bioneural.net » tips

Using faux Contacts for GTD on the iPhone

Bruce — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 16:16:28 +0000

Despite strong indications of an imminent second generation 3G iPhone, the recent £100 price drop on the 8GB iPhone proved too tempting. I had hesitated because the iPhone failed to meet my minimum requirements for basic PDA functionality. With 1Password mostly overcoming the secure data exchange obstacle, the remaining challenge was to find a network-independent way of managing and synchronising tasks ("to do" items). I've also been wading through David Allen's book Getting Things Done in a search for ways to improve my personal productivity. Could I cherry-pick the key principles of the GTD religion and apply them on the iPhone using only the built-in apps? The essence of GTD The OmniFocus Basics Video does a good job of distilling the core ideas in the GTD method. It outlines three concepts: Actions are something you can physically do in a single step; Projects are activities that require more than one physical action to complete; Contexts are physical requirements for carrying out actions (e.g. being at work, at home, connected to the Internet, etc.) The video also summarizes three workflow steps to getting things done: Capture all outstanding individual ("atomic") actions; Organize those actions by grouping them into projects and/ or context; Do the outstanding actions. Let's put that graphically (adding horizontal reorganization as part of ongoing review): I'm not being strict about contexts being a physical place, person or thing: in my world a context can be a frame of mind, or an area of mental focus—whatever makes sense for grouping related actions. The wrong tool for the job? The iPhone is most ...

Customizing WordPress feed content

Bruce — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 20:38:12 +0000

From bioneural.net:

When I last looked at customizing feeds in WordPress, it was all to do with being able to offer a summary and full text feed simultaneously—making use of WordPress' flexible feed URL syntax and a .htaccess file. In this post I look at modifying the actual contents of the feed using a functions.php file (which may already exist as part of your current theme). Just as WordPress provides a number of hooks for adding or removing actions in your theme header (see here), so to do the core files that generate your feeds. Editing the core files is however discouraged (it makes upgrading a pain), and although you can build your own replacement feed templates an easy alternative is adding a few lines to your theme's functions.php file. As a perpetual PHP beginner I feel obliged to warn you that use of the following code is at your own risk. If there are any PHP/ WordPress experts reading this who can improve on my code please make yourself known ;-) Removing WP version info Somewhere, a while back, I read a tip about not including the WordPress version you are running in your template header—potentially allowing hackers to identify you as a target if you haven't kept up-to-date. It's easy to remove if present. For example, in the K2 theme just delete the following line from header.php: From bioneural.net:Mac-based web developers...]]> ... http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/ Rendered in a feed reader humans will see this: The Creative Commons icon is hopefully recognisable and links to the correct license; the link to bioneural.net ...

Pages and searching in WordPress 2.5

Bruce — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 17:07:34 +0000

From bioneural.net:

WordPress 2.5 lets you search across pages (non-blog entries) as well as posts. This is undoubtedly a good thing, but if your pages are liable to turn up in site searches you might want to make a couple of changes to stop page content from swamping your results screen and improve appearances if you use category icons. In WordPress search results post content is displayed up to the  tag: The rest of the post continues, but when viewed on the non-single/non-permalink web page such as archives, categories, front page, and searches, the post is shown as an excerpt to the more point. Pages don't usually have a more tag, because there is no excerpt or "teaser" destined for use in a feed. Thus when a page appears in a search results it will display in its entirety. Furthermore, because I'm using the Category Icons plugin, post titles will display alongside the category icon for ease of identification. Since pages don't usually have a category, they will show indented with no icon. Here is a search for "architect", showing an iconless page result occupying the screen: With the addition of  to the top of each page, and the use of an icon for Uncategorized content (assuming all posts are categorised) we get this: Much more usable and informative.

Block IntelliTXT faux links with ease

Bruce — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 22:40:01 +0000

From bioneural.net:

Bugged by faux hyperlinks with intrusive IntelliTXT pop-up ads on sites like MacWorld UK? Disable them in Firefox with Adblock Plus, or an ABP clone called SafariBlock if you're using Safari.

Spring clean your WordPress head

Bruce — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 08:00:42 +0000

From bioneural.net:

If you had viewed the source of my WordPress-generated pages a while ago you'd have noticed that my head elements were a real mess. Now they've been spring cleaned, arranged neatly into related groupings and the needless clutter disposed of. Plugins that use the wp_head hook distribute junk all over the show, offending any sense of order. Luckily your WordPress theme is the key to taking control of your head, through a combination of edits to functions.php and header.php. Removing actions using a functions file Your theme may already include a file called functions.php. If it doesn't you can create one using the functions file found in the default theme directory (which is a bit busy), or copy-and-paste mine (with the K2 bits stripped out for clarity): The real advantage here is avoiding the need to hack any plugins or core WordPress files (an upgrader's nightmare). Let's go through the removal actions in sequence. Really Simple Discovery helps client software discover things about your blog. If you don't use a client and manage your posts directly in WordPress, you don't need to offer such help. The PHP script: remove_action('wp_head', 'rsd_link'); will remove a line from your head that looks something like this: Windows Live Writer is one such desktop blogging client, but supporting it needs yet another line in your head. The script: remove_action('wp_head', 'wlwmanifest_link'); will remove a line from your head that looks something like this: The Quoter plugin defaults to inserting comments, JavaScript, and CSS into your head: .commentlist blockquote cite { /* Fix for Kubrik theme */ display: inline; } You ...

Share and future-proof iWork '08 documents

Bruce — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 18:28:29 +0000

From bioneural.net:

Can't open your old ClarisWorks or AppleWorks documents in iWork? Check the option to "Include preview in document" when saving in Pages, Keynote, or Numbers '08 to embed a PDF version. Access Preview.pdf inside the QuickLook folder via "Show Package Contents" (Mac without iWork) or by opening the filename folder (Windows). The advantage? You can re-edit the original while iWork is with us, but retain an archived cross-platform version until the end of PDF. [via macosxhints.com]

Accents and glyphs via Mac keyboards

Bruce — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 19:50:13 +0000

From bioneural.net:

GoSquared made a handy PDF reference for producing accents and glyphs via their Mac keyboard shortcuts (e.g. Alt-E for é). Alternatively, open International in System Preferences and check the boxes for Character Palette and Show input menu in menu bar: always available, just chose Show Character Palette from the menu to select and insert the Unicode character of your choice (which you can optionally Add to Favourites).

Stop Gmail sending passwords in the clear

Bruce — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 20:00:17 +0000

From bioneural.net:

Make Gmail Notifier use a secure HTTPS connection when checking your inbox: hold down Command and Option keys while clicking Preferences in the Notifier menu and enter "SecureAlways" (without quotes) for Key and "1" for Value, then Set before quitting and re-launching (via maxoshints.com).

Overcoming CSS Validator changes

Bruce — Sat, 05 May 2007 08:46:41 +0000

From bioneural.net:

A quick follow-up to this post in which I fell victim to the moving CSS validation goal-post. Do you include a link to the W3C Validator on your site to check your mark-up and CSS for standards compliance? If so you probably tested your code against the CSS profile that was in vogue at the time. But what happens when the W3C release a new profile? They upgrade the Validator—and your CSS may go from green tick to red cross! Here's a quick tip that avoids having to re-write any CSS, but at the same time keeps you from seeing red. Originally when I created footer.php for my site I included the following CSS validation link: CSS My pages were valid CSS 2.0. Life was good. But something changed; the W3C began developing CSS 2.1. And I began to see red: The W3C had started to use the draft CSS 2.1 profile as the default for its Validator. The property text-shadow isn't in the 2.1 draft, but it was there in 2.0. I happen to like this effect and wanted to retain it, so the trick is to specify that your website is complying with a specific CSS profile. This is easily accomplished by appending that profile to the URL of the link to the website you are checking, like this: CSS Now, that's better: It's a small thing, but too many little annoyances can be overwhelming!

Moving country with excess baggage

Bruce + Simone — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 19:26:08 +0000

From bioneural.net:

Moving your life? The whole idea of packing for a year abroad is daunting: where do you start? How do you overcome personal baggage allowance restrictions when three pairs of your favourite underpants won't last a year? What is involved in sending baggage unaccompanied? How do you minimize the chances of things going wrong? Allow us to share our experience. What is Project Koru? The code name of our "great escape" from our adopted home in the UK to spend a year living and working in New Zealand. You can find an introduction to the project here together with an explanation of why we chose the koru as the symbol for our journey. Preparation We were taking a holiday in China for three weeks prior to arriving in New Zealand. We thus had to decide what should come with us to China while the rest would travel directly to NZ. The China list was easy—based on our standard holiday packing list—but the NZ list was more complicated. What you might take can depend on several things: Are you renting furnished or unfurnished? We had to guess whether certain items would be supplied or not in the fully furnished accommodation we hoped to find. Is it a convenient excuse to "upgrade" electronics or renew your wardrobe? Maybe put anything you didn't wear in the previous year in a pile for Oxfam. Is it cheaper to airfreight (potentially both ways) than buy the item again? Can you actually get a replacement in another country? Are there things of personal or ...