The Weekly Review

For anyone who has spent a good bit of time looking for the ‘perfect’ GTD binder/planner, this edition of Great Moments by Design may be for you.

I’ve wasted way too much time trying to find a planner that fit my exact specifications. I’m in a better place now, having reconciled myself to the fact that such a planner does not exist. But during my searching I looked into the whole do it yourself planner genre (check out this cool site if this interests you). I liked this concept - you create your own planner once and simply refill with various types of printed out templates when needed.

I never did order any of these products, but I did make my own planner. And I was happily surprised when I discovered the perfect templates were already available on my Mac. In iCal.

Printing

Designing printing functionality for applications seems a tricky business. Listen to any software developer for long and it appears that most of them do not look forward to this aspect of their particular application. Maybe that’s why so many apps do such a poor job of it. But not iCal. The good folks at Apple have got this right. Here is a screen of how the print screen looks:

There are some great default options here that make this a good option for a printed template. You can print daily, weekly or monthly views. You can also print out a certain period of time.

And if you are looking for a blank template, that can be done as well. Under the Calendars section I simply unchecked all of my calendars that have actual entries. I also created a blank ‘Print’ calendar that I leave checked. Now I have a blank printable template.

The best part I found was the daily view. It has a break down of the hours of the day on the left and blank space on the right. This is perfect for me - I like a space for hard events (calendar items) and space for general notes or brainstorming. I’ll also usually jot down a couple of my big rocks at the beginning of each day. This template meets all my need easily.

I think it’s also important to note that the printed pages look great. Many apps have a nice print preview, but the actual physical page just looks bad. Not here.

This is another example of application design that shows the developer(s) put in the extra effort to ensure end user enjoyment.

It’s funny how ideas for blog posts come to you. I have multiple drafts of articles I would like to write sitting in MarsEdit, and I always set a goal to complete one of them on any given day. But nine times out of ten some random thought will hit me while in the shower or out for a run and that’s what I’ll end up writing about. I guess most people would call that inspiration or creative juices etc. And that’s one of the big reasons I started this blog - to start working on my creative muscles

I preface tonight’s post with this explanation because that’s how this post came to be. I was out for a run tonight and started thinking about some of the articles I wanted to finish up very soon. This past week I’ve been focused on GTD and it’s close cousin, simplification. I’ve already simplified the hardware in my life by simply removing mostly everything I owned except for my Macbook and it’s accessories. Last week I did the same with my software. You see, I am an application polygamist. Desktop or web-based software, I like to try it all and grow my harem. Seriously though, I realize that I’ve invested a lot of time in applications I will never use, nor even have a use for. It was time to simplify.

More to follow on that thought soon.

The Struggle

So while running this evening I started thinking again about what it really means to follow the concepts that make up GTD. And how that fits with being a christian. One is focused on tasks and the completion thereof (on the surface at least). The other is focused on relationships. My relationship with God, and my relationships with my fellow man. I started wondering if these two seeming opposites could be reconciled.

If you closely examine the life of Christ, you see that He was never focused on tasks. At least not earthly ones. He was always on the lookout for the next opportunity to glorify Himself and His Father. Doing so almost always took the form of performing miracles - healing the sick, feeding the poor or raising the dead. And above all giving hope.

But when it came to things like stopping at the market to get some food or to be at the synagogue for a speaking engagement, He invested little to no thought or energy (sometimes much to the chagrin of His disciples and followers). He went out of His way to seek out less fortunate souls who needed His message. He was clearly focused on relationships.

So why am I even worrying about this whole topic? Because I know myself. Let me explain.

When I’m at work and getting things done, if someone knocks at the door, my initial, automatic reaction is annoyance at the interruption. And I often struggle to think to myself, “How can I meet this person’s need and how can I communicate God’s love to them?” There is no doubt that it’s necessary to invest time and energy into my job, my home and the other areas in my life that require work. And it’s also okay to try to get that work done in an organized fashion. But when it becomes the number one priority, then it’s a problem.

But It’s the Man, Not the Tools

I’ve thought this idea through a lot in the last year and I know that GTD is not the problem. It’s me. Over the years I’ve grown into this task based person.

But in fact, when you look closely at the concepts of GTD, it fits the needs of anyone. Just look at the title of David’s book - “Getting Things Done - The Art of Stress Free Productivity.” David recognized that we are in a time when information comes at people faster and in greater quantities than they can handle. This will inevitably stress us out. The whole purpose of GTD is to reduce that stress.

A Christians first resource for stress relief and perspective should clearly be God. But we can also apply the concepts of GTD and benefit from the results. Making the best use of my time to complete tasks means less stress. Less stress means better relationships. And that’s what being a Christian should always be about - serving the needs of others, even above our own.

So I’ve enjoyed my week of pruning and look forward to publishing some more GTD/simplification focused content very soon.

Nathan Smith from SonSpring published a new site recently intended to make his new grid system framework available for others. He summarized the whole package really nicely on his personal blog today.

After reading the whole post, it’s pretty clear that Nathan knows his business. If you are into web design and like the idea of grid based design (I am, which is why I use Derek’s grid focus wp theme), check out what Nathan has generously made available.

Now that all the discussion around Apple pushing Safari on Windows users is winding down, people are starting to focus on the improvements in the newest browser for Windows.

So far the biggest complaint seems to be still be centered on the font rendering. Ars posted a review today and reviewer Ken Fisher had this to say about the use of OS X font rendering in an app for Windows:

I know some readers are going to e-mail me and extol the ways in which Safari’s font rendering encapsulates the ephemeral origins of the written word or some other such nonsense, but it comes down to a basic point: all of the anti-aliased text on Windows is rendered using ClearType. When your app uses a different scheme, it looks broken because it looks different.

I thought this when Safari was originally released for Windows and I’m thinking it again - this has to be a personal preference rather than a default fact. Reading on Safari in Windows has never looked blurry to me, at any text size.

I feel confident saying this. A big part of the reason I prefer OS X over Windows is simply the look and feel. When doing comparisons between the two, a lot of focus is placed on features and compatibility. But I think that even if people cannot articulate it, OS X just feels more comfortable (I’m referring to people who have actually tried the platform). And to me, that comfort is largely imbued by the gorgeous way text is displayed. Using Safari in Windows feels the same to me as it does in OS X.

Now I’m not downplaying the fact that a ported application should behave as a native application (we certainly complain that Firefox is not Mac-ish often enough). Nor am I stating that some people do not find text blurry in Safari on Windows. I’m simply stating my belief that this is a preference rather than a hard fact and should be treated as such.

If people want to complain about this whole scenario, I say keep focusing on the sneaky addition of the browser in the software updater. But once the browser is actually on a Windows machine, I say kudos to Apple for giving all those poor folks a little taste of what they’re missing.

Interesting post in the NYTs today under the Shifting Careers column. The author, Marci Alboher, posts some compelling thoughts about the different ways people use newer, social web applications. She spends most of her time talking about Facebook.

Here is one line in the article that really resounded with me:

At the moment, I’m not sure I have any conclusions about all this except that we are living in a moment when all our tools of connection can both deepen our relationships and cheapen them.

I can relate to that thought.

Like a lot of folks, I often switch my default browser in OS X. It’s great that there are so many good options out there these days, but sometimes I’ve wished I could just pick one and stick with it. Ever since upgrading to Leopard though, I’ve found myself sticking with Safari.

Micro Improvements

With Safari 3.0, there was a small change that I didn’t even realize was there until I’d used it for almost two months. Even though it was included right on the Safari features page on Apple’s website, I’d somehow missed the update. The change - being able to drag tabs from one Safari window to another. This has been a pleasure for me, especially when working in web apps like Google Docs, where every action seems to result in a new window opening.

And more recently, with the update to Safari 3.1, Apple implemented the ability to open a new tab by double clicking on the tab bar. Another small but positive change.

Both of these changes are relatively minor. But both being focused on the users interaction, to me they are small changes that improve the user experience in a big way. It’s another case of design that enhances my enjoyment of using my computer.

If you are curious about how Time Machine actually works, both the interface and the behind the scenes code, this post by Sven-S. Porst is the best I’ve seen.

Not long after starting this site I found myself wishing I had configured a few things differently. I’ve mentioned this before and have made some changes since going live. Another item I’ve wanted to add was a time based historical archive.

Most Wordpress themes come with an archive. And I really like the way Derek created the categorical archives for the grid focus theme (click archives in the nav bar above to observe). But I also wanted a reverse chronological list of all activity for my site. I thought this would be a fairly easy task to complete and that there would be a large variety of configurable plugins to meet my needs. I know next to nothing when it comes to php so I was hoping someone else had made it easy for people like me.

Well, the whole idea took longer than I thought to implement and learning a bit more PHP was required to get the exact result I wanted. I had some trouble finding really helpful tutorials online so I thought I would share what I learned. Hopefully others will find this useful.

Archive Plugins

First thing I did was find a archive plugin that had some configuration options. I ended up using Smart Archives from Justin Blanton. He’s built in a couple of options for different styles of lists - a block list of years and months or a reverse chronological lists of posts. The latter was exactly what I was looking for.

Below is a screen of the default page after installing the plugin and adding a bit of styling to my sites CSS:

But I also wanted the date beside each post title. This is where reading the code was needed.

The PHP

So I opened up the smartarchives.php file in Coda and looked around. The first thing I had to do was add the post date to the SQL statement retrieving records from the wordpress database. Pretty easy - I added the , post_date to the select statement shown here:

The next step was to get the post date values to display along with the post titles. This was also fairly simple. I added the following values to the statement below: .$post->post_date.

This results in the date then a space and then the post title. But the date defaults with the exact post time included, which I didn’t want. You can see the results here:

So the last step was to display the date only without the time. This turned out to be the trickiest part due to my lack of php knowledge. Finding the correct syntax for the date function was not hard. Here’s how is should look:

But it took me a few minutes to get the correct syntax for creating the echo string. Finally I realized that the pieces of html are encapsulated in single quotes and the pieces of php are encapsulated in periods. So here is the entire string including post date and post title:

The Archive Page

So now the archive page is formatted as I wanted. The results now look a bit cleaner without the time - see here:

Now I’m happy with the look of the page. And I wrote these steps down for people like myself - no extensive php knowledge, but comfortable in a text editor and familiar with programming basics. I’m sure php gurus out there could have got this done in less than five minutes. And if anyone has a better way to implement this idea, please let me know.

All the credit to Justin - he’s built a great plugin to get started. All I did was mess around make a few minor tweaks to fit my needs. If your wordpress theme does not make use of an archive page already, check out Justin’s plugin.

Thanks also to Chris Leboe for some good php tips regarding the format of the dates.

There has been plenty to read over the past few weeks since Apple demoed the iPhone SDK. I’ve enjoyed reading the different thoughts of my favorite OS X app developers, especially regarding Apple’s 30% cut of all application sales.

And I think Steven Frank summed it up the best:

They aren’t just taking your money and giving you nothing back — they’re putting your apps directly in front of EVERY SINGLE person who can possibly use your product. If you can’t see the value of that, then I don’t know what else to tell you.

If you’ve got a spare few minutes this holiday weekend, check out Paul Graham’s latest essay. Titled, ‘You Weren’t Meant to Have a Boss’, he expounds his idea of the differences between working for a small (very small) company and larger organizations. You may not agree with everything he says, but it’s a thought provoking read.