Notes from Checklist Manifesto

Posted on 27 November 2011 by Terry Chay

In Montreal this summer, while making idle conversation, Paul asked me if I had read anything interesting. Here was my answer…

…

Five years ago, I met D. Richard Hipp because my friends were thinking of bundling a database he wrote into PHP. Since that time, besides being in the PHP core and thus about 40% of the web servers on the planet, SQLite is in every smartphone, in software such as Firefox, platforms such as Adobe AIR, and operating systems such as Apple Mac OS X. It is used by Oracle and Bloomberg.

I was curious how the unassuming man I met took the new-found fame of his pet software project. This is why, despite my hatred for all things database—they’re boring and talks about them are probably what it feels like to sit through a course on actuarial accounting—I popped into his talk at OSCON.

I was glad I did. It was about, of all things, checklists.

My brother and father are much more responsible than my mom and me. One things that separates them from us was in their methodical use of checklists. Watching his talk reminded me how important they are, how they can be used for so much more than I considered, and how thankful I was that I finally made a packing checklist before going to Portland (and Montreal).

Read the article, and, if that interests you, buy the book.

With a little imagination, a checklist will change your life. Continue reading my notes from the book after the jump→

So Meta

Posted on 20 July 2010 by Terry Chay

I was reading Smithsonian’s 40th anniversary issue when I ran across this article on the future of reading.

Since I was on my iPad, I had to take this screenshot.

Get Zinio for the iPad, zoom in on what interests you, take a screenshot of it , and add it to Evernote.

“In my day, we clipping interesting articles with scissors and put it in a folder—a real physical thing made out of cardboard paper—and into something called a filing cabinet. That ‘desktop’ thing was just a metaphor for real physical stuff we used.”

“That’s crazy talk, grandpa!”

MacJournal meets my Kindle

Posted on 8 March 2010 by Terry Chay

While going through the MacHeist nanoBundle 2 purchase, that one of the items was MacJournal. I already own it, so I gifted it. But it caused me to take a peek again at the application—the last time I used it was back when it was freeware and had a taco.

…it still does.

It occurs to me that it might make a useful reading notebook to complement my Kindle (and my iPad next month). I haven’t been keeping track of the copious clippings and notes I take with it. Here is my first attempt:

Here is the process I am trying to use:

Create a journal in MacJournal called “Reading Notebook.”
Import all the Kindle Clippings I’ve not clipped up as entries
Create an entry for a book I am reading, tag it with some search terms in the inspector.
Search and cut the related Kindle Clippings out of the various notes, and paste it to the bottom of the book entry.
organize, summarize, and delete as I go.
Import kindle clippings often and delete often.

We’ll see how it goes. I made out some stubs for other ideas for journals.

Organizing Journal – keep a record of my failed attempts at self-help.
The Woodwork – I’ve stored unfinished drafts for blog posts in a myriad of places: Things, folders with the title, TextEdit RTF documents, and drafts on the blog. I plan to consolidate them here. Note that MacJournal has a “publish to WordPress” feature, but I don’t think it’s robust enough for me. I’ll continue to use the website, and maybe ecto, if I have the wherewithal.
Things to Buy – Things is getting too cluttered with a lot of stuff that I don’t plan on buying for years. Delicious is in the same state. (I’ll still use TaskPaper for last-minute organizing before a major purchase and other maintenance purchases.)

For most notetaking, I’m still happy with opening an RTF, dropping it into a folder, and using Spotlight (via Leap) to find things. This just formalizes a fraction of it.

Purchase MacJournal with 6 other applications on MacHeist (2 days left!).

Lolcats can never be FAIL’d

Posted on 28 October 2009 by Terry Chay

Last month, my friend and fellow kimchee-eater, M.J., had three books sent to me. FailNation, How to Take over Teh Wurld, and Graph Out Loud. That’s important that I have friends like her because I’m usually the last to know about the latest memes.

Three new books and their respective websites: FailBlog, ICanHasCheezburger, and GraphJam.

I mention this because if you happen to be in San Francisco today at 6:30pm you really need to go to the book launch party. I came to get their last book signed:

I’ll certainly be there in order to get the books signed (and then give them away later, like I did last time).

Ben Huh signing their first book.

See you at the party!

(Full disclaimer, I now work for Automattic—though I didn’t at the time M.J. sent me the books. ICanHasCheezburger, GraphJam, and Failblog are VIP customers of WordPress.com.)

Fink’d

Posted on 14 May 2009 by Terry Chay

Something strange I ran across reading a book last night:

Amazon.com: Details Men's Style Manual: The Ultimate Guide for Making Your Clothes Work for You: Daniel Peres, the editors of Details magazine: Books

Tom Fink was my roommate in college. He got me in trouble with the instructor when he got caught with my lab notebooks in physics lab. I’ll always remember him as the guy who didn’t know the difference between EGA and VGA.

BTW, this is the book that the above refers to. I see he’s written this book also. You have to gone to school with him to understand why we’re tickled pink to see this.

Amazon.com: The Man's Book: The Essential Guide for the Modern Man: Thomas Fink: Books

Or is that tickled Fink?

Où est le boeuf?

Posted on 16 April 2009 by Terry Chay

One of the weird consequences a publicly-known fast food obsession housed in a tiny body is that friends keep sending me tasty things like turbaconducken and This Is Why You’re Fat.

A friend e-mailed this gem from Canada.

The Double Big Mac in McDonald’s Canada

Yum!!!

three observations after the jump

I wish my colon was clear

Posted on 8 April 2009 by Terry Chay

From flackette:

“To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting” —Edmund Burke

Alas, it seems that the Kindle has backed up my colon!

A political aside after the jump

Kindle hits the iPhone

Posted on 4 March 2009 by Terry Chay

One of the iPhone updates I downloaded last night was the New York Times app. Trying to figure out how it was better than the previous version I was hit with the announcement that there is a Kindle app for the iPhone.

Here are some screenshots with commentary:

The Kindle icon is nice. I put the app next to Stanza which is, by far, the best free book reader for the iPhone. Yeah, my battery is running out.

This screen is the same as the Kindle 2’s UPC symbol.

All my purchased books are synced and the covers are in color. Nice.

On the other hand, none of my sample chapters synced, none of my documents synced, and my magazine subscription The New Yorker didn’t sync. I was hoping to see the latest cover in color on the iPhone.

Kindle app wirelessly synchronized my page position from my Kindle 2. Slick! You flick tap to change the page, tap hold to pull up the menu. They’ll probably have to change the navigation UI to be more in line with other iPhone readers.

For some reason the scroll is too slow for page flipping. You flick to fast you just get a white screen. You can change the font size but you cannot rotate the display.

Images on Kindle books are supposed to be color. Not for me! Maybe it depends on the book, but the print version of this book is clearly color, while the Kindle version is black and white. Also you can’t pinch zoom or tap zoom any of the images. So much for using the Kindle for my pr0n needs. Argh!

There seems to be a bug where both “Beginning” and “Cover” jump to the cover. Beginning is supposed to jump to the first readable area.

Note that the app syncs my notes and marks from my Kindle 2.

The jump menu is the only thing clearly better on the iPhone. I can jump to the section with just a flick and tap. Those of you who take a lot of notes know how frustrating it is to navigate the Kindle 2’s eInk display.

BTW, there is no text-to-speech. This is disappointing. I know the iPod has spoken menus and there is a way sync high quality voices to it. I’d love for a high-quality voice like Alex read my books while I’m driving (and then sync my book position back to my Kindle 2. [If I have time I’ll archive my notes later in this article]

Kindle Clippings 2009-02-27

Posted on 27 February 2009 by Terry Chay

Kindle saver North Beach, San Francisco, California Panasonic DMC-LX1 1/5sec, ƒ2.8, iso 100, 6.3mm (28mm) No, this is not a sticker. This is the Kindle when it’s asleep. That’s the magic of e-Ink.

I found that you can’t clip from sample chapters Major bummer!

To see a definition on the K2, just navigate to the left of the word and it pops up automatically. Here is a tip I found useful when setting your ad-hoc chapter markers just so.

Kindle 2 User’s Guide (Amazon.com) - Highlight Loc. 524-27 | Added on Thursday, February 26, 2009, 10:26 AM Tip: You can quickly create a bookmark by either holding down the Alt key and pressing the B key, or by moving the 5-way up or down to go into cursor mode and then pressing the 5-way controller twice.

I cancelled my New Yorker (print) subscription and started it up on the Kindle. The New Yorker is nearly ideal subject matter for the Kindle. Note that while you get the cartoons, the cover art and any article art aren’t reproduced in the Kindle edition. Amazon, please fix! Another note is that since they are Condé Nast, you can, with some finagling get the the print version much cheaper than the Kindle version.

The K2 version doesn’t have the ads so I don’t know how I feel about that. But if I really need such a think, I can just buy The Complete New Yorker.

The New Yorker (The New Yorker) - Highlight Loc. 1818-19 | Added on Thursday, February 26, 2009, 09:18 PM The problem with playing someone whose default setting is tabula rasa is pretty obvious, and the primary qualification that Dushku brings to the part is that she graduated with honors from the Royal Academy of Cleavage.

I like the expression at the end of this clipping. The article is a critical review of Joss Wheedon’s Doll House.

Kindle 2 User’s Guide (Amazon.com) - Highlight Loc. 642-44 | Added on Thursday, February 26, 2009, 10:47 PM Tip: You can also play or stop Text-to-Speech by holding down the Shift key and pressing the Symbol key

The Kindle Text-to-Speech is much better than MacInTalk which came with the original Macintosh, but it’s nowhere close to where that technology has gone. I use this tip when I’m showing someone the text-to-speech and I need to stop it quickly.

Kindle 2 User’s Guide (Amazon.com) - Highlight Loc. 701-2 | Added on Thursday, February 26, 2009, 11:57 PM Tip: You can also narrow a search in the Kindle Store to an author’s name by typing “@author” followed by the author’s name.

A shortcut. I use the Kindle Store a lot, but not to buy. I’ve read about a half dozen first chapters today.

Kindle 2 User’s Guide (Amazon.com) - Highlight Loc. 1043-45 | Added on Friday, February 27, 2009, 12:14 AM Tip: If you would like to avoid the fee, address the e-mail so that the second part of your Kindle e-mail address is @free.kindle.com. After sending to the @free.kindle.com address, a link to the converted file will be e-mailed to your Amazon.com e-mail address. You can then download the file to your Kindle’s documents folder via USB using your computer.

What can I say? I’m a cheapskate.

The Kindle is a better conversationalist Sushi on North Beach, North Beach, San Francisco, California Nikon D3, Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G 1/60sec, ƒ2.8, iso 4500, 35mm As you can see, my Kindle 2 gets more women than I do. I may have a weakness for women who read books, but Marie seems to only have a weakness for books. Major bummer.

getting free books on your Kindle after the jump.

Firestarter

Posted on 9 February 2009 by Terry Chay

Well the Kindle 2 came out today so I preordered it.

This morning two people IM’d me about it so I decided to give the first my Amazon referral bucks. I give Amazon bucks semi-randomly to various friends and he asked me how I do it.

I use a “Buy from Amazon” bookmarklet I wrote to make life easier.

You can drag that into your toolbar if you like. One nice thing is to remove the second prompt and just replace the href with the tag to yourself. I keep it this way so that I remember to put the associate ID of one of my friends since I put them on rotation.