sayzlim.net

Slave’s Desire

Tue, 01 May 2012 01:15:00 +0700

One doesn’t merely allow desire to take control of himself. Becoming aware of self, acknowledging the existence of ego, and continuously look into the origin of desire can allow one to see the impermanence and unsteadiness of desire.

Yet the desire, despite how fragile and unsteady, continuosly to occupy one ability to think. The thought of fulfilling desire will attempt to seek — or even make up — reasons, turning one into slave, and eventually surrendering himself to endless craving.

If only one acknowledges the existence of desire, its impermanence and unsteadiness, then he might be able to escape the destiny of slave and obtain what slave doesn’t have.

It’s freedom.

Fast Action Button on Flipboard for iPhone

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 00:58:44 +0700

I’m a fan of sending article to my favorite Read Later application, Instapaper. Sending articles from Flipboard to Instapaper usually requires at least 2 steps.

Recently, I discovered a small neat built in Flipboard for iPhone feature that works very well. Fast Action Button, which can only be enabled for Twitter account, allows you execute quick action by skipping the share button. By default, it’s Favorite. However, you can also set it to Retweet or Read Later.

You can change the default behavior by going into Setting panel and choose Twitter to find Fast Action Button. It’s time saving and very useful.

Zynga, Shame On You

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 00:21:00 +0700

Cult of Mac:

Pierce had such a project: a little game called Connectrode, a Dr. Mario style puzzler he had created for his wife. He had made it before joining OMGPOP, and it hardly made any money, but Pierce had sentimental attachment to the game.

When Pierce asked for an addendum to that contract, specifying that he be able to continue offering Connectrode on the iOS App Store, Zynga told him that he either had to sign the contract as it was written or walk.

If you got a dollar, buy Connectrode. As for Zynga, I dislike the way they’re doing business.

No Longer Illusion, Meet Harpoen

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 22:49:00 +0700

This silly idea¹ I came up with few months ago is no longer an illusion. Meet Harpoen.

Aulia Masna on DailySocial:

Harpoen lets you leave notes, photos, remarks, comments all over the city, virtually. This digital graffiti app lets you put up what the developer calls “harps” all over the city which can be placed permanently or temporarily, as you can set these harps to disappear after a particular length of time if you wish.

Update 17/03/2012: John Patrick, co-founder and CEO of Harpoen, sent me an open letter. It answered most of my questions and gave some insight of what they may add in their next version.

How to delete harps?

This is very much on our minds as well. To stay with the graffiti analogy, Harps are also written in indelible ink. Messages that remain, for better or worse, become more interesting for their permanence. Harps currently cannot be deleted after creation. The evaporate function can schedule future removal but must be set when the Harp is created.

How to delete comments?

Comments can be a part of a thread, so removing one may upset the conversation. Comments can’t be deleted. Commenting (or Harping) anonymously is also a fix — why does it need to be deleted if “I” never wrote it?

How will it handle a huge number of overlapping harps? (I’m not using time filter)

We are working on ways to better navigate areas with numerous Harps. One way, which we failed to include in our app tour (on first load and always available on the settings page), is “Stacks.” When Harps are made in the exact same location, the preview panel becomes horizontally scrollable and slides between different messages.

Filters are the main way to navigate lots of overlapping content. The time filter allows you to look back at what is being said in a certain place and the other filters help see the different people saying it. New filters will be added to help hear all voices, and to help users connect with the kind of ideas and things they want to connect with.

Do I really need to tap each node to view harps?

This the first version of Harpoen and we did our best to create a unique and sensible user interface. The answer for now is yes – you must tap each node to view Harps. But what did you have in mind? Please help us brainstorm!

“How to make money” is not exactly a question for Harpoen. They can charge advertisers for the ability to leave harps anywhere on the map, or premium account for Harpers.²

Their first goal is probably increasing user base. The effective way, from my experience with social networks, is to attract influencers. If you can get influencers to use your product, you can increase your user base easily.

What do most influencers have in common? Popularity. And the indicator of popularity? Numbers.

Unless you add numbers, influencers are unlikely to use Harpoen.³ This is their response:

The question about influencers, and to a lesser extent the question about money, has the same answer. As cheesy as it is to quote a movie (and you know which one we mean), to “make something cool” is what we’re trying to do. We have a ton of other ideas that soon will be added to Harpoen, like favorites, notifications, and a something we are currently calling “Lighthouse.”

Seems they’re doing what most startup has done so far. Monetize later. Not that it’s not going to work, but charge for the service once it proves useful and cool.

Ideas are cheap, execution matters. ↩
Or Harperians. ↩
Retweets, Reblogs, Likes, Loves, Reshares. ↩

Apple’s Battery

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 22:04:00 +0700

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes’ post on ZDnet:

Between the release of the iPad 2 last year and the announcement of the new iPad yesterday, Apple has nearly doubled the capacity of the battery, taking it from 25Wh to a massive 42Wh. Measured in milliamps this boosts the battery from 6944 mAh to a monstrous 11,666 mAh.

That’s one important thing. It means Apple has found a way to maintain battery life while equipping their products with the latest technology.

MG Siegler:

During the keynote, I noted that I remembered the days when my laptop battery would give out before an Apple keynote was over. It was only a few years ago. Yesterday, by the end of the event, my MacBook Air was at 65%. What if Apple is close to a 20-hour laptop?

A MacBook Air¹ that can last more than 20 hours? It won’t be available this year, not so soon, considering the MacBook Air can only last 7 hours without Retina display. Unless, Apple doesn’t implement Retina display in their MacBook lineup.²

MacBook Air is laptop to me. ↩
This year. ↩

Illusionary

Sun, 26 Feb 2012 22:53:00 +0700

Sites I love are Twitter and Tumblr. Sites I hate is Facebook. So from the hates and loves, I get Illusionary.

Illusionary requires your username, email, password to sign up. That’s all we need. You can delete your account completely with a simple email verification.

What does this app do? Let’s pretend you’re having a great meal in one of the restaurant near your house, and you want to your friends to visit this place when they’re around that place. What would you do? Leave a note or signboard so they can see them when they’re nearby.

Wait, it seems there is a similar service somewhere. I forgot the name, but yes, it exists.

So, let’s say you’re enjoying your vacation in Japan. You enjoy walking, so you use public transportation and venture around the city. It’s unexpected, but you discover a small waterfall somewhere right now. Let’s leave another note so the next time your followers visit this place, they can drop by that small waterfall.

I respect privacy. So, there is no need to show the number of followers in your profile to other people. By default, your account is private. So, every follow request requires your confirmation. Sounds complicated? Nope, unless you want others to stalk you. But wait. You don’t mind using Foursquare, do you?

Talking about privacy, if your account is set to private, other users won’t be able to see your profile in your followers’ “Following” section. Make this account just for your friends.

Fashion bloggers, cuisine hunters, or gadget geeks. Feel free to create a public account and treat it as common blog. But this time, we’re making it location based. Your followers can only see the notes you leave when they’re near the notes. Sounds great? Maybe we can have a simple Love or Hate button for your notes to determine your its popularity.

We don’t have mention, direct message, or retweet. That’s it, the interaction is between you and your followers. Your followers can only love or hate your notes. I love spontaneity, that means you can only post your notes from your current location.

Shop owners. Why bother tweet your promotion to your followers who are far away from your shop? How about leaving notes to your followers that you’re having a 50% discount today. They’re just around your shop, very close, just a few minutes of walk.

I don’t mind sharing this idea. It’s not like I’m the first one to come up with this idea, what matters is the implementation.

FYI: This post was written few months ago. I discovered it while browsing through drafts and decided to publish it anyway. Silly idea is better than having no ideas.

Your Paper and Pencil, Clear for iPhone

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 17:34:48 +0700

I’m not a big fan of to-do apps in general. Creating to-do apps can serve as a good project for new developers. It’s not surprising that the app market is flooded with to-do apps. The problem with those to-do apps are their target audience. Unlike OmniFocus that is primarily designed for long term goals and large scale project, most of the existing to-do apps fall into the region of “Reminder.app”.

Now we have Clear for iPhone designed by Real Mac Software and Impending. Clear has clearly taken a right approach in designing app for iOS. Clear makes use of all the apparent gesture interaction for managing to-do list. Combining with the colorful interface indicating the priority of tasks and the variation of sound effects+vibration to send feedbacks, Clear turns creating to-do list from boring stuff into pleasant and entertaining experience.

To gain understanding how Clear for iPhone works, watch the preview below, or skip ahead for the rest of review.

Design & Interface

At first glance, people will wonder if this particular app is ported from Windows Phone. Clear uses solid color to indicate the priority of items, saving the need to add priority setting which can be found in Reminder.app. The clean design allows the maximum use of space without buttons and icons bring the focus to the items.

One thing to notice from Clear is the lack of “Tapped Button” states. Feedbacks are given either by via hidden text and icon that can be only be seen when gesture is used. When you pull down, you get the fancy flipping a new item telling you to release in order create an item. Swiping right and left show the action button. The smart usage of sound effects and vibration deepen the sense of control, making user inclined to use it over and over.

Some people questioned the solely the use of gesture for managing list like “I can’t pinch in while holding my iPhone with one had”. That’s where tapping coming in. Tapping remains one of iOS mandatory interaction method. Clear doesn’t try to enforce gesture as the only interaction method to manage lists. While people might inclined to think that each interaction need to be done via gesture, the fact that you can add new item by simply tapping empty area and pulling down to access previous view allows user to use Clear with one hand.

Hierarchy of View

First Layer, Configuration. You’ll be presented with tutorial in form to-do list the first attempt you run Clear. Clear itself uses the layer approach to show the top-down hierarchy relationship. At the top of layer you can see the number of list created, change the color theme, view more tips & tricks, follow developers team on Twitter, and configure setting. Tapping one of the list will bring you one level down.

The second layer is made up of lists. There are several ways to create list. The difference between each way is determined by the location you plan to insert list.

Inserting list to the top can be done by pulling down the screen until it shows “Release to Create List”.
Inserting list in the middle of lists can be done by pinching out between chosen lists (depending on where you want to insert it between).
Inserting list at the end of list can be done by tapping empty area (as long your list doesn’t fill the whole screen), or else you need to insert the list between and move it to the bottom of the list.

Swiping right to left deletes list. I made several mistakes on swiping direction at the beginning. To make it easy, just remember the delete icon is on right side. To delete, show the delete icon which eventually leads you swiping right to left.

Third layer is consisted of last opened tasks which is known as items in Clear. The main interaction remains same as second layer. There are some new actions such as:

Mark item as complete by swiping right to left because check mark is located on left side.
Clear completed items by pulling up in order to show the “Pull to Clear” command.

To get back to previous view, you can do it by either pinching in or pulling down top of view.

It’s Designed This Way

There is no syncing, tags, or search. The simplicity of Clear is the main reason why this app excel. It works like a paper and pencil where you can bring easily to almost everywhere. It’s designed to be fast, reliable, and simple. That’s the reason why it limits your items to 30 letters.

If you need to remember anything, quickly jot it down. Run the app, view the list, mark it as complete, and clear the completed items.

It’s designed this way to cater simple to-do list which should make creating and completing to-do list simple and fast.

Buy: Clear for iPhone

On Being a Writer

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 23:32:00 +0700

I’ve never expected writing will become part of my life. I started writing when I had internet access in 2007. That was the time when I didn’t even know that “I” should be capitalized.

I’ve made numerous amount of mistakes. But, no one read my writing that time. No pressure, so I keep writing. Writing makes me think and I enjoy arranging my thought into a piece of writing.

The thought of making living through writing has never occured before. I didn’t have any plans after graduation. The only plan was to accept any job available that doesn’t require long commuting while continue writing and learning UI/UX design.

This is what I’m going to share with you.

I’ll be working at MakeMac with Kuswanto and Fauzan to bring the latest news, tips, and review to Indonesia Apple community. It’s a huge step for me. It’s an act to pick up responsibility and start doing the right thing.

The right thing, following my own principle, is to select and bring the most significant writing to people. The writing that matters and adds value to people.

In one of the latest post by MG Siegler, he revealed the current state of tech blog.

Most are stories written with little or no research done. They’re written as quickly as possible. The faster the better. Most are just rehashing information that spread by some other means. But that’s great, it means stories can be written without any burden beyond the writer having to read a little bit and type words fast. Many are written without the writer even having to think.

Rumors is one of them. Most of the writing are done to generate page views. Because page views are the main reason why advertiser would pour all their money into your blog, most writers are hired to generate page views.

We can’t change this. Just like how we can’t control people spending their money, we also can’t control how people spend their time.

MG Siegler nailed it,

I offer no solutions because my honest opinion is that nothing will change where we’re headed. Increasingly, there are two realities in the technology space: 1) reality 2) “reality”.

MakeMac aims to be the number one Mac and iOS resources for Indonesia Community. We may follow the same trend, feeding some junk information, aiming for page views.

Personally, I’ll strive for writing that’ll add value to people. Even if I need to feed junk information, I’ll try make it healthy for people.

Journaling with Day One

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 20:20:00 +0700

It happens all the time. I notice an app, pin it, and toss it aside at Pinboard. A friend of mine mentioned Day One to me few days ago, so I took a closer look to this app. My thought on this app? Totally in love with it. It’s definitely a beautiful tool for you who take pleasure in writing down your thoughts in diary.

“Make sure you write your feelings and thoughts about things going on in your life.”

One of the inspirational message found in Day One for Mac. Whether you’re an public figure or regular person, I think your thoughts and feelings carry a certain value that no one can measure. Years later, you might be surprised to see how much you’ve grown and changed from reading your archived entries.

Sometimes I also want to spill my thought in a writing. There is certain moment this mind is filled with love, lust, frustration, anger, greed, or cowardness. I want to write without giving any thought of others, or considering how people will react to my writing. I bet you also feel the same. Next time, that one moment where various of thoughts run through your mind in a split second. Write down everything, maybe you’ll learn a little bit more about yourself.

“After the writer’s death, reading his journal is like receiving a long letter.”

Everyone can be a writer. If you tweet, you’re a writer. If you can update your Facebook status, you’re a writer. Whether it’s a short sentence or several paragraphs, we’re used to express ourselves in this digital era by using text. Rather than posting your thoughts randomly, how about archiving them? You might be surprised at how much you enjoy writing.

I can tell you how useful and well made Day One is. But, if you hate writing or not even interested in keeping a journal, features are meaningless. You need a reason. Once you find a reason, you need a tool that can aid you in the most beautiful and elegant ways.

Day One on iOS

On iPhone, you’ll be able to see the statistic of your entries at the start screen. You can view all your entries in Calendar, or Entries by Year. Creating new entry is simply done by tapping the new entry button. You can also configure the starting page on startup from the setting menu.

iPhone and iPad version are fairly similar. Day One on iPad make use of the space efficiently like how most native apps should behave.

Day One on Mac

Those who prefer to write by the end of the day, like how most people used to write diary before sleep, should get a Mac version. Sometimes I find myself learning a valuable lesson from a piece of writing, rather than trying to write it down with iOS version. I turn on my Mac and copy-paste or rewriting them into Day One. With syncing and Markdown support, you can read all the stored entries easily on your iPad/iPhone.

All the features accross the devices remain similar and the most noteworthy features, aside from its intuitive interface are:

Syncing between devices can be done via iCloud or Dropbox. I prefer Dropbox over iCloud because I can manually manage each entry. You can also restore the deleted entries from Dropbox. With iCloud, you’re unable to make any modification if you make mistake during sync. You don’t want to lose all your entires.

Security is very important in journal. You don’t want other people to have easy access to your personal journal. Both iOS and Mac version lets you setup password, which is the most important feature in personal journal.

Sharing is made simple. You can easily tweet or email your entries with share button.

If you hesitate, start with iOS version. The price is as low as $1.99 to get you started. There is one way to make use of Day One if you’re not used to keeping jornal. Rather than updating from any Twitter client, write it down first in Day One. If you don’t want to share them to your followers, it’s fine. And if you’ve decided to publish it, hit the share button. You might be surprised at how much entries you can accumulate from using this approach.

Purchase: Day One

Sync iCloud Contacts and Calendar on Snow Leopard

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 15:42:00 +0700

Syncing iCloud to Snow Leopard is relatively simple. The information you need are your iCloud ID, usually in number identified as 1473233284, and the iCloud Server Number, usually labeled as pXX-caldav.icloud.com.

To find out your iCloud ID and iCloud Server Number, you need to run Safari and sign into your iCloud account.

Pick Calendar or Contacts and choose Windows —> Activity from menu bar.

You should find something similar to this:

p03-contactsws.icloud.com/co/mecard/?dsid=1325673149

From the image above, my iCloud ID would be 1325673149 and my data are stored in server p03. Note down what you’ve found out because we’ll need these information later while setting up iCloud on iCal and Address Book.

Syncing iCal

Run iCal and choose iCal -> Preferences… from menu bar. Pick Accounts Tab and click on the small plus sign at the bottom left. Fill in your iCloud email address and password.

The most important part is to replace the p03-caldav.icloud.com with your own iCloud Server Number. For instance, if you find out that your iCloud Server Number is p11, fill the Server address with p11-caldav.icloud.com.

Syncing Address Book ¹

Syncing your contacts might be a little bit difficult if you’re not used to edit .plist files. This is the right time to export all your contacts from Address Book and import them to iCloud before proceeding to next step. You can do this by select all your contacts and use right-click to create a backup file.

Access Address Book preferences by choosing Address Book -> Preferences… from menu bar. Add a CardDAV account by following the same procedure as iCal.

Fill the “User name field” with your iCloud email address under this format:

emailAddress%40domainName.com:yourPassword

For instance, if your iCloud email address is LOLcats@yahoo.com and the password is DogsMuffin, you must fill “User name field” with:

LOLcats%40yahoo.com:DogsMuffin

Leave the Password field blank and replace the Server address field with your own iCloud Server Number. Take note that it’s pXX-contacts.icloud.com this time. Ignore the error and warning, you’ll fix it later.

Choose the “Server Settings” and fill in your iCloud server address. It’s the one you fill in earlier in Server address field. (pXX-contacts.icloud.com)

Working With Configuration Files

We’re going to configure some setting by navigating to Address Book support folder. Run Finder, choose Go -> Go to Folder… and enter this:

~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook/Sources

You should be able to find one or several geeky folders. Run through each folder and open the configuration.plist with TextEdit or any similar text editor apps until your find the configuration associated to your iCloud account.

Replace the value after servername with:

https://pXX-contacts.icloud.com:443/YYYYYYYYYY/principal/

Replace the XX with your own iCloud Server Number and YYYYYYYY with your iCloud ID number. Once you’re done, save the file and run Address Book. Fill in your iCloud password in the “Password field” and you should be able to see your iCloud contacts immediately.²

Update 12/02/2012: A reader pointed the need to enable SSL Connection to make contact sync works. Thanks Federico.

Update 03/03/2012: Another reader pointed out using https allows you to skip the step enabling SSL. Thanks Ron!

Notes and Duplicate Bugs

Sometimes Address Book will behave weird and keep duplicating your contacts. There is no need to worry having your contacts duplicated at iCloud Contacts. Those duplicated contacts only exist locally.

I haven’t found the way to fix this bug. However, you can stop the bug temporary by readding your iCloud account to Address Book. Make sure to remove the previous iCloud account first.

You can always use the contact form if you have any questions.

Finally! Sync your Address CardDav in OSX 10.6 Snow Leopard ↩
Thanks for j-dubya who helped to clear up all the confusion. ↩

Making Choice Between Droplr and CloudApp

Sat, 17 Dec 2011 12:45:23 +0700

CloudApp and Droplr are without doubt well known file sharing services. They separate themselves from many competitors in this industry by delivering a high standard of web interface, providing native apps that run seamlessly on Mac OS X.

For those of you who may not be familiar with how they work, CloudApp and Droplr allow you to upload your files to their server by either:

dragging files into Menu bar icon;
or using shortcuts;

If I were to use only one app, I’ll choose Droplr. Take aside a shorter URL generated (d.pr to cl.ly), Droplr also supports Markdown and text upload where you can display your text like normal webpage easily.

However, I use both services, each with different purposes. Instead of comparing both services head on, I’ll try to show you how I use both services.

Droplr

Droplr and CloudApp were the only candidates when I decided to use file sharing service last year. It took me a while to pick one of them. In the end, I opted to Droplr because CloudApp only allowed 10 uploads each day.

Droplr launched their second version few weeks ago with a major update both in web app and native app. Despite the changes, it doesn’t change the way I use it. In fact, I like most of the updates.

Web App is blazing fast. Even with a slow connection, Droplr manages to load much like a native app, it doesn’t take more than 2 seconds to switch between pages. I use web app whenever I want to check the statistic of clicks.

Native App, more useful with preview. Droplr 2.0 app has a feature to preview image directly from menu bar. It’s pretty handy if you upload a lot of images. You can also delete your recent drops without having to access the web app. CloudApp is one step late implementing this feature, but I’m sure they’ll include this feature in the near future.

Droplr comes with a 25 MB upload size limit and a space of 1.24 GB. You can use your own custom domain by upgrading your account to paid account.

Droplr is more like a personal storage where I store links and files for my own blog. It also serves as an analytic for me to track number of clicks and downloads. If you share a lot and want to separate personal files from random links, images, and documents. I think you’ll like Droplr.

CloudApp

If Droplr is my small drawar, then CloudApp is my huge storage room. I’ll toss everything into this room without bothering the number of downloads.

Apps Integration. The popularity of CloudApp manages to get a lot of popular apps to include CloudApp as one of the upload options. Take Sparrow integration for example, you can upload files to CloudApp, which return shorten links on success, by dragging the files into “New Message Window”. Another app I use daily is Twitterrific where I usually shorten URLs and attach pictures.

Raindrops are plugins where you can trigger to activate certain behaviour in one of the supported active apps. If you trigger Raindrops while using Chrome, CloudApp will shorten the current active URL.

Just in case you didn’t notice, CloudApp has 10 files upload limit a day. Although it seems too little, for me, it’s more than just enough.

There is no storage limit mentioned in CloudApp blog. I assume files stay forever.

Conclusion

If you’re not bothered with having too many accounts, just try to use both services. If you only want pick one, CloudApp is more useful in term of apps integration. In term of features, you should pick Droplr.

How to Remove Spotlight Icon in Menubar

Sat, 10 Dec 2011 22:29:00 +0700

If you choose Alfred over Spotlight, it looks better without menubar icon. Paste the code below into Terminal.app and enter your admin password.

To Hide Spotlight Icon

sudo chmod 600 /System/Library/CoreServices/Search.bundle/Contents/MacOS/Search && killall SystemUIServer

To Show Spotlight Icon

sudo chmod 777 /System/Library/CoreServices/Search.bundle/Contents/MacOS/Search && killall SystemUIServer

Memories in Small Town

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 22:08:00 +0700

As someone who has experienced the life without internet connection, I find the way people spending their time has changed a great deal.

Companion is no longer the factor within consideration. In fact, most people prefer to spend their time watching people creating noises.

Coming from a small town where commuting took less than 15 minutes from one place to another. I could visit several places in one day. Despite the lack of entertainments, my friends and I could create our own fun and laugh every day. You can barely experiencing boredom.

We had this basketball court in one of the corner in town. And this basketball court, a place where teenagers gathered each afternoon was the place full of memories and experiences. Many people met their friends, their love, and their enemies there.

Sometimes I preferred to find a corner, sitting down while sipping a bottle of mineral water and watch how the older played prank on the younger kids, fighting each other, or simply swearing.

Occasionally, we would visit beaches. While waiting for everyone preparing what they called barbecue party, I would take a good look at my surrounding. I still remember warmness of the sun while hiding in the shade, the flawless pile of sands covering my feet, and the calming sound of sea breeze towards the land.

The most important thing is you know your friends are there doing their own activities. Whether we played together or not, simply knowing they were there was enough.

Despite all the people living in this big city. We rarely spend time with people. We rarely care about people. We rarely talk with people. We rarely pay attention to people.

By the end of day, the memory you wished you’ve created is not about how much reblogs you’ve gotten on Tumblr, friends you’ve made on Facebook, number of followers on Twitter, and number of contacts in your BlackBerry Messenger List.

How do you create memory?

I can tell you one thing for sure. You don’t create it with toys.

16 Tips in Dealing Information Overload

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 22:27:27 +0700

Only use the services you need. Deactivate and delete unneeded services.
Don’t read news.
Don’t watch TV.
Don’t share your private information online. Keep them vague.
Read only well written works. Don’t know where to start?.
Don’t make noise, talk at appropriate time, same thing apply to status update, comments, and tweets.
Stop finding out what your friends are doing or just quit Facebook.
Pick several role models in term of appearance, ability, and achievement. Find out how they do it, do it.
Stay away from notification and subscription.
Stay away from gossip.
Spend more time with your family.
Exercise.
Pay attention to your diet.
Write what you have learned from your daily life.
Make money.
Better yet, stay organized.

6 Basic Alfred App Extensions

Sat, 19 Nov 2011 23:39:00 +0700

The release of Alfred 0.9.9 has added a feature for users with experience in Apple Script, Shell Script, and Automator to extend Alfred capability beyond what it can do. If you’ve made a switch from Spotlight to Alfred, I hope this list adds another reason for you to get Power Pack upgrade. Even without Power Pack, you should also try Alfred.¹

Connection Speed measures your connection speed and displays the result with Growl.² It has helped me save many steps required in speed test site to get the same result.
Flush DNS flushes DNS.
Memory Purge can save you from countless reboot by claiming back unused and inactive memory on your Mac. I made this extension by using the shell script I learned from Lifehacker 2 years ago.
Rebuild Open With… is an extension that can solve your problem with Open With… item lists. Some apps still exist in the Open With… item lists even after uninstallation. This extension rebuild the item association list with all existing apps.
Toogle Desktop. I’m not the first one to come up with this extension. However, this is the first extension I built with code reference from Don Southard.
Toggle System Files lets you show and hide system files that are usually hidden.

You can download all the extensions above using the link provided below. I’ve replaced some of the extensions icon. If you know the owner of the icon, please let me know so I can properly credit the icon owner.

Download: Extension Pack

Learn why I recommend Alfred for average users in “Alfred App vs Spotlight“. ↩
You need Growl to show the notifications. You also need beautiful style themes. ↩

Care Less

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 00:19:04 +0700

Children can be so carefree is simply because they care less.

The problem with adulthood is we care too much. We care too much how people will view us as an individual. We care too much how successful other people compared to us. We care too much how cool other people compared to us.

We care too much so we stop to learn.

We lose ourselves in the midst of this world where majority determines how we should act and behave. And this pattern has caused us to follow and act according to what is being shown by media such as magazines, televisions, and internet. This behavior has hijacked our mind to make a choice.

When was the last time you make a choice without considering how others will react to your decision? Probably a long time ago.

When was the last time you failed to make a choice because you were afraid of how your family or friends would show resentment or disagreement? Probably, just a few minutes ago.

Including other people, especially those who are influenced by your choice, in making a choice is still important. You can’t probably make a selfish choice easily if it’ll hurt or cause pain to related party. But when you start to include those people who aren’t influenced by the choice you make, you’re simply making thing difficult to yourself.

You forget to consider the most important person for the choice you make. You forget yourself. A choice made to please other people or to avoid disagreement won’t make you feel happy. Those happiness is empty. It’s simply a lie to make you feel better for not trusting yourself.

If you want to make a choice, start to care less.

Remove as many unrelated factors as you can in the choice you make. Stop having delusion that the world will pinpoint out every small changes you make. Stop bothering how your friends will react to your choice.

Happiness is a choice. You pay the choice with responsibility in exchange for happiness, commitment for satisfaction.

It’s not possible for a sad person to bring happiness to the people around him.

I believe, the key to happiness is to be a better you. It’s not a goal, I’d rather call it an attitude. It’s a constant growing and learning. It starts from inside, expresses to outside.

The key is stop finding excuses, become a better you. ¹

The worst advice you can receive is probably “Just be yourself”. ↩

Day-0, Menu Bar Clock with Calendar

Thu, 03 Nov 2011 22:43:24 +0700

Well, if you’re not a fan of FuzzyClock.

Download: Official | Alternative

Denotification

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 22:42:35 +0700

“Someone has sent you a message”, “Download is complete”, “Clara is typing…”, “Connection to FTP has failed”. Those messages are known as notifications. They are always there, whole time, notifying what is happening with your Mac if you have Growl installed.

Most applications, by default, enable the notification. And by having all the notifications together, we end up with a pile of useless notifications.

Problem is, it’s difficult — if not troublesome — to sort out notifications and filter out the notifications that matter. Most people don’t feel like to manually select the notifications they want to receive. (Some people don’t even know which notifications matter to them.)

Thus, it leads me to question the importance of notification app on desktop.

To say that notification app play a big role in your computing experience is not entirely wrong. But, if we take a close look on how most people make use of notification, notification distracts instead of helping. A split second of notification can remove the focus you’ve been building over time. If notification can hinder focus, why should we have them on desktop where we’re supposed to create and work?

Put it blatantly, you don’t need to worry missing notifications. If the messages are important, you’ll remember them. You’ll take an extra step to ensure everything is working perfectly.

Without notification system, less hindrance, less distraction.

I personally no longer have Growl installed. The choice to remove Growl has helped me to build a better focus. While writing this, I have no need to bother whether the background download is complete or not.

If you’re used to take a glimpse of notification. Perhaps it’s time to try “denotification” for your Mac.

Keep It Simple Sparrow

Thu, 20 Oct 2011 20:51:00 +0700

Unless you’re a new to Mac, you’ve probably heard about Sparrow for Mac. This simple mail client has grown from a little app, supporting only Gmail, into a complete mail client while maintaining the nature of being “simple”.

Sparrow for Mac is a versatile mail client. It can be used in many ways, as a small widget, or as a complete mail client for serious tasks.

If you’re like me, someone with limited screen space. This setup might lessen the screen space required for email works.

Just “Inbox”

Enable Unified Inbox within app Preferences. It lets you check all the incoming items without having to check each account inbox manually.

You can hide the Sidebar and Message Panel from the Menu Bar under Window item. Don’t forget to hide everything in Message list as shown in the picture below.

Keep the window size relatively small. I prefer to pin it at the top left of the screen and adjust the width to align with the Format menu item.

Custom Shortcuts

One problem with this setup is there are less visual elements for you to access each item. Items like Label, Drafts, Sent, must be accessed using default shortcuts which is ⌘+(1–5). Sparrow 1.4 doesn’t allow you to use these shortcuts in Unified Inbox unless you have Extended Sidebar enabled.

The workaround for this problem is to assign a shortcut using Keyboard Preferences. Each time you launch Sparrow, you can quickly show and hide Extended Sidebar using assigned shortcut.

One thing most people fail to notice is the feature to assign custom shortcuts on OS X without the need of 3rd party apps. You can do it within Keyboard Preferences by adding the app you wish to assign shortcuts for, with the exact name of Menu Item as shown in the picture below.

I don’t use label. I use ⌘+K to search for archived emails. Sparrow doesn’t provide shortcut for search feature. You’ve to manually assign it according to the picture above.

Use custom shortcuts for menu items you often use. It’ll reduce the time you spend on repetitive tasks.

Everything

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 12:18:53 +0700

Everything you know about this blog and me won’t exist if I didn’t get a MacBook few years ago.

Everything I’ve learned, believed, and pursued might not be this elegant and beautiful if I don’t know the figure behind all the gadgets I’m using.

He has left us with everything he has believed since he was young. Now, all we need is to believe and follow the voice of our heart to do what we love.