2013 plus 1

Now, with little light remaining in the last day of 2013, seems like a good time to review the year. Challenges always stick in our memory—money has been too tight for our tastes and we’re all itching for a real vacation away from home—easy painful memories, but I want to focus on the good things we have enjoyed.
My wife has worked a couple of jobs here and there since resigning in July 2011 to earn her master’s degree, but has not enjoyed employment. That changed several weeks ago when she was hired to do work she is passionate about. She makes me proud for sticking to her principles and finding work she loves in a gasping job market. I am ever thankful that she agreed to spend her life with a bum like me.
Our oldest daughter started college in the fall at a balmy south Georgia campus where she is doing great. Her grades are hanging in there after her first semester (which is more than I can say about my own college experience) and she has lots of friends on campus and was invited to join the ΑΣΑ sorority. For now, she has declared a major in criminal justice with some thoughts of going into law.
Our two youngest are still doing great in high school; definitely in the top half (third?) of their respective classes. Great Scott, our sophomore will probably get her driver’s license next month with with her younger brother getting a learner’s permit after his birthday in the spring. They both have a bumpy ride toward learning how to be personally responsible and respectful of others, though they are learning (kicking and screaming the whole way). One of favorite TV characters, Ron Swanson[1] from the show Parks and Recreation, summed up responsibility and respect better than I can.

You know what makes a good person good? When a good person does something bad, they own up to it. They try to learn something from it and move on. Ron Swanson, Parks and Recreation

They aren’t the only ones with lessons left to learn. I need to find my center and be more patient to be a better parent and husband. My biggest failure as an adult and parent is my broken relationship with my oldest son. It took both of us to reach the point we did while butting heads before he turned 18 and struck out on his own. The last time I saw him was during an awkward visit on my birthday in 2009. I love him and miss him, and want to be a better father to all of my kids.

New Year Rising

My hope is the new year will bring health, hope, and good luck to me and my family. Yours too.
My wife and I will turn 42[2] this year. As a feisty young whippersnapper, 42 sounded ancient. Now, I know I was wrong. While I’m not as spry as my younger self and surely need to lose about a third of my weight, I’m still learning and maturing while accumulating the wisdom that can only come with time.
As an inveterate nerd, I have been poking around in several computer languages.[3] My plan is to become somewhat proficient in a couple of those with a good working knowledge of the rest, because doing so furthers my ultimate, if vague, plans.
You see, for years I wanted to be a Writer. In my early 20s, I played the traditional role of drunk tortured writer, perpetually scribbling bad poetry and nonsense with fancy pens in a journal while writing very little. Then, I was hired as a journalist and wrote a lot, complaining all the while how I was so tired of writing for work that I couldn’t write for me. After my stint with print journalism, I migrated to public communications. There is a lot to love in my current job and I’m pretty good at it; however, I stubbornly remain a computer jockey at heart and want to be a professional nerd when I grow up.
Also, read less news and more books, and groan write more.
OK then. So, 2014 is going to be a year of growth and learning for me. Thanks again to my wife’s support for my crazy ideas and steady support so we can enjoy this exciting year coming straight at us. Strap yourself in for a Happy New Year everyone. I hope this is your year to shine.

  1. Swanson’s wisdom goes straight to the point like some amalgamation of the Dalai Lama, Yoda, and Yogi Berra.  ↩
  2. The number 42 is the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything, and that has to be a good thing. Right?  ↩
  3. LaTeX, Perl, python, and some PHP with a dash of CSS and JavaScript for the web.  ↩

Necessary Distractions

Dr. Drang is fun to read for a lot of reasons and should especially appeal to my fellow nerds in the world. In a recent post titled A Free Distraction about writing and the onslaught of “distraction free writing” apps, this bit about his habits hit close to home.

I’ve tried to change my writing habits. I’ve tried to turn my brain’s internal editor off and just let the words come out, trusting myself to fix them later on. It would make writing much easier, regardless of the text editor I use. But I can’t do it.

Yep. That. I am a fiddly writer and have tried the distraction-free environments. The more designers and developers try to strip away, the harder they are for me to work in. Apps like Byword provide a happy medium, but I most often find myself doing all of my writing in a full-blown text editor (Sublime Text these days, dabbling in MultiMarkdown Composer, never a word processor a la Microsoft’s Word or Apple’s Pages).
Drop Dr. Drang’s news feed in your reader of choice for a few weeks and give it a shot. I think he’ll make the cut.

Life Work Joy

Life. Work. Joy. The three shouldn't be mutually exclusive and the third should be omnipresent. Some seek a sharp divide between life and work and hope joy plays at least a small part in both.

Love what you do, and you will never work a day in your life.

Perks and challenges of being an introvert

Being an introvert does not have to mean living a hermit's life, though that is my tendency. I don't like big groups of people. Crowds don't make me nervous or scared; the din and sea of motion overwhelms my brain. Football games, concerts, and bars are great examples of places where I struggle. What may come across as shyness is probably just my flight instinct kicking in. Because I can't stop trying to focus on everything at once, I struggle to focus on anything at all. I can't understand the person talking right next to me and either nod my head wearing a goofy affirmative look on my face or wave them off with a look that says I can't hear you, which is frustrating for me and the person doing the talking.1
My hearing is fine, too fine at times. In a fairly quiet place my brain picks up the tiny sounds: bumps of someone moving around in adjacent rooms, beeps of random electronics, voices in other parts of the house. Televisions, like crowds, produce a constant flicker of motion. Even if I try to ignore it, the peripheral flashes of noise and sound are like a hynotic narcotic reducing me from creative worker to mindless consumer.
Does that mean I'm cranky when it's loud and cranky when it's nearly quiet? Mostly, yes. Am I sometimes hard to live with? Family members vote "yes." I'm glad we all love each other.
So far this sounds like a bleak existence, but I don't write off my challenges as complete flaws. Given the right environment, I can focus intently on the task at hand and churn out some great work.

Down to brass tacks

My ideal work environment is quiet and flicker-free. Music helps me focus, especially when wearing headphones. I prefer something with a bit of a drone and few to no lyrics. Aphex Twin fits the bill, providing everything from atmospheric soundscapes to intricate digital beats.2 Both have their own place depending on the work I am doing. What I struggle with now is trying to figure out what work I want to do.
My life was challenging from the ages of 17 to 25, that period when people are becoming who they will be. My dad died suddenly when I was in high school. I chose to be a young dad married (the first time) at 22. A poor sense of direction in my first year of college made the remainder more challenging. I shifted from engineering to English and spent much of my time after year one digging myself out of an academic hole. I had no direction, no distinct future in mind, and was just attending college because that's where I was supposed to be. Right?
After years of part-time courses and bumming around a series of low-skill jobs (waiting tables, washing cars, warehouse work, etc.) I landed a job writing for a weekly newspaper. After about seven years of journalism, much of it focused on writing about education, a public school superintendent offered me a job. Growing as a communications specialist helped me shed aspects of newspaper work I didn't like. Covering police and courts is a depressing beat for someone with no stomach for it. In this new role, I get to focus on telling stories, writing to bring clarity and a touch of style to the world of education in spite of its jargon and acronyms. My work also opened doors to discover areas I never knew I would love. Now, happily married (third time's the charm) with four kids and equipped with the budding wisdom of middle age, I am beginning to look at my options again.
Do we ever really figure out what we want to be when we grow up?

Everything comes with a price

With a broad job description, I have been able to define my role as as communications specialist with a focus on designing for print and the web. Like a twist in a fairy tale, my curse was working with the media.3. I can be happily chugging away on the web, working to build relationships through our sites, helping schools, promoting students, and tending to social media, when a discipline issue captures the media's attention and everything else screeches to a halt.
Nota bene: Like medicine and law, much of our work in education is confidential and protected by law. FERPA4 leads the charge in reasons we cannot tell all even when we want to, which leads to much frustrations on both sides of the street.

What now?

With time to focus and a renewed appreciation for clear design, I fell in love with structured text, the code underneath the spit and polish of the web that binds everything together. Code is an endless puzzle I find satisfying because it keeps me engaged as I continue to learn. I get to play5 with CSS, HTML, and a little javascript. Along the way I've picked up some perl and shell scripting skills and look forward to learning python and ruby.
I'm running out of steam on this topic, but I think it boils down to this:

  • I want to continue working with Mac OS X and iOS.
  • I want to teach people how to get the most out of their computers and mobile devices (which are converging quickly).
  • I enjoy researching complex data sets, picking them apart and putting them back together in a way that makes sense to everyone who sees it.
  1. My beautiful wife (bless her heart) is the one who suffers the most from this aspect of my affliction. ↩
  2. As I write, I'm listening to Polynomial-C via Rdio. ↩
  3. Curse is a strong word, but I enjoy the metaphor. Most reporters I work with are good people; most of them. ↩
  4. FERPA is the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. ↩
  5. I chose the word "play," though I could just as easily have chosen "work." This is kind of the point I am trying to make. ↩

Maximize UI for Rdio & Simplify

When I’m in my Fortress of Solitude working on my Mac, it’s a safe bet Rdio (I’m ELBeavers in Rdioland) is feeding my brain a steady stream of rhythms and beats. Brett Terpstra made Sidecar13, a skin for a third-party Rdio controller called Simplify.
Sidecar13desktop
Sidecar13 provides a nice visual interface, but I can’t stand to have anything floating above all windows so I can’t see it in the background.
Then I thought about my shortcut to maximize windows, Keyboard Maestro macro that’s always a quick keystroke away.
First I considered created a Macro Group, but as far as I can tell that only makes actions available based on a selected apps availability. Knowing there had to be a way, I looked at the Maximize Window script again and added an if then else statement.
If Rdio is running, the Maximize… script zooms the front window to 1,116 × 786 (on my MacBook Air) ((This macro’s utility is limited to my screen’s dimensions, but with a little more work someone could tweak the macro to see what size screen it’s dealing with and act accordingly.)) and scoots the window 250 pixels from the left edge of the screen. This fills the space to the right while Brett’s beautiful Sidecar13 languishes gorgeous on the left.
Maximize window macro
Another couple of macros watch Rdio’s status. If it’s active, then Simplify is launched (if it wasn’t already). When Rdio quits, Simplify quits too. When those apps aren’t running, the Maximize Windows macro zooms to fill the entire screen.
2013 10 20 simplify
Check out the macros on Github or just go ahead and download them to use with Keyboard Maestro. Let me know if they’re as helpful for you as they are to me.

Mind. Blown.

I’m going to want to be able to find this again later and you need to get with the watching buddy. Video clocks in at just over five magical minutes.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lX6JcybgDFo]