New Room 34 CD coming soon…

The time has come once again for me to engage in the extreme narcissism of producing a compilation album. I’ve recorded a crap-ton of music this year (even outpacing 2008, my most prolific year to date). Most of it I’m pretty proud of. Some, not so much. But this CD is just the good stuff. 13 tracks, 10 recorded in 2011 and 3 recorded in 2010. All remixed and remastered, with a kick in the pants in the form of boosted bass. So if you like your music with more low end than I’m accustomed to giving, this CD should suit you fine.

I’m putting the finishing touches on the masters this week, and am hoping to have the CD ready for production next week. In the meantime, here’s the cover art…

Update: So, yeah… this is available now. You can get it on iTunes or Amazon MP3 or, if you prefer physical media, direct from Kunaki. No free downloads yet. TBD on that.

140 characters

Picking up where the last post left off, this morning SLP and I were discussing the frustrations some people have with Twitter, and their frequent inclination to dismiss it wholesale as a result. One of the biggest complaints always seems to be that you “can’t say anything” in 140 characters. That the brevity of a tweet naturally leads to flippant, ill-considered, 2 short & hvly abbrvtd, or just plain pointless missives fired into the vast, chaotic fray of similar voices, loudly saying nothing.

As I usually do at this point (although maybe she beat me to it this time), I brought up haiku. Most haiku poems could easily fit within the 140-character confines of a tweet, but few people dismiss the haiku form as too brief to convey meaning. In fact, I was inspired to compose a haiku on the topic of Twitter itself, which I subsequently tweeted, of course:

Twitter, like haiku,
Is brief, but you can still say
Something meaningful.

Of course Twitter, like all forms of communication, has limitations. And of course some of what ends up on Twitter is pointless babble. Just because someone gives you the tools doesn’t mean you know how to use them. But to dismiss the entire platform simply because it has constraints or because you don’t like the way certain other people are using it is as silly as dismissing haiku because you can’t write a dissertation in 17 syllables.

But sometimes that’s all you need. Is this 262-word blog post really more effective at communicating the merits of Twitter than my (as SLP called it) twaiku?

On digital literacy and the confidence to fail

A few weeks ago, I tweeted this:
[blackbirdpie id=”111598134282551297″]

Today at lunch SLP and I were discussing digital literacy and I was reminded of this tweet. On reflection, I’d amend it slightly. Being a computer expert isn’t 90% not being afraid of the unknown, as much as it’s 90% not being afraid of screwing up.

Everybody screws up. The only way you can avoid screwing up is by not doing anything in the first place. (Which is, I think, a kind of failure itself.) So, are you going to face that inevitability with confidence, or are you going to deny it by not even trying?

This doesn’t just apply to computers. It applies to everything. Computers (and other technological gadgets) are just perhaps the most obvious place in modern life where the fear of failure clearly manifests.

There’s something related to this fear and avoidance of failure: a lack of mindfulness. Again, not something specific to computers. When we are fearful, we can get absorbed in that fear, and forget to pay attention to what’s happening around us. Ironically, it is precisely that fear, leading to a lack of mindfulness, that can often be what leads to failure. By fearing failure, we make failure more likely.

On the other hand, by facing the potential for failure with confidence, knowing that failure isn’t doom, we can clear distraction from our minds, remove the clouds of confusion, and see what is before us, which is the most important key to accurately assessing a problem and finding a solution.

More specifically, when confronted with an unfamiliar technological interface, it’s easy to get overwhelmed, and to panic, and to either screw up or give up. But technology is nothing to fear. It’s merely a tool. Approach it with confidence, take your time, try things. Don’t be afraid to “break it.” If something could be broken so easily, it’s probably not worth bothering with anyway. It takes a lot to “break” a computer, generally involving a sledgehammer or being dropped from a 5th-story window, not a few errant mouse clicks.

There’s another benefit to mindfulness and confidence: it makes seeking help easier. I’ve worked tech support, and in that job there’s nothing more frustrating than having a user tell you something “doesn’t work,” with no further elucidation. At worst, it leads to the assumption that the user isn’t trying (or is stupid), and even at best it’s unproductive. But when you’re confident enough not to become overwhelmed, and mindful enough to pay attention to the details of what you’re doing, you can provide a much more thorough explanation of the problem to the person who’s trying to help you.

So, don’t be afraid. Your computer can’t hurt you. More importantly, you can’t hurt it. Take your time and, if necessary, a deep breath. Observe. Think. And if you screw up, try something else. It won’t hurt.

Is iCloud deleting your iCal events? Here’s a possible solution

Like many Apple enthusiasts, I spent much of the day yesterday updating software. Mac OS X 10.7.2, iTunes 10.5, iOS 5, and… iCloud. I’ve been relying on MobileMe for a little over a year to keep my mail, notes and calendars (mostly) in sync. I was not an “early adopter” with MobileMe, so I escaped the first-day glitches that promted Steve Jobs to declare the system’s launch “not our finest hour.”

Less than a day into my experience with iCloud, I’d have to say that this launch also is not Apple’s “finest hour.” There have been numerous complaints today about iCloud mail outages (following what I have observed as several days of flaky MobileMe mail performance). But without a doubt the biggest issue for me personally has been related to iCal.

After completing the iCloud transition yesterday, to my dismay I discovered that all of my iCal events were duplicated! My MobileMe account and my iCloud account were both showing up, with all of the same events. Now, in retrospect, the correct thing to do would probably have been to go to Preferences > Accounts and just delete the MobileMe account from my iCal configuration. But is that what I did? Why, no, of course not! I proceeded to delete all of my individual MobileMe calendars. That appeared to do the trick. The iCloud calendars were still there, and every event was just showing up once.

But then this morning I sat down at my computer and discovered — to my horror — that everything was gone. At some point yesterday, when I wasn’t looking, MobileMe and iCloud synced up, and deleted all of my events.

Time Machine to the rescue!

I opened up my Time Machine backup from yesterday afternoon… sometime just before I had made the iCloud transition. I drilled down to [home]/Library/Calendars. (Note that Library is now a hidden folder, but I have my system set to show hidden files and folders*.) I found the multitude of .ics files that represent each individual calendar event, and dragged them into iCal. At first, things seemed great… until I noticed that one by one, the events started disappearing from my calendar again! Apparently iCloud didn’t like having these events show up in the calendar in this way — probably because it recognized them as being events I had “deleted” yesterday — so it “helpfully” removed them again.

AAAAARGH!!! How am I supposed to get these events back into iCal when iCloud just deletes them as soon as they’re added?! Then it hit me… you don’t have to put events into iCloud calendars.

iCal also allows you to created local calendars (“On My Mac”). My solution was to — temporarily — create new “On My Mac” calendars, add the events to those calendars, then export those calendars and import them back into the iCloud calendars. (Then the “On My Mac” calendars can be deleted.) It worked!

Here are step-by-step instructions to do what I did, in case you’ve found yourself in the same conundrum.

1. Find the old calendars in your Time Machine backup. You could open Time Machine to do this, but I like to just explore the disk in the Finder. (The remaining instructions assume you’re taking my approach.) The most important thing is to determine the date and time when your last “good” iCal backup would be. Drill down into that backup to your home directory (that would be something like [drive name]/Users/[username]), and then to Library/Calendars. (Remember that Library may be hidden; if so, see the footnote below.) You’ll see one or more weirdly-named folders. Each of these represents a separate calendar in iCal. Inside each is a directory called Events, and inside that are all of the events on that calendar, each with a filename ending in .ics. If you have more than one calendar folder, you can tell which calendar this is by selecting one of the events in the Finder; its icon will show its date and title. Keep this folder open; you’ll need to come back to it in a later step.

2. Create a new “On My Mac” calendar in iCal. Go to File > New Calendar > On My Mac. Call this calendar whatever you want. If you have multiple calendars, like I do, you’ll need to repeat this process for each of them separately (to keep your events from all getting jumbled together in one calendar).

3. Set the new “On My Mac” calendar as the default calendar. This can be found under iCal > Preferences > General > Default Calendar. When you drag events into iCal, it automatically assigns them all to the default calendar, so this is a pretty important step. Reassigning the events to a new calendar once they’ve already been imported can be a pain.

4. Drag all of the backed-up events into iCal. Go back to the Time Machine backup window you left open in step 1, select all of the .ics files, and drag them into the iCal window. Depending on how many there are, it may take a while for them all to load. Once they’re in, proceed to the next step.

5. Export the “On My Mac” calendar. It can be tricky to make sure you’re getting iCal to export the correct events. Click the Calendars button in the upper left of the iCal window (on the brown “binding” of the cutely skeuomorphic interface), find the “On My Mac” calendar that you’ve added all of the events to, and right-click (Control-click) that calendar to get a contextual menu. Click Export... and follow the prompts. I recommend saving the exported file to your desktop.

6. Set the appropriate iCloud calendar as the default calendar. This is a repeat of step 3, but this time you’re changing it to the iCloud calendar you want the events to be loaded into.

7. Import the exported calendar file into the iCloud calendar. Go to File > Import > Import... and locate the file you created in step 5.

8. Delete the “On My Mac” calendar. Once you’ve completed the import (and have confirmed that the events are not disappearing), you can safely delete the “On My Mac” calendar you created. Click the Calendars button in the brown “binding” again, right-click (Control-click) the “On My Mac” calendar, and select Delete from the contextual menu.

9. There’s no step 9!

* To get your system to show hidden files and folders, open up Terminal and type this: defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE then hit Return, type this: killall Finder and hit Return again.

How are Beatles albums like mobile-first web design?

When I’m meeting with clients and collaborators to discuss building websites, I like to make analogies. As the representative “tech geek” in most of these meetings, I find them the best way to convey the meaning of esoteric technical concepts, even if they’re sometimes rather strained. (I make car analogies a lot, for some reason.)

The other day I was explaining my two favorite (and overlapping) current trends in web design: Responsive Web Design and Mobile First. (How convenient that A Book Apart has books on both topics. I mention A Book Apart a lot in meetings, too.)

Suddenly in the meeting it occurred to me that mobile-first web design has an analogy with the production of most of the Beatles’ albums. In the early and mid-1960s, popular music was released primarily in mono format. Most of the market for these albums was listening to them on small mono turntables, not expensive stereo equipment. (And apparently at the time mono equipment could not properly play back stereo records.)

When the time would come for the Beatles to prepare the final mixes of their albums, the band members would join George Martin in the studio and carefully perfect the mono mixes. Then the boys would all head to the pub and leave George Martin alone to hastily assemble the stereo mixes as an afterthought. (And, frankly, it shows.) But somewhere along the way (in 1968, specifically) stereo had caught on enough that the last few albums (Yellow Submarine, Abbey Road and Let It Be) were mixed in stereo first.

The web is kind of like those Beatles albums. Up until now, websites were designed for “mono”: a computer screen. Eventually enough people started using the web “in stereo” (on mobile devices) that mobile versions of websites became necessary, but they were a hasty afterthought. But we are presently arriving at a time when a lot of people are doing a lot, if not most, of their web browsing on mobile devices, of a variety of shapes and sizes and capabilities. It’s starting to make sense not just to consider mobile versions, but to start with the mobile design.

Fortunately, we’re also at the point (to, as usual, strain the analogy) where the mono equipment can play back stereo records. There’s no need to design two separate websites, one for mobile and one for desktop. Responsive web design (via the magic of CSS3 media queries) lets us build one site that works on any screen.

But why mobile first? I see two main benefits, stemming from one main factor: the small screen size. By targeting the smallest screens first, you 1) focus on what’s most important, and 2) can more easily see what’s not important… or, at least, less important.

Mobile first fits well with the model of best-practices web design I like to promote. The decisions you make to create the best mobile experience will generally create the best experience, period. Granted, the needs of a visitor on their way to your office and checking your site on their smartphone may well differ from those of the visitor casually browsing your site on their iPad in bed, or from the customer placing an order from their office PC, but it’s easy enough to enhance the experience for users of those larger displays after the core needs of the mobile user have been addressed.

It’s an exciting time to be a web designer. Things are really starting to… come together.

(Come on, you knew I had to end with a Beatles reference.)