App on The Dangling Pointer

Being Mindful for 122 Days

Sat, 20 May 2017 13:44:13 +0000

It's been nearly four years since I started the journey of understanding how my attention & focus work. Along the way I've learned several things that have been key factors in developing tools to modify my behaviors to perform better.

Most importantly any tools/habits you use or create are ephemeral. The tool may or may not work for you. Maybe the tool works for you for a couple months but then it becomes a hinderance. Possibly even the tool feels like it has always worked but something lets you understand it never really did help. The key thing to realize is your toolbox will and should continually change with you over time. No matter what people say you're a continually changing person - even old dogs learn new tricks. It's okay to throw things out and to try new things.

Don't try to change too much too quickly. This is probably just as important as the first key but it's not very obvious until you start trying new things. If you try to change too many things or switch a habit drastically it's much easier to abandon when you don't feel immediate successes. Instead try to incrementally change towards something longer term.

I've always wanted to have a meditation practice and make it part of my daily regimen. I felt it was the one missing piece to my daily routine with exercise that could help curb some of the ADHD symptoms. The problem was I didn't know where to get started and was really afraid of being a failure. I've always had a very open heart and mind when it comes to spirituality - if I couldn't "get" meditation then that would make me question a lot of things. I realized that my biggest fear was based upon my perception of how meditation can work and look.

Mindfulness meditation is one of the many ways you can practice meditation. Specifically it focuses your mind on being present in the moment - to be aware of what you're doing but not getting overwhelmed or misdirected by emotions, memories, and other inputs. My husband started meditating with the Calm iOS app to help with his challenges with anxiety. I learned that meditation doesn't require hours of effort every day and having an app on my phone made the barrier to entry super low. It also helped that he broke the ice by starting the practice and the two of us support each other with motivation to try to get a session in every day.

My Favorite Screenshot Tool - SnagIt

Mon, 30 Nov 2015 02:44:58 +0000

I've been using Techsmith's SnagIt for years for taking screenshots. It started as a Windows-only product but then a Mac version came out. It's extremely simple to use and has most everything I want for a quick image including cropping, border effects, transparency, and annotations like arrows and text.

What's your favorite screenshot and annotation tool?

Limiting Data While Tethering on a Mac

Tue, 23 Jun 2015 17:19:27 +0000

Using Too Much Data

Being a remote worker, I tend to work at home a lot. I also like to roam around to coffee shops and coworking spots on occasion in addition to traveling to meet up with my coworkers. This means I tend to tether quite often and use mobile data.

One of the biggest annoyances I have with Mac OS X is that in 2015 it isn't aware of tethered vs. (relatively) unmetered connections. I wish there was a mode in Mac OS X that would intelligently back off autoupdates, file sync, and other expensive data operations while on specific connections. This includes when you're tethered to your iOS device using the iCloud automatic tethering option and WiFi access points you've specified as being metered connections.

Live Storm Chasing App

Mon, 28 Apr 2014 02:23:43 +0000

Enjoy chasing storms from your couch like me? There's a great app called "TVNweather Live Storm Chasing" that I've been using to watch live streams from actual storm chasers out in the field. You'll see names like Reed Timmer (TornadoVideos.net) and the team running the Dominator 2.

TVNweather Live Storm Chasing for iOS

The app itself needs some work with stability, but the collection of active streams is incredibly handy and fun to watch. An Android version is coming soon as well. Until then you can also watch on their site at http://tvnweather.com/live.

Grilling Season with my Range Thermometer

Sat, 26 Apr 2014 23:58:21 +0000

It's grilling season again (finally) here in Wisconsin. I got my Range iOS-enabled thermometer over the winter season and only used it once with a ham. I used it today with grilling burgers, brats and steak and really enjoyed it.

The Range thermometer is really fast at responding to temperature change. The problem I always have with even the best analog thermometers is that once they reach a high temperature, it's hard to test temperature of meat that may be a little bit colder. I can move the Range thermometer around from each thing on the grill and not have to wait for it to reset.