Tim's Bandwagon » GTD

Finding Time to Exercise

Tim Brayshaw — Tue, 23 Aug 2005 00:43:37 +0000

I’m down to less than 200 feeds in NetNewsWire now after culling a few dinosaurs and thinning-out a few sorry specimens.

I’ve just unsubscribed from the increasingly inane Lifehacker (cf. Finding-Your-Car and Coffee tips) after reading this little gem:

You’re busy. Your life is a hectic mess. How do you find time to get some exercise? Here are a few tips from Maria Gracia of GetOrganizedNow.com.

Skip the escalator and elevator. Take the stairs.

Park at least a block away from work or get off the bus/train a few stops early. Walk the rest of the way.

Rather than meeting with a friend for lunch, consider going biking, roller blading or swimming together instead.

Do some calisthenics or ride a stationary bike while watching your favorite television program.

Do some simple stretches, while you’re on the telephone and you’re on hold.

Schedule just 10 minutes of exercise per day on your calendar. By the time to month is over, you will have exercised over 300 minutes!

If your life was a “hectic mess”, and you were riding a stationary bike while watching your favourite television program, would you really feel any better about getting your busy hectic mess of a life under control? Well, that’s almost irrelevant because you’ve got at least 10 minutes of exercise scheduled for tomorrow and you can enjoy as many simple stretches as you’ve got minutes on-hold.

Quicksilver and Mac OS 10.4’s Dictionary

Tim Brayshaw — Mon, 22 Aug 2005 16:27:03 +0000

A little tip: how to use Quicksilver to look-up words in Tiger’s Dictionary app.

First install and configure the software:

Install Tiger and Quicksilver
In Quicksilver’s preferences, install the “Services Menu Module”

Then, whenever you want to look-up a word in the dictionary, do this:

Summon Quicksilver (usually with ⌘ + Space).
Type “.” to start typing into the variable input field.
Type or paste the word you want to look-up and then tab to the next pane.
Start typing “dictionary” until “Look up in Dictionary” is active.
Press return.

At this point the Dictionary application should launch and try to find your word.

If you’ve made it to here you might enjoy Merlin Mann’s Quicksilver tips at 43 Folders and John Gruber’s in-depth tips about invoking the Dictionary at Daring Fireball.

How to run a script to do useful stuff when you plug-in your iPod

Tim Brayshaw — Sun, 03 Jul 2005 00:08:02 +0000


-- This is a Folder Actions AppleScript that triggers an
-- event when a disk (like an iPod) is mounted by the
-- System. I use it to run a compiled Automator workflow that
-- backs-up my Keychains, and copies my GTD lists to the
-- iPod notes folder.
-- 
-- To run it you should tweak the script accordingly, and add it
-- as a Folder Action to the "/Volumes" folder. It isn't
-- exactly obvious how to do this, so here's how:
-- 
-- 1. Open the "Folder Actions Setup" app.
-- 2. Click the '+' button to add a new Folder Action.
-- 3. The "/Volumes" directory is hidden from view. Don't click
--    anything, type "/Volumes" to get to it.
-- 4. Add this script as a Folder Action.

on adding folder items to thisFolder after receiving addedItems
    set volumeName to "Tim Brayshaw's iPod" -- change this!
    repeat with addedItem in addedItems
        if the displayed name of (info for addedItem) ¬
            is equal to volumeName then
            volumeMounted()
            exit repeat
        end if
    end repeat
    -- System Events seems to keep file references open to each of
    -- the "addedItems" above, this means you can't eject these
    -- volumes. This bodge quits System Events, so you can eject
    -- the added volumes. (System Events gets launched immediately
    -- again.)
    quit application "System Events"
end adding folder items to

on volumeMounted()
    tell application "Finder"
        open application "Update iPod"
    end tell
end volumeMounted

This should world for other devices like USB thumbdrives, external FireWire disks, Digital Cameras etc. I futzed around trying to figure out how to do this with launchd, but gave up. If anyone knows a better or other way, post a comment!

I’ve found this useful because it’s removed some backup anxieties, and means I’ve always got my shopping and out-and-about errands lists (and so on) with me when I’m away for the computer. There’s probably a better way of doing this, but it took me an inordinate amount of time to figure it out, so I thought I’d post a code snippet here for like-minded dabblers.

Geeky Sunday Afternoon Tinkering

Tim Brayshaw — Tue, 26 Apr 2005 19:40:36 +0000

Tinkering project #1 – Get the dates of posts and comments to display with an ordinal suffix for the day of the month.

I wanted to display the dates of posts and comments using numbers for the day of the month like 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th. It wasn’t too tricky, but required a bit of tinkering.

Now, I’ve got a convoluted setup for this blog, but essentially it uses Movable Type for the admin and back-end, and the pages are displayed using Smarty, a PHP template engine. Smarty has a date formatting modifier that works just fine (a wrapper PHP’s strftime function), but unfortunately strftime doesn’t support ordinal suffixes, whereas PHP’s date function does.

So, I made a Smarty plugin that acts as a wrapper to the date function, you can get it here: modifier.phpdateformat.php.txt. The template syntax is {$variable|phpdateformat:'jS F'} (replace the jS F bit with any of the format characters used by PHP’s date function).

Tinkering project #2 – Put a GUI on my CD Wallet Label Generator.

I’ve recently been using CDFinder to catalog the backups and archives I’ve got on CD-ROM and DVD. I work making websites and CD-ROMs so over the years I’ve amassed quite a collection!

I’ve been giving each cataloged CD an index number (as a CDFinder comment), then filing the CD under that index number. I couldn’t find a suitable utility for printing lots of sequential index labels, so I knocked one together using PHP. (Yes, it did occur to me that I could just write them with a pen or pencil, but I wanted something neater and tidier – and more “formal”.)

Introducing Tim’s Simple CD (or DVD) Sleeve Index Generator. I use it for printing onto plain white paper CD wallets. It’s pretty much tailored for my individual needs, but it’s slightly configurable, so maybe someone else will find it useful too!