rands

When it comes to comics, I’m a omnibus guy. While I imprinted on the standard comic book format as a kid and I miss it, I lack patience and and I lack time. I want to consume the whole story arc in a couple of sittings, there is no sitting and waiting a month for the next comic, I need closure. (As an aside, this content binging strategy is also my current move for TV shows – two seasons of Game of Thrones in two days – no joke.)

At somewhere between $50 and $100 dollars, an omnibus is an investment. I need to have pretty good signal that the entire series is compelling. Astonishing X-Men? Amazing. Possibly the finest piece of capes and tights fiction out there. Avengers vs. X-Men. Meh. Artwork starts off bizarrely bad – story improves over time.

I’m 1/3rd of the way through the Planetary Omnibus (tip of the hat to @pberry for the birthday gift of the first few issues) and I’m still deliciously wondering what the hell is going on. This is Warren Ellis’s masterpiece and like Alan Moore’s Watchmen before him, the universe he’s created is an homage to comic books.

Planetary is the tale of a group of super powered archeologists. The three main characters are wandering around, chasing a complex and unfolding set of mysteries, but the question the remains (and remember, I’m on chapter 10 and I’m certain this question will be answered shortly) is “What universe are we in?”

Planetary is set in the WildStorm (a division of DC shutdown in September 2010) universe, but at my current location of the story, Ellis is gleefully teasing readers with hints of crossovers between the WildStorm and DC universe. Chapter 10 of Planetary goes as far as to introduce characters so closely approximating Superman, Green Lantern, and Wonder Woman, the reader (me) is left asking, “Where the hell am I?”

These moments are rare – being lost in an all consuming story. I turn the pages slower because I’m dreading the reveal.. the end. That is a worthy investment.

Via Brain Pickings:

We must be patient, and believe that inspiration will come to those who can master their disinclination.

Too often, I’m waiting for the perfect alignment of time of day, caffeination, and inspiration before I sit down and write.

Via Nick Statt on CNet:

“There must be a clear and simple task; that task must provide instant feedback; there must be no distractions that either disrupt your concentration or make you ultra-aware of your own actions; and, key to the act of game playing especially, it must be a challenge with appropriate balance with regards to your own skill and the task’s difficulty.”

There are huge monetary rewards if you solve for flow correctly.

Via Nick Bilton in the New York Times:

Using neuroimaging techniques, researchers are peering into gamers’ heads, hoping that the data they collect will help them make video games that change as you play, getting easier or harder, depending on your performance. The idea is to keep people at the addiction point. You know, that infuriating flap-flap-flap zone.

Brief productivity update. As I noted at the end the year, I moved from Things to Asana. After the initial excitement and eager eager that accompanies any new bright and shiny product, my Asana usage tanked. The issue? First, I was using it like I used Things and, second, I didn’t know Asana.

As I’ve written about before, my personal workflows are bereft of complexity because each sliver of complexity creates mental friction and aggregate excess mental friction is why I abandon tools. My initial Asana workflow was an exact mirror of Things – the reason, I didn’t want to reinvent my flow. After a week, it was clear from increasing that with Asana that I was forcing my square-peg workflow into a round product.

After several weeks of watching Asana slowly gather digital dust, I rebooted. First, I watched every single Asana video available. Oh, it all revolves around the inbox. Ok. Second, I became the master of all Asana keyboard shortcuts. This might well be a nerd thing, but part of the reason I knew Asana is built for me is they’re big on keyboard shortcuts and, for the nerd, the single biggest killer of mental friction is memorized keyboard shortcuts. Lastly, and as you’ll read in an accompanying forthcoming article, I reinvented and rebuilt my workflow in both my email client and Asana. Accompanied with a better understand of Asana’s features, this blank slate approach allowed me to build around Asana’s feature set. Two weeks later and this revamped workflow feels familiar and productive.

My workflow is a work in progress. I’m still experimenting, but, then again, so is Asana. This week they released a Calendar feature. I haven’t extensively used the feature, but I sleep better at night knowing my tools are actively thinking about how to grow and evolve with me.

I continue to cautiously use Keynote 6 as my primary presentation design tool. When possible, I also run my presentations off Keynote 6, but this is function of whether the venue will allow me to use my MacBook (usually) or, if not, whether they have Keynote 6 on their presentation machine (usually not).

While there are many other features still missing from Keynote 6, my biggest complaint has been the lobotomization of presenter display features. Specifically, Apple removed the ability to fully customize the presenter (not primary) display and, unfortunately, many presenters learn this when they’re up on stage running their first Keynote 6 presentation and they realize their configured presenter display – the display they use to keep the presentation in their head – has been reduced to a bare set of options where you can enable/display the current slide, next slide, presenter notes, the time, and the elapsed time.

For me, I often place most of my context in my presentation notes. These are notes the audience never sees, but I use to keep track of the narrative – especially when a talk is new. This means I usually make the presentation notes ginormous because that’s what I need to see. My actual slides are usually a couple of words or a photo, what I need is scalable presentation notes.

This is why the recent 6.1 Keynote update piqued my interest – “enhanced presenter display options”. Sweet. A quick scan of the different Mac sites out there revealed absolutely no detail regarding this feature. In fact, most of the sites uselessly parroted the “What’s new” section of Keynote 6; adding zero additional research of their own. Nice job.

Fortunately, I had Keynote 6 on a different machine so I was able to compare and contrast presenter display options and I’m sad to report the following. By enhanced presenter display options, I believe Apple has added the following to the presenter view… a button:

This button serves a single function. When presenting, it swaps the two (or more) displays that either show the slide view or the presenter view. Now, as a speaker, I can attest to the need of this button. It’s the first thing to go wrong with a presentation – the audience sees your speaker notes, but it’s a feature that has existed in Keynote for a long time: to swap the displays you hit the X key. This and a slew of other handy presenter display options are visible when you select the ? button above or select the ? in the toolbar above.

Not sure what annoys me the most: the useless description of the feature, the absence of any legit reporting on said useless feature, or the fact this really isn’t a feature. It’s a button.

While I believe we have to continue to figure out how to integrate remote folks into teams, this video hilariously captures so many of the little micro-annoyances of remote workers.

Sally Kerrigan on A List Apart:

Because writing—that first leap into taking your idea and making it a Thing People Read—isn’t really about wording. It’s about thinking. And if you can tell the difference between an article that knows what it’s about and one that exists purely to sell ad space, then you’re pretty good at that already.

Start with something messy, get to the point, get an editor, and make it good. Kerrigan’s excellent advice finishes with one of my favorite lines in her piece, “This is what crafting purposefulness looks like.”