Fashion Sense

Let he who hath never worn parachute pants cast the first stone. - Jim Butcher

It's be an interesting experience learning over the past years that I have no ability to coordinate my clothes. Some how I made until my early thirties thinking that I was okay at this. I certainly didn't think I was "fashionable" but my system of wearing a shirt I liked paired with pants I liked apparently was not how you're supposed to match.
My lovely wife pointed this out to me once we had been dating long off she could. Many times my clothing was just "unmatched" and sometimes it was an attrocity. It culminated in a moment when we were meeting the insurance agent so I made sure to put on a burgandy polo shirt to look nice and then my khakis were still in the dryer, so I just put on my green camo cargo pants. Of course, I forgot to change pants, and showed up with that shirt and those pants not really thinking "well this looks horrendous." I just thought, "a bit awkward." The first words out of Mrs.Chaos' mouth when she say me was "what are you wearing?!?!"
Many men solve this problem by only wearing jeans which apparently match everything. Other men solve it by only wearing black and blue. Me? I just struggle though it. I'm being educated on how to match. Slowly.
But for some reason, before I had even passed remedial matching, my wife upped the game. Why be stuck with just some white undershirts when you could have v-neck sand whole set of colors of shirts? I feel like I got moved out of remedial matching way too early.
 

Changing the Workflow

The world hates change yet it is the only thing that has brought progress. - Charles Kettering

I wouldn't call myself a "lifehacker," but I certainly do like my workflows. Lifehackers tweak and optimize lots of things in their life to do things really efficiently and often in creative ways. I do have a lot little optimized flows, but it's not like I'm constantly looking for more. The problem with optimizing a flow is that things change and then you either need to change your flows or be stubborn and keep doing it the old way.
These three weeks of WWDC, Google I/O and whatever else other companies announce are weeks where we learn how our great technology leaders will make us change our lives. We say a lot in the software world that if you change anything, twenty-percent of people who use it will complain about it. It's not because the old way was "better" exactly, just that they had built a habit out of the old way and change can be annoying.
These can be big changes - like I had a really optimized flow for updating my website that involved TextWranger and custom AppleScripts for formatting and updating. I switched over to Google hosting and had to create a new flow. It seemed like it should be easier, but Google forced some formatting on me and it took a lot of tweaking to get my quote box working again and my random picture widget running. All working, right? So then I decide I want to do updates on my iPad and get the best program out there, Blogsy. Great, right? Not so great, because it does something different with formatting and so I struggled against to invent the new process flow so I could have my quote box, my image and it would all look good on the site, in mobile and through RSS. All working nicely now.
But there can be simple flows that get easily broken. How do you put your phone in your pocket? Me? I put it in my pocket with the earphone jack up and the screen facing out. I pull it out my pocket with two fingers on the sides and gravity rotates it into the correct position. Now I hear that Apple is going to move the headphone jack to the bottom of the phone. This will be AWESOME for my use in the car, but I have to switch my workflow for taking out my phone. Crazy, right? So I'm practicing putting it into my pocket with the screen facing in and the dock connector up. It's pretty natural - I should learn it fast!
I don't complain much about these things. I try and channel the people who make it and figure out the right way to get my job done.
Speaking of which - Blogsy just update from v3 to v4 and this appears to have broken my quote box again. PROGRESS!

Living in a Post-PC Era

I think PCs are going to be like trucks: less people will need them. And this is going to make some people uneasy. - Steve Jobs

The industry keeps telling me that we're entering the post-PC era. I had a US Robotics Palm Pilot in 1997, loved it, and used it constantly. People would see me reading novels, entering appointments, playing games, and sending email. In class or on a plane I would hook in the collapsible keyboard to take notes, write emails and update my website. They would ask me if they should get one and nine times out of ten I would say no. The Palm was a computer extension - a tool to help you run your life while away from main work horse. If you didn't use a calendar on your computer, the PDA wasn't going to make you organized. Around 2001 I even got an Omnisky cellular modem for my PalmV, but after a year, I stopped the service. It just didn't cut it.

Now we've moved into the days of an Apple iPad, Google Android Tablets, RIM Playbook, and the soon to be Microsoft Surface Tablet. All those companies are telling me that I'm living in a post-PC era. I mean, sure, I would still need a real computer (e.g. powerful laptop) to get the real WORK done, but for my personal life, a nice tablet is all that it will take.
So I'm starting a bit of an experiment to see if I can really feel fulfilled just carrying around my iPad. It's become the computer that I generally use - but I'm upping the game and trying to see if I can truly avoid using my real MacBook for personal use. I do "cheat" a little bit, because I have server at home and iSSH on my laptop so I can run VNC against the home computer. But mostly all that is used for is ripping CDs, re-encoding videos, etc.
I cashed in all my "Peer Recognition" points at work and got myself $75 in Apple gift cards to buy what I need. I used that to buy Beejive so I have a good IM program and to buy Blogsy so I can easily update my website. I bought an Apple bluetooth keyboard that nestles right under my Compass stand. So I have a "laptop-like" setup when I need to do some serious typing - like updating my website. But I can leave all that behind when I'm doing "couch-based" computer on social networks.
Wish me luck and we'll see how it goes.

No Open Door. No Turn On Light.

Where you are is not really different than any other place you could be. - Dennis Kas

We've been spending the week with Mrs.Chaos's sister, husband and three children. We've still got another week to go. They are adorable little rascals. The little boy is a 2yo and he has mastered the rules for going to sleep each night. At first we had to tell him all the rules: head on your pillow, don't open the door, don't turn the light on and off, don't talk with your sisters. When he would inevitably ask, "where momma?" we'd say, "your mom will be back by the time you're awake."
Now? No fuss. You tell him it's bed time and he recites the rules to you: "Head pillow. No open door. No turn on light. No talk with sissy. Momma home when I'm awake!" that's right.
With Mrs.Chaos and I still running our life child-free, it's kind of crazy to have the day schedule around wakeup, breakfast, lunch, naptime, dinner, bath time, story time, bed time, grownup time. I'm still from world where every day only has grownup time.
I've also started to notice those things that people notice when the spend too much time around children... we start talking to each other the same way. "Mrs.Chaos, you're kind of close to me." "Well, you made the decision to lean forward. If you're choice to be this close, so you can choose to move if you don't like it." Or. "Mr.Chaos, I want my computer." "How do you ask nicely for something."
Inevitably the other person feels like their being condesended to and the only solution is immedate laughter!
 

Walking versus Hiking

Getting to the top is optional. Getting down is mandatory. - Ed Viesturs

My wife is okay walking, she is less excited about hiking. My brother-in-law was mention that his wife is fine hiking or walkin as long as she knows which one it is going to be. We had a back and forth trying to classify and finally came up with our definition. Walking is most comfortable when done in flip-flops while hiking is most comfortablely done in tennis shoes.

Today we when up into the mountains for "hiking" and everyone put on their sneakers. I would like present a third term. It should be called "rock climbing" when you have to use your hands to help you get up. I guess it becomes "spelunking" the moment harnesses a required.

Do I speak sussing Cully?

I bet you say that to all the virtual assistants... - Siri

Voice dictation is going to change the way you talk. Did you know that?

I first used voice dictation under OS/2 which required "distinct speech" to work. In distinct speech you need to say each word as if it was the only word you were saying - independently. It produced a very specific way of talking. Very few people interacted with the OS/2 dictation engine, so it probably didn't have much of an impact on us.

When I first got a US Robotic PalmPilot I had to learn to write in "graffiti" to enter things. It was a specific way of writing each letter that made it trivial for a PDA to understand what you were writing. I got really good at writing in graffiti. To this day, I can trivially write in graffiti on a piece of paper.

Do you remember watching Star Trek:TNG where everyone could interface with the ship's computer using their voices? And yet, when ever they were all on the bridge or working in engineering, everyone used the LCARS interface. Why? Because when you have a group of people within hearing range of each other and they all want to use a computer, it's ridiculous for all of them to do it verbally. Could you imagine?

Siri is pretty good. I don't have to use distinct speech. Generally, I can speak normally, but it's creating a few abnormalities. I say, "Call Ashley" it asks, "Which Ashley?" and so I tell it to "Call my wife."When I try and say, "Call Don" it tries to call my father's cousins. So it's gotten me into the habit of saying, "Call my father." I'm getting used to referring to people by their relationship.

I am also getting very good at speaking succinctly and clearly annunciating everything I say. Yet, when I ask Siri "Do I speak succinctly?" she would prefer not to say...

It's Not Real Until You Share It

That a century of the younger men wished to confer with their elders on the question to which persons they should, by their vote, entrust a high command, should seem to us scarcely credible. This is due to the cheapened and diminished authority even of parents over their children in our day. - Titus Livius Patavinus

If you go to Disney World, but don't post about it on Facebook, did it really happy? Did you know I've been married for over a year near? For our "one year anniversary / end of the school year / we love Disney" vacation we headed out to Florida for nine todays and played in Disney World. I did my fair share of posting updates on Facebook, and Twitter, and Instragram about all the fun an excitement, but not nearly as much posting as I saw the kids doing. Ahh the kids. They don't come back from vacation and have long conversations with their friends about their holidays, instead they microshare the whole way though. It's not just about the experience, it's about the sharing of the experience. I was talking with my father about the different generations, "Baby boomers, Gen-X, Millennials, etc." and how we seem to be have smaller and smaller lengths of time before we start spawning new generation definitions. When I went to school we didn't have laptops, we had to take notes in notebooks! When I went to school we didn't have mobile phones, we had to call each other from phones in our homes. One generational thing I find interesting - when I was in high school, I spent most evenings in an online chat board (while watching TV, listening to the radio, doing other stuff). I was a nerd for it, that wasn't a standard social activity. But I've heard that the kids these days do the same thing, except the just leave a Google Hangout running non-stop and you don't have to be a nerd to do it! Crazy.