• I'm starting to think that the single column widgets on the 12.9" iPad Pro under iOS 11 is not a bug, but a choice.

    It's a bad choice.

    2017-07-10 17:54

  • 2016-2017 NBA Season

    I did not watch much basketball this past season. I watched bits of a game here and there, but didn't even bother finishing games until the Finals. I didn't watch a single pre-Finals playoff game.

    I really enjoy watching basketball in general. This year? I struggled with it. It just wasn't that much fun. There are a few reasons.

    Post-Kobe Era

    This is the first year of the post-Kobe era. Kobe wasn't Kobe for the last three years of his career, but he still showed flashes of his younger self. But this year, instead of pulling up for heat check 3's or making professional basketball players look silly in the post, Kobe was making muppet videos.1

    Predestined

    The 2016-2017 NBA champion was clear before the first game of the season. Ever since Kevin Durant signed with the Death Star Warriors, there was no doubt. There could be no doubt. You can't take an utterly dominant 73 win team, add one of the best scorers of all time2, and come away with any other possible outcome. As long as the key players were able to remain upright during four games at the end of the season, the Warriors were the champions. They were always going to be the champions.

    That's fine, I guess. Kevin Durant is an adult who can make his own decisions. I'm not mad at him for that. Golden State's front office is paid to put together the best team possible. They did that, and I'm not mad at them. But with one signing, a perennial contender was destroyed, and a nearly unbeatable dynasty was improved. Not created, mind you. Golden State was already nearly unbeatable before Durant.

    That single move took all the drama out of the season. It took away all doubt. Sports are fun because they don't matter. They are a reprieve from the world. They are entertainment. I just like a little entertainment in my entertainment.


    1. Good for him. Really. They aren't my thing, but I'm glad he found something that he seems to enjoy after basketball. 

    2. Not to disparage any other part of his game. He's an absolute terror on defense as well. 

    2017-06-24


  • Gabe on the updated iPad Pro screens:

    Most of what I've read or heard about the new iPad Pro is close to reality but I think the effect of the new 120 Hz refresh rate of the screen is being over stated. It's nice but it is not dramatically better. It's not even that noticeable. Scrolling looks better, but it's minor.

    Yep. My wife upgraded her trusty but ancient Mini 2 to a shiny new 10.5" Pro recently. It's fantastic. The screen is gorgeous. But the way some of the reviewers have been talking about comparing it to Retina vs non-retina? Get out of here with that.

    2017-06-24 14:02

  • Task Managers

    A good task manager is an extremely important tool, and one that I rely on to pretend to keep my shit together. I change too often – from Things, to OmniFocus, to TaskPaper, to 2Do, Todoist, 2Doist, and back to 2Do. Each tool is fine until it isn't.

    I become unhappy with every task manager I've ever used. Sometimes it happens quickly. Sometimes it happens more slowly, but it always happens. Some design decision or functionality limitation just grates on me until I break. All of this is my fault. The fault is not with apps, the system, or the devs. My brain is broken.

    I used Things for a long time. It was fantastic - one of the best designed apps available1. You may not know this, but Cultured Code has a great reason for the sub-glacial release schedule. They have to hand-craft each artisanal pixel in a pristine German factory. One pixel per day. No more. Sometimes less.

    As my life became more complex, it outpaced Things' ability to keep me in line. On to OmniFocus.

    I resisted moving to OmniFocus for a long time, even though I knew it was the right choice. It was obscenely complex. It had a killer learning curve that Things just didn't. It was fiddly. It was also extraordinarily powerful. It did a good job of helping me pretend to keep my shit together.

    Over time, the complexity of OmniFocus wore me down. It was too hard to use. I was spending more time on meta work instead of real work. Additionally, I really wanted my task list on my work computer, which is a Windows PC. So I went to the extreme opposite of OmniFocus - TaskPaper.

    That, predictably, was a mess. I had frequent sync issues that I couldn't pin down. Duplicate task files. No alerts at all. I still make short-term TaskPaper lists, and I still think in TaskPaper format, but I can't live my life that way.

    Enter 2Do. I thought 2Do was the one. It was a revelation. It seemed to have the power of OmniFocus in a better looking, simpler package. There are a lot of great things I can say about 2Do, but I won't rehash them. The one thing I will say is that 2Do nails iOS. Editing multiple tasks on iOS is just as easy as it should be. It's great.

    Once more, the urge to get my tasks on my Windows PC gnawed at me. So I tried an unholy combination of 2Do and Todoist - 2Doist. It failed the first time quickly. Back to 2Do. But I tried 2Doist once more. I held out longer, but when it failed, it failed spectacularly. The duct tape and popsicle sticks holding it together didn't stand a chance.

    So, back to 2Do. It doesn't feel broken, but it doesn't feel right. Something is off.

    I finally know what it is.

    2Do has no concept of Sequential Projects or dependent tasks. I used the heck out of these in OmniFocus, and have missed them ever since. So here we are. (Almost) full circle. I painstakingly moved my absurdly complex task management system over to OmniFocus.

    That sucked.

    What is old is new again.

    OmniFocus has replaced 2Do in the dock of my various iOS devices. 2Do has been relegated to a folder, no longer in use. I have folders, parallel projects, sequential projects, tasks and sub tasks, flagged tasks and unflagged tasks. I have multiple Perspectives set up to give me different views.

    OmniFocus is still complex. It's still fiddly. There's still way too much metawork. I still don't like the app. But for the first time in months, I feel like I'm back on my way to pretending like I have my shit together.


    1. The just-released Version 3 takes the best-in-world design to a new level. 

    2017-06-16


  • Manton describes Twitter pretty well:

    The best of Twitter is the thoughtful tweets and discussion, connecting new friends and diverse opinions. When real news breaks, the service runs uncontrolled, in fits of nervous energy and hate. It's a terrible place.

    Emphasis mine.

    2017-06-14 18:33

  • Sometimes taking the easy way out pays off.

    2017-06-12 22:36

  • Colin Walker on his time away from Twitter:

    I had imagined I would do a post with my thoughts and make a big thing of it but, as it turned out, the occasion (yesterday) completely passed me by.

    Sounds familiar.

    2017-06-03 14:25

  • This guy had his phone number hijacked in a painfully easy way:

    After talking at length with customer service reps, I learned that the hacker did not need to give them my pin number or my social security number and was able to get approval to takeover my cell phone number with simple billing information.

    It cost him $8k in cryptocurrency. That fucking hurts.

    2017-06-03 14:20

  • In my NBA Finals thoughts, I said this about LeBron:

    He's already in the top 3 all time.

    I have James #2 all time. Sorry, Kareem.

    2017-06-01 12:21

  • NBA Finals 2017 Thoughts

    Some random thoughts on this year's NBA Finals.

    • If the Warriors win, it is in no way an indictment of LeBron. The Cavs are supposed to lose. We're talking about a 73 win team that added one of the greatest scorers1 in the history of the game.
    • If the Cavs win, then LeBron simply must be in the conversation as an equal to Michael Jordan. He's already in the top 3 all time. Arguing otherwise at that point is just silly.
    • If the Cavs win, Durant will look even worse than he already does. The guy left to join the 73 win superteam that beat him in last year's playoffs, and still couldn't win it all?
    • If the Cavs win, I assume Golden State will have to go all-in on collecting superstars. They'll figure out some way to make a hard push for Chris Paul2, and they'll try to coax Tim Duncan out of retirement for a year.

    I'm tempted to say Warriors in 5, with the possibility of a sweep. LeBron has been superhuman in the last two Finals, and is playing his best basketball this year. That would be disrespectful.

    Warriors in six.


    1. Durant isn't just a great scorer of course. He is a superb defensive player as well. 

    2. Free agent this summer, though they won't easily have the cap space to pursue him. 

    2017-06-01


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