Pocket Revolutionary

Looking for an alternative pen (I love you, G-2, but I just want to know my options), I ran across the website for Tul pens. Their handwriting analysis toy (I don’t know what else to call it) was actually pretty imaginative and kept me on the site, made me send my wife to the site, and made me want to post it here. For a pen that’s inexpensive and sold only at OfficeMax, I thought it was surprisingly creative, and I might just check out their pens now. The lesson is that sometimes your “hook” for viewers can be engaging and only tangentially related to your core business to pique somebody’s interest. Of course, this also goes horribly wrong or just lame on a lot of well-known corporate websites with bizarre or completely random advertising, but for a relatively unknown or small company it can be very effective and you’re not risking very much if it does go wrong. I didn’t know who Tul was before, and if their website was just “good” then I would quickly forget who they were. If I didn’t like the handwriting analysis, then I might go somewhere else or I might skip to the catalog. Either way, the only way to keep my attention was to risk it on a Flash toy.

[via tul.com]

This started out as a review of the new OmniFocus app for the iPhone. I was going to talk about it being the first time I can have powerful task management on my main computer and not abandon it at my desk. I was going to explain that I have always either tied myself to a solution that was too simple, but portable, or an awesome desktop app that was only truly helpful when sitting at my desk. Being too analytical, I started out by thinking out the history of my to-do list, and I realized that explained why I like OmniFocus better than my actual article. So, I present to you my (mostly) chronological evolution of to-do lists.

Day Runner

My first love…

My mom got me my first Day Runner when I was 13 (possibly younger). Really. I begged for it in the office supply store as only a future nerd could. She eventually gave in to my geekiness, and I got my first taste of organization. It seemed infinitely extensible, yet structured in a powerful “business professional” way. You’re thinking there was no way I thought about that when I was 13, but you could not be more wrong. I loved a fully-stocked planner, and I still kind of do. My wife replaced her Palm Pilot with a big planner last year, and she couldn’t be happier (although her iMac is replacing it). My problem? I write down way too much with my whole “ubiquitous capture” obsession, and I can kill many a planner.

Paper

…and then I couldn’t afford the refills.

Inevitably, at some point I wore out multiple planners and went through way too many refills. I realized that I could manage just as well with a good spiral notebook, and then I could stop crying quietly at night thinking about how much I was spending on that specially-formatted-just-because-we-can paper known as “refills”. Yes, I could have just printed my own refills, but that wasn’t nearly as easy/popular/economical in the olden days. I normally just ran out of the to-do list refills and ended up shoving a napkin with a project plan into the pocket.

Palm Pilot

Project management in my pocket.

I have had six different PDAs. I even had a Sharp Zaurus SL-5500, which gives me way too much geek cred. I used little project management apps like “progect” to organize my tasks. The thing I loved was that it was in my pocket all the time (seriously, all the time). I just ran my task list from my pocket, and never cared about syncing issues. This was good because I had Linux in the bad old “can’t-really-support-usb” days that involved modifying and compiling your own drivers (I did), and I tended to like Palm apps that could only talk to the ugliest desktop apps on the planet.

Paper 2.0

I guess I just need paper again.

At some point I realized that the un-sync-ability of my task apps made them about as “powerful” as pen and paper and less extensible. Obviously, my next step was to go back to paper with a vengeance. I mean, at least on paper I could organize things the way I wanted them, and I had started to work out my own GTD-like system with projects on one page, and today’s task list on another. I just had a great big list of tasks, and I narrowed that down to a smaller chunk every morning on a separate piece of paper. It was simple, but it didn’t always scale. Once my “big list” reached two pages, a lot of important projects got lost in the shuffle.

Palm Pilot w/iCal

Okay, I can kind of sync.

I had a brand new Powerbook, and it could sync! This didn’t really solve the scaling issue, but it was a start. I imported everything into iCal, and then I’d flag the top 5-10 tasks to work on each day. It was almost exactly like the paper system, but I could scan it faster and it could easily talk to my Palm Pilot. This worked great until my task list reached 265 (I’m now at 423). At that point, I lost perspective, got depressed, and started going on all-night organizational benders.

Kinkless GTD w/iCal

I can kind of sync, and I’m getting organized about it.

After taking a long weekend to “clear my mind” and “stop screaming at inanimate objects”, I found some great sites like 43folders.com that gave me enough tips to talk me off the ledge. I discovered Kinkless GTD, and then I read “Getting Things Done” by David Allen. I decided that GTD wasn’t “the way” or a cult, but it was a good place to start in actually, you know, getting things done. All of a sudden, life was a little bit easier. I had less stress. I could sync with— no, I could kind of sync with my Palm Pilot. I synced a couple times. One day, my iCal messed up it’s own records, synced with Kinkless, wiped out Kinkless, and then in “data seppuku” wiped itself out. I lost my 265 tasks into oblivion. This happened twice before I buckled down and bought Missing Sync.

iGTD w/iCal

I can kind of sync, and I have a GUI.

Unfortunately, I fiddled too much and got tired of pressing the sync button all the time. I completed something, so I pressed the sync button. I changed something, so I pressed the sync button. I forgot if I had forgotten to sync in a while, so I pressed the sync button. It was a natural result of Kinkless being a script, and you can’t blame Ethan for that. I wanted GUI goodness, though, and I tried iGTD. I used iGTD for quite a while, but I just couldn’t commit to it. I wasn’t managing my projects with the same top-down view I had grown to love. It was just built for people who think differently than me. At least I could still sync, though.

OmniFocus

I love my app, but I’m not mobile.

I joined the alpha testing for OmniFocus, and I loved it. It had more of the “big picture” views that I needed, and it even had some basic iCal syncing to tide me over. It wasn’t perfect, but it worked. It worked, at least, until I got my iPhone. I loved my Palm TX, but I just couldn’t resist the charms of the iPhone. I needed my task list, though, because I still have a few moments every day (maybe not today) that I’m not staring at my computer screen. I like to run errands, fix things around the house, and, yes, even help my wife cleaning the house. My big solution? To print an errands and housework list from OmniFocus or write it down in my notebook. Then, I’d check things off and “sync” it later by checking things off in OmniFocus. I always needed to add to my things to my inbox, and I got really good at emailing myself tasks. OmniFocus handled my emails with ease, but I still couldn’t actually edit tasks or plug my new tasks into just the right spot in the middle of a project. I was just sending myself reminders, basically, of things to organize later.

OmniFocus w/iPhone App

Bliss!

Here I am today, and I’m the happiest I’ve ever been with a total solution. This is sweet, sweet, synced bliss. I do my main organization, weekly reviews, new projects, etc. on my laptop in OmniFocus, and then it’s automatically in my pocket. I can even tweak, rearrange, defer, delegate, and create on my iPhone, and I’ll see it later on my laptop when I get back to work. I basically have a license to fidget with my system all the time, for better or worse. Okay, it’s not technically perfect. Sometimes the syncing is slow (like three-minutes-to-update-my-tasks slow) or I can’t sync at all, but that’s pretty much because of MobileMe’s widely-publicized growing pains. Even then, it’s still the best system I’ve had.

Addendum

Moleskine, you complete me.

Lest my pocket Moleskine and Pilot G-2 be offended, let me assure you that I’ve only abandoned paper for my to-do’s. My wife knows exactly how obsessive I am about my notebooks and pens. As an aside, if you haven’t read The Gel Dilemma on RandsInRepose.com, I highly recommend it. The only part where I differ with him is that he sees the retractable operation as a bad thing (which I know I used to), but I actually think it’s more convenient to getting my pen “ready to write” and never losing another cap.

Update: Thanks to an update in the OmniFocus iPhone app and a more stable iDisk connection, my syncs are nice and fast now. Thanks, Brian!

In a fit of productivity and needing to produce a bio for someone else, I have finally added an “About Me” page. For redundancy sake, I’m posting it below:

Hi, my name is Jeremy Greenawalt, and I’m the head web guru at Generals International. I’m also a freelance programmer, occasional consultant, accidental web designer, and non-commital blogger. Once upon a time, I attended the United States Air Force Academy (until knee surgery), and I’ve been a professional programmer/web developer almost non-stop since then (sans a stint at Fry’s Electronics and one year at a box plant). I grew up programming since I was 13, but I learned the sheer joy of PHP and Linux while I was working at FishNet, Inc. for two-and-a-half years as a software engineer and I got paid to work on fun projects like the open source shopping cart FishCart. I later worked as the systems administrator and part-time java coder at Tek-Tools until I left in 2005 to pursue my current calling at a ministry, Generals International, where I traded in my Linux skills for a Powerbook (now a MacBook Pro) and I’ve been building with TextMate ever since.

I continue to do a lot of work with PHP, and I’ve learned just enough Flash and JavaScript to keep clients happy. My favorite website management system is TYPO3, and I like to use it on my clients’ websites because, as a solid framework, I can always extend and re-work their sites to do almost anything they will ever want (forums, video, blogs, newsfeeds, newsletters, etc). The biggest benefit to me and the clients, though, is that they can own and control the site once it’s built. As I’m writing this, I’m 28 and married to the most beautiful, talented photographer in the Dallas area and our sweet puppy, Aingeal, is now 5 years old. If you like the blog, feel free to let me know.

Sites I’ve worked on:

• http://www.generals.org (head web guru)
• http://www.lightthehighway.org (since it’s a Generals site, I was the head web guru)
• http://www.imagesbyrebekah.com (designer, developer, etc. of my wife’s site)
• http://www.whiterhinocoffee.com (designed, developed, and built a TYPO3 website for them)
• http://www.fulfillingdestiny.com (turned a couple Photoshop files into a full-blown, TYPO3 template, and now I build new features every couple weeks)
• http://www.newnamemissionsociety.com (still a work in progress, but I designed and built it)

How to contact me:
Email me at jeremy@pocketrevolutionary.com
Twitter me at twitter.com/pocketrevolver

Disclaimer:
The opinions and thoughts I express are just my own. Nothing on this blog, in my emails, in my twitter, or in my thoughts represents my employer, clients, wife, or dog.

I was re-building the templates for a quick international website last week and wanted to swap the logos for the different languages. There are, of course, a plethora of manual ways to do this, but I cater to the lazy webmaster. I mean, isn’t laziness at least partially the point of using a CMS (and paying somebody an hourly rate to tweak the crap out of your templates)? This should have been easier (like five minutes), but either my searching skills suck or the final hack I did was not well-documented (it took fifteen minutes). Either way, I wanted to post instructions for using your Typoscript template to swap images in a TemplaVoila template you’re using (that’s right, you’re combining technologies… how Web 2.0 is that?). So, obviously you need to have a place in your HTML template to map a logo (or other image) to dynamically. I used a div tag. That took 3 seconds, and I’m pretty sure you know how to do that if you’re building a template for TemplaVoila to begin with. Next, I put the following XML into the TemplaVoila Data Structure to create a TypoScriptObject:
<field_logo type="array">
<tx_templavoila type="array">
<title>Logo</title>
<description>map to logo</description>
<sample_data type="array">
<numIndex index="0">(logo)</numIndex>
</sample_data>
<eType>TypoScriptObject</eType>
<TypoScriptObjPath>lib.logo</TypoScriptObjPath>
</tx_templavoila>
</field_logo>
Then, at the beginning of the Template Setup for the website, I just added these two little lines to fill in a default image:
lib.logo = IMAGE
lib.logo.file = fileadmin/template/june_2008/images/logo.jpg
Then, the last (still really easy step) was to add the following line to my language setup in the Template Setup under the non-default languages:
lib.logo.file = fileadmin/template/june_2008/images/logo_es.jpg
You can see this line in context where it will replace the logo image when somebody loads the Spanish language:
#Setting up spanish language:
[globalVar = GP:L=1]
config {
sys_language_uid = 1
language = es
}
lib.logo.file = fileadmin/template/june_2008/images/logo_es.jpg

If you want to see this in action, you can just go to FulfillingDestiny.com in English or Spanish (or just go to the page and switch languages when you’re there, obviously).

I am not a multi-tasker by nature. I like to concentrate. If you show me a whole bunch of windows on my desktop, I’m not focusing. The irony, of course, is that I willingly run a lot of apps at once all day long. I’m normally using at least 3-4 programs at a bare minimum with another half-dozen in the background, but I need to switch my focus between them quickly. And that, my friends, is why Isolator is my new best friend. It’s not just a little app that I kind of like; no, I turned this on two days ago and have not turned it off yet. It is one of the sacred few programs that I actually want to “start at login.” Seriously, that’s not an honor I give out lightly. What does Isolator do? It simply blocks out all the apps except the one I’m focused on. This one has some new features that I’ve never gotten to have, though, in other apps. I just want to list some of my favorites off for you, please:

1. It focuses on what I click on. I’m lazy, and I type fast. If I need to do anything to focus on an application that involves fancy “right-clicking” or “drop-down menus,” I won’t do it. Isolator knows what I want to focus on because it’s application I’m typing in right now. That’s it.
2. It can be transparent. I can even adjust the transparency. This is great, because I can still see the other windows if I want to, but they don’t grab my attention.
3. I can blur the background. This kind of ties into transparency, but it’s new to the 3.1 beta they just released. Now, I’ve set everything that’s inactive to be blurred about 75% (you can adjust that, too). I can see the shape of the window, I can identify other windows as TextMate or Safari, but I’m not reading them subconsciously. I love this.
4. I can click on inactive windows and they become active and focused. This is mind-blowing. I don’t want to be distracted by a lot of apps, but I am, as I already stated, running a lot of apps that I’m constantly switching between. I need to concentrate on TextMate, then Safari, then Navicat, then TextMate, then the terminal. I don’t want anything to slow that down, and that’s probably why I can’t use anything that either hides my other windows completely or requires to focus and un-focus apps manually. I want to click on a window and watch TextMate fade to the background as Safari comes up. It’s that simple. I really, really need it to be that simple.
5. Finally, I can toggle it from the menu bar. I’m trying not to fill up my menu bar, but it’s becoming inevitable. I can click on the menu bar icon for Isolator, though, and it just toggles. I don’t have to go through the drop-down menu or anything. It’s on, and then it’s off. This is especially helpful for the times that I’m either watching something on my second screen or trying not to annoy my coworkers who don’t use Isolator when I need to show them something.
6. It’s free. Although free is always nice, it’s not a necessity because this app is good enough to pay for. All this means is there’s no reason to even think about it twice before downloading and installing it. It really is awesome, though, so I’ll have to give ‘em a donation as soon as I can.