A long time ago, I tweeted about how uncomfortable the unread badges on email programmes and other software make me feel. That there is something I have to attend to.

When I got Reeder for the iPhone (which, by the way, is a great Google Reader synchronisation app for the iPhone), and discovered that the settings allowed for an unread badge, I quickly turned it on. I reasoned something along the lines of ‘well, I have to know how many unread items I have, because that’s what one does with these sort of applications’. I quickly turned it off, however.

The thing is, the unread badge hangs as a symbol of guilty conscience, there is something I should attend to, which I haven’t.

Marco Arment published an article on the side effects of writing software for oneself, in this case Instapaper, because one gets to make the decisions. He makes explicit mention of an unread count on the folders. It just so happened that the evening before, I had sent an email to Marco requesting this very feature — Marco assures me it wasn’t directly spurred by my email, despite my initial belief, but I was nonetheless one of the requesters.

This time, my reasoning wasn’t to do with ‘unread count’ per se, it was more of a convenience issue for me, I didn’t want to browse through all the folders I had, to see where I had some reading material stored. Marco’s response was well argued, though — Instapaper generally doesn’t store material that you urgently have to respond to. And that’s what the unread badge signifies: urgency.

And so very little of what we do at a computer is really urgent. A co-worker might think some email is urgent, but it is rarely really urgent. We pollute our views and realities if we think that every email, every new item in our feed reader, and every new tweet really need attention within five minutes.

When we sit at our computers (at least on our personal time), it should be a pleasant experience. Connecting with friends, reading interesting stuff, playing games, all that jazz. But if we make the illusion that any of these (specifically the second point of reading) are urgent, don’t we remove the feeling of enjoyment?

I think so, and that’s why I’ve disabled the unread badge in and automatic synchronisation of NetNewsWire and Mail.app. Reclaiming my computer, letting it act on my premises.

Now, if only I could get Tweetie to stop synchronising automatically, and stop reminding me that I have unread tweets.

And, speaking of screenshots, following my own tweet, I took this screenshot as proof of my claim:

I don’t know when they changed this, or if it was in fact part of iTunes DJ from the start, but I love this:

Then choosing the ‘Play in iTunes DJ’ option from the right-click menu will start the number in iTunes DJ, at the same time in the track:

That is very clever.

I just spent [[80 DKK]] on buying April March‘s Chick Habit album, although I could have purchased the songs one by one, and only having had to pay [[56 DKK]], because I already have the Chick Habit song.

But then, the real stupid in this is obviously me, because I didn’t look properly into this. But still. (It’s a great album, though.)

I’m a Dropbox user. (That link is a referral link, which will earn me 250 MB of additional space if you register.) Not a power user, and I currently only use .9% of my 2GB free plan, but a user nonetheless.

I have, however, found a very useful use case for the service. In my Documents folder, I have a Writings/DRAFTS folder. This is where I store drafts for posts on Simply Jonathan.

Now, Dropbox works this way: you have a folder called “My Dropbox”. You can choose the location of this for yourself, but the default location on Mac OS X is ~/Dropbox.

The important thing to notice is that these are not identical. And only stuff you put in your Dropbox gets synced.

Not to worry, though, because a little UNIX style magic is all it takes. Using the power of symbolic links (symlink), I was a able to achieve exactly what I wanted: having Dropbox sync an out-of-scope folder or file.

Now, symlinks are nothing new, and this was not a matter of whether a symlink could live in the Dropbox — it was merely a pleasant discovery that it also synced the contents of it.

How come I end up where I started? How come I end up where I went wrong?

How come no browser in the history of humanity has had an ‘open in this window’–button? Because they assume people don’t use target="_blank"? They do.

And it’s obviously not to keep buttons out of the interface — when tabs came to browsers, they implemented ‘open in new tab’. So what is it?

(Yes, I know this can be achieved with user scripts, I just wonder about why it has never been built into the browser.)

Forever awake he lies shaking and starving Praying for someone to turn off the light

$ python -c 'import time; print time.ctime(1234567890)'
Sat Feb 14 00:31:30 2009

One way or the other, I probably won’t be able to remember, but it’s fun anyway.

(Hat tip, Thought Palace.)

Christmas is here. Tomorrow, I will be seated with eight of my nearest family members to celebrate. That same night, lots of presents will be unwrapped by yours truly. (In Denmark, it is custom to open presents on the 24th.)

I don’t hate Christmas. While its relevancy, seeing as my family is mostly made up of atheists, is questionable, I like taking a night off to have a nice time with my family. Enjoying company and extravagant food is certainly something I enjoy.

But something I don’t like about it is the presents. I don’t mind presents when they’re personally picked; only, they rarely are.

Wish lists. Wish lists are what I really don’t. The problem with wish lists is that they’re essentially order forms; and when you get to my age and has a decent income, it becomes a question of whether someone else will buy it for you, or whether you will buy it yourself. And that really takes the fun out of it, at least for me.

Mind you, I don’t hate all presents. Giving children a thing they have wished for is certainly okay, because they have no other way of getting it. (The argument could be made that they don’t need all this stuff, but that’s another matter entirely.)

And then there are personal presents. The ones where the person giving the gift has personally selected it, based on what s/he thinks the receiver really needs. These are obviously okay, because they take out the unwanted, order forms, and put in what’s needed: care.

Merry Christmas, and may you receive more presents that others think you’d like, and less of what you yourself think you’d like.