Certified arborist Martin Arnest took my headcam into our 50-year old, 5-story tree, after two days of cutting and trimming, and showed us how it's done.

Unfortunately, the sound didn't turn out as great as I'd hoped, so we miss many of Martin's observations, but if you listen close you can hear him whistling. See the photo stills.

Labels: video

I'm a "down Dock" kind of person. Also, I tend to keep only the Open apps in there, along with a few shortcuts to Parallels, remote machines, links-du-jour, and my network drive.

Then, I just use Quicksilver to lauch or find anything, or even to drag and drop onto an app.

This reduces visual clutter, and saves me valuable milliseconds when parsing my work environment. There is less to see.

Another habit that I've nutured is: constantly review what's in the Dock. This mostly means removing things. but occasionally I'll add things temporarily.

This practice is easy to remember:

Reduce visual clutter,
Reuse the space in your Dock,
Recycle valuable mental processes as a result.

Labels: GTD, Mac, tip

You can now subscribe to my Feed via Email, which is nice.

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I've developed a good habit (which I stole from Case) that has pretty much ruled my GTD system for almost a year now: SMS to Email.

Yes, most SMS plans include an email gateway (T-Mobile's has been known to crap out occassionally, but it's been better of late). Here's how to exploit it:

0. Get an unlimited SMS plan. Do it.
1. Get an Idea.
2. Open SMS app on your phone.
3. Instead of using a number for the destination, use your GMail address (or whatever GTD destination you employ, like a BackPack page).
4. Distill idea into 160 characters or less.
5. Send, then Forget About It.

Later, in the Batcave...

6. Categorize Idea in GTD system of choice.
(I also auto-label all messages from my phone into =Log.)
7. Get That Done, then Archive.
8. Enjoy Fruits of Labor (usually an apple, or sometimes an orange, or maybe a satsuma).

Labels: GTD, SMS, tip

Ever wonder why your Mac has grown hot? Or starts acting sluggish or seems to be thinking really hard? Enter Activity Monitor.

This is an Apple app that ships with OS X and helps you examine the processor load, network activity, disk and memory usage on your Mac.

1. Go to Applications > Utilities to find it (or just type "Activity" and then spacebar in Spotlight).
2. Choose View > Dock Icon > Show CPU History in the application menu (or right-click on the Dock Icon itself).
3. Close the main window if you want (just click on Dock Icon to show it again).
4. You can even go one step further and make it a Login Item.

Voila! A handy, instant peek into the brain of your machine. It's free, it's always on, but takes less memory than iPulse, which is still cool.

Labels: Mac