Sorry for the repeated articles in the feed

Had an issue with Dropbox synching which duplicated the post files.

This isn’t a drill — as if my OCDness wasn’t bad enough — this blog will now¹ use smart quotes.

Overcast 2.5 was released with two patron-only features: dark theme and file uploads. I feel smug and validated.

I didn’t know Firefox for iOS was totally open-source and written in mostly Swift. It kinda gives it a new car smell.

Looking forward to Scanner Pro 7 on Thursday. I’m using Scanbot 5 and really like it — but I love comparing great apps even more.

Working Titles:

• Apps I’m looking forward to.
• Categorize your Read Later articles, and find out what you’re into.
• Homepage and Battery usage Apps consistency.

All draft posts I tried to develop today. But lots of family time got in the way, and I couldn’t be happier.

Basically Free Data

The price of gasoline is the most common example of price distortions in Venezuela, but mobile plans are not less fascinating:

• Movistar 3GB, 4G¹ plan: BsF 1.820,00 about $1.5
• Digitel 1250 MB: BsF 300,00 which about 25 cents.

As always in economics, something has to give. Trying to find a SIM is not easy, since all networks are over-capacity, they try to restrict new users.

Also, notice how limited the data-plans are — in both cases its the highest allowance offered. Some people have told me the have two SIMs with separate contracts to get through the month.

MIA ✈︎ CCS

Flying home to Caracas. Haven’t traveled there in 15 months -which I think is the longest I’ve been without visiting.

Sadly it has become more common each year for this to be a bittersweet trip. We’re going mainly for both my goddaughter/ahijada and Roberto Andrés baptism. We’ll see friends and family, many of them will meet Robie for the first time - including his two dog sisters. He’ll get to say he went to Venezuela as soon as he was born, which is a ridiculous statement but important somehow for emigrant guilt.

On the other hand, you’d think we were going to the Australian outback from our bags: medicines, baby good, more medicines. Without a doubt the economic crisis in Venezuela has hit a new low. We don’t say bottom anymore since every six month the standard is redifined.

It’s irrational to go as a family to a place you currently don’t recommend to visit. But nationalities are almost never about being rational.

Trello has a new Chrome extension. You can search from the Omnibar, and it’s much easier to add cards than the bookmarklet.

Still, wish they had a native app™.

Updated Wikimedia iOS app looks good: Nearby and offline articles could be useful.

Linkclump extension for Chrome. For reasons you really don’t wish to know, I’ve been extracting links within pages. Best one I found, and it may stay installed given all the customization it has.

Ulysses for iPhone is out. This is my current long form writing app in Mac, iPad and now iPhone. As such, it’s basically by current repository of drafts…

Intro price may seem steep at $19.99 (later $24.99), but you get both iPad and iPhone app.

This NYTimes article convinced me to start a 5:2 Diet experiment for the next month. I already played around with skipping lunch last year, and it did help maintain my weight.

If you subscribe to the principle that weight is a function of calorie inputs minus calorie output, there’s really no magic to any of these. You just need to find the setup that works best.

Next month will be tough since I’ll be traveling for vacation and work. But better now than later.

#→ SelfControl

SelfControl is a free and open-source application for Mac OS X that lets you block your own access to distracting websites, your mail servers, or anything else on the Internet. Just set a period of time to block for, add sites to your blacklist, and click “Start.” Until that timer expires, you will be unable to access those sites–even if you restart your computer or delete the application.

This app has been installed in my Mac’s since forever. On some weeks/projects it’s really hard to fight the impulse to hit ⌘ + tab and do anything but what you need to do.

SelfControl is tough medicine for this¹.

On Relevant News (or Being News Relevant)

As I browsed around the web to collect some links to continue on the 3 day streak of linkblogging — the question of why? broke through the back of my mind.

While I enjoy my own witty commentary on news, I woke up today thinking:

1. is the blog the best place for this?, and
2. why do news at all?.

There’s a simple reason for the why?: I’m imitating my favorite blogging sites. Links to cool stuff and posting longer articles in between.

But usual tech news that I easily regurgitate is not cool stuff.

When I picture somebody reading the blog, I wish that ze trusts that every link is interesting enough to warrant a visit.

Links with some commentary to news items kinda breaks this. Because I can’t guarantee the reader that there’s going to be a consistent posting of news to give context of why some made it and others didn’t.

This week’s experiment

I enjoyed being able to post smaller commentary without an specific topic. So I will likely continue explore it this week by posting anything that’s longer than a tweet on the blog.

On the “Link posts” front, I’m going to try to post only links to things I haven’t seen elsewhere. Restraining myself from simply reposting easy links, and trying to curate some of the tools I already wasteinvest time looking at each week.

There probably is an email somehow related to all personal and profesional milestones in my life since 1995. Thank you Ray Tomlinson.

If you installed Transmission BitTorrent client this past week, you should check the How to Protect Yourself in this post.

A $30k Tesla Model 3 on Marth 31st is something I look forward to with less philosofical interest than the Model X.

All is not well in Bitcoin land. But it looks like it’s going to continue to get worse.

A billion is not what it used to be. Still, a chart about how long 12 apps with a billion active users took to get there is fascinating.

Tried Google Maps pit stops today. It’s where have you been all my life? kinda good.

Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull

Finally finished listening to Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed Catmull this week.

Took me longer than expected because I kept abandoning it every few days. I’d heard going things about the book, but it wasn’t until Nav recommend that I pushed it up the queue.

I think the book is a bit slow because of how sincere it is. Unlike many other Business/Leadership books which always have some sort of recipe for being as successful as X — Ed Catmull is upfront about how hard having a continuously creative company is.

Sometimes the book felt bittersweet in how removed the problems are from my daily work experience but YMMV. But these cases were more than compensated by relatable and detailed accounts of issues encountered by Pixar and how they addressed them. In some cases even unsuccessfully.

Finally there’s the whole Steve Jobs angle. Listening how Jobs intersected the Pixar story from the point of view of a colleague and (later) a friend, was interesting for the fanboi in me.

I have no problem recommending this book. My only asterisk would be that: it is not a book to find out what you need to do. Rather, it gives the proper mindset to figure out what you should do.

Seems some inside Microsoft did see the rise of Slack.

Got to respect wanting to invest that in Skype though.

Enjoyed Manton Reece’s post on The evolution of linkblogging — noting the following recommendation:

If you’re a blog author and you’re adding any significant commentary, the RSS feed should point back to your site.

Food for thougth. I was ready to start linkblogging Daring Fireball style yesterday, but I might give am giving Manton’s commentary style a chance.

I started using the Fleksy keyboard again recently, and the addition of Word Prediction this week has been particularly useful.

With its extra features, you can sometimes get lost versus the plain default keyboard. But speed-wise it’s a considerable increase for me.

New lower prices on Pebble Time($149.99) and Pebble Time Round($199.99) this week have me considering a trial purchase of the Pebble Time.

Sanity and fiscal responsibility have prevailed — but this is how disillusioned I am with the Apple Watch.

Markdown Textshot Bookmarklet

I love using Linky for Twitter textshots¹, however, it is only available for iOS and sometimes I read an interesting article on my Mac. On such cases I either take a screenshot of the browser or actually open the article on the iPhone to just to use Linky:

https://twitter.com/rmateu/status/705440887921381376

Of course, the OCD in me struggles with the lack of consistency around both. Hence this quick and hackie ² bookmarklet that lets me copy the text in Markdown format so I can grab the screenshot of the preview for the textshot.

ScreenShot of resulting Mou preview

I tried to replicate as much as possible the Linky/Instapaper/Medium textshot, so the domain removes the www and gets capitalized. I haven’t tested in enough sites to see if it breaks — buy you can’t get too obsessive, right? RIGHT?.

How to use

1. Drag and drop the Bookmarklet to your browser bar: ✁ M Textshot
2. Select the article text you want to quote.
3. Copy text in prompt.
4. Paste in your Markdown Editor of choice³.
5. Take screenshot of preview.

On Criticizing Without Creation

I criticize by creation, not by finding fault. ― Cicero

This one of my favorite quotes.

I apply it to my everyday work life. Since I don’t have a Steve Jobsian personality to just declare something as shit, I need a way to provide feedback and not struggle with how I’m going to say it.

Feedback with examples may take more effort on your part, but it pushes the process towards the goal. It is also an efficient way to say no. This is true in all directions of the organization chart (peers, bosses and reports), because it leads to a more informed next step. Not necessarily a faster step — which is probably what Jobs was going for — but I’d argue that in a non-tyranical environment the overall process is less traumatic.

That said, sometimes if you’re enough removed from something, it’s just easier to throw a snarky remark and continue on your way:

https://twitter.com/rmateu/status/705036125698715648

I’m sure a lot of really smart and talented people work at Skype. Actually — just like the old Opera logo way back when — I’m willing to bet there a number of people that have a more detailed list of improvements they want to make to the app.

I’m also pretty sure that if we manage to convince the powers to be at work and switch to Slack, soon enough I’ll lot of things to miss in Skype¹.

But from a really high level, you sometimes just know that a Software time has come. Even with its native app, huge installed base, etc, Skype just feels 2000’s.

I hope that by expanding my whinny tweet, I feel less bad about throwing an App I’ve used for so many years under the bus.

Quick Review: Roost Laptop Stand

With the arrival of our bundle of joy, our home office experienced a metamorphosis to baby room. As such, a Monoprice 27in IPS-Glass Panel Pro LED Monitor with 2560x1440 resolution on a LX Desk Mount LCD Monitor Arm didn’t fit the theme — not that I’m bitter.

My old Griffin iCurve took too much space both in the temp work desk (dinning table), and in the basement (under bed) when not in use. I’d heard about the original Roost Stand Kickstarter and set to look for something similar.

Luckily, the same team behind the original Roost successfully funded the 2.0 version last year and they were taking open orders for delivery in Feb/March. At an intro price of $59, it seemed like a good price given the features.

Artsy Roost Stand

I’ve used my Roost stand for about 2 weeks now, and I’m very happy with it.

Design

The design itself is extremely functional, but it clearly fails at the discoverability principle: When you look at it, it’s not easy to discover what it does — or even how to open it.

I had to look at gif on site a few times –and even calmly replay the instructions video– to feel comfortable with setting the 13in MacBook Pro Retina on it.

But once you get the hang of it, I appreciated the usability compromise in favor of its compact size and weight. It fits perfectly on my briefcase, since it exactly as wide as the MacBook.

Use

Three things set apart the Roost from other stands I’ve tried in the past:

1. Height: I’ve only really used the highest of the 3 levels, but it very high. Which is exactly what ergonomically.

2. Footprint: the depth of the stand is surprisingly small given how tall the laptop sits. But for the precarious standing desks I keep setting up, it helps since it allows for more keyboard and mouse space.

3. Grip: given how light the stand is, it feels amazingly solid. You need a pretty strong bump to throw your laptop flying.

In the end, I recommend you consider the Roost if you’re looking for a stand in general. At $74.95, it falls a bit on the expensive side. But if you need a travel stand, I haven’t seen a better option.

The Setup: Mac at Work Apps

This was a pretty intense work week, so it seems like a good time to make a snapshot of the most used apps. I could do one of these every few weeks… since I tend to waste (invest?) a lot of time upfront on new projects modifying my workflow for efficiency.

This time waste/investment is always a result of procrastination, but it has allowed me to learn things more often than not.

With the above disclaimer, here are the top apps of the week:

1. SublimeText 3: A workhorse, a notepad, and everything in between. It’s always open somewhere in my screen, or on its own screen in combination with the Origami package for splitting multiple panes in one window.
2. LaunchBar: Multiple clipboards, snippets, quick reminders, App switcher and launcher.
3. Chrome: Not crazy about it, but can’t really live without the extensions¹. Copytables has been a lifesaver this last two weeks.
4. Choosy: I use Safari for all personal browsing, so it’s perfect to create rules like sending all links from Tweetbot to it or any work Google Drive link to Chrome.
5. Shush: Fast microphone on all Apps. Skype, GoToMeeting, Hangouts… doesn’t matter. Just press fn key (configurable) to speak. Or press twice and default changes to press for mute.
6. Moom: For the Window Management OCD sufferer that can’t start a task without all Apps being on their correct corner. The ability to save layouts seem like a wasted effort at first — see the overarching theme? — but totally pay out. If you want something simpler, I also sometimes use Magnet.
7. Fantastical 2: I’ve always used it as my calendar, but started using the reminders on my most recent productivity tool bankruptcy. Short version: Tasks take time to complete, time that is shared with calendar events. Hence, tasks should appear on the calendar. Fantastical allows this.
8. Spotify: Back after testing all services. Longer post due.
9. Next Meeting: What and how far away is the next meeting.
10. Airmail: While it hasn’t stopped me from loading Gmail in the browser, I’ve been doing it less. Closest successor to Sparrow yet, and also using the iPhone version.

Have a great weekend.

Two Month Review: Late 2015 Person Mini

My Person Mini arrived on December 11. Given that the original delivery estimate was the 14th, I was pleasantly surprised despite being repeatably told this could happen. Still, you’re never fully prepared.

Although many websites advertise home delivery, my wife and I choose to pick up in the store. As most things nowadays, the home delivery would have been a lot cheaper. But we were concerned about the warranty, since we’ve heard some horror stories and wanted to avoid any complications.

We had also been told that we would be getting the male version of the product. This was useful to know beforehand to match some of the accessories. But I must confess I did check to make sure the additional feature of this version was present.

Initial Setup

Like with any new device, you name it to more easily identify on a network or park. Sadly my usual naming convention based on whatever book I’m reading at the time — which has produced such great names as Shadow, Shaftoe, and Dieter — was not accepted by my wife¹.

In the end we went with Roberto Andrés, which similarity to mine will hopefully make it easier with sharing cloud services and social networks².

A note for first time users like myself: while a huge knowledge base exist online, the Person Mini comes with literally no documentation. I will expand on this below, but for such a complex device I was expecting a bit more.

Hardware Design

Given that the overall design is a few hundred thousand years old, I’m not surprised of how functional the hardware is. You can see how much effort was put into miniaturization, and the components have a delicate luxury look.

That said, the design isn’t for everyone. I haven’t seen actual data, but from my anecdotal experience the Person Mini design gets very different responses on a few key market segments:

Customization

One of the biggest selling points of the Person Mini is that each one is custom-made based on the parents. But for the first month, I was a little concerned that none of the specifications from my account was used on the hardware of our model. My wife claimed she didn’t notice at all; but my mother-in-law was clearly fascinated by this setup.

Strangely, my mother kept saying that our model seemed like a clone of my account. By the second month things have improved in my favor, but I’m now more concerned with the software than the hardware.

User Interface

I’m going to go ahead and say it: the UI is terrible. Even when only a few days old, and the only features configured were input, output and stand-by, I couldn’t make heads or tails on how to interact with it.

After two months the AI Interface has improved considerably. But it still hit or miss. Repeating the same actions hardly ever gives the same results, and in some cases, the oposite of what you were expecting happens. I don’t have the time or energy to try to explain how sometimes three taps on the back result in a comforting burping sound — while on others a high pitch noise is emitted and some sort of defensive mechanism deploys a white rancid substance with laser target accuracy.

Long time owners of similar devices have told me the learning curve of the AI is steep but rewarding. We can only hope. Over the past week my wife seemed to have discovered an easter egg that makes the unit smile. However, even when she tries to repeat the steps (which involves a using nonsensical sentences in a high-pitch voice) it doesn’t always work. Never mind that the same process has never worked from me — yet I still get the easter egg randomly.

In what is becoming a theme with the device, even the elusive smile is rewarding enough to justify it. No other device in the market today has provided the same level of engagement.

A Note on Puberty

Virtually all owners of older units have advised that the interface only gets better with time, but I was surprised to find that most with models from the year 2000 and earlier express that their units developed a fatal interface bug that lasts a few years. It seems that at some point communications break down because of a failed software upgrade. The devices continue to operate, and consume a considerable amount of food and clothing.

Notification System

While I may not be a fan of the sound design, I have the give credit for an effective system. You won’t miss any messages from the device — you might not be able to read them, but you know something is up.

Battery Life

Given that similarly sized devices like tablets and notebooks regularly have a 10 hour battery life, I was a bit disappointed that Roberto Andrés averages about 3 hours between charges. I guess battery life would be a bit better if it would enter stand-by mode more easily. However, half the time - specially during the day - it will stay powered on even when his mom is clearly trying to get him to sleep.

A note on third-party charging cables

The debate between using the custom charging conector my wife already has or buying a third party cables with replaceable battery packs should be well known to anyone looking at a Person Mini. It’s for each owner to decide what’s better for their device. In our case, we are mostly using the Ana’s equipment and supplementing with third-party one from Amazon.

My suggestion here is to figure out what works for both mom and device. One thing not mentioned much is that once mom’s equipment is paired with the Person Mini, its functionality changes enough that it might not be as entertaining as before. Just be aware that you’ll be loaning them to the device of a while.

Final Thoughts:

Either as a planned purchase or ordered by accident, the Person Mini is life changing device. It’s the most fascinating, expensive, beautiful, complicated, irreplaceable, exhausting and just plain cool device I ever had³.

Looking at Ana interact with Roberto Andrés, I’m equally curious and dreading the next 30 years. I want to see what he will become, but also freeze time and enjoy the bundle of joy he really is.

It’s a really hard device to recommend. Because nothing prepares you. It’s without a doubt something to experience. Because the more you focus on your Person Mini, the easier it is to miss the biggest feature s/he brings: a sort of personal software upgrade no lifehack book, podcast or Ted Talk has ever taught me.

Migrating from Ghost to Blot

This week I migrated my perpetually semiabandoned blog from Ghost¹ to Blot.

Any suggestion that my lack of writing is in any way related to any type of software should be swiftly dealt with by closing a MacBook lid on my hands. The truth is that I like Ghost. It’s very easy to use, fairly simple to maintain, and has one of the best markdown implementations. I was an original backer of the project, and think it has a lot of potential ahead.

If I have to deal with a server, I would choose it over Wordpress any day of the week. The thing is… I don’t want to deal with servers right now. The relatively low cost and time needed to maintain the Ghost –or anything else– installation is not something I’m inclined to afford with a newborn at home.

I barely have time to write something and save a text file to the desktop. Which is were Blot comes in.

Since first hearing about Blot last year, I’ve been intrigued. But the lack of a demo, and tangential similarity to scriptogr.am² — small project by 1 developer — kept me on the sidelines. On Monday I went ahead and subscribed and immediately liked why I saw. And the feeling has been getting stronger as the week went by.

With Blot I feel a lot of the usual design decisions have been taken by someone for me ³ — someone with sense of pragmatic design I trust. But it’s not only design, but also functionality: posts are files in you Dropbox folder, you can preview how drafts will look (also works in iOS), great markdown support, it’s hosted at a very affordable $20/year and, it has search.

A small design detail the OCD in me appreciates: there’s no Powered by Blot™ or anything similar anywhere on the blog side. Probably no one will notices, but it does make me feel cooler than I am.

In the end, Blot feels to me like the lazy man Jekyll⁴:

1. You can have your posts in your filesystem — and it’s very forgiving of how you organize within folders.
2. Blog loads crazy fast in my tests.

But no SSH needed.

Moving post from Ghost to Blot

One thing that Blot doesn’t include is an import feature — which I can understand why: maintaining import compatibility with new and legacy blog systems is not what I wish the 1 developer of this project to spend his time on.

However, I would suggest to David that some level of format compatibility with Jekyll could be useful. This way Blot could piggyback on the extensive importers Jekyll has.

Update: As soon as I posted this, David mentioned he has some tools for this. So it was just a matter of asking next time.

https://twitter.com/lllIIlIlIl/status/698308318545051648

That said, the post formats are similar enough that with some hacking, existing export tools for Ghost can be modified.

In my case, I went ahead and butchered some export scripts and forked into a barely working version. You can check ghost-export-for-blot.im if you’re crazy enough.

When installed, running the command below should, maybe, kinda, work:

$ ghost-export --t /path/to/ghost/app /path/to/output

Hope this it’s useful to someone.

On Here I Write

I think a thought, and type it out. I read it up, and backspace it down. I crumple the page, and trash it all. Site/server/blog, they are all zeroed out.

I fume and curse. I procrastinate with a stare and frown. I give up and back down. I abandon and move on. Convince myself it’s for the best and decide to never turn around.

But then I’m back. I disappoint the thought, but get something out. Not even 100 words. But all in all, better than none.

This blog is back :)

Microsoft brings Skype to businesses’ iOS and Android apps | TechCrunch techcrunch.com

Avoiding BlackBerry’s fate — Marco.org marco.org

2

The Call from +58

A message on the #venezuela slack channel today started with:

The call I was always afraid of. This morning my mother was murdered.

The message is from a friend. A great person with a beautiful family. They live in the US. He’s a geek, a bit intense — and annoyingly smart.

Why would he be afraid of such a horrible call? Likely because all cold minded Venezuelans living abroad are. We all experience the same leap second of panic every time an incoming phone call from home appears in our smartphones.

Four months ago my next door neighbor received one. For him, it was his Dad.

This post has no real point or ending. Just the need to share the incredible sadness of having to once again utter: I’m so sorry for your loss — and seeing the words fall light years short of the comfort you wish to get across.

I feel useless not being able to help with his pain in this horrible time. But I’m also terrified of understanding how he feels.

Collaboration is process. Not a feature.

People editing a document in parallel is the gold standard demo of collaboration as a feature. It looks great, and even today is an amazing coding achievement. But it’s a Pepsi Challenge sip test.

Doing anything on a common canvas simultaneously is only viable on two ends of the groups spectrum: extremely experienced and in-sync teams, and kindergarteners finger-painting.

For the rest of us, any sort of collaboration requires a sequential approach. Even with a clear objective there’s friction on creation. The back and forward interaction that happens while collaborating polishes ideas in the best of teams — and compromises viewpoints in most of rest.

Real time collaboration is a buzzword, not a 80/20 use case. Digital collaboration works best when it focuses on universal availability. A link should be all that’s needed for sharing the canvas: in mobile, web, desktop, online, offline.

The next paradigm shift in collaboration will be about sharing what’s on our mind, and not on the screen. In the meantime, there’s still many complex problems that need to solved for making digital collaboration as easy as a whiteboard on a meeting room.

Overcast 2 and the Burden of Patronage

Overcast 2 is out and it’s free.

In my opinion Smart Speed is reason enough to choose Overcast over all other iOS podcast apps. It also has a clean UI and good (now improved) directory with social recommendations.

But… Marco Arment’s crazy new business model is based on patronage, and I’m somehow bothered by this.

Let’s get out of the way that I believe Marco is a really smart guy who’s making a well intentioned decision based on what is better for his product and users.

This is actually less about Overcast 2 being contribution supported and more a personal dialogue about why it feels uncomfortable.

The Burden of Patronage

Is it that I don’t want to support the other 80% of users with my contribution? Yes, that’s part of it.

I don’t mind paying more than my fare share, since it’s likely I appreciate some features enough to be willing to pay for them. But I need some self-justification for transaction. I need to know that _I’m getting my money’s worth. _I’m ok with my Porsche driving friend looking at me funny when he hears I pay for a twitter app. My geekness enjoys the idea that not everyone appreciates a better app experience for $5 — just like I don’t a better driving one for many times that amount.

With a patronage model I look at the other people in the bandwagon and get pissed with the idea that they’re not worried if this is going to work or not.

Suddenly Overcast is Firefly and Arrested Development all over again. It’s up to “_us” _to keep it alive. I have to contribute out of concern rather than a clear feature cost/benefit.

Why is Marco making this complicated? what does he has to appeal to a social cost/benefit? I have a kid on the way dammit! For the first time in years I considered not upgrading my iPhone!

After I take a deep breath, I realise how much it appears like I’m projecting my 2016 election issues into a free app. And it worries me to think I can be so progressive on social issues in Venezuela, but I’m suddenly from Vermont on App Store pricing.

The In Crowd

More than anything, this is about being one the cool kids. There’s a slight head nod when listening to a podcast and knowing that John Gruber, John Siracusa and Guy English would think I’m cool because subscribed to Instapaper Premium — even if I didn’t ever used article search.

If Marco opens a Slack channel or insider newsletter for patrons, then suddenly it’s all ok. That’s the feature. That’s the value the other 80% doesn’t get.

But the challenge of appreciating value in a vacuum worries me. In a time when the balance between user-base size and app pricing seemed to have grouped most veteran developers in the fair price camp– this move is gutsy and scary.

However, all this self-imposed drama is a good problem. I believe many will chime-in and that means we still care about good software being valuable. We want good software to continue to exist around us, and the business model behind it to be viable.

This post originally appeared on Medium.

Quick Logging Input/Output Daily

Few days back Christian Oliver shared in our slack channel this photo with his new motto (translated):

Output / Input

The idea is to create, to add value. Actions affect reality more than knowledge.

While I don’t completly agree with the last part — a constant in our friendship — I really liked the simplification of the concept.

For the part few days I’ve been playing with it in my daily Day One journals. Recently I hit what feels to me as a stable nomenclature:

i7/o4

As you can probably guess, yesterday was not a productive day. Of course, without context this can be misleading: if I spent the whole afternoon finally reading about regex, I would argue the input was high, but it was valuable input. Sadly, this was not the case and by glancing at the journal entry you would be able to see it.

I think the main reason the little end of document tag is working for me — it makes me want to add context to the values, without having to make a sentence out of the it.

A productive day can have many shapes and forms, and I sometimes struggle to log this in a short manner — by simply skipping writing about it.

The Formula

In my mind both attributes are in a scale of 10, and a perfect day would be i10/o10. In reality input and output have an inverse relation — since both consume the same resource of time — and the challenge is to balance them while also pushing both up.

Whatever your mental model and nomenclature, I strongly recommend evaluating your consumption/production everyday. Before long you may start to notice some patterns, or even better: you will start to competing with yourself and work towards not breaking the productivity chain.

Thanks to Christian Oliver, Juan Andres Muñoz and @Mauricio for the help on the drafts of this post.

On music and playlists (Part 2)

A month ago I wrote a glowing review of Apple Music and its curation feature.

After this time I have come to terms with the fact that all the joy provided by the amazing music recommendations, is completely overshadowed by a very poorly executed app.

Even more so, I’m worried. What makes Apple Music great has little — actually nothing — to do with the app itself. Give me all of Apple’s curated playlists in Spotify, and I’ll switch back in a second. As it is, I’m struggling not to reopen my Spotify Premium account ¹.

Unless Apple’s exclusive content is going to make Spotify library incomplete, then I’m sure it’s fairly easy to migrate this value.

Minimal touch targets, slow song start time and awful playlist management. These are the things making me struggle with the app.

And on the desktop? Well, I gave up on iTunes a week ago. Spotify’s ads are acceptable compared to the horrible chimera that Apple Music + iTunes is.

On my favorite audiobooks

Top 10 lists are typically linkbait, but my friend Lesley asked me for my recommended list of audiobooks and it seemed like the easiest way to rate my favorite ones:

1. Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing 

• Narrated by: Simon Prebble
• Length: 10 hrs and 23 mins 

Without a doubt my favorite audiobook. The story is so amazing you forget it was an actual event. This is the only audiobook that I’ve been able to listen while jogging — so intense was my attention.

2. Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life by Steve Martin 

• Narrated by: Steve Martin
• Length: 4 hrs and 3 mins 

The combination of a great autobiography, with Martin himself reading makes this another a close second. It makes a superficial understanding of that funny actor into a life story told by your favorite uncle.

3. Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World’s Most Wanted Hacker by Kevin Mitnick, William L. Simon 

• Narrated by: Ray Porter
• Length: 13 hrs and 59 mins 

A catch me if you can story that it’s hard to believe is real. Also an inside tour to the world of computers and networks from the late 70’s to the early 90’s.

4. Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture by David Kushner 

• Narrated by: Wil Wheaton
• Length: 12 hrs and 43 mins 

Great example of how a good reader matters in an audiobook. Wheaton is as excited about reading this book as you are listening. If you grew up with PCs and video games in the 90’s, you’ll love this book. If you didn’t, it’s still an amazing story about technology and brilliant characters.

5. Made to Stick by Chip Heath, Dan Heath 

• Narrated by: Charles Kahlenberg
• Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins 

I listened to this book on my walk to BU 9 years ago. I probably quote more things from it than from any class I took during the MBA.

6. World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks 

• Narrated by: Max Brooks, Alan Alda, John Turturro, Rob Reiner
• Length: 6 hrs and 3 mins 

Only fiction book I’ve enjoyed. I’m not much of a zombie fan, but the documentary style of this book makes for a very fun ride. I hope they don’t make a movie and ruin it ;).

7. The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires by Tim Wu 

• Narrated by: Marc Vietor
• Length: 14 hrs and 10 mins 

More than any other book I’ve listened (or even read), Wu’s walkthrough in the history of networks has given me a much deeper understanding and context in an industry I thought I knew. Every geek and policy maker should read this book.

8. Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle That Defined a Generation by Blake J. Harris 

• Narrated by: Fred Berman
• Length: 20 hrs and 41 mins 

Be ready for flashbacks. If you ever went to bed hoping Santa brought you a Nintendo, Sega Genesis or Sony Playstation — this is the behind the curtain story. Also has some interesting business cases nuggets.

9. I Must Say: My Life as a Humble Comedy Legend by Martin Short 

• Narrated by: Martin Short
• Length: 8 hrs and 40 mins 

The other guy in the Three Amigos movie. Famous, but not star famous. An extremely sincere book with many relatable stories.

10. A History of the World in 6 Glasses by Tom Standage

• Narrated by: Sean Runnette
• Length: 7 hrs and 38 mins 

Fun listen that will make you appreciate your drinks a lot more — and probably become a little annoying at dinners.

On (lack of) patience

I lost my patience today and overreacted to something that a simple call would have likely fixed. At the moment I thought that it was necessary to put my foot down. Even thinking about it now pulls me into an idiotic path of self-justification of why I wasn’t totally wrong. Why?

What is it that overrides common sense when you’re pissed off?

Some people do mad real well. They have the X and Y axis of anger over time down to a science. The best even play with the script: a long silence with some snarky remark to bait you into making the first move. I suck at mad.

Maybe that’s what I need to remember, I’m not good at getting mad. So like everything else I should: either practice (like writing), or just avoid it as much as possible (football).

On understanding the news

Reading a teenager half-a-world away retweet a meme about your country provides both validation and frustration.

You’re somehow glad to be in the global trending agenda, but the absolute oversimplification and reductionism of the events feels like being unable to scream in a dream.

What’s going on in Greece has many origins: economics, social, geopolitical, historical, and cultural. As a netizen I’ll gossip in the drama and read some articles to give me talking points. But I hope to not cross the line an presume I understand what’s going on.

Through all my adult life I’ve been trying to explain why/what/how things are happening in Venezuela, and what the future holds. I’ve been wrong so often that you would question my expertise on the subject.

This has been my learning in recent years: there’s a difference between knowing what is going on, and understanding it. You have to go through the first to get to the second. But then you have to step away and question everything — and try to answer it.

Only then do you start to understand it… I think. I don’t know enough about it yet.

On music and playlists

Even with all its shortcomings¹, Apple Music excels at the curation of the 30 million songs available to top streaming services today. My usage and attitude has shifted from finding music I like in Spotify, to being recommended music I love in Apple Music.

As everything Apple, you can play the fanboi card and point out that Apple is basically following many other services. I may very well be blinded by the reality distortion field, but I still believe Apple Music is approaching the subscription model differently.

At the heart of my argument is HBS prof Theodore Levit famous saying:

People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!

It seems to me that Spotify’s all-you-can-eat music catalog and the benefits of streaming music were features of the drill — and the hole was good music.

Of course good music is a totally relative term.

The problem then is that a catalog with 30 million songs is as good as a couple of playlists with a few thousand songs you love. To get to those hundreds/thousands of songs we are all willing to put different levels of effort.

Hijacking the 1/9/90 rule we can apply the same logic to current streaming music service listeners: out of 100, 1 is a Discoverer, 9 Curators, and the rest Followers.

Spotify social features are better for discoverers and curators, plus the followers that like these as the source of their playlists.

Apple Music is for followers. It assumes full responsibility for discovery and curating, and makes Music For You the default tab were you hit play².

Again, I could be enjoying a great dose of placebo effect. But over the past week I’ve reconnected with many songs I love, and discovered a few artist I want to hear more of. All these artist and songs are in Spotify, but I never put in the effort to organize it myself there.

Probably the big conclusion is that I’ve become a music follower. And I’m ok with that. I’m just happier follower with Apple Music.

Eight months with the Kindle Voyager

Two weeks ago I would have said that justifying the Kindle Voyager versus the Paperwhite was a close affair — but in the end the increased pixel density of the Voyager would edge out in the end.

Since the release of the 2015 Kindle Paperwhite with a 300-ppi screen last week, I see now reason to get a Voyager for $80 more.

The main reason I upgraded from my 2012 Paperwhite was mainly because of the hardware buttons. The Kindle Keyboard — still the best version yet IMHO — had great physical buttons on the sides for page-turning.¹

The Paperwhite backlight and increased resolution were a fun geeky upgrade. But after a few weeks it was clear that using the e-ink screen for page turns was not a great experience. The lag is just to much to make accidental screen touches a complete turn-off when you’re in the reading zone.

During my first few hours with the Voyager, I was happy with its peculiar buttons. But after a few days I started to notice that the innovate PagePress Sensors were not consistent. You have to think about where to press on the edge of the device, which messes the whole experience.

It’s a wasted opportunity really. In everything else the device is pretty great: flush screen, super light and durable. It’s a good device, not a great one.

So get the latest Kindle Paperwhite if you’re in the market for an ebook reader. It’s the same reading experience for almost half the price².

An hour with the Kindle Voyage

Recent reviews had me a little predisposed against the Kindle voyage, seems I was worrying too much. Quick first impressions:

• Page turn buttons work great. Touch screen turns drove me nuts on my Paperwhite, and I may just keep the device just for this feature.
• Screen pixel increase is nice, but not reason enough to update from Paperwhite.
• Backlight looks more even than my Paperwhite first generation (which was notorious for darker corners).
• The glass screen flush with case is wonderful.
• Size is ok. Actually would have preferred a little bigger.
• Back side is a fingerprint magnet. BTW, it actually has a magnet, probably for the case.

For reference, I bought the No Ads Wifi version.

I’m enjoying the #Homescreen App

I’m enjoying the #Homescreen App. Very proof of concept — since it doesn’t allow any discoverability from the app itself, but still fun.

Notable on my Homescreen right now:

• Notedash: Similar to Pop, another favorite of mine. Not so much a note, but just a piece of digital paper.
• Inbox by Gmail: Still not convinced, but it’s very solid. Just wish Google would support standard iOS gestures.
• Hemlis: In beta, but lots of promise.

I’ve Made a Huge Tiny Mistake

Two months earlier:

Hey everyone! follow me to this new blog. It’s mostly the same, but different because it’s under my brand. I’ll post more there — I’m sure of it — because it’s under my name¹.

Present day:

Uhmm, hi? anyone here?

I’m not ready to deconstruct why my attempt to start blogging more failed yet again. However, below factors to get me started:

1. I like doing link-posts:
   Since the beginning of this blog I’ve used the Tumblr bookmarklet on the desktop for quickly sharing links with a short (witty?) commentary. But the workflow in mobile sucked — until Tumblr’s latest iOS 8 update, which takes advantage of sharing extensions to do exactly what I wanted for years.

2. I don’t like have having the blog under my name:
   Some can pull it off, but almost all my favorite blogs are under a different name. No mom, I won’t jump out of a bridge if they do… but if I do jump, I rather scream 5typos instead of rmateu. It’s like your superhero (domain)name.

3. I need MultiMarkdown footnotes²:
   I tried Silvrback, Ghost and Svbtle in this blog (engine) soul searching, and only the Svbtle supports MultiMarkdown Footnotes.

So… I’m back — again, I promise to write more — again, and thanks for sticking around — again?.

Unsettled Six

I want to be able to sell my iPhone 6 and get an iPhone 5s and be perfectly happy with it.

Is it doable?

This is totally doable. It’s actually such a #firstworldproblem that it fits within realm of hunting a lion with a bow. Back home in Venezuela buying an iPhone 6 will take a couple of years of saving your whole salary nowadays. So just by wasting retina pixels on this dilemma I’m committing a minor offense

As technological magic becomes routine, I wonder whether a visit to a preindustrial society might teach me more than it teaches them.

It’s easy to blame the marketing machine at so many companies, but the truth was that I had convinced myself that the iPhone 5s was a perfect device to hold on for another year.

Snorkeling at Work

It all started subtly; my boss — Michelle — sent me just a few emails over last couple of days. Then my weekly status got no bullet pointed reply. And suddenly it happened: she stopped by my desk asked: are you drowning?.

We’ve been 22 days from launch for the last two weeks on my current project. It’s a rolling average — I half joke to the CFO when he makes fun of the static Days Until Launch printout high on my cubicle. But I know it’s not really funny. It’s an acknowledgement of a failure.

Not failure with a capital F mind you, we’re doing some pretty cool things here. However, September 3rd came and went, and I didn’t even check if the DNS configuration is ready. That’s never a good sign.

If military generals and project managers hanged out together somewhere drinking cognac (or Dr Pepper), I’d stand by the window staring into the distance and mutter to no one in particular:

No productivity app survives encounter with a project

Even with my legendary collection of productivity apps[ I failed to dissect, organize and categorize this project with enough detail to predict the showstoppers screaming at me from the email inbox. It’s there where they meet up each morning and then again at the end of the day, damn hooligans .

Did I fail the  ? or did they fail me? I didn’t stick with any long enough to know — and that should give you the answer of who’s to blame.

I’ve learned my lesson, that’s for sure.

If I ever get to do this type of project again, I’ll avoid some (now) obvious dumb mistakes.

However, I feel there’s a hole in my logic: why would I do this project again? When we push this live to production — and we will — I expect be working on the actual result of the project, not going somewhere where I get to do it again.

Maybe that’s the mistake. Perhaps the flawless project execution only happens when you repeat enough times a similar type of project that you are able foresee every issue — a Groundhog Day plot applied to a gantt chart.

The real lesson still escapes me. I’m equal parts tired, frustrated, and determined to see this through. But it’s difficult to have perspective when your head is underwater — even with a mask and a snorkel.

But not to worry, we are launching September 25th… only 22 days away.

… and we are back

Oh 2014.

If I could do a chick-flick style collage it would show: unemployment, wedding preparations, wedding, honeymoon, new job, Costa Rica, Caracas, Costa Rica, Miami, Caracas, Caracas… and Miami. Throw a picture of me smiling every other frame and we are almost done.

Assuming you are that unaccounted 5th reader in my analytics that I don’t know, let me quickly update you with in my relationship status: happily married.

The lucky (?) girl to acqui-hire a 32 year old OCD geek with questionable fashion sense and unquestionable weird sense of humor, is so beyond amazing, I can’t help but smile every time I see her.

The move to Miami is part of a longer plan and a very timely job offer. I’m still working with the web, but a bit removed from the cutting edge. My day to day is now filled with corporate eCommerce, vendors, manufacturers, product feeds, drop-shipments, advance ship notices, CSVs and a surprising amount of sFTP and FTPs.

I will write more about it in the next weeks, but suffice to say I’m learning a lot, and making a disproportionate amount of mistakes in the process.

So that’s it, a duct tape post to connect the past to the present. I could promise to write about the move from tumblr to Silvrback, or leaving 5typos.net behind for rmateu.com, but I don’t think I will.

Things change, and you must let yourself change with them. Sometimes I waste so much time in the why? and how?, that the actual what? never leaves my drafts.

Ping Time Interval

Another duh tip for the terminal. But if you want to increase the wait time between pings to 60 seconds, just:

ping -i 60 8.8.8.8

Why? well, let’s just say that my internet connection is dependable, but not reliable, so it sometimes goes offline throughout the day.

Since I always have a terminal window open on my bottom right side of the screen, I just leave the above command running during the day in one of the tabs and it gives me an idea if bandwidth is failing, or if I’m just offline.

Just could do the same with the default 1s, but I like glancing and having minutes as the relative unit of measurement.

Renew DHCP from the Terminal

My MacBook Pro’s internet has been acting up every time it wakes from sleep. It loses the network configuration and I get the WiFi with exclamation point icon.

Without time for real debugging, I noticed that clicking Renew DHCP Lease under System Preferences › Network › Advanced… › TCP/IP would fix the issue. However, getting there after each wake-up was very ungeeky of me.

A quick search turned up a way to do it from the terminal, then just open up ~/.bash_profile, and add:

alias dhcp-renew='echo "add State:/Network/Interface/en0/RefreshConfiguration temporary" | sudo scutil'

Now, I do a ⌘+tab for the always open terminal window, type in dhcp-renew and password — if I have not authenticated in a while — and boom, all is right with the internet.

Menubar Internet and Terminal

I’m attributing this to a Mavericks bug[1], and hope that a 10.9.1 squashes this, but in the meantime it’s a quick fix that can be useful in other situations.

I’m Back.

What a year. At least in the analog world. Mucho changes, and still more to come.
But now I’m back, for the nth time. I missed you too.

Login and Socialize

Much have been said about our inability to unglue ourselves from any screen and interact with surrounding humans, nature, or approaching buses.

I won’t argue against this.

However, I’m typing this after finding a killer album on the music library of a friend in Singapore. Later —now for you— I’ll post this on my blog and 2 or 3 people will read it. A Facebook post will probably get me a few more courtesy likes — most of them from another time zone. Throw in a tweet, and a few hundred more people will be exposed to the title of my nonsense.

Yes, we are shallow and with the attention span of a mosquito. But no, we are’t anti-social. We are hypersocial¹. Projecting our lives online and creating a narrative out of them — real or fake, that’s another matter.

Maybe our kids will look at our online profiles with the same horror as I do at disco fashion. But it doesn’t matter, they weren’t going to follow us either way.

Tweetbot this Chrome Extension

When clicked, this extension sends the current Page Title and URL to Tweetbot.

If you’re using a recent Chrome version you can use ‘Configure commands’ on the extensions page to assign a keyboard shortcut.

Thanks to Scot Hacker for the original bookmarklet and Peter Legierski for extension framework.

2016-05-12: Updated to support https:// — that was such an stupid thing to do, not support from the beginning. Also added a minimal icon, extensions should not have flashy ones.