mostly writing

A Case For Moderate Connectivity

(Originally written on July 20, 2011)

I’m sitting on a cottage porch in rural Ontario just east of Lake Huron. The Georgian Bay has chains of small islands that pop up throughout the fresh water. Rocky shorelines with evergreens surround this idyllic North America summer location spot. It’s about 82º F with a slight breeze. The morning fog has burned off and I just finished a BBQ lunch.

I’m on vacation this week. My wife and I are enjoying some time away at her family’s wonderful Canadian cottage. There’s no electricity here¹, but it is an amazingly comfortable place to live. It’s only accessible by boat, and has running water², propane, kerosene lamps, and tons of natural light. The view is spectacular and July weather doesn’t get any better.

So why am I punching away on my keyboard?

It’s hard to predict when the writing mood will strike. I’m sure forcing myself to write everyday would be a good thing, but I’m not quite there yet. I didn’t bring my laptop on this trip but I did throw my iPad and wireless keyboard in my backpack. I’m comfortable disconnecting (I swear), but I also don’t see a reason to do it just for the sake of doing it. I was exhausted the first day here. I took out the kayak, went swimming, made dinner, and crashed early. It’s typical not to stay up too late here. There’s something about kerosene lamps that naturally brings sleep on by 10 PM.

I woke up the next morning and immediately walked outside along the the deck, moss and rocks and watched one half of the bay’s Loons swim around. Did I mention this place is wonderful?

I felt much more rested on the second day here. We had nearly nothing on the schedule other than cooking meals, installing a new dock ladder, and working on sun screened tans.

Annie and I both love reading. We just have very different tastes. Me: short stories, news, blogs, long-format periodical articles; Annie: Novels, period pieces, and murder mystery novels from the 60s. Before the trip I got her a going away / “thanks for getting me that iPad” gift: A Kindle. By day four here she kind of called me out.

Me: This Kindle is really great. It’s so nice for reading in natural light, and we get free international 3G web access!

Annie: So, you basically bought this thing you really wanted and gave it to me.

Me: For both of us.

Yeah, you can guess how far I got with that. Anyway. Yes, the Kindle is wonderful. I don’t know how good previous generations were, but I’m really impressed with this 3rd edition. It feels extremely thought out. The physical device is substantially lighter than the iPad, has a great case connecting mechanism, and the page turning buttons on both sides are exactly where they should be located. The interface – once you get used to the screen refresh rate – is very efficient. I’ve had a good many hours to play around with it and I’m a total fan. No wonder Amazon is doing so well with these. They’re not trying to compete with Apple.

I’ve been reading a lot: Mostly I have caught up on some very long articles and posts that I had queued away in Instapaper. Without having Internet access on my iPad³, I found that I wanted to spend the time to read these long articles. It wasn’t just the lack of connectivity though, I had the time to spend reading. But, this is my case for limited (Annie likes that more than “moderate”) connectivity: It forces me to slow down.

There was one article I came across that I immediately wanted to send to a colleague and get his feedback. I had some really basic questions formulated, but the drive to send the email was outweighing my need to formulate some more thoughtful questions and suggestions based on what I was reading. Not having access to my email client prevented me from sending that rushed email.

I spent the next day thinking more about the article, and activating the 3G service on the Kindle to do some more research. The Kindle’s browser, by the way, is fantastic. It may be slow to refresh the screen, but once a page is loaded it is rendered very well. “Article Mode” (sort of like Safari’s “Reader Mode”) formats pages almost as well as native Kindle books. 24 hours after having wanted to fire off an email and delegate my own research left me with a much better understanding of the subject material and I had developed some of my own opinions.

Perhaps this is one of those Unintended Consequences of our ultra-connected society. It has certainly made me much more aware of a habit I had formed while not on vacation.

While being completely disconnected has benefits of its own, I’m now convinced that Moderate Connectivity is also a good thing. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed catching up on long articles, short stories, and starting books – between waterskiing and sunning on solar warmed rocks. This trip is helping me think more clearly about some big professional changes I have coming.

If you feel like you’ve been in reaction / fire-fighting mode yourself, I recommend giving yourself some Moderate Connectivity while on holiday this summer.

You Saw This Coming

It’s been one year since I unloaded my iPad. Three blog posts, many conversations, and tinge of personal analysis later I find myself writing this epilogue… on an iPad 2.

Yes, of course I’m using a Bluetooth keyboard.

My incredibly gracious wife only gave me about a week of heckling after I asked her for an iPad for my birthday. Oh, I knew I was in for it well before I verbalized the request. Long story short, she surprised me with exactly what I asked for. I think she likes me quite a bit.

I’ve had this iPad 2 for just under weeks and I’m really enjoying using it. Even though the screen is just as glossy and the same resolution as the first iPad this time around my overall experience has been much better. A lot of it has been personal changes and how I’m using it. I also think the OS upgrade has made a big difference. Multitasking – quickly swapping between applications that retain their state – really makes the iPad feel a lot less like a toy.¹

It’s been particularly good for writing. No explicit distraction free writing app for me. Simplenote is my current editor of choice. I used the free version for awhile and then paid² to support the app, drop the ads, and backup my notes onto Dropbox. I get around a need for a rich text editor by using markdown, which I’m liking more than WYSIWYG editors anyway.

So what has changed? On the hardware side the iPad is now faster, a little bit thinner & lighter, and it has cameras. Sure, the cameras aren’t all that great, but they’re plenty good for video chatting and snapping quick pictures or videos to share. The speaker has definitely changed. Not only is it louder, but it’s now located on the back side of the iPad. This makes it really good for reflecting audio off hard surfaces. I think Apple took a note from their iMac speaker design here. They’re plenty good for listening to music or watching videos in a quiet room.

I went with the Verizon, 32 GB model this time around. I’m really starting to wonder if 32 GB is even too much. I stream almost all of my music from Rdio. (with ~5 GB of offline sync’d audio) I didn’t even both syncing my iTunes music or iPhoto libraries this time around. Why bother when I’m creating all of my playlists and adding all my new music on Rdio?³

As far as the Verizon (over AT&T) choice. I got caught up in hype of this one. So far I have found Verizon’s data network in DC to be worse than AT&T’s data network here. My hope is that it will be better in other places that I visit. I do like that their cheapest plan (1 GB @ $20/mo) is less than AT&T’s lowest (2 GB @ $25 I think). I’ll check back on this in a few months, but I doubt I’ll go over 1 GB with mobile data in a world of near ubiquitous WiFi⁴.

The really big change has been the software. iOS 4 and the number of useful iPad apps has changed how I previously used the device. One of my big issues was that it was too heavy a consumption device. With this external keyboard it’s very much a creation device. No, you can’t run quite as many tabs and multitask as easily as you can on PC, but it’s great for composing thoughtful emails and blog posts.

So yes, I’m pro-iPad once again. Maybe I needed to give it up for awhile to realize that I actually wanted it. I think I knew this as far back as October last year when I wrote about my seller’s remorse and what-was-really-going-on-with-me.

Distractions will always exist. I thought cutting the cord would lead to better focus. While getting rid of my iPad wasn’t a direct fix, it reminded me that I need to make some changes. I’m getting ready to make a significant career shift. That was one of those issues going on last year.

Here’s to realizing mistakes, owning them, and moving on.

This is a Test

Lets see if this properly posts. From email. And all of that. Line 3. 5. Fin.

Five Apps

that I’m totally into right now.

Rdio

I’m certain that Apple will be giving these guys a run this year, but until then I’m more than happy to fork over $10/mo to have a near unlimited collection of new and old music anywhere with an Internet connection.

Oh, and without a connection I sync any music to my iPhone and listen to it offline. Lala was my go to for web music streaming before Apple picked them up. One of the best features (of lala and Rdio) is being able to discover new music through friends, critics, and other users that I follow. It has almost always delivered me interesting bands and albums better than any algorithm. Our 2010 mix was largely compiled through these discoveries.

Google Chrome

I spend the majority of my computer time in a browser. For the past several years my browser choices were Safari on the Mac and Firefox on the PC. Today, it’s Chrome on both platforms. There are so many small features and refinements that have made this my default over Firefox & Safari. Here are the big ones.

• Speed: I’ll skip numbers and just say that Chrome feels faster in rendering pages, running javascript, and opening/closing tabs than any other browser I’ve used.
• Bookmark toolbar / syncing: Does exactly what I want it to and works across all of my PCs and Macs.
• Design: The minimalist aesthetic is one of the first things you’ll notice. Much about why I like Safari over Firefox is because its window dressings (or chrome) are much less distracting. Chrome takes this up a notch and drastically improves on tab management. Google is making a serious investment in design and it shows.
• Auto-updates: Why don’t all applications work this way? Chrome silently updates to the latest version and installs without disrupting the user. It is the best implementation of auto-update that I’ve ever used.

The quality of Chrome is what makes me think that the Chrome OS netbooks will be something to take seriously. I predict they will be a serious contender to displace Apple’s notebook market share.

Buster Benson is an impressive individual. He’s single handedly created several well-designed and uniquely useful web applications. The first one I came across this past summer is called 750 Words. It’s a private journal that encourages users to write 3 pages of text (750 words) a day. You get a daily friendly nudge of encouragement, and you get to set personal goals & repercussions for meeting or missing the larger goal of committing to writing every day for a month.

I committed to writing for the month of March. It has been a surprisingly helpful way to dump and work through my thoughts. Another fun feature for us data loving geeks: linguistic analysis on your entires. Your text is analyzed every day and findings are reported: It includes everything from Words/Minute to feeling Affectionate vs. Self-Important in your writing.

Health Month

Another Benson original. You set a bunch of health goals for a month and see if you can meet them. Goals include dos and dont’s: x cups of coffee / week & y days of exercise. Like 750 Words, you also set your reward or punishment if you don’t meet these goals, but there’s also a huge social aspect to encourage you along the way. Not surprisingly, you won’t be disappointed with any lack of data visualization.

I really enjoy these subtle uses of technology to nudge us into making good behavioral changes. I think Buster is onto a new class of apps that we’ll continue to see grow.

5BY5

Not exactly an application that fits with the rest of these, but this is by far the most well executed tech podcasting website / network that I’ve seen. Dan Benjamin is an extraordinary DJ / co-host / promoter / designer / programmer with exquisite taste in guests.

I first got turned onto this site when Marco Arment* was interviewed on the 5BY5 show, The Pipeline. Then I realized there was another dozen amazing interviews just on The Pipeline alone. Then I discovered that almost every show on 5BY5 is really high quality. You’ll learn something and almost certainly smile or laugh during each episode.

If you subscribe to only one podcast on the 5BY5 network make it Back To Work. I am a huge Merlin Mann fan. I’ve not only learned a ton about myself through this show, but I totally enjoyed the process while listening. Hilarious and extremely useful.

Runners Up

Here’s a few that almost made my list, but I need some more time with them.

• Pinboard.in - delicous-like bookmarking replacement (that will allow me to set private as the default!) Super fast and clean UI.
• Swackett - weather reports rethought: tells you what to wear
• New Twitter - Twitter’s latest web interface refresh. Top notch.
• Simplenote - Probably should be on the list. I use it almost everyday.

* Instapaper should be on this list, but I’ve been using it for years and I’m trying to keep my selections fresh.

On Living In Public

For me, what’s different about writing a diary in public is that I continue to think about these posts after I publish them. Anyone can read this. I feel responsible for what I post. That’s probably why I was still thinking about that June post three months later.

A week or so after writing a follow up I came across one of the many Merlin gems. First, care. hit home, and it surprised me by how relevant it was to why I thought I got rid of my iPad.

In my experience (yes, as I said, hard-won experience), obsessing over the slipperiness of focus, bemoaning the volume of those devil “distractions,” and constantly reassessing which shiny new “system” might make your life suddenly seem more sensible–these are all terrifically useful warning flares that you may be suffering from a deeper, more fundamental problem.

In this case, I wasn’t obsessing over the latest GTD app or lifehacker article. No, I was taking a muchlarger stance on increasing productivity. Get rid of that extra lap—er—thigh computer. It’s weighing you down! Let’s hear it for the luddites. 

Wow. I completely missed what was really going on with me. For months.

I spent so much energy analyzing and justifying why I sold this device that I owned for only two months. I actually went so far as to say that now—iPad free—I was more social, reading more books, multitasking less… Really? Owning and selling it changed me twice in just a few months?

Nope.

It’s hard to admit, but going through this process has made me realize something larger and more important: I’m not caring enough about how I spend my time. And I’m looking for excuses to avoid answering “What do Ireally care about and how can I focus on that?” What now, Mr. Mann?

My suggestion? Own your distractions, resist fiddly half-measures, and never for a minute allow yourself to believe that productivity systems, space pens, or a writing app that plays new age music while you stare at a blank page in full-screen mode can ever teach you anything about how to care.

It is amazingly easy to get sucked into the minutiae of self analysis (metacognition?) while avoiding the big questions. I’ve got a few ideas on how to course correct. This post is a start. Thanks for reading and for passively applying public pressure.

Oh, and you can go buy an iPad now (but I would wait for the next release—hopefully 12 ounces lighter with an anti-glare, Retina display).

Metacognition (or why I might have sold my iPad)

It’s been three months since I’ve sold my iPad. Part of the reason why I wrote that last post was to help me deal with both buyer’s and seller’s remorse. I had a few friends thank me for writing it and a few not say anything to me about it. Since then, I’ve seen colleagues, family, and friends with their shiny, 1.5 lb, Apple toy, and I’ve missed it. But, I was so convinced that getting rid of it was the right thing to do. Really? Wait, “it was the right thing to do?” Is that that you again, super-ego?

My previous post highlighted a number of technical shortcomings of the device.

Too heavy. Too bright. Too low DPI. Typing sucks. No Flash support.

Who cares? The iPad is selling like crazy, and users seem to love it. People I respect love it (or at least own it). There are some very innovative apps popping up, too. I’m not much of a gamer anymore, but I did find myself in an Apple Store last weekend playing with the Labyrinth 2 HD gyroscope maze game that I used to have in wooden form as a kid. While at my in-laws a month or so ago, I loaded up Flipboard and was immediately taken by the user experience. It was both fun and effective at browsing web articles like flipping through a magazine.

I came to the conclusion in my last post that the technical shortcomings were not the primary reason that I sold the iPad. In June, I thought the main reasons why I sold the iPad were because

1. I could not recommend my friends and family to buy one.
2. While at home, it sits on the table while Annie and I use our laptops.

Perhaps true, I don’t think those reasons are really getting to the root of what drove me to sell an expensive device (from a company whose devices I love) after owning it for just over a month.

Last Thursday and Friday, I attended the first east coast Internet Identity Workshop in my current hometown. This geeky unconference has been taking place in the bay area for five years and this was the first stop in DC. It was a completely worthwhile and fulfilling experience, both professionally and personally. Identity Commons has been fostering a community that really cares about technology, identity, and how we tackle the big Internet challenges in this space. IIWs give an opportunity for members in this community to meet, face-to-face, and talk about how to solve online identity problems.

Now, if you couldn’t have guessed by now, the attendees are mostly (completely) really, really techie. Dinner conversation consists of debating whether Diaspora has a chance against Facebook. Or how OkTrends is an amazing blog (and having the person sitting across from you quote the exact post to which you are referring).

This crowd embodies the term early adopter. So, it should come as no surprise that there were dozens of iPads in use throughout the two day workshop. Wait, why did I sell mine? These wicked-smart, tech kids seem to love it. Am I the one missing out?

Did I mention how much I enjoyed the IIW and how many meaningful verbal discussions I had? At the end of the day I realized that both my personal iPhone and work BlackBerry batteries were nearly full. I had gobs of unread emails. Did I missing being able to read and tap at them all day? Not a bit. Would I have gotten more from the workshop if I was reading the #iiw feed on Twitter? Nope. I had so many useful ideas and contacts at the end of the day that I was more concerned with writing them all down.

While I was drawn to the iPads that I was seeing everywhere I turned, I’m fairly certain that I had a substantially more productive day without having one by my side. I pulled my laptop out to transcribe notes from a couple sessions, made a few phone calls, but that was pretty much it as far as using technology. Not only did I not need the digital hip flask, I was better without it.

I’ve been thinking about writing this follow-up post for the past couple of weeks. When I pulled up Tumblr tonight to sit down and write it there was a quote post from superamit sitting at the top of my Dashboard about Metacognition and Self-Control.

Metacognition is basically thinking about thinking. It’s a skill that all highly disciplined people share. It allows you to outsmart your shortcomings.

Maybe that’s what happened here. I know how easily distracted I can be. Do I really need another interactive device that has a single, shiny button nudging me to context switch? No! I fight to finish books of any length. Not only is the iPad’s screen uncomfortable for reading, the Kindle may be better for reading since it is actually difficult to do anything on it but read. I couldn’t find the original article where Marco (I think) mentioned this, but I did like this one,

The iPad is a great casual computer, but the Kindle is the superior reading device.

I don’t own a Kindle, and I’m not in any hurry to get one, but I’d argue that metacognition would drive me to get one over an iPad - simply to keep me focused.

Maybe I’m giving my subconscious too much credit. Time will tell. I do know that since the sale, I’ve been throughly enjoying Shop Class as Soulcraft (in paper form), and I’m over halfway finished with it.

Why I sold my iPad

My wife and I bought a 3G iPad last month.  It was a gift to ourselves.  We knew it was a luxury purchase, and we were totally excited to have it for a recent trip abroad.  It took a little over two weeks to get it after we purchased it from the online Apple Store.  The anticipation grew.  It came literally hours before we had to leave for the airport on our trip to Croatia.  I rushed through the typical Apple product unpacking, got the 3G connection set-up, loaded all my iPhone apps, added a bunch of Breaking Bad episodes, synced all of my Instapaper articles and we were on our way.  There’s nothing like an 8 hour plane ride to dig into a new device.

I had high expectations for this device.  I’ve been incredibly impressed with the iPhone.  So impressed that I will recommend it thoroughly to my friends and family.  I only recommend products I truly love. (I’m a bad liar)  I really do feel that the iPhone is the best mobile Internet + phone + music player out there.  I recently got a BlackBerry for work.  My eyes hurt trying to read the tiny default fonts.  It may have a keyboard, but my fingers have grown since I was 8 years old.

I knew that the iPad wasn’t as big of a launch as the iPhone, but Jobs’s RDF is strong.  I wanted to hold web pages in my hand while lounging on the couch.  I do this with my laptop all the time.  This was the device for me!

But after about 3 weeks with iPad, I came to a few tough realizations.

• It’s heavy, much heavier than a book.  Find your best pillow to prop it up if you plan to read for more than 10 minutes.
• The screen is very, very glossy.  Maybe it’s just as glossy as recent Apple laptops.  Maybe I’m spoiled with my unibody MBP’s matte screen.  I was getting a lot of iPad glare in all except the darkest of rooms.
• The screen is bright, really bright.  Even though this setting is adjustable, I found my eyes straining to read text after 20 minutes or so.  It’s hard to describe.  I can read for hours on end on my laptop, but the iPad screen was actually harder on my eyes than a monitor or iPhone.  Maybe it was because I held it closer to my face.  Movies look gorgeous, but for anything that requires fine focusing (e.g. reading – my primary use of the iPad) I found myself straining earlier than I would have expected.
• Screen resolution is low and not of widescreen aspect ratio.  The iPad is 1024 x 768 (remember when that was the default on many PCs … in 1999?) and the pixel density is 132 ppi (pixels per inch).  Today’s iPhones are 163 ppi.  That means the iPad is grainier than the iPhone (and I’m keeping iPhone 4 out of this conversation).  Most movies are widescreen, which means big black bars on the top and bottom.  For a screen that is better at displaying movies than text (see above) it would be nice if the aspect ratio followed with most of today’s LCDs.  At least 16:10.
• Typing is awkward.  Significantly more awkward than the iPhone.  Wait, isn’t the typing surface area larger than the iPhone?  Yes!  It is a lot larger, but when I held it in portrait with both hands, and tried to type with my thumbs, I was a lot slower than I am with my iPhone.  If I set it down on a surface and tried to type I was faster, but really just longed for a real keyboard.  Annie and I thought typing in the 2x version of the Facebook app (which renders an iPhone style keyboard) was actually easier than the native resolution iPad keyboard.
• No Flash support.  Okay, I didn’t expect to join the masses in bashing Apple for their lack of Flash support.  I loathe Flash ads and all the poor Flash apps out there, but lets face it – there are also a ton of useful Flash apps on the web.  Annie watches Hulu, Fancast and other TV websites a fair bit.  They don’t have native apps yet.  My bank’s website uses a flash one-time password app to enable login.  NYTimes has released a lot of great visualizations using Flash.  I want to see the web move forward with HTML5 and less Flash, but the fact is that there’s a lot of Flash out there and if the iPad is supposed to replace my couch surfing laptop, it should support flash.  (Note: I haven’t missed Flash on my iPhone, but I think the screen size is a big part of that)
• It doesn’t fit in my pocket.  I know it’s not a phone, but if I’m using my laptop at home, and my phone is dirt simple to carry when I travel, when am I actually using the iPad? 

I know there are a few more small things, but the following two reasons are the ones that pushed me to list, sell, and ship my iPad off in the mail today.

1. I could not recommend my friends and family to buy one.
2. While at home, it sits on the table while Annie and I use our laptops.

This brand new, snazzy, best of breed techie gadget was gathering dust after not even one month.  I knew that if I wanted to capture at least most of what we paid for it, I would need to sell it sooner rather than later.  So that’s what we did.

Is there anything good about the iPad?  Absolutely.  Will it get better?  I have no doubt.  Give me a much lighter, cheaper, easier-to-read (+retina) display, front facing camera, and I will reconsider, but I still do question how much of a laptop replacement it can be without a physical keyboard.  I want to Command-Tab between apps.  I want to open up 20 tabs, each with a new flickr image that my contacts posted.  I want to blather away on an email or blog post without reaching for my wireless bluetooth keyboard.  I can’t do those things with the iPad today, and that’s why I’m giving it up for a couple years.

Thanks to Marco Arment and Jeff Atwood for inspiring me to let it go (even if that wasn’t your intent, Marco.)