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2x4 interview on Lifehack

Brett — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 17:25:39 +0000

Just in case you missed it, a 2x4 interview I did for lifehack.org went live today. Thanks to Michael Schechter for the opportunity to talk about life, creativity and productivity.

Originally posted on BrettTerpstra.com at 2x4 interview on Lifehack

Unbelievable fortune

Brett — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 15:31:44 +0000

The simple

I understand why my scalp has never forgiven me for the things I did to it in my teens and twenties.

I understand why my body has never forgiven me for the things I put in it when I was young.

I understand why my future took so long to start.

I understand and accept these things without question.

The unbelievable

I can not comprehend why my ex-girlfriends from my twenties have forgiven me.

I cannot believe my wife puts up with me.

I don’t understand how or why I’ve survived the things I have.

I can’t believe my parents were supportive through the worst of it.

I do not understand or comprehend these things, but I am thankful for them every day.

No related posts.

Originally posted on BrettTerpstra.com at Unbelievable fortune

From my Macworld Diary

Brett — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 02:12:15 +0000

Dear Macworld Diary,

My Tech Talk this morning, “40 Tips in 40 Minutes” with David Sparks and Merlin Mann went really well, I think. I had fun doing it, anyway. I put up some show notes at the soon-to-change 40tips.com, if you’re interested. I’m looking forward to seeing David and Merlin with Rob Corddry tomorrow. If you’re around Macworld, you should probably get there early!

Lunch with Shawn Blanc, Stephen Hackett, Brett Kelly, Ben Brooks, and Thomas Brand was awesome¹. Great to meet so many cool people all at once.

I just got back from a clandestine meeting at the Samovar Tea Lounge (I love that place). I had tea. We had laughs. I was shown software. It was amazing. I will pimp the hell out of it when it comes out in the next couple of months. Until then, all I can say is just prepare to have core elements of your workflow change drastically, for the better. That’s the second game-changer I’ve been shown lately but can’t disclose yet. I will go insane if this keeps happening.

Also, if you are in San Francisco right now, swing down to Jillian’s tonight before 11pm and catch up with the TUAW crew. It’s going to be a good time. Low-key, good conversation, and probably drink tickets.

Sorry, total nerd namedrop linkfest. Really fun bunch, though. ↩

Originally posted on BrettTerpstra.com at From my Macworld Diary

Fall Panorama

Brett — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 21:55:45 +0000

Trail in the bluffs, a photo by terpstra_brett on Flickr.

My Nex-3 makes me quite happy. Also, this Flickr->WordPress deal is pretty slick.

Originally posted on BrettTerpstra.com at Fall Panorama

Why I will never be a wildlife photographer

Brett — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 21:51:23 +0000

Fall 2011, a set on Flickr.

Because I can’t sit still long enough.

Originally posted on BrettTerpstra.com at Why I will never be a wildlife photographer

An unintentional 24-hour Internet break

Brett — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 18:11:04 +0000

I know, it sounds like one of those experiments that the productivity crowd subjects themselves to, just to see what happens. This was not intentional, premeditated or appreciated, though.

A Charter (my ISP) truck showed up outside of our house yesterday afternoon, ostensibly to work on a neighbors connection. Suddenly, the Internet was no more. As the truck drove away, a correlation was made, but it was too late. An immediate call to Charter, 10 minutes of “automated self-diagnosis” and a service rep in another State failed to bring the truck back. “Tomorrow, between one and three,” they said to my wife. I called back, irate, trying not to swear as it began to sink in that their customer service setup was simply a buffer to keep people like me from talking to anyone who could actually do anything. A fence to keep out the rabid dogs, I suppose.

What to do? I suppose we’ve tried to make the best of it. We went for a nice walk around our new neighborhood. We ate a home-cooked meal at the dinner table, which is a rarity. We retired to the living room and watched something my wife tells me is called a “DVD” on our sorely neglected XBox. I had forgotten we had either around.

That was all fine and good, but the next morning it really sunk in. I work from home which, as you can imagine (or well know), requires some connectivity to accomplish. Waking up without the Internet is neither convenient nor pleasant.

My wife, who has recently returned to college at our local University, was rear-ended last week (please, keep your mind out of the gutter). Her truck was totaled, and we let the insurance folks tow it away this weekend. So we have one car, and we live at the top of a very, very tall bluff. Biking to a coffee house is out of the question, and if she dropped me off in the morning before class, I wouldn’t be able to get back to the house during the much-anticipated service window.

Even my cell phone coverage is intermittent, usually boosted by a broadband-driven MicroCell. So I composed a brief explanation of the situation and waited for an Edge signal to show up so I could send it to my co-workers. Then, I had a cup of coffee on the porch and enjoyed the view.

I took a mid-morning nap, just because I could. Now, I’m writing a leisurely piece about the whole thing, but I still have three hours before the service window opens up, and potentially another two hours after that before anything is fixed. I will, obviously, survive. It’s been a stark reminder of how much my life really does revolve around the Internet, though.

Does it bother me that I’m so dependent on the “Cloud?” Not really. I’m a huge fan of the connectedness I feel online. I’m not very good at making and keeping friends in the real world. I don’t really want to be. For me, digital people are much easier to deal with. I’m also quite enamored with the conveniences of the Internet. Conveniences that as a child I never imagined would exist.

Out with my meat-world friends, I regularly use Shazam to identify a song. Then I use the web to learn more about the artist. Spotify instantly gives me a discography and we listen to our new-found artist on the way home. I smile the whole way, just because I never imagined this would be possible.

Debates at dinner are easily ended by my iPhone. Conclusive evidence is presented–complete with backup sources–in a matter of minutes. Information that may have taken a trip home–or even to the library (I think those are still around)–is easily garnered with a speed that would probably have resulted in burning at the stake not so long ago.

At home, my audio and visual entertainment depends upon online services. The catalogs of movies and songs at my fingertips is unfathomable, and I never take it for granted. I get a warm, fuzzy feeling when I think of a movie I want to see and am watching it five minutes later. A song pops into my head, often obscure, and without even being able to remember the title or the artist, I’m listening to it within seconds. Grin.

Now I’m here, without all of these things that I enjoy so much. I don’t like it, and would never claim that I find very much pleasure in being disconnected. Conversely, I do enjoy the unreachability sometimes. Do you remember when the web was a one-way conversation? The curmudgeon in me does occasionally long for that.

That doesn’t last long, though. Eventually, the urge to send a witty tweet and get a witty response arises, and it’s annoying to be unable to act on my impulses. It’s annoying to have to sit with a thought so long that I eventually realize it was neither witty nor worthy of sharing. I shudder to think how quiet the web would be if everyone had this much time to consider their actions.

Am I making the best of this situation? Yes. I’m thoroughly enjoying sitting on the back porch and watching the sky move from rain to sun, studying the traffic patterns of the cars in town–which look like Matchbox® cars from here–and breathing in real, honest-to-goodness clean air. Nothing beeping, buzzing or otherwise distracting me; it’s rather Zen. I know from camping trip experience that it takes at least 24 hours for me to really disconnect my brain. I’ll probably hit that point just as the Charter service tech shows up.

I could probably pontificate on this for another few hours, but I won’t. I’ll try to get some offline work done, then go back to the porch with another cup of coffee. I do apologize for the gap in my blogging schedule over the last few days. Work, Marked and nvALT all got in the way of doing the reviews I have planned. A WordPress/ifttt.com experiment gone horribly wrong on Saturday and now a 24-hour Internet outage (which I may have mentioned already) all conspired to keep this blog quiet. This will be remedied shortly.

Thanks for your patience, and we hope you’ll choose to fly with us again soon.

(As evidenced by this post, I am back online. Yay!)

Originally posted on BrettTerpstra.com at An unintentional 24-hour Internet break

Fog In The Valley

Brett — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 18:28:45 +0000

As some of you may know, my wife Aditi and I moved into a new house last week. It’s been a crazy week of settling in, but it’s already starting to feel like home. As it turns out, I’m less opposed to weekend projects than I had thought I would be. I’m not exactly handy, but I’m learning as I go.

Our house is on one of the highest ridges in our town in the unglaciated¹ region of the Mississippi River Valley. My office includes an eight-foot-wide sliding glass door that faces out onto the valley below, and the view is incredible. I watch the fog roll into the valley every morning, roil and roll over itself and then dissipate as the sun rises. It very well might be one of those things I never get bored with seeing, much like the rest of this gorgeous area.

I made a time-lapse video of the view from my porch using a Nikon D60 connected to my MacBook Air and DSLRemote on my iPhone. A few hundred snaps later, here’s the video…

It wasn’t flattened by glaciers. It’s a hard word to find a definition of, but I swear it’s a real word. ↩

Originally posted on BrettTerpstra.com at Fog In The Valley

Moving day

Brett — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 06:20:27 +0000

We just completed the first day of a cross-town move to our new house. It’s my first foray into home ownership, so this is exciting and a little bit nerve wracking. Thanks to all of our friends who helped make what would otherwise have been an overwhelming task into a fun afternoon.

Originally posted on BrettTerpstra.com at Moving day

Gratitude

Brett — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 13:55:10 +0000

Yesterday’s news of Steve Jobs’ resignation was sad for me. My concern is not for Apple; Apple is a vibrant community of designers and developers and Tim Cook will be excellent at the helm. My concern was for Steve Jobs. He has been one of the few people in my later life that I’ve truly admired, and his work and principles have been of great inspiration to me. I’d like to join many others in saying “thanks, Steve.”

Originally posted on BrettTerpstra.com at Gratitude

Thanks WWDC

Brett — Sat, 11 Jun 2011 00:01:50 +0000

The TUAW Dev Interviews

Thanks to everyone I met at WWDC this year and to the friends I got to see for a great time. San Francisco was as beautiful as ever and the Mac and iOS development communities are, as usual, full of new and brilliant ideas. It’s always heartening to see. TUAW and MacTech will be posting the result of our blogging work at WWDC over the next few weeks.

The Smile party was a blast, and thanks to Jean MacDonald and Smile for throwing such a great geekfest. The TUAW bash was a great time, too, and it was great to see some Apple employees show up (happens less often than you’d think). They were there with Daniel Jalkut, and it was great to finally meet him, too. Violet Blue, Jim Dalrymple, Manton Reese and more than I can remember right now, great to meet you all!

I’m headed back to Minnesota right now, and not looking forward to the two-hour drive I’ll be in for after landing. Then I’ll have about 5 days to get things in order at work, get nvALT 2.1 released and pack before I head off to a family reunion for almost a week. I seem to be moving around a lot for a grumpy homebody. Oh, well.

Feel free to browse my WWDC 2011 photos to see a bit of what went on.

Addendum

So I’m sitting and waiting for a tow truck to come start my car right now, and I realize I forgot to thank Victor Agreda, Jr.¹ who instigated most of these meetings, kept me alive and introduced me to In-n-Out Burger. Thanks, Victor!

See his amazing HTML1-compliant page for more info. ↩

Originally posted on BrettTerpstra.com at Thanks WWDC

A mistake

Brett — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 22:24:29 +0000

I put up a dummy replacement for the Winona Chiropractic site yesterday. I didn’t expect many people to see it, except hopefully the client. It’s gone viral on Twitter in the meantime, and I just wanted to verify that yes, it was real.

I have waited for several years for this client to pay me. I have sent statements. I have been told that it would be “taken care of.” It wasn’t, so I took care of it. That’s all. I am not unprofessional, I am fed up.

Update: I’ve taken the site down entirely. This isn’t really what I want to be known for, and it got a little out of hand. The original site got almost no traffic in the last year, and I didn’t expect anyone but Winona Chiropractic to see it, and I didn’t even expect that to happen very quickly, given that they hadn’t updated it for at least a year. Anyway, Google indexed it, so I made my point, I guess. It’s funny how a few thousand hits all at once makes Google take notice of things. I’ll let you know if anything good actually comes of this.

For the record, I own and control the domain, the server is mine, and I wasn’t paid for the work. There was no hack involved, just me changing a site I built. It didn’t say anything slanderous. I just stated the fact that I hadn’t been paid. I’m not saying it was a brilliant move, but I was at least careful to try and avoid being sued.

For as long as I’ve been on the ‘net, I’ve never really been known for doing anything mean. Seriously. I’ve always made a concerted effort to be nice, albeit sarcastic and a little dry. I don’t like the inordinate amount of damage this thing has and will cause; it’s disproportionate to any damage to me. On the other hand, this whole thing will probably affect my credibility as well, so it kind of comes out even. Right?

I’m not saying I don’t want to get paid, I really do. I’m also not saying that anything I said was incorrect, but my method was a little off-kilter. Like I said, I didn’t really think that anyone other than the client and a few people I actually knew would even see it. I really should have known better. Lesson learned.

Originally posted on BrettTerpstra.com at A mistake

On my way to Macworld ’11

Brett — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 15:12:23 +0000

I’m sitting at the airport on free wifi right now, getting ready to embark on a trip from Minnesota to California for Macworld. If anyone is headed out there, I’d love to meet you. TUAW will be holding a meetup at some point, I think, so watch @tuaw_mwsf for that. I can also be reached on Twitter at @ttscoff, or contact me through the contact form here. I look forward to seeing some new faces and meeting up with old friends!

Originally posted on BrettTerpstra.com at On my way to Macworld ’11

The warmest, fuzziest scary thought

Brett — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 00:35:46 +0000

As a child, my wife Aditi had memorized this poem by Oliver Herford. She remembered enough of it that we were able to find it on the Googles, and I’m absolutely in love with it. As your end-of-the-day, end-of-the-world thought, and as my I-just-ate-my-first-hamburger-in-15-years thought, I present:

Earth

If this little world tonight
Suddenly should fall through space
In a hissing headlong flight,
Shrivelling from off its face,
As it falls into the sun,
In an instant every trace
Of the little crawling things -
Ants, philosophers, and lice,
Cattle, cockroaches, and kings,
Beggars, millionaires, and mice,
Men and maggots all as one
As it falls into the sun…
Who can say but at the same
Instant from some planet far
A child may watch us and exclaim:
“See the pretty shooting star!”

-Oliver Herford

Originally posted on BrettTerpstra.com at The warmest, fuzziest scary thought

Pescatarianism and changing views

Brett — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 14:00:52 +0000

This post is a departure from my usual. I need a chance to think out loud about a larger-than-usual decision I’m making. Bear with me, or skip it entirely if you like. You can always come back again later for nerdier fun. This morning I’m writing about this choice. This is not a life-or-death decision, but it is certainly a change in the way I view the world.

See, I was a Vegetarian for 5 years of my life, and have been Pescatarian (I eat fish) for another 9 years after that. I’ve recently decided that I’m going to eat meat. The beef and poultry kind of meat. I haven’t acted on this decision, yet. I thought that writing this out might help me understand my changing views, so here goes.

Why Vegetarian?

I originally became a Vegetarian because I stopped liking meat. I don’t know if it was the preparation, a blood-type thing, or just a distaste for the weight and texture of meat. After a couple of weeks without, a hamburger felt like a huge snail crawling through my system. A Vegetarian diet didn’t slow me down. It worked.

When it comes down to it, It’s not really about the animals. I do care about animals, probably more than the average animal-lover, but I’m what I would call “pragmatic” about it. I’m not squeamish about blood. I’m not anti-hunting. I understand overpopulation. I understand that the cost of building the living space that I enjoy means displacing a good portion of habitat and that the price is often paid in blood, one way or another. I’ve come to terms with that.

That being said, over the years I have become painfully aware of the horrors of the commercial meat industry. I cannot and will not ever eat meat from animals who have been raised shoulder-to-shoulder like plants, fed chemicals and their own brethren, slaughtered inhumanely and shipped to my grocery store. It’s not my primary reason for being Vegetarian (or Pescatarian); the principles resulting from this knowledge can still be adhered to without forgoing meat altogether. It’s just been what “felt” right for me.

Why Pescatarian?

I can’t fully explain why I decided seafood was going to fit into my overall diet. I think I knew I needed more protein than I was getting, and fish seemed benign enough to not conflict with the feelings I had developed about eating flesh. Somehow seafood didn’t equate to beef and poultry. I’m still squeamish about fish I know are being overfished, and have avoided certain types based on what knowledge I had. I’m also generally careful about where my seafood comes from, but not to the point where I wouldn’t eat sushi out if I didn’t know its origin.

My diet is still primarily Vegetarian, fish is an occasional thing. But I consume it often enough that I can’t call myself a Vegetarian. I’m also very, very far from Vegan. Really, the only things I don’t eat are beef, poultry and pork, as well as a good number of foods that I’m just too damn picky to swallow.

Why not?

I recently watched several TED talks on seafood. I’ve realized that for every shrimp I eat, dozens more creatures of the sea were being killed and discarded. The random destruction of entire ecosystems is a huge price to pay for a small meal. The most frightening aspect, to me, is that–from my location in the Upper Midwest–I have no way to see where my seafood is really coming from, or the impact that its production has. At least with beef, I have the ability to trace the source and understand the process.

It’s really that simple. Once you know something like that, it’s hard to see things the same way. I’m not John McCain. I don’t change my views based on light pressures or a change in wind direction. I am willing, however, to change my stance in light of new facts or new understandings.

Why meat?

I’ve seen the local chicken factories. They’re disgusting. You can smell them for miles. I have no intention of eating what they produce. Nor will I be eating at KFC or McDonald’s (I’ve boycotted McDonald’s for 17 years for reasons mostly separate from their meat sources). However, I’ve also worked on small, independent farms. I’ve slaughtered cows, chickens, turkeys and pigs. I’ve had their blood on my hands and, honestly, it didn’t bother me. I can eat meat from those grass-fed, free-range sources.

Further, and the reason I’m mostly focused on beef right now, is that our cattle are almost entirely dependent on us. They’re a creation of our own breeding and farming techniques. They’re not “wild,” they wouldn’t survive without our intervention. The feelings I used to have about seafood have now transferred to cows. It might just be a mental justification I’ve concocted, but it makes sense at the moment. I still do not want to see any animal raised in horrid conditions and then slaughtered on a conveyer belt. I doubt I will ever want to have any part in that.

As a general rule, I won’t be eating meat (including fish) at restaurants. Unless they can tell me that they’ve sourced their meat locally and can account for its life and death to some reasonable extent, I won’t be able to put it in my mouth. There are several restaurants around here which can actually do that, though, and I’m kind of looking forward to a steak at one of these establishments. Our local co-op also has a great selection of meats from local farmers whose farms I’ve seen, whose cattle I can personally verify is free of growth hormones and other nasties, and whose death I can verify is as humane as a slaughter can be. I’m ready to eat those cows. I think…

Why eat meat at all? Without strong moral objections, I’m finding I’m curious. I might change my mind after a month of trying it. I don’t know. I think there may be health benefits for me, too. I’m told a shift in my diet might help the nasty intestinal problems I’ve suffered from for almost two years now. Maybe it will be more effective than the $10,000 I paid out-of-pocket for hospital stays and tests last year. That’s a lot of money to not have any answers, or even suggestions. Either way, I want to find out. I just need to do it with an understanding of the ecological effect of my decisions, and to eat in a way that helps, in some small way, to create a sustainable way of life on a large scale.

Originally posted on BrettTerpstra.com at Pescatarianism and changing views

Home from Punta Cana

Brett — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 01:26:15 +0000

We made it home from our vacation to Punta Cana late this afternoon. The vacation was amazing, and I made new friends and put some faces (and amazing personalities) with names I already knew. A great time was had by all. The trip home, US Customs, canceled flights and fleabag hotels I could have lived without, but I’m home safe and looking forward to getting back to work, coding on my various projects, and catching up on all of the TUAW news I missed!

My Drobo wasn’t happy to see me, unfortunately, so now I get to try to figure out how to get back a couple terrabytes of data. Good times. Everything else is awesome, though, and a big thanks to our friend Jon Clark for house-sitting and leaving the place better than he found it!

p.s. If anyone has any tips for dealing with a Drobo that lights up everything (full bar across the bottom and a red light on every drive bay) as soon as you plug it in and never attempts to boot, please let me know.

Originally posted on BrettTerpstra.com at Home from Punta Cana