notes on Life Hacks: Tech Secrets of Overprolific Alpha Geeks

Grok Headline matches for notes on Life Hacks: Tech Secrets of Overprolific Alpha Geeks

Life Hacks: Tech Secrets of Overprolific
Alpha Geeks ETCON talk notes

Life Hacks: Tech Secrets of Overprolific
Alpha Geeks ETCON talk notes 02/11/2004 03:01 PM
Here're my running notes from Li fe Hacks: Tech Secrets of Overprolific Alpha Geeks at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference in San Diego.

It's the 10-second rule: if you can't file something in 10 seconds, you won't do it. Todo.txt involves cut-and-paste, the simplest interface we can imagine.

It's also the simplest way to find intercomation. EMACS, Moz and Panther have incremental search: when you type a "t" it goes to the first mention of "t", add "to" and you jump to the first instance of "to", etc.

This is being added to Longhorn (Unix geeks, we've had this since Jan 1 1900, and it will go away in 2038).

Power-users don't trust complicated apps. Every time power-geeks has had a crash, s/he moves away from it. You can't trust software unless you've written it -- and then you're just more forgiiving.

Text files are portable (except for CRLF issues) between mac and win and *nix.

Link

ETECH Notes: Life Hacks Live!

ETECH Notes: Life Hacks Live! 03/19/2005 03:03 AM
Cory Doctorow: Here are my notes from Danny O'Brien and Merlin Mann's Li fe Hacks Live, at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference in San Diego. Danny's been doing variations on his Life Hacks talk since the last Emerging Tech conference -- it's basically an effort to research the productivity patterns of very prolific geeks and convert them to wisdom that anyone can follow. Merlin has been adapting the fantastic productivity cookbook Getting Things Done into a series of tools for geeks, on an equally fantastic blog called 43 Folders. They're now working on a book version of their stuff for O'Reilly called Life Productivity Hacks, and today's session was a preview of it -- it was uproariously funny and incredibly inspiring.

Here's a recap of last year, in bumper stickers:

HACKERS HEART PLAIN TEXT

Geeks store what they do in text and spurn big apps, using plain text editors. Simplicity and speed, ease of search and extraction, cut and paste. All you need in a filing system.

MY OTHER APP IS IN ~/BIN

If it wasn't plaintext, there's one app that they loved, like mail, Excel, PowerPoint, etc. The rest was little glue scripts in ~/bin, secret scripts they are embarrassed about and don't share with others, though it turns out that they're all really similar.

SUPER PROLIFIC GEEKS DO IT IN PUBLIC WITH COMPLETE STRANGERS AND LIKE IT. OH YES.

(don't put this on your car)

Geeks get their credibility and prolificness out of sharing everything -- put it in public and the public organizes it for you. Put it on a Wiki and others will fix it.

Link

Tim O'Reilly on Alpha Geeks

Tim O'Reilly on Alpha Geeks 09/04/2004 07:19 PM
Mark Frauenfelder: MP3 audio transcript of a interview with Tim O'Reilly talking about Alpha Geeks, who make things that aren't available, and as a result, make them available to everybody.

So often, signs of the future are all around us, but it isn't until much later that most of the world realizes their significance. Meanwhile, the innovators who are busy inventing that future live in a world of their own. They see and act on premises that are not yet apparent to others.

In the computer industry, these are the folks I affectionately call "the alpha geeks", the hackers who have such mastery of their tools that they "roll their own" when existing products don't give them what they need.

Link

"Life Hacks"

"Life Hacks" 03/30/2005 05:17 PM

Danny O'Brien's Life Hacks

Danny O'Brien's Life Hacks 06/06/2004 06:44 AM
Here are my running notes from Danny O'Brien's NotCon recapulation of his "Life Hacks" talk. Danny interviewed a bunch of prolific geeks and asked them how they do it: this is his distillation of the habits of the geeks who spew the most code, words and such. Wish he'd turn this into a book already!

People use todo.txt (Ford's is 27,000 lines long)

* Don't use complicated apps

* Use Word, BBEdit, Notepad, emacs, vi, whatever

* Why?

* If you want to organize yourself, take the stuff you're going to forget quickly and dump it just as quickly -- if it's in your short-term memory, you have to put it somewhere

* You need to be able to find and enter text fast

* Can cut, paste and find text fast

* XML Guy: "Not interested in tagging my behavior with metadata -- just want to find stuff. Google shows that text cna be found quick"

* Text editors have incremental search (Mozilla: type slash and begin typing for your search string) -- quick way to lock-in on your desired text

* In Moz, Panther, Launchbar, Quicksilver, etc

* Text can be trusted

* Power users trust software as far as they've thrown them in the past

* Power users know that the bigger an app, the flakier it is

* They've upgraded and crossgraded a lot, which means that they need text, which can run on every platform

Link

Curiously High-Tech Hacks for a Classic
Tin

Curiously High-Tech Hacks for a Classic
Tin 02/05/2005 09:04 PM
After the mints have all been eaten, the container starts its second act.

IBM Rolls Out Alpha-Code Life Sciences
Tools

IBM Rolls Out Alpha-Code Life Sciences
Tools 05/06/2004 02:46 PM
Six new life sciences software packages are made publicly available by the tech giant to aid in biological research.

The High-Tech Secrets of the Famous
Clapper Remote

The High-Tech Secrets of the Famous
Clapper Remote 12/31/2003 09:39 AM
ABCNEWS.com Dec 31 2003 7:53AM ET

MR Tech Systray v3.0 Alpha Preview 1 -
Refresh 3b

MR Tech Systray v3.0 Alpha Preview 1 -
Refresh 3b 11/03/2003 09:03 PM
MR Tech Systray is a utility that can shut down, restart or log off Windows, clean your hard drive, organize MP3's and optimize your system. [Freeware 150 KB]

Boing Boing: Danny O'Brien's Life Hacks

Boing Boing: Danny O'Brien's Life Hacks 06/07/2004 04:11 AM
Boing Boing: Danny O'Brien's Life Hacks .. references

boingboing.net/2004/06/06/danny_obriens_life_h.html
track this site | 4 links

Notes and Tips: Watson End-of-Life

Notes and Tips: Watson End-of-Life 07/05/2004 11:24 AM
Karelia sets October 5 as the "end-of-life" date for its popular search system.

Study Notes Rise in Inmates Serving Life
(AP)

Study Notes Rise in Inmates Serving Life
(AP) 05/11/2004 04:20 PM
AP - The number of prisoners serving life sentences has increased 83 percent in the past 10 years as tough-on-crime initiatives have led to harsher penalties, a study says.

tech.life@school |

tech.life@school | 01/22/2004 04:21 AM
Philadelphia Inquirer Jan 22 2004 8:19AM GMT

Hi-tech MOT scheme splutters into life

Hi-tech MOT scheme splutters into life 11/06/2003 05:16 AM
vnunet.com Nov 6 2003 4:14AM ET

Virginia Tech and more on tonight's Your
Mac Life

Virginia Tech and more on tonight's Your
Mac Life 11/19/2003 10:33 AM
Virginia Tech, the Berklee College of Music, Macworld Expo and Other World Computing are spotlighted on Wednesday evening's Your Mac Life. Hosted by Shawn King, the weekly QuickTime-Webcast radio show features news and information of interest to Mac users.

tech.life@play | Headphones that are a
joy

tech.life@play | Headphones that are a
joy 04/17/2005 06:40 AM
Philadelphia Inquirer Apr 17 2005 10:17AM GMT

Notes and Tips: Tech Text

Notes and Tips: Tech Text 03/19/2005 02:34 AM
Charlie Orchard recommends a big technology text he's using for a course.

High-tech bank notes due Nov. 1

High-tech bank notes due Nov. 1 08/10/2004 09:25 PM
Japan Times Aug 11 2004 1:23AM GMT

The high-tech life: Living the future
now

The high-tech life: Living the future
now 04/10/2004 06:24 AM
Vancouver Sun Apr 10 2004 10:24AM GMT

PalmOne, Battery Tech, ASMC on Your Mac
Life

PalmOne, Battery Tech, ASMC on Your Mac
Life 07/21/2004 02:22 PM
Wednesday's Your Mac Life QuickTime Webcast radio show will feature PalmOne director of Web publishing Rick Whooten who will talk about a new online resource center targeting Mac users. Battery Technology Inc. (BTI)'s VP of marketing and sales Dave Sarazen will be on hand to discuss new high-capacity batteries for iPods. And Kevin Langdon, CEO of Crywolf Computers, will discuss The Apple Specialists Marketing Co-Op (ASMC), a new group of Apple Specialist resellers. Peter Cohen of MacCentral.com and Macworld magazine will have all the latest gaming news. If you have questions for any of tonight's guests, please send them along. The show is Webcast live from 5:30PM to 8:00PM Pacific, 8:30PM to 11:00PM Eastern, and is available in an audio video feed or an audio-only feed, depending on your bandwidth.

Tech veteran to explore what life is
like outside cyberspace

Tech veteran to explore what life is
like outside cyberspace 01/16/2004 11:28 AM
SiliconValley.com Jan 14 2004 8:40PM GMT

tech.life@play | Two games; only one
winner

tech.life@play | Two games; only one
winner 03/27/2005 05:50 AM
Philadelphia Inquirer Mar 27 2005 8:44AM GMT

William Gibson on his Tech Life and
Latest Novel

William Gibson on his Tech Life and
Latest Novel 02/19/2004 07:40 PM

Notes and Tips: Anti-Counterfeit Tech

Notes and Tips: Anti-Counterfeit Tech 01/16/2004 12:59 PM
Here are many more details about the secret anti-counterfeiting code hidden in Photoshop and other software.

One Tech Site Notes a Library Service

One Tech Site Notes a Library Service 01/22/2004 03:23 AM
Original SimCity Online

"Classic Live - SimCity.com: I've recently become (re-)addicted to SimCity 3000 (which I checked out from my local library on a 30-day loan, believe it or not). You can play the orignal SimCity online here. Via Metafilter." [Gadgetopia]

This is the first mention of a library I can recall on any of the tech-oriented blogs, and it's not even for a remotely-accessible service like online reference, database access from home, or requesting books via a PDA or cell phone. That's just sad.

tech.life@school | Subscribe to services
to help with searching

tech.life@school | Subscribe to services
to help with searching 09/16/2004 03:37 AM
Philadelphia Inquirer Sep 16 2004 7:35AM GMT

tech.life@school | Prepare for college:
Learn how to think

tech.life@school | Prepare for college:
Learn how to think 05/27/2004 04:43 AM
Philadelphia Inquirer May 27 2004 8:10AM GMT

Seeking Real-Life Spy Tech Master 'Q'
(Reuters)

Seeking Real-Life Spy Tech Master 'Q'
(Reuters) 04/19/2005 09:20 AM
Reuters - Get out the rocket launcher camera, brandish your acid-shooting fountain pen and stick on your fake third nipple.

Cash on offer to bring hi-tech dreams to
life

Cash on offer to bring hi-tech dreams to
life 05/25/2004 06:43 AM
Manchester Online May 25 2004 11:13AM GMT

tech.life@play | Finally, baseball
without steroids

tech.life@play | Finally, baseball
without steroids 04/03/2005 03:44 AM
Philadelphia Inquirer Apr 3 2005 7:33AM GMT

Grants Support Tech for Easing Life with
Alzheimer's

Grants Support Tech for Easing Life with
Alzheimer's 08/31/2004 05:28 PM
The grants, a collaboration between the Alzheimer's Association and Intel, aim to advance research in using commercially available technology in innovative ways to help patients live more independently—and to help their caretakers.

tech.life@play | Combat's not easy in
this shooter

tech.life@play | Combat's not easy in
this shooter 04/10/2005 03:29 AM
Philadelphia Inquirer Apr 10 2005 8:09AM GMT

tech.life@school | Internet-based help
for the new teacher

tech.life@school | Internet-based help
for the new teacher 12/25/2003 04:27 AM
Philadelphia Inquirer Dec 25 2003 3:36AM ET

tech.life@play | Nintendo renews old
favorites for retro fun

tech.life@play | Nintendo renews old
favorites for retro fun 06/24/2004 03:00 AM
Philadelphia Inquirer Jun 24 2004 7:32AM GMT

tech.life@play | Smooth and masterly is
Jade Empire

tech.life@play | Smooth and masterly is
Jade Empire 04/17/2005 06:40 AM
Philadelphia Inquirer Apr 17 2005 10:17AM GMT

tech.life@play | Now showing: Games
based on new movies

tech.life@play | Now showing: Games
based on new movies 07/01/2004 03:23 AM
Philadelphia Inquirer Jul 1 2004 8:14AM GMT

Force Companies To Give Free Tech
Support For Life

Force Companies To Give Free Tech
Support For Life 12/22/2003 12:42 PM
Last week we talked about one idea to improve computer security issues: threa ten to put executives of software companies in jail if their products are not secure. That seemed a bit extreme. This week, however, the Washington Post's Rob Pegoraro has another interesting idea to improve technology product quality: require companies to provide free tech support for life. This way, he argues, the companies will quickly learn about problems, and it will be in their own best interest to get working fixes out there as quickly as possible. It will also give them incentive to do things better the first time around. He argues this is beneficial to the companies as well, as with better products, people will be more willing to spend money on them. I would add one adjustment to this suggestion: make an exception for companies or individuals who give away software for free. This would make it so anyone shopping for software can get a real benefit for paying for a product, and also doesn't unfairly burden those who prefer to just give away software.

tech.life@school | Teaching students how
to navigate Internet

tech.life@school | Teaching students how
to navigate Internet 05/13/2004 03:31 AM
Philadelphia Inquirer May 13 2004 8:02AM GMT

tech.life@school | Educators get help to
improve teaching skills

tech.life@school | Educators get help to
improve teaching skills 04/29/2004 06:33 AM
Philadelphia Inquirer Apr 29 2004 11:16AM GMT
Grok Description matches for notes on Life Hacks: Tech Secrets of Overprolific Alpha Geeks
GrokA matches for notes on Life Hacks: Tech Secrets of Overprolific Alpha Geeks

HP iPaq 6300 Product Slides

HP iPaq 6300 Product Slides 04/14/2004 07:38 AM
JOEL JOHNSON -- Smartfone.net has some product slides from HP detailing the specs for the upcoming HP iPaq 6300 series smartphone. They do require forum registration to get to all the slides, but you can get the general gist from the slides they have on the main page. Most notable...

Turning Heads With PowerPoint

Turning Heads With PowerPoint 12/09/2003 06:13 AM
David Byrne, who climbed to fame with the Talking Heads, lately has been wrapping his brain around PowerPoint, cranking out art. Xeni Jardin reports from Los Angeles.

R2D2

R2D2 05/28/2004 03:36 AM
R2D2 project launched.

Turning Heads With PowerPoint: David
Byrne

Turning Heads With PowerPoint: David
Byrne 12/09/2003 12:10 PM
In today's edition of Wired News, an interview I conducted with former Talking Heads member David Byrne about his art-explorations into PowerPoint:

From televised presidential aircraft carrier visits to the glut of unreal reality TV shows, "American culture is becoming a culture of pageants," says David Byrne. "We're surrounded by show, just as the Roman Empire turned to bread and circuses to hide other things that were taking place." To examine how the medium shapes the message, the former Talking Head uses Microsoft PowerPoint -- the ubiquitous presentation software -- as a creative tool.

His art presentations make babble of business-speak, and question whether the form of what we communicate can affect its truth: Rebellious flow charts stream backward, screens overflow with clip art gone wild, deliverables and leave-behinds assume surreal new roles, and renegade bullet points assault the viewer in a rapid-fire barrage.

Link

R2D2 Elected to Robot Hall of Fame

R2D2 Elected to Robot Hall of Fame 11/11/2003 02:09 PM
At long last, R2D2 has taken his rightful place next to HAL 9000 and Mars Pathfinder in the Robot Hall...

Running Linux on an iPAQ

Running Linux on an iPAQ 09/13/2004 08:50 AM

Survey Says Linux Hacks Are Rare

Survey Says Linux Hacks Are Rare 07/29/2004 08:30 AM

The Unix Bookshelf, "Linux Server Hacks"

The Unix Bookshelf, "Linux Server Hacks" 01/02/2004 05:00 PM

Powerpoint Foghat

Powerpoint Foghat 08/28/2004 02:49 PM
The Essential Foghat Timeline. Is it any wonder that Foghat is so hard to keep track of? (Found here). There were two versions of Foghat touring from 1990 to 1993. Roger Earl was touring with his version of Foghat (originally called the Kneetremblers) from 1986 to 1993 and Dave toured with Lonesome Dave's Foghat from 1990 to 1993...

Coffee on PowerPoint

Coffee on PowerPoint 12/15/2003 08:12 AM
Peter Coffee in eWeek meditates on what PowerPoint is doing to us. He begins with Edward Tufte's piece on how PowerPoint misled the assessment of the risk to the shuttle Columbia. Peter writes: Bad presentations result from people learning to write with a model of "topic sentence, body, conclusion," instead of a journalistic model of "lead (conclusion), significance, supporting details." Peter says that although media "don't just transmit facts; they alter both selection and emphasis, creating different realities in the process," PowerPoint isn't solely to blame for the bad presentations done with it. In fact, he says, PowerPoint helps you...

The PowerPoint Mythology

The PowerPoint Mythology 04/09/2004 04:12 PM
I spent yesterday consulting with a company whose salesforce is having trouble explaining exactly what its software does, a common problem with enterprise applications since software tends towards functionality sprawl in ways that, say, refrigerators and asphalt don't. Not to mention that this company's software is genuinely innovative. The company's impulse is to address this need in the usual way: Build a PowerPoint "deck" (sorry, "deck" instead of "slide set" still sounds unnatural to me) with the sort of corporate overview appropriate for an industry analyst. But, the deck a salesperson needs is, of course, quite different. The rep isn't...

Accelerated PowerPoint?

Accelerated PowerPoint? 08/15/2004 01:18 PM

Powerpoint makes you ...

Powerpoint makes you ... 12/17/2003 05:58 PM
Tools are emerging that claim to make application development as easy as writing a Powerpoint presentation. ...

Perestroika by PowerPoint

Perestroika by PowerPoint 12/11/2003 06:15 AM
Go easy with the tax breaks

Not my beautiful PowerPoint

Not my beautiful PowerPoint 12/29/2003 09:16 PM
USA Today Dec 29 2003 8:03PM ET

FC Now: Near Death by PowerPoint

FC Now: Near Death by PowerPoint 01/05/2005 06:14 PM
Ever been stuck in an interminable meeting in which a speaker slogged through 101 frustrating PowerPoint slides? Ever finish sitting through a presentation and wonder, well, what the point was? It doesn't have to be that way. Business strategist Rob...

Does PowerPoint make us stupid?

Does PowerPoint make us stupid? 12/30/2003 07:37 PM
Peter Norvig, 46, engineering director at Google Inc., is generally credited with creating the first PowerPoint parody in 1999, when he published an online ...

Microsoft's PowerPoint Assailed

Microsoft's PowerPoint Assailed 12/19/2003 11:30 AM
Motley Fool Dec 19 2003 10:43AM ET

"Break up with your girlfriend with a
PowerPoint"

"Break up with your girlfriend with a
PowerPoint" 09/23/2004 09:50 PM

Mac 911: Exporting Keynote 2 to
PowerPoint

Mac 911: Exporting Keynote 2 to
PowerPoint 06/17/2005 04:33 PM
If your Keynote presentation won't export to PowerPoint, you may be in need of better bullets.

Byrne takes on PowerPoint

Byrne takes on PowerPoint 12/29/2003 04:20 PM
"In his book and DVD compilation, 'Envisioning Emotional Epistemological Information,' Byrne twists PowerPoint from a marketing tool into a multimedia canvas, pontificating that the software's charts, graphs, bullet points and arrows have changed communication styles."

Scripting Microsoft's Powerpoint

Scripting Microsoft's Powerpoint 05/20/2004 10:05 AM
The new Microsoft Office 2004(tm) suite of applications include advanced support for automation via AppleScript. The following pages provide examples of how to script the fundamental application elements of Microsoft PowerPoint.

Controlling My PowerPoint Excitement

Controlling My PowerPoint Excitement 11/14/2003 12:05 AM
The universe works in funny ways. You see, earlier today an e-mail message when out to a large number of people at work. It said something like this: If you create power point presentations then get ready to be very excited . . . we have a new Corporate template for you to use on all of your presentations! I am not making this up. There was no smiley. It was a serious message. Not only could I not...

notes on Life Hacks: Tech Secrets of Overprolific Alpha Geeks

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