Tag: Life

An update as it’s been a few years since I compiled a list and, once again, a friend is making the PC to Mac switch and I was collating a list of what I use (and why) anyway so thought I’d share it here too (cos I’m nice like that!).

I’ve taken my last post and updated it as some of the apps I used to use may be useful for others. Personally I’ve moved away from many 3rd party apps and services with the Apple offerings not good enough for me to use daily (plus my own circumstances have changed).

Productivity

• Spark – email client I use across Mac and iPhone. Handles multiple accounts, and the Snooze feature is a lifesaver (and lets me go as far ahead as I want, other apps seem to limit this to a few months or so!)
• Google Drive – FREE – much as I love the Apple versions I find the familiarity (aka ‘feels a bit like MS Office’) of the Google apps covers everything I need for simple documents and spreadsheets
• Todoist – FREE/Paid Premium – took me a long time to settle on a To Do list app and whilst Todoist still lacks a couple of features, it’s nicely designed, works on multiple platforms and, importantly, it works for me. Switched to Apple’s own Reminders app, instant sync, multiple lists and does everything I need it too (and it’s free).
• Evernote – FREE/Paid Premium – It took me a while to really get into using Evernote but it’s now become a key part of how I work/live. I use it to store all sorts of things, a backup to my ailing memory. Switched to Apple’s own Notes app which I largely use for storage of useful information and occasionally sharing those with friends and family.
• Simplenote – FREE – simple text/note app, syncs with iOS app. Feels ‘lighter’ than Evernote so I use it for transistory information, useful during meetings or on calls. Anything that I need to keep is tidied up and moved to Evernote. As above, Notes fills this gap (but I still have Simplenote for easily getting chunks of text from my work PC (via Simplenote web to the app on my MacBook/iPhone)
• Fantastical – £15 – I’d be lost without my calendar, but iCal is less than great, this makes using the calendar quick and easy, syncs with my Google Calendar (and the 9 other Google calendars I’m subscribed too), and my work Exchange server. I use the iOS app too. Switched to Apple’s own Calendar app, which has everything and is super easy to share with my wife (and vice versa).
• NEW – Tot – £20 (on iPhone or Watch, free on Mac) a wonderful utility for temporary text capture/edit. “Tot is an elegant, simple way to collect & edit text across your Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. It’s your tiny text companion!”

Utilities

• 1Password – £40 – Works on multiple browsers and on my phone, saves me remembering multiple passwords and will generate ‘better’ passwords for me too. Life saver! Switched to Apple’s own Password Manager – here’s a handy Shortcut to take you straight to it – and I’m hoping it’ll become a standalone app one day.
• Moom – £10 – gives me window positioning and sizing, customisable and fast.
• BetterTouchTool – FREE – I love the touchpad, multi-touch gestures are changing how I work, this add-on lets you take that to the next level, still figuring it all out!
• Bartender – £10 – file under, why didn’t Apple fix this? Removes a LOT of visual clutter (it’s the small bar on the top-right of my screenshot above).
• Caffeine – FREE – one click to stop your Mac going to sleep until you say so, handy for viewing movies etc.
• Keka – FREE – file archiver (ZIP/UNZIP) deals with most archive file formats, nice and simple.
• Witch – £14 – window switching made easy, a must have if you are moving from Windows.
• VLC – FREE – video player, supports a multitude of formats.
• Skitch – FREE – fantastic app for screenshots and image tweaking. Part of the Evernote set of apps. Built in Apple functionality is enough for me.
• uTorrent – FREE – for downloading torrents. Duh. What’s a torrent? LOL
• AppCleaner – FREE – for when I want to remove some of these apps, it’ll find all the related files and get rid of them too.
• Hazel – $29 – a simple way to keep your Mac tidied. Watches folders then runs rules, very powerful and very useful.
• Flycut – FREE – Clipboard manager, nice little popdown menu of the last [x] copied items.
• Contexts – For those who also use Windows, this provides a smarter CMD+Tab app switcher, which includes sub windows too. So, if I have 3 draft emails, I can bring either one to the front.
• Timeout – FREE – a simple enough idea, an app that helps you take a break more often so you don’t end up staring at the screen for hours. Very customisable too.

Worky

• Pixelmator – £23 – A bit like Photoshop because sometimes you need a little more power than the standard editor gives you. Not yet tried the iPad version as I don’t do that much graphic editing.
• FileZilla – FREE – FTP client. I don’t have need for anything fancy, I’ve used FileZilla for years and it does everything I need.
• TextWrangler – FREE – powerful text editor. Mostly used for checking code snippets.

Cloud services apps

• BackBlaze – £4 per month – I recently switched away from Crashplan which would drag my internet connection to a halt. BackBlaze seems simpler but provides the same service. Cloud based backup. I use Time Machine on a separate drive as all of my important stuff is backed up on iCloud
• Dropbox – FREE/Tiered – quite simply I don’t know where I’d be without this service. Hosted files, apps on all my devices. Drop something in a folder and it’s synced everywhere. Replaced by iCloud
• Spotify – FREE/Paid Premium – because sometimes listening to random playlists created by someone else is all you wanna do! I now pay for Apple Music, largely because of how it hooks into the rest of the Apple ecosphere (we have a family Spotify sub though so I still have access to it)
• Pocket – FREE – I moved from Instapaper to Pocket largely because, at the time, Pocket seemed to be further ahead and have more integrations to other apps I used. These days it seems Instapaper and Pocket are separated mainly by marketing/buzz.

Lifey

• Day One – £8 – Journal app, only downside is no web app, syncs with iCloud and/or Dropbox.
• ByWord – £8 – my writing app of choice these days. I compose blog posts and other random writings in it. Syncs to Dropbox, and the accompanying iOS apps are great.
• Calibre – FREE – eBook management, for my Kindle, it’s a bit clunky and not the prettiest but does exactly what it says on the tin. I now just use my Kindle app on my phone, not fired up my Kindle hardware for years.
• TweetDeck – FREE – Because Twitter. App is dead and Twitter is dead (to me).

And there you have it.

On Tuesday evenings Becca goes out to work, so it’s just me and my boy from about 4:30pm through to his bedtime (anywhere between 8-8:30).

So far, regardless of the rest of his day, we’ve managed to get him into a pretty good routine in the evenings;

• Dinner time at 5pm. Finishes whenever he announces he’s ‘aawww dunn’
• Time to play – current favourite is to run from one end of the house to the other and crash into Daddy on the sofa!
• Fruit at 6pm with strawberries and grapes currently the favoured options (I say favoured, he eats them so that’s all that counts)
• More time to play, or sometimes we just lie on the floor rolling his toy cars around.
• A glass of milk is offered at 6:30pm and drunk over the next 15mins or so.
• Teeth get brushed at 7pm, right before his bath.
• After his bath it’s straight to his bedroom for wind-down time. I’ll read him a story or two as he sits quietly on my lap…. hahahah not really, as is more often the case, he spend the time burning up the last of his energy, running up and down, giggling his head off.
• From about 7:30 I’m watching for signs that he’s slowing down and getting tired again, as soon as I can it’s into his sleeping bag, big light off, and into bed (or sometimes we cuddle in the chair for a wee bit first).
• He’s usually in bed by 7:45pm or so and asleep by 8:30 at the latest most nights.

When Becca is working, then during all of this my sole focus is him. No phone, no other distractions, even the dogs now just doze on the sofa knowing they won’t get any attention from me. Even if he’s at his toddler tantrum worst (which to be fair he’s never really all that bad with no reason) it’s still oddly relaxing, having a singular focus like that.

And I love it, but I wonder if I only cherish these moments because I work 5 days a week so I regularly have time away from Jack when he’s not on my mind every second of the day (just every other minute…) because I’m focusing on something else even if I still think about him often.

Recently someone posted this on Threads:

“something I didn’t realize about parenting before I experienced it is that you always have some sort of tether to your kid. if they’re asleep, you’re listening to the monitor. if they’re with grandparents or at school or daycare, you’re watching your phone. I don’t regret becoming a parent, and I also wish I could hyperfocus the way I used to.”

https://www.threads.net/@rebbiest/post/CxYOyf1uYff

I had to agree, that ability to hyperfocus on something was lost to me for a while but it’s definitely coming back, admitedly that’s mostly because my work is keeping me busy (my previous job, not so much) and, as I’ve recently mentioned, it comes coupled with the sense that I can start to plan to do things just for me, I can be my focus.

That said, there is something I find very refreshing about my evenings with Jack, the routine to be followed and the simple singular focus helps to clear my mind of the usual noise and I typically end my evening feeling very calm and accomplished (even if all of this has been in the midst of the tiny chaos agent running amok in our home!).

I don’t think it’s just because it’s wonderful and fascinating to spend time with Jack, seeing the world as he is seeing it. Rather I think it’s likely something to do with putting my phone away, and letting myself focus without distraction.

Becca and I joke about who spends the most time on their phone (probably me!) but it’s telling that Jack now demands us to ‘poot pone way’ at times when he wants our attention. It’s so easy to pick up your phone and get lost in something largely unimportant and whilst we both use our phones for important things as well – and those things tend to be about Jack which makes his demand a little annoying at times – we both know it’s better for him if he knows he has our attention. He is far far more important than our phones!

It’s also telling that iPhones now have much better ‘Focus’ controls, something I’ve been experimenting with to limit what I see on my phone throughout the day, which is where having a clear routine for Jack really helps, I can schedule my phone to turn off all notifications during his bedtime, for example, so my phone isn’t buzzing and lighting up whilst I’m trying to get him to go to sleep.

There is a balance to be found here of course, Jack is growing up in a world where these miniature hand-held computers are the centre of how we run our lives. We don’t always cede to his demands to put our phones away as he also needs to learn about boundaries and that, sometimes, Mummy and Daddy are allowed to say no, and no that doesn’t mean you throw yourself down and start banging your head on the floor (tellingly he only does this on carpet, not the laminate… just saying. Not daft this one!).

I’m enjoying my solo parenting evenings (and weekend mornings) more and more, and finding that quiet calm has definitely been something I’ve missed and there is no doubt that spending time with Jack is helping me find it easier to put my phone down and focus on one thing at a time.

It’s reminding me that I used to be able to this, and that I know how much it benefits me (and my loved ones) to have a calm mind and a clear headspace and all of these thoughts are prompting me to get back into a habit that I’d set aside for a while; Meditation.

I’ve mentioned my discovery of meditation and it’s benefits before and for a long time I used an app called Calm. It’s one of the better known meditation apps, and usurped Buddhify (which I loved) because of the simplicity of the ‘Daily Calm’ a 10 minute guided meditation.

It was possibly timely that I’d drifted away from meditating each day (hey, life gets in the way) as, when I got the subscription notification for the coming year, I was a bit shocked to see it was £50. I was immediately conflicted for, whilst I’m happy to pay for software as I recognise the effort that goes into building and maintaining it, I don’t consider meditating as something I WANT to pay for… surely it’s something I should be able to just DO, without an app.. yet I don’t and have used Calm as a trigger to remind me of the benefits I know I get from meditiation and… ok look, I’ll be honest, I struggled to properly understand my feelings here, I just know that something didn’t sit right with me when asked to pay £50 for an app.

And I’m absolutely certain I did not pay £50 for using this app in the past as anything over £20 gives me pause. I know it shouldn’t especially for an app like Calm that offers constantly updated content, and from which I have derived a good deal of personal pleasure. I think it’s simple because it’s an APP on my phone that makes me consider the price point this way. Weird.

Anyway, rather than splash the cash straight away I decided to look around for alternatives and stumbled head long into the world of ‘for profit wellness’.

Looking at the top hits in the App Store (and looking at the In-App Purchases available, which is in and of itself a complete clusterfuck of similarly named and priced options…), it quickly became apparent that Calm is not alone.

• Headspace – £50
• Balance – £63
• Mo – £60
• Breethe – £70

The good news is that there are, still free options available, Oak, Smiling Mind, and Medito.

I thought I’d start with Oak and whilst it’s the same 10 min meditation every day it was working ok for a week or so but I quite quickly realised I was missing having new content each day. Medito and Smiling Mind didn’t really land for me (aesthetics and UX just not ‘for me’ but might good for others), so I found myself a little stuck. I perserved for another couple of weeks but I was starting to ignore the ‘Meditate’ reminders more and more and the entire practice was slipping away from me.

AND THEN

Along came Black Friday and Calm had a 50% off sale and, £19.99 later, I’ve signed up for another year. Morals, what morals?

I did swither though, honest I did, and whilst part of me doesn’t really like the fact I am, once again, supporting the “wellness” market this way, I have to be honest and say that Calm worked well for me over the past few years so it’s nice to have it back. Sometimes we need to put ourselves first I think, compromise where you can, but given this is all about helping me find more calm (how apt) then it’s a compromise I’m willing to make.

Looking ahead to 2024 I hope I can keep carving out 10 mins each day to meditate. Just as I hope I can get back out on my bike more often, as it too brings a level of focus that brings a level of calm to my busy brain.

And of course I still have time with my son, existing in his world is a focus in and of itself. And when he’s not diving around burning off his toddler energy, we both enjoy little moments of calm. A hand held during a walk, a cuddle on the sofa , or just lying on the floor rolling his cars around.

P.S. The CALM offer is still on if you are interested. No, I’m not on commission nor is this a paid for post.

I’m a sucker for a new app.

Over on Threads recently there was a short spell of people sharing their home screens, and I reveled in it; I love seeing screenshots of peoples phones/computers to see what else is out there. Whilst I rarely intentionally seek out new apps these days – the apps I currently use are good enough for my needs – I’m always happy to try new ones when I spot them, after all you never know when something ‘better’ might come along.

When it comes to paying for apps though, it’s fair to say that that can be a tougher decision to make. Not because I want everything for free but because with so much of my daily life boiled down into a few apps on my phone, the app needs to work the way I want it to and if doesn’t fit into my workflow/usage, then I’ll look for an alternative.

For example; I was an early convert to Evernote, it’s clipping functionality was super useful, it had a nice clean interface, and it’s quick syncing across platforms was flawless; I used it heavily for several years until they started focusing on getting ‘Business Users’ (companies) involved and for a few releases the app got bloated and the UI got cluttered and it eventually it got to the point that using the app was a mental chore with features I didn’t need or want getting in my way every time I used it. So I looked for something simpler and, with some serendipitous timing, Apple had finally updated their own Notes app to the point of being useful enough for my needs, bye bye Evernote.

I was happy to pay for Evernote and would’ve continued to do so but at some point the barrier of usage, for me, stopped offsetting the price value (in my simple view, admittedly). I tried some other paid alternatives before deciding on Notes (Bear was another one that ended up just not quite what I wanted to use, the UI is a little overbearing for me, no pun intended!).

Over the past few years there has also been a shift, rightfully in my mind, to a yearly subscription option for apps. Previously apps were given a single purchase price and you could happily use it for a few years until, inevitably, a big redevelopment/improvement was made and the developer(s) realised they deserved to be paid for the time they’d put into said new version and made it chargeable. Ohhh the uproar when a developer says ‘version 2 of my app, the app you’ve been using for the last 3 years at version 1, will now cost you money if you want to upgrade’ was horrifyingly fascinating to watch.

Sidenote: I have a few apps I have paid one-off fees for, most notably Tot, but they are far and away starting to be the exception.

Maybe my understanding of paying for software is because I work in software development. I know how hard it is to build and maintain an application, even a simple one. What looks easy on the surface is usually only that way because of a myriad of build/test iterations to hone one feature, repeated many many times, all of which take time and cost money. Some apps will have an underlying infrastructure to build and support as well; keeping content files backed up and in sync, for example, requires storage which costs money, even if the files are small (and a popular app could have thousands of users with millions of files to manage). No wonder developers want to charge for all of this.

I have also found an additional benefit of apps moving to a subscription model, it’s causing me to pause and consider how often I use an app, and how much “value” I garner from it and sometimes that has me looking for and finding alternatives.

For example, I most recently I stopped using Todoist. It’s a product I’ve mentioned here before in glowing terms, but due to some changes in my own circumstances I wasn’t using it the same way to the value I was getting had dropped.

When I discovered Todoist I’d already tried many different To Do apps (ahhh Remember the Milk was almost the one…) and Todoist stuck with me because it let me customise it just enough for what I needed, worked across multi-OSes, and had very little functionality that I didn’t need. Alas a job move meant I could no longer use it for work purposes and my home use requirements weren’t as grand so… hello Apple Reminders! I have a few different lists in there, it handles reminders and recurring tasks well and does everything I need and, it’s built into iOS so in that sense it’s “free”, renewing Todoist would cost me £47.99 a year.

Ditching Todoist was a simple enough value equation in that instance, and I’ve found that after brief comparison that same value equation held true with a few others apps that I used to use, so much so that the number of subscriptions I currently have is down to 6 – one of those is Apple TV+, one is the free 1 year membership of Balance (more on meditation apps later!) which I’ve not really enjoyed so won’t take forward, and one is for a Tour Tracker app for following cycling events in real time (at £2.99 I didn’t mind a one off ‘purchase’ to try it in full but I won’t renew this one either).

Which means, for apps that I will continue to use for the foreseeable future, I currently only pay subscriptions for:
– Carrot Weather – largely for the Apple Watch complications – £2.29
– Day One – my journaling app of choice* – £31.99
– Overcast – my podcast app of choice – £8.99

Ohhh and we pay for a Spotify Family sub as well because we both use it.

I do like that a lot of apps these days come with free trials, with a few days to use the app before the subscription price is charged, so I can happily try them out – although I do wish they’d let me have more than a week, sometimes I barely get near my phone as it is, so I can’t prioritise trying a new app I MIGHT use in the future in that limited amount of time. Gimme a month then charge me?

I know for many people there is a view that apps should be free/cheap and that is why subscription models charging upwards of £40-50 a year cause some people to baulk (and then complain loudly) and even though I value the time and effort that goes into making good software, these prices do make me swither, even though I know they really shouldn’t.

I’m not sure how to get past that initial reaction and maybe I never will; growing up in a world where shareware was the most popular way of getting new apps (for “free” thanks to relying on the honour system of ‘pay if you like it/use it’) meant that software has never been something to which I attach a large monetary value. And of course it doesn’t help that these days an operating system isn’t just a platform but a plethora of free apps, even if you don’t want to use them they are still there to remind you, hey you got this for free (I know, I’m paying for these apps just by having an iPhone).

Hmmmmm, I wonder what would happen if Apple started charging for each app; Ohh you want a messages app, that’ll be £20 a month thanks, a phone app you say, another £10 a month, a camera app will be £15 a month…. I know it’ll never happen but I can’t help wondering if there was a unique cost on every single app, no matter who provided it.

As ever, writing these posts is enlightening for me. Turns out my thoughts and approach to purchasing software is not fixed and, like many people, I have a definite ‘grudge’ when it comes to paying money for apps. What I’m starting to realise is that it is my own sense of value – in terms of how often I use an app, how useful I find it, and how well it works with the way I think – that drives me towards a decision on parting with money for it, or not.

I feel a little sorry for app developers, finding that sweet spot of user experience, usability, utility, and price is a hard one. Yet some have managed it and, as I continue to discover and try new apps, I’ve no doubt what I pay for and what I use will continue to evolve. Ohh yes, we users are nothing if not fickle.

So here is my current homescreen, mostly for my own reference. If you want to know any details, hit me up in the comments (do we still ‘hit people up’??).

* I know that Apple are about to release their own Journal app but having seen the previews I don’t think it’s a good fit for my needs just yet. However, as with their Notes app, I’ve no doubt they’ll enhance it and in a year or two I’ll be re-considering it.

One of the earliest pieces of advice I was given, in my first lecture at Glasgow Polytechnic (now Caledonian University), was to always read the newspaper. Didn’t matter what direction, read the Sports pages first if you want, but read it all, stay up to date, know what is going on in the world.

I should point out that this was before the internet took off, when news was delivered via radio, TV, or on paper, and it was good advice and, although I’ve not bought a newspaper for decades, I do try and keep up with what is going on in the world and ohhh my days what a shit show it seems to increasingly be.

That’s my perception at least, that the world is getting worse and worse, with more and more of the news being dominated by extreme acts/events/people. Wall to wall horrors assault our senses from all angles. Every day something awful happens that seems to trump (horrific pun intended) the last, and it’s gotten to the point where I avoid news broadcasts purely to avoid the direct assault on my senses.

Of course it’s likely that things only seem worse as global communication is so much better and faster so we hear about more of these things as and when they happen, rather than being an article in a newspaper 2 or 3 days after the fact (if at all). These days the multi-angle assault we get across all our social media channels and news sources feels like a constant barrage and I, for one, am lost in the trenches. Defeated.

And then I read this – available to Friends of Dense Discovery – that Kai wrote:

“To combat defeatism and stay engaged, some more or less obvious things we can do: read, listen, watch broadly to gain more context; dip only lightly and occasionally into what I call ‘fast and furious media’, i.e. news and social platforms; be with friends and family; be an active citizen: sign petitions, write to MPs and join protests; donate; walk/hike/exercise; immerse ourselves in nature; help a local cause; be extra empathetic to the those around us; allow ourselves to grieve; allow ourselves to experience joy.”

Kai Brach – Dense Discovery

The dip only lightly and occasionally into fast and furious media is an approach I’ve taken over the past few years, if not longer. As a way to manage my own mental health and general wellbeing, it’s akin to the steps I’ve taken to remove toxic/negative people from my life. I do not need the drama.

Of course the rest of his advice resonates, immersing myself among the trees, or along the shore of a loch, is a surefire way to reset my humanity. And of course it’s also important to take a step back and remember that the one thing that news media has gotten very good at is reporting on atrocities. Alas they don’t report on the good things all that often. The world isn’t all that bad, on the whole.

In short; The world is awful. The world is much better. The world can be much better.

So my advice on how best to manage your consumption of world events? Turn off the news, pause a moment, look up at the clouds as they scroll overheard, find moments of beauty in your day and… breathe.

There will ALWAYS be more news tomorrow, let it go for today.