A pianist from Toronto, Canada

I have spent the first couple of weeks of summer getting into Ruby on Rails and it was not without it’s pains to say the least. However, after getting past the depreciated functions, incompatibilities, and an out-of-date book, I managed to pull something together; as a bonus, I’m actually happy with the result.

Quotasaurus is a place that I can fill with cool quotations about music, technology, productivity, life, and anything else that’s inspiring. It’s just a really simple one-long-page application, but that’s how I want it. It’s easy to make things complicated when you are developing, but I tried to discipline myself; not even a search box, haha! Anyway, enjoy reading the thirty or so quotes I have in there, and check back because I add in things everyday from books I’m reading and other places. Don’t forget to leave a comment and tell me what you think.

But first, a brief breakdown of todays events.

Living with myself

• 11:30: Checked email, Facebook, feeds, Twitter, Tumblr, and other things that needed surfing
• 12:30: Decided I should probably go to school and practice
• 13:00: Dressed up to go out
• 13:45: Found out for the first time that my piano teacher hosts these gigantic 10-piano and 2-pianist monster concerts that have been featured on TV several times
• 14:30: Watched some Adam Gyorgy videos on YouTube
• 14:55: Cleared my nose for the seventh time today
• 15:10: More pianists on YouTube
• 15:40: Ate lunch so that I wouldn’t be hungry if I decided to go to school any time now
• 16:10: Did 11:30’s run-through again
• 16:40: Listened to Lizst Etudes and thought of writing about how I have not left for school yet
• 17:25: Upgraded this blog to WordPress 2.5.1, because the reminder of a new update available annoyed me
• 17:33 (Now): Making a promise to you that I will leave for school and practice by 18:00

What I was going to say

I’m dropping the idea of posting every Tuesday for now, because it made this blog feel like a chore, and I think the last post was a reflection of that (Not that it was a meaningless post, but it was very rushed and dutiful). I’ll try to make something happen somewhat regularly here, but it’s up to me, so there.

17:51 Gotta go!

Every time I look at my blog reader, I see a lot of unread posts that I can’t seem to keep under a manageable amount; seriously, I was lucky when I once got it down to 150. It is so noisy in there, I have to trim blogs off my list every now and then to preserve my time and sanity. For the last few weeks I have used a simple strategy that has helped keep what I want to read in my reader, and everything else out in the wild.

All it really involves is reading a blog’s last few posts before adding it to my list; “meet” or get to know the content before you subscribe. If the last few posts don’t interest me, the next few probably wont either. The bulk of the cruft in my reader spawned from blogs that I added on impulse, without really reading them first.

I still have to go through most of my reading list, but I have a feeling that my dream of having nothing to read in my feed reader will come true someday.

My first year at university was an amazing experience, and I learned so many things. I think the most value, aside from all the course work, came from understanding how to manage my life. Here are several ways of thinking that helped me get things done and not fall under all the pressure.

Empty space is not a problem

I have developed the habit of filling any morsel of free time in my schedule with some commitment. This year, I had Tuesday and Wednesday evenings free, so I joined a debating team and the Hart House Chorus. I also took more courses than I could handle this year, simply because I wasn’t doing anything during the time of the course; I did not take into account that each course would have its own work to be done outside of class. Although I enjoyed the extra-curricular activities and was able to get many credits out of the way, I did not have much time to breathe, because during my free time, I was either working on school work, practicing, or hanging out. Breathing room is really the key to staying relaxed and not having to feel guilty for possibly being less efficient with the way I’m spending my time at the moment.

Look at your schedule everyday

If I had a penny for every disadvantage I encountered from being unaware or uncertain about the time of a commitment on my schedule, I would have about ten pennies. That isn’t a lot, because I look at my schedule sort of regularly, but it’s more than enough to make me realize the importance of looking at that big picture everyday. Those few moments where it will save your behind will make it more than worth it.

Put everything in your system, now!

I’ve been pretty good this year (at least by the second term) about not procrastinating with assignments; it’s a surprise, but a welcome change. However, even though my GTD system has made lollygagging a thing of the past for the most part, I have still finished some assignments the night before, only because I left the reminder for it unprocessed in my inbox. Many hours of stress and sleep can be recovered if that inbox is simply processed, with the respective articles awaiting your action in the appropriate place in your system. Even if you don’t use GTD, get those assignments in your reminder system. The key to all of this though, is to do it sooner rather than later.

30 minutes of focus is better than 2 hours of drooling

I struggled with this in my calculus course, a lot. I know I’m hyper and incapable of sitting still for more than three seconds, but if I can code in PHP, math shouldn’t be that hard, at least on the concentration level. I found myself spending 45 minutes doing the simplest problem on somedays, and ten difficult ones in half an hour on another day. Eventually I realized that if I just focused and kept the next action in my head as I worked, it would all be a cinch, regardless of the subject matter. The environment also had something to do with it; I found it harder to concentrate when working on my bed or the comfortable sofas in our faculty’s common room, in low light, or anywhere there are people. That last one took me by surprise, but it is true; I wont work when I know I can talk to the people around me.

Of course, what post about focusing would be complete without a reference to web browsing, social networking, email checking, and video watching; my fellow OCD sufferers, this is your dystopia. Here is what I do to stay on track while using the internet: use an inbox for links, use a timer, check email and everything else once a day (really).

Regular work is easier than cramming; saves money, stress, and time

I was totally lost in calculus this year, because I didn’t do the weekly problems, so I spent $90 on a seminar that crammed everything you needed to know for the final exam into your head, in two days. In my historical survey course, I didn’t read the chapters every week, so I had to stress before the final exam, read and make notes on everything frantically, and not have any time to take it easy. Both of these experiences resulted in a severe loss of time at the end of the year, which is when it is most needed. For my other classes, I barely had to study for the exams, because my knowledge was solidified after doing the work every week. As obvious as this whole idea is, it’s easier said than done. The only thing that can be said is to keep the goal of regular work in your mind, because it becomes much more doable if you think, “If I do this now, I will probably save about an hour during exam week, which can be spent relaxing and poking fun at colleagues that didn’t do the regular work”.

Switch activities regularly; it’s not only for the 5 year olds

I used to teach in a music school where I taught piano to small classes of toddlers, and I was told by my trainers that I had to change activities every five minutes, or they would get bored. When programming, practicing, or doing school work, I feel a lot better if I take a break or do something completely different on a regular basis, not every five minutes of course, but maybe at the end of each hour.

My actions for next year

• Get an estimate of how much of my time is going to be taken up by other things, and make sure I have an hour or so to breath; if I can’t figure out to do with my time, I’ll either sleep, go for a walk, or hide in some corner of the campus to be quiet.
• Look at my schedule every morning before starting my day.
• Process through all assignment sheets and understand what needs to be done next, sooner rather than later.
• Work in isolation and focus so that I can finish working sooner.
• Do the work every week, because if I do, I wont have to study during exam week
• Switch modes before my head starts to hurt

Design requires awareness of all elements to obtain control. As Robin Williams said in her Non-Designer’s Design Book, simply observing elements and the principles of design working together will give you control over them; if you haven’t read Williams’ book, Lifehack wrote a good summary/ripoff of it, explaining the four main principles of design. Being aware of everything that is going on in a particular space gives you control over the space. To explain this, I will use three spaces: design, music, and driving.

In Design

Seeing all elements and applying the four main principles of design (Contrast, Repitition, Alignment, and Proximity) helps you make better decisions about the placement of objects on your canvas. I used to be completely unaware of any design principles, which is a common characteristic of many people. I “designed” title pages for my papers by italicizing, making random things bold, underlining (heaven forbid nowadays), and centering everything. Now, after observing just those four main principles in advertisements, documents, and other media, I notice problems in my own work and can align and contrast different elements fairly competently. Awareness gives me control. I am not a designer, so lets move on to something I know more about.

In Music

Seeing all notes and signs in a score allows me to play them on the piano, or even in my mind, and it’s not not hard either; it requires me to actively look at the music and see everything quickly. What really makes sight-reading a score difficult for most people is a lack of awareness for the written music; you can be skilled at playing and have the fastest fingers in the world, but if you aren’t aware of what is in front of you, it wont do you any good. I once had a four year old student named Tammy, and at the time, I used a music book that was filled with lots of colours, and pictures of horses, mountain goats, and disproportionate looking children; it all became a distraction for her and made it hard for her to read even simple music. After giving her a simple and clean music book, without all the junk, she had a much easier time following along. Reading music well as a pianist, or even a four year old like Tammy, is really about training yourself to see everything and making rapid mental decisions about what to do with your hands. By being aware of the dynamics, notes, and other markings, you create space to work in, which means playing music, no matter how difficult, will seem to come naturally. Awareness is key.

In Driving

Seeing traffic signs on the side of the road and the cars that are around you, as well as thinking about where you are on your route, all add to your mental picture of what is going on. The more complete your picture is, the easier it is to make good decisions while driving. That’s why you need to check your mirror every couple of seconds, because your mental picture is constantly being updated with new and different information that you need to take in to account if you want to drive safely. This should be emphasized while learning to drive because if people understand that they need to create a picture in their mind, they will automatically check their mirrors, scan the road, and manage their space effectively; if all they are taught is to check their mirrors and look all over the place, without being told what to actually look for and why, they will “look blindly” just for the sake of looking and not really obtain that clear picture. The best drivers know what is going on in their space and can anticipate well. It all goes back to awareness.

To Summarize

Regardless of the type of task you are doing, awareness will give you control of your space. Try to see as many of details as you can and use it to create a mental picture what is going on, so that you can have more power over what you are doing.

I used to have a problem with getting next-actions checked and off of my GTD lists. This is a typical problem that occurs in a GTD workflow: after going through all the steps to get your todos together in logical and ninja order, when it comes time to get something done, nothing happens. I realized that sometimes path to the action might be the problem. I will explain this using an experience from my initial years learning to play the piano.

I am a pianist, and as everyone knows, people who play an instrument need to practice. It has been a challenge for me to find time to practice now, because of my absurd course load, but I remember many years ago, when I was only a couple of grades levels into piano, I found practicing to be quite a chore. The difference is, back then, I had plenty of time to spare, being almost a teenager and all. I was a bit slothful in my desire to turn on the piano (I had a digital piano) and play; today that’s called procrastination. Was it really all me though? Now that I think about it, my environment may have been a contributing factor to my hesitation.

Let’s just think about the area around my piano for a minute. To this day, my house contains a plethora of random, mostly useless things that have been forgotten, but have not left, and will not leave our (me, and my parents’) house, for reasons beyond my control. These items would often wonder onto our lovely Technics digital piano for “temporary” placement until a better place was found; they were often left for me to move them away. So there’s stuff on the piano. In addition to that, my Mom wanted to keep dust from getting on the piano, so she kept a cloth over it. This is perfectly valid, but that made two things that separated me from the piano; two things that I basically had to take care of before I could actually play the piano.

Obviously, these are all trivial things that can hardly be referred to as “barriers to action”, but if you think about it in a GTD context, it can slow things down, or in my case, bring everything to a halt, because it makes the next action unclear. You shouldn’t have to do six other things in order to complete your initial task; our life doesn’t run on Windows.

What can we learn from this? Always make it simple to do the action, with as few invisible steps as possible, if not none; David Allen refers to this as “widget cranking”. Get rid of any barriers that stand in your way of finishing. Think “done” means pushing the big red button, and make it as close to that as possible for all your tasks.

Okay, one more metaphor, for the real GTD nerds. Together, you and your system have the ability to take on the world, so work with each other’s strengths and weaknesses and make productivity a smooth sail for both of you.

The latest version of WordPress should be released within the next few weeks. I’ve been trying out the WordPress 2.5 Release Candidate 1 and it is really spiffy.

The interface, which is the most noticeable enhancement, was designed by the talented folks at Happy Cog Studios, who also created the designs for Kongregate, Ma.gnolia, and A List Apart. It is very clean, clear, and intuitive: more design, less “Field Name: Field Value”. To my knowledge, everything works just as well in Safari as well.

The dashboard is pretty cool. Although it has the same content as before, you can now change the feeds that display, so if you want to see Digg stories when logging in, you can. You can only replace the two feeds that come with the blog though, so you can’t add in all your favorite blogs to the dashboard, which is probably a good restriction anyway. The incoming links section now runs on Google Blog Search, but again, like the other feeds, you can choose Technorati, or whatever else you like, as long as it has a feed.

The Write section now houses all the creation (posts, pages, and links). The editor has been cleaned up and beautified, with added support for (almost) full-screen. The whole attachments/gallery deal has now been simplified: it is now the Media Library and supports images, video, and audio. The tagging system now auto-completes so that you don’t have to tediously type in every tag you want to use.

Everything else is just as you would expect; there are other new things of course, but most of this upgrade is just a visual cleanup. It still feels much easier to use than previous versions, and definitely looks more professional. Congratulations to the WordPress developers and community; this is a great release! I can’t wait for 3.0.

Uploading a WordPress directory piece by piece really, really sucks.

I just upgraded to WordPress 2.5 and the process was very smooth, as you would expect from a WordPress installation, but while cleaning up the old files, I accidentally deleted the new directory.

Luckily, Cyberduck was too slow to rid of everything instantly, as usual, so I was able to keep some of the new installation, but it did me absolutely no good because I don’t know what was deleted.

ARGH!

So I tried uploading via Dreamhost’s web FTP client, but anything that takes longer than 30 seconds gets halted, and for some reason, the server got really slow and would not finish extracting the installation as it did 45 minutes ago.

ARGH!

Could I extract the uploaded zip file from Cyberduck? No, because it doesn’t know how!

ARGH!

Could I extract zip file on my Mac and upload the resulting folder? No, because it would take Cyberduck 6 years to finish it.

ARGH!

Eventually, I had to zip little bits of a local WordPress 2.5 directory, and upload that, which is not a pleasant task; let me refresh your memory of the WordPress directory, if you don’t remember from the top of the page.

Now that everything is running smoothly online, I’ll post my thoughts on WordPress 2.5 in Tuesday’s article.

This kind of frustration calls for loud German: Ich hasse FTP! Or, more elaborately, in a language I can actually speak: I hate FTP, consistently slow internet connections and server time limits. Technology should not fail at life!

Have you ever wanted to apply an Automator workflow to the current Finder item using Quicksilver? If you’re still reading, the answer is probably yes. To do this, you will need to create a workflow and make it work with Quicksilver; I will show you how, using my example workflow: adding the date to the current finder item, and moving it to my ‘Inbox’ folder.

Create the Workflow

1. Open Automator [located in Applications/Automator.app] and select ‘Finder’ from the library.
2. Drag the ‘Get Selected Finder Items’ action into the workflow on the right. This action will “grab” whatever you have selected in the Finder so that Automator can do things with it.
3. Add the ‘Rename Finder Items’ action and use the settings found in the screenshot at the end of this list.
4. Add the ‘Move Finder Items’ and select the folder you would like to move your files to.
5. Save your workflow as ‘Move to Inbox’.

Your workflow should end up like this:

Make it Work in Quicksilver

1. Open ‘Preferences’ from the Quicksilver menu.
2. From the ‘Plug-ins’ section, select ‘All Plug-ins’, and check the box next to ‘Automator Module (+)’ if it isn’t checked already.
3. Go to the ‘Preferences’ section, and from the ‘Action’ list, search for and enable the ‘Execute Workflow’ command, although it is probably already checked.
4. In the ‘Catalog’ section, click the ‘+’ icon at the bottom, select ‘File & Folder Scanner’, and choose the folder that contains your saved workflow. This makes sure that Quicksilver can see your action.

You are now ready to go. All you have to do now is select something you want to move to the ‘Inbox’, activate Quicksilver, type in the name of your workflow (‘Move to Inbox’ in my case), and select the ‘Execute Workflow’ action. If everything is set up correctly, this will do exactly what we asked: add the date to the current Finder item and move it to the ‘Inbox’.

The only problem with this is that you might inadvertently move and rename something you didn’t want to touch: when I was working on this post, I had the workflow selected in the Finder, and accidently executed the workflow on the actual workflow; so just be careful. Other than that, this is a very useful and powerful tool you can use to quickly do lots of other things to Finder items; you are only limited to Automator actions and AppleScript. I would prefer to be able to find files in Quicksilver and send those to an Automator action, like a Quicksilver command, but this is just as good.