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I Was Wrong About PC Gaming

16 June 2013: 30 Second Summary I believed that dedicated gaming platforms were superior to gaming PCs. I was wrong. While previous consoles wallow in eight-year-old computing hardware and new consoles threaten to ...

Your Personal Digital Archive

7 June 2013: 30 Second Summary If you can't hold a complete copy of your data in your hand, you don't own it. If your data isn't in an open format you can open in multiple applications, you don't own it. Big comme ...

Technology Predictions for 2023

19 May 2013: On my 40th birthday I had some fun looking back at blog posts from ten years to see what was on my mind and what I thought of the future. Apparently I was into Matrix Reloaded in a big way; boy was th ...

Why I Don't Have Comments

7 May 2013: 30 Second Summary Fifteen years ago it was important to include a comment system in a website or blog if you wanted to build a community. These days, websites are no longer the hub of your community, ...

2012 Personal Year In Review

15 April 2013: "I didn't mean to take up all your sweet time. I'll give it right back to ya one of these days." - Jimi Hendrix, Voodoo Child Reading someone else's personal 2012 year-in-review is about as interest ...

Repeatable Success

1 April 2013: "If you wish to make apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe." - Carl Sagan My good friend Dave the Game wrote an excellent article entitled Get Bit and the Tabletop Effect descri ...

Taming the Monkey Mind

16 March 2013: "Monkey Mind: A Buddhist term meaning 'unsettled; restless; capricious; whimsical; fanciful; inconstant; confused; indecisive; uncontrollable'." - Wikipedia: Monkey Mind "Had he been a Manni holy man ...

On the Attention Economy

2 March 2013: In the article Attention Shoppers!, Michael H. Goldhaber describes the future currency of a world of unlimited supply: attention. Attention is a limited resource and, just like money, we have to consi ...

Tweet Threshold

27 January 2013: 30 Second Summary News, blogs, and social networks demand more and more of our time to process an ever-growing torrent of noise and separate it from the stuff we really care about. Tweet Threshold is ...

Ignoring Inboxes

24 January 2013: 30 Second Summary For the sake of this discussion, consider an "inbox" any place new commitments, whether they be messages, packages, or any other source of "stuff". There are three ways to deal with ...

The Schedules of Benjamin Franklin and Hunter S. Thompson

12 January 2013: Benjamin Franklin Hunter S. Thompson 5:00 AM Rinse, wash, and address Powerful Goodness! Contrive a day's business, and take the resolution of the day; prosecute the present study, and breakfast. ...

E-Book Publishing Tips

22 December 2012: If you find this essay useful, you can give back by picking up the Amazon Kindle version. Contents About This Essay Why e-Publishing? Publishing an E-book in Ten Minutes A More Detailed Process Writ ...

Packing Light

22 September 2012: Last updated 22 September 2012. Over the past three years I've become obsessed with packing light when travelling. I've tried a whole bunch of different clothes, accessories, and techniques for travel ...

PC vs. Console Gaming 2012

19 September 2012: Note on 17 June 2013: My opinions on this topic have changed drastically since I originally wrote this. Take a look at the article I Was Wrong About PC Gaming to see how I feel about it in June 2013. ...

Computer Generated Creativity

3 September 2012: A friend of mine recently asked me what I thought about sending machines to Mars instead of human beings. I replied that the conservative in me is fine sending machines because its so much cheaper. Th ...

A Better Twitter Workflow

8 July 2012: 15 second summary According to trend analysis, if you want your tweets to be read, post them at 2pm EST. Use tools like HootSuite, Bufferapp, Tweriod, Tweet4Me, and Tweetbot to build a workflow that l ...

My Moleskine GTD System

9 May 2012: Note: This article has been updated from the original version written on 1 October 2009. For many years, Getting Things Done has helped me manage the chaos of everyday life. GTD has made me happier, m ...

Where are my VR Goggles?

7 May 2012: 30 second summary Though cyberpunk books like Ready Player One show us a world in which we all live in virtual reality, current trends suggest that physical immersion isn't important to us. Instead o ...

The Creative War Against Getting Things Done

26 April 2012: 30 second summary Across the web, creative types have described Getting Things Done as too tweaky for the creative process and too regimented for simple peace of mind. Creative people spend too much t ...

Why I Quit Playing Draw Something

16 April 2012: Three weeks ago I began playing Draw Something. Two weeks ago I quit. I quit for two reasons: First, I have enough inboxes. I don't need another app with a little red number in the corner demanding my ...

Player Driven Stories

2 April 2012: Video game bad boy, David Jaffe, recently spoke out against games that force-feed you the story of the writers and directors instead of building a game that lets the player build their own story. For ...

Sennheiser PX 100 II iPhone Headphones

16 March 2012: 30 second summary It's really hard to find a good set of iPhone-compatible headphones. After much searching and testing, I found that the Sennheiser PX 100-II on-ear iPhone headset had the best mix of ...

Five Tips to Thrive in Corporate America

12 March 2012: Tips from a 15 year vet Last Saturday, on 10 March, I hit my 15 year anniversary with my company. A co-worker, who probably didn't know what he was getting into, was kind enough to ask me for my "old ...

Seven Habits of Highly Effective Shysters

1 January 2012: 30 second summary Though 70% typical self help bullshit, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People still contains a few tools that help focus and direct one's actions towards their most important goals. Whi ...

Kindle Touch Review

26 December 2011: 30 second summary If you're shopping for a Kindle, pick up the 4th generation non-touch Kindle for $80 from Amazon. With a small size, light weight, simple interface, and nearly disposable constructio ...

Pueblo: Python Markdown Blog Software

15 December 2011: Updated 19 March 2013 I have significantly updated Pueblo since the last version. The main differences include using the Jinja2 module for HTML and RSS generation and switching it over to a library in ...

Talkers and Doers

5 September 2011: 30 second summary There are a lot of talkers in the world. Everyone has an opinion and a voice and seems incapable of not using it all the time. There aren't, however, a lot of doers. There aren't a l ...

Rebuilding Sly Flourish, No More Wordpress

18 August 2011: 30 second summary I rebuilt Sly Flourish this week into a set of static HTML pages generated from articles written in Markdown processed by a small 100 line Python script. The site is complete HTML5 w ...

The Value of Creative Work

31 July 2011: 30 second summary Our creative work holds value and only one person decides what that value is -- you. When I decide to do a new project, it must meet one of the following criteria: I get paid a reas ...

A Brief Review of OSX Lion

22 July 2011: For an in-depth review of Lion, read John Siracusa's massive OSX Lion review. It's worth at least skim reading and matches a lot of my thoughts. Instead, in this brief review, I'll focus on the things ...

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