[self setTitle:nil];

• A well fitting every day suit
• A bullet proof vest
• Fedora

I have been working day and night on one project. I have a few ideas for other projects, some good, some not so good, but no matter what I keep telling myself to hold off on them until the main project is finished.

After giving it some thought I think holding off is the wrong approach. I should allocate some resources to a side project. It will slow down the main project speed a little bit, but I think that this approach will increase the quality of the main project.

When doing web applications it was not uncommon to switch back and forth between projects on a bi-weekly basis. In doing so I would be disgusted with the “old” code when switching back to a project. I would then merge in changes and updates to shared code, modify things a bit to fit the “new” way of thinking. Basically all the ideas and knowledge I had acquired since working on this project would be merged back.

My brain never stops learning and growing so why should my projects stop as well? I am taking on a minor project that I will force myself to work on for a full day once a week. I am hoping that in doing so I will dig myself out of the hole one can do when spending too much time on one thing.

Sneak peak screenshots of the upcoming side project to be posted soon.

No updates as of late due to intense stretches of coding.

Here is a sneak peak at what is coming up.

Turkeys?

We have successfully moved to Houston, TX. I have been lacking on updates as of late because once we rolled into town things got rather hectic. All in all the setup the nursing agency does for us is pretty convenient. We got the keys to our home for the next three months and their was a furniture rental truck waiting outside for us in the morning. By the afternoon we had unpacked, gotten settled in and taken a dip in one of the many pools at the complex.

Lessons Learned

• We may decide to use a roof rack and a roof rack box instead of the trailer. The trailer worked out well, but was expensive. Since we will be doing this a lot we will need to come up with a cheaper way to do the move
• Lowered the litter box to get the cats to use it. We initially rested the litter box on top of some bags in the back seat and the cats ignored it. Once we wedged it to be below and raised their sitting area up, they felt more comfortable using it in a moving car. I think having it perched up high scared them.
• We would have been better off getting to our destination as quickly as possible and staying in a hotel a few nights instead of prolonging it. Each day packing and unpacking the car took its toll as well as finding something to eat in a new area every night.

Things that went well

• The cats did an amazing job in the car. Once settled in they would sleep for most of the ride. We had only one accident outside the liter box.
• The trailer (albeit expensive) held up really well. Personally I would have preferred we both sell our cars and get a small truck so we wouldn’t need a trailer at all, but Jen hates trucks. I am still trying to convince her to switch vehicles though…
• Long driving days were better then short ones on morale. The scenery changed more and we felt as though we had made progress to our destination.
• American Mobile was really good about giving Jen our address and setting us up. Jen’s recruiter is great and through.
• The iPhone TomTom application and holster worked out great as well. It would have been a lot more difficult with just Google Maps

Rupert stretching out during the long journey.

Fatty living up to her name.

Really no words.

The view from our apartment. Nice courtyards.

And Houston looks just like any other city.

Another courtyard next to a pool.

Jen critiquing the Houston architecture.

Today was food experimentation day. Venturing from the usual healthy food we attempt to get, we went to some of the more “classic” venues of food.

First up, Sonic.

Jen and I imitating the Sonic commercials

Me being very shocked at how good everything really is.

They give you mints with your meals perched atop the drinks.

Then the kittens had a meal:

Kittens eating some delicious grub.

Then… Cracker Barrel:

We felt disgusting and violated after it. Jen referred to it as the Deliverance of food.

And back to Sonic again (it was that good):

Cherry Limeaid Route-44 sized.

Our second day went without any problems as well. So far the drive has been super uneventful. Despite the lack of excitement (asides from the constant excitement of moving somewhere completely new) we couldn’t have asked for a simpler trip.

The Nursing Agency got the move in date mixed up and we cannot move in until the 8th, two days later then we originally anticipated. This means we will stay in a hotel in Houston one night. The upside to this is the agency could not find any one bedroom apartment so we were bumped up to a two bedroom, a.k.a a one bedroom apartment plus a bike room.

Below are some pictures of our travels thru Maryland, West Virginia, and Virginia. Day three we hit the deep south.

The McGuiver hack I did to get the chains from dragging after Pennsylvania roads ruined one of them.

The cats being good in the car with the new litter box setup. They have gotten into the rhythm of car, hotel, car and have adjusted their bathroom and eating habits already.

Jen hanging out on the trailer getting some sun in Virginia.

We really wanted to take a picture of this old lady and used our picture as an excuse.

These "Hot Fries" are a piss poor excuse for Hot Fries. I crave some real Andy Capps Hot Fries.

Day one of the move to Houston, Texas has gone well. Nothing out of the ordinary to report. No troubles with the trailer, no troubles with the cats, no troubles with traffic.

A very hectic day so I was only able to take a few pictures. Enjoy.

The bike and trailer setup.

Note the trailer says "Rent for your next adventure!"

The back seat setup for the cats. The mostly slept.

Jen and Rupert getting some much needed rest and Dallas watching in the motel.

Growing up my mother had drilled into me the concept of checklists. She always had a large list on a piece of paper, she would also leave my sister and I chore lists. Every time we left the house she would always stop at the threshold of the door and say “do your mental checklist”. At the time it drove me nuts, but to this day whenever I walk out of the house “keys.. wallet… phone..,” and when I leave the car “keys in my hand.. lock the door..”

Lists became natural to me in high school when I would write a step by step list of the homework and chores I would do in the most efficient order, as well as what downloads to start and in what order so when everything was done, I could spend as much time as possible playing Quake, or working on some code.

At the heart of any sort of life hacking or “getting things done” workflow are these same original lists I’ve had drilled into my head since I was a child. What I’ve found though is that these lists are very restricting in that they take extra thought from your brain to extrapolate the context. I am more then likely already spouting off direct lines from David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” but part of me refuses to spend time reading about about how to get things done (oddly this same part is okay with writing about it.).

Context is as simple as a grocery list. If I make a list of all my days errands, add on all the days chores, then add on dependent items that can only be done at certain times of the day or while something else is happening I end up with quite the list. Things get lost in the shuffle. I go out to the grocery store and I have to constantly waste thought processes weeding out the items on the list which are out of context. Things.app has solved this for me. A simple Mac OS X desktop application with iPhone companion application, Things.app allows me to tag all of my items with their appripriate context.

When traveling to the grocery store, doing my chores, or slogging thru code I am no longer thinking about the other items to do in their respective contexts. I’ve trained my brain to turn off repeating these lists over in my head. In these spare brain cycles I think of things to write, come up with new application ideas, solve coding problems. In effect thru relational and structured thinking I’ve freed up my brain to be more creative.

This all ties ultimately into the length of my beard though as any good todo list system should. Recently I have decided to start putting menial tasks into my lists as repeating tasks. Shaving is one of those tasks that I always know I need to do it, but put it off until it bothers me so much I stop what I am doing, break concentration and shave. So I picked a timeframe. I won’t shave or think about shaving until every second Tuesday. A task appears in my lists now under the Personal / Home / Hygiene contexts every second Tuesday. This time frame is short enough to not get frustrated with the length of my beard and long enough to not be annoying and time wasting.

My new shaving method can be applied to all of the most menial tasks around the home. I now think of these repeating tasks like the video game The Sims. If I want to put more energy into my work, I increase the length between times of certain household tasks.

I know this is all a “duh!” notion but putting it down on paper and using tools to plot out how I want to spend my time has instantly improved my productivity and has helped me put time and effort in the activities I love.

I have recently been looking into best practices for iPhone applications. I have two applications in the pipeline, both require settings but are very different in their type. After looking into the options I’ve decided Apple’s settings application could use some fixing.

According to Apple’s developer documentation, the Settings application should be used in “productivity-style applications”.

Adding your application preferences to the settings application is most appropriate for productivity-style applications and in situations where you have preference values that are typically configured once and then rarely changed.

The documentation goes on to say that applications should not duplicate the functionality of the settings application, nor should they be used in utility style applications or applications with few preferences.

I think this is the wrong approach all together. This breaks application flow, and in many cases, preferences despite proper verbage, will not always be 100% clear. In some cases a user may want to switch a preference, see how the application’s functionality has changed then switch again.

There are also preferences that fall under the “set once” category and some that fall under the “depends on my mood” category. My favorite IM application Beejive IM suffers from this problem, preference schizophrenia. Take Beejive IM’s “More” tab.

Beejive IM

There are no settings in this tab, although, you can set the application’s wallpaper here. This is a good example of a setting that a user will try out quickly, but schizophrenia lurks around the corner. Clicking the Support tab brings up an FAQ. There is a question in the FAQ “Where are my settings?” that points the user to the settings application.

The settings application has a bit of a lag when loading in 3rd party applications, and because of this, coupled with it not being natural to change application settings outside of an application, I rarely notice these. When directed here looking for Beejive IMs settings I found settings to applications I was unaware had settings. Either I had checked here after installing it, and they were added in a later update or I just missed them altogether.

Application Settings

Inside the Beejive IM settings pages there are a ton of settings, some of which are closely related to the wallpaper setting that is located inside the application. Changing the wallpaper could make text unreadable, and require me to quit the application, change the color scheme from settings and relaunch Beejive IM and hope I do not have to repeat. “Status Icons” and “Table Divider” are both settings which I need more instant visual feedback to make a decision. When preferences are outside the application and I am not 100% certain how they work, I am less apt to play around with them.

Beejive IM Settings

Now do not get me wrong. From a developer stand point the SDK provides a really easy way to create preferences. The new file dialog has a “settings bundle” which creates a easy to edit and understand XML file. From there accessing the preference values is as simple as two lines of code (replacing “typeForKey” with the proper type int, bool, etc…)

NSUserDefaults *userDefaults = [NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults];
[userDefaults typeForKey:preference_key];

It is obvious that Apple is trying to solve the issue of preference interfaces being horrendously designed as well as trying to keep everything in one neat and tidy location. Fixing the the issue of the user not being aware of preferences could be solved with a badge icon for updated settings bundles at application install time. This would notify the user of settings needing to be set, and get some of the first time settings out of the way. Apple’s own documentation says this area is for settings that will be touched once. The setting buttons for 3rd party applications should launch the settings pages in the application in question so as to alleviate the issue with switching back and forth and trying out settings.

TL;DR version
Disadvantages

• Breaks application workflow.
• Confusing to users used to desktop style settings.
• Hard to “try out” preferences quickly

Advantages

• Very easy for developers to implement.
• Attempts to keep bad settings UI design away from the user

Possible Solutions

• Badge notifications for updated / added 3rd party preferences when an application is installed or updated
• Settings part of the SDK allows for creation of a settings page collection that is viewed and accessed inside the application itself.
• Clicking the application from the settings application opens the settings pages inside the 3rd party application.