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Some links for Tuesday, 19 February 2008:

• Things - Task Management on the Mac: I’ve just tinkered with this a bit, but it’s really polished. Too bad I’m stuck with Windows at work.
• The Anonymity Experiment: via kottke: “We don’t know what information is being collected about us, whom it’s being shared with, what it’s being used for, or where it’s being held.” Scary stuff. Makes me want to retire to my hideout and work on my manifesto.
• OpenCongress: Maybe a web 2.0 look will make people pay attention to what our leaders are up to. Lots of good information here. Information we should all watch. Congress works for us, people.

There’s been a bit of buzz recently about The Commons Flickr pool from the Library of Congress. The Library has posted some of its collection on Flickr so people can access part of the archives and also help in tagging the photos. I like this idea. Not only do we get to see some pretty amazing historical photographs, but this effort is a great example of what the web is good for.

Personally, I’ve been pretty blown away by these pictures. In particular, I find the 1930s-40s in Color collection astounding. I’ve seen plenty of Depression and WWII era photos before, but all in black and white. These images pop in color, the people moving from Historical Subject to Real People. Kind of makes it all hit home. These were all real people, and they look pretty much like we do now.

Anyone with a significant amount of digital photographs and an organizational preoccupation will know what kind of effort can be involved in organizing a collection can be. Imagine having millions of pictures. Imagine having millions of pictures that you didn’t take, of people you don’t know, of places you’ve never seen. How do you organize that? So the Library of Congress has outsourced the work to a group of digital photography enthusiasts. This is harnessing the collaborate nature of the current web in a manner we don’t see much, especially with government institutions. And Flickr users are, on the whole, a communal and friendly lot. Everyone wins.

However, some people are idiots.

Take a look at this picture. Or this one. What kind of person would leave insensitive and rude remarks on photos like these. It’s almost as if we need some oversight to block this kind of digital defacement–but that kind of goes against the spirit of the network, right?

Here’s the thing: We have all these new open communities on the web. People interact with one another in ways thought impossible just a few years ago. Especially young people. The freedom and lack of rules really foster this type of communication. But when the freedom is abused — as in making off these off color comments — it makes our entire society look ignorant. When you see a picture of a guy whose face is black with coal dust from working 12 hours in a mine with inadequate safety equipment, and then proceed to make a joke about the guy’s outfit, the entire group suffers. Suddenly, anyone using Flickr looks like a self-absorbed dolt with absolutely no sense of history.

Those of us on the web today are a pretty lucky bunch. On the whole, we have a lot of the things we want, get enough to eat, don’t lose sleep over bands of marauding raiders. But this wasn’t necessarily the case for people in these photos. This isn’t necessarily the case for a lot of people in the world today. We probably shouldn’t forget that.

My wife is an extremely hard worker. Recently she was awarded an iPod Touch from her company for her work on a difficult project. With this, my wife has taken a decisive lead in our household iPod arms race. My third generation iPod is getting a little long in the tooth, so I’m auditioning for replacement in the not so distant future. This little thing goes with me everywhere, making commutes and waiting rooms enjoyable. It would be nice to be able to watch video and maybe look at some pictures once in awhile. However, I seem to have trouble committing to a new model.

On one hand, I like the idea of packing up every media file I own to cart around on an 160Gb iPod. But do I need to carry everything with me all the time? Don’t I have a lot of music that I never listen to? And how often am I away from my computer for syncing anyway? Wouldn’t the sleek form factor of a new Nano much more convenient?

My wife complicated this first world problem further when she walked in the door with this new iPod Touch. To be honest, I never really considered the iPod Touch. Until I touched it, that is.  I just didn’t get it. But once I started flipping through album covers on this device, something clicked. This little object had been solely a music player a few years ago. But now it’s evolving into something much more.

It’s tough at times for our analog brains to make the leap to digital. What was once a music player has evolved into a music and video player, photo viewer, email client, web surfing tool, online mapping, etc. While I was preoccupied with the device as a media player, I was missing out on the idea that devices like these are going to move into a more central role in the lives of many people. Instead of something attached to our computer, these devices become what we use instead of our computers. The relationship between our devices has changed.

What made me pause when I first ran a greasy finger across the iPod Touch’s screen was that it reminded me of something: one device to rule them all. For years, I’ve fantasized about a portable device that would become the center of our computing world. The idea of a work computer and a home computer always frustrated me. This is all my data, so I should be able to get at it anywhere, right? I was totally surprised when someone had created this device while I wasn’t paying attention.

The environment I envision looks like this:

• All your data (documents, music, pictures, etc) exists on the device.
• While on the go, you can access the data in limited ways: listen to music, view pictures, go online, edit text and spreadsheets, enter contacts and appointments, etc.
• Once you plug the device into any computer, the device becomes an attached drive. You can use the applications on the computer to do more advanced file manipulation: edit photos, advanced word processing, watch movies on the larger monitor, etc. You also back up the device while connected.

This vision appeals to me so much because it would allow one to carry one’s whole digital life in a small package. You could use any available computer without ever leaving your own little environment. What’s more, you could actually pull out the item on the bus and access the data. How very Cory Doctorow!

More classic PDAs got close to this. Very close. But not with the grace and UI of the iPod Touch. Even if you can’t edit Word  documents on the Touch — or even access it as an external drive — the UI metaphor still comes closer to my vision than any PDA I’ve used in the past.

The iPod Touch isn’t the end all. There are still significant hurdles. There is no file manipulation on the Touch. And all the music is locked away in iTunes. And  even 32 Gb isn’t nearly enough room for everything. Further, flash memory isn’t well-suited for lots of read/writes. Still, with the software development kit coming from Apple this month, it may not be long until we see a word processing application for the Touch. It may not be long until we truly have a device from Science Fiction in our hands.

Some links for Tuesday, 12 February 2008:

• Organize Yourself- Create Your Own Personal Personnel File: I’m starting a new job soon (on top of our recent move), so this feels like a good time to make sure I’m keeping track of everything I need to. (via Lifehacker)
• Developing an improved online environment for educating computer users: There’s a bigger story here that I’d like to flesh out. Back in my tech writing days, I was always frustrated by the industry’s inability to shift its paradigm of how to present information. Everyone seemed to just take a standard user manual, shove it on the web, and call it online. There is an increasing divide between technical and non-technical users, and it’s about time we started using some new tactics to close the gap.
• Watt Watt: Haven’t had a lot of time to drill into this, but this site talks a lot about energy consumption and alternative power sources. (via Make)
• Louis Theroux’s Weird Weekends on Google Video: I used to love Theroux’s show and am delighted to see it online.

I’ve got some baggage. Rather, I’ve got a thing for baggage. I’m always on the lookout for the perfect bag for some specific activity. Disc golf, hiking, geocaching, work. You get the idea. Everything should have its place, I say. All my gear should be ready to go, allowing me to grab the appropriate bag and hit the door for adventures unknown.

The thing is: I rarely have adventures. I’ve got work and dogs to walk and prime time television to watch, just like everyone else. I’m uncomfortable in rental cars. I dislike airports. And with a small child, the potential for adventure travel is somewhat limited. But this doesn’t stop me from browsing REI for a better daypack.

Whenever I travel, at some point I find myself organizing my gear, making sure everything is accounted for and in the right place. I never noticed any of my friends doing this. Anal-retentiveness, I suppose. But I should wonder what it is I am really doing when I find myself sorting through my stuff, when I find myself making doubly sure pens and keys and batteries are all in the proper pockets. Am I worried about my stuff, or trying to maintain some control over life itself?

Maybe this is all just anal-retentiveness. But lately, I’m questioning my motives, my purpose. As a father, I spend a lot of time thinking about how I want to raise our son. I want to instill in him a sense of wonder in the world, a hunger for curiosity that will make him want to see what’s around the next bend (even if it is just another bend after that). I have this fantasy of going on family vacations. On these vacations, I would keep all my essentials in one small bag. This would teach my son how to travel light yet remain prepared, how to not fixate on “stuff”. Then my fantasy seems to derail into an itemized list of what exactly I would keep in this bag. And how would I use this bag? If we go hiking, do I dump everything out and load it up with hiking stuff? Or do I grab another bag?

This all seems to miss the point, if you ask me.

Maybe keeping myself organized is a way to overcompensate for the randomness of life. But it’s a sucker’s bet. You can’t prepare for life by keeping necessary items close at hand. The only thing you can do is remain flexible, ready for anything. Ready for change.

So not only is organization a deceptive activity, it also leads you away from how to truly remain prepared. While I am increasingly obsessed with having the proper bag for the proper situation. To be ready for life is to keep things easy, to not worry about keeping things organized. Keeping things orderly places too much emphasis on the items themselves.

I realize that I can never teach my son these things I wish to teach him because I don’t know them myself. Not yet. It seems I’m much more likely to instill a sense of organizational paranoia and object worship in my son–hardly the best gift a parent can give.

On the other hand, I think of my Boy Scout motto: Be Prepared. I’d also like to be the kind of father who is ready for any crisis that might emerge. But not at the expense of carrying a purse.

You have to remember what’s important. And usually it’s not anything kept in any bag.

I like to see to see people who are way into something. Maybe it’s model trains. Maybe it’s political punditry. Whatever flips your switch, I say go for it. All the way. Too far is where you always want to go, to paraphrase Patton Oswalt. We have enough people in this nation hanging out in front of the TV, never following a passion for anything.

The downside if this can be a loss of perspective. It’s easy enough to forget that the rest of the world doesn’t care that there were significant storyline anachronisms in the final season of Farscape.

This is why I want to applaud Leo Laporte. TWIT (This Week in Tech) is Leo’s wonderful podcast featuring a number of minds sharing insightful views about weekly technology news. But even these folks can lose sight of the larger picture at times. However, I was pleased to see the panel in TWIT #129 step outside the fold a bit. The group was discussing the new Mac laptop, the ultra thin MacBook Air. In general, they were unimpressed. But the interesting part came when Leo noted how the current economic downturn puts such a fetish device in perspective. It’s not often that you see people downplay the role of their interests in the bigger picture, especially people who make their living in these fields.

Perspective is always good to see, especially in journalism.

But I still want a MacBook Air.

My friend in Texas makes the best mixes. Mixes full of eclectic, evocative songs. His latest tells the story of the birth of his son as a rock opera. This is good stuff. I don’t speak to my friend very often, but when one of these CDs mysteriously lands on my doorstep, it’s a reunion of sorts. I get a peek at his thoughts, his moods, his life.

A true mix, a good mix, is something other than a collection of favorite songs. A mix tells a story, communicates a message to the listener. A mix is something for other people.

Making mixes is easier than ever, so I’m surprised I don’t see more of these around. (Maybe the fact that I am long out of high school has something to do with it, but I’m not convinced.) In the glam days of the 80s, you had to cue up two tape decks, hit record at the proper moment, pause between tracks, add up minutes (45 per side!), check counters, and on and on. Even after CDs, creating a mix involved several evenings of drinking heavily while listening to random CDs and scratching out notes before inevitably calling an ex-girlfriend. Here’s the point when I praise technology. Since I digitized all my music for my iPod, everything is ready to go. All I need to do is create a new playlist and burn it.

Sure, the quality isn’t great, but I’m no audiophile. This isn’t about distributing music anyway; it’s about telling someone a story. What would be great is if I could create a playlist, upload it to the iTunes music store, and buy copies of the whole mix for my friends to download. Hey, other people could buy it, too.

I doubt artists (or record companies) would go for this. People go to a lot of trouble to make albums. Who am I to cut up their story arc because I think a White Stripes song segues well into a Johnny Cash classic? But there’s also the argument that we are becoming a commodity culture–we already buy songs a la carte. Maybe it’s time to allow new formats like this. Maybe it’ll increase sales by providing a benefit for buying electronic music. It could make some money.

My last mix was entitled Dirty Girls: Songs about mean, troubled, and generally uncivilized women. I think it took me six months of tinkering before I gave up and called it done, but it was fun. At best, I entertained a few friends. At a minimum, I rediscovered a few tracks in my archive without drunk dialing anyone. I have a couple of more ideas on deck:

• Waking up in a Hotel in the Desert Next to Liz Phair
• But Dad, I Don’t Want to be an Astronaut!
• Camaros and Monte Carlos: A Tribute

I’ll let you know how it goes in about eighteen months.

Part 2

Last time, we watched our hero pursue organizational insight from paper to digital and back to paper before ultimately becoming on of those Mac people. Will he prevail in his struggle against organizational chaos? Will he give up and concentrate on just living life? Continue on to find out!

Handheld Redux

After trading my venerable HP tower for an iBook (on which I am typing this, incidentally), I started wondering how to get all the data from my hip Mac apps into some kind of digital format.

Sensing this (or reading the notes I left around the house), my wife surprised me with a new Palm organizer for Christmas. I was back in the game.

The Palm synced seamlessly with my laptop and I found a a lot of good freeware apps. List keeping was never better. And e-books! I’d forgotten about e-books! And solitaire! These were old friends returning to the tavern.

Again, I don’t know what happened. After a couple of months, I stopped using the Palm. It seemed like too much work. I had finally started to understand that time spent fiddling with a system wasn’t really time spent accomplishing anything. Planning to do something isn’t really the same thing as doing that thing.

I feel the same guilt as with the Axim. The Palm is in a fancy shoebox under the bed. Right on top of the Franklin (Covey) planner. Like I might pick either one up any day now.

Moleskine

By now, it was 2006 and the GTD craze was in full swing. Sites like 43 Folders and Lifehacker created communities for people just like me to gather and discuss organizational preoccupations. I must thank Merlin Mann for making my affliction cool. Well, maybe not so cool, but at least I wasn’t alone anymore.

I flirted with online web applications for tracking lists and projects. But these always felt cumbersome. I also didn’t like the idea of having to be online all the time. Portability is always important, as I do a lot of my best planning in the bathroom.

The Moleskine notebook became a hallmark of these communities. I’d been keeping these simple black notebooks for a couple of years for my journals, but had never considered using one as a planner. A former co-worker and fellow productivity geek showed me how he’d set up his Moleskine. My curiosity was peaked. I’d always been concerned with how you would keep a bound book tidy as a planner. You couldn’t add or remove pages. It wouldn’t scale well. But the point was to just go with it, don’t worry about tidy, worry about doing.

I checked out some of the intricate hacks people had devised around this little notebook and was sold. I could be as crazy as I wanted to be and no one would notice. For ten dollars. I bought a pocket notebook the next day.

My first step was to divide the notebook into sections. A section for lists, a section for projects, a section for notes, a section for To Dos, and so on. Back to my old scheming ways, capturing everything like a GTD ninja.

Exactly six months later, I realized I was out of control. I spent a lot of time looking at my lists, tweaking project plans, making notes…and very little time getting anything accomplished. Further, this was all pointless, personal, pet projects. This was 1999 all over again. But I’d replaced the battered Franklin planner with a hipster cliche.

There is no rehab for this kind of thing. So I just quit.

Sanity

Responsibility finally drove me from the forest. With a baby the grandparents refer to as “extremely active”, a move to a new city, and so on, time is at a premium. And I’d rather be enjoying my free time with my wife and son (and even the dogs, at times) instead of fretting over some pointless project. Sure, I still have pet projects. But only a few and I try to keep them useful. Like keeping our files in order or scanning important papers. It’s all about clarity of thought. If something is worth doing, just do it. Don’t plan on doing it.

I also realize that some kind of system is necessary to maintain this clarity of thought. I don’t want to wake in a panic because I can’t remember what kind of primer is best for Warmachine figures. So here is my system:

• Contacts: Address Book on my laptop. Syncs with my iPod.
• Calendar: Google Calendar. Syncs with iCal on my laptop, which in turn syncs with my iPod.
• Email: Gmail
• To Dos: 3 x 5 notecard in my pocket. Only things I actually plan on doing in the immediate future.
• Passwords: In my wallet. If I lose that, these are the least of my concerns.
• Projects and Lists: A few text files on my laptop, mostly for gifts to buy, books to read, and projects I might want to do someday. As I said, important stuff, like preparing emergency escape bags for my family and tagging all my digital photos.
• Notes: Small notebook in my pocket. So I never miss an idea for a thrilling blog post or really bad short story. Really bad. And really short.

And that’s it. The point was for me to worry about what you need to do, what you really want to do and forget the rest. And then just do what you say you will. All the cumbersome technology and productivity flowcharts in the world can’t really help if you can’t get past that idea.

But then again, it’s time for me to get a new phone. And I hear I can get a Blackberry cheap….

Part 1

While the baby sleeps, I am busy adding album art to music in iTunes. Truly a twenty-first century problem if ever there was one. This one of the nagging little projects that tend to eat up my free time. I have several, all of which are about as useful as linking little pictures of album covers to MP3 files.

I’ve been this way for as long as I can remember. And this has lead me down a path looking for the perfect organizational solution. This is a long path. A sad path. Consider yourself warned.

Before I begin, I should note that I have never had an issue staying organized at work. I’ve always been able to keep my priorities in line with rather simple lists. This obsession with productivity applies only to my own pet projects. There is probably a lesson in that. But I have no time for lessons right now.

The Pre-Digital Days

It all started my first day of high school. It’s not often that one can pinpoint the exact moment of downfall, so I like to remember this. In homeroom, 8:21 am on August 29, 1989, I was handed the ECHO: Edgewood something Homework Organizer. This was a small, spiral-bound notebook where we could write down our homework assignments. When I think about it now, it seems like a pretty good idea. Have you ever tried to get a fourteen year old to do anything? Imagine trying to make a couple hundred of them take ownership of their own educations.

I used the ECHO for two days.

This really wasn’t an issue. I was a pretty orderly kid and never had much of a problem keeping my homework in line. This freed up plenty of time to work on my mullet.

Before I left for college, my stepmother gave me a Franklin Planner. It was the best thing ever. Being away from home, I suddenly had a need for an address book. And a real calendar. And there was lots more homework. Lots. This was the big shock of college I never quite got over.

I used the Franklin Planner all the way through college and into my first real job. Over time, I strayed from the Franklin methodology and used only monthly calendars, address pages, and blank paper. Blank paper was for lists, and I loved me some lists.

CDs to buy, books to read, places to visit, bills to pay, Things Never to Drink Again. You name it, and I had a list for it. To some, this may have been a cry for help from an unfulfilling job and vastly empty social life. To me, it was an intricate system of knobs and switches by which I could control my life. In fact, I used to really enjoy sitting down and rewriting all my lists–almost as much as marking completed items off a list.

By 2000, it was time to move up in technology. I’d been working in the IT industry for a couple of years and it was high time my red-Ford-Ranger-driving bad self went digital.

Handheld

Well versed in my affliction, my mother gave me an electronic organizer for Christmas. An eight megabyte Handspring Visor. This was the new best thing ever. My contacts, my appointments, even my precious lists were all there in grayscale glory. Passwords we secure! Not to mention solitaire games and e-books. Without this little device, I probably wold not have found Cory Doctorow when I did.

Truly, this was an enlightened time. Tinkering with my lists became even more fun. This was a good couple of years. And I ruined it by getting greedy.

In 2002, I went back to school. I noticed a lot of folks were carrying Windows Mobile PDAs. Color screens, wireless web browsing, Excel. Excel! I decided it was time to upgrade. Credit card debt notwithstanding, I ordered a Dell Axim post-haste. It was the new best thing ever.

For about two weeks.

To this day, I can’t really pinpoint the problem with the Axim. I see it in its tomb (a box at the top of the closet) occasionally and feel shame. Sure, it was clunky. Sure, Windows Mobile crashed all the time. Sure, the interface was counter-intuitive. But I still feel that I was the one who failed here. I could have tried a little harder to make things work out.

Finishing my MBA, I treated myself to a new Franklin planner. Now, Franklin Covey. Sleek, black leather. I immediately set about making my lists all over again. But something wasn’t right. It felt contrived. I’d been touched by digital convenience and wasn’t sure if I’d be able to go back.

Back to Basics

Fortunately, my organizational chaos did not toss me down the dark chasm of despair. By this time, I had a fiance and didn’t need these little lists and projects to prop me up. Thankfully, this woman was patient enough to let me figure this out and is understanding enough to allow me pointless projects.

So I went on for a year or so making my little lists. I was faking it, but it didn’t really matter.

After we were married, I bought a Mac–first one since college–and all was good. I kept my calendar in iCal, my addresses in Address Book. I typed up my lists and printed them out onto pages for my Franklin (Covey) Planner. And I began to think, “You know, it would be neat to somehow keep all these things digital…”

And so goes the cycle. Tune in next time for more hot handheld action, a resurgence of Luddite methodology, and the possible return of our hero to something like sanity.

At some point, around sixteen years old, I chose a path, a path away from twenty-sided dice and angry orcs. Sixteen years later, at 9am one Saturday morning, I found myself sitting around a table at GenCon Indy playing a Dual Dungeon Duel.

Likewise, after years of relative video game disinterest, I found myself last week on the receiving end of an ass whipping via Wii Sports Boxing from my loving wife.

I’m not one to believe in fate. Our lives take wandering paths via everyday decisions. For instance, not studying for a Calculus 2 exam my freshman year has ended up with me sitting at this table writing these words. Had I done a little better on that test, I may not have switched schools. Had I not switched schools, I would not have made the friends who pointed me toward my first real job. Had I not taken the first job, I would not have moved to the second job where I met my wife. On so on. Because small decisions (at the time) yield much larger impacts in our lives, it’s hard for me to swallow that I am part of some great cosmic chain spinning toward my True Destiny.

After all, what kind of cosmic chain would want me to spend time painting tiny pewter steampunk miniatures?

When it first recurred, I was a little ashamed of my proclivity for geekiness. Mind you, this was before Sci Fi became cool again via Lost and Heroes. I thought of my hobbies and interests as childish, immature. Decidedly unmanly.

Slowly, I understood that my hobbies weren’t rooted in the cosmos, but rather in cultural artifact. They say a man’s physical condition in his twenties directly impacts his health in his forties. The theory is that our body somehow takes a benchmark in our youth that influences, how it will age. (Full disclosure: I am not a doctor. I don’t have any doctor friends or neighbors, either. It’s not that kind of neighborhood.) I think our minds take a similar snapshot of interests at a more innocent time, and this snapshot determines our hobbies at a later time.

So what was I doing at 14? Playing Dungeons and Dragons and Nintendo. What am I doing at 33? Playing Dungeons and Dragons and Nintendo.

This is not to say I’m about to start sneaking beers after halftime at the football game, but some things stick with us. Other hobbies, such as hiking and camping, I can trace directly to my days as a Boy Scout.

I think of my father and his friends who have much more manly pursuits involving old cars. My dad came age in the Days of Sheer Unadulterated Horsepower, so it follows that he would spend his time working on and showing off cars. I’d like to see demographic trending data on hobby participants. Who is building model railroads? Who is restoring old cars? Do these hobbies wax and wane over time, or simply disappear altogether?

Perhaps it’s self-preservation. We start aging and our minds kick us back to the things we liked to do in youth. We forget about the intervening years and tolls on our failing bodies.

It’s hard to think about getting old when you are busy fighting off a band of angry orcs.

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