I’ve always been curious. I remember having coffee with my cousin and her boyfriend as a teenager and saying, in my naïvety, that I wanted to know everything about everything, to know all that was knowable. Even then I knew that was impossible, but that didn’t stop me from wanting to know as much about the world as I could. As time went on I started to dive deeply into different subjects, and put off others till I had more time. Now that I’m looking at forty and an ever growing list of things to learn and do, I’m experiencing something new… panic at the thought of running out of time.

I always assumed that I’d have more time later to learn the things that I want to learn. How to play guitar and piano. Ride a horse. Play chess.¹ Paint like Bob Ross. Woodworking. Gardening. Scuba diving. The list goes on. I’ve started wondering about prioritizing these pursuits according to season, time, and, eventually, health. I run today because I want to be healthy enough to keep learning and doing as I get older.

I was thinking about these things over the weekend when I bought new strings for my guitar. I bought the guitar ten years ago with the intention of learning to play, but one thing or another has always come up, and I figured that later was always a better time than now. Last night I was tuning the guitar² and mentioned to my daughter that “someday” I was going to learn how to play it.

“No time like the present!” she said as she left the room.

She’s right. The finger tips of my left hand are sore this morning, because last night I pulled up a YouTube video and started learning how to play. I may not be able to do it, I might not be able to learn everything I want to know or be able to do. I will fail from time to time. But… “if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”³

After all, “life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.”

Computers are complex tools; designers and developers are always trying to strike a balance between usability and usefulness. I have a theory that over time a computers configuration grows to resemble the mental state of its primary user. Each machine is a unique mix of file and folder organization methods, naming schemes¹, and application choices. Those choices can reflect the level of technical knowledge and values of the user, but only if the user has made a conscious choice in what apps to use.

A user making the right application choice is empowered in a way that she wasn’t before. Suddenly this opaque machine begins to bend to her will and provide results, she feels the machine working with her and not against her. Tasks which were too complicated are made understandable, and eventually she is able to forget the computer and become enveloped in the flow of her work. Sometimes finding this flow is difficult, but it is almost always worth the effort.

But how can someone find the right app? In this sense, especially in the Mac and iOS ecosystems, we have an embarrassment of riches. Even for something as basic as a word processor, there are several choices for all types of uses. Off the top of my head I can list:

• Microsoft Word
• Apple Pages
• LibreOffice Write
• Mellel
• Nisus Writer Pro
• Scrivener
• Ulysses²
• Byword
• IA Writer

The list goes on. If you are looking for a simple text editor or note taker, the list of available apps is even more ridiculous. So, what to pick, how can someone make the best choice for themselves that doesn’t waste their time and end up abandoned in frustration?

This is actually two problems. The first is discoverability, or, how to know that an app even exists. This problem is much harder to solve, because the best apps are not always featured in the app store, and do not always show up at the top of a Google search. Personally, I find that immersing myself in the Apple community for the past thirteen years has helped tremendously. Reputable sites like Federico Viticci’s MacStories, Jim Dalrymples The Loop, Shawn Blanc’s The Sweet Setup, David Sparks’ MacSparky, Jason Snell’s Six Colors, and of course, John Gruber’s Daring Fireball are the best places to look for reliable, and personal, application recommendations. I would avoid trying to search in either the Mac or iOS app stores.

Once you have a handful of recommendations for a certain genre, let’s go back to our list of word processors, it’s time to start whittling down the contenders.

Aesthetics

Like it or not, how something looks will affect how it is used. Look at the screenshots, is the app pleasing to the eye? Can you visualize yourself doing the type of deep work you care about with this tool? If you’ve already installed the app, investigate the view options for hiding toolbars or views. The app should be inviting, a prompt for you to do your best work.

Familiarity

You could also call this usability. On the Mac, most well-designed apps function in a fairly similar way. There are common keyboard shortcuts that should be standard. In your word processor, start typing. Edit a couple of paragraphs. Does shift-option-left arrow do what you expect?³ Does the app not only look like it belongs on the Mac, does it feel like it belongs? Does it function in a way that gives you the impression it was built with care specifically for the Mac?

Reputation

The Mac has been around since 1984, and iOS is coming up on a decade. Developers have had time to build reputations in the industry for themselves and the apps they create. If you like the look and feel of the app, take a few minutes to check into the history of the app and it’s developers. Are they active in the community? Do they have a history of supporting their app? Has the app received any recent updates? Are updates regular? What you want to find out here is if you feel you can trust the app to be around for the foreseeable future.

Trusting that the developers care about their app means that they will put the effort in to adopt new features of the operating system as they are announced by Apple, and that they will not abandon the app so that it eventually stops working. Establishing this trust in your tools is essential in quieting that little voice in the back of your mind that panics when you start using the tool for significant work. If the developer blogs regularly, is active on Twitter or other social networks, and releases updates to their app on a regular basis, chances are that they care enough about the app, and are personally invested in the app enough to keep going.

Data Longevity

Depending on the type of work to be done, how you feel about the longevity prospects may or may not be important. For example, I use OmniFocus for day to day task management, but I’m not especially concerned with being able to review todays tasks in twenty years. However, for our word processor example it may be very important to be able to read and edit the papers you are writing today. Maybe you are in grad school and are looking for the right tool to write your thesis, or you are a stay at home dad and want to record your thoughts for your son. How you look at data longevity is dependent on the job to be done.

Choosing open formats is the easiest answer, but may not always be the best for day to day use. Plain text is the most future-proof, but it’s difficult to work with plain text if you want to include images or media alongside the text. To solve this problem, I’ve made the decision to work with tools that can export to an open format, normally PDF, but not necessarily use an open format natively for day to day use. This way, when I’m done writing that important paper I can hit the export button, or print to PDF, and I have a reasonable safe way to save my important information in a way that should be readable at any point in the future.

fin

I hope this helps, it works for me. There are probably many more aspects to choosing an application that I didn’t list here. Price and income model come to mind. Let me close with this list of companies that are worth looking into:

• The Omni Group
• Panic
• Bare Bones Software
• Red Sweater Software
• The Soulmen
• Bloom Built
• AgileBits
• Smile
• DEVONtechnolgies
• Literature & Latte

I got back from my morning run today and was sitting on the back porch, enjoying the morning air and the feeling of contentment I get after a great run. I logged my run in Day One, and noticed a voicemail from yesterday that I hadn’t dealt with yet.

Lifeserve Blood Center. I’m a regular donor. Or at least I was till I started working from home. My office, when I had one, was five minutes away from the closest Lifeserve location, so it was pretty easy to run down at lunch and spend an hour donating platelets. Now it’s a half-hour to forty minute drive. I had avoided the call.

Feeling as good as I did though it seemed like a good time to listen to the call. The caller had left an impassioned message, and I was moved once again to do something. I decided to make a day of it to head to town and make this part of the trip. But I couldn’t make the call to schedule an appointment at 6:30 AM, I had to put this into OmniFocus to deal with it at the right time. Each voicemail in iOS has a little share icon, and when I hit that icon I fully expected to be able to drop a link to the voicemail straight into OmniFocus. But OmniFocus was missing.

Thinking I had missed it or did something wrong I went through again and searched, no OmniFocus choice. At this point Federico Viticci came to mind and I opened Workflow.

Workflow was probably at the top of my mind at the moment because I had just used it to log my run to Day One. I use the Today View in iOS to launch a Workflow that asks me a few questions, snaps a picture, and pastes all of it into Day One in my Running journal. So far I’ve got 202 runs stored this way.

I knew Workflow had OmniFocus support, and I knew individual Workflows could be saved as action extensions for inclusion in the share sheet. All I needed was an action that could take any input, create a new OmniFocus task, and add the input as an attachment to the task.

Workflow took care of this in one step. Like Dr. Drang once said, “These embarrassingly simple bits of automation are often the most useful.”

A few years ago I adopted David Sparks’ paperless workflow. I installed Hazel and TextExpander, bought a ScanSnap scanner, and started dutifully scanning all of my paper that came in the mail. I scanned the water bill, my bank statements, and notices from my son’s second grade teacher about upcoming snack days. Over the years, and 2000 documents later, I’ve got a massive database of useless facts.

Never once have I actually needed to go back and look at what my home phone bill was last September. Even less have I needed to know what the schedule was for March in the third-grade classroom. I became so enamored by the ability to save everything that I stopped thinking about what I actually needed to save. I was hoarding.

Like any hoarder, I justified my activities. Why did I spend an hour every other week scanning things into my Mac? Why, for the most basic reason of all… I might need that someday! Eventually my Spotlight searches became nearly useless, as every keyword was littered with results from my OCR’d scans, useless information I didn’t need to keep.

So, today I staged an intervention for myself. I archived everything and started from scratch¹. With the help of stackexchange, I now have a sane plan for what to keep and for how long. Some things will still get scanned, like reciepts for large purchases and the kids artwork that we can’t bear to part with. For the most part though, the paper will come in, live in my drawer for a month or so, and then move on out.

The new system will take some getting used to, but in the end I think I’ll be happier and better organzied for it. There’s no need to keep things I’m never going to look at again, physically or digitally.

Turn it all off.

I’ve deleted the twitter apps from my phone and computer, I don’t log into Facebook anymore, and I’m limiting when I read news outside of the tech news to once a week. It just became too much, I started feeling angry all the time, and reading more news wasn’t making me feel any better about it. There was nothing I could do about how I felt, there were no actions I could take to assuage the pain. The constant flow of new events across the world to be outraged about is too much for anyone to handle.

So, I’ve started myself on a strict information diet. Unless the news is related to Apple or the tech industry, or any of my hobbies,¹ I’m leaving it till Saturday morning after I’ve gone on a long run.

There is plenty of evidence that binging on news is detrimental to your health. In the past few months I’ve noticed my mental state has grown significantly more pessimistic about the state of the world, when in truth my personal circumstances have never been better.²

That’s not to say that the issues in the world right now are not serious, or that I don’t care about the many, many problems affecting our society. I do. I care enormously. I simply can’t let how much I care dictate how I feel about everything else. I’m not cutting myself off completely, I’m simply making a decision for myself about when and how much of the news I’ll allow in. When the time comes for action, I’ll take it.³ I just don’t need to be reminded about what I already know over, and over, and over.

Sometimes the best thing to do for your own mental health is to log off.

I’m in the process, a very long process, of switching from Vim to BBEdit as my primary editor. The reasons are long and varied, but boil down to me being tired of screwing around with Vim’s configuration. I do a lot of work in Python now, and I’m using the experience of building and maintaining cloudchain to learn how to navigate BBEdit. Hopefully, someday I’ll be as good here as I was with Vim.

Today I learned that BBEdit ships with support for ctags, best defined by the documentation:

Ctags generates an index (or tag) file of language objects found in source files that allows these items to be quickly and easily located by a text editor or other utility. A tag signifies a language object for which an index entry is available (or, alternatively, the index entry created for that object).

The tag file serves two purposes. First, BBEdit will use the tags to allow you to jump to the point in your project where the selected function was defined. Second, if you copy the tags file to a specific spot, BBEdit will use that file for code autocompletion.

• ⌘- -> Find the definition of the selected function.
• ⌘⎇[ -> Jump back to the point you were at in the previous file (if the function was defined elsewhere).

To generate the tags file, open your project directory in Terminal and run bbedit --maketags. Then copy the resulting tags file to ~/Application Support/BBEdit/Completion Sources/Python/tags. Quit and restart BBEdit and autocompletion and function definition should both work.

This looks fantastic.

Today, the team I’m a part of at TargetSmart is releasing our first open source project, a bit of Python I like to call “cloudchain”. cloudchain is designed to make it easy to store and retrieve secrets using AWS. cloudchain relies on the AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) Key Management Service (KMS) to securely store and manage access to encryption keys, and stores the encrypted secret in a DynamoDB table.

Part of the reason, if not the biggest reason, we are open sourcing this project is to request feedback from the community. cloudchain itself is only a few lines of glue plugging together a few AWS services, but its the idea itself that I’d like vetted. We are using this in a few projects internally, and so far it’s worked out. However, I know that there are things I haven’t thought of, and ways to improve the process, so I’m hoping others will be able to look at the project with fresh eyes and see things we haven’t.

There are three steps in the process. First, cloudchain retrieves an encryption key from KMS and uses it to encrypt the plain text secret. The boto3 library used returns a dictionary with a “Ciphertext” entry containing the encrypted key. cloudchain then base64 encodes the encrypted key into a string, and saves that string to a DynamoDB table named, by default, “safedb”.

Setup

pip install cloudchain

A new encryption key should be created in KMS. Using the console makes this easy, and sets up permissions to the key using IAM users or Roles. IAM users should be given permission individually, while instances launching in AWS should be identified by a role.

A new DynamoDB table should be created as well. Run this command using the AWS CLI tools:

aws dynamodb create-table \
--table-name safedb \
--attribute-definitions \
AttributeName=Service,AttributeType=S \
AttributeName=Username,AttributeType=S \
--key-schema \
AttributeName=Service,KeyType=HASH \
AttributeName=Username,KeyType=RANGE \
--provisioned-throughput \
ReadCapacityUnits=1,WriteCapacityUnits=1 

This will create the DynamoDB table with two attributes: Service and Username. cloudchain assumes that the combination of a service and a username will require a unique secret. The first time a secret is written to the table the third “Secret” attribute is created.

Configuration

The cloudchain cli, cchain, looks for a configuration file at ~/.cchainrc. This should be a standard Python ConfigParser compatible file with the following format:

[dynamo]
region_name = us-east-1
endpoint_url = https://dynamodb.us-east-1.amazonaws.com
tablename = safedb

[IAMKMS]
keyalias = alias/key

The “keyalias” should be the name of the KMS encryption key created during the setup, prefixed by “alias/”. The “endpoint_url” should point at the closest HTTPS endpoint, or at localhost if using a local development environment.

Import cloudchain as a Module

Both the test.py unit tests and the cchain cli import cloudchain.py. After importing, cloudchain expects four variables to be set:

• region_name
• endpoint_url
• tablename
• keyalias

Reasonable defaults are mentioned in the configuration section above, but the keyalias must be unique.

After importing, cloudchain can be called on to encrypt and decrypt secrets:

To Encrypt:

cloudchain.savecreds(args['service'], args['user'], args['save'])

To Decrypt: cloudchain.readcreds(args['service'], args['user'])

Where:

• service = The service name the username and secret are associated with
• user = The username
• save = The unencrypted secret to encrypt

Command Line Use

The command line script supports five arguments:

  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -u USER, --user USER  User name
  -e SERVICE, --service SERVICE
						Service or application
  -s SAVE, --save SAVE  Save password to the safe
  -r, --read            Read password from the safe

• The --save and --read arguments are mutually exclusive, and cannot be used at the same time.
• --save expects the unencrypted secret as an argument, and requires both --user and --service flags.
• --user expects the username as an argument.
• --service expects the service name as an argument.
• --read requires no arguments, and requires both --user and --service flags.

Examples

To save a secret:

./cchain -u testuser --service testservice --save testsecreet

To retrieve a secret:

./cchain -u testuser --service testservice --read

We hope this is useful, and that we can continue to make cloudchain better, easier to use, and more secure as development continues.

For the past two months I’ve been working, on and off, with a Rocelco Height Adjustable Standing Desk Riser, a less expensive choice for working at a standing desk than the popular VARIDESK. The Rocelco is a solid alternative for budget conscious workers, but as with most products, the drop in price comes with a set of trade-offs.

Having worked for several months with a VARIDESK, and the past two with the Rocelco, my opinion is that the VARIDESK is simply a better product, and will probably stand up better over the course of several years. The Rocelco does what it advertises, it raises the monitor and keyboard tray up to a reasonable level that feel appropriate to my height. However, the pistons it uses to raise the desk are so strong that you can’t simply pull on the top to raise it and stand away while the desk raises itself. If you do the top shoots up with enough force that when it reaches it’s full height it stops suddenly and shakes.

The first time this happened I was a bit afraid for my monitor. It even managed to shake the desk out of position slightly. If I had a cup of coffee on the desk I’m sure it would have splashed out. The pistons are strong. Once I realized this I remembered from then on to guide the desk to the standing position.

There are no alternative desk heights with the Rocelco, not without engaging the desk locks on each side of the structure. Where the VARIDESK has set points along the path of the raise, the Rocelco has one smooth transition from collapsed to fully expanded, although at any point along the way the locks could, theoretically, be engaged to lock the desk at a specific height, with the mechanics of how the desk raises it would be awkward at best. I’ve not bothered to try.

I’m a bit worried about the long-term prospects of the keyboard tray. The tray seems to be sitting an eighth of an inch lower than it was when I first unpacked the desk, and pulling up on the tray shows that it’s developed a bit of play to it. After two months of on and off use I would expect it to remain solid, I’m not sure what shape it will be in after a year or two. Also, neither the tray nor the desk seem solid enough to support me leaning on it, which, honestly, is a good thing. I shouldn’t be leaning on the desk while working anyway.

Since switching to a sanding desk last year I’ve become accustomed to long periods of standing, and walking around my office to think and work through problems. While I think the Rocelco is a fine starter desk, neither the aesthetics nor the mechanics of it make me happy enough not to start planning it’s replacement. For the next version I’m leaning heavily towards The Wirecutter’s recommendation of the Jarvis Bamboo, but I’m also considering a drafting desk like Dr. Bunsen’s.

Starting a new job working from home gave me the opportunity to evaluate exactly what I wanted from my work environment. I knew I was getting a new Mac (13” Retina MBP, as you do), but I also knew that I needed a new monitor and standing desk.

I worked for a few weeks using nothing but a 15” rMBP on my desk at home, and found that my right wrist was starting to hurt after only a few hours. I’ve had run-ins with RSI before, and had to wear a brace and adjust my posture while typing to relieve it. While my desk works well for the occasional work day at home, spending a few weeks sitting at it proved to me that it’s insufficient for serious extended periods of concentrated work.

However, I was ruined after looking at the beautiful retina screen for as long as I did. At my previous job I used an Apple Thunderbolt Display, which was beautiful and functional, but had lower DPI than the MacBook display, and was not very adjustable. The Thunderbolt could power the MacBook, and acted as a hub for anything that I needed to plug in, like network cable or external hard drive. The Thunderbolt is also $1,000. Given that I look at text all day, and sometimes into the night, I wanted a display that equaled my MacBook, had adjustable height, and wouldn’t break the bank. After researching a few alternatives, I settled on the Dell Ultra HD 4K Monitor P2415Q 24-Inch Screen LED-Lit Monitorat less than half the price.

I’ve read about Dell’s Ultrasharp line before, and always came away with the impression that they were very high quality. The 24” screen has a resolution of 3840 x 2160, the same as the next step 27”, which means the pixels are at a much higher density. After using this one for the past week, I can say that the screen itself is superb. There are no dead pixels, text is crisp and clear, colors are sharp, and the matte finish means that I’m not inadvertently staring at my reflection when working in a dark color scheme.

The screen adjusts to a height level with my eyes, so I’m not hunched over or looking down while working. It also rotates 90°, which I tried briefly and discarded. Just too weird.

While I’m perfectly satisfied with the screen, I do miss quite a few of the niceties of the Thunderbolt Display. There are no integrated speakers, no FaceTime camera, no ethernet port, and no power adaptor for the MacBook. It’s just a monitor. It does have a USB hub, and apparently the display port is capable of carrying audio, but neither feature is integrated into the Mac enough to be useful. For example, if my Time Machine drive was plugged into the monitor when the monitor went to sleep, the drive would be lost to OS X and I’d get that annoying alert about not ejecting a drive. If I need to do video or audio conferencing I’m either going to have to take the Mac out of it’s Twelve South BookArc or I’m going to need to plug in a USB camera, microphone, and speakers like it’s 2003.

I mentioned that the display port can carry audio. The monitor has a speaker jack on it, and I at first plugged in my desk speakers into that, but when I did the Mac lost all capability to control the volume output to the speakers. Hitting F11 or F12 showed an image on the screen indicating that the Mac was just shrugging it’s shoulders. Nothing it could do. Plugging the speakers back into the Mac and setting the headphone jack as the default audio out port solved this issue. I had to remind myself… it’s just a monitor.

The last part of the puzzle is still being shipped. I ordered an adjustable standing desk similar to a VariDesk, but made by a Canadian company for, again, about half the cost. I have the 32” Rodelco ADR on the way, and I imagine I’ll once again be standing for about three-quarters of the day. I spent several months standing while working at my previous job, and I miss that more than the Thunderbolt display. I’ll post again after I’ve worked with it for a week or so with my first impressions.

The 13” is a big change from the 15”, but I don’t feel like I’m missing anything. The 15” seemed an odd size to me. Too big to comfortably use apps full screen, but too small to be able to see more than two windows at the same time. The 13” is perfect for concentrating on a single task, is super light and easy to carry, and has enough power to push the incredible number of pixels on the Dell screen. So far I’m pretty happy with my new setup.