Matt Shelton

Keeping up with the goings-on in the world seems to be harder than normal these days. Maybe it’s life and maybe it’s work, but it seems like I have less and less Quadrant 2 and 4 time lately. [I'm not complaining... sometimes one needs an adrenaline rush!] One of those low-priority things I enjoy doing is reading posts from all around the blogosphere and for a few years, I’ve used a feed reader to centralize all of that reading.

For your money [technically none], there are few better products than those from NewsGator. Both FeedDemon [Windows] and NetNewsWire [MacOS] are excellent readers, and if you happen to read in multiple locations, you have ability to sync your feeds and clippings folders, keeping yourself from re-reading everything. For sure, web-based readers work well for this also [FeedDemon has an online reader which also synchronizes with the other clients] and many folks also like to use Google Reader and Bloglines.

Retaining a high level of personal productivity whilst reading ~200 RSS feeds is nearly impossible, however. To stay on top of the news and not waste both time and focus, I rely heavily on clippings folders within FeedDemon. I don’t find them all that useful when I’m at home using NetNewsWire, but at work they’re crucial.

My tactic is to take about 15 minutes when I get to work to go through the overnight news feeds. [This is generally the same time that I'm also whittling down my Inbox, making sure I know my tasks for the day and so forth, so it's a good time to process everything I've collected before getting started with my day.] I have six clippings folders so that I can properly prioritize my reading later in the day:

• blog: Posts about which I’d like to post, not items I want to link to
• do - next 10 days: Reminding me to do something or install something soon
• do - next 6 weeks: Reminding me to do something or install something in the near future, but not right away (e.g. I know I want to split up this huge DJ Tiësto concert track, but know I don’t have time right now, so the link reminding me how to do this in iTunes would sit here.)
• do - someday: Reminding me to do something or install something, but I know I can’t any time soon (e.g. if I know I want to put non-standard firmware on my wireless router, but not until after I switch ISPs, and I know that’s 1-2 months away, I would put that post here.)
• read: Default folder for posts I should read
• tag: Items I want to tag on del.icio.us for future, long-term reference
• watch or listen: Basically the same as “read”, except that I’ll need headphones.

I’d say I come in to anywhere between 100 and 400 posts to filter through in a morning, (most of which are from the digg.com feed. I can knock them out easily in those 15 minutes by refraining from reading anything substantively, reading the title and skimming the post body to see if it might be worth my time later. This works pretty well as I’ll end up with about 30-50 new posts to read/watch, some of which will migrate to the one of the do/blog clippings folders at some point.

Next, of course, is actually reading said news.

On days not like today, I tend to read through the “read” stack on my lunch break [I had a conference call today, so... bad example] or when I need a mental break between particularly intense tasks or meetings. I make a consistent habit of closing NewsGator right after my morning feed processing [NOT a farming term, mind you] so as not to be tempted to start the day on an unfocused foot. All of my feeds and clippings sort in reverse chronological order so that I don’t lose track of things I wanted to read last week (the week before… month before… year before…) I find that lunch is also a good time to watch whatever posts included video, which mostly consist of clips from The Daily Show and other commentary.

Not sneaking feed views throughout the day takes a level of distraction-relevant self-control that I have not always had. It’s very important, however, to maintain a professional level of focus without killing ones’s self. For reading the news, this means that I only read what’s important, and that do not waste much, if any, time in the office. I had thought that by only giving myself a set amount of time to read, I’d never get caught up, but that screen grab above shows only a half-dozen items in my “read” folder. It’s never quite empty, and only a few times (e.g. after vacation or a long weekend) has it stayed above 20 for long periods of time.

The downside is, of course, that if my daily habit is to read at lunch then this means I’m sitting at my desk instead of socializing or being outside. In the winter, or on meeting-heavy days when I need a moment away from people, this isn’t a big deal… but it’s Spring, so now I find myself taking a walk at lunch instead, and leaving my reading for another day. All of those posts are retained in the client (even if the blog goes poof, they’re still there), so I can come back and read them on rainy or cold day instead.

All in all, this method keeps me on top of the news, and also on top of my work, which is the point to the exercise of adding more *stuff* whilst retaining productivity.

geek habits, geek life, productivity

The other day, I caught a post on Signal Vs. Noise about using Automator in OS X to grab your favorite newspaper’s front pages from Newseum as PDFs and join them. This sounded like a great idea, so I set out to do just that.

Unfortunately for me, this particular workflow only works in OS X 10.5, and I have yet to upgrade my iMac past 10.4.11.

Undaunted, I replicated the same thing in perl. It turns out that the “Combine PDF Pages” automator action is a simple Python script. It looked semi-useful on its own, so I copied it from its normal home (/System/Library/Automator/Combine PDF Pages.action/Contents/Resources/) to my personal bin directory for good measure. Perl source follows… please note that the >’s are rendering as literal >’s. Silly Code Highlighter!

#! /usr/bin/perl -w

use locale;
use strict;
use warnings;

#############################
#  [01-31]      [yyyy-mm-dd]
my ($day,       $date,      $tmpdir,              $tojoin) =
   (`date +%d`, `date +%F`, '/Users/shelton/tmp', '');
chomp($day); chomp($date);

my ($join) =
   ("python /Users/shelton/bin/join.py -o '/Users/shelton/Desktop/$date.pdf'");

########################
# Define PDF Links Here
#
my (%papers) = (
    # Boston Globe
    0=>"http://www.newseum.org/media/dfp/pdf$day/MA_BG.pdf",
    # Chicago Tribune
    1=>"http://www.newseum.org/media/dfp/pdf$day/IL_CT.pdf",
    # Buffalo News
    2=>"http://www.newseum.org/media/dfp/pdf$day/NY_BN.pdf",
    # NY Times
    3=>"http://www.newseum.org/media/dfp/pdf$day/NY_NYT.pdf",
    # Wall Street Journal
    4=>"http://www.newseum.org/media/dfp/pdf$day/WSJ.pdf"
    );

######################################
# Loop through %papers
#  -> Determine tmp output file
#  -> Download the File
#  -> Add file to string for join cmd
#
foreach my $page (sort(keys %papers)) {
    my $output = "" . $tmpdir . "/" . $page . ".pdf";
    `wget -q -O $output $papers{$page}`;
    $tojoin .= "'" . $output . "' ";
}

##################
# Join The Files!
#
`$join $tojoin`;

#############################
# Delete All Downloaded PDFs
#
foreach my $file (sort(keys %papers)) {
    my $rm = "" . $tmpdir . "/" . $file . ".pdf";
        `rm -f $rm`;
}

I suppose I could have picked more interesting papers (like, for instance, the Amazônia Hoje from Belém, Brazil). I stuck to papers from my current and previous home towns (and the NYC area, because they have interesting papers). Boring? I know…

I run this daily from cron at about 7am. Of note, I also redirect all output of the script to /dev/null because the python script throws a ton of meaningless errors that don’t mar the output.

apple, code, lifehacks

The Wordpress upgrade guide says:

Consider rewarding yourself with a blog post about the upgrade, reading that book or article you’ve been putting off, or simply sitting back for a few moments and let the world pass you by.

So, a post, then. I must say that the interface is going to take a bit of getting used to. In addition, the color scheme choices are… kinda muted. I liked the darker blue from previous 2.x versions, and high glare situations, I’m noticing that I can’t always see the logical separation of the menu section.

Oh hey! I can switch back the old color scheme! Excellent.

The UI changes made to the post editor are excellent. I like the understated “Add media” buttons, and the additional AJAX functionality is useful and not overbearing, exactly how said technology should be used. The UI and font selections system-wide are great.

I don’t like that they still haven’t fixed the DST time zone thing.

Beyond that, not bad. The upgrade process went smoothly, and here I am.

uncategorized

I don’t get into April Fool’s Day. I think my nefarious side went to sleep somewhere around the time just after I saran wrapped my 12th grade area office (VP, class counselor, etc.). Since then, I can’t seem to come up with good, mysterious, (harmless) and intelligent pranks. So I just don’t bother.

I do, however, get a real kick out of what folks on the internets come up with.

For instance, QWANTZ (Dinosaur Comics), XKCD and Questionable Content are all currently redirecting their current comics’ pages to each others’ sites in a revolving “OMG WHAT HAPPEND TO TEH WORLDZ!!” sort of way that makes you seriously wonder “Did I click on the right link?”.

ThinkGeek, who has done does this every year since 2001, has come up with an excellent set of not-actually-real-but-you-want-them-to-be-real goods for your perusal. I’m digging the Defendius Labyrinth Security Lock, myself.

Last year, they featured an 8-bit tie which was so popular, they actually made one.

Slashdot usually posts some funny, totally untrue, stories. I’m not saying they necessarily forgot it was April 1st, but they do seem to be taking their sweet time.

geek life

I was incredibly excited to read that Neal Stephenson’s next novel, Anathem, will be released this September.

*does a little dance*

The amazon affiliate boxy thing on the right doesn’t look nearly as cool as it could with the actual front cover image, but I don’t believe one has yet been released, so for now.. empty box. I don’t actually care about the 2 cents I’d get if someone clicked on that link and pre-ordered the book. Really, I just wanted a straightforward way to embed some amazon content, and the affiliate account was the fastest way to go.

Hey, it’s late.

The back-panel text or, more correctly, “catalog copy” is as follows:

Since childhood, Raz has lived behind the walls of a 3,400-year-old monastery, a sanctuary for scientists, philosophers, and mathematicians—sealed off from the illiterate, irrational, unpredictable “saecular” world that is plagued by recurring cycles of booms and busts, world wars and climate change. Until the day that a higher power, driven by fear, decides that only these cloistered scholars have the abilities to avert an impending catastrophe. And, one by one, Raz and his cohorts are summoned forth without warning into the Unknown.

According to a Q&A published six months or so ago, the book is primarily about Platonic mathematics. I am, therefore, bound to read it in about e working days. Count me pre-ordered!

Hat tip to Nerd World.

books, geek life, math

I’ve been thinking about blogging for a while now, but it’s been busy these days. During these busy days, however, I stumbled upon the blog being run by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). My wife tells me that it’s been commonly known of for a while now, but digg.com seems to drive most of what news I read, so somehow I missed this one.

Nevertheless, I’ve been finding it very interesting. Two recent posts about the troubles that passengers have recently had with the new MacBook Air was very enlightening. It was also the perfectly appropriate response to the complaint. The average MBA user is probably the same demographic as the average reader of blogs, so it stands to reason that the most appropriate marketing channel is the TSA Blog. Kudos to that. I’m also curious to see how/if they’ll post about the article which hit the wires today about a Texas woman being forced to remove a body piercing with a pair of pliers to be able to board a flight. The article was somewhat sensationalist, but that’s the mainstream media for you.

Edit at 8:10pm: And it looks like they did.

I leave you with italic kittens, which is both entirely irrelevant to this post, and quite geeky at the same time:

blogging

Happy π Day!!

geek life

Spotted this over on Of Zen and Computing, and I thought it bore repeating to gain some Google traffic.

If you have ever used G-Archiver to back up your GMail, immediately change your GMail password and uninstall G-Archiver.

G-Archiver e-mails your GMail username and password to the program’s author. The program’s source code contains the author’s GMail login credentials — an abnormal ocurrance [sic] that led a curious reader of Coding Horror to discover the dark side of G-Archiver.

Coding Horror reader Dustin Brooks took a peak at the author’s GMail account, and discovered that John Terry, creator of G-Archiver, is in possession of the usernames and passwords of thousands of people who have used G-Archiver.

I’ve not tried G-Archiver, and for certain I won’t knowing it’s going to up and steal my account password! There are safer backup ideas out there for GMail.

software notes

My productivity has noticeably improved since making this my desktop wallpaper. As soon as Outlook gets minimized I see this… and it’s back to work!

Via InterfaceLIFT, by Spargett.

geek life, productivity

Quite a while ago, my wife left me alone at home for an evening with nothing to do. Arguably, I could have cleaned or something, but I was feeling crafty, and had happened upon a tutorial on Instructables for creating a Floppy Disk Pen Holder. I looked at the first page, totally grokked the idea, and whipped up two of these utilitarian beasts of burden.

I must admit that this is an almost perfect re-purposing of “things I was going to throw away some day”. I’ve seen nifty uses for discarded recordable CDs and DVDs, as well as spindle containers. I usually recycle the latter and shred the former, but were I to ever actually require a bagel carrier, I know where I’d get one!

Speaking of re-use, I think I have five more floppies lying around somewhere, and should be able to construct a third pen cup at some point. It would have to be a gift since I have, at this point, max’d out my ratio of floppy-disk-pen-cups to desks.

geek life, how-to