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20 Aug 2007

Gettin' Hitched

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By now the news is out and I’ve received a deluge of email asking for details, so here they are. For those that don’t have the 43folders RSS feed piped directly into a neural connection and haven’t yet subscribed to the Omni blog as penned by the lovely and talented Linda, here’s the scoop: After over a year of collaboration I’m officially joining The Omni Group!


7 Aug 2007

Twiiter is IRC turned inside out

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Twitter is just IRC turned inside out. It’s a giant IRC channel for the whole twitterverse, but everyone is by default set to ignore.

Reminds me of (which?) William Gibson story where they talk about turning a kill file inside out.


26 Jul 2007

Target: 8760

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This is why Omni Group rocks the house. Current average time to crash on OmniFocus is 8000 hours.

This is kind of stability they are working on in the beta alpha.

And the best part? Tim’s goal is even higher. Love these guys/gals.

Read more about their crash reporting stats.


14 Jul 2007

Speirs-Gruber Twitter Off

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Speirs? Gruber? I’m pretty sure this is twitterific not twitter, but the stability of both seems a bit iffy during this trial. I’m liking them nonetheless. Like a carnival ride - fun, but you feel like there might be a couple screws missing from the safety mechanisms.

Fraser wins this round, but watch your back, Speirs, Gruber won’t give in so easily.


13 Jul 2007

Script download fixed

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Yikes. Script link is now fixed in the new vaporize article.

That’ll teach me to go see a movie after hitting “publish”.


13 Jul 2007

Vaporize The Unwanted (Kinkless iTunes 1)

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Feeling less than literate? Eyes tired of all those “words” and “letters”? Me too, so I made a screencast that you can jump to now.

In this article I’ll be showing you how to easily clear your library of unwanted tracks using a custom Applescript and Quicksilver trigger.

Like many of you, I’m a keyboard junkie. I listen to music all day and I’m constantly switching between shuffled and non-shuffled play, skipping tracks and repeating them all without lifting my hands from the keyboard. There are a lot of apps that do this but I am partial to Quicksilver’s iTunes plugin when used with key-combo triggers. I’m not going to explain how to set this up (see MacApper for a nice run down similar to the basics of what I’ll describe here).


12 Jul 2007

Twitter, I succumb

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After resisting the twitter meme for months I decided to give it another spin. For those wanting to follow my every trivial twitter post, clicking here should add me directly.

Twitter nick: ethanschoonover (how terribly original… I’m just too forgetful to cope with anything else)


10 Jun 2007

See you at WWDC (NEW ROOM)

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UPDATE: We’re now in a new, larger room (see below)

DOWNLOAD ICAL EVENT HERE.

I’m excited to have the chance to meet up with folks at WWDC. Omni, Merlin and I will be doing an informal meetup:

  • WHEN: Wednesday from 6:15pm-7:15pm
  • WHERE: The Olympic Room, 2nd Floor of the Westin Hotel (map) (one block from Moscone)

Should be a fun time and hope to see some of you there! Questions to es [at] ethanschoonover [dot] com … -e


9 Jun 2007

Getting Things... Remembered

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For those that spurn the written word, there is also a screencast at the end of this article.

We spend all this time and effort figuring out ways to get things out of our heads and into our trusted systems. We’ve offloaded the memorization of telephone numbers to our mobile phones, driving routes to GPS units and friends’ birthdays to our calendar applications.

But some things belong inside our heads.

With all this focus on getting things off our minds, what do we do about getting things back in? Where’s Getting Things Memorized?

Am I the only one that feels like, despite freeing up all this mental processing power with all these clever applications, my memory is still getting worse?

In this post, I’ll talk about a new application that tackles this head-on.


5 Jun 2007

Merlin's Oil Change (Preparing for OmniFocus)

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Merlin has an excellent post up regarding how best to start getting ready now for OmniFocus, regardless of whether you are in on the beta yet. My favorite tip is “simplify your contexts”, but you’ll probably have your own.

More importantly, this is the kind of article that I want to go back to in a couple months and work through again to bang the cruft out of my system as it builds up over time. Even though he’s talking about OmniFocus, his post is also a great set of generally applicable principles for cleaning out the gunk in your trusted system.

It’s like an oil change for your task engine.


31 May 2007

Visiting New Haven

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For the next several days I’ll be accompanying my lovely wife during her school reunion in New Haven, CT. If you’re there, feel free to drop me an email at es [at] ethanschoonover [dot] com and let me know if you’ll be at any of the various reunion activities.


25 May 2007

Hazel Rules Updated

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UPDATE for the Kinkless Desktop Part 5 article: Amber V. and some other readers spotted an error in the ruleset for applying green labels. I’ve corrected that rule now and re-uploaded the zip file. Please continue to post improvements and ideas in the comments on that article as I’ll be collecting them for a later update article to this methodology. The power of the hive mind in action :) -e


24 May 2007

Kinkless Desktop 5: Cruelty can be kind

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This is the final part of a five part series on how to clean up, prettify and streamline the usage of your desktop. You can also start with the introduction.

UPDATE: Amber V. and some other readers spotted an error in the ruleset for applying green labels. I’ve corrected that rule now and re-uploaded the zip file. Please continue to post improvements and ideas in the comments as I’ll be collecting them for a later update article to this methodology.

This screencast demonstrates the use of Hazel to keep my Inbox, Outbox and Pending folders tidy, including labeling the files in them based on age and whether I’ve accessed them.

Links in the sidebar aren’t working, it would seem, so here’s a link to download the rules for the time being.

Before starting, however, please note that there are some links and downloads to the right. You can jump over to Noodlesoft to grab a beta of the 2.0 version of Hazel and I’ve also provided download links for the Hazel rules that I’m using in this screencast. Download them, try them (cautiously when it comes to deleting stuff) and let me know how they are working for you!

Keep in mind that this the current Hazel 2.0 is beta software. Do yourself a *huge* favor right now and go to this Noodlesoft forum thread for the most recent beta update information. You will need to make a user account, but it’s quick and painless and will keep you abreast of the updated releases. Lovely.


24 May 2007

Kinkless Desktop 4: Capture and access easily

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This is part four of a five part series on how to clean up, prettify and streamline the usage of your desktop. You can also start with the introduction.

In this screencast, I briefly demonstrate using the sidebar favorites in Finder to ensure that your new folders are easily accessible from any application and how I’m using smart folders so that I can keep my capture-databases filed away but still have them easily accessible on the desktop, along with recently opened files.


22 May 2007

Kinkless Desktop 3. Aesthetic Computing and Usability

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This is part three of a five part series on how to clean up, prettify and streamline the usage of your desktop. You can also start with the introduction.

You can start with the article below or jump to the video:

Computing should be an aesthetic experience. Our environment impacts our mood and creativity. For this reason, and to provide us with distinct visual cues as to the function of each of our new folders, we’ll assign custom icons to them.

I’m using a couple tools to style my system wide folders.


22 May 2007

Kinkless Desktop 2: Fight Desktop Entropy

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This is part two of a five part series on how to clean up, prettify and streamline the usage of your desktop. You can also start with the introduction.

You can start with the article below or jump to the video:

Now that your desktop is in its most natural denuded state, it’s time to try and stop the seemingly inevitable build up of new stuff. Our trick is going to be applying good real-world habits to your computer’s desktop.


21 May 2007

Kinkless Desktop 1: The "No Mercy" Cleanup

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This is part one of a five part series on how to clean up, prettify and streamline the usage of your desktop. You can also start with the introduction.

We’ll assume you’re starting out with a messy desktop. If this is not the case, congratulations and you can skip this step after doing a little dance of exultation. Extra credit if you film and submit the dance with a shot of your desktop.

I’ve mentioned that there are two basic reasons that your desktop becomes cluttered:


21 May 2007

Five Steps to a Kinkless Desktop

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This is the introduction to a five part series on how to clean up, prettify and streamline the usage of your desktop.

How did it come to this?


15 May 2007

Omnifocus in Parallel

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OmniGroup has let Schrödinger's cat out of the bag and put doubts to rest as to whether it exists or not... it definitely exists. With the beta rolling out slowly but surely, I thought it was a good time to release another video showing you some other neat stuff you can do with OmniFocus.

Click below to watch a ten minute video that talks a bit about sub-projects, nesting sequential sub-projects inside parallel parent projects and even briefly demo's how to change styles.

11 May 2007

Hues on First

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Here are a couple variations on colors that I was playing with before... nothing really struck me as "right"... Click each to change the background.

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