Daily Links
Merlin Mann | Nov 30 2007
- Where I Go [Chris Glass] - One of those old-school "home page" conventions that I miss most is the once-ubiquitous links page. In addition to being my personal muse on all things visual, Chris Glass also posts his highly clickable list of favorite sites. Need to make me one of these.
- helvetica - ThisNext - Casting about for gift ideas for the Helvetica lover in your life? Not a problem.
- Graphic Design and typography - Swiss Legacy - "...a collaborative blog focused on typography, swiss graphic design and grid." Grid pr0n, and that's okay by me. (seems to be down just now)
- My personal war against Crackberry - "Here at the office, we’ve begun to make most of our meetings 'topless' (i.e. no laptops allowed). I’ve gone a step further by trying to ban any form of networked communication from the working meetings I put together." Good on ya, Todd.
- And now it's all this: Shortened URLs with Quicksilver - Python script lets you build a fast Quicksilver trigger for generating (and copying) a shortened url based on the the front Safari window. Really useful. [via Daring Fireball]
- What are the most intellectually stimulating podcasts? | Ask MetaFilter - I'm so overwhelmed by podcasts these days that I've pared down to about five, most of which are mentioned here. My single "don't miss" right now is "Radio Lab," which is kinda like This American Life with more science and less Yo La Tengo.
- WiiHealthy - [via MeFi] - I wonder what kind of hideous freak I'm becoming by playing an hour of Wii Bowling each night while a 12-lb. baby is footballed over my non-dominant arm. That seems like the makings of a pretty odd workout when I think of it.
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Merlin Mann | Nov 7 2007
- My paperless office - O’Reilly Mac DevCenter Blog - “I’ve been using DevonThink Pro Office to catalog and manage the PDFs that the SnapScan creates. So far, I’ve got about 1,000 documents spread between three DevonThink databases.” Cf.: Ryan's post from earlier this week.
- Basement.org: Enough With The Lists - “And speaking of lists, I’ve grown to hate the list-ification of information. ‘10 Things That…’ or ‘20 Reasons Why….’” I struggle to articulate how much more I loathe this genre of “writing” each day. Like lazy babysitters feeding pork rinds to fat kids. [via Chris Glass]
- Researchers: Ron Paul campaign e-mails originating from spambots - Paul’s people say they aren’t involved. But, to quote the Dude, “It’s like what Lenin said… you look for the person who will benefit, and, uh, uh…” Too bad spambots can't vote. Yet.
- Wired editor bans PR flacks - Boing Boing - I’m struck by the absurd antics people have to resort to in order to get these loathsome choads out of their inbox. To willfully, and by deliberate human means, continue to manually provoke people who have begged not to be provoked? That shit should be actionable in court. End of story.
- Brilliant recurring calendar events? | Ask MetaFilter - Great discussion of the kind of events you’d want to be reminded of periodically. Along the lines of the time change/smoke alarm heuristic.
- Jonathan Coulton - Thing a Week 46 - You Ruined Everything- “I compare the process [of becoming a parent] to becoming a vampire, your old self dies in a sad and painful way, but then you come out the other side with immortality, super strength and a taste for human blood. At least that’s how it was for me.”
Merlin Mann | Oct 25 2007
- AppleInsider | Road to Mac OS X Leopard: System Preferences - Entertaining and nostalgic walk through the Mac's iterations on the [Control Panel](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_panel_(Mac_OS). I vividly recall sitting in the Science building at New College in 1987, staring at the 9-inch black and white screen of a Fat Mac, and thinking: "These little drawings have got to be coolest thing I've ever seen." God bless Susan Kare.
- How-to: Proper Gmail IMAP for iPhone & Apple Mail - Metric buttload of great tips for using Gmail IMAP with your iPhone. Nicely done. [via Lifehacker]
- Tasks bundle for TextMate - Henrik's TextMate bundle will surely be of interest to folks using TaskPaper.
- dotfiles.org - "community for sharing dotfiles like .bashrc, .vimrc, and .bash_profile" Handy if you're getting started with the terminal and want to trick out your profile. Get a great bash .profile and half the work is done for you. [via torrez]
- No Slippage! - Sean Bonner adds skateboard grip tape to his too-slick iPhone. So smart. I've been meaning to try this with the edges and corners of my MacBook Pro for months. Just ordered this guy to take a crack at it.
- My evenings are a waste of time. | Ask MetaFilter - "So, bottom line, what can I do (and what do you do?) to be as productive, motivated, and energetic during the evening hours as I am during the day?"
- Cool Tool: AlphaSmart Word Processor - Paul Ford has talked about the distraction-resistant AlphaSmart Neo here before. Very tempting little chunk of func.
- jwz - PSA: backups - "'OMG, three drives is so expensive! That sounds like a hassle!' Shut up. I know things. You will listen to me. Do it anyway." Possibly the simplest and most do-able approach to brain-dead backup I've seen. Recommended. [via Nelson]
- Food: Monitor Food Expiration Dates with Best When Used By - It would appear there is a web application that will help you track when your food is about to go bad. And here's a blog post that someone wrote about it. See, back in the coal-smudged, Dickensian second world of Web 1.0, you would have to monitor this kind of stuff yourself -- or you could hire someone like Bobby Hill. Alas, technology marches on, and I, for one, will not stand in its way. (Because I actually have some Bulgarian Rails developers building a web app that will stand in the way of things for me. Right now, it's in a private beta after closing a lucrative angel round.)
Merlin Mann | Oct 18 2007
- Writing - Cooking - Life » Blog Archive » I Heart Zappos - "Big and lush and fragrant. I opened the card, and it was from Zappos." What a lovely story. I'm a huge customer service nerd, and this one really got me. [via: Waxy.org]
- I can not use my vacation responder [Gmail] - This workaround fixed a problem I'd been having for days with Gmail's vacation responder. My only addition? First change the language to something like "English (UK)", make the noted change, then switch back to "US" after it's working. Weird-ass bug.
- How to Clean a Water Dispenser - wikiHow - Mine was turning orange inside. Which, upon reflection, seems kind of unhygienic.
- How to control ones ADHD | Ask MetaFilter - "Are there any natural NON PRESCRIPTION drugs or techniques to help and develop my ability to focus?"
- Motivation - While "Motivation" is still my favorite, I'll admit that my careful plan for paternity leave is starting to unintentionally look a lot like "Apathy."
- Martha Mitchell effect - "The Martha Mitchell effect is the process by which a psychiatrist, psychologist, or other mental health clinician mistakes the patient's perception of real events as delusional and misdiagnoses accordingly." I'll bet psychologists hate it when their patients learn about this.
- iPhone Nextbus - SF MUNI riders: so far this is my favorite iPhone NextBus app I've seen [thanks, Nelson]
- Best. Day. Ever. - The always-wonderful Oliver Sacks' wikipedia entry shows him wearing my favorite Mule shirt. Made my week. ♥ Dr. Sacks. Catch him on this 2006 Radio Lab episode.
Merlin Mann | Oct 13 2007
- Macworld: Feature: I will be smarter about how I handle e-mail - Tips on more secure email, handily graded by "Security" and "Hassle."
- Coding Horror: A Visual Explanation of SQL Joins - This makes so much more sense to me when explained with Venn diagrams. I want Venn diagrams for everything.
- TTB #25 - 09/16/07 at The Teen Tech Buzz - In which I am interviewed by my teen pals, Aaron and Austen (each of whom are younger than several coffee mugs that I regularly use)
- Macworld: Mac OS X Hints: Hand-code Smart Folders - "So this hint is intended to share some info about how to modify the 'code' in the saved search to get what you want." I wish I could hand-code something to make Spotlight's UI work better for me. (Did I say that out loud?)
 The Office Collar: Mind Your Own Business - Geekologie - Maybe I spend too much time in the internet's less savory neighborhoods, but this really has the feel of "pony play" [PNSFW] to me. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing. Offices can get pretty boring. Here, have a carrot, Ol' Paint.- 41 Reasons Why Your Blog Probably Sucks - I'd make #42 "'Writing' naught but Digg-y list posts whose headline starts with a numeral and is followed by a plural noun." Heck, I'd probably go ahead and just add that one reason eight more times -- I mean, you know: so you can make it a nice, round, super-useful "50." Yes, that might help countless blogs not to "probably suck."
Merlin Mann | Oct 9 2007
- The day the music industry died - Times Online - “The truth now is that a rudimentary cotton garment with a band logo stamped across it that has probably been manufactured for pennies in a Third World sweatshop costs about twice as much as an album recorded in a state-of-the-art western studio.” Related, don’t miss Yahoo!’s Ian Rogers’s post “Convenience Wins, Hubris Loses”
- Abused Workers Fight Back by Slacking Off | LiveScience - “Employees toiling under an abusive supervisor often rebel quietly and indirectly by slacking off on the job and handing in sloppy work.”
- What’s next, no potty breaks? [AskMe] - “My company just instituted a “no headphones” policy…how can I deal?” I don’t know how you can expect someone to do a data-entry job without headphones. That’s just inhuman.
- 43 Folders [Chris Glass] [PNSFW] - “Backstory: Merlin and I met years ago when we were teenage girls on LiveJournal.” Chris Glass talks a bit about he ended up redesigning 43f. Love that guy.
- HollenbackNet - BigCityBaby - If you hadn’t put the pieces together yet, I’m about to need advice like Phil’s. And, wow!, did I ever dig his long article on big-city baby-having.
- You Tube - Inbox Zero - My Google Tech Talk on Inbox Zero is now available on the YouTube — previously it was only on the Google Video (now clocking in at 186,000 views)
- Five rejected Spice Girl personalities - “5. Emotionally-Unavailable Spice.” A long overdue 5ives update. One of three.
- I’m not usually one to get squeamish, but this wigged me… (kottke.org) - I’m not too squeamish either, Mr. Kottke, but this bastard crab is literally haunting my dreams. Dear Lord.
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Merlin Mann | Sep 23 2007
 How to catch a mouse without a mousetrap - 43f’s designer, Chris Glass, shares his humane mouse mojo. “Set the fella loose at least a mile away from your abode. Postnote: It worked within the hour.” - notes on ‘dancing monkey rss reader’ - “I would like an RSS reader with a button that says 'Gimme 5' and it loads only five posts people with similar subscriptions are reading within the last 24 hours.” I want something kinda related for email — show me exactly 5 messages that need a response (then, let me get back to work)
- Daring Fireball on switcher-come-latelies - “There’s a whole class of recent switchers who define ‘Apple fanboy’ as ‘anyone who’s been an enthusiastic Mac user since before I switched to the Mac.’”
 Name that Color - Chirag Mehta : chir.ag - “Being a typical guy, I have no clue what the colors Lavender and Mauve look like. You can show me Indigo and I won’t know if it’s more like Violet or Purple. So I made this little app where you can create a color on the screen (or copy-paste CSS hex# color) and find out the name of the closest matching color.”- greys : Java Glossary - Me? I love me some greys, and I like seeing them all at once with their hex codes. Handy.
- A List Apart: Articles: The Perfect 404 - Seems like a smarter person than me could make a pretty nice “similar to what you searched for” using Drupal and Views Fast Search. Sounds like a job for the Lazy Web. Any takers?
- someecards.com - “When you care enough to hit ‘send.’” Hilarious ecards, nearly all in terrible taste, and outfitted with awful Reagan-era clip art. Pure gold.
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