getting organized
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in this week alone, i started three new projects. all easy and fun, but I can be overwelmed by small details (i’m an ADHD-type person, and i’m more confortable with abstract concepts than with this cold hash reality, sniff!).
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so i built this calendar, to be printed (and cut in half, and glued together) and shown poster-like, so you can write down every new appointment or timeframe and consult it to get organized.
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BTW, this flashpaper was made on a mac, thanks to contribute 3.
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I don’t give a flying fuck for contribute features - to depend your project updates on a corporate communications system is simply insanity for my open source tastes - but flashpaper (macromedia’s solution for adobe acrobat, give or take) is da bomb!

assynchronous collab
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i’m reading about the “outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism” documentary (go fast, NYT link there), and the way it was done. it’s a classic example of what i’m thinking about - assynchronous collaboration - and since we’re on the web, how easy (and cheap) it is to get some results that it’s gonna be our new way to work.
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“In January, Greenwald rigged up a dozen DVD recorders and programmed them to record Fox News 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for about six months. Greenwald and a team of researchers compiled a list of what they saw as Fox’s telltale themes and techniques: stories questioning the patriotism of liberals; relentlessly upbeat reports on Iraq; belligerent hosts who scream at noncompliant guests. Greenwald planned for the list’s categories eventually to become organizing sections of the film.
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Once the list of categories was complete, Greenwald asked MoveOn to round up 10 volunteers, each of whom was assigned a particular time slot during the day to monitor Fox, so that the network’s news stories or commentaries were under observation virtually 24 hours a day. When a MoveOn volunteer would spot an example of footage that fit one of Greenwald’s categories, he would note the date and precise time and send the information in an e-mail message to Greenwald, who had an assistant code it and transfer it to a spreadsheet.
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By May, Greenwald had received enough examples to construct a rough outline of the film. He then hired five editors. In the evenings, two editors would consult Greenwald’s spreadsheets and locate the flagged footage in his vast library of Fox News segments. During the day, the three other editors worked simultaneously on separate parts of the movie, stitching together a coherent narrative from the Fox clips as well as interviews that Greenwald conducted with former Fox employees (some of them disguised to protect their identities) and commentators like the former CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite and the liberal media critics Mark Crispin Miller and Eric Alterman. At the end of each day, the editors posted their work on a secure Web site for Greenwald’s review.”

thresholds II
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I bought a powerbook 12″, with superdrive. It’s the first time I use a top of the line computer.
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It’s not that fast (i don’t mind it, I don’t buy the fast = productivity myth) but it’s very responsive.
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before it, my workload should respect the bload programs, one at a time. now, I can afford to have 2, 3 big programs open, and concentrate on each task .
usually, my chain is corel draw (design), photoshop or flash (adjustements) and dreamweaver (presentation, upload). for each step.
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and even if my computer can handle al ot of programs open, my attention span doesn’t, so the hide command (command+H) saves me (my computer doesn’t have to redraw all windows, and I don’t have to reopen the program at every turn).
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and just to be geeky, I found a code that makes the hidden program icon slightly transparent on the dock, just for fun:
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you go to terminal and type defaults write com.apple.dock showhidden -bool true, and then you restart the dock, with killall Dock.

hooked on a banner
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the first rule for newbies on the web is “don’t click on banners”, but i did it!
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shameless self-promotion
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my bird drawing (just below) is now a soon-to-be t-shirt from threadless.
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minha irmã quando fotografa, curte fazer vários testes para então escolher um. só que a animação dos rejected é ótima, super-nonsense. então que resolvi montar loops de filmes disso. este primeirão vai sem áudio, uma coisa de cada vez… clica em play, pombas!
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o paypal é um serviço bem espertinho… eu posso “request money” sempre que quiser, mas só depois de receber a grana avisam que preciso fazer um upgrade da minha conta para recebê-lo…
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anyway, é pra frente que se anda, e lá fui eu. o bom é que agora posso receber por qquer cartão de crédito internacional, o que serve para fazer até o cliente mais relutante abrir a carteira - “ah, paga no cartão de crédito, sem problemas” - além de outros recursos maneiros: shopping cart, venda de produtos, etc. o ruim é que não tenho nada pra vender, então tô colocando aqui este botão de donate só pra testar a ferramenta…
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