The Best Of Graham English 2007
December 24, 2007
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It’s time for my yearly reflections and celebrations.
By far the most popular and most controversial post of 2007 was The Zen Of Attraction. I’m surprised at the attention it received because I wrote it as an aside. Some people loved it and some people hated it. But what was most interesting for me was how many people hated not the article, but me. I mean these were just simple ideas that are totally debatable. This post led me to define some comment rules that include no personal attacks. I’m willing to debate ideas but not whether I’m a good person or not. It was a very interesting experience!
The second most popular post was iQuickTwitter - My Quicksilver + Twitter + iChat + Growl Hack. This little app got some serious link love from TUAW, Ars Technica, and many other fantastic blogs. And a big reason why I didn’t blog as much as I did in 2006 was because of Twitter. If I ever had something short and simple to say, rather than try to develop it into at least 250 words, which I previously believed warranted a blog post, I would just post it to Twitter, which has a limit of 140 characters. I think my strategy will change some in 2008. My new Lifestream category will probably see a lot more action whenever I find that 140 characters is not enough. The most significant change is that I won’t keep such a tightly controlled niche blog. The only thing tying this blog together is that I am writing it, not the subject matter. So if I feel like saying something, this blog will take priority.
Along similar lines as iQuickTwitter were my many posts on automation. Some of them were conceptual, like Automation As Part Of An Integral Life Practice and Automating The Quality Of Your Attention. While others were specific and geeky, like IM Status: Update Your Skype, iChat, Or Adium Status With Quicksilver, Top 5 AppleScript Productivity Hacks for WordPress Bloggers and Podcasters, and Blogging With Quicksilver And AppleScript. I’ve really grown to see automation as an important part of life that I need to revisit again and again.
Some of my favorite songwriting articles were Applying The 80-20 Rule To Your Songwriting, my Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast, The Secret Alchemy Of Songwriting, 5 Sure Fire Ways To Kick-Start The Songwriting Habit, Rewriting Song Titles For Practice And Inspiration, and What Makes a Good Song? My biggest disappointment of 2007 was the small amount of completed songs. I finished only about half a dozen songs and published just one of them, which I’m quite proud of, “When The Wall Falls Down.”
I also didn’t write about ear training or music theory nearly as much as I did in 2006. But I have a few favorites, such as How To Use Tension And Release In Your Melodies, my Absolute Pitch Ear Training Podcast, Playing Outside: The Dominant 7 Pentatonic Scale, and Ear Training or Listening Practice?
Two great moments of 2007 were getting my new MacBook Pro and iPhone. The new Mac inspired a whole new series of podcasts called Graham English Talks and introduced my own videos, like The Best Of Dwight Schrute Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. The iPhone inspired Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies For Your iPhone and made my tech life much more streamlined.
2007 was definitely a year of social networking. Twitter, Facebook, Last.fm, Stumbleupon, and many other social networks occupied a large part of my time online. And there were many benefits like making new friends, reconnecting with old friends, finding a larger reach for my articles and music, and discovering new forms of self-expression. It confirms how important relationships truly are.
Which leads me to the very best of 2007, You! My life wouldn’t be nearly as fulfilling without the special presence of you. The support of my readers and listeners has made the tough times easier and the good times even better. I sincerely hope that we stay connected through 2008. Thanks for sticking with me through 2007. w00t!
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(4 votes, average: 4.75 out of 5)
Loading ...Graham English Talks Episode 4
August 21, 2007
0 CommentsIn this episode I test recording on the iPod with my Belkin TuneTalk adapter on the way to the gym. Here I discuss my bad iPhone driving habits, my practice of automating the quality of your attention, weight loss, the TNT diet, escalating density training, and interval cardio training. On the way back home, I share some criticism of the Podsafe site and give advice to podsafe artists. Plus, I talk about podcasting, iWeb, monetizing your blog, Alex King’s Share This WordPress plugin, AdSense, My current business strategy, the 4HWW, and the myth of residual income.
The audio quality is pretty poor. You can hear everything fine but the extraneous noise and the overall quality leaves a lot to be desired. The Belkin adapter doesn’t pass the test but I may still use it until I find a better alternative.
Music:
Blur by Jody Shelton
When The Wall Falls Down by Graham English
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I’m a Facebook fanatic. I joined immediately after they opened to the public. In the beginning, there wasn’t much to talk about. None of my friends had joined and there really wasn’t that much I could do there. But since then, the buzz has caught my friends’ attention and Facebook’s extendibility has grown consistently, giving me a lot to play with.
Since I’ve been catching myself updating both Facebook and Twitter separately, I figured I should revisit my workflow and see if I can tweak my current level of automation.
It wasn’t difficult. I just added a couple lines of code to iQuickTwitter and now I can update Twitter, Facebook, iChat, and Skype with a single command. If you dig it, be my friend and let me know.
Graham English @ Facebook
Graham English @ Twitter
Click here to open the script in Script Editor.
If all you want is to update Facebook with Quicksilver, try this:
Click here to open the script in Script Editor.
If you try to please everyone, somebody is not going to like it.
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There are lots of tools out there to expand your Google AdWords keywords by adding brackets (exact match) and quotes (phrase match) to your keyword list. Some of them are free, some are not, and even fewer options are available for Mac. But if you use TextMate a lot, like me, then you’ll enjoy this little keyword matching options command.
Open TextMate and show the bundle editor (⌃⌥⌘B). Create a new command by clicking the plus sign on the bottom left of the bundle editor. Name the command “Add Quotes” or something to your liking. In the right-hand pane, leave the ‘Save’ drop-down menu to ‘Nothing’, Copy sed 's/^/${1:"}/' | sed 's/$/${2:"}/' into the Command area, leave ‘Input’ to ‘Selected Text or Document’ and change the ‘Output’ to ‘Insert as Snippet.’ If you like, you can create a key command like ⌃⌥⌘”.
Next, create an “Add Brackets” command exactly the same way except copy this code into the Command area: sed 's/^/${1:[}/' | sed 's/$/${2:]}/’
Now, whenever you are want to add quotes or brackets to your keyword list, copy your keywords into a TextMate document and select them, activate your key command, and voilà, your keyword list has been transformed.
One more thing. If you have a list of keywords that you want to transform into a negative keyword list, do everything above except copy this code into the Command area: sed 's/^/${1:-}/'
(1 votes, average: 4 out of 5) Loading ...My New Method Of Automated Journaling
June 11, 2007
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I’ve been hacking this auto-journal script for a while and I’ve recently settled on using a local install of WordPress combined with AppleScript and Quicksilver. It’s really pretty easy.
Follow MacZealots’ tutorial on Installing WordPress on Tiger. If you have any trouble along the way, you might need to check out Mac OS X Server 10.4.4: Improvements to Apache/PHP/MySQL interaction. Now you’ve got a local install of WordPress that you can dress up.
Now you’ll want to save this applescript as a ‘Stay Open’ application and set your options. If you want Growl support to work, you’ll either need to save it with the name “WordPress Journal” or modify the Growl tell in the script. I have it set to ask me what I’m doing every 15 minutes during regular work hours and every 30 minutes thereafter.
There may be times when you don’t want to use the automatic functions but you would still like to send something to your journal. For this, I’ve also created a Quicksilver action. Save this applescript in your Quicksilver actions folder. Again, if you want Growl support, save it with the name “WordPress Blog” or modify the Growl tell in the script. Now all you do is call Quicksilver, enter text mode and type your journal entry, tab over and type as much of “WordPress Blog” as you need, and hit Return.
Of course, you could use a remote version of WordPress if you don’t like the idea of installing it locally. But for privacy, it’s probably best to keep it on your own machine.
Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy.
– Charlie McCarthy
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