Author: William Gallagher

Now out – The Blank Screen email newsletter

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Have you subscribed already? The first weekly newsletter is now out and if you have, it will be in your email inbox. Remember the most productive thing you can do with email is read and enjoy it immediately. In this case, anyway.

If you haven’t got it, what you’re missing out on is:

  • An unmissable video about kids and “ancient” technology
  • The best productivity news of the week
  • The rather unusual Buy of the Week recommendation
  • Details of the Stratford Literary Fair
  • The best technology stories of the week

To subscribe for free, just email me and say you want in.

And in the meantime, take a look at today’s first-ever Blank Screen email newsletter in full right here in your browser.

I hope you like it.  It’s been a lot of fun creating it since the idea popped into my head last Saturday. I was on my way to exhibit The Blank Screen paperback at the Birmingham Independent Book Fair when it occurred to me that I could offer people a free PDF sample of a chapter. If, that is, I got their email address. It was but a short hop from that to thinking I could ask people to sign up for an email list and then it was a much longer hop to thinking what I could do with it for them.

Maybe if the list hadn’t been so successful I’d have thought of something else. Something quicker. Something a lot simpler. But it was simply lovely seeing that list grow on the day and then later over emails and social media.

So I think the email newsletter is good. And I know it’s your fault. Thanks.

Facebook introducing Nearby Friends

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That’s not Facebook introducing nearby friends as in “Have you met Ted?”. But it is something that may finally mean we no longer have to actually look up from our screens. If your friends are near enough, your phone will tell you.

Optionally.

Much as Apple’s Find My Friends feature lets you elect to be spotted by certain people, so does the forthcoming Nearby Friends. With Apple’s thing, it’s that you can say to Siri “Tell me when Angela leaves work”, which is no possible way creepy.

With Facebook’s, it’s that you can rely on it to pipe up when that pal of yours, the one you can’t remember what she looks like, comes in to the bar.

Who am I kidding? It’s never going to be a woman. No woman is going to use this. Facebook’s thing will pip up when that pal of yours, the one you can’t remember what he looks like, comes in.

He has to allow this. You have to allow this. Nothing can possibly go wrong.

Read Facebook’s own announcement of the feature for the details of how it’ll work and hints about how soon we’ll have to be switching it off.

It should be a verb – defuse your enemies by Ben Franklining them

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The trouble is, that looks like frank lining. Like you’re really serious about the inset seam on your jacket.

But Ben Franklin, as in this fella, had enemies and he defused them. Maybe not all, but certainly his greatest. There was this one guy and…

Franklin set out to turn his hater into a fan, but he wanted to do it without “paying any servile respect to him.” Franklin’s reputation as a book collector and library founder gave him a standing as a man of discerning literary tastes, so Franklin sent a letter to the hater asking if he could borrow a specific selection from his library, one that was a “very scarce and curious book.” The rival, flattered, sent it right away. Franklin sent it back a week later with a thank-you note. Mission accomplished. The next time the legislature met, the man approached Franklin and spoke to him in person for the first time. Franklin said the man “ever after manifested a readiness to serve me on all occasions, so that we became great friends, and our friendship continued to his death.”

The Benjamin Franklin Effect – BrainPickings.org

That quote is from David McRaney’s book  You Are Now Less Dumb: How to Conquer Mob Mentality, How to Buy Happiness, and All the Other Ways to Outsmart Yourself. Maria Popova’s BrainPickings.org article is, typically for that site, partly a review of the book but partly an examination of topics it raises. There’s a great deal more in the article and, natch, even more in the book. Here’s the article and here’s the UK edition of the book, here’s the US edition.

Going too far – Mac Desks website

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It is far too far. You can like Macs without going within a pixel of how far this site goes. But you’re going to look, aren’t you? There is a now a website that just features photographs of peoples’ desks with Macs on them. It’s – wait, where did you go?

I was going to show you an example! Fine. Run off to MacDesks.com, or run away to more sensible people than me. You’ll just never find out that I have mocked and scoffed Mac Desks – and also subscribed to it through RSS.

Here’s that example, since you weren’t asking, noooo:

 

Counting

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I said earlier today that my wife Angela Gallagher and I had been at a hospital appointment. It was an oncology one and she was officially signed off after her years of treatment for breast cancer. I come out of there and I write Time and Emotion, a Blank Screen entry – she comes out of there and she has written a poem.

She gave it to me to read on our way home and I sobbed.

I want you to see it too:

Counting

by Angela Gallagher

Six years six months since diagnosis.
Those numbing, cold slivers of words.
Cut by them.
Cut by them.

Six years five months since the lumpectomy.
Secretive, demon growth, bigger than they thought,
Cut out by them.
Cut out by them.

Six years four months since the start of chemo.
(Happy Birthday!)
Ancestors of mustard gas – over the top boys!
Weapons of war.
Poisoned by them.
Poisoned by them.

Six years three months since the hair fell out.
Lying under my husband’s gentle hands –
An odd sharing –
A shaving of the ridiculous remnants. Wisps of hair
cut off by him.
Cut off by him.

Five years ten months since the end of chemo.
Crawling over the finish line, immune system
barely intact.
Poisoned by them.
Poisoned by them.

Five years eight months since the second op.
The insidious spread to the lymph glands –
Cut them out.
Cut them out.

Five years seven months since the start of radiotherapy.
Long past caring about the sex of the medic,
Baring all to the rays.
Burned by them.
Burned by them.

Five years six months since the end of radiotherapy.
Red raw, weeping skin
Burned by them.
Burned by them.

Five years three months since the return to work.
Escaping, tasting the weather again.
The sweet, gradual return to the life everyone else has,
The life lived by them.
Lived by them.

Eight months since I came off the meds.
Bolsters gone, the shedding of the last of the armour.
Saved by them.
Saved by them.

Today.

Today the oncologist signed me off.

Creativity and the time of the month

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Lifehacker has picked up on German studies that suggests firstly that women tend to be creative around their menstruation cycle – and secondly that so do the men nearby.

During the preovulatory phase, creativity was in general improved when serum concentrations of estrogen (E2) and luteinizing hormone (LH) were highest whereas motor perseveration decreased. In control women, there was no preovulatory improvement of divergent thinking and no preovulatory decrease in motor perseveration.

And:

A new study suggests that when young men interact with a woman who is in the fertile period of her menstrual cycle, they pick up on subtle changes in her skin tone, voice, and scent – usually subconsciously – and respond by changing their speech patterns.

Specifically, they become less likely to mimic the woman’s sentence structure. According to the researchers, this unintentional shift in language may serve to telegraph the man’s creativity and nonconformity – qualities that are believed to attract potential mates.

Both quotes reported in How Ovulation Affects Your Creativity (Even if You’re a Guy) – Lifehacker.com

Frankly, any time anyone says anything is down to a woman’s time of the month, I cringe. But if this is true – and do read the whole Lifehacker piece for more – then it’s also a bit depressing.

It suggests that people’s creativity is not theirs, it’s somehow tied to our body chemistry. It also suggests that we are stuffed after menopause.

fsdfsd

Time and emotion

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I am behind on my work this week and it is officially because I had various meetings away from my office – but I think it’s more because I’ve worried about how far behind I am.

I knew Monday would be a write-off; I had things to do all day and all evening in London, forget getting much else done, much else written. Tuesday just had two chats but one was in Birmingham city centre so there’s travel time too. And today I went to a hospital with my wife Angela Gallagher where she was at very long last signed off for the end of her treatment for breast cancer.

Today I don’t care that I failed to get enough done. Not today. Today is fine, today is mighty fine.

But now we’re back and it’s around 6pm, far too late to make any calls for the day, I am slipping back into reviewing what I should’ve done instead of what I have done. Let me take that hospital appointment as a clue to how I should be looking at everything, at how I think we all should. There is no work that would’ve kept me from that appointment. Bollocks to everything else.

In a less dramatic, less bollocks, more I would reschedule if necessary kind of way, yesterday’s two chats were terribly entertaining and fun as well as getting things done. I enjoyed the nattering, I enjoyed the company. So what if I have to write this evening to make up for it?

And so what if I lost Monday?

‘Course, there are limits. You may not see me tomorrow because my head has got to be down, my fingers have to got be typing a lot. I mean, a lot.

But every once in a while, William, lighten up. Productivity is about the quality of work you do, not the quantity.

I’m having this – link Evernote to OmniFocus

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If you don’t already use Evernote then, fine, that’s your choice and maybe at some point you could check it out on the official site. It might be great for you.

If you don’t already use OmniFocus, proceed directly to The Omni Group and buy it now. It might be that you have to buy an iPad or an iPhone or Mac but it will be great for you.

But if you’re one of the many of us who use both – actually, use isn’t a strong enough word. Let me try again. But if you’re one of the many of us who live in both, then you want this:

Let’s talk about two popular programs: Evernote and Omnifocus. Omnifocus excels at managing tasks but it is weak in storing lots of information. Evernote is weak as a task manager but excels at storing lots of information. If you use them together, they should solve all your productivity problems… right? Unfortunately, it isn’t that easy. You have two separate systems that do not automatically work together. It is up to you to figure out how to do that and this is usually causes problems for some.

For example, if you store something in Evernote, how do you make sure you will revisit that information at some point in time? The obvious answer would be during your weekly Omnifocus review. However, that means you need to create a task in Omnifocus to remind yourself to review that note in Evernote. This is where the hiccup is – that extra step that people tend to forget. Fortunately, we have a script that will automatically transfer notes to your Omnifocus inbox. You will never ever forget information in Evernote again.

How to Automatically Transfer Evernote Notes to OmniFocus – Asian Efficiency

It takes some setting up and the full article is very detailed but I’m off to use it now.

Microsoft lowering cost of Office for iPad – a bit

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Microsoft gives and Microsoft takes away. It’s interesting that this is in any way interesting: Microsoft Word for iPad, especially, is so much better than expected that it has become a genuine, serious contender. Enough so that if the pricing weren’t an issue, you’d have bought it and tried it already. Pricing is an issue, though, because you can’t buy Office for iPad at all, you can only rent it.

From launch to now, that meant paying $99 or so per year for an Office 365 subscription. Office 365 predates the new iPad offering so people and businesses who had already bought in to that programme for their home or work computers could just shrug, download Office for iPad and start working. While the price is a barrier to casual users, for serious regular users and devotees it was as close to a bargain as you could get. Office 365 effectively gave it to you for free: it cost you no extra to have a couple of iPads in your subscription.

That’s changed.

Now there is Office 365 Personal. There’s also Office 365 Home: Microsoft will never give up on making you study the feature list and regret your choice later.

Office 365 Home has UK pricing here and it’s £79.99 per year or £7.99 per month which gets you Microsoft Office on up to five PCs or Macs plus up to five iPads.

Office 365 Personal is £59.99/year or £5.99/month and for that much less you get much, much less. Only one PC or Mac (not even one of each) plus one tablet.

The two programmes also have storage but, hand on heart, I don’t understand the options. Whatever it’s all about, the principle is the same: the higher price gets you lots more.

But if you can live with the Personal constraints and you know you need Office for iPad, go take a look. Bring a calculator.

Having a Bad Day? Read this for free

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As part of the Birmingham Independent Book Fair this weekend, I gave away a free PDF of what's proved to be the most popular section of my book, The Blank Screen. It's called Bad Days and it is meant for those times when you are seriously under water: there is fast advice to get you out of it now and then there is a lot more to help you avoid the situation in the future.

I want you to have a copy too so please feel free: here is the entire and uncut Bad Days chapter from The Blank Screen.

I think it will help you. I hope you also like it and if you do, have a look at the complete book: The Blank Screen on Amazon UK and on Amazon US.