Macworld 2013

We are just a few days shy of Macworld and I can hardly wait. This year I feel more than ever that I need to get away and be among my MacSparky friends for a few days. I am really looking forward to this trip. I’m also going to be pretty busy. Here’s my schedule:

Thursday
12am – Mac Workflows with Macworld Magazine

This is at the Macworld Magazine booth on the second floor with Katie Floyd, Brett Terpstra, and Jeff Taekman. This will be a dense session with lots of great information.

2pm – The OmniFocus Setup

I’ll be over at the Cartoon Art Museum talking with a bunch of other smart people about OmniFocus

7pm – The OmniFocus 2 Debut

Join me, Merlin Mann, Ken Case, and some of the people from Omni as we look at the OmniFocus 2.

Friday

1pm – Mac Power Users Live Show

Katie and I will be on the main show floor doing a live Mac Power Users show. We’ll be doing lots of audience interaction and it will be fun.

5pm – iBooks Author Survival Guide Session

I’m going to give a presentation on how I use iBooks Author and my experience with the iBookstore.

Saturday

10am – Transporter Booth

I’m going to be at the Transporter booth talking about their great new product.

2pm – Self-Publishing Talk with Macworld Magazine

This is at the Macworld Magazine booth on the second floor with Adam Engst, Serenity Caldwell, and Marco Arment.

3pm – Meet the Podcasters with Smile

Katie and I will be at the Smile booth talking about how we use Smile apps and otherwise just having fun. This will be just a few hours before the show floor closes and I can think of no better place to close the show out.

To learn about the activities of some of my favorite writers and podcasters listen to this week’s Mac Roundtable.

If you’re at Macworld, please stop by and say hello. I love meeting readers and listeners. That is my primary reason for going to Macworld.

Also, if you’re an introvert (I certainly fit in that category), I’m telling you right now that MacWorld is the place for you to burst out of that shell. Make yourself uncomfortable and introduce yourself to people and make some new friends. You’re among family at Macworld and you won’t regret it. I’ll see you in San Francisco.

Home screen: David Chartier


me_surprised_400.jpg

As I prance through the Internet, I keep noticing that articles I particularly enjoy have David Chartier in the byline. David (Web) (Twitter) is a freelance writer who frequently contributes to some of the best tech sites, like Macworld and Ars Technica. David also does work with AgileBits, publishers of my beloved 1Password. David, I believe, is also the first guest to share his iPad mini home screen (though I suspect he won’t be the last). So David, show us your home screen.


IMG_0025.jpg

What are some of favorite apps?

How much time do we have? Let’s see, Evernote, Flipboard, Tumblr, Drafts, Day One, TextExpander, and Writing Kit off the top of my home screen. If I can diverge from the iPad for just a second, I also have to mention KitCam for iPhone. It feels like the epitome of everything we’ve learned about and want from a mobile camera for photos and videos.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

Right now I’d have to say Angry Birds: Star Wars. I know we’re all probably sick to death of them, but adding the Star Wars characters created some fun new game mechanics that I am fully prepared to admit have convinced me to in-app purchase all the levels.

What is the app you are still missing?

A to-do app for things and places. I have Things, I might switch back to OmniFocus, but I want an app for collecting books, movies, music, places, and other types of things that I want to try. This app needs to understand and display metadata about the thing I want to try. I want album art, movie ratings, Foursquare-like photos of the European city to which I want to travel with my wife… not just a list of names and checkboxes. Good idea David.

Springpad is a kitchen-sink Evernote competitor that works some metadata magic. It’s close, and its iOS apps are great and getting better so I might try it again for what I’m talking about. But I would prefer an app tuned for this specific purpose, and ideally not supported by advertising (or likely to be). Recall for iPhone is getting there, and Done Not Done adds some light, social smartness to that whole thing. But I still feel like my Moby App is out there… eluding me. Taunting me.

How many times a day do you use your iPhone/iPad?

Is this a trick question? Ok, I should probably break it down. My iPhone? Constantly. I keep it with me as a scratchpad for ideas (Drafts, Evernote, and Things), or to limit my social media usage when I really need to hunker down. Or simply as a flashlight to get around the house at night and to take the dogs out since I am often a night owl, my wife is a light sleeper.

When it comes to my iPad, it’s different. I’ve grown to love the portability and simplicity of iOS for many of the tasks for which it suits me, like reading, writing, outlining, basic sketching, researching (thanks to Writing Kit’s built-in browser), and more. That said, I’ll admit my Mac is still better for some tasks and situations, so I’d say my general work day is split about 80/20 Mac and iPad, maybe 85/15. But when it comes to after hours or anything that doesn’t absolutely require a Mac, I reach for my iPad more and more these days. Walking out of the house with nothing but a small, incredibly light satchel containing an iPad and maybe my Logitech Tablet Keyboard is incredibly liberating.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

That it can become any feature. The iPad and iPhone are designed to be blank canvases, from the first line of code to the final line drawn by Jonathan Ive. Whether I want to write, or tinker with my music and singing hobby, or dust off the drawing skills of my multimedia design degree, my iOS device becomes entirely devoted to that purpose with a single tap. It’s been five years and I’m still impressed by this aspect of the experience and platform that Apple built, and the immense creativity developers show in harnessing it.

If you were in charge at Apple, what would you add or change?

I would iterate iOS faster and add a layer for power users. As much as I love iOS, parts of it really do feel like they’ve stalled or fallen behind. iOS releases have become one major X.0 release per year, a couple of security fixes to follow, and then nothing until the preview of the next big X.0, then the release of said next X.0.

I really do think there is room for some kind of a “pro user” layer to iOS. Maybe it could be a giant red button, buried deep within Settings.app, which warns the user that they forfeit all software support for the remainder of their device’s warranty (but total hardware failure could still be covered if you have AppleCare+). The details are negotiable.

But utilities like TextExpander, Pastebot, and everything else handicapped by sandboxing and other iOS rules are incredibly useful. There has to be a way iOS can be safe and secure for the vast majority of users, yet offer the extra power for users that can knowingly harness it.

Anything else you’d like to share?

Thanks a ton for inviting me to this series. Be excellent to each other.

Thanks David

Drafts 2.5. Whoa.

There is a reason Drafts is in my iPhone dock.

The newest version of drafts just got really nerdy:

  • unlimited URL actions
  • Dropbox actions
  • action sharing
  • URL callbacks and workflow automation

So what does this pile of words mean? You can now add a level of automation to the iPhone that almost seems dirty. Go here and watch the video. If I wasn’t so busy right now, I’d drop everything and fiddle with this for hours.

∞

More Monospaced Fonts

Today I received several notes about monospaced fonts following yesterday’s post. Here are some more great monospaced fonts.

Bold Inconsolata

There is a Google Web font version of Inconsolata with bold. I’ve already upgraded.
via Luca Soldaini

Adobe Source Code Pro

This is a free font from Adobe and I’m really liking it. I’m trying it right now in Byword.
via Andy Taylor

Nitti

This is the font used in iA Writer and a lot of people love it. It costs €39.
also via Andy Taylor

Okay. I think monospaced fonts are out of my system now, for awhile.

In Praise of Inconsolata

I don’t have the pedigree that a lot of Mac geeks have for typography. I’m pretty sure John Gruber has more typeface related knowledge in his pinky than I do in my entire body. Nevertheless, I do get the benefit of using a monospaced font. I find monospaced fonts making writing easer, particularly in terms of grammar. There is no silly microspopic dot squished next to a trailing letter for a period. With a monospaced font that period (or comma or quotation mark or tilde or guillemet [yes, I went there]) gets its very own real estate just like any letter. After working in a monospaced font, you’ll probably feel the same.

For this purpose, I came across Inconsolata a few years ago. Raph Levien created Inconsolata and relased it for free with donations requested. Raph has since been scooped up by Google’s web font team. Smart move Google.

I’m not exactly sure how I found Inconsolata but I’m pretty sure Dan Benjamin had something to do with it. I just noticed this evening that I’ve now been using Inconsolata for a few years and I am not sick of it. That is saying something.

If you are curious, I usually eventually move words to a proportionally spaced font later in the proofreading process. It’s silly but switching the typeface after I’m used to it monospaced helps me find more typos, which is probably hard to believe if you regularly read this site.

Craftsmanship and My Father


Dad and Me in 1972

Dad and Me in 1972

Today is the 20th anniversary of my father’s death. My dad was awesome. Here is a reprint of my recent essay on Craftsmanship and My Father from the Read & Trust Magazine.

As words like craftsman and artisan come back into vogue, it is important to remember they are more than clever phrases for selling the latest geegaw. Indeed, I became obsessed with becoming a Craftsman 20 years ago.

You see, growing up, my father and I had very little in common. He grew up in Missouri where he shot his dinner while riding his horse home from school. I grew up in suburban California. Instead of firearms and horses, I rode bikes, obsessed on Star Wars, and programmed computers. Dad didn’t object to my interests. However, he didn’t understand me and I didn’t understand him. I was a geek. Dad was a craftsman. He sold lumber for a living and had a wood shop in the garage, where he’d spend his entire vacation building furniture. He obsessed on every little detail and made some really great stuff. I, meanwhile, was busy growing up, then attending college, and then law school, all the time with my head down. We loved each other. We told that to each other openly. However, we really didn’t get each other.

As the end of law school approached, I began to think more about my craftsman father and how much I could learn from him. He was newly retired and I planned on having more free time after the bar exams. We talked about it. We decided to start building furniture together. We both wanted to connect better and were excited to get started.

Then Dad got sick. First he got kind of sick, then he got really sick, and then he died. He spent his entire life working to support us and when he finally had time to pursue his passion, he died. I was six months shy of graduating law school, and after waiting 25 years to learn how to speak my dad’s language, I suddenly found my teacher was gone.

Cleaning out Dad’s shop after he died was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Losing him when we were finally figuring each other out broke my heart. He had so many new tools he’d been squirreling away as he edged toward retirement. He had a small wooden box (which he built, of course) full of plans and drawings. He had sketched and detailed most of the projects we’d been discussing without ever telling me. Like I said, my father was a craftsman.

So you can imagine the thoughts that ran through my head as I looked through those drawings with tears running down my face. At that moment, I decided that, hell or high water, I would become a craftsman just like dad. So I started my journey. In the years after that I spent countless hours in Dad’s and, eventually, my own wood shop. I taught myself with old copies of Fine Woodworking and lots of mistakes. Within a few years, I gravitated to old-school hand tool woodworking. I made my own tools with mail-ordered blades. I spent hours flattening and cutting walnut, mahogany, and maple. I bought books on intricate Japanese joinery and spent days cutting dovetails. I built some of those projects Dad sketched, which, in hindsight, I had to do. I even managed to keep all of my fingers. This whole journey was one long conversation with my dead father. In time, I became a craftsman.

Dad died on January 21, 1993 and as I sit here on the 20th anniversary of his death, I don’t spend as much time in the shop as I used to. My kids are growing and I’m busy raising them. I’ll get back out in the shop eventually but that really doesn’t matter. Whether or not I’m making wood shavings, I still consider myself a craftsman. I’m in the club. I apply those craftsman skills that I learned from dad and the the shop every day to everything I do, including writing these words.

Craftsmanship means caring about what you create. It means you measure twice and cut once. It means you look at what you are creating from every angle and don’t cut corners. In short, craftsmanship means you don’t ship crap and you never mail it in.

Now, more than ever, words come and go but craftsmanship is something I will hold dearly for the rest of my life.

January 26 Disneyland Meetup

Adam Christianson and I get together every few months for a nerd dinner. We are both Disneyland fans and we’ve been talking about meeting there one day forever. We are finally getting serious about it and we decided to invite anyone else to join us that is willing to brave a Saturday crowd and shell up the admission costs. So if you are in the Orange County area on January 26 (the Saturday before Macworld) and so inclined, head over to DisneyMacGeeks.com and sign up. It doesn’t look like a very big turnout but it will be fun anyway. We’ll take a picture in front of the castle, have a big meal, and share a few laughs.

So how deep are my roots at Disneyland you ask? This deep.


Skipper MacSparky

Skipper MacSparky