I happened across this twitter thread when I was about to suggest to Cultured Code that they allow filtering by Area in their Things app. As it turns out, there is a way:
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Filtering Things by Area
Author: Ken Walker
Husband, Father, Analyst. In a glass case of emotion since 1978.
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Marital Counseling…
…with axes at Bury the Hatchet
Ty Fujimura, a friend and founder of Cantilever, a web design firm, has written a LinkedIn post about how his company is attempting to take work-life balance more seriously.
It’s a good, well-polished read, but I particularly appreciated this portion. In it, he provides one of the most insightful and articulate descriptions I’ve seen of traits that parents can bring to the workplace:
Parents bring unique and invaluable perspective to a team. When you take care of children, you have no choice but to grow more patient and more resilient. In giving so much to a child, you sublimate your ego. You learn how to teach, to motivate, and to energize another human being. You learn how to prioritize, and get the most out of short bursts of productive time. You learn how to push yourself harder than ever before. Who doesn’t want a teammate with those skills?
He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness is a shield and buckler.
You will not fear the terror of the night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness, nor the destruction that wastes at noonday.
A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you.
—Psalm 91:32-35
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Posting Anything from Anywhere
Back when I was trying to make The Daily Newarker happen (which went about as successfully as trying to make “fetch” happen), I was trying to find clever ways to fit writing for the internet into the interstices of the day.
In 2008, my “smartphone” was a Blackberry Pearl 8100. Laughable by today’s standards, sure, but back then the pocketable, candy-bar shaped device felt sprightly and capable. The pearlescent little trackball in the center of the device for which it was named was a fun and useful way to zip the cursor around and edit large blocks of text. With it, I was able to browse through the morning’s news, copy links and quotes, tap out some commentary, paste the whole post into a web form and click Publish.
Discover, comment, publish—all while riding the Path train from Newark to Wall Street. I even made a game of seeing how many links I could post before the train slipped under the Hudson River and out of cellular reach before resurfacing in the World Trade Center.
When I transitioned to using an iPhone 3G the following year, this whole workflow was lost—writing text without cut/copy/paste meant I could never take the critical step of editing afterward. But after Steve Jobs strode on stage and foisted our touchscreen future upon us, there was no going back—all those clicky plastic keys seemed ancient by comparison.
Cut/copy/paste did arrive two years later, but it would still take an additional six years before the iPhone 6s shipped with 3D Touch, a feature that (finally!) could turn the iPhone keyboard into a trackpad to move the cursor around the screen. Despite its usefulness, the feature remains so laughably undiscoverable that it still amazes friends and family when I show them how to use it.
So, finally, in 2019, blogging from a mobile device is starting to feel like a good idea again. Even better, the WordPress app for mobile has make blogging feel even more natural than the kludgey process I had strung together on the Blackberry.
And just his past week, one last piece of the workflow snapped into place: drafting a blog from anywhere with a tap of the share sheet. In a brief exchange with the @wordpress twitter account, I discovered just how to do this.
And just like that, I can return to that old process of discover, comment, publish I knew so well ten years ago—all from the device in my pocket.
I think I’ll celebrate by blogging like it’s 2009…
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He Gives to His Beloved Sleep
It is in vain that you rise up early
and go late to rest,
eating the bread of anxious toil;
for he gives to his beloved sleep.
—Psalm 127:2
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Time to Go
The Data gesture is obviously the best part. (Courtesy, Swear Trek.)
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After Dinner Cleanup
Every night, we split the ritual of cleaning up after the kids at dinner time vs. putting them to bed. And every night its my turn to clean up after dinner, I inevitably turn my body into a garbage disposal unit, eating the children’s leftovers, reasoning, “Well, I wouldn’t want it to go to waste.”
It occurred to me today, however, that the Mindlessly voracious goat from The Onion’s, Hey, You Got Something to Eat? is a far more accurate metaphor:
Do you have any trash? I’ll eat trash. You were gonna throw it out anyway. Hey, lemme eat it. Lemme at least taste it. If it’s no good to eat, I’ll know. I hate to see it go to waste, is all. […]
Maybe I could eat something else for you later, something maybe that you’re not interested in eating. Or maybe something that you intend to only eat half of. I might be able to eat the rest of it for you.
I’ve tried about enough of the grass around here to last me a while. I’m sick of this grass. This damned same grass day in and day out, I could just about… I take that back. This grass is okay. I’ll eat it. It’s pretty good. It’s great, actually. I mean, it’s okay.
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“Cooperative” Mode
To play Portal 2 in co-op mode with the eight-year-old while holding the 12-month-old in my lap is to contemplate all the possible meanings of the phrase “working at cross purposes.”
It’s amazing how tight a grip on these shows had on my childhood psyche. Almost as amazing, in fact, as how vapid they prove out to be in my adulthood.
Well Within Limits 
