“I’m building a robotic marionette (see http://www.delamaquina.com). The couple times I’ve shown it off in public, it is fascinating to watch reactions — first, people notice this creepy puppet moving around… then inevitably, their eyes travel up the strings and see this machine with spinning pulleys and wires. They stare at this device, mesmerized by the motion and peering all around it to see how it fits together. THEN, after a few minutes, they notice I’m standing off to the side, pushing buttons and working sensors to make the puppet move… that’s when the conversation begins, “OH! you’re controlling it by that computer! How does it work?” or “What does this mean for puppetry?” or “Who’s controlling whom?”

So maybe “Technology is just another art medium through which emotion can be expressed?”

Indeed, I think that’s becoming my own unresolved question: can we coax expressiveness out of technology, itself?”

• Fixed odd format on permalink pages
• Fixed double “Tag: Tag:”

I’ve been hacking away at a little app to post/share what I’m going to call “sketchstreams”

I learned a lot about how I enjoy working while getting ready for maker faire.

I’ll be adding features and tweaking the design on the blog in iterations over time rather in fell swoops.

Collect, Wonder, Tinker, Build, Repeat — that should apply here too.

If the first tag is not the word “private” then the link is also posted, via cocoalicious, to my del.icio.us account.

This was based on my prior script and Ethan’s attempt to deal with info overload.

It attaches the referral URL to the DEVONThink record, so when it creates the archive, it will actually fetch the article from the original source (ex. del.icio.us posts get the original article)

Since DEVONThink doesn’t really do tags, I’ve co-opted the “comments” field for this purpose.

This is attached to a Quicksilver trigger (CMD-CTR-OPTION-/).

Here is the workflow:

• SCAN: Quickly scan headlines in NetNewsWire and hit return when I see a headline that seems interesting. This opens the page in the background in a tab in NNW
• READ: Go down list of articles, skim them, do CMD-CTR-OPTION-/ for those I’d like to possibly include in future research to invoke my script. * In the prompt that appears, type a few keywords/tags that describe the content and hit “return”
• REVIEW: Later on, when doing research or work around a topic, I can use DEVONThink’s smart searching features confidently knowing that it will dig up at least some interesting connections between articles I saved.

Things to do:

• add a growl notification saying “successful import”
• write a looping script that will handle the few hundred articles marked as “flagged” in NNW by archiving them. What would the tags be here?

set destination_group_location to "/url/delicious/"


tell application "NetNewsWire"
    set userInput to text returned of (display dialog "Enter Tag:" default answer "untagged")

set h_tags to userInput

set AppleScript's text item delimiters to space
set h_tags to h_tags's text items
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {""}--> restore delimiters'

try
    if (index of selected tab is not 0) then
        set tabnum to index of selected tab + 1
        set taburls to URLs of tabs
        set h_URL to (get item tabnum of taburls)
        set tabtitles to titles of tabs
        set h_title to (get item tabnum of tabtitles)
        set h_mdate to get current date
        set h_when to current date

    else if exists selectedHeadline then
        set h_URL to URL of selectedHeadline
        set h_title to title of selectedHeadline
        set h_mdate to get current date
        if exists date published of selectedHeadline then
            set h_when to date published of selectedHeadline
        else
            set h_when to date arrived of this_headline
        end if
    else
        error "No headline is selected."
    end if
on error error_message number error_number
    if the error_number is not -128 then
        try
            display alert "NetNewsWire" message error_message as warning
        on error number error_number
            if error_number is -1708 then display dialog error_message buttons {"OK"} default button 1
        end try
    end if
end try

tell application "DEVONthink Pro"
    if item 1 of h_tags is "private" then
        set destination_group_location to destination_group_location & item 2 of h_tags
    else
        set destination_group_location to destination_group_location & item 1 of h_tags
    end if

    if not (exists record at destination_group_location) then
        set destination_group to create location destination_group_location
    else
        set destination_group to get record at destination_group_location in current database
    end if

    set archive to create record with {name:h_title, type:html, creation date:h_when, modification date:h_mdate, URL:h_URL, comment:userInput} in destination_group
    set source of archive to download markup from h_URL

end tell

tell application "Cocoalicious"
    if item 1 of h_tags is not "private" then
        make new post with properties {description:h_title, url:h_URL, tag string:userInput}
    end if
end tell


end tell

Technorati Tags: applescript, devonthink, netnewswire

1. adjust controllers/feed_controller so that the article limit is greater than number of articles
2. clear cached feed in settings
3. in CLI, execute “curl http://yoururl.com/feed/ > feed.xml” (atom)
4. use an xml / xsl editor on feed.xml to apply the Atom2RSS xsl sheet found here http://atom.geekhood.net/
5. Use RSS import on wordpress

Issues: Tags / Categories get all mixed up. Pages and comments do not import

As I was looking at my list of blog enhancements I wanted to spend time building, I realized that the WordPress community has already accomplished most of these items and that it would take me months if not years to reinvent those wheels w/ mephisto.

So, I had to make a decision. Was I in all of this to wrestle with my web publishing platform? Does “build mephisto plugins for a relatively small community” satisfy my life purpose.

No.

I’m also exploring some ideas after reading 4 hour workweek that would be much more quickly implemented via one-click installs of wordpress.

I visited the websites for a handful of people who are doing interesting work that I admire, secretly envy, and wish to become… not one of them was using mephisto, and most were using wordpress or blogger — that sealed the deal.

So wordpress it is.

There is some more work to be done:

• conversion of old posts to wordpress… I have many years of content to convert
• conversion of my davidnunez.com mephisto theme to wordpress template

I also feel like I have to play catchup to understand the architecture and development path of wordpress. Wading through plugins, alone, is going to be a daunting task.

I found some plugins I installed right away to help w/ using textmate as a blog management tool with tags (a la Ultimate Tag Warrior).

Through the TextMate bundle framework, you get some nice collating of contexts, etc.

GTDAlt does rely on some proprietary syntax, but it’s pretty basic and easily parsable.

There is rudimentary support for iterating through items in an inbox.txt file to generate GTD items.

I created an applescript which will take the selected message in Mail.app and create a properly formated item, using the subject and message: url (you must have MailTags installed so the message: protocol is recognized).

This means I’ll get action items with links to specific messages in my GTD system.

I partner this with a Mail Act-On rule… so when I hit ctrl-1, a GTDAlt item gets created, the message is tagged “@action”, and it’s sent to my one archive folder in one step.

In true GTD fashion, this should only be used for messages that take longer than 2 minutes to respond to. In reality, I need to get better at firing off quick responses to things (or liberally using the delete key). Otherwise, it’s likely I’ll use this to just procrastinate email items away into a black hole.

Download the script

The applescript in this post will take the currently selected article in NetNewsWire, prompt the user for tags about the article, and then create a web archive of the article in DEVONThink.

It attaches the referral URL to the DEVONThink record, so when it creates the archive, it will actually fetch the article from the original source (ex. del.icio.us posts get the original article)

Since DEVONThink doesn’t really do tags, I’ve co-opted the “comments” field for this purpose.

I’ve attached this script to a hotkey using Red Sweater’s FastScripts (cmd-ctr-option-/) Of course, a more hipster way to do this might be to consider quicksilver triggers.

Here is the workflow:

1. Quickly scan headlines in NetNewsWire and do CMD-CTR-OPTION-/ when I see a headline I’d like to possibly include in future research
2. In the prompt that appears, type a few keywords/tags that describe the content and hit “return”
3. Later on, when doing research or work around a topic, I can use DEVONThink confidently knowing that it will dig up at least some interesting connections between articles I saved.

Note: if the article is something that I think I would want to read immediately, I can either tag it with “@read” or hit return in NNW to pop it up in a browser window. In the latter case, it’s critical that I seperate the *scanning* mode from the *reading* mode. I accomplish this by setting a timer (say 15 minutes per day) where I’m just scanning headlines for read-immediates or archivable articles and another timer for my reading stuff. From my browser, I can go on to create archives if I determine it’s worth saving.

Things to do

• add a growl notification saying “successful import”
• in DEVONThink, use the @read tag somehow to generate a reading list or printable digest of articles
• write a looping script that will handle the few hundred articles marked as “flagged” in NNW by archiving them. What would the tags be here?

tell application "NetNewsWire"
    try
        if exists selectedHeadline then
            set h_comment to text returned of (display dialog "Enter Tags:" default answer "")
            set this_headline to selectedHeadline
            set h_mdate to get current date
            set h_title to title of this_headline
            set h_note to description of this_headline
            if exists date published of this_headline then
                set h_when to date published of this_headline
            else
                set h_when to date arrived of this_headline
            end if
            set h_URL to URL of this_headline
            set h_note to "<html><body>


<

p>

I just started using the textmate blog editing bundle by Brad Choate to update this blog.

I watched a screencast that convinced me.

I’m liking it quite a lot… Working solely in text with markdown is somewhat liberating. I think with some good quicksilver-foo, it would make for some fun blogging workflow.

Furthermore, I can then keep local versions of all my blog posts as subversion-friendly text.

I’d like to work on hacking into the bundle to grab a full backup in text-friendly format.

The intent is to provide an interactive experience for the show-goers bringing laptops — the back-channel as performance art.

I set them up with PHPFreeChat on a mac mini with a local wireless network. I have no idea what the play is about, but it promises to be weird and fun.

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Technorati Tags: 365experiment, Creative, daily, framework, stretch

What is Dorkbot?

• It’s a science fair with beer.
• It’s a geek talent show.
• It’s people doing strange things with electricity.
• Best of all, it’s fun, free, kid-friendly and hands-on.

We think dorkbot is exactly what Austin is all about. Nerds, artists, musicians all come together to show off their work in a casual environment. Previous dorkbot events have included singing robots, lightning bolt generators, hacked nintendos, and somebody crazy enough to electrocute a pickle. dorkbot was most recently featured on Austin Technology Matters, a new show on Austin cable access.”

Every platform comes very close to being good enough to trust. However, all of them fall short for various reasons. ANY system will fail if it’s not a complete pleasure to use. Systems that do not urge me into action are going to disappoint me, no matter how clever.

I’ve noticed a new crop of apps starting to appear in the scene and something struck me about attempts at GTD nirvana. They all essentially do the same thing: they present information in table, outline, and list formats. None of them do much more than help organize a set of lists – this is a great start, though; even David Allen says it all comes down to lists.

The point of this post isn’t to enumerate why these platforms don’t turn me on. Let’s just leave it at, “they don’t.” (Not entirely true, every one of them has elements that I could see co-opting for my ultimate platform, but none of them get me excited about doing things on their own).

I believe that there can exist a GTD framework that not only handles day-to-day battlefields, but can also tap into some different cognitive access points. Why does everything have to be lists? Why not ephemeral clouds? Why not physical devices that urge me into activity by nudging me in the right direction? Do any GTD apps really help you decide what to do next, or don’t they all just present a too broad set of information?

They need to be smarter… What if our GTD platform showed you not all the things you COULD get done to fill your time, but only the very next thing you should get done to evolve your soul?

At the end of the day, yes, I realize that I’m the only one that can make me get stuff done, and I will fully own up to the reality that this endless tinkering is, indeed, a form of procrastination.

That being said, I am pretty convinced that I’m the only one that can build the better system.

… the better system as defined by “what works for me.”

A long, long time ago (okay, 2003), I hinted at an application I was hacking away at called Tock. It was basically GTD before everyone else had read the book.

I even had a prototype. It committed “paradigm violence.”

It should probably be dusted off.

I realized though, that my working style has changed and I really need to field test anything I come up with in a rapid development environment. So, over just a couple hours this weekend, I threw together the Project-Task-Context model in Ruby on Rails.

”Ugh! Not another web 2.0 wannabe app!”

Exactly. However, RoR makes for a good prototyping environment… this will help me get the backend right. It will let me tinker on experiments like, “Tock, give me the 9 things I should work on today.”

I was very close to just forking Tracks, but I realized that there was too much in there just to support AJAX user interfaces. Tock isn’t about that. Tock laughs at web browsers. Hell, he laughs at mice and keyboards.

You’ll see…

I urged people to spend 20 minutes today working on whatever creative endeavor they have brewing in the back burner. Move that project into the center of the radar for just 20 minutes.

20 minutes is a very small chunk of time. In any given project, however, there are any number of minor pieces which can be built in that time. The encouragement today was to spend 20 minutes just building. This needs to be focused working time without deviation from activity. This is inspired by Merlin Mann’s dash concept – a good way to beat procrastination is to just begin on a small chunk… Just commit to cranking activity out for a small amount of time. When the dash is over, you’ve easily beaten the first and only hurdle of procrastination: starting.

Running constantly on my OSX desktop is a small timer program called Minuteur. This has worked wonders for me.

I just set it at 20 minutes and hit go. I focus on a single piece of a project until the timer runs out. Minuteur pops up a “TIME’S UP!” window and I can choose to add 5, 10 or 15 more minutes. I often do that simply because I’m on a roll. I’ll also sometimes drop in 10 minutes between working periods for guilt-free play time. That’s usually when I do my RSS reading or grab coffee.

Admittedly, my responsibilities are fewer than, say, a single mom with 2 toddlers who is trying to finish college, but I often find myself devoting 100% of my useful and usable time into other peoples’ projects. Day job work spills into after hours and suddenly I’m barely left with enough energy to get myself home, much less exercise or make a good meal, and much MUCH less build a stunningly cool and beautiful machine puppet.

Since when did I put “making somebody else lots of money sweating blood over their vision” at a higher priority than “following what my soul and mind’s eye are screaming at me?”

That needs to end.

It’s not to say that we all don’t need day jobs. We have mortgages to pay, for crying out loud. However, I think the mistake I often make is letting the day job crowd out the dreams.

In The Now Habit and there’s this concept of the “Unschedule”. Briefly, it recommends starting your calendar by planning in all of your “me” time: Block out sleeping, eating, commuting, and exercising time. More importantly, block out your play time – time in which you are simply NOT working. This is time for guilt free play; guilt free play, incidentally is where I think the best creativity is born.

I also recommend scheduling 20 minutes a day as an unbreakable appointment with yourself every day for every project which you genuinely care about completing with all your heart.

Only then do you block out work appointments: meetings, etc.

Whatever’s left is your day job working time.

If you are anything like me, you’ll be very surprised at how little time you have left over. It’s no wonder we feel overwhelmed at work sometimes – we operate as if we actually had 40+ hours a week to do the jobs we’re assigned. And as Parkinson’s law suggests, we stretch tasks to fill those phantom 40+ hours. Whoops. It’s like buying working hours on credit… we don’t have that much time to complete the tasks on that schedule and so we tend to go home over budget. Of COURSE our energy is low and all we want to do is crash.

So let’s start operating with a more realistic understanding of what time we have and how fast we should work and to what standards we should aspire. That is to say, we start learning when to stop tinkering to get to perfection and just start building… putting projects in the “done” bucket faster and with less energy.

I would never suggest that you go about your day job without the highest integrity and quality of work that you can provide. During work hours, you work, and you work hard; you deliver more value to your employers and clients than they are paying for: 110%, team-player, all that – Work with the mantra “I am here to do nothing but add value.”

I believe that a self-fulfilling prophecy / psychological trick starts to happen. When you realize your time is limited at the day job and also at the passion job, you start to move with grace and efficiency. You don’t feel the need to slack off, mostly because you are aware of how little time you have to accomplish your jobs.

However, you must remember that you have unbreakable appointments with your personal passion projects. When it comes time to work on those, you will find a way to work on them and summon all your energy to build them with the same amount of integrity.

I suggest 20 minutes a day at first. I would guess this will increase over time.

caveat: I think it’s a bit presumptuous for somebody like me, who often struggles with Getting Things Done, to write an article about how better to get things done. Take it with a grain of salt. I’m only regurgitating advice I’ve culled from many other sources.

<!– technorati tags start –>

Technorati Tags: day job, gtd, procrastination

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His name is Iggy… I don’t particularly like that name, but I wouldn’t want to change it lest I confuse his reptilian brain.

He has officially outgrown his crib. His tail gets curled up when he tries to turn around. I’m on a mission to build him a more humane place to live that will let him stretch his dewlap.

Project: Iguana Habitat

Thursday; May 18, 2006 – 10:20 PM Initial Quick Research

• Melissa Kaplan’s Herp and Green Iguana Information Collection – If I read nothing else, I will read this
• all links I found to iguana care
• all links I found to iguana cages