Friday, April 8th, 2005
Germish
This is getting ridiculous: i’m writing some boring documents for a university course in german right now and i just opened a dictionary to translate something from english to german because i can’t think of the correct german term. It shows that i’ve read or written hardly anything in german for the last two years…
Wednesday, April 6th, 2005
Sony’s flip orientation mp3-player
The “flip orientation” feature of sony’s new nw-hd5 mp3-player seems like a neat idea at a cursory glance, but thinking about it i don’t see this work. This mp3-player will flip both the display and button orientation depending on how the user holds it, which basically makes it impossible to use it blindly. In addition it might be pretty jerky if it’s overly sensitive to movement and you try to use it while walking or working out. Sounds like one of those features everyone just deactivates as soon as the novelty factor wears off. If you can deactivate it at all, that is.
Anticipating smart folders
According to latest rumors, mac os x 10.4 tiger should be released later this month. I’ll be all over it for mail 2.0 alone.
I recently moved all my e-mails from some 30 folders to my inbox. Let’s face it, filing away e-mails into folders just doesn’t cut it. You’ll always be behind, you’ll have to set some time aside for tediously managing your e-mail and when you really need to find something, you’ll resort to fancy type-ahead search anyway, because it’s the fastest and most reliable way to get at what you’re looking for. If you’re searching across all mailboxes, all folders anyway, why not just keep everything in your inbox?
I’ve set up several rules to automatically apply color labels depending on sender to keep a rough overview of private messages and university stuff, and mail does a decent job at highlighting threads and conversations. The main difficulty lies in keeping track of which e-mails need further processing. In the past, i’d only keep unprocessed e-mails in my inbox and moved them out as soon as they’d been handled, but now without the filing i’ve started to flag them. Problem is, however, that my inbox is slowly getting a little crowded and flagged messages move further and further down the list of messages, becoming more urgent and less visible over time.
With smart folders, as promised for mail 2.0, this won’t be a problem anymore: just create a smart folder for all your flagged messages for easy access while all your e-mails keep living in your inbox. Slice and dice your data as you see fit. Let me tell you - slicing and dicing is the new filing. Soon we’ll all have forgotten this unnecessarily limited notion of dumb folders where a file can only live in one place just for the sake of a dusty metaphor. That concept never did any justice to the many facets especially present in personal data and i most definitely won’t miss it.
Tuesday, April 5th, 2005
Sonny
Today i might have gone slightly over the top. I bought a white jacket. I look a little bit like sonny in it, which can be good as well as bad, depending on my mood.
Thing is, i have a very disturbed relationship with jackets and also suits for that matter. Suits are the finest clothes a man can wear. They’re supposed to lend dignity and confidence to their wearer, but it doesn’t work that way for me. If you look on the streets, you’ll find that suits have been seized by two demographic groups: old men and corporate drones, where old men get to wear the really sweet, classic three-piece suits and drones… they get to wear the boring stuff mostly. If you’re not part of these tribes, you’re tough out of luck, your only chance is to rock a jacket with a decidedly snarky attitude, something i’m not particularly fond of (though i’m tempted to give it a try).
In order to get into the right state-of-mind to confidently wear jackets and suits, i’ve come to the conclusion that i have to familiarize myself with the practice. Sure, it might be a little painful in the beginning and missteps are bound to happen, so please be forgiving, but it’s something i consider necessary and a white jacket had to be on my road to enlightenment as one of the first steps. That’s just me i guess, reconquering suits from drones one piece at a time. Continuing at this pace i’ll have the confidence for three-piece suits by the time i’ve retired…
Sunday, April 3rd, 2005
The weekly feedcycle
I wouldn’t dare wasting your time with this post on a weekday, but somehow i see it fit posting this on a sunday:
I usually start mondays with a clean slate in my feed-reader, no unread posts left, mostly based on two grounds: weekends afford a lot of spare time to catch up, and posting frequency hits rock-bottom on sundays. Major news outlets lie quiet, bloggers scale down their output, things come to a halt.
After a rapid uptake on mondays, i’m usually totally swamped with unread posts by wednesday or thursday. Around this time i just surrender to the incoming stream of words and start anticipating saturday, when all winds down for the great sunday hiatus.
Now the problem lies in those fickle two or three days before the weekend: i’m overwhelmed, feel out of control, ponder unsubscribing from a bunch of feeds but then retract from such a drastic step simply because i know i’d lack occupation and entertainment the following sunday.
Even worse, i feel disconnected, behind the curve, out-of-sync with the rest of the world. Getting your news two days late, what a drama! This medium is about immediacy after all, if i wanted delays i could subscribe to a newspaper!
It sure would do me some good to drop this nasty habit of finishing any post i started reading, even if it’s of low relevancy or interest. Reading the last sentence i almost wish you didn’t make it down here.
Friday, April 1st, 2005
Panel-perfect Sin City
If you haven’t heard of Robert Rodriguez’ movie adaptation of the brilliant sin city comic books, let me tell you that this is the movie to be excited about this year. Check out the trailers and marvel at the panel-perfect adaptation of the comic’s visual style. Don’t tell me you’re not impressed by that.