Mind hacks
A lot of people, including myself, talk a lot about organization, productivity and life hacks that make things run better for us, and share it with others. But on a more personal note, some of us also need additional hacks just to function normally in normal situations. I call these mind-hacks, tricks that enable people like me to function and get through the day. Without them, our minds just spin off in a hundred directions and we get nothing done.
Be Organized and Productive
The theme of 2012 was all about getting organized and productive using software. I may have spent 2012 developing Kifu and some internal applications for clients, but I spent a lot of time this year getting better organized and more productive on my Mac. It’s ridiculous how much this has paid off. So, instead of a cool-products-of-2012-year-in-review post, here are many of the things I do and tools I use to be organized and productive, with thanks to those to shared the ideas with us.
2012 Year End iPad Essentials
I posted my 2012 iPad Essentials (excluding games) in March this year when the iPad 3 came out. Since then, the iPad 4 and the iPad mini have launched. Surprisingly enough, the early 2012 essentials (excluding games) have changed very little: New Additions The Magazine - Technically not an app, The Magazine is a brilliant new take on how a magazine should work, with great writing on a wide variety of interesting topics.
CD to Current Finder Path
To open a new terminal in the current Finder path in OS X, you can use the built-in service (See below on how to enable). But if you are already in a Terminal session, you need to leave the keyboard, mouse to Finder and drag and drop the path back. Here’s a trick that gets you to the frontmost Finder path without leaving the Terminal or keyboard. Add the following to your .
How to Flexify a Class
OK, so you managed months ago to stop yourself from Premature Flexification when creating a class (or someone else did), but now the time has come to add features or flexify the existing feature set of the class. There are many wrong ways to do this, and I have seen all of them in practice: Duplicate the existing class, rename it and add the flexibility to the new class. This sounds great as existing code remains unaffected, but sucks if a bug is found in the original and both need to be maintained.
Free Instagram Ad Image for Advertisers
Dear Instagram, Feel free to use the below image to promote any product out there on my behalf. It’s available at http://instagram.com/p/TbW5CmjjYx/. Ok, thanks, bye. ~Hilton Follow the author as @hiltmon on Twitter or @hiltmon on App.Net.
Premature Flexification
I was sitting down to design an iOS widget to display an analogue clock face for an upcoming app. I wanted to make sure, as we all do, that the widget will work for all scenarios needed by the app. The app needs to display the time in different time zones, given a reference time in a reference timezone. ✓ User defined background image and hand images STOP! You Aren’t Gonna Need It.
Depersonalize because you can’t quit
My Twitter stream today is full of people quitting Instagram because of the new Terms of Service, see You’re the Advertisement. Six months ago, it was Twitter, and six months before that it was Facebook. Quitting over privacy. Except they didn’t quit. They are all still on Twitter and Facebook and will remain on Instagram, because we, their friends are still there and the service remains awesomely useful. If you are worried about privacy, but wish to remain on these services, just depersonalize.
You’re the Advertisement
It used to be said that: If you pay for a product, you’re a customer. If you don’t, you’re the product. Now its getting worse. The new Instagram Terms of Use make you the advertisement for any unknown third party product. Anyone can pay Instagram to use your user name, your image, and your photos to advertise their product to anyone else, without your knowledge or consent. Some or all of the Service may be supported by advertising revenue.
Gun Control does Work
Personal note: I have lived in the USA for 9 years now, and think this place is magnificent. Two days ago, in Newtown CT, 20 children and 6 adults were massacred. The dark side of America that is in denial about gun violence, that refuses to even discuss gun control, that treats massacres as a normal and regular part of life, a country that gives up its civil rights over a single terrorist act, but takes no action on a score of massacres of its children, well, that just scares the shit out of me.