kw906 : “Cyber Zen”
Jan 29This week we look for ways to make technology work for you instead of the other way around. No really ! Have you noticed how you are constantly interrupted by notifications from your smartphone ? How you spend hours on Social media without doing anything productive ? How adds and Tv sometimes make you feel agitated ? We go on a quest for some practical tips to cyber-zen your lifestyle. So lets tame your content stream and your devices so they will work for you .. instead of the other way around.
Shownotes.
- Introduction
- Getting rid of cable tv
- Taming my devices
- The power of “Ding”
- The “Ding” hierarchy
- The results
- Signoff.
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Zen week : Guard your sleep cycle with f.lux
Nov 03Its “Zen” week on Knightwise.com where we are going to give you some tips on turning you hyper connected lifestyle a little more towards the “pool of tranquility” that is a state of Zen.
Lets start out with a cool little app called F.LUX.
The screens on our devices (laptops , tablets, phones) are designed to mimic the blue hue of daylight as much as possible so we can enjoy a clear an crisp image and be “productive”. However, our brains and our sleep cycle are triggered by the presence or absence of daylight. As the sun sets it gets darker in the evening, our brain tells our body to get ready for bed and once we lie down we hopefully doze off. But RIGHT before you go to bed you quickly check your Facebook feed on the super-daylight-bright display of your laptop. Your eyes notice the “Daylight color” and your brain thinks .. ” F*ck ! It’s noon ! ” and completely resets your bio clock. Result : You have a hard time getting to sleep ! And this is BAD for you !
So enter F.lux. F.lux will adjust the color temperature of your screen according to the time of day. In the morning your screen will have a much “warmer” color to match the rising sun. As the day progresses F.lux will adjust the brightness and color tone to “daytime” only to “wind it down” back to a warm tone in the evening. This puts less strain on your eyes and makes your laptop much more sleep-cycle friendly.
You can disable flux from the menu-bar icon for an hour or until the next day to prevent it messing up your colors when you are doing video editing or photoshop.
F.lux is free and is available for :
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App Week : Block distractions with Offtime. (Android)
Oct 20Smart-phones. That is what we call them .. right ? Well, in todays world we just call them “phones” because aside from aunt Jenny in Pensilvania who holds on to her Nokia 5110 for all eternity, there is no-one left using a “dumb-phone”.
However … I think our Smart-phones are pretty dumb ! They distract and interrupt you at the most horrible times. A Facebook message in the middle of a meeting. A phone call right when i’m “in the zone” for writing a good article, Email when i’m watching tv … or a silly ping by Pinterest that “such and such” is now following me .. AT 4 AM IN THE MORNING.
I hate being a slave of my communications, rushing to get calls, anxious that i’ll “miss out” on emails or messages. “Offtime” is a great app fror your Android phone that helps you with that. You just set the time when you don’t want to be disturbed and Offtime will block any incoming calls, dings, emails and messages EXCEPT from the people you put in your VIP list. Everybody else gets a nice “out of office” message that you have drafted up in advance.
Afraid your internet superstardom will make you “miss out” ? That”s ok. Offtime will give you a summary of what you missed when you get back. The app is free, available for Android, works ‘cross device’ (messages on your tablet smartphone etc will go ‘dark’ at the same time) and you can tie in offtime to your calendar.
And their video is adorable. … Offtime. That little curly haired girl that kicks you in the nuts and takes away your cellphone when you don’t want to be dist… OUCH !! HEY … GIMME BACK MY PHONE !!!!
LINK : Offtime (Free , Google Play)
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Column : Single display Simplicity.
Feb 15If you ever watched the movie Wargames (I am showing my age here) or remember the scene inside the control room of the Nebuchadnezzar and you found your geek heart-rate quickening at the sight of all those screens … then you know what I mean when I say : “One display is never enough”.
Somehow, having a workstation with multiple computers blasting lines of random code onto several monitors surrounding a hyper-connected fast typing individual has something strangely appealing to it. More computers, more screens, more keyboards, more input, more data .. it somehow enhances our sense of power.
I remember the near fistfight scenario’s at the office where users would demand a dual-screen setup. They would vaguely think up scenario’s about the need to simultaneously run applications or compare data across the screen. The troglodyte rat-race that had prefaced this situation featured the urge to get “the biggest screen” in the office. Now there was a new kind of ‘hip’ in town .. the need to have TWO screens. Never mind if they needed it .. their neighbour had two .. so one screen was just not enough.
The domestic geek in the confounds of his own private dungeon is very much the same. ONE computer cannot be enough… you need SEVERAL machines. And since we are well on a roll on tilting the number of devices per user quota , lets add some tablets and smartphones to the mix .. shall we ?
So what you end up with is a complete over-connected bat cave with plenty of systems that you need to maintain. More screens then you can encompass, each displaying a separate part of your information streams (or each redundantly displaying the SAME information streams). Giant “waves” of notifications across all the different systems whenever you get a new reply on Twitter. Plenty of of keyboard-swapping and a dizzying amount of chair-swivelling. Yes : You have built a veritable mission control centre with enough machines to keep 5 people occupied, but you have a staff of one.
So what if we go back to simplicity ? Last week, I had to confine myself to our kitchen table downstairs so I could keep my wife (who had the flu) company as she was sleeping on the couch. My “Mission Control Centre” sat unmanned upstairs. The only thing I had was my laptop, a notebook riser, an external keyboard and mouse .. and a pair of earphones. My geek universe shrunk to ONE 13 INCH screen. Can you imagine the horror ?
So was it horrible ? Did I suffer information deprivation ? Did my fingers grasp the empty air where otherwise secondary (or tertiary) keyboards used to be ? Initially the answer was : YES. It took me quite to squeeze all of my workflows onto one machine/display but after a couple of hours I started to enjoy it. I have to admit , my personal digital architecture ( the way I have organised my Cyber Lifestyle) highly favours “sliding” from OS to OS , from machine to machine so I seldom have data or workflows locked down to one specific machine. I could cope with using just ‘one machine’ for a short time, but would it last ?
To my own surprise I actually started enjoying it ! The “one machine” approach meant that I could focus on what I was doing. The distractions were kept down to a minimum (Windows that I did not need simply remained closed) and notifications just came in ONCE on ONE system. When I closed down my email client, I did not get any mail notifications. I didn’t have to fight the urge to “check Twitter at a glance”. With fewer monitors and fewer systems I gained more focus then ever before.
On top of that, I got back some “intimacy” with my system. When there was a problem, or I needed to figure out how to do stuff , it was just on that ONE machine. It had been a long time since I experienced the feeling of having “one” computer that was “MY” computer and not just “A” computer. This kind of “human-device” intimacy resulted in me taking extra good care of that machine. I tweaked it to my liking. It took me 25 minutes to find the right wallpaper and really ‘settle in’ on my machine, instead of just ‘passing by’ and quickly rap on the keyboard before moving on. That one little computer became my ‘home’.
So I have learned something : More is not always better. I admit it is quite hard to do full screen video editing on a single 13 inch laptop but it does help you focus on the content. More machines means more maintenance, more distractions and more ‘distance’ from the machine. We loose not only the intimacy with “OUR computer”, we also lose the intimacy with the applications we have because we “bounce around” so much. We hop from phone to web interface, from mail client to tablet and loose any ‘deep knowledge’ of an OS or an application. We don’t seem to the time anymore, or better said : We don’t TAKE the time.
It felt refreshing to be back upstairs after a couple of days. Basking in the glow of all three 24inch displays, overlooking my digital horizon while leaning back with my hot cup of tea .. but somehow I missed my little excursion. Going back to the basics of one simple machine reminded me .. that sometimes less .. is so much more.
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If you want my advice … why don't you take it ?
Jul 26Helpdesk Saturday. Being in the IT field I get a lot of phone-calls. I must say, if I don’t “accidently” leave my cell phone at home from time to time .. Saturday afternoons, rainy days, and holidays would turn into some kind of private on line help-desk sessions. It used to be even worse, being awoken on a saturday morning with by a random native of my town who was standing outside my door , computer case in his arms, demanding I fix his computer by the end of the day, and stuff like that. But as I said … its not THAT bad anymore. Some of the people I know have actually evolved from : “Calling Knightwise whenever I fracked something up” to .. “ Calling Knightwise BEFORE I frack something up.” This results in the fact that I get some phone-calls and questions on “advice” rather then “ support “I don’t mind advice calls, sometimes even think they are rather charming. People standing in an IT store, disregarding EVERYTHING the sales person has just tried to sell them, picking up the cellphone and calling ME for objective and trusted advice.
What to buy. Same thing happened last saturday : A phone-call from a niece of mine, on the one big question : What MP3 player should I buy : A creative or an Ipod. Ah … She had come to the right place of course. My house is the virtual Dagobah of portable media device advice and “ The master am I in advice about what to buy ! ” ( or some Yoda-esque quote like that) So after explaining for 20 minutes straight that the Ipod is most surely the better buy. ( I’m not pimping Apple here , I have just been so frustrated with Creative MP3 players that the last time I threw one away I surely must have launched it into orbit) My niece who is a very bright and chipper girl gave me some excellent questions and was well informed about the matter : What’s the best buy in storage-space for your money , What device has the best software, What device has the best hardware quality etc. Gingerly I answered all her questions and pointed out that the Ipod is the best buy. Creative has been struggling to make “ipod killer” after “ipod killer” but they just can”t do it. With software that is more instable then the Tjernobyl nuclear reactor, Devices that look like some five year old just had a run in with a blob of play doh and battery life that mounts up to the attention span of a ADD patient on red bull … its not something you want to by. So I say , scream, argue and imprint the line : Don’t buy a Creative : Buy an Ipod onto her synapses. Short from writing the message on the face of the moon .. I have used up all my recourses in trying to convince her. Satisfied with a job well done .. I hang up .. Flattered by the fact that people trust my advice and follow my directions before they plunge themselves into technological mayhem.
Erm .. I made a booboo. Or so I thought : Because yesterday evening .. I got a call .. From my niece. Prepping up to give her some Ipod pointers, software, websites and advice .. I was a little dumbstruck by her first line ..” Well erm .. I went out to buy an mp3 player .. And I bought a Creative”. My heart skipped a beat and for a little moment in linear time I thought that insanity must have claimed me. I seriously started doubting my communicational skills or the fact I have somehow contracted an alternate personality that had advised the purchase of such a devilish device. As she went on she explained (frustrated) that the Creative just didn”t work right. Importing movies onto it did not function properly and the software that came with it decided it would cease functioning after the first use : Result : The creative does not work. The words “ I TOLD YOU SO “ formed like a big sign in the back of my head. What part of the message : DO NOT BUY A CREATIVE had not been very clear. Did I have to implore reverse psychology ? Did I by some strange interstellar phenomenon appear to be an unreliable source of advice ? I do not know honestly. But I’m a nice guy , did NOT say I told you so , but was unable to offer any advice accept for the fact ‘ Because its CRAP” as to why the Creative MP3 player did not work. Sadly for my niece she has to dive into the manuals of the device and hope and pray it will preform correctly. Oh well.. at least i’m not like NICK BURNS !
