Tag Archives: lifehacks

Scripting my application launch process

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Every day for work, there’s several applications I always use. The other day, I put together a quick and dirty bash script for opening all of them at once.

I’m terribly inexperienced at this, so don’t poke fun, only offer good suggestions for improvement…

#!/bin/bash

# Open all of the requisite applications
echo 'Opening Chrome'
`open /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/`
echo 'Opening Skype'
`open /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/Applications/Skype.app/`
echo 'Opening Sparrow'
`open /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/Applications/Sparrow.app/`
echo 'Opening Linkus'
`open /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/Applications/Linkinus.app/`
echo 'Opening Adium'
`open /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/Applications/Adium.app/`

Two life decisions: veganism and work email

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Last night, I made two life decisions: I’m going vegan and I’ve removed my work email account from my iPhone.

For the first, Annie and Jacob have been eating vegan for about a month and a half now. Jacob convinced me to switch last night when he made an amazing grilled pizza with mushrooms, onions, peppers and a tahini sauce. I’ve seen it’s possible to eat well while eating vegan, and I’m pretty sure you end up eating more vegetables too.

For the second, I’ve had a policy for a while where I turn my computer off at end of the work day at PIE. This naturally extends to not getting sucked into work email at home either — and the easiest way to do so is to remove the account from my phone.

Life hacks for a deliberate life.

The Setup: An Interview with Amber Case

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I sometimes run a very old version of The Sims to optimize living conditions for two people with busy lives who want to achieve maximum happiness and self actualization. I run simulations of floor-plans and then try to find places that are similar to those floorplans. It took two years to find my current place of residence, and not only is it cheap, but I can run Sims whenever something seems odd in the house. Turns out that an errant chair or a table configuration might cause undue friction and, over time, decrease joy and happiness. It’s difficult to step outside of life and watch it from an isomorphic architecture view in 30x speed, but the Sims allows you to do that. It’s kind of my version of debugging life, and it’s another reason why I have a PC lying around. I don’t play the game unless I’m trying to figure out a more optimal living condition. I don’t use this religiously by any means, but as more of thought experiment.

Amber Case — The Setup

New kit: Fitbit

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Ordered a Fitbit way back in August or September and it finally arrived today. Holy Moses. The device is sleek and brain-dead simple, and the website allows you to track everything under the sun in an elegant way. If it works well, this is the coolest thing I’ve come across in a while.

Nature’s bounty

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Creativity tip: if you have a hankering for a massive salad, but don’t know what to put on it, go to the salad bar and make a list of everything available. Then, go to the veggie section of the grocery store, and buy everything on that list and then some. With luck, you should end up with a delicious mix of beets, baby corn, carrots, cucumber, chard, olives, peas, avocado, potatoes, and tofu.