I seriously doubt I’ll finish even half this list between now and the beginning of the Fall semester, but I wanted to share this with my few blog readers, i.e. friends I tricked into reading my blog.

Thank you to Aaron R, Daniel D, Dan S, Matt K, Rose L, and David F. for their book suggestions.

I will provide links to the rest of the books tomorrow. It’s late and I need sleep

History

• The Gun by CJ Chivers
• IBM and the Holocaust : the strategic alliance between Nazi Germany and America’s most powerful corporation by Edwin Black
• Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943 by Antony Beevor
• The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939 Beevor
• The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age 1300-1600 by Halil Inalcik
• War: Ends and Means, 2nd Edition by Angelo Codevilla

Education

• Farnsworth’s Classical English Rhetoric by Ward Farnsworth
• Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches in History by William Safire
• How to use your mind: a psychology of study… by Harry Kitson (free from gutenberg.org I highly recommend this book for any learner)
• The Anatomy of Criticism by Northrup Frye
• Your Memory: How it Works by Kenneth Higbee
• Speed Reading for Professionalsby Wechsler and Bell
• Usage and Abusage: A Guide to Good English by Eric Partridge

Writing

• Usage & Abuse: A Guide to Good English by Janet Whitcut
• You Have a Point There: A Guide to Punctuation and Its Allies by Eric Partridge

Fiction

• Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
• Sewer, Gas, & Electric by Matt Ruff
• The Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu by Maurice Joly
• Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
• Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
• Snow Crash by Stephenson

Poetry

• The Madman by Khalil Gibran

Computer Science

• The New Turing Omnibus by A. K. Dewdney
• Object Oriented Software Construction by Bertrand Meyer

Math

• Concrete Mathematics Graham, Knuth, and Patashnik
• Princeton Companion to Mathematics by

Design & Usability

• The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman

Philosophy

• Philosophy and the Young Child by Gareth Matthews

Bicycles

• Zinn & the Art of Mountain Bike Maintenance by Lennard Zinn

Tricks and workarounds:
http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2011/07/the-os-x-lion-survival-guide/

http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/21/os-x-lion-new-features/

http://lifehacker.com/5817644/top-10-secret-features-in-mac-os-x-lion

Lion security and now with full ASLR support:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/07/21/mac_os_x_lion_security/

Wait, what’s ASLR?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Address_space_layout_randomization

~/Library folder is invisible in finder for Lion. Here is how to make it visible
http://krypted.com/mac-os-x/get-your-library-folder-back-from-the-lion/

Macports compiled for Lion
http://www.macports.org/install.php

July 20, 2011 12:09 PM
First Impressions

• My system seems slower
• I don’t care for the reverse mouse scrolling. I changed that in Settings
• Spaces is replaced by Mission Control. Instead of a “spaces” like Gnome, you now have “screens”.
• Maybe it’ll take a while for me to get used to Mission Control, but I prefer how I could view everything easier in the old Spaces. I do like how you can swipe between screens with the mouse in Mission Control.
• Mail looks much like the iOS version which I love on the iPad and iPhone. It’ll take me a bit to get used to it on a non-touchscreen computer
• Praise ze gods, Safari has fullscreen mode, but it puts it in its own “space”. If you are on a dual monitor setup, your other monitor is useless. So far this is only in Safari.

edit: I called them “spaces”, but I believe the correct term is “desktops”

Mission Control & Fullscreen Mode
Ok, I get Mission Control now. You two finger double tap on the Apple mouse to go to Mission Control to see everything open on one screen, then you two-finger horizontal swipe to see what’s open in your other screens. The advantage over the old Spaces + Expose way is bigger thumbnails. Personally, I prefer the old version for now, but once I have two browsers, two IDEs, iTunes, Adium, 3 terminals open at the same time, I may change my mind.

Hmm, you can have multiple apps open in fullscreen now. That is cool!

Chrome Navigation
Aww, man, backward and forward navigation is broken in Chrome. Previously, the two finger horizontal swipe was back and forward navigation; now it’ll change to a different “screen”. Well, at least I installed the mouse gestures plugin for Chrome.

Launchpad & Airdrop
Launchpad is pretty awesome! You can group applications together and rename the groups in Launchpad. You can also change the order of the application list. This function is very much like the iOS version. If you prefer to view your applications in the traditional list view, you can still go to your ~/Applications directory.

Airdrop looks pretty cool! I want to try that out as soon as I can.

Something’s Wrong with Macports and Xcode
I think the upgrade did something to macports and Xcode. My vimrc file was also overwritten. Luckily, I had a copy in Devonthink.

The New Gestures & Lion Annoyances
If some of the gestures and options annoy you, you can look here for some tips to revert: http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2011/07/the-os-x-lion-survival-guide/ I agree with Lifehacker on the new look for iCal. Address Book resembles the iOS version, so it doesn’t bug me so much. I also agree that fullscreen mode bogarts your dual monitor setup, and it’s fun to say “bogart”.

Lion Security
Lion supports full address space layout randomization according to The Register: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/07/21/mac_os_x_lion_security/
Find out more about ASLR here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Address_space_layout_randomization

July 21, 2011 7:16 PM
My ~/Library disappeared in Finder
Your ~/Library folder is hidden in Lion. To unhide it, type “chflags nohidden ~/Library” in the terminal. The write up is here: http://krypted.com/mac-os-x/get-your-library-folder-back-from-the-lion/

Update to Xcode 4
Xcode 3 does not work in Lion so you’ll have to get it from the App Store for free. I thought it installed last night, but for some reason it didn’t. Go to the App Store and download Xcode 4 for Lion. If it doesn’t start to install after the download, go to /Applications/Install Xcode.app and click on that

Macports for Lion
Whenever you migrate to a new OS, you’ll need to also update Macports. Unfortunately, I had to pretty much reinstall everything to ensure stability.

Here is what the ports site suggested for migrations:

https://trac.macports.org/wiki/Migration

Unfortunately, the migration didn’t work for me so I had to force uninstall after I created my “myports.txt” in step one of the migration tutorial above. It’s very important to get that list of the ports you already have. When you reinstall don’t bother getting the dependencies. Just cherry pick what you actually want and install those programs only.

Here is what I am doing for the uninstall:
http://guide.macports.org/#installing.macports.uninstalling

To reinstall Macports, refer to the link below. I was able to use the packaged file for Lion. As soon as Macports installed, I ran “sudo port selfupdate”
http://www.macports.org/install.php

Some folks claimed that didn’t work, but this one using svn does. It wasn’t necessary for me:
http://guide.macports.org/#installing.macports.subversion

Final Thoughts
The UI improvements are great. As Dr. Chao said, “It’s remarkable the good job Apple did considering they’re merging with a mobile OS”. Aside from the inconvenience of reinstalling Macports, I’m happy as a clam. There may be a less painful way to get ports and Lion to work, but after my recent experience with a fresh, flawlessly working install, I wanted to continue my command-line honeymoon.

For those who are hesitant about migrating to 10.7 Lion, you will be perfectly fine working in Snow Leopard at least for the next couple months. Save your thirty bucks and donate it to Haitian relief, Japanese Tsunami victims, or buy your mother some roses. Do good deeds and make the world a better place, or be like me and drink some decent beer for a change

http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/03/13/fukushima-simple-explanation/

http://blogs.aljazeera.net/live/asia/japans-twin-disasters-march-13-liveblog

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2011/mar/13/japan-earthquake-and-tsunami-japan

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/latest-updates-on-earthquake-aftermath-in-japan/?hp

Changes since my last great organization
I finally parted with my paper planner. I’ve had a planner or paper calendar of some sort since grade school. I’m on the computer so much that I do most of my time-sensitive entries digitally on a computer.

I would use the paper calendar for a couple weeks, then I would get tired of the double entries and discontinue writing things down by hand. Then several weeks or months later I would feel guilty and go back to the paper calendar. I swear I’m not insane or that stupid, but I was mentally stuck in a habit that I thought I had to maintain or else my entire world would be disorganized. Well, what really happened is the duplication of exertion just made me give up putting minor things on the calendar all together.

Things that weren’t earth-shatteringly important were not entered in the calendar and with all the other things I jot down in notebooks and keep in my head they fell by the wayside. These little pieces of information flotsam & jetsam eventually accumulated into a huge mountain of missed to-do’s that burdened me greatly.

My system is less mentally taxing today. Now I use Google Calendar which is also synced with iCal. DevonThink acts as my inbox and information storage medium. The tiny pocket notebook I carry is also an inbox for little notes and reminders. I also keep a very short to-do list on it.

1. Save some money
2. Upgrade my computer
3. Get some road tires for the mountain bike
4. Work on a couple side jobs
5. Exercise and eat healthier
6. Take lots of pictures
7. Manage my time better

Leave unto us, o Lord, your jollificating servant <name>; <he/she> hath amused us enormously in <television programs/songs/media shenanigans> and we hope that thou wilt leave unto us a precious few more years of VH1 specials, desperate comeback tours and minor scandals.  In Jesus’s name we pray, Amen.

For all those running some flavor or Unix, Linux, or OS X:

1. Open a terminal
2. type wget and the tinyurl
3. After the HTTP response code 301 or 302 you’ll see the real url

For the paranoid who don’t want to download anything at all:
1. Open a terminal
2. Create a directory and set permissions to read and execute.
Example:  “mkdir expandTiny”  then type “chmod 550 expandTiny”
3. cd to that directory
4. type wget and the tinyurl
5. After the HTTP response code 301 or 302 you’ll see the real url

The Problem
In previous organization attempts I halfheartedly reshuffled junk from one bin to another. Sure things were out of sight, but not out of mind. You would be amazed how something like “need to buy milk” can cause chaos when it’s swimming in your mind with the dozens of other little things you need to do (including clearing out your email inbox).

It also didn’t help that in the course of implementing a project I would also get preoccupied with instant messenger, social networking sites, and assorted junk media websites. So now my mind was at critical mass trying to focus on what had to be done, having tons of miscellaneous chores swimming in my subconscious, and then reading a “cool” link someone sent me on youtube or that I found on Reddit. My disorganization was making everything difficult and frustrating. Also, I work in a field of numerous context-switching. Few employers appreciate the fact that programmers can spend an hour or so just figuring out what the hell they’re doing when they’re suddenly distracted by telephone calls, impromptu meetings that don’t affect you, or suddenly yanked to another “high priority” project.

Something Had to Give
My mind was blown and I would either go stir-crazy or take control. The first order of business was to turn off instant messenger, check email only twice a day, and stay the hell away from Digg and Reddit. IM is something that many bosses require you to have now. Ever since I started working managers have asked me to either sign into IRC, ICQ, or AIM. I also used to check my email out of boredom or because I’m just plain obsessive compulsive. Reddit and Digg (in my way of rationalizing) was a programmer’s escape when I simply couldn’t think and needed my biological CPU to stop thinking so much. So, removing these things for a full business week for me was difficult at the beginning.

The Solution
Once I made the decision to block out the internet except for reading the news and checking my email twice daily, it was time to implement Getting Things Done (GTD). I first went through all my junk and cleared out most of it. I gathered a couple inboxes and started processing all my action items. I made a few next actions lists, project folders, and most importantly started using my calendar only for timed actions. No more putting my to-do list on the calendar. When you submit to this system one very important component is to review weekly or bi-weekly your lists and projects to ensure you’re still on track

The Result
It’s still too early since I’m on week one, but so far I’m really enjoying the system. One side-effect is that I’m so used to worrying about all the “stuff” that I have to do that I don’t know what to do with my extra time. For the first time in years, I have the time to fully develop my creative and analytical sides. I’m not burying my head in the sand and simply ignoring the little things I need to do, but processing and organizing them accordingly. I highly recommend this book for anyone that feels like they are just spinning their wheels creatively or productively. It took much discipline (and still does), but I feel very confident that I can pull this off.

Some Suggestions and Peculiarities
Besides Omnifocus & OmniOutliner for Mac, I found that most of my solutions were low-tech. I don’t have a smart phone, iPhone, or PDA and all of those didn’t quite fit my needs. GTD works very well with hi-tech or low-tech tools, but to me crisp paper suits me quite fine. Here is a list of things I used. Results will vary and you should use whatever tools help you to be more organized:

• Moleskine journalist pad for capturing things for my in-box
• 5 x 8 Moleskine for notes, journal, or doodling
• I have a Moleskine weekly calendar which I love because you can glance the days on side and notes on the other page. If I do get tempted to write a list, it won’t be on the calendar itself
• Omnifocus: There are other programs out there like Outlook, Things, and iGTD, but I have Omnifocus and it works great.
• OmniOutliner: Man, I LOVE this app. I really enjoy being able to make a dropdown out of anything
• iPod: I work well when my music is playing
• Cambridge Limited Project Planning Notebook: Honestly, loose leaf will do, but this is great for making Next Actions Lists
• Embrace Minimalism: If you don’t need it, trash it
• lifehacker.com: I know everyone is a “geek” or “hacker” these days, but this blog has good suggestions

Conclusion
I still have to refine my system a bit and make things as simple as possible. I’ll update my progress in the following weeks, but I feel very good about things. If I am as ADD as my lovely wife says I am here’s a way to be productive without the need for drugs

- Chili con carne

- Beef Burgundy

- French Onion Soup

- Beef Stew

- Crawfish Chowder

I’m getting hungry just writing about this!