48-Hour Days

My setup at home is rather unorthodox. We have a really small house. Really small. As a consequence, I don’t have an office. I don’t even have a desk at which to work. I use my laptop as an actual lap-top and work in the recliner or on the couch in our living room, where we truly live. When not in use, the MacBook Pro lives on the coffee table and, as you can imagine, it gets moved around quite a bit. All of my other equipment (DSL modem, router, web server, etc.) is located in our upstairs bedroom.

Among the various components located above me is an HP OfficeJet 5610 and a 500GB SimpleTech SimpleShare. Separately, I’ve been very happy with the performance of both devices. But, until now I had never tried to connect them.

I purchased the SimpleShare because I needed more disk space for my iTunes and iPhotos libraries, as well as somewhere to put backups. I didn’t relish the thought of dragging an external drive around the house with me and I wanted something that would be available from any computer on my network. A network-attached drive fit the bill rather nicely.

Getting the OfficeJet to play nice with the SimpleShare’s built-in print server was not the most straightforward process. HP does provide driver software for Mac OS X, so I’ve had no problem printing when the printer was directly connected to the MBP. I figured the drivers had to be on my computer somewhere, right?

I connected the OfficeJet to one of the USB ports on the SimpleShare, then used the web interface to enable the print server. The SimpleShare had no problem seeing the OfficeJet. So far, so good.

I then used the Print & Fax preference pane (I’m running Leopard) to attempt to add the shared printer. I could log into the SimpleShare and see the printer, but when I had to choose the driver, I was stuck. The driver for the OfficeJet wasn’t there. There were other OfficeJet drivers and I tried a few of them, but they didn’t work. The SimpleShare accepted the job, but nothing printed.

So, what was I using to print when connected directly? Apparently, some application that served as a proxy of some sort. There wasn’t a PPD somewhere that I could select. Damn.

Some Googling around led to others with the same problem, but no one finding a solution. So, I tried the Apple forums. BINGO!

Here’s the solution in a nutshell (all of these files are available from The Linux Foundation):

1. Download and install Ghostscript
2. Download and install Foomatic-RIP
3. Download and install HPIJS for Mac OS X

Once these were installed, it was a simple task to add the printer in:

1. Launch System Preferences and choose Print & Fax
2. Under the Printers list, click the + button; this will open a printer browser window
3. On the toolbar, click Windows
4. Click on the name of your SimpleShare workgroup, then host; you’ll be asked to log in
5. Once logged in, you’ll see the printer attached to the SimpleShare; select it
6. From the Print Using drop-down, choose “Select a driver to use…”
7. There isn’t a 5610-specific driver, but there is a driver for the 5600 series, and that is the one that works for me

Incidentally, the printer browser is a rather strange and buggy beast, with an unfinished feel. It doesn’t seem to be attached to any application: you can’t hide it, it doesn’t have a menu of its own, and it doesn’t go away when you quit System Preferences. When you are presented with a login panel, you have the option of saving the information in the Keychain. Although it appears to have been saved in my Keychain, it wasn’t using it because I had to enter my password every time. I also noticed that I was only able to see the printer once, then I had to reboot to see it again. I’m not sure if this is a bug in the printer browser or with the SimpleShare. I tend to think it is with the printer browser, though. These are annoying quirks and hopefully will be fixed in future updates. I’ll have to file a few bug reports.

Anyway, I’m happy with the outcome. I have more printer drivers than the law allows, but I can print from anywhere in my house. Now, if I can only find some software that will bring the printed pages downstairs for me…

48-Hour Days has a brand spankin’ new look, thanks to the totally awesome and very talented Brendan Cullen. I love this theme. I could never have come up with something so amazing and I’m excited to show it off. Enjoy!

If you haven’t just crawled out from under a rock, you know about Microsoft’s version-targeting proposal for IE 8. If you have just crawled out from under a rock, welcome back, and go read:

• Beyond DOCTYPE: Web Standards, Forward Compatibility, and IE8
• From Switches to Targets: A Standardista’s Journey
• Compatibility and IE8
• The Bruhaha of the Meta Declaration
• Standards mode is the new quirks mode
• Version targeting in IE 8, and an alternative path for Microsoft

I am not going to express my opinion on the topic just yet. I have some ideas, but I want to think them through and put together a considered opinion. However, I did have something that I just had to get out.

I think Microsoft really deserves a pat on the back for allowing this to be an open process. It is wonderful that all of this discussion and debate is taking place now, before even a beta of Internet Explorer 8 is available. That gives the web development community an opportunity to influence how it is implemented and, perhaps, even if it is implemented. It gives other browser-makers a chance to implement the same functionality in their browsers, if they choose. It shows us that they are listening and they really are trying. Think what you will about the way they are trying to do it, but it seems to me they are trying to do what is best for developers and users alike.

So, kudos to you, Microsoft. Here’s hoping you are truly listening.

I’ve blogged before about my e-mail client woes. I finally got fed up enough with Thunderbird’s bugginess and non-integration with just about everything else that I decided to give Mail.app a serious try. So far, so good. There are a few things I miss, though.

One of the main things I missed was the ability to hit a keyboard shortcut to hide and show the preview pane (where the body of an e-mail appears). In Thunderbird, this was done by hitting F8. In Mail.app there is no such beast.

However, Mail.app, being an Apple application, is extremely AppleScript-able. I looked at the Library for Mail.app and found that I could access the visibility of the preview pane. Fabulous. I wrote the following little script and saved it in my ~/Library/Scripts directory:

tell application “Mail“
    set currentStatus to preview pane is visible of message viewer 1

    if currentStatus = true then
        set preview pane is visible of message viewer 1 to false
    else
        set preview pane is visible of message viewer 1 to true
    end if
end tell

Now, to add the shortcut key. That’s where Quicksilver comes in. I set up a trigger that will run my AppleScript when I hit F8. Ta-da! Color me happy.

I am a weather junkie. It started out from necessity, as the office I worked in had no windows. Now I plan virtually my entire life around the weather. “Hmmmm. It is going to rain on Wednesday and Thursday, so we’ll wait until Friday to run errands.” My husband frequently works outside, so I am always looking to see what kind of weather he must endure or helping him decide when to switch a particular job to another day. I need to know how to dress the kids, etc. You get the idea.

For a very long time now, I’ve lived by the Cleveland weather forecast from The Weather Channel’s web site. This page has everything: current conditions, suggestions for events, interactive weather maps, the whole schlemiel. But, dang! Is it ever slow! Plus, I keep getting annoying suggestions on what to do for my wedding (which was over 5 years ago, thank you very much).

Then I came upon a post at Web Worker Daily about SimpleWeather. The site does exactly what it promises. You get the current conditions illustrated by a simple graphic, basic forecast for the week, and that is about it. I know, I know, that sounds really bland in comparison to TWC, and at first I dismissed it thinking I couldn’t live with my moving radar picture.

However, its simplicity is its strength. Really. When you get down to it, do you really need the moving radar? Sure, when you’re following a big storm, but otherwise? I don’t miss them. The page loads extremely fast and it has all the information I need.

But the page design isn’t the only place where the site’s functional simplicity shines through. It is extremely easy to get the weather for anywhere. You simply tack the zip code onto the URL. Yeah, that easy. For instance, mine is http://www.simpleweather.com/44135. How sweet is that?

It doesn’t stop there, though. Of course, you aren’t always going to know the zip code. So, you don’t have to! Just add on the country, state, and city and you’re there. The URL for Cleveland looks like this: http://www.simpleweather.com/us/oh/cleveland. You see? Simple. Weather. It takes me two seconds to see what the weather is like for my sister in Columbus, or if it is good softball weather in Cinci, or even see the forecast for my in-laws on their cruise in St. Croix.

The main page does provide a search box, so you can find a weather location in a more conventional way if you want. Search is lightning quick.

I’m extremely busy. I don’t want to have to go to the information, I want the information to come to me. This is where the developers behind SimpleWeather really won me over. They have a service that sends updates to a Twitter feed for selected cities. It wasn’t a huge surprise that Cleveland wasn’t one of them. There was an e-mail address to write to, though, to request another city. I wrote, thinking I’d hear something back someday, if I was lucky.

I got an e-mail within an hour and Cleveland’s SimpleWeather Twitter feed was up in another day. Yup, I follow it and now the current conditions are tweeted to me (and anyone else who is interested) three times a day. Now that’s what I call service!

I’m a bit mobile-challenged myself, but if you aren’t, they also have a mobile site at simpw.com.

I’m a die-hard Thunderbird fan. I have been since something like version 0.5. I love the way it threads messages. It very gracefully handles multiple accounts and subscriptions to mailboxes. It has some pretty flexible configuration options, including the ability to save all sent messages in my Inbox. This means that my e-mail messages are threaded right along with the messages I receive. Total time-saver for me, as I like to archive my responses to important e-mails.

Thunderbird does have its downsides, though. Tagging is an incomplete feature at best. Searching is slow and buggy. Mailboxes sometimes show messages that I have already deleted. And, a big one that has bothered me since the beginning: I can’t use Apple’s Address Book. I miss out on a lot of things because of that. Another biggie: no direct capture to EagleFiler. I have to save the messages and then let EagleFiler import them.

I’ve tried a lot of clients over the years: Mulberry, GyazMail, Entourage, GNUMail.app. They all missed something vital to my workflow and/or were incomplete.

I’ve tried Mail.app many times in the past and the latest version actually seemed like something I could switch to, except for one important thing: I can’t configure it to put my sent mail into my Inbox. Sure, I could bcc myself on everything and then clean out my Sent folder, but that is too much work when I can configure Thunderbird to do what I want. This is a deal-killer for me. I’m so used to Thunderbird it is going to take a lot to make me change.

So, I was pretty psyched when I stumbled across Correo. This is a fledgeling project, but seems to be headed towards exactly what I’ve been looking for: Thunderbird with Address Book support. Awesome! I tried out the latest build (0.3) and it just isn’t usable yet. I can’t find any way to contact the dev, Nick Kreeger, and I’m wondering if AppleScript support will be something else he plans. If so, than this is the holy grail of e-mail clients, for me at least. Go Nick!

A List Apart always has great stuff, but I found this issue’s articles even more relevant to my current projects.

First up, A Preview of HTML gives a great tease about what is coming. I love the idea of actual structural elements for the page itself instead of using divs all the time. I also loved seeing the benefits of both HTML and XHTML and how HTML5 will support both. It echoed some of the thoughts that have been expressed in a recent discussion on the CWSA message board.

The second article, Designing For Flow is about designing complex sites so that they get out of the way and let the user get things done. This is the whole problem with my company’s web site and exactly what I hope to focus on improving. Some really great tips in there and I’m really glad to see someone talking about complexity instead of simplicity. Some sites are necessarily complex and all those articles out there about simplifying your design don’t help me much.

Great stuff. Go read.

I’m finding it nearly impossible to keep track of all of the things I want to read: books, magazines, blog posts, news feeds, articles, etc. I have a readme tag in EagleFiler and del.icio.us. I keep tons of blog posts because they link to an article I want to read or because the post itself is something I want to read, but it is long. I tried a paper file one time, but the kids just ripped it all up and I lost the articles completely. I have a stack of books and another stack of magazines, all to be read.

I’ll tell you what. Nate Klaiber is my hero. He has a family and a busy career, but still finds time to read books. On top of that, he has time to blog about the books he’s read, providing a great review that helps others decide if the book is worth the time or not.

So, how does one keep a good read-me file? I need something that is portable, so I can take my unread articles, etc. with me. I can steal a few minutes while I’m waiting for my son to get released from pre-school or on the drive to Sam’s Club (husband driving, of course). It has to be contained and small enough that I can easily move it out of the kids’ reach. It has to be interesting and efficient enough for me to actually keep it in front of me at all times and use it. I also have to have some way of cross-linking digital files with paper files, since not everything can be digital.

At first, I was thinking something like the Sony Reader or Amazon’s new Kindle would be the answer. They are small, very portable, and can hold vast amounts of reading material. Best of all, they hold digital files, which means I’m not killing trees! However, I’ve read reviews and it seems that getting existing files over to them in a readable format isn’t always easy or possible. I don’t have time to monkey around with exports and settings just to get reading material in one place. Not only that, but these are expensive little gadgets and they would require that I purchase digital versions (where available) of the books that I’ve already bought. Ick.

So, now I’m starting to think about a portfolio or accordion file or something that I can put at least my articles and magazines into, if not books. Something that I can close, so that things don’t fall out and I can carry it around. Maybe I’ll go shopping at Staples. There are a few downsides, though. I can’t put books in there and I’d have to print out the digital media that I want to read. That means wasting paper and coming up with a way to cross-reference the softcopy with the hardcopy. Again, Ick.

I’m sure I’ll be pondering this for a while and trying to come up with something. In the meantime, if there are any suggestions, please leave them in the comments. I’d be ever so grateful.

I’m really getting into using Remember the Milk for my tasks. I’ve even gotten my boss, Tom, into it. I love that I can share my work-related list of tasks with him so he can adjust priorities or add information as needed. Also, he has a real-time look at what I’m working on without me having to update something else or put extra effort into it.

But, organizational freak that I am, I’m always looking for ways to use the service better. Enter the Remember the Milk Tips & Tricks Forum. There is a lot of really good stuff in there. Below I’ve detailed some of the posts that I’ve found useful and how I’ve adapted those techniques to my workflow. I have a caveat, though. Like all good organizational processes, this is a work in progress. I expect it will be for quite some time. However, I really think I have the basic flow nailed down and it seems to be working well. As with any advice, your milage may vary.

Projects

I keep all of my work-related tasks on one list and personal tasks on another. I have shared my work list with Tom and kept the personal list private. However, the tasks on these lists beg to be broken out into projects. RTM doesn’t support hierarchies, though (well, not yet). What to do?

I found this post in the forum and decided to use it as the start of my system.

For each project, I create a task tagged “project”. At first, I followed the poster’s advice and prefixed the task name with two hyphens. This allows the project tasks to be sorted before the actual action tasks, since the hyphens get put first alphabetically. However, I found that I don’t like seeing the overall project task in the same list as the associated action tasks. It was a distraction for me. So, I removed the hyphens from the project tasks and now I just create them without any sort of prefix.

For each project, I create a tag that is in the format “p-code” where “code” is just a one-word short code I use to identify that project. For example, my tag for all of the things I have to do for Riemer Week is p-riemerweek. These tags are applied to the action tasks for the specific projects.

You’ll notice that in my system the action tasks are not directly related to the project tasks. They are in my mind, but not in the actual task lists. I like it this way. I only use the project tasks to prioritize the projects as a whole and keep a high-level view of what I’m currently working on. The action tasks are for my “what’s next” moments. Thus, I’ve created two Smart Lists: one for projects and one for next actions.

A Dash of GTD

One of the ideas I took away from David Allen’s Getting Things Done is putting tasks in lists according to context. So, all the phone calls you have to make are in a list by the phone, all of the errands you have to run are in a list in your purse/wallet/diaper bag, that kind of thing. It makes perfect sense. I haven’t been able to do it yet.

I’m trying, though. To this end, I have context tags in RTM. These tags are prefixed with a “@”. So, I have @office and @errand so far. Since I work from home, there are tasks that I pile up and do the next time I’m in the office. This makes it easy to pick those out. If I decide to go run errands with the kids, I can get a quick list of all of them. Extra bonus: using the Location field to map out the store for that particular errand. Now, if I can find a mash-up site that will spit out a complete driving directions itinerary with each errand’s location included and everything put in a logical order so that I’m not doing any backtracking.

Keep ’em Separated

Now that I have formats for specific tags, I wanted to organize my tags (is there no end to my mania??). That’s where another post in the RTM Tips & Tricks forum comes in. The poster came up with a way to create “separator” tags that span the entire width of the tag cloud. The trick is to use the same prefix as the tags, then add a bunch of underscores and an optional label.

I’ve created a special task in my Inbox that only holds the separator tags (tags must be assigned to a task in order to exist).

Next Actions

So, on these monolithic lists of tasks now sorted nicely into easy-to-find projects, how do I determine what my next actions are? Priorities, baby!

Just about everything I have to do needs to be done ASAP. This makes adding due dates pretty useless as everything is due now. This is where priorities come in. For each project, I pick out the very next thing I have to do. That gets assigned priority 1. Then I pick out the next task. That gets assigned priority 2. Finally, I pick the next task after that and give it priority 3. This gives me the next three actions for each project.

I then have a Smart List that only displays tasks that are not tagged with project and that have a priority set. Bam! My list of things to do today.

I mentioned that I like to keep the projects separate. I have another Smart List that has all tasks tagged project. This allows me to assign priorities to the projects themselves. When I view all of the priority 1 tasks on my Next Actions list, I can do the next action for the highest priority project.

Conclusion

This probably all seems overly complex, and perhaps it is. But it works for me because it allows me to break really big projects into small tasks, then figure out which task needs to be done next. Keeping track of this in a concrete way is a must because I only get to focus on work in short bursts during the day. I can track where I am on a specific task using the notes field, so it is always easy to figure out where I am. I’ve also begun echoing the same tag structure in my EagleFiler libraries. Consistency is key to making an organizational process work.

Like I said, this is all a work in progress. However, since I set it up a few weeks ago, it has been a lifesaver. It really seems to be working and I’ve only changed a few minor things along the way.

Just found this: if you drag a file from one library to another, the tags and other metadata are transferred with it. Tags, title, note—everything.

This is just too cool. This means that I can easily consolidate libraries because I won’t have to recreate all of the hard work I’ve done tagging up the files.

Thank you, Michael!