News free

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In the vein of lifehacking, I’ve just spent a month news free. Specifically, that means no news on television, no Twitter, no Google Reader. If I were on Facebook, it would’ve meant no Facebook either. Oh hey you know what? It was a pleasure. You know what more? It was a pleasure from day 1. Okay I allowed myself to watch TV shows and listen to podcasts. And sure, there’s news there, but it’s not live and it’s digested.

So what happens when you go news free? Well the first couple of days when I meant to take a break from work, I’d go to my new tab page to click the Reader icon only to find it not there. Oh right, I’d remember: no Reader. So I’d take a walk through the office instead, talk to some co-workers, perhaps get myself a healthy snack. Did I mention I’m also off the sugar? I’m also off the sugar. It’s lifehacking month for me, and it’s really working out too. And that’s it. Without RSS or Twitter feeds to check, I’d do other stuff. Relax more, read more, do nothing, more. I’d look forward to specific podcasts (even though John Siracusa said “nucular” on the most recent one and immediately dropped from 11 to 10 points in my book).

The bottomline is, going news-free was pretty easy and very satisfying. In fact, while I do plan to tweet again and perhaps even open Google Reader once in a while, I’ll be unsubscribing many things. No offense, The Verge, but from now on I’ll only watch your show.

Terminal Shortcuts

Storing these commandline shell shortcuts here mostly for my own benefit.

Ctrl-l: clear the screen
Ctrl-a: move caret to beginning of the line
Ctrl-e: move caret to end of line
Ctrl-k: delete everything from caret to the end of line

Next for Chrome OS

Remember Chrome OS? No? That’s okay. It’s Googles Chrome-browser with a stub of Linux underneath it, making the browser the operating system. I believe in this thing, not for myself, but for my mom; the ability to hold a couple of buttons while it’s booting to format the entire system and reinstall it from the cloud, keeping all personal files intact, is pretty much the perfect mom computer. Still, Chrome OS and “Chromebooks” never really took off. Now Google’s trying to take it to the next step, which apparently means a window manager:

While there’s some interesting UI going on, particularly with the semi-fullscreen-split-view and the ultra-minimal taskbar, I can’t help but feel like they could’ve done something really interesting with this. I don’t think the desktop has a future.

Optional Continuity

So, I’m pretty psyched about Ridley Scott’s Prometheus. It’s a space opera following the crew of the starship Prometheus. And unless Scott has lost it, it’ll be a thoroughly enjoyable sci-fi adventure.

I have a thing with sequels: I like continuity. Re-casting an actor takes me out of it. Sometimes a “movie reboot” is the solution to whatever ailed the old series; other times it’s a death-knell to a flawed diamond. Turns out there’s a third option: the pseudo-reboot.

JJ. Abrams Star Trek (2009) was created in such a way that if you were new to Star Trek, you could disregard 40 years of baggage. On the other hand, if you were a trekkie1, the movie gave you a straw to grasp at which would acknowledge those 40 years of continuity. Star Trek did the impossible — provide an entry for new movie-goers yet satisfy (the majority) of the trekkies, all the while actually being a good movie! I don’t even need to explain to you what exactly Star Trek did to respect the old continuity, that’s the point. If you didn’t pick up on it, it’s because you don’t need to worry about it.

Now watch this:

That’s continuity. If you want it to be. Did you get it? You might prefer not to read on.

Still here?

Turns out Prometheus is a pseudo-reboot of Alien. Peter Weyland is the co-founder of the Weyland-Yutani corporation, the evil conglomerate and eternal nemesis of Ripley. Which means, if you’re an Alien fan, you can consider Prometheus a successor to Alien. If you like, also Aliens. Perhaps even Alien 3, but I would expect most of you to disregard Alien Resurrection (whose only good part was the whiskey cubes). On the flipside, if you don’t care about Alien, you’re unlikely to watch the above viral video. You’re probably unlikely to even care. But there’s a chance you might go watch Prometheus anyway because every effort has been made to convince you it’s its own thing. The continuity is optional, and I like that.

  1. Or trekker, I don’t care about the difference.  ↑

Litany of fear

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

The above may be fiction, but it’s good fiction.

Smart Smartphones

Smartphones are great. I can use them to read, browse, look up who that guy in that movie is, listen to podcasts, and even take photos with them. Supposedly it can also make calls, but I don’t know anyone that uses smartphones for that anymore. Only, when my smartphone dings in the middle of the night because it found that I have a new email and it absolutely has to tell me right now, it’s not quite as smart as the prefix suggests.

Smartphones should know when to bug you but most importantly, when not to. On the Android, I’ve fallen in love with Setting Profiles, a programmable context settings manager.

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There’s a permanent shortcut in your windowshade showing which profiles are active. Click the shortcut and you’ll see all your profiles for easy access. Yup, would look much nicer were the app updated to the new Ice Cream Sandwich look … developer, ping?

So essentially, the app is about profiles and contexts. For example, “Rotation lock” is simply a shortcut to a feature I’d otherwise have to dig up from deep within the settings panel; quite useful for when you’re lying down and reading. “Quiet time”, on the other hand, is auto-activated from 22:00 to 09:00 every day, i.e. night-time — it essentially mutes the ringer and disables email sync.

“Quiet time” is a activated by a schedule context, but it could also have been activated by a location (as decided by GPS, Wi-Fi SSID or cell-tower ID), or when you dock your phone in a car, when you plug in a headset, when you miss a call or a number of other contexts.

Here are all my profiles:

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“Hearing saver” actually replaced a dedicated app for me.

The end result is that I have to do a lot less managing of my smartphone. That’s really nice, and it’s certainly smarter than the phone was when I got it. Still, it requires you to set it up when in fact your phone should be able to handle a lot of these things itself. I bet that’s the next big thing: actually making smartphones smart.

Erase and Sync

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I don’t even want to try to explain what’s going on here. I mean, I understand it, but I don’t understand it. I don’t see how it’s in anyones interest for it to be flaming-hoops difficult to sync a device to a new Mac. Seriously, Apple, how did this pass your “it just works” razor?