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A Week of Rafting the Salmon River
I went on a 6 night rafting trip with my Dad on the Main Fork of the Salmon River in Idaho, an 80 miles stretch of river through one of the most remote areas left in the lower US. SO awesome. I've been rafting with my Dad since I was 4, and being able to camp while rafting is truly one of the most enjoyable experiences. Being able to throughly disconnect from the external world is so cleansing and appreciated. I had no idea what time it was most of the time and even lost track what day it was a time or two. This river is called the "River of No Return" as it pretty much is one-way trips from East Idaho to West Idaho only. It is also the 2nd deepest river gorge in the continent, even deeper than the Grand Canyon, although it doesn't feel like it as much since it's a series of false summits. It flows into the deepest river gorge afterwards, the Snake River cutting through Hell's Canyon.
Map
View Salmon River in a larger map
Photos
Video
The above video was filmed and put together by Brandon Iverson. At 2:33, the boat I'm running goes through a Class 4 Rapid that tosses all 3 of us out.
I'm traveling around the World for 6 months. While Working.
Have you ever had something big you've always wanted to do? Something that seems improbable but undeniably alluring? Something that you could look back upon much later in life and smile deeply knowing you didn't let chances pass you by?
For me, it's been the idea of traveling while working part-time in a location independent career. I taught myself how to be a front end web developer and have emphasized learning how to do it in a way that the where does not matter. Most of the time that just means being able to enjoy working at my house part of the week and being able to make visits back home easier to swing. After reading the world altering 4 Hour Work Week and seeing that many concepts about work and life were outdated and unnecessary, and seeing that other people, like Sean Ogle and Cody McKibben, were pulling this off, I've realized that it could be taken so much further.
I realized that I could outsource myself and save money if I could be in a country where the cost of living was less than in US cities, while still earning US city wages by working on a laptop abroad, a form of Geo-Arbitrage. Research of places that fit that description while having solid internet access, cross-sectioned with my own travel destination voids (namely islands and beaches), led me to looking closely at Thailand as a place to hang out.
Next step: upgrade ability to work at home some days of the week to working wherever all the time. Bringing this all up to my amazing boss, Martín Rio, resulted in a response I couldn't have accounted for: "Well, if you want to travel and work, you should just come down to Argentina and stay with me when I go back home to Buenos Aires next January and February!"
WHAT?!?
Um, OK! I'll go to a country I've wanted to visit for about 5 years and hang with an awesome local. I'd love nothing more than to hang out and drink Yerba Maté in Argentina.
Turns out another stellar key member of our team at OMBU Web, Jon Glick, was also very interested in living and working in Argentina for two months this winter, so he's coming too. So, basically, more than half our company will be working from a different hemisphere this winter :)
So the 2 or 3 months I want to spend in Thailand will go right before Argentina, nicely fitting into their peak season away from monsoons. However, that left me with another month void to fill as I wanted to leave at the end of the summer (wouldn't want to miss the amazing Pacific NorthWest summer). Since the monsoons were affecting Thailand during September, I looked across the equator to see if they'd flip and sure enough: Bali was in prime during that time.
Elated, excited, and barely able to contain myself, I set off planning and preparing as much as possible. Well, not too much planning: I'm really trying to avoid guidebook's list of places to see: I'll let word of mouth suggestions guide those actions. One day, I ended up sharing my plans with my friend Flavio in Switzerland, who's quick reaction was to demand a visit. After checking plane tickets, I discovered that by adding a few hundred bucks to the Thailand > Argentina flight, I could make it happen with a side trip to Belgium (love their beer!). So I'm hitting up Europe for about 10 days in January before going to Argentina.
The Overall Plan
I've booked a one-way ticket to Bali, Indonesia leaving from Portland, Oregon on August 29, 2010 and plan on heading up to Thailand around October 16th. I plan on doing some quick side trips to Laos & Cambodia, then leaving Thailand for Switzerland around January 4th. After about 10-ish days in Switzerland & Belgium, I'll fly down to Buenos Aires, Argentina to live and work for the next 2 months. A side trip to Brazil is definitely in the plans. Then its back up to Portland, Oregon sometime in March 2012 to crack open my dusty storage unit containing my apartment starter kit and restart life.
I'd love to answer any questions you have about location independence, working remotely, learning web development, traveling South East Asia, or anything else you have on your mind in the comments below. You can sign in with your Facebook. Thanks for reading!!
Massive Thanks
- Martín Rio - My Stellar Boss & Good Friend
- Tim Ferriss - Author of the 4 Hour Work Week and breaker of false constructs of reality
- Sean Ogle - Inspiring location independent worker and fellow Portlander
- Cody McKibben - Free thinking, enthusiastic digital nomad
- Rolf Potts - Author of Vagabonding
My Mom & Dad - You've got to thank your parents, right? They've always supported me following my instincts. I often think of a magnet on my Mom's fridge:
"Leap and the net will appear."
My Path with Yoga
I don't remember exactly what compelled me to walk into my first yoga studio sometime in February 2000 and sign up for my first Hatha class, but it is something I'll be eternally grateful for. I was hooked from the start, attending as much as I could. My tendency to share what I love with others I love lead to me bringing friend after friend down to the studio so they could experience how wonderful it made me feel. I brought so many friends with me to the studio that my teacher offered to teach a private free class to me and as many friends as I could bring one enjoyable night. I think we had a class of 12-15.
After practicing a gentle and restorative Hatha practice for 2 1/2 years, I found myself signing up for a "Yoga 2" class at the University of Montana in Missoula. The class turned out to be taught in the traditional method of Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga, founded by K. Pattabhi Jois in India. I LOVED IT. A dynamic class that moved with fluidity, connecting breath and movement together to form a more powerful action, and building up an energy that is a blessing to be bathed in. Starting from the basics, and providing modification and encouragement to those starting, our teacher, Katie Heath, built block after block of foundation for this powerful practice. Soon we were doing things we had previously labeled "impossible". "Practice, and all is coming", she would say. It's true.
I loved the class so much I took it for another semester. And then I stay on as the Teacher's Assistant for another 5 semesters afterwards. So, yeah, I was pretty much in the college yoga class for 3 1/2 years. Great times. I learned SO MUCH from my teacher, Katie, my guru. I had been developing a great practice under her, as I was attending her class at her studio, the Yoga Fitness Center, at this time too.
After college, my desire to teach still itched without it's accompanying scratch. I would often have friends ask to get a quick yoga lesson, which would then inevitably lead to us clearing out the living room and me giving a basic run down of Sun Salutations and some Standing Asanas. Then we had more who wanted to join in, and they wouldn't fit the living room anymore. The scratch came when the space at a unique building in Missoula opened up and was free and available. The owner simply wanted to have a space to share with the community.
My weekly free Ashtanga Yoga Class started up in January 2008 and consisted of close friends who had already been through a few "living room classes" with me. It was personal, communal, and loved. So they all told their friends about this great feeling they had from this great class, and they brought a friend, who eventually brought another friend. Soon, we really were connected to the community. People I didn't know in town asked me if I was that guy with the free yoga class and when it was. Every day I was thankful to be making people's lives around me better by showing them this light. The class continued until August 2009, having never charged a single student.
During the time of my free yoga class (Dec 2008-mid Jan 2009), I had the immense honor of traveling to India to practice yoga at it's originating school in Mysore. Every day (with the exceptions of Sundays & Moon Days), we would have completed a sweaty, challenging, 2 hour Primary Series of Ashtanga Yoga before 7 am. I had the life-goal-accomplishing honor of meeting the guru of Ashtanga Yoga, K. Pattabhi Jois, and thanking him for Ashtanga Yoga, before he died 4 months later. After 2 weeks of the traditional practice, I went elsewhere to try other teachers and enjoy the rest of the country during my 6 total weeks there. The traditional form of Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga continues to be my favorite style and is still challenging me while making me feel like I can accomplish anything as long as I continue to breath, stay steady, and take things one at a time.
Awesome Auto-Versioning System using Dropbox and Coda
I just came across an awesome, better way to work with web files doing what I do, which is usually spending a lot of time working with CSS, jQuery Javascript files, and images to create themes for Content Management Systems, my favorite being Drupal. Setting up a proper versioning system, like Git or Subversion, can be a little time-consuming and overkill for one person working, but everybody knows that backup and versioning is essential.
So here's what I'm doing: I have my Projects folder inside my Dropbox folder, then each project to it's own folder. Inside the project folder is 'Source Files', 'Given Content', and the one that is important for this discussion: 'theme'. In Coda, I have the Site setup so that the Remote Root is the path to the theme, not to the root of the site, and I have the Local Root point to the 'theme' folder in my Dropbox. Then I open, say, the local CSS file of the site, work on it, hit save, then BAM: Dropbox toss's a backup to it's servers and versions it automatically. This will happen every time you hit save, and every one of those "snapshots" will be available for the next 30 days from Dropbox, even on the free account. I believe there are paid options for having no time limit. Rad. Then I hit Ctrl+Cmd+P to publish the local changes to the remote root, basically just uploading the new file to the server and overwriting the old copy.
This adds 1 step to your web design workflow (instead of save, it's save then publish), provides an off-site backup of precious theme files with a restorable history, and doesn't require working knowledge of the system to get benefit for it (so it could be set up for a team without everyone having to know versioning systems). Also, Dropbox folders can be shared on multiple machines and users, which warrants exploration that I haven't had the chance to do. I'm curious as to what happens when two or more people are working on the same file at the same time. I doubt a proper merge would be successful, but if Dropbox could make this work smooth, and market it properly, they could attract even more paid accounts as professionals that work with code could make one of the more frustrating, yet necessary aspects of being a web designer easy to implement.
Thoughts on Facebook and Other Mediums of Communication
I'm beginning to get worried about our reliance on Facebook as our only method of communication with those close in our lives. Anybody that knows me knows that I'm a fan of the ways Social Networks, especially Facebook, allow us to revive and keep alive connections that would of atrophied away under classic circumstances, where friends afar can fade away. However, I believe that Facebook should only be an extra layer of communication added onto the ones we already have: phone conversations, texts, emails, letters, and most importantly: face to face conversation.
Facebook's wonderful for giving those broad announcements of general activity in one's life to a semi-closed circle of friends and family. It allows everyone to kinda keep up with other's lives, and this should be used as a stepping stone for the next time you communicate with someone: the phone call where you get to ask your buddy about how the rock climbing trip was that you saw pictures of on Facebook, the text where you ask your friend if they're still planning on going to that show tonight, the conversation over coffee that can skip the question: "What have you been up to for the past year?", and can get right into how they are now and can listen to some of their more personal thoughts about the last year.
The convenience and nearly ubiquitous use in friend circles makes Facebook the medium with the least amount of resistance and the most amount of return for time invested. Communication should not be funneled through a single medium. None of them can properly capture what is going on in one's life. Each medium has it's advantages & disadvantages. Using only one sacrifices certain aspects. Together, they can provide a more clear picture.
So what am I doing about this in my life? I call a friend when I see an important status update to congratulate or console. I try to call and video chat more with far away friends. And I don't post everything that happens in my life on Facebook so I can save some really good stories for the friends that do call. What do you think about this? How has Facebook changed the way you communicate with others, both for the better and worse? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.
How to get an iPhone in Montana
EDIT(Mar 8, 2011):Well, now that the iPhone is available on Verizon, Montana's biggest cell carrier, this post is more of just an archived look at what we used to have to deal with during the 4 dark years of a mainly iPhone-less Montana.
I have an iPhone 3G in Montana with a (406) area code phone number that I brought over from Verizon (the phone number, not the iPhone) with me about a year ago. It works great! It took a little bit of work to get it rolling, but it's actually not too hard. If you're willing to jump through a few hoops, I'll explain in plain English how to get the coolest piece of technology in existence.
Before we begin, a minor background on the situation for the uninitiated. iPhones are currently only sold in the US on AT&T. AT&T is not available in Montana. The main option here is Verizon Wireless, which most of the Montanans I know have. The reason you can't get an iPhone on Verizon is because the iPhone & AT&T "speaks" GSM and Verizon & it's phones "speak" CDMA. However, Cellular One is in Montana and does "speak" GSM, so you can get an iPhone on Montana's Cell One. To allow an iPhone to get on a cell carrier that speaks it's language (GSM), there is a process called "unlocking" that allows your phone to get on any network. Unlocking is not illegal.
So, here's what you need to do to get an iPhone in Montana.
- Buy an iPhone. In order of preferred method: ask your friends, check the Craigslist for your area, or buy one off eBay. It doesn't have to be an "unlocked" one you see frequently on eBay. That just means that the next step is taken care of for you, which is the hardest, but still doable.
- Unlock it. So there's jailbreaking and there's unlocking. Jailbreaking is the process that allows one to run anything you want on a device, like an application that will unlock your phone and allow it on any network. (More info on Jailbreaking here-great info). So you jailbreak so you can get unlocked from AT&T. To start, Go here and select a tutorial that matches the iPhone you got and the Operating System you have. Follow it. You might have to try it a couple times, but don't worry about messing it up because you can always just restore your iPhone's Operating System and start over. If you're having problems, listen to what the iPhone Dev team has to say as they are the grand masters. Oh, and never pay for an unlocking software.
- Setup service with Cellular One. If you want to keep your number, tell Cell One that and they'll prepare the paperwork to send to your current cell carrier. Tell them that you already have a phone and you just need a SIM card. The plan I have is unlimited data/unlimited voice/unlimited texts for $89/month. I should note that a major drawback to this whole plan is that Cell One doesn't have service outside of Montana. You can roam, but you can't use your data plan (ie no Google Maps), which TOTALLY SUCKS, I know, but is a con I'm personally willing to accept for all the pros I get from an iPhone while I'm in Montana (which is 99% of the time). The suggested course of action is to get roaming credits before any out of state trip as that is much cheaper than paying roaming fees after the fact. Also, it should be noted that you don't have to sign a contract since you own your own phone. I'm on a month-to-month contract and can leave with my iPhone at any time :)
- Insert Cell One SIM card into unlocked iPhone. Test call someone. Brag that you got an iPhone. Hopefully you didn't piss them off, because you'll want them to call you back to test incoming calls too.
- Setup Picture Messaging & Data Network.
Under Settings>General>Network>Cellular Data Network
Cellular Data
APN: internet.chinookwireless.net
Username: blank
Password: blank
MMS
APN: wapgw.chinookwireless.net
Username: blank
Password: blank
MMSC: http://mms.cellonenation.net/mms/
MMS Proxy: 204.181.155.195:8080 - Test Text & Pic Messages. Send one of each to some asking them to send a test one back. Picture messages take a little bit to send. Be patient.
- Test Anywhere Internet. Go into settings and turn off your WiFi if you're by some. You'll see and "E" in the top indicating that you're connected to Cell One's EDGE network. Open Safari and go somewhere. If it's not working, go back into your Network Settings and check the Settings again, sometimes they don't stick.
- Rejoice!
OK, that wraps it up I think. If there's anything I missed, leave it in the comments and I'll edit the post to integrate the info. Also, I just wanted to say that I am in NO WAY involved with Cellular One or Apple, nor am I making any money off this, I just want to share with you this method as it is our only way to get an iPhone working in Montana. Well, besides getting an iPhone from AT&T in another state and just roaming in Montana, which isn't that bad of an idea. I have friends that do that and don't have any big problems, they just have crappier reception than I do. Finally, if you followed this post and wanted to say thanks, just leave a comment at the bottom so I know that it was appreciated. Hope this helped!
First Foursquare First Friday
As I'm sure you know, I've been a big fan of Foursquare, the location based game. And recently it has started to catch more interest in the Missoula Twitter community. I think that it would be a fun idea to play a game of Foursquare during Missoula's First Friday, the downtown art walk that takes place the first Friday of every month. The two ideas of what is being done is practically duplicated: going to multiple places, checking out new venues, and hopefully running into friends and other interesting people.
So here's what I propose: the person who gets the most points on Foursquare on Friday the 5th of February 2009 in Missoula, MT from 4pm - 8pm, I will give a growler of any beer from any brewery in Missoula. You can even keep the glass container. I know it's not too much, but I thought that it'd be fun for everyone who played the Foursquare First Friday game could met up at the brewery of the winner's choice the next day around 6pm-ish and all hang out, enjoy a beer, and chat. And of course, so I can give a growler of beer to the winner. To make it more interesting I was hoping more people would be willing to put up another small prize. Just mention it in the comments below.
So I just wanted to mention a few things about points on Foursquare quickly. You get 5 points for stopping at any place you've never been to, you get 5 points for adding any venue that Foursquare doesn't have yet, and you get 1 point for each place you've checked into that day. So if the 3rd place you check into is a place that you've never been and Foursquare doesn't have it, you'll get 13 points for that. So if someone wanted to have an unfair advantage on this day, then they'd just check into several places before First Friday started, then all their checkins during 4-8pm would be worth more points, therefore being unfair to the other participants. So the only way I can see it working fair is if you are participating then you can't check in at any place till 4pm. I'm open to hearing other ways around this and other opinions on what rules to have (ie only counting checkins at art galleries).
Oh, and also since you can't see a leaderboard for the general Missoula area, to be eligible you'll have to friend me on Foursquare. I'll be taking screenshots of my leaderboard at 4pm and 8pm (those are the general First Friday hours, right?) and then doing the math to see how many points were earned.
So what do you think? Does it sound interesting? Let me know in the comments below, and be sure to tick the sharing option on your comment if you want to blast your comment out to your network too. If you want to of course. Thanks for hearing me out!
Glacier Park is listening
Recently, I noticed that Glacier National Park had started putting out updates on Twitter. I love that park, live a few hours south of it in Missoula, and have been planning on going up there to snowshoe. So, naturally I became excited that there was a point of contact there that I could ask advice. I shot out a couple tweets asking where we could go and received no answer, much to my dissapointment. So I posted out this tweet:
Am disappointed that the updates coming from Glacier Park (@glaciernps) don't seem to have a human listening on the other end :(
About an hour after that, this message came in through my site's contact form:
David Restivo sent a message using the contact form at http://evanlovely.com/contact.
Hi, Evan.
I saw your Tweet regarding our participation in communication on Twitter. I didn't want you to think that nobody was listening in on the other end. I had seen your posts and questions regarding snowshoe and ski recommendations, so we tweeted where people could find that informaiton on our Web site. At this point, the park has decided to use Twitter as a one-way communicaiton tool only. Our social networking media page on our Web site better explains how we use each tool. http://www.nps.gov/glac/photosmultimedia/webcams.htm
Thanks for following us. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to write. By the way, your photos on your Web site are nice.
Best,
David
Well, it looks like I was wrong, and that Glacier National Park IS listening. Thanks David.
Why Foursquare is Important to Businesses
Lately, I have been really digging Foursquare. I'm pumped that they made it available in any city now. If you're not sure what it is, then you should check out what @TheRealClint posted up about Foursquare on his blog. It covers the introduction bases well and even goes on to talk about why it's important for businesses to take advantage of it. I highly recommend reading it. My favorite point he makes is that if you become "Mayor" of a place and they give you a free coffee/beer/treat, you'll be inclined to come back. And then others will be visiting more often to see if they can take the Mayor spot from you. This, obviously, results in an increase of customers coming by.
The point I want to make is that when you check-in to a place via Foursquare you have the option to push it out as a Facebook and/or Twitter status update to let your friends know that you're at the place in hopes that they stop by if they're in the area. Basically this boils down to wonderful word of mouth free advertising from a trusted source to your network of friends for the business. The average person who's decently into Social Networking has at least 300-500 friends on there combined Facebook/Twitter friend list, if not significantly more. Being able to get out to that many people, through a trusted source, for the price of a free cup of coffee, is an amazing deal to businesses. People are SICK of traditional advertising. They've built up a resistance to it. Friends telling them where the great place to go is, what there favorite product is, and what meaningful, relevant news they should pay attention to, is quickly replacing traditional advertising. If businesses can't excite their customer base to the point that they get excited enough to share it with their friends, then they've lost on a big opportunity. Social Media fans have long known this, but the new element that Foursquare is bringing to the table is they are tying status updates to a location. Tying the digital update to a real physical location is key for this to work. It's a new push into Geosocial Networking.
More information about Foursquare can be found on there site, their Wikipedia page, their blog, or on Twitter: @Foursquare.
How to Prepare Yerba Maté
There is a lot of confusion and poor documentation surrounding the proper preparation of Yerba Maté, I would like to share my method here. I'm not saying that my method is the perfect method and all others are wrong. I can only share what I know and use, and that I like it and it works well. I prefer using the traditional method using the Gourd and Bombilla (the Metal Filtered Straw), but there are many, many ways to prepare Maté.
- Boil Water
- Clean out yesterday's gourd. (Sad, but very true step to my method)
- Pour water into thermos, adding cold water to get the desired temp. I usually test this by putting my finger in to get an idea. I've also found out the I like water at about 150° F/65° C by using an Espresso Thermometer
- Put loose Yerba Maté into gourd, my favorite Maté being Cruz de Malta
- Shake Maté so that it creates an opening to the bottom of the gourd, then put the bombilla all the way to the bottom, then "fold" the Maté over the bombilla. This method is better seen than described, so I posted a quick video on YouTube, which can be viewed below.
- Pour cold water into the gourd. Let it soak in. Sip the gourd dry. The cold water prevents the hot water from "shocking" the nutrients from the tea.
- Pour hot water from the thermos into the gourd, making sure to pour the water onto the bombilla, so that it slides down it and into the gourd. This is better than pouring the water directly onto the herb as that will create a micro-splash-crater and disturb the herb. This first sip will be an inconsistent temp as it will still be grabbing some of the cold water. Only the 2nd or maybe the 3rd fill will be a good indicator of the temperature that the rest of the people enjoying the Maté will be experiencing. As the person preparing the Maté session, known as the servador, you are responsible for making sure that everything is of high quality for your guests, and that they will not be burning their tongues.
- Fill the gourd, point the bombilla towards the recipient, let them enjoy the entire gourd, then they hand it back to you, the servador, then you fill it again, handing it to the next person enjoying the session with you.
- Repeat
A Different Homer
Artist's Comments
"He long his wife he once had, his daughter's suicide will never be forgotten like the tattoo he has for her to remind of his failed role as a father. Homer, no longer the happy fool whom he use to be, now wanders alone in seeking the only light left in his life, his wanders in search for his missing son... "
Art by *nJoo from Deviant Art
Kick Ass Mac Applications
I love Apple Macs. Steve Jobs and his team has created one of the best platforms for enjoyable and effective creative outlets. But that's just what it is: a platform. What you build upon it is what makes it unique and amazing. Technology is what you make it. Read on to see a list of the applications I install almost as soon as I reinstall my computer's OS.
Essential Software:
Basically I install this stuff within the first hour of having everything up and running and I wish that Apple would buy most of this and integrate into Mac OS X.
Basically I install this stuff within the first hour of having everything up and running and I wish that Apple would buy most of this and integrate into Mac OS X.
- Growl - Unobtrusive Systemwide Notifications
When events happen around your computer, most application can tell Growl to send a nice little title with a description to the upper right corner that let's you know what's happened and then it fades out. Most of the time you can click it to go off and see it. But It's like having one foot in the stream of constant updates and one foot out. Seriously, Apple needs to buy this. Free - Fresh - Pop up recent files handy do-dadd
Hit a keyboard shortcut and the 6-ish most recently added or altered (that's a big one) files are there, ready to be dragged into anything (even open/upload dialog boxes). Handy as hell. <--Hell's probably not too handy, huh? Sayings are weird... $9 - Jumpcut - Simple Clipboard History
Saves the last 20 things to grace your clipboard. Super helpful. I catch things I copied the day before often enough. Usually it's just for working with 3 or so things without having to recopy any of it. Super helpful. Free - Fluid - Site Specific Browser aka Turn Gmail into an App
Web pages are turning into applications more and more. Why not treat them as such? Fluid turns any site and creates a browser that is dedicated to just that site. Super helpful for frequently visited and left open sites that get lost in your browser's tabs. Some ideas: Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Facebook, Web Host Panel, Project Sites, Wikipedia, Google Reader, Any News Site. You can get really tricky by turning your Fluid site into a Menu Extra SSB (pretty easily) that puts the browser up in your menu bar. This works even better when the site you are using in that browser is an iPhone optimized site. I heard about it here. Free - Adium - Multi-Account, Multi-Network IM Client. Sadly doesn't do video chat. Free
- AppZapper - The Uninstaller Apple Forgot. $13
- Caffeine - Screen Dimming Inhibitor. Useful for watching videos online & not having to move your mouse every 5 minutes. Free
- MultiClutch - Trackpad Gestures > Keyboard Shortcuts. If you have a laptop that allows for 3 finger swipes for browser forward/back, this will let you do a whole lot more. Free
Organizational and Productive Software
- Evernote - The Best note taking software EVER. Never lose another note again. Syncs with a Windows version and online version accessible from any broswer. Syncs with your Blackberry, iPhone/iPod Touch, Windows Mobile, Sony Ericson, or Palm Pre. You can email notes to it. You can tag your tweets to be sucked into Evernote. You can send text or picture messages to it and then IT SCANS THE WORDS IN IT AND MAKES IT AVAILABLE FOR SEARCH. I basically have a pocket scanner with my iPhone (thanks to a macro lens case) that I can search the words in later. Seriously. This is amazing. There's web clippers that you can install in Firefox/Safari/IE that will allow you to highlight text then send it to Evernote and it'll snag the source url you grabbed it from. It'll geo-locate your notes too and you can see them on a map. The free version will allow me to add 16,000 notes or 380 photos in a month. Haven't even come close to my monthly limit. FREE
- Anxiety - Minimalistic to do pop up that links into the system wide to do list, newly available in Snow Leopard. This means it shows in iCal, Mail, Dashboard Widgets, any 3rd party to do app, and can sync to Blackberry/Palm/iPhone nicely. Free
- Dropbox - This syncs a folder to a web service that will in turn sync it down to any other computer running Windows, Mac, or Linux that you want. Super helpful as a backup. If you keep your working files in there, you'll always have a current off-site backup. Also, there's a public folder that you can toss big files, then get a public link for. I sent my friend a 4.4 GB file once. Start out at 2 GB free, then you can get up to 5 GB by inviting friends. Pay accounts are available to get up to 50 & 100 GB. Free
- OmniOutliner - Outlining and note taking on steroids. This app was my savior in the final years of college. Seriously, it helped out SO much. Screw MS Word for notes, that's for righting the final paper. Towards the end, I dreamed of having a personal wiki through VoodooPad that housed all notes in all classes, because knowledge usually overlaps in courses and taking notes can be redundant. Expensive at $40, but if you use it lots, it's worth it.
- Blogo - Simplistic, quick blogging software. This got me starting to blog more recently. It's quick, it has what you need and doesn't have what you don't need. I often think of something I want to post, fire it up, type it out, send it up and I'm done with a blog post up 5 minutes after I had the idea about it. It handles multiple images well, and will let me jump over to HTML mode which is nice. $25
- Tweetie - Twitter client for Mac. FINALLY. This makes the entire process SO much better. Fires updates through Growl. Multi-accounts, TwitPic support, Short URLs support. It's awesome. A few ads in the timeline that are totally fine to deal with gets you the free edition.
- 1Password - This is the BEST password manager ever. So much more too. It's smart. Everytime you enter a password, it asks to remember the password, then tosses it in 1P. Later when you want to go to the site, you can click it in a list, it asks the 1 Password, then it opens the page, fills in the info, and hits enter and bam, you're in. Syncs with iPhone. Check out this video, because seeing is a way better way to explain it. $40
Web and Graphic Design Software:
- Coda - One Window Web Development
This app now takes care of 80% of my work on web sites. CSSEdit is better at just editing CSS, but this still has all the auto-completion that I need (makes work so much faster with a much lower chance of getting a syntax error. I especially like that they have a "Preview" mode, which is really just Safari (alright, it's WebKIT) running in another tab. Super helpful if you work on awesome Content Management Systems like I do on a regular basis. This basically made me stop using CSSEdit, TextMate, & Transmit (which are all very awesome BTW). - Firefox with Firebug - The reason I didn't quit Web Design
Firebug lets you get under the hood of a web page the way that lets you understand it and, more importantly, lets you live tweak the HTML & CSS of a page. It really aids understanding and cuts down on the maddening cycle of: See error, change code, upload, wait, refresh browser (w/o a cache), wait, observe how it almost worked, repeat. Thank you Firebug dude, one day I will donate a million dollars to you. One day. On Firefox, I love the awesome bar. You know, the awesome bar, it used to be the address bar, but now you can type it a whole lot of other stuff. It's like live search for your history & favorites. It kicks ass. - Snippet - Awesome, quick, smart code snippets. $13
Media
- I Love Stars - Easy iTunes Ratings in Menu Bar
Smooth, simple, and effective. If you like your iTunes song's rated, then keep this up in your menu bar and you just click the rating you want. - PandoraJam - Better Pandora Experience. You can stream Pandora to Airport Expresses and it umm, can record Pandora. Yep. $15
- Skitch - Take screenshots, draw little arrows and put text on screenshot to explain your idea, click button to upload to internet, then copy link to the image to toss into IM/Email/Twitter. Helps explain concepts A TON. Also, check out Jing (Windows too) to record video of your screen, which also tosses it up online with a url. Both Free.
I'm going to India to practice yoga
So I'm going to India from December 3rd, 2008 until January 13th, 2009. First, I will meet my great friend there, Ben Little, who has just got done with 2 years and 4 months volunteering for the Peace Corps in Tanzania, Africa. We will be practicing Ashtanga Yoga in Mysore for 2 weeks at the Ashtanga Yoga Research Institute, home of the founder of this style of yoga: Sri K. Pattabhi Jois. Afterwards, we will probably venture north, through Goa, a beach paradise. Then up further north, we will stop by the famed Taj Mahal in Agra. Then it's up to Rishikesh, which is suppossed to be the "yoga capital of the world". This is in the foothills of the Himalayas. Although I know it's improbable that we actually get to hike in the Himalayas, being able to see them in the distance would be a dream come true. Being a Montana boy, I love mountains.
This is all subject to change of course (not the first 2 weeks, that's pretty solid), as Ben has still yet to preview these plans. I'm sure he'll be down. Our 2 weeks in Mysore was unexpectadely cut down from the traditional month. I'm kind of glad that I get more time to check India out though. We will be on the other side of the world (12 hour time difference from Montana) and it would be a shame to stay in one town the entire time.
I've been practicing yoga since I was 19 (I'm almost 28 now) and I've been practicing Ashtanga yoga for about 5 years. I've taught it for the past year, and was a teacher's assistant in the Ashtanga yoga class at the University of Montana for 2 1/2 years under Katie Heath, owner of the Yoga Fitness Center. I've always enjoyed yoga (what made me love it at first was getting a good night's sleep). Coming across Ashtanga was a whole new world though. It helps my ADHD so much. It gives me energy, flexibility, strength, and humility. Getting to share this with my students has meant more than I imagined. Hearing many of them come up and tell me how much better it makes them feel makes me smile. I love the new-comers who walk up to me after their first class and tell me how they thought it was SO much different than they thought and I'd definitely see them next week makes me realize why I do it for free (the probably wouldn't be as likely to come if they had to pay). I hope to learn a lot as a teacher in India.
I'll be doing my best to keep my blog going, complete with pictures (feed in through my Flickr account). If you want to keep updated, jump on some email updates (see sidebar) or subscribe to the rss feed. You can also, of course just come back to the site. :)
Here's a map of India with Mysore marked:
View Larger Map
I'm a Front End Web Developer who kicks ass at CSS, is soaking in as much CSS3 & HTML5 as possible, and can write a mean jQuery line or 500. When not hunched over a glowing screen, I'm taking photos, teaching Ashtanga Yoga, or doing something outside so I don't feel so bad about loving technology so much.