What rough beast slouches towards Inbox Zero

I’ve had what you might call an email problem. Before Getting Things Done was published, and long before Merlin Mann started talking about Inbox Zero, I was already in a deep, dark pit of email messages, both read and unread (and plenty that were actually read but were marked as unread). I’m going to tell you how I got there, and how and why I got out of it.

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White Space

Anyone who knew me as a teenager or young adult is likely to remember that music was a big part of my life back then. I was constantly joining or forming bands, writing songs, and playing in front of people as often as I could manage to find gigs.

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The Sligulous Prondle-Garg

My first attempt at Vogon Poetry, inspired by a joke I made on the thoughtbot chat today.

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iOS Text Kit Basics

(reposted from Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots, where it originally appeared May 30, 2014)

In the iOS 7 SDK, Apple gave developers programmatic access to Text Kit, an advanced text layout system that lets you easily display and edit rich text in your applications. Although these capabilities are new to iOS, they’ve existed in other contexts (OS X since its first release, and OpenStep before that) for nearly two decades, in what’s called the Cocoa text system. In fact, if you’ve used OS X at all, there is a near 100% chance that you’ve run apps built with the Cocoa text system.

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iOS Code Review: Loose Guidelines

(reposted from Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots, where it originally appeared February 19, 2014)

From time to time I’ve been asked to do an independent code review, to determine the overall health of a client’s code base. Unlike a code walkthrough, where someone familiar with the code shows the main components, this is a code review where an outside expert examines the project, takes copious amounts of notes, and reports back either in written form or in a meeting with the team, depending on what the client wants.

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