Author Archives: derek

Perspectives Matter

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I have been doing some a lot of reading lately about gold and one of the articles I stumbled upon opened with this 1952 story of Mississippi House of Representatives member Noah S. “Soggy” Sweat, Jr.’s position on whiskey.

I share it here for your entertainment:

If you mean whiskey, the devil’s brew, the poison scourge, the bloody monster that defiles innocence, dethrones reason, destroys the home, creates misery and poverty, yea, literally takes the bread from the mouths of little children; if you mean that evil drink that topples Christian men and women from the pinnacles of righteous and gracious living into the bottomless pit of degradation, shame, despair, helplessness, and hopelessness, then, my friend, I am opposed to it with every fiber of my being. Continue reading →

Doing business with Americans? HSBC has some cultural advice

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This entertaining article from Canada’s national current affairs magazine Maclean’s reminded me of something similar someone told me years ago. She told me that she had read a guide book for Japanese people planning on visiting the United States, and on the section for dining etiquette it said something like:

A popular American meal is the hamburger. It is important when you eat a hamburger that you hold it with both hands and eat it as quickly as possible without speaking.

I’ve always thought that that was a very funny insight. The article linked below has some entertaining points as well such as:

American table manners involve holding the fork in the right hand and using it to eat. Hold it tines up. The knife cuts and spreads things. To use it, switch the fork to your left hand. To eat, switch your fork back to your right hand.

For the full article, click the link below:

Doing business with Americans? HSBC has some hilarious cultural advice – Business, Business Blog – Macleans.ca.

Stuck in an Elevator

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My wife just texted me from her phone – she was stuck in a tiny elevator in Milan.

Got stuck in a tiny elevator!!!!!!!

Followed immediately by this:

I can’t breathe!

I called the hotel to find out what was going on – they said that they were aware of the issue and a technician was on the way to fix it.  While we were waiting for her release I tried to give good safety advice; the basics “Don’t get out between floors,” “Make sure the car has stopped completely before you try to get out,” etc. Continue reading →

A Distillation of Sun Tzu’s Art of War

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Friend Todd Kuipers (@toddkuipers) sent along a link to an interesting post this week from Eric Barker at www.bakadesuyo.com on what we can learn from Sun Tzu’s Art of War.

Highlights include:
All warfare is based on deception
Rapidity is the essence of war
An army without spies is like a man without ears or eyes
Preparation is everything
Excellence is breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting
How to lead and
How do deal with the enemy

Barker closes out the article by saying that he doesn’t think that Sun Tzu’s Art of War should be applied to most situations of conflict – the issues that most of us deal with are better handled with the tools of negotiation than war.

The article is well thought out and informative- check it out here.

Tricking-out Your OmniFocus Perspectives Video Summary

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This is part 3 of a 3 part series-  “Tricking-out Your OmniFocus Perspectives Video Summary”.

As mentioned in my previous posts in this series, I had links to a few videos saved in Instapaper for a about a year because I didn’t make the time to sit down and work through them for the full two and a half hours.  Once I spent the time, however, I found some of the information useful and so have decided to provide this distillation of information that I took from them in order to (hopefully) save you some time.

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Working with the OmniFocus Bookmarklet in iOS Video Summary

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This is part 2 of a 3 part series-  “Working the the OmniFocus Bookmarklet in iOS Video Summary”.

I had links to a few videos saved in Instapaper for a very long time because I didn’t make the time to sit down and watch the full two and a half hours of video.  Once I took the time, however, I found it useful and so have decided to provide this distillation of information that I took from them in order to (hopefully) save you some time.

Continue reading →

OmniFocus Ninja Tricks Video Summary

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It’s no secret that I’m a fan of Instapaper, but sometimes it brings out the worst in me in terms of procrastination.  This is ironic since the topic of this post is OmniFocus, which should, in theory, be just the tool to help me overcome this disability.

At some point, I came across (probably via the OmniGroup twitter feed) a series of videos from Omni at MacWorld (2011) with tips and tricks on how to get the most out of OmniFocus.  Since I usually read my twitter feed on the go, a lot of interesting stuff ends up in Instapaper to languish until I can spend the time going through whatever it was I found interesting to begin with.  That was especially the case with these three videos as between the three of them it was two and a half hours of watching to do.

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AdBlock for Safari

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I appreciate all the free stuff that’s available on the Internet, and I know that much of it is available due the the presence of advertising.  That’s why I’m somewhat conflicted about the use of AdBlockers, and haven’t used one for at least 3 years (since I switched from Firefox to Safari, but that’s another story).

I don’t know what the final straw was that led me to seek out an AdBlocking solution for Safari, but whatever it was, I’m thankful that it came.  A quick Google search led me to highly rated AdBlock for Safari, written by Michael Gundlach.  After a bit of research to learn what there was to learn about it before installing, I took the plunge.

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My picks for best iPad apps

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As a zealous iPad user I often get asked by iPad newbies what apps they should check out or install.  I’ve decided that to make it as easy as possible on me (and them), I will keep a list of some of my favorite apps here.  I’ll try to keep it updated as I get experience with a broader universe of apps.  You’ll see that the list is rather information consumption heavy, and not so game orientated.  I don’t do a lot of gaming on my iPad – although if I had more time I probably would.  I’ve tried to identify the apps that are not free at the time of posting. Continue reading →