What I Did in 2009

New Year’s resolutions are for people of a more optimistic disposition than I. This time of year, what I typically feel is not enthusiasm about what I might achieve in the coming months but rather disappointment at how far behind I am on various projects, how many things on my to do list for the previous year are still undone, and how much work and stress await me in the new year. In 2009, I had a rather spectacularly long and ambitious to do list, and sure enough—despite my best efforts—lots and lots of those things are about to be pushed right onto next year’s list.

But this year, I decided to undertake a little exercise to help me feel a bit less guilty and dispirited about all those undone tasks. I sat down and wrote a list of what I did manage to accomplish in 2009. And you know what? I think I actually did OK. Despite life’s usual range of complications—administrative problems, illnesses, travel snafus, unexpected bills, and a million other things—when I look at this list, I kinda go, “Dang! That is not a bad showing for a year’s work.”

I thought I’d share my list here—not to brag (hey, if I’d pulled off everything on my to do list, that would be something to brag about!) but to offer a bit of perspective. If you’re the sort of person who, like me, gets depressed at the realization that you haven’t done “enough” (whatever that means), try making your own list of accomplishments. I’ll bet you’ll discover you’ve done much more than you thought, and I hope that helps you feel better about yourself!

So here’s what I did in 2009 (or at least what stands out in my memory), in no particular order:

And, in case you were starting to think life was all work and no play for me in 2009, I also wasted spent plenty of time interacting with my favorite media…

And, of course, there were many intangible accomplishments. I made new friends, and got to know existing friends better. I saw and did lots of interesting new things here in Paris. I took long walks with my wife. I spent time with my son. I played with my cat. I smelled flowers and watched sunsets. I ate large quantities of chocolate. I also end the year with an empty inbox.

This hasn’t been my favorite year, not by a long shot. I’ve experienced enormous amounts of stress and anxiety, and on the whole, I’m happy for 2009 to be behind me. But all things considered, I’d have to say I’ve filled the past 365 days rather adequately.

December 31, 2009 by Bricolage

Twitter Tools Goes Haywire

So I was trying out Twitter Tools, which can do interesting things like creating a tweet when you post on your blog, and creating a blog post when you post a tweet. Both of which are potentially useful things. From the FAQ in the Read Me file:

What happens if I have both my tweets posting to my blog as posts and my posts sent to Twitter? Will it cause the world to end in a spinning fireball of death?

Actually, Twitter Tools has taken this into account and you can safely enable both creating posts from your tweets and tweets from your posts without duplicating them in either place.

Yeah, except it didn’t. As soon as I turned it on and set up the various options I wanted, two things happened. First, it downloaded my last 20 tweets and made blog entries out of them. (Not at all what I wanted, because some of them are quite old…I was assuming it would start with my next tweet.) And then, having discovered 20 new blog entries, it created 20 new tweets, one for each. (That’s what the Read Me explicitly said wouldn’t happen.) So they were totally duplicated—highly annoying. Nor did this stop after the initial batch—my next tweet, to apologize, was also turned into a blog post that was immediately re-tweeted.

I also discovered another missing feature: when Twitter Tools creates a blog post from a tweet, it just truncates the tweet arbitrarily and turns that into the title, but with no verbiage like “From Twitter…” (comparable to the “New Blog Post” it puts in tweets). So, another big minus.

So: Twitter Tools = FAIL. And sorry for all the birdy poo. Now to uninstall…

December 7, 2008 by Mac Stuff

The Latest News

It’s like this: I just have too many blogs. Not that I’ve had time to write anything for any of them recently, but the problem is compounded by the fact that there are at least two different places where I’d write about stuff going on in my personal life if and when I had the time to do so (here and on Truffles for Breakfast). In theory, TFB is for stuff relating to our life in Paris, but since that sort of encompasses pretty much everything, it leaves little that feels like it belongs here. One of these days I’ll figure out what really belongs where, but in the meantime, for an update on what’s been going on in my life, please read New Year’s Update on Truffles for Breakfast.

January 3, 2008 by News

Early bird gets the Leopard

Almost exactly four years ago, on October 24, 2003, Apple released Mac OS X 10.3 Panther. On that same day, the very first ebook in the Take Control series appeared—my upgrading guide, Take Control of Upgrading to Panther. Little did I know then that this little publishing experiment, undertaken by most of the TidBITS staff and a handful of other talented authors and editors, would be so successful as to eventually produce the majority of my income. But today, less than 24 hours after Apple finally announced the shipping date of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, I’m pleased to report that my 14th title in the series is now on sale: Take Control of Upgrading to Leopard: Early-Bird Edition.

When I wrote my second Upgrading book, Take Control of Upgrading to Tiger, I naturally started with what I’d written about Panther, added some stuff, removed some stuff, and generally updated everything to be accurate under the new system. But this time I wanted to go way beyond that. Leopard is a big, big release with lots of serious changes; I wanted the Upgrading book to reflect that and prepare users as thoroughly as possible. So in addition to massively reworking the text to cover all the changes to the Leopard installation process, I pulled in some material from my ebooks on backups, maintenance, and troubleshooting. Now I provide detailed instructions on getting your Mac in tip-top shape, complete with an excellent backup, before inserting that Leopard DVD—and I think the extra steps up front will lead to much happier installations later.

Of course, there was a tiny problem: ideally, you’d do all that preparatory stuff days or even weeks before you get your Leopard DVD, but I can’t actually release the full book, with all its top-secret information about the ins and outs of Leopard installation, without violating my NDA. So we decided to create two versions of the book. The Early-Bird Edition, which you can buy (for $10) and download today, has all the background information you need to get your Mac ready for the upgrade, but leaves out all the information I’m not allowed to reveal (which amounts to quite a large portion of the book). The full edition will become available the instant Leopard goes on sale in North America (that’s 6:00 p.m. Eastern Time next Friday, October 26). Anyone who has already purchased the Early-Bird Edition can simply click a link on the cover of the PDF to go to a Web page where they can download the full version for free. And then they can skip (or skim) about 50 pages of text and get on to the actual upgrading process fairly quickly. Of course, if you wait until next Friday or later to make your purchase, you’ll simply get the full version, which is a superset of the Early-Bird Edition.

Now then…what’s crazy to me about all this is that I initially wrote (both versions of) this book back in February, when Apple was still saying Leopard would be released in the spring. It went through our whole editorial and technical review process way back then. In April, when Apple announced a delay until October, we just put the project on ice. This summer I picked it up again, and updated the manuscript with new information from each new beta version of Leopard. Yesterday, as soon as Apple made their announcement, I had to tweak a few things in the Early-Bird Edition to correspond to the latest truth, but even so, we were organized enough that the PDF was available for sale within hours. Between now and next Friday, I very much hope to see an even more recent version of Leopard than what I’ve been working with, and should it contain any significant changes, I’ll work those into the final text as well. The result should be our most thorough and up-to-date upgrading guide ever! If you’re planning to install Leopard, I think you’ll find this ebook to be immensely helpful.

October 17, 2007 by Books Mac Stuff
Joe Kissell is a best-selling, award-winning, hyphen-overusing author and technologist, and the publisher of Take Control Books. He enjoys making complicated topics easy to understand. He’s also a husband, dad, and dreamer. Having lived in numerous places in the U.S., Canada, and France, Joe has now settled in Saskatoon.

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