Category Archives: Workflow

Perfect Passwords, Every Time

Computers, Security, Workflow

Perfect Passwords, Every Time

by Richard White

2011-07-20

Man, I am really getting tired of all this talk about passwords.

Okay, okay, I’m one of the people who has been talking about them, but… still. Seriously. Can’t we all just learn how to create awesome passwords and be done with it?

You know all the don’ts, right?

  • Don’t use words found in any dictionary, English or otherwise.
  • Don’t use any personal information: names, dates, social security numbers…
  • Don’t use the same password for multiple uses/websites
  • Don’t use a password that is too short.

And then there are the dos, which can be a bit overwhelming.

  • Do use a mix of letters, numbers, and special symbols.
  • Do use different passwords for different sites, and change your passwords regularly.
  • Do use a longer password.

I probably don’t need to spend a great deal of time explaining the rationale behind these rules, which are well-founded. Bad guys do try to guess your passwords, both to important things like your bank account, and seemingly trivial things like your email (which they can use to get your bank account passwords). Bad guys use computer programs to try to guess your passwords. Bad guys look at passwords stolen from other places like Sony and try to use them for your other accounts.

It’s a jungle out there. But here’s how you can deal with it. All you need is a system.

It needs to be your own system, of course. You don’t want to reveal your system, your pattern, your trick, to anyone else, because then they’ll know your system, and will be able to guess your passwords. Not good.

But I’m going to show you my system, and you can use something similar, and then we won’t ever have to talk about how to make good passwords again, mmm-kay? :)

Here’s what you need:

  1. A root
  2. A place indicator
  3. Padding
  4. A time indicator

Let’s see what those four items mean, and how they can be used to create a good password.

1. A root

The foundation of your passwords is a good root password, sufficiently random that no one will be able to guess where it came from. You will use this same awesome root for every site you use. My personal recommendation is to use the initials of a favorite song lyric or passage from a book.

Some examples:

“In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth.” → ItBGctHatE
“Ob-la-di, ob-la-da, life goes on, bra” → Oldoldlgob
“We, the people of the United States…” → WtpotUS

These are already some pretty good little passwords, but they’re too short (susceptible to random guessing) and they aren’t going to be different based on place. Let’s fix that.

2. A place

We’re going to add, on either side of your root password, one or two characters that are unique to where that password is being used. For this exercise, let’s say that we’re just going to add a single letter before and after our root, and those letters (according to the system I’m using, are the first and second letters in the place name. If I’ve selected “WtpotUS” as my root password, how does that affect our passwords?

User password on my Windows computer → WWtpotUSi
Amazon account password → AWtpotUSm
Bank account password at Chase → CWtpotUSh

Notice how cool this is: Even if someone were to see me typing in my Windows password, without knowing my system they wouldn’t have any idea which of those letters are the root and which are associated with the Windows machine. They wouldn’t even know to look for such patterns, there’s so much entropy in that password.

So now I have a reasonably good password that’s different for different situations. For some people, that’s good enough. But we can do better, and very easily.

3. Padding

We haven’t yet used any special characters in our password—#, &, %, (, @, etc.—and using special characters is an easy way to increase both the complexity and the length of our password. For my situation, I’m going to use the three characters “!@@” both before and after my passwords. My passwords now are:

User password on my Windows computer, with padding → !@@WWtpotUSi!@@
Amazon account password, with padding → !@@AWtpotUSm!@@
Bank account password at Chase, with padding → !@@CWtpotUSh!@@

4. A time indicator

It may be that you want, or need, to change your passwords from time to time. Some systems require this, and other people just think it’s a good idea. One possibility is to include some sort of date signature in your system, but keep in mind that it can’t look like a date signature; otherwise, someone who learns one of your passwords is going to have a big clue about your other passwords.

In my system, I try to change my passwords every 3 months or so, starting on my birthday in February, and append to that the digit of the year. So my passwords from February to April in 2011 will have a 21 included. From May to July the passwords will have a 51 included.

User password on my Windows computer, with time indicator for February – April, 2011 → !@@WWtpotUSi21!@@
Amazon account password, with time indicator for May – July, 2012 → !@@52!@@
Bank account password at Chase, with time indicator for November, 2010 to January, 2011 → !@@CWtpotUSh111!@@

And that’s all there is to it.

Okay, okay, I know what you’re saying: “I don’t care about changing my passwords every three months.” Fine. Leave #4 off your list.

Or, “Can’t I just use once special character for my padding, rather than three?” Of course you can—make your own system, based on similar parameters: high entropy (disorder) in your password, and greater length (in order to discourage brute force attacks).

Or, “Do I really need a system this complex for my Webkinz subscription? Probably not, but I know some 8 year olds who are pretty darned protective. Use your password system at your discretion.

It bears mentioning, too, that if most of your passwords are used on the Internet, then a service such as LastPass or KeePass might be valuable to you. They offer true entropy, and site-specific passwords managed by a single master password. Of course, relying on a third-party to manage your security can have its problems too.

Using and maintaining passwords is hard work, but it’s increasingly important that we all have a basic working understanding of what’s involved. Root – Place – Padding – Time is a useful, customizable way of creating and remembering stronger passwords.

Good luck!

Keeping the Brain Flexible

Computers, Workflow

Keeping the Brain Flexible

by Richard White

2011-07-02

They say that keeping your brain active is an important part of trying to stave off the natural effects of aging on brain function. This may be good advice on a neurological basis, but I think it’s even more important for teachers to stay cognitively active.

This is harder to do than you might think. I’ve spent a good part of my teacher prep time for the last ten years or so trying to devise materials and methods that will allow me to me less cognitively active. “If I put these materials on PowerPoint slides, I’ll be better organized (i.e. put less future thought into creating my lessons).” Or, “if I assemble a great test bank of questions now, I won’t have to work as hard when I need to write a unit test on this material next year.”

There’s nothing wrong with this, of course. I’m just about the biggest fan of “Work Smarter, Not Harder” there is. But being more efficient isn’t necessarily doing my cognition any favors.

Our brains, it turns out, like to be puzzled. Which brings us to vi, now vim.

What’s vi?

That’s not the Roman numeral “6,” that’s actually the two letters “v-i”, pronounced “vee-eye,” and referring to a text editor that was originally written back in 1976 by Bill Joy. vi has since gone on to become the power text editor of choice, beating out by a healthy margin gedit, emacs, and all the others in a recent survey.

Wait… what’s a text editor?

If you don’t know about “text editors” yet, you don’t know what you’re missing. Text editors allow you to write simple, unformatted, text-based documents without, say, having to wait 5 minutes for Microsoft Word to launch. Another advantage includes the fact that “text is text”—you don’t have to worry about whether you have the right version of a proprietary software package to open a file (Microsoft’s 2004 software won’t open its 2008 .docx files, for example.) The disadvantage to text files is that they don’t support even the simplest formatting: bold text, italicized text, underlined text are not available. You get text, and that’s it.

I use text files for lots of different things, from to-do lists to lesson plans, from journal entries to coding programs and websites. So I’m kind of a fan. On the Mac, I started out using BareBones Software’s free TextWrangler for awhile before deciding to pony up the big bucks for their professional-level BBEdit. I played around with emacs for a bit, and recently have enjoyed working in TextMate.

All of these are perfectly awesome text editors, and well worth your time, money, and attention.

You may have noticed that vi is not on that list.

vi, for me, has been super difficult to learn. It’s what people call a “modal” editor, meaning that you have to switch between 2-3 modes while working with your text—inserting text is different from editing text—and that process of switching back and forth between the two modes is difficult for me, cognitively.

Doing the difficult thing

So that’s why I’m learning vi this summer. It’s the most popular text editor for geeks by a large margin, it’s amazingly powerful, AND I get to try to learn something new that my brain has to struggle with?

Sign me up!

That’s what I’m trying to do this summer that’s difficult for me. What are you doing to keep your brain plastic? Something creative? Something challenging? Something you don’t already know how to do?

NOTE: If you’d like to try vi for yourself, it comes pre-installed on Apple OS X and any Linux distro—launch a Terminal and type vi to try it out. Fair warning, though: you’ll want to Google “vi tutorial” or something similar for advice on getting started.

Windows will have to install vim by following the instructions here.

Good luck!

We Do All Of It… Or Sometimes Not.

Uncategorized, Workflow, ,

We Do All Of It… Or Sometimes Not.

by Richard White

2011-06-30

Well, well, well… look who’s posting something on the HybridClassroom.com blog. It’s little old me!

I hope you’ll excuse my absence for these last 3.5 months. It turns out that that whole teaching thing requires a fair amount of time—who knew?!—and spring semester this year was a doozy. I hope to make up for lost time by slamming with you a series of posts that will leave you breathless, entertained, and elucidated.

I like to set my sights high.

We’ll start off with this one, which is actually a two-for-one deal. Here’s the first post-within-a-post:

IT’S WHAT WE DO–ALL OF IT

by Richard White

2011-03-12

On some days–often the more painful professional development days, it seems–I get a little frustrated. Either the subject matter, or the process, or the guest speaker, or sometimes even something my colleagues do will cause me to metaphorically throw up my hands and say, “Why can’t they just le me do my job? I’m here to teach the children!!!”

On some other days–often at the end of a few hours banging my head against the wall with my students in the classroom–I’ll say, “You know, I could get SO much more work done if I didn’t have all these darn kids.”

I suppose it’s a “greener grass” question, but the reality is, it’s ALL part of our job. One of the challenging and exciting things about teaching is the wide variety things that are expected of us: lesson planning, teaching children, communicating with parents, participating in ongoing professional development, representing our school in the community, chaperoning dances, attending school sporting events… You can’t do it all, of course, and no one expects you to (although if you want to give it a try, ask your local administrator to swap places for a day)… but you are reasonably expected to do what you can, and not squawk too much about it in the process.

Rockclimbers have to be able to handle a wide range of different vertical terrain: smooth sloping faces, steeper faces with small holds, finger cracks, hand cracks, fist cracks, off-widths, chimneys. The really good climbers–those able to handle the widest variety of terrain–don’t practice what they’re already good at; they address their weakest areas of expertise, in order to improve in those areas in which they are most deficient. Although this ironically has the effect of making training more annoying, it’s toward the greater end of becoming a more capable climber overall.

In the same way, consider working on those areas of your profession at which you feel slightly deficient. Are you a lousy communicator? Resolve to get better at it, make a plan (any plan), start small, and start communicating today–NOW. Do you tend to get stuck in your own classroom? Get out, walk around, and visit a few other teachers, a few other classrooms. It’s a refreshing change of pace, and may have unforeseen benefits down the road.

And above all else, do you work late at night grading, at the expense of your family and friends? Burnt out and bitter is no way to survive teaching (although I’m amazed at how many people do just that). Stay balanced, and try to keep it all in perspective.

You get the irony, right? Those are my notes on an idea for a blog post from March, which was apparently just about the time that I completely dropped the ball on this blog, as well as a more personal blog that I maintain for my friends and family (although “maintain” might be a little optimistic).

Or perhaps (he said, sidling sideways), the bigger truth is that we can’t do it all, even as we struggle to maintain balance in our lives. The rockclimbing I spoke of above is almost non-existent in my life at this moment (although my training for a half-marathon is going quite nicely, thanks for asking), and my classroom teaching is on hiatus for the summer, but I have some online education projects that I’m working on.

I’m perfectly okay with making decisions like that—making mid-course corrections to one’s priorities—particularly when there are some cool things that happen as a result of that realignment.

And it’s those same “cool things” that I’ll be sharing with you over the next few posts.

Come on back and read all about it!

Mac Advice for Switchers

Apple, Workflow

Mac Advice for Switchers

by Richard White

2011-02-08

###############################################################################
A LONG NOTE FOR MY SWITCHER FRIENDS

Hey. Okay, so you got this new Mac thing, right? Good for you! It’s an amazing machine, and you’re going to love it.

You probably don’t know this but I’m a Switcher myself. I started on PCs w-a-y back in the day, and did NOT like the first Mac I got. And more recently, I’ve been using Linux for a lot of things, and… well, that’s a Switch too. Every time I switch to something new, it’s a little disorienting before I finally figure out how to make the new thing work for ME.

What follows are a series of tips, tricks, hardware, and software that have worked for ME over the past few years. As they like to say in the online bulletin boards, “your mileage may vary.” Fortunately, most of these things (with the exception of the hardware) can be had for free, or at least on a trial basis while you figure out whether or not it fits you.

I hasten to add that I although you COULD run out and download/buy every one of these programs, that’s certainly not necessary. I typically get a program, play around with it a bit, and then see if it “works for me” before going on to try something else. And I certainly DO encourage experimenting with new software. Downloading and installing programs on a Mac is extraordinarily easy, and there is some wonderful software out there that will do things for you that you didn’t even know you needed to be done. So get out there and play!

I’ll be updating this list from time to time as things occur to me, so… be sure to check back! :)

Here we go…

###############################################################################
WORKFLOW

1. Organize your stuff in folders. It’ll help.

My folders on the Mac look like this:
/Users/rwhite/ # my home folder

Inside the home folder:
Applications/
Desktop/
Documents/
Downloads/
Dropbox/
Library/
Movies/
Music/
Pictures/
Public/
Sites/
src/

By far the most important folder is my Documents, which contains:
About Stacks.pdf # not important
AppleWorks User Data/ # not important
Microsoft User Data/ # important I guess
OmniFocus Backups/ # not super important
comm/ # contains email archives, letters, etc.
down/ # contains stuff I’ve downloaded, including PDFs of articles, movies, etc.
edu/ # big folder containing everything having to do with my teaching
fnc/ # financial stuff: tax records, receipts, etc.
iChats/ # iChat archive
impt/ # important stuff: scans of passport, driver’s license, etc.
media/ # movies and stuff
misc/ # stuff I haven’t filed away yet
othersfiles/ # folders of stuff associated with parents, girlfriend, etc.
photo/ # all my photos, including iPhone
proj/ # ongoing projects: Xmas stuff, a folder for my car stuff, jokes, recipes
snd/ # music files that I’ve created
tech/ # lots of folders here: notes, linux, scripts, google, etc.
trvl/ # folders for packing lists, tickets/boarding passes, maps
wrtng/ # folders for my journals, my trip reports, etc.
www/ # folders for all my websites and related stuff

You get it, right? Nested folders to organize all your stuff. Here’s my edu/poly2010-2011 folder contents:
apphysics/
compsci/
conceptual/
edtech/
grades/
misc/
poly2009-2010 alias # This points to last year’s folder, because I’m always needing to get something from there
schedulecommittee/
science_dept/

I love my folders.

—

2. Text files for notes
I keep notes on lots of different little things, and stash them away in those folders. I really like Textmate as a text editor, but BBEdit is good too, as is the free TextWrangler (see Software below).

One of the best things I started doing a few years ago was make a text file on my computer where I keep track of software (and authorization keys) that I install on my machines.

—

3. Backblaze backup service (backblaze.com)
Crazy good, and very reasonably priced. See “Hardware” below for more info.

—

###############################################################################
HARDWARE

I don’t like to rely on too much hardware. My friend Aaron likes to carry around a boatload of computer crap, but I like to travel a little lighter than that. Stuff that I regularly use, though, and which you might find me carrying in my backpack:

1. USB cable for the iPhone

2. Logitech Anywhere MX mouse. This thing is AMAZING.

3. Dongle (for connecting to a VGA projector)

4. Logitech Wireless Presenter R400 with Red Laser Pointer (again, for presenting)

5. Power brick (if I’m going to be away for awhile)

6. iPhone

—

Stuff that stays at home includes:
1. Old HP LaserJet 6MP laser printer
I don’t think they even sell this thing anymore, but it’s a beast, and it’s awesome.

2. Laptop cooler/stand (I use this one: http://www.roadtools.com/podium.html )

3. A couple of Seagate 1-terabyte external hard drive ( Seagate FreeAgent XTreme 1 TB USB 2.0/FireWire 400/eSATA Desktop External Hard Drive ), because I’m a freak about backing up my machine. These aren’t my “daily” backup drives, but rather “permanent archive” drives, that store things like old photos, music, and other archives that I simply don’t want or need to carry around with me on my laptop. There are two because even backup drives can go bad, so I have one “main” backup, and one “backup” backup.

4. A smaller 500-Gb hard drive that I use with Apple’s Time Machine backup software. I plug this in about once a week to make a local backup of what I’ve been working on lately.

5. Backblaze ( backblaze.com ) – This isn’t hardware, but it kind of acts like it. It’s “backup in the cloud,” and their software runs every morning at 1am, backing up my computer to their servers. It’s $50/year to keep an encrypted copy of all your stuff on their computers, and you don’t have to remember to plug it in. It’s probably the best backup solution there is for your local data.

###############################################################################
SOFTWARE

1. Safari
Apple’s Safari web browser is amazing. I also have Mozilla’s Firefox ( http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/ ) and Google’s Chrome ( http://www.google.com/chrome/ ) installed too, because Firefox may load some pages that Safari can’t handle.

2. Mail.app
Apple’s Mail.app email program is just about the best email program I’ve ever used. You’re going to love it.

3. iCal
Apple’s calendar program is NOT the best calendar program I’ve ever used. It’s got a clunky, cumbersome interface that often seems to enjoy getting in the way of entering information, but… it’s integrated across the iPhone, so I keep using it. There are various add-ons that you can use to enhance it, if you’re a calendar geek: BusyCal ( http://www.busymac.com/ ) is a popular enhancement.

4. TextWrangler ( http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/ )
I love text files, and TextWrangler is a surprisingly powerful editor, given that it’s free. TextMate is a popular text editor for the Mac as well, although some people prefer to get by with Apple’s own TextEdit, which has its own advantages. Text editing is high on my list of must-haves, but I admit that most people don’t use them at all. They’re missing out!

5. Microsoft Office
Why do I like text editors so much? Try launching Microsoft Word to write a note to yourself–by the time the bloody thing has opened up, you’ve already forgotten what it was you were going to write. Still, it’s the industry standard, so you pretty much have to have it. And as much as I support the free, open source alternatives–LibreOffice ( http://www.libreoffice.org/ ) and OpenOffice ( http://www.openoffice.org/ )–those distributions aren’t the real thing. Of course, Microsoft’s own software isn’t always want one might wish for… :-/

6. Adobe Photoshop Elements
I hate Adobe. There are other photo processing packages available for the Mac, including the free GIMP ( http://www.gimp.org/ ) and free GraphicConverter ( http://www.lemkesoft.com/ ), as well as Apple-friendly solutions like Pixelmator ( http://www.pixelmator.com/ ). But like Microsoft’s Office suite, the gold-standard is Adobe, and their Photoshop Elements series–a low cost version of their high-end Photoshop program–is amazing.

On the other hand, if you’re not really into doing heavy image editing, iPhoto can do an amazing job with very little effort. And it comes with your Mac!

7. Coda and Transmit ( http://www.panic.com )
You may not be into the whole FTP/web development game–uploading files, working on web pages, etc.–but if you are, Panic’s Coda (integrated web development and FTP) and Transmit (FTP only) are solid programs.

8. Skype ( http://www.skype.com )
Audio, video, and text chatting. Awesome.

9. Adium ( http://adium.im/ )
Great chat software, which integrates just about every chat protocol in a single window: AIM, MSN Messenger, GoogleTalk, Facebook, ICQ…

10. VLC Media Player ( http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ )
If you have a video file, chances are that VLC will be able to play it for you. It works where others fail.

11. Dropbox ( http://www.dropbox.com )
If you’ve ever struggled with keeping track of a single file in 3 different locations, or wondered how you can send a 120Mb file to someone by email (hint: you can’t), Dropbox provides 2Gb of online storage, free. Install their software, drop anything you want in the “dropbox,” and it will be synced with any other machines that are connected to that same account. Some people put their entire Documents folder in the Dropbox, so they can access their files anywhere (including on their iPhone). Amazing. You can pay money to buy more storage if you’re a heavy user.

12. Audacity ( http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/ )
Free, cross-platform, sound editing. Super useful, and a nice complement to Apple’s GarageBand, which does more-or-less the same thing, but differently.

Keeping the Lines of Communication Open

Workflow

KEEPING THE LINES OF COMMUNICATION OPEN

Why would we restrict the use of tools that allow us to communicate more effectively, just because they allow us to communicate more effectively?

2010-09-19

by Richard White

I’ve read a lot of scary headlines in the last few weeks. “Digital diversions leave teens, parents sleep-deprived.” “Digital Devices Deprive Brain of Needed Downtime.” “Beware of digital overload and technology fatigue.”

I’ve also heard people complain about overflowing email inboxes, and a feeling that they should answer emails at any time of day. Some of us compulsively check our smartphones any spare moment to see if we’ve been buzzed (via Google), tweeted (via Twitter), texted (via phone), chatted (via instant message), friended (via Facebook), emailed, or even phoned (how primitive!). And after all that, if you’re still feeling twitchy you can always play a game, surf the Internet, or read a downloaded book on that same phone.

You can also use a computer to do all these things, if you’re a few years behind the times… ;)

Look, people, it’s really very simple. If you’re feeling a little overwhelmed, digitally… turn off your phone. Don’t check your work email account after work. Let your Facebook status lapse for a day or three. Stop twittering about your mood swings. Unless you’ve been clinically diagnosed with some obsessive-compulsive variant, just put the phone/computer away for awhile.

Or don’t. If you find–as some do–that increased communication has actually made your life better, then by all means, have at it. Blog your life. Open up on Facebook. Text during dinner. But you don’t get it both ways. You don’t get to open up a dozen new input channels to your brain and then complain about being deluged by information. The two go hand in hand.

For some people, email overload may have developed from a feeling that those messages, because they are transmitted instantly, must be responded to instantly. Workflow-efficiency pundits haven’t helped matters by advocating an “Inbox Zero” policy, suggesting that any unread emails in one’s Inbox are a bane to be avoided at all cost. Recent research emphasizes what should have been obvious all along: checking one’s email every 15 minutes disrupts the concentration often necessary for real work to get done, to say nothing of throwing a huge monkey wrench into one’s after-hours personal life.

Another obvious note: just because you receive an email at 8pm doesn’t mean you have to immediately reply to it. It should be understood that, when away from work, one doesn’t have to DO work. No one expects you to respond to, or even read, a work email that was sent after hours. (And if there ARE expectations by some people here, then those need to be addressed.)

For some teachers, the email pressure has gotten so bad that I’ve heard rumblings around my school site of a movement to restrict certain forms of these communications and/or the hours that they may be used. “No sending emails after 9pm,” for instance.

Let’s think about this for a moment. First of all, from a technological perspective, the idea doesn’t make sense: telling someone not to send an email after 9pm is like telling someone not to leave a voicemail after 9pm–leaving the voicemail (or sending the email) has absolutely nothing to do with when the message is received, and neither type of communication impacts the recipient until he or she chooses to check that voicemail or email account.

Second, this is a misguided effort to regulate people’s workflow, something for which the school is not, and should not be, responsible. If I have a problem managing my digital world, that needs to be addressed by me, and not by the school. And on the other hand, if my successfully-managed workflow includes sending out emails at odd hours of the morning, evening, or weekend, well… why shouldn’t I? (Come to think of it, that’s what my boss does!) The alternative is to… make me wait until I’m at school to send email?!

Third, the idea is unenforceable. We all work when we want or need to, and a stricture against sending emails at certain times is going to be as effective as a regulation against grading student papers at certain times: you can tell me I can’t grade on weekends, but I have to, on occasion. The student won’t receive the paper until later on, during an appropriate time. In the same way, I’m going to communicate with colleagues, parents, and students via email when I have to, even if they don’t receive the message until later on, at an appropriate time as determined by them.

I’m not forced to turn off the TV just before the one show I watch because most of the U.S. has already watched four hours that day. And my dietary intake is not restricted because someone else is overweight.

“Electronic curfews” destroy the very thing that makes most digital communication powerful: the ability for a sender to communicate as needed, with actual delivery managed by the recipient.

Restricting the freedom to take advantage of that communication doesn’t make any sense.

Setting up filters

Workflow, ,

SETTING UP FILTERS

by Richard White

2010-05-14

Too many computers. Not the average teacher's desk.

Sounds like a pretty technical article here: “Setting up Filters.” That could refer to spam filters, or search result filters, or filtering content to restrict the types of webpages that are being delivered to students at your school’s network. All discussion worthy, but… today, I’m thinking about personal filters.

Let’s look at how you can set up filters in your personal/professional life, filters that allow you to focus on the good stuff coming through—the things that you want or need to focus on—without being distracted by the bad stuff:things that are only going to interfere with your job/life/effectiveness.

Because the reality—our reality—is that there are simply too many channels for input in our lives, and no one is able to manage that firehose unaided. No one. Not me, not you, not your multitasking, ADHD, twenty-something friend living on espressos and Monster drinks.

You’ve almost certainly already taken advantage of some of the coping strategies that have been made available to you: your email client (I use Apple’s Mail.app) or webmail provider (gmail) already has spam filters built in, lucky for us.

If you’re feeling a little overwhelmed lately, here are some options to consider:

  • Reduce your networks
    Social and professional networks allow us to be more connected than ever. Feature? Yup. Feature AND flaw. More connections are good up to a point, but you’ve got a limited amount of time and energy. If you can’t monitor what’s happening in Facebook, your Ning accounts, your LinkedIn account,… why belong to all of them?
  • Reduce your peripherals
    This could run the gamut, from that extra printer that needs to be recycled to the bluetooth mouse you hardly ever use, from the old cellphone (recycle it!) to the extra car that you no longer use. Get rid of all that extra crap that you keep moving from one corner of your desk to another, and free up some CPU cycles.
  • Reduce distractions
    There’s ample documentation on the web that getting any actual… you know, WORK… done while you’re AT work is a Herculean /Sisyphean/Greek hero-of-your-choice task. Phone calls (work & cell, emails, text messages, chat messages, colleagues stopping by to ask a question, friends stopping by to take a coffee together, all conspire to make it extraordinarily difficult to do what I love most, and what I’m actually paid to do: teaching. Don’t get me wrong. I love the people I work with and the fact that I can socialize with them. But when it’s time to work, you need to find a way to shut out the distractions.

    Turn off email. Close your browser. Silence the cellphone. I still had one colleague who kept coming in to chat at inopportune times, so I got the clever idea of buying a pair of Sennheiser HD 202 headphones that I could pop over my head when I really needed to get work done. I was wearing them when the guy came in earlier this week when the guy came in and and cleared his throat a few times. I pretended I couldn’t hear him. After a few more tries, he poked me on the shoulder to get my attention, forcing me to look up and take off the headphones.

    “Wow, those things really do a good job of keeping out distractions, eh?” he said.

    “Not good enough, apparently…” I said.

    Was that too mean?

  • Reduce complexity
    Life’s a lot more complicated than it used to be, from the television shows we watch to the decisions we have to make as consumers. It makes sense to reduce complexity where possible, in order to save your processing power for the things that are truly important.

    Why carry 7 credit cards in your wallet? Why keep 37 files scattered over your computer’s desktop? Why pay for a landline? Why try to keep your complex schedule in your head, as opposed to on a decent calendar app in your smartphone?

    “You can have anything you want… but you can’t have everything you want.” Figure out what’s important to you, and ditch the rest.

  • Organize your news consumption
    This may seem silly, but I’ve stopped reading newspapers, or at least buying them. It’s hard to justify buying magazines, too. I don’t know how the whole “who’s going to support journalism” thing is going to settle out, but while they’re discussing it, I’ve taken to bookmarking RSS feeds on my laptop, syncing those feeds to my cellphone, and reading the news on the computer/cellphone at convenient times. Less waste, and I have enough different news sources now that I can easily scan the RSS headlines, just like I used to scan articles in the newspaper. It’s the new thing.

    Give it a try!

What strategies have you found to simplify your life, things that allow you to filter the distractions in your life so that you can focus on things that are more important to you? Keyboard shortcuts? Cutting your cable service? Ditching your smartphone?

iPad: What’s it to you?

Apple, Workflow

iPad: What’s It to You?

2010-04-09

by Richard White

I’ve had my iPad for just about 5 days now, which means I’ve started to figure out a little bit about what it means to me.

The biggest question most people have, before they’ve used it anyway, is: “What is this? Is it just a big iPod Touch?” I think one of the really cool things about this new device—and I think it’s fair to call it “new”; like most Apple products, it’s not technically a new device, but Apple has gone and made this thing so well that it IS new, for all intents and purposes—is that it can be different things for different people.

  • It’s a big iPod Touch
    It plays games and movies like nobody’s business. Two days ago, I made the mistake of leaving it out on my desk at school. When I returned an hour later and started it up, the game “Plants and Zombies” started up, with a “Welcome back, Matthew” opening screen. “Uh, I hope you don’t mind, Mr. White—I didn’t want to mess up your game, so I made my own game account on their,” explained Matthew, a little embarrassed.
  • It’s a small computer / netbook killer
    Netbooks, for some people, have been the ideal device for light-duty computing: answering email, surfing the web, working on cloud-based documents, or doing some light word processing. The iPad does at least the first three really, really well. And it’s a super-sexy chick magnet, so… that’s worth the price of admission right there.

  • It’s a book reading Kindle Killer
    It’s true, the plastic, gray-scale Kindle is doomed. The iPad’s ability to display epub-format books beats the competition all up and down the block. Colors are crisp, the page turn motion is realistic (if that kind of thing is important to you), and their bookshelf metaphor (ripped off from Delicious Monster’s amazing Delicious Library) is stunning. It beats the heck out of sitting in bed reading the dishwater-gray Kindle with a freaking reading light clipped to the screen.
  • It’s a Media Consumption Device
    Music, books, and especially movies are SO good on this. How good? Last night I sat on the couch with my girlfriend and her son watching “WarGames” on this machine, streaming over the wireless via Netflix. The giant wall-mounted flat screen hooked up to DirectTV? Yeah, it didn’t even get turned on…
  • It’s the Next Big Thing
    Awesome 10-hour battery life, a cool running processor, blazing fast graphics, bright screen, razor-sharp touch interface… It all screams “I am the future!” At least if you’re into consuming media.

I’m not that guy, though—I’m not the media consumption guy. I don’t typically play games on my computer, except for the World of Warcraft years… but there’s no app for that on the iPad. I don’t usually watch movies on my computer. I do record movies on my camera and edit them on my laptop… but you can’t do that on the iPad. I surf a little on the web, but I also create content for the web… and you can’t easily do that on the iPad. I edit Word documents, and you can’t do that in any serious way on the iPad. I do computer-based presentations (PowerPoint/Keynote) for my students… and the iPad has only limited functionality in that area.

I talk a lot about workflow, so what I’m saying is this: I like the iPad in a lot of ways, but it’s not as useful to me for my own workflow.

Not yet. I’m willing to wait a bit.

In the meantime, I’m not the only guy who’s trying to figure out if this is “my thing.”

iPad

Apple, Workflow, ,

iPad

2010-04-08

by Richard White

So… yeah. I bought an iPad.

I pre-ordered, and got in line at 6am to hang out with some other really nice people, including Carlos, the youth minister to gang-bangers, and Abraham Peters, who graciously took a picture of all of us standing in line, and the German guy from London, who happened to find himself in the States at the right time and managed to buy a reservation from some guy on Craigslist.

I bought two iPads, actually: one for myself, because I’m an Ed Tech guy, and I have a feeling this is going to be a Very Big Deal. And one for my Dad, because this thing is so made for him.

Picture my Dad, hunched over in the cold, drafty office, reading the online New York Times every morning on an ancient computer screen. Eventually he gets up, rubs his lower back, and heads off into the kitchen where he’ll make some breakfast, sit down at the table, and settle in to read the local newsrag, a pitiful thing that barely qualifies as journalism.

The iPad was made for my Dad. Now, he’s eating his eggs and reading the New York Times online on the blazing bright LED screen, flipping through articles, and emailing me the ones that he especially likes. It’s business as usual… only infinitely better.

We sat on the couch and watched an episode of “Glee” together—he’d never seen it before, and absolutely loved it. We set up Netflix streaming for him. We looked at the books in the online bookstore. At the rate we were going, I’ll be surprised if he ever gets on the computer again, unless it’s to sync his most recent photos to the iPad. Then he’ll unplug, them pack up the little tablet, and take it to my Mom to give her a slide show on the thing.

As for me and my iPad? I’m not as much of a convert. You can read the excellent comments of David Pogue, or John Gruber, or Andy Ihnatko, or this excellent article at Ars Technica, and they say more or less what I say: it’s fast. It’s beautiful. It represents, for many people, the future of computing, where our devices are powerful, and simple, and seamlessly integrated into our lives to the point that we have a hard time remembering what life was like without them. I don’t doubt that that’s going to happen. In fact, I hope it happens—I have a little money invested in Apple, and my son is starting college next year.

But as of this writing, it doesn’t seem to be my thing. It’s a great machine for consuming content, there’s no denying; YouTube never looked so good. But for content creators like myself, or anyone who needs a little more control over their computer—anyone who wants to drive a stickshift—the iPad’s automatic transmission is probably going to be a frustrating experience.

  • Want to read a PDF document? You’ll have to email it to yourself, or use a third-party app to get it onto the iPhone’s hermetically-sealed file system.
  • Want to edit a Word document? You’ll have to buy the $9.99 neutered version of iWork’s Pages, open up the document in that, edit it, then “Save As…” a Word document, plug in your iPad to your main computer, use iTunes to Export a copy of the document, and then fix any fonts, formatting, or layout that got changed in the process.
  • Want to backup your files? Well, you sort of back them up every time you sync, although you can’t actually restore an individual file. You can make a copy of a file from the iPad (for a limited number of applications) by exporting, but you’ll have to go through and do that on a file by file basis. There’s no facility for backing up the entire machine and restoring individual files.

I don’t want to complain too loudly; any device manufacturer on the planet would KILL to have a product like this in their stable. And I totally get that this is going to be a hit.

Facebook’s a hit, too, though. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s something that fits my lifestyle, or my workflow.

The typing I do, the websites that I design, the video editing I do, the podcasts I record, the DVDs I rip, the music I record and mix, the presentations I deliver, the programming I do… none of those exist in the world of the iPad in any meaningful way.

And yet…

It’s a very import development, technologically, and I’m looking forward to seeing where we go from here.

It’s an exciting time to be a technologist.

Analog Development

Workflow, , , ,

Analog Development

2009-01-15

by Richard White

I’m a minimalist.

Seems like I’ve been “going light” for most of my life, or at least since I got turned on to backpacking, and started eating everything from cereal to steak out of one of those little Sierra cups that were all the rage back in the 70s. I don’t carry any consumer debt, I don’t check a bag (even flying transcontinental)… and you can still occasionally catch me eating Lucky Charms out of that little cup.

The ultralight ethos only got reinforced when I began preparing live in France for an extended period of time. Books, music, photos, lesson plans… everything got moved onto a 15-inch Titanium PowerBook, and it seems like I’ve been living out of a laptop ever since.

I’ve had lots of reasons for expending the time and energy it takes to transfer old-school paper-based lessons and lesson-plans into digital form. Part of it has to do with the ease of transferring information from one year to the next. I look at some of those “Course Planners” that I used to plan the year with, and remember how I’d painstakingly transfer one year’s schedule into another planner for the following school year (writing in pencil, in anticipation of the inevitable changes that would necessitate last-minute adjustments). I had two large 3-inch binders, one for each semester, in which I’d keep detailed lesson plans, copies of handouts, lab activities, tests, test keys.

It’s all a bit overwhelming when I think back on it now.

I’m reminded, though, of how important those pen-and-paper, “analog” lessons were, now that I’m in the process of developing a new course. You can get all sorts of “planning in analog” advice, from everyone from Nancy Duarte to Garr Reynolds, and they’re right.

There are lots of reasons why it’s good to plan with a pencil and pen. Making diagrams and sketches is almost always easier on paper. Collaborators can easily add to your work (as long as they’re in the same room). Paper is easily transported, and multiple pieces of paper can be easily spread out for examination.

For me, it’s mostly a simple question of real estate. I’ve got a two different calendars that I’m working with, a lesson plan for the day, a textbook propped open—and yes, the laptop opened up—and that allows me to organize the disparate elements of the course and assemble them into something more-or-less cohesive, in a way that clicking back-and-forth among eleven open windows on the tiny screen simply doesn’t allow for.

Imagine me and the Sierra cup, a 10-oz steak flopping over the sides, and sauteed mushrooms dropping onto the ground while friend, fellow backpacker, and chef for the evening Brian laughs hysterically.

The final product for the course I’m working on (a computer science course) will include a website, the lessons (in PowerPoint form), a series of assessments, and a whole lot of code examples and programming assignments, and all of it will eventually live on the laptop.

For now, though, I’m enjoying the paper. The notes. The ballpoint pen. The mess.

It’s all part of the process.

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Geeks

Workflow, , , ,

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Geeks

2009-12-22

by Richard White

I’ll admit right from the start that I have no idea if these techniques align with anything Stephen Covey mentioned in his book (which I haven’t read), but here they are: seven things that will improve the way you work on the computer.

These aren’t sexy, high-gloss, applications that you need to download. No, these are mostly relatively simple, under-the-radar habits that you can incorporate into your Mac, Windows, or Linux workflow immediately, just in time for the New Year (if you’re in need of any easy-to-fill resolutions).

Let’s get started!

1. Organize your directories

If your Documents folder is full of a bunch of random files, or—worse yet—your Desktop is filled with a bunch of random files, you need to clean up your act. Get those files organized into a series of logically organized and nested folders that will give your brain a strong sense of place location.

I don’t care how powerful your operating systems search function is, there’s a benefit to keeping all your receipts in one folder, all of your emails in another folder, all of your materials for Project X located in the Project X folder.

And while you’re at it, switch your file system view from Icon to List view, so you can see that nested file structure.

Here’s a partial glimpse of what mine looks like. Here, a series of PowerPoint lectures are contained in the folder lec, which is contained along with some other folders in a folder for my ap_physics course, which is contained in a directory for this school year called poly09-10, which is grouped with all of my educational materials in a folder called edu, which is in turn contained in my Documents folder. Easy!

2. Print to PDF

Bookmarking websites is a great way of keeping track of those websites that you like to return to, but content on some websites has a unsettling way of disappearing. If you’re interested in keeping an archive copy of something—and article you read, or something you want to read later on when you are offline—you should make a PDF copy of it.

Apple, Windows, and Linux machines all have the capability of “printing” to a PDF formatted file on your local computer. This capability comes standard on Macs and on some Linux machines. Most Windows and Linux machines will need to have an additional bit of free software installed to make this happen. (Google “windows print pdf” to find out where you can get this software for windows, or “linux print pdf” for Linux.)

Not that many webpages include a “single page” option or a “print” button that will show you a page that removes much of the distracting navigation or ads that might otherwise clutter your PDF copy. Then select “Print” in your browser, and choose the PDF option in the Print dialog box. You’ll need to indicate a file name and location on your machine that the file will be saved. Then click “Print” (a bit misleading, because you’re really saving a file), and then you’ll have a local copy of the content, ready to read at your off-line leisure.

3. Take notes with a text editor

Whether it’s the Apple’s TextEdit, Windows’ Notepad, Linux’s gedit, or something a little more powerful—BBEdit (Mac), vim or emacs, etc.—everyone needs a lightning fast text editor that they can use to create little text files. Grocery lists, to-do items, a note on the desktop with the title of that book you need to order… using Microsoft Word or Excel to keep track of a few kilobytes of text is overkill.

4. Organize your bookmarks

All web browsers—Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Internet Explorer, etc.—provide you with the opportunity to bookmark frequently visited pages. If you have a LOT of bookmarks, you should definitely consider organizing them into folders, and then perhaps keeping those folders in a “Bookmarks Bar” at the top of your browsing window.

Even better, don’t bookmark the website itself; bookmark the RSS feed for the site, which will inform you when new content is posted by placing a small number indicating the number of unread articles next to the name of the bookmark.

Here, for example, I have 19 blog postings that I haven’t yet read, and 6 educational technology articles that I need to look at at some point.

If you don’t mind others having access to your bookmarks, you might also consider taking advantage of http://del.icio.us, which allows you to subscribe to and sync browser bookmarks across multiple machines.

5. Make a daily backup

The new mantra, courtesy of Leo Laporte and the fine folks at T.W.I.T., nicely summarizes the minimum requirements for keeping your data safe: “3 Copies, 2 Media, 1 Offsite.” In other words, you should have at least three separate copies of your data, stored on at least two different types of media, with at least one of those copies stored offsite (where a local catastrophe can’t harm it).

This is easier than ever to do. Optical disks (CDs and DVDs) are on the way out, and flash drives are still too expensive for their limited capacity. Here’s how you get started:
a. Get an external hard drive and configure your computer to keep a copy of your computer’s files once a day on there. Use Apple’s Time Machine, or Windows’ archive feature, or create a nice little shell script featuring rsync if you use a Linux machine (more on this another time).
b. Subscribe to Mozy, or Backblaze, or one of the other offsite services that, for a pathetically reasonable fee, will backup your entire machine (and, in the case of Backblaze, any external hard drives you have attached to it) for pennies a day. Or maybe it’s nickels a day. Yeah. It’s about 3 nickels a day. For bulletproof, offsite, backup!)
Then you can stop worrying about losing your data. Because you will lose data from your main machine. It’s a fact. You just want to be sure that you have another copy of it so you can easily get it back.

6. Stay in touch (email processing, blog, Twitter, social networking)

We don’t work in isolation. “The more you share, the better,” and computers excel at allowing you to keep in touch with friends, family, colleagues, etc., to an extent that can sometimes feel overwhelming.

The web is full of advice on how to be an effective blogger, or Twitterer, and if you find that at all interesting, by all means explore it. I would suggest that, as technologists, each of of should have at least a passing familiarity with the technology. I’m not on Facebook every day, but I have an account, and update my status every once in awhile, just so people know I’m not dead. I don’t have a long list of tweets, but I follow a few people, and am followed by others, and I occasionally observe as the wave of some recent hot topic builds, crests, and collapses onto itself (it’s fascinating to watch!).

And I have a blog or three (this, one of them) that I use to keep in touch with people in my life, both friends and colleagues. Blogs aren’t for everyone, of course, but as always, it’s great to play with the technology a little bit to see how it all works.

And everyone can deal with Facebook. Double-check your privacy settings and guard your personal information, by all means, but check it out and see what’s going on there. Again, as technologists, we need to be familiar with this stuff.

7. Manage your schedule (calendar, project software, task lists)

Computers have been used for managing calendars and to-do lists from the very earliest days, and the software has only gotten better with time. Everyone can benefit from using Google’s free, online Google Calendar, or Apple’s iCal, or any of the calendar options available on Windows machines. If you’re busy—and you know you are!—you should be using calendar software to help keep your life organized. You get bonus points if that calendar is kept up-to-date and synced regularly with your smartphone (iPhone, Droid, etc.)

Best of all, your brain, once cluttered with “Don’t forget to do X,” will tend to experience less cognitive overload, and be free to do what it was really meant to do: think creatively.

Chances are, I’m preaching to the choir on this one, but on the off-chance that you’ve ignored some of these up to now, consider this a gentle reminder. None of these items are terribly sophisticated, or beyond the scope of any of us. They’re just good, solid tips that will make your life a better place to be.

Any items you’d like to add to the list? Leave a comment!