https://lauralisscott.com/categories/tools-and-technology/ Recent content in tools-and-technology on Laura Lis Scott https://lauralisscott.com/images/lls_icon.png https://lauralisscott.com/images/lls_icon.png Hugo -- gohugo.io en-us Thu, 07 Mar 2019 00:00:00 +0000 https://lauralisscott.com/blog/2019-03-07-designing-multicultural-eye-examination-chart/ Thu, 07 Mar 2019 00:00:00 +0000 https://lauralisscott.com/blog/2019-03-07-designing-multicultural-eye-examination-chart/ 112 years ago, optometry was a growing profession. In diverse cities like San Francisco, however, the eye chart commonplace in western countries today could not suffice. Enter George Mayerle’s multilingual eye examination chart. George Mayerle’s Vision Test Chart (ca. 1907). Via Public Domain Review Public Domain Review writes: The chart was a culmination of his many years of practice and, according to Mayerle, its distinctive international angle served also to reflect the diversity and immigration which lay at the heart of the city in which he worked. https://lauralisscott.com/blog/rediscovering-the-notes-app/ Fri, 23 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000 https://lauralisscott.com/blog/rediscovering-the-notes-app/ How do you take notes? I prefer to use my bullet journal. But what about when I don’t have it handy? When I’m just relaxing is when I might get a great idea. Or stumble across a fabulous resource. Or see a pithy quote I want to save for later. When relaxing, I’m usually reading a book, browsing around on my iPhone, doodling on my iPad, or watching a TV show or movie. https://lauralisscott.com/blog/bullet-journal-comparison-leuchtturm-rhodia-midori-muji-northbooks-noleskine/ Sat, 28 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000 https://lauralisscott.com/blog/bullet-journal-comparison-leuchtturm-rhodia-midori-muji-northbooks-noleskine/ A while ago, I got interested in bullet journaling. Eager to get going on it quickly and discover how I would use this freeform style of journaling and personal planning, I initially went with the popular bujo favorite, the Leuchtturm1917. But I was immediately frustrated when I saw how much ghosting I had on the reverse sides of my pages. I needed to find the best bujo notebook. Bullet journaling, at least in my mind, demands a higher standard. https://lauralisscott.com/blog/2015-04-03-2015-bother-me-less-or-i-dont-want-your-notifications-nose-under-my-attention-tent/ Fri, 03 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000 https://lauralisscott.com/blog/2015-04-03-2015-bother-me-less-or-i-dont-want-your-notifications-nose-under-my-attention-tent/ The Apple Watch seems to be inspiring a lot of uninspired thinking. Things like all the news that fits on the wrist. I for one cannot imagine why I would spend hundreds of dollars so a device can annoy me with yet more notifications. I certainly don’t need to have my work/flow/conversation/meeting/meditation/relaxation interrupted with news about people I don’t know in places I’m not. That crap can wait until I’m ready to lean back and browse the headlines. https://lauralisscott.com/blog/2015-02-27-on-ergonomic-keyboards-again/ Fri, 27 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000 https://lauralisscott.com/blog/2015-02-27-on-ergonomic-keyboards-again/ Following up on my review of three ergonomic keyboards last year, I pass along now Marco Arment’s review of the Matias Ergo Pro Keyboard, which he’s liking. From the features he describes, it sounds similar to the The Goldtouch Go!2 keyboard I’ve been using, but with some differences, including one that would drive me crazy. [T]he Ergo Pro’s two halves are physically separate and connected by a cable. This is a mixed bag: it provides flexibility, but it’s also frustrating to have no way to lock in your preferred setting, leaving you to figure it out again whenever it’s moved. https://lauralisscott.com/blog/2014-09-24-digital-ephemeral/ Wed, 24 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000 https://lauralisscott.com/blog/2014-09-24-digital-ephemeral/ What happens to this blog when I die, when I no longer pay the monthly bill? What happens to my emails when my card no longer covers the autopay on the account? https://lauralisscott.com/blog/2014-09-18-scrivener-to-word/ Thu, 18 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000 https://lauralisscott.com/blog/2014-09-18-scrivener-to-word/ Note (26 Feb 2018): This post was written some years ago about Scrivener 2. It does not apply to Scrivener 3, which has happily addressed these gripes. This shouldn’t be so hard. I’ve reached the point where it’s time to compile my manuscript from Scrivener into Word format, in preparation for The Great Editing. Now, the Compile part is easy. (Well, I say “easy” in that it’s pretty complicated, but in a Scrivener way, and after you’ve been using Scrivener for a while, well, you eventually become something akin to a taxi driver in London; you eventually learn where those dead-ends and obscure addresses are. https://lauralisscott.com/blog/2014-06-16-the-pain-and-suffering-of-scrivener-exports-to-word/ Mon, 16 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000 https://lauralisscott.com/blog/2014-06-16-the-pain-and-suffering-of-scrivener-exports-to-word/ Note (26 Feb 2018): This post was written some years ago about Scrivener 2. It does not apply to Scrivener 3. As a writing tool, I love Scrivener. Unfortunately this comes with some hindrances: Scrivener is not a standard format, so you have to compile and export anything you do to to anything with it. Microsoft Word is a standard format in publishing—obviously people in publishing are a bunch of masochists—but Scrivener’s exports to Word are unstyled. https://lauralisscott.com/blog/2014-05-11-2014-second-screen/ Sun, 11 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000 https://lauralisscott.com/blog/2014-05-11-2014-second-screen/ It’s not that we need a second screen, it’s that we have an inadequate first screen. If we’re watching a great movie, we’re engrossed, swept away. We’re not even thinking about the phone in the pocket or purse. We’re not wondering what’s happening on Facebook or Pinterest. We’re not even thinking about that. That’s the point, isn’t it? https://lauralisscott.com/blog/2014-04-14-k-is-for-keyboard-ergonomic-keyboards/ Mon, 14 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000 https://lauralisscott.com/blog/2014-04-14-k-is-for-keyboard-ergonomic-keyboards/ Regular keyboards give me a pain — a pain in the wrist, specifically. It makes a huge difference when you’re typing a lot for emails, blog posts, proposals, articles … and novels. In the ’90s, I used an ergonomic Microsoft keyboard, but by today’s standards, it was a mushy experience. I couldn’t just adapt that old thing. I needed to find a modern solution. So I tried three different ergonomic keyboards. https://lauralisscott.com/blog/2013-12-13-scriveners-learning-curve/ Fri, 13 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000 https://lauralisscott.com/blog/2013-12-13-scriveners-learning-curve/ Update 26 Feb 2018: This post was written about Scrivener 2 some years ago. While there is still a Scrivener 3 learning curve for anyone new to the application, the particulars are different in important areas. Overall, I think Scrivener 3 represents a huge improvement. For my writing—and editing, and prep for publication—I’ve been using Scrivener. It’s not an intuitive app by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, it feels like something of a patchwork of basic functionality with miscellaneous add-ons. https://lauralisscott.com/blog/2012-07-27-forking-or-collaborating-the-mix-of-open-source-ethics/ Fri, 27 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000 https://lauralisscott.com/blog/2012-07-27-forking-or-collaborating-the-mix-of-open-source-ethics/ When it comes to Open Source software, forking is a feature! Anil Dash said it well: There are several related technical concepts that can answer to the name “fork”, but the one I reference here is the dramatic moment when a software project undergoes a schism on ideological or technical grounds. Instead of merely taking their ball and going home, those who forked were taking a copy of your ball and going to a new playground. https://lauralisscott.com/blog/2011-10-18-2011-samsung-or-iphone-screenshot-worth-thousand-tweets/ Tue, 18 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0000 https://lauralisscott.com/blog/2011-10-18-2011-samsung-or-iphone-screenshot-worth-thousand-tweets/ So last night, I saw that John Gruber had favorited one of my Flickr photos from 2008: a screenshot of the Google Maps app on the iPhone. Hmm, what was that about? It turns out quite a bit. I found Gruber’s Daring Fireball post pointing out what appears to be Samsung’s alteration and reuse of a screenshot image I created in 2008. Samsung’s alteration and reuse of a screenshot image I created in 2008. https://lauralisscott.com/blog/2011-09-26-2011-theming-firehose-nb-designers-front-end-developers-new-drupal/ Mon, 26 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0000 https://lauralisscott.com/blog/2011-09-26-2011-theming-firehose-nb-designers-front-end-developers-new-drupal/ You theme with the mark-up you have, not the mark-up you’d like to have. That’s the essential truth that designers and front-end developers new to Drupal need to understand. You don’t get to construct your pages from scratch, building out essentials, never a wasted div, never an extraneous class. No, you have to flip the entire process around. With Drupal you’re getting markup shot at you from a firehose, and as a themer you need to sop it all up and make it pretty. https://lauralisscott.com/blog/2010-11-18-2010-browsers-dont-matter-look-longer-view/ Thu, 18 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000 https://lauralisscott.com/blog/2010-11-18-2010-browsers-dont-matter-look-longer-view/ I love my apps! I have an iPad and a Droid. I used to have an iPhone (before I decided I wanted my phone to also be able to make calls). I love apps! They’re efficient and fast. Websites on mobile browsers can be difficult to manage. The apps can connect with internet data, but do it with a much improved user experience. No doubt. When it comes to mobile at least, a well-designed app beats a well-designed website 99% of the time. https://lauralisscott.com/blog/2009-09-14-2009-what-open-source-really/ Mon, 14 Sep 2009 00:00:00 +0000 https://lauralisscott.com/blog/2009-09-14-2009-what-open-source-really/ This question has me pondering the broader values behind open source: openness to inspection, openness to revision and improvement, working together in a commons, not in a doctrinaire centralized system but rather in an informally organized (if at all), decentralized coming together based upon common interest. That’s not to say there aren’t rules. Scientific research has traditionally been open source. I recommend James Burke’s Connections for some wonderful perspectives on this subject. https://lauralisscott.com/blog/2008-01-20-2008-01-email-etiquette-best-practices-things-avoid/ Sun, 20 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000 https://lauralisscott.com/blog/2008-01-20-2008-01-email-etiquette-best-practices-things-avoid/ This morning I was going through a working group’s internal documents about best practices, procedures, etc. for coordinating communications between all of the group’s members, who are scattered worldwide. At one point, on the topic of email netiquette, there was a recommendation to follow the rules of a rather emphatic post, “How to correctly quote e-mails and news posts,” which is “[p]artly written by Tom Sommer.” I think it was the “correctly” part that got me going here on this blog post. https://lauralisscott.com/blog/2007-07-03-anti-priority-dogma-er-canon-of-gtd-and-omnifocus/ Tue, 03 Jul 2007 00:00:00 +0000 https://lauralisscott.com/blog/2007-07-03-anti-priority-dogma-er-canon-of-gtd-and-omnifocus/ So I’ve been playing with OmniFocus alpha to see if it can work for me as a personal productivity/task manager, but as I noted before, the system lacks a way to prioritize tasks. It seems rather obvious to me that you want to identify the important must-do items before you start filling in your day. I could spend all day answering the phone, reading and writing emails, catching up on my feeds, having meetings, doing conference calls … and not getting done the things that need to get done. https://lauralisscott.com/blog/2007-02-21-how-to-use-open-source-and-how-not-to/ Wed, 21 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000 https://lauralisscott.com/blog/2007-02-21-how-to-use-open-source-and-how-not-to/ The open source path can be a delightful and cost-effective way to go for a web-based project. However, if you don’t understand the primary dos and don’ts of open source, a “free” open source website can quickly become a costly and difficult bear to manage. As open source software becomes more popular and more relevant to the needs of non-tech-minded people and organizations, we thought we’d offer some basic background on how to use – and not to use – open source for a web platform. https://lauralisscott.com/blog/2006-01-06-on-itch-scratching-hitchhikers-and-growing-within-the-interactive-ecosystem/ Fri, 06 Jan 2006 00:00:00 +0000 https://lauralisscott.com/blog/2006-01-06-on-itch-scratching-hitchhikers-and-growing-within-the-interactive-ecosystem/ The story goes like this: A couple hundred years ago, Scottish chemist Joseph Black was approached by some Scotch distillers. With the explosion of coal power, they wanted to know exactly what techniques they should use to replace their wood-burning distilling processes with coal-fired methods. Black did some experimentation and developed for them the appropriate method. But his calculations reportedly inspired some new ideas in his colleague, James Watt, who took Black’s ideas of “latent heat” and used them in the development of a new steam engine. https://lauralisscott.com/blog/2005-11-12-2005-11-sony-temporarily-halts-use-of-crippleware-but-homeland-security-still-is-not-pleased/ Sat, 12 Nov 2005 00:00:00 +0000 https://lauralisscott.com/blog/2005-11-12-2005-11-sony-temporarily-halts-use-of-crippleware-but-homeland-security-still-is-not-pleased/ Nothing like lawsuits to get a response, if only for the moment. Stung by continuing criticism, the world’s second-largest music label, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, promised Friday to temporarily suspend making music CDs with antipiracy technology that can leave computers vulnerable to hackers. Sony defended its right to prevent customers from illegally copying music but said it will halt manufacturing CDs with the “XCP” technology as a precautionary measure. “We also intend to re-examine all aspects of our content protection initiative to be sure that it continues to meet our goals of security and ease of consumer use,” the company said in a statement. https://lauralisscott.com/blog/2005-09-29-when-a-website-is-a-car-not-a-taxi/ Thu, 29 Sep 2005 00:00:00 +0000 https://lauralisscott.com/blog/2005-09-29-when-a-website-is-a-car-not-a-taxi/ This may sound kind of like a sales pitch, but it seems that many people do not understand the difference between a static website (aka “brochureware”) and a dynamic website. So I thought I’d explore the question: When is a brochure more than a brochure? I think vlado put it quite simply: “If you have more features, you’ll pay far more” Well, Laura seems to favour exactly the opposite – quote the customer a brochure site and deliver them an ever expanding, flexible website. https://lauralisscott.com/blog/2005-05-28-which-is-really-the-bubble/ Sat, 28 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000 https://lauralisscott.com/blog/2005-05-28-which-is-really-the-bubble/ So are blogs just a passing fad, as Kevin Maney claims? His USA Today column stirred up a minor tempest in business blog circles, mainly for assertions such as: So, yeah, blogs are cool. Anything that gives people a voice benefits society and makes us all better and smarter - and, as bloggers have proved, makes established information outlets more accountable. But blogs don’t seem to be the second coming of the printing press.