For the last several months I’ve been practicing the the "Inbox Zero" email strategy. So far, I’ve loved it. Keeping my GMail and Work Email Inboxes empty not only makes it easy to see what’s going on, but it’s a nice feeling to see visible accomplishment in what’s going on.
Today I found a great presentation from Merlin Mann about Inbox Zero, presented to the folks at Google. The video follows:
[tag:inboxzero][tag:merlinmann]
Since I began using EverNote a few weeks ago, I’ve added alot of information to my account. Once I figured out a good way to work it into my routines, I found the PDF indexing capabilities particularly useful. I’ve since added every issue of every MSRC magazine I can find into my Evernote, for it’s superior indexing support. Now I can simply search for a researcher and find every article at every center that he authored or that mentions him. However, a few of the sites generate unusually large PDF files (I’m looking at you NAVO Navigator, with your 40Meg PDF). At first I thought there was simply no way for me to get these into EverNote, because of EverNote’s 25Meg limit on entries. After some research, however, I found a way using the Mac’s built in tools to shring these PDF’s by over an order of Magnitude.
For starters, simply download and open the PDF’s in the built-in "Preview" app. If you hit the File -> "Save As" menu option, you’ll be presented with the option to Save this PDF to disk, and possibly apply a "Quartz Filter". The Quartz Filter menu shows some promise, but the built-in "Reduce Filesize" filter completely scrambles the colors, rendering the resulting file unusable.
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| "Save As" dialog | The Original (left), and "Reduced Filesize" versions (right) |
So the goal is to create a new Quartz Filter that will still reduce the filesize, but not scramble the colors. [tag:mac][tag:apple][tag:pdf][tag:evernote]
So, with my iPhone I drank of the Mac koolaid, and it was yummy. So, after many years of swearing I would never own a Mac, I now own a Black Macbook.
Why the sudden change? Well, it wasn’t really sudden. I’ve become increasingly frustrated with windows over the last 4 or 5 years. It seems no matter what you do, a windows machine just becomes unreliable after 6 months or so. Bluescreens, slowdowns, and general instability plagues it. Is it the Hardware? Is it the Software? Honestly, it’s probably a mix of the two.
I’ve tried to run Linux laptops and desktops occasionally, but could never get them to integrate into my usual workflow very well. Linux is very customizable, but takes alot of time to get "just right", and stuff that’s trivial on Windows & Mac (example: WPA2 on WiFi) can be a real pain on Linux. A Mac gives me the Usability of a Windows Machine with the Power of a Linux machine.
So, I bought it Friday and spent the weekend configuring it. Then I took it to the HPC Users Forum in Tucson, AZ this week to "field test" it. So far, I’m ecstatic. I haven’t had a single crash since I bought it. I’ve got Time Machine making hourly backups via WiFi to an external 500Gb drive, I’ve got all my utilities working (and some new ones), and the whole thing simply "flows" in a way I’ve never seen from a Windows Machine. So far I’ve installed:
That covers my bases for basic work. I’m currently playing with getting a working MAMP stack (I’ve installed it, just need to configure it & setup a host environment).
So far, I’ve only had 2 complaints:
So I’m a Mac Convert. Expect to see alot more Mac-centric posts here in the future.
[tag:mac][tag:software][tag:hardware]
So I’m here at home, riding our Hurricane Gustov. I’m far enough inland that I’m hoping I won’t see much more than some wind & rain, with minimal impact to utility services (unlike Katrina). A few days ago the media really started to wind up in preparation, and I noticed one of my Twitter accounts MPBOnline was really providing some useful information about shelters, gas stations, road & traffic conditions, and more. Since then I’ve started following a few more people (iDeeDee, iellie, TbroOnline) affiliated with MPB and other agencies, and I’ve found them to generally be ahead of the local radio and major media as to the state of things. They were the first to tell me about the contraflow conditions on i59 & I55. They were the first to tell me about the gas Shortages in south Mississippi. They’ve been giving regular updates on Gustav’s strength, wind speed, and estimated landfall time. I’ve not even really needed to watch the weather channel or local news, and they’re covering it all.
So, it’s been interesting getting more news (and more accurate news) about Gustav with Twitteriffic on my iPhone than on the TV. And as an extra plus, if I lose power or cable internet access, I’ve got 3G to fall back on (as long as it’s up). New Media triumphs again.
[tag:hurricane][tag:newmedia][tag:gustav][tag:twitter]
