I now have my very own blog on Merlin Mann’s 43 Folders. After publishing a couple of my guest posts, Merlin’s kindly given me a cozy little corner on his site to rant, rave, and muse at random.

I won’t have a set schedule, but I expect to post 3-4 posts a month. Check out my first official post:

• The 7 deadly sins of instant messaging

You can even see my tiny mugshot next to the post. ;-)

Also, don’t forget to send some love to the other bloggers on 43 Folders.

How will this effect LifeClever? Don’t worry, I’ll still be running the main show and posting regularly here. In fact, I’m planning some big changes, so stay tuned!

Posted in: Blog, Friends

The anxiously awaited XO laptop is now available for individual purchase as part of a Give One Get One program. For $399, you’ll pay for two laptops. One goes to you, and the other gets donated to a poor child in a developing country.

If you’ve been on a media fast for the past two years, here’s more about the goal of the program:

The mission of One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) is to empower the children of developing countries to learn by providing one connected laptop to every school-age child. In order to accomplish our goal, we need people who believe in what we’re doing and want to help make education for the world’s children a priority, not a privilege.

$200 dollars of the purchase is tax-deductable, and as a bonus, you’ll get one full year of T-mobile HotSpot access.

As a Cambodian refugee of war who grew up with the privilege technology in the States, this program has extra meaning for me. Help a child who didn’t have the same opportunities as you and I, and donate today.

Posted in: Giving, Laptop

Back to My Mac through iChat
“Back to My Mac allows a user log into another Mac remotely via internet. This is a great feature but it is only available if you are a .Mac subscriber… This quick tutorial will show you how set up iChat to do just that.”

Dabbawalas: Low-tech and lean delivery system
“A dabbawala is a person in the Indian city of Mumbai whose job is to carry and deliver freshly made food from home in lunch boxes to office workers. More than 175,000 or 200,000 lunches get moved every day by an estimated 4,500 to 5,000 dabbawalas, all with an extremely small nominal fee and with utmost punctuality. According to a recent survey, there is only one mistake in every 16,000,000 deliveries and the system has registered a Six Sigma performance at 99.999999 rating.”

The original 43 folders
“I stumbled across a delightful little gem. Apparently, not only did the David not invent the tickler file (news to me), but it’s been around since at least 1934.” via Ryan

How to Learn (But Not Master) Any Language in 1 Hour
“How long does it take to learn Chinese or Japanese vs. Spanish or Irish Gaelic? I would argue less than an hour. Here’s the reasoning–¦ Before you invest (or waste) hundreds and thousands of hours on a language, you should deconstruct it.”

The 7 Bad E-Mail Habits that Make People Want to Kill You
“E-mail is a shallow way to communicate. It’s easy, fast and lacks the depth of understanding most people have face-to-face. Unfortunately, many people don’t realize just how much of this understanding is lost. As a result, they pick up bad habits and start driving coworkers, bosses and friends crazy. Here are seven particularly bad habits, and how you can fix them so people don’t want to kill you.”

Windows users who are jealous of Quicksilver’s might on the Mac now have a glimmer of hope in Skylight.

Like Quicksilver, Skylight is an automation utility that lets you launch applications, find files, and execute actions with a quick series of keystrokes.

Click to continue

Posted in: Lifehacks, Productivity, Quicksilver, Windows

Are you grappling with how to design websites using a grid-based layout? Check out Khoi Vinh and Mark Boulton’s excellent design tutorial, Grids are Good.

The presentation starts with a brief history of grids, then walks you through a step-by-step example of redesigning a large portal-type site using a grid.

The portal example is especially interesting because of its complexity. Here’s what Khoi says:

When I started casting about for an ideal candidate, there was an obvious winner in a high-profile portal Web site that’s familiar to millions of Web surfers ” rhymes with –”ha-hoo.– That site has an ideal mix of many different kinds of information design problems: robust navigation, multiple content types, consumer branding, a mix of editorial and marketing contents. You couldn’t really ask for a more well-rounded challenge.

I especially love that Khoi also carefully considers how ads fits into the site. In fantasy-land there’d be no ads, but in reality, we have to live with them. Instead of ignoring them until the very end of the design process, Khoi accounts for ads from beginning, creating a harmonious, balanced, and integrated look.

Download the complete presentation here:

• Grids are Good

For more of Khoi’s thoughts on grids:

• Oh Yeeaahh!

Posted in: Design, Grids, Web Design

Maybe it’s just me, but I’m finding Leopard’s new menubar more irritating than Fox News after a natural disaster. The mix of translucent bar with solid text and icons makes it an illigible mess.

Fortunately, there’s OpaqueMenuBar. Just launch the app and your menubar returns to its full solid glory.

Leopard’s menubar should have been more like MenuShade, in which the menubar becomes solid on mouseover. Simple, elegant, and useful. Too bad, it’s not Leopard compatible yet.

All in all, aside from menubar annoyances and a few other minor bugs, I’m loving the rest of Leopard.

How about you? Do you love or loathe Leopard?

Posted in: Leopard, Mac OS X

Thank you everyone for your thoughts, condolences, and prayers regarding the recent death of my father. Your words and kindness have truly given me comfort during this difficult time.

Posts will return this week. Thank you again for your understanding and patience.

Warmly, Chanpory

Last night, my father, Yath Rith, passed away. He was 78 years old and was sick for a long time. I was able to see him just a few minutes before he died.

My father was a Cambodian refugee of war, a man who liked his shoes polished, and a meticulous barber who preferred vintage hair clippers over electric ones. Until his steady hands failed him, he was the only one to cut my hair. Although cultural, language, and generational differences sometimes divided us, haircuts brought us together.

He did not know what design was, but it was from him that I gained a discerning eye. Thank you, Pa.

LifeClever will not be updated this week, while I spend time with my family. I expect posts to return next week. Thank you everyone for understanding.

Is Mint Ready for Your Money?
A great in-depth review of brand new money-management tool. Complete with extensive screenshots.

The Right Brain vs Left Brain test
“Do you see the dancer turning clockwise or anti-clockwise? If clockwise, then you use more of the right side of the brain and vice versa.” Stare at the shadow of the ballerina long enough, and you’ll see her spin the other way. Total mindfuck.

7 Little Known Ways To Drastically Improve Your Learning
“Most people have pretty ineffective strategies for learning. Here are a couple tips for how to maximize the amount you learn so you can use more of it later.”

Kyle Krichbaum, 12-year-old vacuum savant
This totally obsessed Michigan boy has a giant collection of vacuum cleaners and even wanted to be a Dirt Devil for Halloween. Thanks to Kyle for validating the geek in all of us.

Have a great weekend everyone.

If you’re in San Francisco on October 25th, you can’t miss Punchcut’s Typophile Film Fest 4. It’s the perfect time to mingle with connoisseurs and dabblers of typography.

Here’s the dealyo:

Punchcut’s screening of the Typophile Film Festival 4 is best described as a three-hour party centered around a rare and unequaled selection of short typographic films. Hailing from Portugal, The Netherlands, Austria, Canada and the US, the films create a visual mashup of motion design, typographic animation and short stories.

It includes broadcast motion design, documentaries and typographic eye candy from Trollbäck + Company, Strange Attractors, Heebok Lee, Nick Shinn, Juan Leguizamon as well as exclusive interviews and cuts from the acclaimed documentary film Helvetica. Thanks to FontShop for helping make this presentation possible.

Where, when, and how much

Venue:
Swedish American Hall
2170 Market Street
San Francisco, CA 94114

Date: Thursday, October 25

Doors: 8–11pm

Screening: 8:30–9:30pm

Tickets: $12

Posted in: Event, San-Francisco, Typography

I’ve recently had two posts published on Merlin Mann’s 43 Folders. The first is a confession and plea about my own laptop addiction. The second is a follow-up post and presents my five favorite tips for divorcing your laptop.

Check them out:

**Laptops: A blessing or a curse?**
“When I got my first laptop, I loved the exhilarating freedom of whipping it out anytime I –”needed– it. No matter where I am, I could work on a project, balance a budget, or play a video game. Years later, despite its –”convenience–, I’m dangerously married to my laptop.”

**How to divorce your laptop**
“If you’re in a soul-sucking marriage with your laptop, you’re not alone. Last week, I confessed the details of an embarrassingly codependent relationship with my laptop. In desperation, I begged you, fellow 43 Folders readers, to share your experiences and tips for breaking up with a laptop. Many of you empathized, offering very useful suggestions.”

Posted in: Lifehacks, Productivity

It’s Blog Action Day and today’s post is about the environment.

What’s a super-easy way to reduce energy consumption, lower your energy bill, and feel good all-over? Put your computer to sleep.

For some of you, its already second nature to tuck your computers in at night. The rest of us, however, are still seduced by screensavers like flying toasters, swimming fishes, and flurry lights. When we leave work, we turn off the lights and turn on the screensavers. It’s hard to resist, because they’re just so darn pretty. Also, screensavers do prevent “burn-in”, right?

Turns out, they don’t.

Click to continue

Posted in: Computers, Environment

Helvetica, the typeface everyone loves to hate–and hates to love–now has its very own coffee cup. Austere but oh so cute and clever.

You can get it for $18 bucks at Veer. Also, don’t forget to check out the Helvetica film.

Too bad, I don’t drink coffee. :-(

Posted in: Design, Typography

Giant megabookstores like Borders and Barnes & Nobles are great for getting coffee table design books that everyone and their momma has. But if you want to snag ultra-cool limited-edition books, you’ll have to look elsewhere.

Here’s my favorite places to discover new books before everyone else. Most are in Europe because that’s just where the better design books are published. This means If you live in the states, you’ll have to pay a bit extra for shipping. It’s a small price for the extra cool-factor:

Click to continue

Posted in: Books, Design

ShoutingMat.ch
“The ninja editors at shoutingmat.ch have compiled a definitive list of the blogs that everyone’s reading. A separate elite division of parsing ninjas scours these blogs regularly to find out what all the blogging heads are linking to. Using our top-secret army of (robot”and, again, ninja) monkeys, we then determine what links are hot and publish them for you.”

Menu Bar Show and Tell
Check out this gallery of what Mac users have done with their menubars: “The Mac Menu Bar”the small strip of applications on the top right of your Mac”houses some of the coolest apps you can run on your system. They’re small, they’re sleek, and sometimes they’re absolute must-haves for staying productive on your Mac.”

Blogging is Dumb, Stupid and Successful
“Most blogs are dumb, even the successful ones. The ones about blogging. This isn’t because the writers of those blogs are dumb, they are very intelligent. It’s the readers, the ones who want to scan not to read, not to study, not to ingest. The ones who want another quick fix trick, before they have a chance to implement even the quick fix trick they just learned.”

The Paradox of Choice–Why More is Less
A video of Barry Schwartz given at Google TechTalks. Video has subtitles, so no need for headphones.

I’m a very very bad person. Why? Because I procrastinate. I put things off, leave them to the last minute, or simply never finish them. To beat these lazy habits, I’m reluctantly reading Neil Fiore’s The Now Habit. I still haven’t finished it after three months, but I have hope. (I have 40 pages left.)

According to Neil Fiore and 30 years of research, procrastination isn’t the result of laziness. Rather, procrastination is a symptom, a way of coping with deep psychological self-criticism and fear. It’s because we’re taught to believe that working is good and playing is bad. To reverse this unhealthy model, Neil proposes a tool: the Unschedule.

The Unschedule looks like a normal schedule, but with a twist. Instead of scheduling work you have to do, you fill in everything you want to do.

Here’s what my Unschedule looks like next week:

After visualizing my day, I was amazed to see I don’t have time to work for more than two hours without a good break. Already, work doesn’t seem so bad.

Here’s a summary, based on Neil’s instructions, on how to make and use your own Unschedule:

Click to continue

Posted in: Lifehacks, Procrastination, Productivity