Just created a Python API for reading and modifying (even if all the modify features are not complete yet) TaskPaper files. The (so far very small) project is hosted at my GitHub page here. The file you are looking for if you want to play with the API can be found here.
1. Take your camera everywhere you go
2. Use it any time - day and night
3. Lomography is not an inteference in your life, but part of it
4. Try the shot from the hip
5. Approach the objects of your lomographic desire as close as possible
6. Don’t think
7. Be fast
8. You don’t have to know beforehand what you captured on film
9. Afterwards either
10. Don’t worry about any rules
A wise man once said that one should “Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler“, something I have seen to be true in many areas of my life recently. I have been a practicioner of David Allen’s GTD method on and off for almost three years now. I have tried all kinds of implementations of the method, both in software and in paper based solutions like the Moleskine. I started with a lot of lists in a big text file, then a Moleskine setup (see PigPogPDA and Hacking a GTD Moleskine) then an array of different software solutions like TiddlyWiki, MonkeyGTD, ThinkingRock GTD, Midnigt Inbox, Todo.sh/Todo.txt, iGTD, OmniFocus, Things, The Hit List, Nozbe, RememberTheMilk and a few others I can’t remember the name of. The latest solution I have stuck with for more than four months now is OmniFocus by the OmniGroup, a very nice piece of software.
I have been a user of OmniFocus ever since the closed beta period even if I have tried other solutions now and then (it is in my nature to shake things up whenever I can). I have been driven to other solutions by the fact that, even as OmniFocus is a great app (and OmniGroup produces several other nice ones), it can be quite complex at times. During the collection and review phase it is way to easy to create all to many projects/contexts and organize them into levels of levels of hierarchies. Of course it is very good to get all that data out of ones head, that is the whole point of GTD, but it is very intimidating when you look at it all just to find a single task to do next, like you are about to build the pyramids or some similar achievment. This is of course my personal oppinon which is heavily colored by the fact that I cannot function in a completely organized environment, whether it is my desk at work, icons at my desktop, e-mails in my inbox or tasks in my todo manager.
For a while now I have been “off the GTD wagon” as many refer to not following the GTD guidelines David set up for us. When browsing through my feeds tonight a post at LifeHacker really got me thinking about why my current OmniFocus setup and why it isn’t working for me - Quickly Prioritize Your Tasks by Urgency and Importance by Adam Pash. Just having four priorities really seems like a good idea, UI - Urgent/Important, NUI - Not Urgent/Important, UNI Urgent/Not Important and NUNI - Not Urgent/Not Important. When I thought about how to implement that in OmniFocus with all the levels of organization it would bring I realized that I needed to start over again - todo ground zero. I remembered that I briefly tested a text based GTD app a couple of years ago and that I actually got a license for it together with the last MacHeist bundle. Enter Taskpaper!
Taskpaper by Jesse Grosjean (HogBaySoftware)
The approach Taskpaper takes is to work with plain text based files, annotated (anotation described in Taskpaper User´s Manual) in a way readable both by machines and humans (thus giving the advantage of data beeing readable even when Taskpaper isn’t avaialble for some reason). It features shortcuts for most common actions such as assigning contexts/tags to tasks, marking tasks done and archiving them, adding to @today context and of course adding new tasks, projects or contexts. What I like most so far is the fact that it simply plain text editing. I can just as well open the file in my favourite text editor and hack away, I can save the file in a Dropbox folder and thus obtaining version control and backup of my valuable tasks and I can of course create various Python scripts working with the file for various reasons. A very nice bonus I discovered when I decided to move from OmniFocus to Taskpaper is that OmniFocus can export tasks directly to Taskpaper-format. I just exported everything and opened the file in Taskpaper. After a few edits I had all my tasks in the new environment and was ready to start working.
I remembered that the last time I briefly laied my eyes on Taskpaper I had to fiddle with QuickSilver and AppleScript to get a quick way of entering tasks without bringing the Taskpaper window to focus and finding the right place to add the task to. Again I found a nice bonus. In version 2.0 of Taskpaper Jesse/HogBay added a quick entry window very similar to the ones you can find in apps such as Things, OmniFocus and the Hit List. A huge thumbs up!
Take a look at the Taskpaper screencast and see if it is something for you. As I have changed setup several times during my last three years of GTDing I cannot say that I will stick with Taskpaper yet - it is to early. I will however give it a fair try and see how long I can “stay on the GTD wagon”.
Tip
If you are a notorious VIM user or work in another environment than Mac OS X, David O’Callaghan have created taskpaper.vim, a syntax file and file-plugin allowing you to comfortly edit your taskpaper files in VIM.
The ultimate camera?
I recently sold my Nikon D90 since I realized that I only use an SLR-camera when I’m on vacation. In everyday situations it is just to heavy to throw in the backpack. While thinking about which camera to go with instead (an ongoing thought process of mine) it struck me that I have been a digital camera user for 10 years this year, and during this time frame bought and sold no less than 16 cameras (almost two per year). I have owned everything from the most simple VGA-resolution cameras like the Agfa ePhoto CL18 to professional models like the Canon EOS 40D with all kinds of accessories and tools.
The realization of changing camera almost twice a year got me thinking if I’m only in digital cameras for the chase of the next new model or why I take photos at all. My interest in photography started way back in the beginning of the nineties when I got to borrow my fathers analog Ashia Pentax Spotmatic SPII, which I still think is a very good camera. Before that I used a compact camera only for vacation and pet (our late cat Findus) snaps. When I got my hands on the Pentax and the fine lenses that came with it, I realized that photography wasn’t only a way of freezing a moment, it was a creative outlet as well. I started shooting more artistic and especially nature/landscape shots. It was always a thrill to get the film back from the camera shop and looking through the master pieces. The years went by and my interest in photography faded until almost 10 years later when my upper secondary school got a digital camera (the revolution!).
The camera was a Kodak DC200, a brick that produced grainy 640 by 480 pixel shots in bright light. Anything else than perfect shooting conditions and all you got was a pixel blur. That did not stop me for a second though. Even if the camera was school property, we were allowed to borrow it during evenings and weekends - a benefit I often took advantage of. Compared to shooting with the Pentax, this was like going back to my first compact, more of a memory freeze than an artistic outlet, but it was amazing to skip the whole development process and not having to pay for each shot. A year later I bought my first digital camera, a Agfa ePhoto CL18, more ore less the same kind of camera as the DC200, but I didn’t have to ask someone every time I wanted to use it.
The pattern I have observed while going through my list of previously owned cameras is that I’m torn between artistic expression and my love for advanced technology. All my friends know that I’m a technology loving, early adopting gearhead who is always on the hunt for the next cool gadget. During the last 10 years there have been a small revolution in digital cameras which have fuled my fire for technology by releasing new and more advanced models each year. I love to read reviews of new cameras, dig in user forums (like dpreview.com), look at 200% enlargements of ISO comparisons between different camera models and so on. Of course that has been very good for the gadgetist in me, but not always a great match for the artistic photographer. I say “not always” because some of the cameras have unleashed the same kind of creative freedom I first experienced with the Spotmatic.
In a couple of weeks I’m going on a trip to Japan and of course I want to take a lot of vacation snaps and also artistic images. With the realization that I’m often torn between creativity and technology (heart and brain?) I’m now hunting for a camera that I know will satisfy my artistic and creative side foremost. Right now I have a few contenders, but haven’t been able to decide yet. The Olympus E-620 seems to be a good compromise. It is an SLR, but it is very small and lightweight, especially if equipped with the Zuiko 25mm pancake lens. My main arguments for the E-620 is that it has a swiveling screen and built-in “Art Filters” (I know, it is just digital filters that is also easy to apply in post processing, but that’s thinking with the brain, not with the heart). Olympus will release another interesting camera in mid June as well. It is a micro four thirds camera in retro range finder style, something that sounds appealing to me. Another very interesting thing is something I saw on my last trip to Tokyo. It was a digital version of the Lomo camera Diana+ (see pic above). I have always been drawn to Lomo cameras, but I don’t want to hassle with analog film anymore. A digital version would be very nice. Will check it again on my next visit in June (think I saw it at the department store Tokyo Hands).
My next camera?
Either way I will soon be buying a new camera. The difference this time is that I will buy with my heart instead of my brain and hopefully snap a bunch of creative images on my next trip.
If you want to take a look at my photos, either go to my flickr page or my page at Fotosidan.se (a Swedish photography site). Of course I can give advice on the cameras I have previously owned if you are thinking of buying one, just send an e-mail (check the About page for info).
My camera history
Updated
An upgrade to b10 solved my problems!
–
I have run into a bit of a problem with iTunes 8.2 pre-release. It keeps crashing just a few seconds after startup with a EXC_BAD_ACCESS exception. I googled for answers but the only possible solution I could find was to repair disk permissions which didn’t help. If you have seen this problem and found a solution, please send me a comment or e-mail. I will update this post if I find the source of the problem.
Process: iTunes [941] Path: /Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/MacOS/iTunes Identifier: com.apple.iTunes Version: 8.2 (8.2b7) Build Info: iTunes-8201001~3 Code Type: X86 (Native) Parent Process: launchd [100] Date/Time: 2009-05-06 10:43:46.995 +0200 OS Version: Mac OS X 10.5.6 (9G55) Report Version: 6 Exception Type: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGBUS) Exception Codes: KERN_PROTECTION_FAILURE at 0x0000000000000000 Crashed Thread: 0
After your computer crashes for the second time of the day and you reboot, the last thing you want to be greeted with when starting the Mail.app is this:
This is not the first time Mail.app forgets who I am and where my e-mail is stored. Fortunately I solely use IMAP and thus all messages are safely stored and backed up on a server somewhere. Unfortunately, for Mail.app, this was the last time I go through the agonizing pain of setting it up the way I want just to have to redo it in a couple of weeks. I don’t know if it is the amount of messages in my mail accounts or something else, but it keeps happening.
The first impulse was to download Thunderbird, but I have never liked it on a Mac. There is something I can’t really pinpoint … something of a bad usage feeling. I recently read on LifeHacker.com that Woz organizes all his e-mail with Eudora and so I actually considered it for a brief moment, but no, it is to much 1998 over it.
As I have done several times before on this matter, I turned to Google. A search for “mail clients for mac” resulted in 78,300,000 hits, most of which I have probably read before, but this time, an article caught my attention - Postbox: An Alternative Email Client For Mac | MakeUseOf.com.
Postbox is a new kind of e-mail animal that builds on Mozilla technology and adds several interesting features like “topics” (where conversations can be tagged), integration with social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and Flickr (to mention a few), working indexing and a smashing user interface. Another feature I really like is archive. I just press ‘a’ and the selected message goes to an archive folder of my choice. Inbox zero in no time, and no need for expensive addons like Mail Act-On (for Mail.app).
Even if this is not a open/libre program (and it probably will have a price tag later on) I’m diving in head first and don’t look back. After using the “Beta 11″ version for a couple of hours I must say that I’m happy so far. A good and sleek e-mail app is a crucial part of my work day and so far Postbox seems to handle it well. I will give an update when I have used it for a while. In the meantime, download the beta and play with it yourself at http://postbox-inc.com/ (available for both Mac and Windows, no Linux version yet).
This is not something you want to see when upgrading the firmware of your beloved toy:
After that iTunes said that the connected iPhone was in recover mode and a simple restore would fix that. It did not, however. I had to press ALT+Restore and select the previous firmware 7A280F. I’ll just have to wait for the next version …
Update
I thought that the version I had of iTunes was the latest one, but I did not have the 8.2 preview and that did the trick. Thanks Paul!
… perhaps enough energy to start write again. Stay tuned :-)
After re-organizing my messenger bag today I was inspired by Lifehacker article "Show us your go bag", took a photo and documented everything inside. It helps me remember all the things I actually lug around each day so that when I need them I really use them. It have happened all to often that I have solved situations much to complicated just because I didn't use the tools at hand (or in my bag).
After I wrote this I realized that I forgot to include the actual bag in the picture ... well if I have the energy when my new camera bag arrives, I will make an updated photo :-)
Technorati Tags: go-bag, gear, stuff, macbookair, d60
After much research I finally settled for the Nikon D60. My main requirements where lightweight and DSLR (for image quality). The D60 seemed to fit my requirements best at this time, and I have wanted to try Nikon again (had an advanced compact 5-6 years ago). Now I'm just waiting for my Jimmy Bo to arrive so I will look smashing at the streets :-)
