I am implementing a new feature for WordPress for iOS in the site stats and needed to demo the implementation for my coworkers. By accident I recorded my computer audio and gave the demo accompanying music. I liked this so when I recorded the next change I did it again.
[wpvideo ri5olTYQ]
I think I’ll continue with this :).
A coworker of mine posted this video today about what that extra pair of holes is for on your running shoes:
That reminded me of this site. My mind was completely blown when I saw just how many ways you can tie your shoes.
I’ve mentioned before on this site and other places that I have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and that I’ve been doing a lot to manage it. I didn’t really connect the dots until I started working remote for Automattic almost two years ago. It’s a continual process for me and I’m continuing to make adjustments over time to combat it. I have good days and I have bad days.
After I got diagnosed with ADHD by an accredited counselor and my primary physician, I started on medication to help. It was my goal at that point to not be on the meds long term but rather use them to show me where I could be. It’s hard to see the destination without an idea of where you’re going or even why you’re going.
The medications worked pretty quickly. Within the first week I started seeing things in life I always ignored. I went to a museum in Houston with family and discovered myself reading the signs around exhibits and actually taking in what I was seeing. It was amazing. Within a couple months I realized I wasn’t eating food regularly any more (it’s a common side effect) and my personality was changing too. We also increased the medication a few levels to figure out what was the right level to be at. I ended up taking myself off of the medication a bit earlier than I had wanted to originally but I could see the longer I was on it the harder it would be to come off. I wasn’t addicted per se but the clarity I got from it was hard to give up. Really hard.
Since I’ve been off the medication I’ve been using the tools my counselor and I came up with to help with concentration and focus. Primarily its a mix of the following:
Being active is a huge part of the success with dealing with ADHD. Working at home gives me a ton of flexibility to include exercise in my daily routine. I’ll break up my day around noon with a bike ride, walk or step aerobics in my basement. Since February of this year I’ve been using a treadmill under my standing desk with some good results. I try to walk in the morning and afternoon and then stand in between. I find it gives me some different kind of focus than when just purely standing. I haven’t fully decided if I’m more successful with the treadmill desk but I am benefitting from the activity being more regular health-wise.
Taking notes is a huge deal with ADHD. You have to leave yourself a reminder of where you left off on a task or else you will forget. Short notes are sometimes not even sufficient – a few words is sometimes not enough to remind you. It’s crazy how often I can forget to do something even hours later without a note. I haven’t found the perfect single place to leave notes so it’s a combination of sticky notes on my monitor, handwritten notes next to my keyboard and electronic notes in Evernote. I should boil it down to one place but I tire easily of a single solution and then stop using it.
I’m not quite sure how I’d survive without music. I’ve been listening to electronic/trance/techno music since I was 12 years old when I discovered it allowed me to concentrate on tasks. Most electronic music (if there isn’t a lot of vocals) will busy the part of my brain that is trying to derail me. Working in a regular office environment you’d always find me with my headphones on. Working at home I’m using open speakers and I find that I don’t get the same effect. I actually don’t listen to music consistently throughout the day but when I find myself straining to finish a task, I find the right music to assist.
I should practice formal meditation more. Years ago I would set aside time to meditate and I enjoyed it. In the two years I’ve worked remote I’ve only done a full meditation exercise a handful of times. I tend to use short moments of meditation thought to help center myself when I feel like I’m going too many ways. Being mindful of yourself is a big help. Be aware of when you’re started to swerve off course and recognize the signs. Being on the treadmill desk is a little like meditation … it’s amazing how much around me sort of fades out when I’m walking and working.
What it comes down to is you have to try to reduce or replace the noise in your head with something else. In radio engineering Signal to Noise Ratio is the amount of desired signal vs the background noise. You want more signal than noise otherwise your transmission isn’t effective. Signal is analogous to the task or idea you’re trying to focus on and the noise is everything else going on in your brain that’s trying to derail it. You have to find the ways that work for you to reduce the noise or improve the signal.
Much like radio engineers there are things you can do to improve signal and reduce noise – some of which I’ve mentioned. Everyone is different. For some the only thing that works is the medication – and it works well. Don’t be ashamed if you are on medication to help. There is such a negative stigma with taking medication for mental conditions which to me is crazy. Find what works for you! Don’t get discouraged if something doesn’t work down the road or if you fail with an experiment.
My credit card got charged today for my Apple Watch which wasn’t supposed to ship until June. I was so excited that I tweeted the shipping notification to sarcastically note the availability in June still.
Copying that text into a tweet, I actually got:
Preparing for Shipment TODO: Pull info bubble content div up to the order list level (only need 1 per page) and refactor info bubbles into single conditional & span based on group status type OR alternatively, refactor to single info bubble per delivery group based on status shipped shipped Available to ship: June
So it appears that even Apple developers leave TODOs in production code. I don’t feel so bad now that I do it. 🙂
Pro Tip: If your product involves transmission and reception of electromagnetic waves, make sure you have a kick ass signal wherever your big ass banner advertisements are.
I also tweeted about it and the US Cellular support reps, while friendly, just don’t get it.
@astralbodies I'm not showing any reported issues. Have you tried restarting your phone to see if your signal improves? ^Allie
— UScellular (@UScellularCares) April 6, 2015
In my post on using QuickTime to record an iOS device I mentioned the carrier and time are fixed at simple dots and 9:41am. Why 9:41am? Well I knew there was a reason behind it and did a quick search to review the reason.
January 9th 2007 .. iPhone announcement day .. 9:41am:
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/09/live-from-macworld-2007-steve-jobs-keynote/
I got this from Cards Against Humanity today – they accidentally messed up my order and had to apologize in their own style.
Dear valued Cards Against Humanity customer,
We fucked up.
Your order is on its way, but we had a warehousing issue. If you ordered a 2014 Holiday Pack, you’ll receive a Science Pack. If you ordered a Science Pack, you’ll receive a 2014 Holiday Pack. Oops!
We’re really sorry about this, but we’re going to make it right and send you what you actually ordered within the next week. Feel free to keep the extra pack, or gift it to a crappy friend. We understand if you’ve completely lost all faith in us.
Sorry again,
– Jenn and the Cards Against Humanity team
<3
You need to record your iPhone or iPad’s screen to show someone a bug or demo a feature to your customers. In the past the only method available was to use a program like Reflector to emulate an AirPlay/Apple TV and then record on your machine. This works fairly decently although the quality over WiFi isn’t very good leaving you with a less-than-crisp recording. Reflector also isn’t free which makes it difficult for users in the wild to record bugs.
Apple introduced the ability to record the screens of iOS 8 devices with QuickTime Player in Mac OS X Yosemite. You may have already been familiar with the ability to do a screen recording with QuickTime but now those screens includes any of the iOS 8 devices you have connected with a cable. The implications of this new feature include:
Notice that Apple took the time to replace your device’s status bar with one being carrier-free and fixed at 9:41am.
Nice touch.
There are only a couple limitations that I’ve found so far. Finger tips are not shown in the video, so it can be hard to demonstrate things. My suggestion is to talk through the issue or provide a list of things you tapped if its not obvious. Secondly if you’re trying to demonstrate something that involves going full screen (like watching a video on the phone) then the recording will not capture the full screen presentation (it’ll go black). Lastly there is a little bit of lag when you’re recording so make sure to watch the actual device screen and not your computer. If you record audio from your microphone, QuickTime does a good job syncing it up afterwards. This process also works a bit better on newer devices.
Sharing the video you’ve recorded can be a challenge since these videos tend to be of a very very large size in a matter of seconds. Exporting in 480p can definitely help. If you’re providing a demonstration of a bug then you may wish to clip the beginning and end of the movie to only show the actual reproduction of the bug. Follow Apple’s instructions on how to clip a video here.
Reflector is still a great program and very useful. Simple things like being able to add a fake iPhone or iPad frame around the video makes a big difference for demo purposes. I will still continue to use Reflector especially since it’s still the only way to record iOS 7 devices.
The human body seems to have a natural instinct to burn itself out. We find something we like and want to continue receiving those brain signals so we keep on doing the thing. Eventually our brain grows weary and sometimes our body too. My scientific analysis has some gaps but you get the idea. We like to put blinders on until we feel pain that something is no longer fun.
At CocoaConf Chicago, Jaimee Newbury gave an excellent talk on Burnout and how she used her skills as a product designer to battle it. Not only was her talk informative, it was quite moving. She managed to incorporate stories of her family, her childhood and the movie Rocky to help us comprehend why she reached burnout.
Rocky is Jaimee’s favorite movie and from it she remarks on one quote from Sly Stallone – “It doesn’t matter if I lose this fight. All I want to do is go the distance.“ Simply put you’re going to fail in life. The idea is not to let those failures consume you to the point of stagnating your creativity and drive to continue on. We learn from failures – how else would we know when we succeed?
There are four steps in the plan Jaimee is following to help her spin the burnout back into creativity: understand, discover, design, iterate. These are the same steps she would follow when working with product development – why not reuse the tools you already know? First you have to really understand what the problem is you’re trying to solve. Then you have to discover the context of the problem – determine all of the variables, inputs, behaviors, technical issues that cause or interact with the issue. Next, design a solution to help resolve the problem but while keeping in mind the human condition – we can only change so much so fast. Finally, the last step is to iterate because as we go through the journey of change we’ll need to tune things as we discover more about ourselves.
There are a couple big takeaways from Jaimee’s talk that I wanted to share.
I’ve gotten to the point of burnout a few times in my life and I’ve made my own internal rules to deal with situations like this. I don’t think I’ve ever analyzed my process enough to know what it was (or that it really even existed). This talk on burnout has made me understand more about how I approach problems and I’m glad that I do have some analytical assistance from my experience as a software developer. Hacking your own brain and life is quite possible! 🙂
I’ve recently become a fan of Walt Whitman’s poem from 1892 entitled “O Me! O Life!”. I’ve heard the poem in the past but it has never resonated with me until hearing Daniel Steinberg, an iOS developer and trainer, used it in his keynote at CocoaConf Chicago.
O Me! O Life!
Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring,
Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,
Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,
Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?
Answer.
That you are here—that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.
I knew I had heard this before – most likely in commercials and referenced in other stories. I realized where I had heard it recently when Daniel played the Apple commercial that the late Robin Williams narrated lines from Dead Poets Society. It was actually one of the last productions he worked on before his death.
The challenge is to find out how you can contribute a verse to the play that is life. Daniel’s message to us as software developers is that we can both construct our verse and help others contribute their verse to life. The apps we write can unlock the inspiration, provide the accessibility, and fuel the creativity to let people bring their verse into existence.
I’ve never considered the work I do to be something that is capable of changing a person’s life until this past weekend. Viewing the ad Robin narrated again with an understanding of Walt’s poem hit a heart string.
I create apps that people use and touch from the moment they wake up in the morning to the moments before they go to sleep. I am a part of people’s own verses in life without them even knowing I’m there acting as a muse. I help provide the means for the users to help others with their verses.
All of our contributions to life are intertwined. I exist because you exist. Finding your verse in life will ultimately help someone else discover theirs.
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