
21·Feb·08
Our boiler decided to conk out 10 days ago, taking with it hot water and heating, and leaving us with a mere coal fire to keep us warm. Sniff. Finally, new boiler in place today and our radiator system given a damn good shake out, we’re finally warming through again. Yeeeee haaaaaa!!!
Turns out our old boiler was only designed for up to 8 radiators, whereas our house carries 17 of the creaking buggers. No wonder it gave up the ghost.
So here’s a photo of the scene outside our house, just before the boilerman in shining armour arrived – no heating’s no fun with scenes like that, I can tell you. Brrrr…
9·Feb·08
We received a leaflet through the door the other day from Abel and Cole, who deliver organic produce to your door. We gave the service a go this week, got our first delivery yesterday, and we’re absolutely delighted.
Basically, once registering you choose a regular organic box of fruit and veg. This could be a family box, a one person box, or many other variations. Abel and Cole fill these each week (or 2 weeks, or month, whatever you choose) with fresh, seasonal, locally produced goodies – no air freighting whatsoever.
The beauty of this is that you get a different range of fruit and veg each time they send you one, thus ensuring that you get an amazing variety. This week, for instance, amongst other things we got Jerusalem Artichokes, Celeriac, Raddichio, none of which we’d have dreamed of buying otherwise.
You can then add other individual organic items too – chocolate, butter, milk, etc – and set these to be delivered at a different individual frequency than your main box. So, you might want milk every week; bread only every 2 weeks, etc.
The website is a joy to use – dead easy to let them know what you really don’t like (we haven’t used that service cos we’ll scoff anything!) and really easy to put the order together.
It’s the added value that I love the most. The website is full of advice and recipes, so if you get something in your box that you’ve no idea what to do with, just consult the website for loads of ideas. We’re having a celeriac gratin tonight that looks wonderful.
I’ve already been eating really healthily the past few weeks and this is just going to make it even easier to eat loads of really interesting, fresh, seasonal stuff. Can’t wait!
My day job is running Definition with this bodacious dude.
Used to have a blog (waaaaay back in 2000), now I don't, even though I work on the web day in and day out. Thought it'd be nice to wind it up again. No plans really…
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