Mark Whitcher

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).

Today is Father’s Day, and I wanted to take just a minute to honor my Dad here before God and the world (and try to make up for not getting a card sent in time).

I am very thankful to my Heavenly Father for giving me the earthly father that he did.

Since leaving home for college, my dad has been a constant source of wisdom and counsel for the situations that have risen as I try to become a man of God. There have been countless phone calls asking for help about topics ranging from building a relationship with the young woman who became my wife to changing the intake manifold on my 1983 Chevy Monty Carlo to getting rid of credit card debt to raising up my son in the way that he should go.

Dad, there is no way I could put words together that would adequately communicate the blessing you are to me. So I’ll stop talking (before this gets too sappy) and just say “thanks” and I love you.

I was asked by my wife’s friend to retouch some old photographs of her family in China (the spot healing brush in Photoshop became by best friend). One scene, in particular, was very engaging for me—a bride being whisked to her wedding through a crowded street. (I haven’t gotten permission to use her photograph here on my blog, but here is a small crop of it. We’ll call it fair use until I get permission.)

I don’t know any of these people, and I wouldn’t be able to communicate with them if I did. As I am working on the image, removing the worst spots and scratches caused by decades of being stuffed into envelopes and transported around the globe, I see the faces of these people with their varied expressions and am reminded of how caught-up-in-my-own-world I get. I get overwhelmed by circumstances and start feeling sorry for myself, but on this one little square piece of paper is a snapshot of many different people, all with worlds of their own. Each one is worried about something, or happy about something, or excited about something. These aren’t just shades of light and dark on paper, these are souls at a specific point in time who were just as real as I am right now with my thoughts and feelings.

It takes a lot of effort on my part to look at this and try to think what they are thinking and feel what they were feeling—to feel the reality of it. I love old photos.