Microsoft products have waned with me over the years, but their new product, Band, definitely got my attention today. Also glad to see that they have apps available on all major app platforms.
Desktop decisions
Apple's choice to remove the ability to upgrade the internals of their products has me asking decisions about my own preferred hardware setup for work purposes.
Our house is light when it comes to computing power. We have a handful of devices between the family and there's a games console there for when I feel the need to be humiliated at Madden by my oldest son. As for actual computers though, with the keyboards, mice and monitors, we have a single laptop in the house. Mine.
My MacBook Pro has been my workstation for over a year now. Solidly built and still just as fast as the day that I bought it. It's also the laptop the family use to sync their photos and music to external disks for long term storage. I've been careful about seperating content between work and family. I've got a couple of external hard disks for storing pictures and music as well as a third external hard disk for Time Machine backups. Anything work related stays on the laptop, while videos, movies, pictures and music are all located on external disks.
The setup we have is fine for our needs for the moment, but ideally I would like to have seperate computers for work and family. Keeping the two seperate would mean that if one was to go, then it wouldn't be a major impact on me working. If my MBP was to pack in tomorrow then the home computer could serve for work purposes until I was back up and running with the hardware that I needed for work again.
After hearing the news of the updated Mac Minis in Apple's product line up, I was excited. These little boxes of technological joy have been on my radar for a while. While the lovely iMac has been on the wishlist for a while, the cost of it is out of our budget for what would be a computer that would be used intermittently. The Mac Mini was the next sensible choice then. With a monitor already on my desk, it makes much more sense to just buy a computer than can plug into it and allow me to use my own keyboard and mouse.
However, joy quickly turned to dismay when I found out that as a consumer, I won't be able to open up the Mac Mini and upgrade the parts that I need in the future. Like it's MacBook and iMac cousins, the Mac Mini has it's memory soldered onto the motherboard which makes upgrading in the future impossible. If you want something more powerful, you need to buy another Mac Mini with the specs you need. Hardly ideal given that in order to make these Mac Minis viable as long term computing products, the upgrades on the Apple website are higher than the market prices for similar upgrades you could do to a more open computer.
It's sad to see that Apple's products are going against this with memory now being soldered on to each of their product's motherboards. It's got me thinking again about how much do I want to invest in computing hardware in the home as I am clearly becoming more and more dependent on Apple's products. As a technology platform for ordinary consumers, Apple's products are hard to beat. They work well and the software that they provide for OSX and iOS is easy to use. I don't think for everyday use I would switch to another platform such as Google or Microsoft. It just works, it always has.
The geek in me though has me looking at Linux barebones boxes and alternatives to traditional desktops such as these miniature Linux desktops as a replacement for my laptop. I definitely want something longer lasting but also upgradeable. I'm just not sure at the moment what that setup will be. Ideally a desktop running some Linux distribution as well as a small form laptop such as a Chromebook, without the Chrome OS, could serve me for my mobile needs which at the moment are rare. That could change though.
A few decisions to make here, but I think the first is whether I could use Linux as my work environment on a daily basis. I should probably decide on that first before making any decisions regarding my desktop hardware.
Team 256
What started as a monthly challenge is now fast turning into a social network daily ritual, which isn't a bad thing when it comes to the fast and furious world of social networks.
Back in September, I started a challenge of writing a 256 character post everyday on App.net. Aside from missing a single day's post I completed the challenge. It was a refreshing use of my time on a social network. Rather than simply typing the first thing that comes to your head and posting it, filling the post with 256 characters means you need to spend a bit of time editing, re-wording and ensuring your post is correct and uses all character space available. It's this time spent on getting the message right that makes my 256 character posts so different from every other post I make.
Social networks are often seen as a cheap and fast way of getting messages across to people, so few people think before they post. While they are great for short bursts of information, social networks are mostly places where masses of un-edited information stream by us every day. My #team256 posts on App.net are not wildly profound or better to read than other posts on App.net, but they do provide me with a chance to write something a bit more detailed.
What started as a monthly challenge has fast become something of a daily habit. I'm still keeping the habit going to post 256 characters a day on App.net and while I might have missed the last couple of days, I did look forward to writing my post for the day. I hope that it continues and gathers pace on App.net in the future.
Journey across the world using your mouse with these amazing images taken from the International Space Station.
via SwissMiss
Excellent use of those blank pages at the start of a book, create your index of ideas from the book.
via Taking Note
Pixelmator for iPad
I love using Pixelmator on my MBP, but it's great to see it's now available on the iPad too.
via Tools and Toys
Fixie Friday - Legor Cicli 29er
Obviously this isn't a fixed wheel bike, but with just a single gear and no suspension in sight, this is about as close as you can get to off-road fixie.
via Cycle EXIF
New Todoist for Macs
A new look Todoist for all you Mac people. Love this service.
NB is Timeless
No fads, gimmicks, or shortcuts. Just practical advice and hardwork.
Techniques like brainstorming try to sell a way of generating ideas in a short space of time, but is there a better way?
Out of the blue you have an idea for something. A product, a book, a service, something. What do you do with it? The obvious answer here is to write it down. Anywhere. Whatever comes to hand, get that idea down. Give it an hour or two and you might simply forget it even existed.
Great. Now what?
The next step for many is to re-visit this idea at some point in the future and decide whether to act on it or not. The down side to this is that while the idea might have sounded great on its own, it is only one idea. One single good thought.
If the idea is so good then you might be thinking that it would be a challenge to improve upon it. What's better than a single idea though? How about two, three or even seven ideas that support this one single idea?
The problem is that while we might want to set aside a 30 minute session to brain storm more ideas to support this new idea of ours, the new ideas we want might not simply be there. You can't force yourself to come up with new ideas. You might be able to expand on an idea but limiting yourself to a time period will only leave you with a couple of new ideas.
If you're the patient type then how about trying a different approach?
Let your ideas incubate.
I've wrote before about incubating mind maps in the past. Rather than starting and finishing a mind map in a single session, I would re-visit my mind map on a weekly basis to give myself time to allow the central topic of the mind map to sink in. The benefits to this is that you allow yourself time to think about the central topic of the mindmap thereby allowing associations to that central topic to develop over time.
The same can be said for new ideas.
By allowing an idea to incubate over time, it gives us a chance to think about the idea. Thoughts and ideas often come at the most inconvienent of times. When you're walking the kids to school, when you're out on a bike ride, when you're anywhere other than on your computer to execute the idea.
This is a good thing though. Being away from your desk or your workplace means that you don't act on a sudden impulse to test the idea. Just make a note of it and then carry on with your day.
At the end of the day, make a more permanent note of your idea so that it can be easily found later along with any other ideas that you have had that support this idea.
Give it a couple of months and you should start to see that single idea develop into something more. And this is the benefit to incubating your ideas. An incubation period of two months can yield more positive results than a single brainstorming session could. It's not for everyone though, but I'm more of a believer that slow and steady wins the race.