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LiteSwitch X – Get your hide on switch on!:

I’ve had more than a few people ask me since watching the TextExpander/Markdown screencast what was making my Mac only show one application at a time (i.e. hide on switch). I’ve never liked the visual clutter of having different applications layered on top of each other. Therefore, I have sought out utilities to help with this since my Mac OS 7 days. The one I currently use, and have been since 10.2, is LiteSwitch X from Proteron Software. It’s a really excellent replacement for the built in application switcher and it provides tons more features. That said, the single application mode is not something it does out of the box. Therefore, here is a screenshot of my settings:

I hope this helps those of you who have asked and others who want to use it just to bring a bit of that iOS flavor focus to your Mac desktop.

We recently moved apartments. Not because we wanted but because the woman living next door is a heavy smoker and her nastiness was coming through the walls and into the baby’s room.

After complaining to her and the apartment building manager, we ended up moving ourselves since apparently the law protects the smoker. Stupid law. It always protects the criminals.. But let’s not get into that.

Anyway, I am a minimalist. A practical minimalist: I have what I need and nothing I don’t. This means that at any given moment I might have 5 items or 1000. I don’t care how many items I have. I care that those items are needed or not. If they are not needed they are out. I don’t just get rid of stuff for the sake of saying I am a minimalist, look I own nothing!.

My wife on the other hand is not a minimalist. She likes to keep stuff and it’s OK. That’s the way she is and I love her. I try to explain to her the virtues of minimalism but she just smiles at me.

She loves books. She is in academia and she keeps every book she reads for research or other things and the bookshelves have been growing steadily for the past 2 years. Mine, on the other hand, a getting smaller and smaller since I am now only buying digital books and keeping only those physical books I read constantly. Before the move I had only 30 books (novels, technical and philosophy books).

Now, all this came into play when we moved. Moving is always stressful. Moving with a lot of stuff, more so. This time we also have all the baby stuff: furniture, clothing, toys, gear, etc. More stuff to move.

I saw this opportunity to go and check everything I own while I was packing and I felt good when I saw that only some books and some clothing items were discarded (for donation). That means that I did have only what I need and nothing more. I went down to 18 books. I tried to get my wife to do the same but she refused so I let it go.

After a crazy 24 hours of packing, moving, unpacking, sorting and getting crazy with the little things my wife came to me and told me: You know? You were right. I don’t need all these 300 books. I read only a few of them. I don’t needs all these little souvenirs, I only want to keep those close to my heart. I don’t need all these clothing, I never wear that, it’s been sitting in the closet for 2 years, unworn.

I helped her go through everything. We set 3 piles: Keep, Donate, Trash.

Two hours later I was driving to the donation point with clothing, books, old silverware, old plates and pans and some other stuff. Then, I grabbed the trash disposed of it (recycled the items that can be recycled and threw the rest). Finally, I returned home to a happy wife and baby.

Needless to say, I was happy too.

“Fools ignore complexity; pragmatists suffer it; experts avoid it; geniuses remove it.”

- Alan Perlis

Wherein, I have an “eat your own dog food” moment regarding automating Markdown URL syntax with TextExpander.

Also, this is my first screencast for Minimal Mac. Let me know if you like this sort of thing and I will do more.

“At first I hoped that such a technically unsound project would collapse but I soon realized it was doomed to success. Almost anything in software can be implemented, sold, and even used given enough determination. There is nothing a mere scientist can say that will stand against the flood of a hundred million dollars. But there is one quality that cannot be purchased in this way—-and that is reliability. The price of reliability is the pursuit of the utmost simplicity. It is a price which the very rich find most hard to pay.”

- C.A.R. Hoare, “The Emperor’s Old Clothes”, Turing Award Lecture (1980)

Pack light, go fast:

I pack light, I go fast