Ever seen the weapons prisoners make out of soap or a spoon? They make do with what they’ve got. Now we’re not saying you should go out and shank somebody – but get creative and you’ll be amazed at what you can make with just a little.

Julie just had a baby shower for our son Joshua – here’s the picture I drew for her. Love you Julie! You’re the best!

From Seth

This is still pretty rough because I’m still hashing out where this whole thing is going. I figure it’s kinda hard to go wrong with wood and paper right? I keep choosing and un-choosing what language I’m writing this thing with, I should actually do a post on that someday! Just wanted to make sure that you knew that I was still up to something.

Why Jonathan Ive? I already have one pad, it’s a cheap multitouch drawing pad but it works and it cost $2.79. Why have you shown up with your keen sense of industrial design and apparent need to have everyones money? WHHHHHHHYYYYYYYYY!?!?!?!

I don’t have too much to say about the iPad yet. The thing is darn pretty but if I had to make a choice between this or the iPod touch I think I would still be leaning toward the touch. The big feature for me would be an awesome drawing app but it seems like that already exists for the touch?

Either way, Apple continues to do a great job in devising more clever and nimble ways to try and wrestle more money from our purses…

In starting to write a fogbugz app, I thought this might be an ideal time to really start learning how to use Flex 4. Wow, I’m glad I did – although – there’s definitely a learning curve moving from 3 to 4. It’s a good thing though, I see where the developer is given a lot more freedom in creating and styling the components in the Flex framework and it’s nice to see states work in a way that is really useful. Here’s how it looks in my really really early early first stab at creating an item renderer:

	<s:states>
		<s:State name="normal" />
		<s:State name="hovered" />
		<s:State name="selected" />
		<s:State name="normalAndShowsCaret" />
		<s:State name="hoveredAndShowsCaret" />
		<s:State name="selectedAndShowsCaret" />
	</s:states>

	<s:Rect left="0" right="0" top="0" bottom="0">
		<s:fill>
			<s:SolidColor color="black"
						  alpha="0"
						  alpha.hovered="0.4"
						  alpha.selected="0.4"
						  alpha.selectedAndShowsCaret="0.4" />
		</s:fill>
		<s:filters>
			<s:DropShadowFilter />
		</s:filters>
	</s:Rect>

You can see where I’ve cleanly defined the states and how the properties correspond with each state. No more addProperty and removeProperty, just nice clean awesomeness. Yay!

As for the actual app, things went fairly fast today. I already was working on a small base of code but I ended up trashing it so I could start clean in Flex 4. I was able to create models for all of the FB objects and was able to knock out the login, syncing FB details (projects, areas, fixFors, etc) and getting the search to work in a fairly rudimentary way. Tomorrow I’m hoping to really clean up the case list area and start working on the view you see when looking at a specific case. Huzzah!

I’ve been using fogbugz for a while, we put in place at work to handle issue tracking and after using a slew of different bug tracking solutions (ok it’s like 6 or 7 but that’s slew enough for me) I have really become very happy using fogbugz. Plus, fogcreek sounds like an amazing place where the sofas are made out of donuts and the water fountains have perfectly carbonated mexican coke. The thing I really like about it though is the api. Knowing that there’s a way out in case some feature doesn’t work the way you want it to is a very comforting feeling. And having worked with it a little in the past I know it’s a very capable api that’ll allow you to code up quite a bit of functionality.

Having said all that, there are some things in fogbugz that don’t work well for me. Namely, time tracking. At work, we don’t use EBS, we use the time tracking feature to bill clients. Since we do that, we have to track every minute of our day. So, this takes some discipline to always remember to set the “Working on” which apparently I’m the only person in the world who has issues with this because I’m always forgetting and having to go back to fix it. When I was designing a small app to help me with this, I came across a few other features that I’d like and it started to develop into an actual app. So here I am, writing a fogbugz interface. Here are the features I’m throwing in here:

Phase 1:

1. Quickly list,add,edit, and view cases.
2. Case search
3. Case history (keeping a running tab of the cases you have looked at)

Phase 2:

1. Automated time tracking: What ever the current case is that you are looking at, that is the case that gets time tracked to it. Switch case, new time entry.

It’s totally not a fleshed out attempt and it’s something I’m doing in my spare time so I don’t know what this will turn into – but – in the end I’m hoping to have a solution for me (and people like me) to easily track time in fogbugz. It’ll be an Adobe AIR app and will most likely be coded out in Flex. I’m wanting to really focus on the ui to create something a little slicker that what I usually do so having a Flash desktop app is the way to go. And considering I’m booted into Windows during the day and OS X at night, I need something that will work on both platforms. We’ll see what happens, I’ll keep you updated!

from afsilva on flickr

Well, today wasn’t perfect. I opened my browser this morning to find a number of tabs containing content that I meant to read last night but ran out of time. I spend so much time consuming that I can barely take it all in that I’ve devised ways to make sure that I don’t miss anything. Anyway, I read the open tabs which led to opening a few more tabs. I caught myself early but still, no way to start an Information Detox (ID). But even though today wasn’t perfect it was certainly different and certainly for the better. It was funny, starting the ID actually left me more time to think and do rather than just consume. I had to find things to do to fill the time that I idly spent on the internet rationalizing that I was “keeping up” and “staying informed.”

The first thing I did? I went to work and I worked my ass off. I’m trying to think of a nicer way to say it but “worked my butt off” or “worked my tail off” do not do justice to what I did today. The only way that statement could be more accurate would be if I said “I worked my f***ing ass off.” Seriously. That’s not to say I don’t do anything at work on a usual basis but there was something totally different about today. I hit it like a freakin bengal tiger and I tore it up and it felt great. I don’t know if it was due to the ID or just from making a change in general but I just found my ability to focus today was unbelievable.

Some other things I did today? I went for a walk instead of cleaning out my feed reader and noticed a lot of cool stuff that exists downtown that I’ve never even seen before. Old interesting factories that were totally deserted (the one pictured above for instance.) Houses nestled between huge slabs of concrete whose front sidewalks seemed to bank at a 45 degree angle. People reading books and walking dogs. I walked through parking lots that I usually only drive by and smiled at people who smiled back at me. We were living our separate lives but for some reason we were together today. I wasn’t just there – I actually was in the moment – I was there.

I did some thinking, I did some walking. I planned, I read, I came, I left. It seems almost silly that I would spend so much time fooling myself that I was really improving my life with all of this information. The problem was that in one single day I feel like I’ve realized that consuming the information is really the tiniest part of the equation. If I’m not living the stuff that I’m reading then why am I reading it? Rather, why am I reading it over and over and over again?

And what else is taking root in my life that I can “detox?” What else can I get rid of that’ll free up more time for these wonderful feelings?

Anyway, on to the next day, I’m looking forward to see what will happen next.

So, I’m thinking it’s time for an information detox. I need to lay off the continuous stream that seems to be clouding my life and instead opt for things that bring results and satisfaction. So, starting now until March 1st, I’m going to abide by the following rules:

1. No blog reader. If I’m searching for info that’s one thing, but to sit down and read everything that spills out of there is really quite the chore. When I’m done, I feel like I need to trim that thing down…

2. Podcasts are ok – but the list needs to be trimmed.

3. No digg, reddit, popurls, failblog, or other junk media sites. I don’t think I’m going to miss these – I can’t remember more than one of the things I saw on there today despite having just spent 20 minutes checking them all out.

4. Sitting down at the computer needs to require a plan and a purpose. No idle surfing because there’s nothing better to do.

5. Facebook is ok, but only once a day.

6. Books are ok too, but try to read something fun and not necessarily educational.

This has been a long time coming – I’ll post some updates to let you know how it goes. I’m off to delete some often used bookmarks…