Brilliant Corners

It was fun to read (and see) Christoph Niemann's visual story on his kids' infatuation with the New York subway system, because my own kids got a huge kick out of riding the subway when we were in Rome this March. We weren't there long enough, or rode the subway enough times, for Clara and Eliot to memorize the routes and stops, but they enjoyed it enough. My kids are so used to riding in cars that taking any kind of public transportation is a truly unusual treat.

Here's Eliot demonstrating his subway pole holding technique from one of our rides on the Rome subway:

I think the best way to teach yourself a new web technology is to build yourself a weblog application. Well, I wanted to learn Merb, so that's what I did. Kinda. Basically, I just took the same database layout that I had in the last incarnation (which was written in Ruby on Rails) and then just wrote a Merb application around it.

I'll probably have more on Merb as I've learned quite a bit, and I've become quite enamored of the little framework that could!

For those of you in feed readers, I apologize if you get all my posts in your reader again. Some URLs have changed, and the commenting doesn't work as well as I want it to yet, but it's passable for now.

Yes, I saved that much by visiting the local library today, and that's not including tax! That's what it would have cost if I went to the comic store and bought the five graphic novels that I checked out today.

Since I first got my library card I've checked out 56 items, most of which are graphic novels/comics. I don't feel like adding the cost up from all of those, but I know it's several hundred dollars. Now, I'm grateful to have saved all that money, but at the same time I'm sad I'm not contributing to the wallets of those certainly-deserving writers and artists. How can I resolve this quandary? Well, maybe my mind can be put a little at ease thanks to the cost of graphic novels. Something just seems wrong paying $20 for something that can be read in 15 minutes, great art or not. Still I feel a little bad about it, but that's what libraries are for, right?

Well, maybe I can't completely justify it, especially since I don't plan on stopping my visits to the library to check out more books and comics. However, there have been many that I enjoyed so much that I do plan on buying and adding them to the bookshelf:

• The Arrival, by Shaun Tan

  Gorgeous art and a wordless, yet moving and powerful narrative. I had seen this mentioned on a couple of "best of the year" lists, but it just took a look inside to see the reason why.

• Skim, by Jillian and Mariko Tamaki

  The story is great, but it's Jillian Tamaki's art that really grabs me. It reminds me a lot of Dave McKean's Cages for some reason, which I loved tremendously.

• La Perdida, by Jessica Abel

  I had read the first issue or two of La Perdida many years ago, but thanks to the library carrying the collected comic, I've been able to read the entire story (almost in a single sitting).

• Persepolis 1 & 2, by Marjane Satrapi

  These are some of the first graphic novels I checked out from the library. I still haven't seen the film, but if it is anywhere near as good as these then it should be fantastic.

• The entire Lone Wolf and Cub series, by Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima

  A Zen-like assassin and his infant son travel from job to job, often without saying but just a few words. Yeah, it can be quite violent at times, but it isn't overly graphic or gruesome. The beautiful art is what grabs me the most.

I really have enjoyed reading everything that I've checked out of the library, but those above are the ones that really stood out. I can also thank the library for getting me hooked on Iain M. Banks' sci-fi books. They had an old beat-up copy of Consider Phlebas which I loved. Sadly, many of his earlier SF books are still not yet available in the US (although they are being released, slowly) so I've had to resort to buying some from overseas in order to feed my Culture fix.

I was working with Google Maps for something I'm dealing with for work and thought I'd take a look and see if the "Street View" vans (or cars, or whatever they use) had been down the street we used to live on in Dallas. little StreetView trip to our old house--our first house--in Dallas. They have:

It's odd looking at the house from this perspective. First of all, it's no longer our house. Secondly, the current owner has been adding all kinds of changes to the front yard. It looks like he's adding some big flower beds or something there. From the Street View, they're still dirt so who knows what the final result will be. I'm sure he had a blast going to the Dallas Preservation Society meetings to get those changes approved. We had to go several times ourselves: first time was to let us remodel the inside, one time to get the fences approved, another time to let us tear down the old garage, and another time to get the "O.K." to have a new front porch poured. It was a hassle of paperwork and useless meetings, but in the end we didn't really have many problems.

Next time we're in Dallas we'll have to drive by and see what went into the new flowerbeds, since I doubt Google will update the views anytime soon. I don't really have that strong of an attachment to the house anymore, but it is a strange experience seeing it from the angle of ex-owner, and seeing the changes that have happened since we sold it.

And as long as he keeps the trees that we planted, one after each child was born, then I'll look on the changes with approval. Otherwise, he'll need a talking to.

I'm going to crib the linking style of Things Magazine to post the links I've been collecting for a while. So then, in no particular order...

Andy Baio is posting daily again. / I've been meaning to really learn how to use Illustrator. Now, with these Illustrator tutorials, and these, and these, I'm unsure where to even start. / A long thread of mostly-funny jokes on Reddit. It reminds me of this joke post with great comments on Defective Yeti. / Did you know that adding milk to your tea reduces its health benefits? / A few simple LAMP performance tips.

SuperDuper! has finally been released with Leopard support. / Have you ever wanted to register the copyright for one of your photos? / A Web 2.0 Style Guide. / Wet Paint carries the Print Gocco printer and supplies. / Dinosaur Gardens posts mp3s from the Gangster Fun album Time Flies When You're Gangster Fun.

"davesecretaryatwork" has a knack for telling stories, and someone archived his story thread from the vivalavinyl message boards. I'm glad they did. Here's one of the shorter ones:

SO ALSO IN KINDERGARTEN I APPARENTLY THOUGHT THAT THE KIDS IN MY CLASS DIDN'T KNOW ENOUGH ABOUT COUGARS FOR SOME REASON, BECAUSE I DEFINITELY MADE A SWEET COUGAR QUIZ WHICH I INSISTED ON GIVING OUT TO THE CLASS THE NEXT DAY.

WHAT COLOR IS THE COUGAR? GOLD? NO! BROWN? NO! RED? NO! THE ANSWER IS TAWNY.

There are many more and longer stories at the link above. I wish I could remember half of my own crazy childhood memories as well as he does.

It seems the original thread on the vivalavinyl message board is gone, but someone posted these stories into a new thread here where "davesecretarystillatwork" comes in later with some new uppercase hijinx.

• The Fountain Pen Network
  "Welcome to the Fountain Pen Network where the pens are abundant and the ink and chatter flows freely."
  (tags: pens forum writing fountainpen pen fountainpens ink)
• Black Star Rising - Why Photographers Hate Creative Commons
  "But it does seem clear that an increasing number of photographers -- not just professionals but high-end hobbyists also -- have become disenchanted with the Creative Commons system."
  (tags: copyright creativecommons cc photo photography creative business legal)
• Confirmation bias - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  "In psychology and cognitive science, confirmation bias is a tendency to search for or interpret new information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions and avoids information and interpretations which contradict prior beliefs."
  (tags: interesting psychology bias logic cognition brain science lifehacks)
• How To Read and Understand a Histogram (Professional Photographer Magazine Web Exclusives)
  "What is a histogram and what does it tell us about a photograph?"
  (tags: adobe color design articles photography histogram photoshop tutorial photo howto)
• how to fold a shirt
  I keep forgetting to try this. The video makes it look so simple.
  (tags: diy culture howto video shirt folding)

Whether you want to call it "Getting Things Done" or call it keeping a list of Things That Need To Be Done, there are many applications out there to help you out. I've tried out several of these applications, as well as several web-based ones (like Ta-da List). I think I'm finally ready to give up with all the fancy solutions, and have returned to a simple one: the plain (though lightly-formatted) text file.

The first of the applications I tried was OmniOutliner-based KinklessGTD system primarily because of Merlin Mann's review and recommendation. It worked pretty well, but I'd occasionally get frustrated with how the system worked (with the rebuilding and whatnot). Then I tried iGTD and that also worked well, but something about the app's layout and icons eventually turned me off it (free or not). When The Omni Group announced the OmniFocus alpha testing, I thought I'd go ahead and try that one as well. I've been using that up until early this week. It's worked the best of all the options I had tried so far, but still it seemed to be too much work for keeping a todo list.

More recently I've seen some posts about YAGTDA (Yet Another Getting Things Done Application) called Things. It certainly looks pretty and I was enthused enough about the application and hype to sign up for access to the beta. I haven't received an email with info on how to get the beta, but I don't think it'll matter. I think I've moved on from the big (and not cheap) applications for my todo lists. I haven't stuck completely to the GTD philosophy (or theory or implementation or whatever) so I'm not sure I ever really needed one of the heavyweight apps in the first place.

Today, when looking for something simpler I came across a couple of TextMate bundles that are more along the lines of what I need, especially since most of my day is spent in TextMate anyway. I first found Henrik Nyh's Tasks bundle, which in turn pointed to Sven Fuchs' Taskmate bundle, which is based off of Tasks, but is a little more functional. And it's exactly what I need (for now). It uses a simple text file as the base with some minimal formatting (colons and dashes) to mark up your task/todo list. This is more like it. Not jmuch effort needed and it does exactly what I need.

I did have to make a few changes to Taskmate for it to work for me. I like using the Quicksilver "Append to" command, but it only allows appending text to files ending with the ".txt" extension. After adding the Taskmate bundle, I opened up Textmate's Bundle Editor and changed the following info:

fileTypes = ( 'todo' );

to

fileTypes = ( 'txt' );

so that it will recognize .txt files instead of .todo files. In order to avoid issues with other basic text files, I added another line to make sure it's working with Taskmate files:

firstLineMatch = 'Todo List';

Now, in order for Taskmate to work, the file must have a ".txt" file extension, and the first line of the file must be "Todo List". Of course, if you're reading this and would like to use your own qualifier, just make the necessary changes. I did make this solution a little more complicated than the default installation, but once these things are set, you don't have to think about it again.