Beeminder for goal Tracking
Beeminder for goal tracking.
Beeminder in simple terms: Goal tracking with commitment contracts.
You commit/pledge/bet, say, will do 10 pushups every day, so every time you don't meet the goal/derail, your credit card will be charged and the bet/pledge keeps on increasing.
Goals for this year(2021)
Run a total of 1200Kms.
Total productive work hours everyday = 6hrs
Total hours spent on hands on design everyday = 6hrs.
Uses This
List to software tools that I use to get things done at work and in life.
Core Work:
Adobe Suite
Figma
Sketch
Final cut pro
Webflow
Would love to use more:
Productivity:
Vim — a tool for all occasions, everything goes into Vim first, for thoughts, notes, and code. Also the smartest tool I’ve ever used.
Apple Mail — managing two email accounts, personal and work (Connects Proton Mail and Google Gsuite email)
Business Email — Google G-suite (Google, easily the worst offenders of privacy, I’ll never use their mail app and will avoid using their search engine, don’t even ask me about Youtube)
Proton Mail — Personal email, accessed via Apple Mail. (You also get calendar and storage space all encrypted)
Google Docs (Again, I loathe everything Google, used only when collaboration is needed)
MS office — By far the best productivity suite. You already know it’ll work. The only suite the allows for web, desktop, and mobile. After exploring the world of writing apps, everyone comes back to MS office.
Github — Git(version control) must be a common man’s tool(not just for devs). It just solves lots of problem, just like that.
Box — For sharing and storage, way better than Dropbox.
Amazon Drive — Project photos backup and for files. (cheapest of all).
Tmux - Terminal.
Lyx - GUI for LaTex
Other Work Related Apps:
Monodraw – For planning, workflow, flowchart, wireframes and mind mapping
Filezilla – FTP
Handbrake – Video converter
VLC - video and audio player
Clipy – clipboard manager
Pixel Snap 2 - Measure distance and dimensions of anything on the screen. I don’t have the experience nor the eyeballing skill to align objects while designing.
Communication
Telegram
Zoom
Google Hangouts
Work and Goal Tracking
Beeminder
(in that order)Be Focussed Pro(Pomodoro)
Apple Music(Already spent a lot of time with playlists, can’t move to Spotify)
Health
Knowledge Management(what ever that means..)
Roam Research – I don’t even know what the app does and what it helps to achieve. It is so buggy. So unreliable, some times you can’t even do the basic CRUD functions.
If any one wants to try Roam wait for two years at least, you won’t miss anything, right now they don’t even have a mobile app and 2FA. Please at all cost avoid following #RoamCult. (pure BS)
Security and Privacy
Proton VPN - Always connected to it (They don’t log data and are under Swiss jurisdiction, comparatively safe than other providers)
GPG Tools – GUI interface for GPG encryption . Encrypt email, text, files, folders, and hard disks. Signing photographs and files for verifying authenticity. (no one does it or no one cares)
Heuristics for laying out problems.
Just picked up The Algorithm Design Manual, by Steven S. Skiena.
The first chapter talks about the different kinds of heuristics to solve a problem.
Just picked up The Algorithm Design Manual, by Steven S. Skiena.
The first chapter talks about the different kinds of heuristics one can use to solve a problem.
I thought these techniques could be used anywhere, not just for algorithms.
Faster way to do emails
Want to try new way of doing emails, have some time to burn, want to have fun:
Why not try Mutt? It’s been there since 1995
Every one wants to do faster emails now! — but why? that is an altogether different question, as in, why would any one want a lite-help-desk-software for managing emails?
But hey Hey.com[1]
To every one who is eagerly waiting to get an invite from Hey.com
If your question is: How is this problem being solved now? How are power email users managing emails?
Want to try new way of doing emails, have some time to burn, want to have fun:
Why not try Mutt? [2]
It is free under General Public License, been there since 1995.Refer [5][6]
Typical Mutt setup:
Your fav terminal > Mutt > Vim[3] > GnuPG[4]
In a way, it is a faster way to do emails:
* Entirely command line.
* Plain text only
* Key bindings that you can learn and master
* Configure your favourite editor to compose(a good opportunity to learn Vim)
* GPG end-to-end encryption support
Caveats
* Take just minutes to get it up and running, but configuring perfectly will a be work in progress.[4]
* High learning curve, but hey any thing worth doing is.
[1] https://hey.com/
[2] http://www.mutt.org/
[3] https://www.vim.org/
[4] https://gnupg.org/
[5] https://stevelosh.com/blog/2012/10/the-homely-mutt/
[6] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Mutt
[7] Mutt in action: Video
After thoughts:
Quoting Hey.com from this link:
Either they rely on everyone using the same service/app (good luck converting everyone you email with to use the same setup as you!). Or the emails aren’t really emails, but links to a website where the encryption is then applied. Or you use a clunky external tool to encrypt and decrypt the messages (like PGP). This really only works if you’re willing to give up on email as we commonly understand it. If you absolutely must have end-to-end encrypted email, checkout something like ProtonMail.
This posturing, I don’t understand, Hey.com’s narrative is don’t believe in Google, but believe us, why should anyone? — without end-to-end encryption.
Users must control the encryption. That is why end-to-end encryption(PGP) works and has been around for more than 25 years.
PGP is a difficult concept to grasp at first, but once you wrap your head around it, you’ll feel more liberated and safe.
It is not clunky? Is terminal window clunky?
For anyone who wants to try PGP on a mac try GPGtools.
They have made a commendable job of making encryption and decryption of emails, and files easy.
This is how GPG integrated email looks on the native Apple mail client.
All emails are encrypted and signed using GPG. You own the encryption keys.
Encrypt and decrypt files, folders and disks with a click
Project and Task Work Flow
Managing work - Git is the way to go. Even for non-coding related work.
This is my current workflow for managing tasks and projects at Friday Matinee Studio.
Still a work in progress.
Goal is to figure out a workflow that unites managing projects, managing tasks, documentation(wikis), handling project files with version controlling.
Git is the way to go. Even for non-coding related work.
*Ascii art made using MonoDraw by Milen Dzhumerov
VIM
It takes a decade to master VIM they say. Mine is just beginning. I've seen how powerful the tool could be. It's like having a nitro boosters on fingers.
It takes a decade to master VIM they say. Mine is just beginning. I've seen how powerful the tool could be. It's like having a nitro boosters on fingers.
Starting to get used to "navigating/moving around" the text.
h,j, k, l
Ww, Bb
gg, G
3gg, 10gg
ctrl f, ctrl b
shift $, shift ^
Tools of the Trade
The following are the tools and applications that helps me get the job done; both personally and professionally(photography, video and design)
The following are the tools and applications that helps me get the job done; both personally and professionally(photography, video and design)
Hardware
Workstation
- MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2017, Two Thunderbolt 3 ports)
- Dell 21.5 inch (54.6 cm) Ultra Thin Bezel LED Monitor
- Bose QuietControl 30, Noise cancellation headphones
Photography
- Nikon D750 FX
- Nikon D3100 DX
- Canonet 35mm film
- Nikon F65 35mm film
- Yashica FX3 super 35mm film
- iPhone SE
- Godox AD600B(studio light)
- Godox V860 N(camera flash) * 2
- Zhiyun crane 2
- DJI Osmo Mobile 2
- iPad mini 2 - 20% of my reading happens here with iBooks & Kindle app for iPad.
Software:
Creative Suite:
- Photoshop CC
- Lightroom CC
- GIMP - for quick, lightweight photo edits.
- Inkscape - vector design
- Sketch - design
- Final cut pro
- Handbrake video transcoder
- Apple Keynote
Writing & Research
- Ulysses - Notemaking
- LaTeX - for documentation
- Brother 220 manual typewriter
- Ember(now discontinued) - Capture screenshots, videos, and organize them under tags(visual research)
- The Wayback machine lets you capture web pages and store it as an archive for reference and sharing.
- Both Ember and The Wayback Machine are my humble attempt to try Zettelkasten.
Tasks
- ProtonMail
- Omnifocus - To-do list
- Rescuetime - Productivity tracker
- Freedom - distraction(social media) blocker.
- Keychain - password management
- A private phpBB forum for internal communication, project management, and knowledge wiki.— One place for discussions & decisions.
Storage:
- Amazon drive - Backup for: personal projects, and photos on the iPhone
- AWS S3 - Backup for professional projects
- Squarespace CMS. This website and fridaymatinee studio are hosted there.
Fitness:
- Garmin Forerunner 15 GPS watch.
- Smashrun - Training and running intelligence integrated with Garmin Connect.
Music:
- Apple Music
- Panasonic Bahadur AM | FM radio - I live alone and gets too lonely in the mornings. Most of the time it is for just the white noise.
- GPO vinyl record player
Communication:
- Panasonic KX-TG1612 Cordless Phone - Landline for work-related communications.
Browsers:
- Google Chrome
- Tor - with duckduckgo; for ads-blocked privacy conscious browsing. Mostly used during focused research.