The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life (Free 1st Chapter)

As long as I've outed myself as an obsessive fan of Twyla Tharp's The Creative Habit, it seems sensible to point you to this free excerpt of the book, which includes the full text of the book's first chapter.

While it doesn't capture the clear-eyed usefulness of the book nearly as satisfyingly as each subsequent chapter does, it will give you a feel for why this book's different from your garden-variety aspirational artist porn -- this woman does not believe in "natural genius," and she damned well expects you to work your ass off, every day:

Safari AutoFill for iPhone and iPod Touch (Switchers' Blog)

Babies, iPhones and very-high-security passwords can be a bitter cocktail; it's really hard to enter a 28-character/mixed-case/special character password on the iPhone while you're holding 15 lbs. of undulating infant. Trust me.

So, if you caught video of my recent interview with Agile Web Solutions' Dave Teare, you could see how excited I was to learn about a then-upcoming beta which would support autofill name- and password-entering via secure bookmarklets on your iPhone. Well, the day has arrived, and, brother, am I ever loving this.

click to view larger

From Dave's post on the company's blog:

multipart/mixed: Turbo-Charging the Dymo LabelWriter

I love my Brother PT-65, which is regarded by many as the unofficial official label maker of GTD nerds (and which, quizzically, appears to have been discontinued :-().

The PT-65 has easily paid back its modest sticker price with three years of faithful service. Trouble is, I like using it so much that it's gotten to be kind of a pain to pull it out and Blackberry-thumb-type my bajillion labels via its teeny keys. Now, I want something that hooks up to my Mac.

Josh Carter's gotten me interested in the Dymo LabelWriter 330 Turbo via this handy tutorial from late last year, which covers basic setup info, plus a tip on speeding up the creation of a new label with Quicksilver.

Josh has good stuff to say about the 330:

The advantages of the LabelWriter, as I see it:

• The Dymo software is easy to configure for "power user mode" which eliminates all the extra dialog baggage, and then it's wicked fast to use. (Doubly so with Quicksilver in the mix.)
• You get to use your computer's nice keyboard. This is especially important for me since I use the Dvorak key layout.
• The Dymo labels are cheap and look totally pro, even better than a stand-alone label maker.
• Labels are the same size, so reusing a folder is as simple as sticking a new label over the old one, and it still looks nice.
• You can use fancy Mac OS X features like printer sharing if needed. (I tried it, it works great.)

Anybody using one of these units or similar? Care to recommend a label maker of any brand that hooks up via USB and works well with Tiger/OS X? I ♥ my little Brother, but I'm ready for Label Maker 2.0!

Using Gmail as your GTD mail implementation

MWSF Drinking Game 2007
Originally uploaded by World Leader Pretend1.

We'll all be so drunk by 11am tomorrow.

[via Digg]

One of my favorite bands, Sloan, has a new record called Never Hear the End of It that just came out last week in Canada (currently only purchasable via import in the US; in Canada, you can buy it on MapleMusic).

While recording the CD, Sloan also shot a bunch of short in-studio videos, including a couple that reveal their innately organizational side.

Neat, simple tricks for printing your own index cards--either as templates or as stuff you've been storing electronically.

Jon Udell: The LibraryLookup Bookmarklet Generator

I covered this one back in the bronze age of 43 Folders, but I wanted to highlight the awesomeness again today for those who might not have seen it the first time around.

As described in September, 2004:

I still can’t get over how cool this is. Jon Udell’s little wizard [direct link] lets you generate a bookmarklet for requesting a library book—based on the Amazon page you’re currently viewing. It’s clearly a flawless lifehack.

You just need to know your library’s URL and which system your own city uses (which Jon makes simple by providing preview links to see which style your system seems to follow). San Francisco folks, use “http://sflib1.sfpl.org/” and leave the default system of “Innovative” selected.

At some point over the years, Jon's bookmarklet fell out of my favorites bar (J'accuse, Amazon Prime). But today I was able to recreate my bookmarklet in about ten seconds, and now Bobos in Paradise is en route to the Parkside Library.

To modernize the tip just a bit, I'll mention that this (and many other browser tasks involving entering passwords) gets so much easier with the amazing 1Passwd. In this case, you can tell the app to remember your library card number and PIN and autofill the library login page automagically.

A boss and a good friend recently told me something really instructive. It went something along the lines of:

Y’know, Merlin, we’re really satisfied with the actual work you do, but is there any way you could do it without showing so much…I don’t know…mental sausage?

I knew exactly what he meant.