There are a couple of podcast milestones of note. Allison Sheridan’s Nosillacast recorded its 500th episode tonight. 500. Wow. Also, Victor Cajiao, after taking a few year hiatus is back in the game. Victor’s new podcast with George Starcher is called Artechulate. At this point they are just at episode 0 but I expect big things from those two.
Jazz Friday: Night in Tunisia and “The Break”
There is a jazz classic, called Night in Tunisia written by Dizzy Gillespie and Frank Paparelli in 1942. It’s a great song that starts with this sort-of desert vamp that’s infectious. The bass line really sells it. According to Wikipedia, Night in Tunisia is available on 500 different currently available CD’s. If you play the below YouTube clip you’ll probably recognize it.
I love this song but for me the story goes deeeper. Back when I was a teenager and obsessed on jazz while surrounded by a group of friends that also obsessed on jazz, we often talked about “the break”. The break is a portion of Night in Tunisia after they finish the first run-through of the melody. Before the first soloist starts, the band comes to an abrupt stop and the soloist gets a few bars of silence to perform the be-bop equivalent of shredding. In the above recording, the break is played by Charlie Parker at the 1:18 mark. It’s glorious. My jazz-nerd pals and I would always challenge each other to see who could “break” better. To this day, every time I listen to this song I always stop what I’m doing when the song gets to the break and smile.
There are several notable breaks worth mentioning. In addition to the one by Charlie Parker (iTunes), I’d also recommend checking out Ella Fitzgerald’s break (iTunes). Finally, for fun, you should watch Dizzy play Night in Tunisia below. He brought so much joy to jazz. Also, Arturo Sandoval crushes the break at 1:50. If you watch the whole video, there are several breaks. At the end, Dizzy explains how he wrote the song. I’m pretty sure you’ll smile at least once while watching.
Home Screens: Katie Floyd’s iPad
In our most recent Mac Power Users episode, Katie and I talked about our home screens. At the end I convinced Katie to share her iPad home screen at MacSparky and here it is. One of the highlights of my life is taking time every week to make the Mac Power Users with Katie Floyd (website) (Twitter). So Katie, show us your home screen.
What are some of favorite apps?
I have a common morning routine with the iPad. I’ll check email using Apple’s Mail.app, review my RSS feeds with Mr. Reeder and check Twitter using Tweetbot all before I get out of bed. As time allows I’ll also check in with the Mac Power Users Community on Google Plus and maybe catch up on a few items I’ve saved to my Instapaper queue.
For work and school related projects I live by apps like OmniFocus, OmniOutliner, PDFpen and Evernote. As we discussed on the Mac Power Users Tech in Education episode, I keep all my notes in OmniOutliner and supporting material is either in Dropbox or Evernote. Most of these documents are PDFs which I read and annotate using PDFpen. The beauty of this workflow is thanks to various sync services everything is available on any of my Macs or on the iPad.
Which app is your guilty pleasure?
I’ve never been a gamer so I don’t have a single game on my iPhone or iPad. So I guess if I had to pick a “guilty pleasure” it would have to be a social media related App like Tweetbot or Facebook. I seldom post to Facebook but do like it for keeping up with old friends. I love interacting with friends and followers through Twitter.
What is the app you are still missing?
I’m still missing a really great App for taking notes. Notability is probably the best but the dream is to be able to take notes on the iPad as easily and clearly as I do on a pad of paper. Unfortunately my handwriting has never been the best and even with fancy stylus like the Evernote Jot Script writing on the iPad is still a struggle. The text is barley legible, input is dropped, and despite wrist protection features I still end up with stray marks all over the page. For now, typing using the iPad’s built in keyboard is still a far better, but a less than optimal, option for me.
How many times a day do you use your iPad?
My iPad the first thing I reach for in the morning and the last thing I put down at night. While I don’t take it with me every day, since converting to the iPad mini last year I’ll take my iPad out and about with me many days for use when taking notes at meetings, reading (especially reading and highlighting cases for class) and doing more productive work on the go.
What Today View widgets are you using and why?
The trick to Today View widgets is to have enough to be useful, but not too many that it becomes overly cluttered. On the iPad I use fewer than on the iPhone. I use Dark Sky because it’s one of the smallest forecast widgets I’ve seen and it’s very accurate. Although the Fantastical widget takes up quite a bit of space, it’s a great at-a-glance view of my calendar and I can easily create new events from the widget. I use the Evernote widget because it gives easy access to creating a new document . The Drafts widget allows me to easily send information from the clipboard to Drafts, though as of this writing the fate of that widget is in flux.
On my iPhone I use additional widgets including OmniFocus and Delivery Status and DataMan.
What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?
Even after all these years with the iPad every time I pick it up I still feel a little bit in awe. I have an object in my hand that’s smaller than a pad of paper and it’s a computer. How freaking cool is that? Steve Jobs was right, the iPad was and remains a magical and revolutionary device.
If you were in charge at Apple, what would you add or change?
I would continue to open up iOS. Apple has made great progress with a limited set of extensions in iOS 8 and developers have used those tools to do great things. 1Password is now available in Safari and can be unlocked with my thumb, I can share items directly into Evernote, Instapaper a
nd OmniFocus and my TextExpander snippets are now available everywhere thanks to a custom keyboard. While these are among my favorite new features, but there’s still so much more we could do. Why are there no share extensions in Mail.app? What about giving developers access to Siri? Why are there so many seemingly arbitrary restrictions on what can occur in the Today View Widgets? Why can’t I customize Control Center? I understand Apple has to balance stability and security with usability and features but I feel there’s still more work to be done here.
What’s your wallpaper and why?
It’s a photo of the Golden Gate Bridge taken from a boat in the bay. I took the photo during my first trip to Macworld in January of 2008. I think it’s a nice photo but it’s also sentimental because it represents so many things; my first Macworld, the trip where I first met David and so many people who would become great friends, it’s also the trip that was the genesis for Mac Power Users.
Anything else you’d like to share?
Life for me has been pretty crazy the past few months but I feel like I am starting to find a balance. I’m making a conscious effort to keep my blog regularly updated, even if it’s smaller posts, and I’m trying to engage more on social media. I’d love a few more subscribers over at katiefloyd.me and followers on Twitter @katiefloyd.
Thanks Katie.
Muting Continuity
Am I the only one that thinks Yosemite’s Continuity feature is pretty awesome? I am often sitting at my Mac with my phone across the room in a charger and answering a call on my Mac feels like living in the future.
What I don’t like about this feature is the way everything in my office goes off like an air-raid klaxon every time I get a call. Unfortunately, Continuity is a binary thing at this point. You either get the window on the screen plus the ringer or you get nothing at all. I think there should be a setting that lets me keep Continuity turned on at my Mac and iPad, but doesn’t make an audible ring. If I’m looking at my Mac and the a phone call comes in, I don’t need the audio. After all, I’m looking at my Mac. The same goes for my iPad. In short, Continuity needs a ringer-mute switch.
Byword Still Gets the Job Done
I was looking at the latest sexy text editor, Typed from RealMac. Over the years I’ve had several friends that worked at RealMac and I’ve got a lot of respect for what they do. I bought Typed because RealMac makes it and I’m one of those guys that does stuff like that once in awhile.
So I was playing with the new app, testing features, listening to the embedded soundtrack (that always makes me roll my eyes a bit in a text editor) and I found the experience quite enjoyable. As I finished writing about 3,000 words in it, something occurred to me.
I really love Byword.
I first fell for Byword the way I had my first crush, with reckless abandon. (Although Barbara O’Leary never had a clue.) Over the years, my love with Byword has become something a lot more comfortable, like Carl and Ellie.
The thing about Byword is that it just delivers. The design is solid and unobtrusive. Its developers understand iteration and avoid change for the sake of change. Byword was one of the first multi-Apple-platform text editors and continues to lead in this respect. It supports Dropbox, iCloud, and most recently adds support for Handoff. When I need to replant myself in a tea shop and pick up writing something, Byword has me covered whether I’m using my Mac, iPad, or iPhone.
Byword has great typography but at the same time doesn’t tell me it knows what’s best for me and prevent me from using a big, clunky, ugly monospace font when I want to change things up for a proofread.
Byword doesn’t have every feature on the market. It does, however, make it possible for me to write just about anywhere and when I’m doing the hard work of moving the cursor across the screen, Byword gets out of my way and lets me get on with the work at hand. I’d guess that at this point I’ve written something like a half million words in Byword. You’d think I’d be ready to move on to something different. I’ve got nothing against Typed or any of the other Byword competitors. Many of them are fine applications but the thing is … Byword, I still love you.
Thanks for the Support
I’ve received a lot of really kind emails and tweets about the OmniFocus Video Field Guide. A lot of work went into that project and I’m really happy to hear it is helping people get better at using OmniFocus. I’m as baffled as the next guy about how I am lucky enough to have smart people in the world interested in the things that I make but I sure am thankful.
MPU 227: Home Screens
Episode 227 of the Mac Power User is up. In it, Katie and I talk about what apps make the cut for our home screens and notification center widgets. Also, this is the one where I discovered I am more anal-retentive than Katie. Who’d of thunk?
Sponsor: The Ultimate Unofficial Dropbox Guide
This week MacSparky is sponsored by Jeffrey Abbott’s book, The Ultimate Unofficial Dropbox Guide. I am so glad Jeff wrote this book. We are all using Dropbox but very few of us are taking advantage of its power features. The Ultimate Unofficial Dropbox Guide was created to help make our digital lives more organized and efficient. The guide is a comprehensive look at power-using Dropbox, whether you’re just setting up your Dropbox account or already think you’re a pro.
The book covers a lot, including a comprehensive walk-throughs for photosharing, best practices for organizing your folders and documents, keeping your files secure, and automating tasks using IFTTT. There are also some bonus products including a handy keyboard-shortcut reference page, 15 Tips and Tricks for Families, and Photosharing Guides you can share with non-tech family members who still want to see photos of your kids. A book like this was overdue. I’m glad someone wrote it.
The OmniFocus Video Field Guide
I’m pleased to announce the release of the OmniFocus Video Field Guide. This is a screencast, not a book. A lot of people have asked me to write a book about OmniFocus but instead I made this 2.5 hour video that takes you, soup to nuts, through the Omni Group’s supremely bad-ass task manager. The screencast can turn an absolute OmniFocus novice into a task-managing ninja.
The screencast is fully bookmarked, nearly two and a half hours, and full of awesome. I’ve been working on this screencast for months now and I’m quite proud of it. You can learn more and buy it for $10 from here. Below is a sample video.
Upgrade and Work-Life Balance
At the end of this week’s Upgrade podcast, Jason, Myke, and Greg Knauss talk about their experiences with quitting the day job. Everyone had insightful points to make. As someone that continues to have a day job and a night job, I find this topic fascinating.