Mark Whitcher

Full disclosure—the iPad sleeves that I will be mentioning are made by my wife. If you happen to purchase one, I will get some of the money (whatever she decides to let me have).

My wife is an avid quilter, but not in the sense that most non-quilters would think of (sitting in a chair sewing together a bunch of squares by hand). She prefers to think of herself as a fabric artist and when you look at one of her recent quilts you will understand why.

About a month ago, the case I originally got for my iPad fell apart completely, and I fell in love with the feel of using the iPad without a case. So I asked Ingrid if she would make a sleeve for me to keep my iPad in. She gladly obliged and had fun doing it.

She had a lot of fun.

So she decided to make some more and sell them on a website. I have been using mine for about a month and it works and looks great.

I will say though that these sleeves are not like others you might find. They are not mass-produced at all, but are made in a series of about five sleeves. She will design a series that all look alike and do about five of them (or so). There will be some variation between the sleeves within a series, but not much.

This is my third blog post about OmniFocus and Things, and I’m afraid my natural tendency of obsessively trying new tools in my workflow is showing itself. I’ve thought about this and come to the conclusion that when a platform does what it is supposed to do, getting out of the way so I can use it without thinking about the platform, then I stick with it. It’s the platforms that make me constantly evaluate how I am using the platform that drive me to look for something better.

The problem with Things

I decided to give OmniFocus another try because Things isn’t powerful enough to help me know what I should be working on. You are supposed to look through the “next” area and tag what to work on that day, but the next area is a huge list of hundreds of actions. Am I supposed to read through them all and decide if each one should be done that day? How does that help me?

Then when I start to fall behind, as I am prone to do, the “today” focus starts to become a smaller version of the “next” one. I end up with a list of 20-50 items that I should be thinking about and working on. I reschedule all those that I can’t do today, which might help me today, but I end up in the same situation tomorrow.

Using Things ends up being a perpetual grind of rescheduling tasks, all the while thinking I am missing something. I end up with no clear picture of the state of things and just drift with no clear direction. The only way to get a clear picture at that point is to spend a significant amount of time with the software and reschedule accurately what I can’t think about yet.

At this point, the list is my focus rather than the things I should be working on. So how exactly is it helping me?

OmniFocus perspectives to the rescue

When I tried OmniFocus the first time, I tried to translate everything from Things into comparable areas in OmniFocus. I created contexts for all my areas of responsibility, trying to squeeze the way I was using Things into a way to use OmniFocus. This worked for awhile, but I ended up in a similar situation as I had with Things.

This time I did things differently. I looked at the methods that OmniFocus had to offer and decided how I could use them to help me get things done.

So here is how I have it set up—

• Projects or actions that I need to schedule for a certain time get a start date. I then set up a perspective that groups and sorts by start date. This perspective tells me what I should be working on.
• Projects and actions that need to finish by a certain date get due dates. I then set up a perspective that focuses on work projects, grouping and sorting them by due date. This let’s me easily see what jobs I need to finish soon (or should have finished already).
• I’m making good use of the ability to designate that actions within a project happen sequentially or in parallel. This is great for creating a focused today list (perspective). I may have twelve things to get done today, but I can view the list with only available actions and see a shortened version which makes the list more manageable.
• I am using flags as my method of designating what I am working on today. So I have created perspectives that help me evaluate what is in the queue, then I just flag the actions or projects that I should work on today. I think this is going to work really well.

So through the use of perspectives I can create views to help me quickly analyze what needs to be done. No more scrolling through a list of hundreds of actions to find what I need to be doing. I view what I should be working on in one perspective and what I need to have done this week (or next) in another. I can easily see the bills that are late, or those coming this week. Items will pop up in the perspectives when I need to think about them, but not clutter up my focus on what I need to do today.

I am really excited to see this work. I would love to settle in and become OmniFocus only, focusing on the tasks instead of the tool.

A thought about OmniFocus for iPad

I bit the bullet and bought OmniFocus for iPad. There are many people who think this is the ultimate “getting things done” system, and there is something to say for using the iPad for planning and managing tasks. It is much more relaxing sitting on the porch with an iPad and reviewing the schedule than sitting at the desk with complex-looking software on the laptop. If I am relaxed going into the day with a clear picture of what to work on, and confident that I’m not overlooking anything, then it starts the day off right.

That being said, the iPad app doesn’t really add anything to the mix beyond what the other versions offer (with a couple exceptions). The interface is nice and minimal, which I really like, but it essentially is a redesigned version of the iPhone app.

The one feature that everyone raves about is the forecast view. It is basically a nicer looking version of a perspective that I could create. It does let me focus only on what is due in the next seven days, which is nice, but then I find myself wanting to refine the focus to only work-related tasks which I can’t do. So it is nice, but not something I absolutely have to have.

The one thing that I love, is the button to move from an action to it’s context or project. Actions show up in lists or perspectives, but before the iPad version of OmniFocus I had to navigate manually to the project. The iPad app let’s me hit a button to go there which helps me easily navigate through my list of stuff to do. (You have to click a confirmation that you want to go to that view, which seems redundant to me. Accidental taps would be inconsequential if we had a browser-style back button.)

So, I like it, but could live without it.

I saved up my BestBuy bucks and got Things for iPad today. Here are my initial thoughts:

• It isn’t ground breaking—there isn’t anything about the user interface design, or the application itself that wows me at all. It is a fairly clean implementation of the features found in the desktop application. It actually feels a little cleaner than the desktop application (which is one thing I was hoping for).
• It feels comfortable—thanks to the iPad’s touch interface, it is much easier going through all my projects and managing all my tasks. I was able to sit with my iPad in bed and go through everything in the list, getting ready for the day tomorrow. It feels much less like an extra chore, and more like actual planning. It feels good.
• It is making me fall in love with my iPad again—when I got my iPhone 4, the iPad started sitting unused more and more (which was fine because my family started picking it up more and more). Today, between Things and the new Twitter app, I am wanting my iPad with me constantly. I am getting real work done without having to sit at my desk with the laptop.
• Syncing, please—I really miss OmniFocus’s effortless over the air syncing. The local syncing in Things seems to be working better than it used to, but OF was great. It just worked and I never had to think about it.

All in all I am pretty happy with it.

If you are like me (a follower of Christ who tries to become a better Christian every day) then you are looking for ways for God’s Word (also know as the Bible) to permeate your life more and more. I thought it would be kind of cool if I could create a script that would randomly display a random verse from the Bible on my macbook.

I found a web page that will generate a random scripture passage. So I used ruby and growl (on OSX) to create a script and cron to run it periodically. The script requires a couple gems to run, but if you know what you are doing it should be pretty easy to set up. The only gatcha would be to set up growl to allow incoming network notifications.

Download the Random Scripture passage script

I’m back on Things and I’m loving it

I had posted previously about my trip from Things to OmniFocus because of much more robust syncing in OmniFocus between the iPhone and my macbook.

In the post I mentioned that I did not enjoy the complexity of OmniFocus compared to Things, but I thought I had to make due with it because of my syncing needs. Well, it turns out my office manager isn’t using OmniFocus at all. I finally got fed up with OmniFocus’s way of doing things and moved back to Things. Syncing with the iPhone still sucks, but I would rather live with bad syncing than software that makes me work too hard to make it work for me.

For those who are interested, I wrote an AppleScript to take the CSV file exported from OmniFocus and create the tasks and projects in Things. Against my better judgement, I am making the script available here in spite of the following reasons for not making available.

• It isn’t a direct AppleScript but is written in Ruby using the rb-appscript gem.
• It is far from flawless and I had to double check everything and make sure I had it set up like I wanted.
• OmniFocus is way too flexible to have a single way of transferring the projects, dates, and contexts into Things. I did what worked for me, but it probably won’t be what others will want.
• When I am doing a quick script, I write extremely sloppy code (minimal comments), if you know enough to make the script work, it would probably be easier to write it from scratch.

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

I purchased the Invisible Shield screen protector from zagg.com a couple days ago and I just removed it from the device. I thought I would let you know what I thought about the product.

What I loved about it

• It is crystal clear. The shield doesn’t affect the way the screen looked at all.
• It looks like it would do a good job keeping the screen from getting scratched.
• It has a lifetime replacement warranty.

What I hated about it

• It feels rubbery. Your fingers don’t slide across it very well.
• It doesn’t stay in place. If you push on it, it will slide around the screen and not stay where you put it. This was a problem in my pocket.
• The edges kept getting pushed up by the case I was using. This sealed the deal for me. I kept getting air bubbles along the edges where the screen protector would get pushed up by the case.

A couple disclaimers

• Installation was not a problem at all. Product reviews for zagg screen protectors often mention that it is difficult to install. I did not find this to be true. Installation was unconventional to be sure (you spray the shield and your hands with a liquid that they provide and then you squeegee the liquid away with the provided squeegee), but I felt better about this installation than any other screen protector I have used.
• It’s possible that the protector didn’t adhere to the glass well enough because of oils from my skin. I cleaned the phone thoroughly, but I did not use any kind of detergent or solvent to make sure there were no oils on the glass. There where no finger prints or debris of any kind, but that is the only thing I can think of that would have caused the behavior I saw. Enough people are completely satisfied with this product that I am guessing I did something wrong. However…

I won’t buy it again

I spent $20 on this product at Best Buy and $20 has been hard to come by lately, so I won’t be purchasing this again. I don’t even know if I am going to pay the shipping to have it replaced under warranty and give it another chance.

Feel free to leave a comment below if you have experienced anything similar with these products.

I thought I would take a minute to put a plug in for AT&T’s customer service. You always hear how good Verizon’s customer service is, but I have had nothing but good experiences with AT&T. I’ll illustrate with a quick story.

The backstory

Last week I got my iPhone 4 upgrade which I had pre-ordered through AT&T (got it a day early, actually). I was excited about the phone because it really is the best phone I could ever dream up. Enjoyed the phone all day Thursday and everything was going, as some would say, “swimmingly.” Friday morning, however, my shiny new iPhone decided to go for a swim in the toilet.

There are a bunch of web pages detailing what you should do in a such a case, so I promptly had my phone sitting in a warm dry place completely submerged in a bowl of uncooked rice to draw out the moisture. After two days of that, the phone looks good and works well, except for the fact that it won’t stay on for more than a few minutes. Every few minutes it tries to restart itself, and sometimes the battery just craps out and it shuts down (despite the fact it says there is about 84% charge on the battery).

So I decided to let the phone sit in rice for a few more days and then decide if I am going to pay the $199 to have my iphone fixed or replaced by Apple or try to have it fixed someplace else.

In the meantime I needed a phone. I was using the kitchen cellphone, but that could only last for a short while because I need my data. I can’t just put the sim card from the iPhone 4 into the old phone because they are different. So I put the sim card from the kitchen phone into the old iPhone.

The part about AT&T

The problem is the kitchen phone doesn’t have a data plan. So I called AT&T and within a few minutes I had the data plan for my iPhone moved to the number for the kitchen phone. So I’ve got a fully functional iPhone (including the tethering plan) which works great (except for the cracked screen and slower processor) and I can go about my work like normal. It also helps that my business phone number is a Google Voice number so I could route it to the temporary number I am using.

Since I had just renewed the contract on my number, I was thinking I wouldn’t be able to suspend the data plan on that number, but it was not a problem at all. The customer service reps that I spoke to were very knowledgeable, kind, and helpful.

The only bad thing

The only thing negative that I would say about the customer service is that it is not available 24 hours a day. There have been several times that I have been doing something during off hours and have not been able to fix a problem right then because the office wasn’t open. I don’t know if this is normal in the cell phone industry or not (never had a need to call customer service on Verizon when I was with them).