Outlook for Mac - Filter meeting invites

Outlook for Mac sucks (at least compare to the windows version). But I have to use it to manage My Exchange calendar invites.

I am trying to use Apple "Mail" for the my mails and Outlook to manage my meeting invites. But when I launch Outlook, I would like to see *only* my meeting invite.

It seems that the only way to do it is via the "Raw query" on Smart folders.

Some reference that helped me:
Apple Spotlight metadata
Comments from this blog post


Here is the Raw query that seems to work fine:

com_microsoft_outlook_has_reminder == 1

Ipad2 app Review: IAnnotate PDF vs PDF Expert

 

VS

The ipad is a perfect tool to review some documents offline or on travel.

I am personally dumping some pdf docs (if not in pdf already, I have to change their format, this is still a pain) in a dropbox directory and on best effort, I review and annotate them on my Ipad.

Browsing the Internet, I found 2 apps that seems to be leader in this category: IAnnotate and PDF Expert. I had some difficulty to choose between them as looking on forums, I couldn’t find enough info.

First of all they are both extremely expensive without any trial period. I spent 10$ for each app and was not happy about that.

I wanted an application that support multiple format, not only pdf. PDF expert here as a slight advantage as it can read other format (doc, txt file at least). But what is the point if you cannot modify it? There are better document viewer on ipad anyway. Iannotate claims some multi-format document but it is clearly not working today.

Both app are not very intuitive (took me half an hour to understand how to Undo or delete my annotation on both app).

In fact, there is no good “undo” function on any of those apps. But I didn’t find it that important as the delete function is working well (The way to do it is to select the change (by tapping it) and then select delete).

IAnnotate advantage:
- More flexible and more features
- Not possible to move notes in PDF expert. This is annoying as the notes are never on the correct place.
- On iAnnotate it is possible to create a text file with all the review/change. This is very useful as the owner of the document doesn't have to search the full doc to see where the modification are. 

PDF Expert advantage:
- Dropbox syncup is easier than on IAnnotate. For example we can sync up a full folder with one button. We need to do it file by file on IAnnotate.
- UI is nicer and cleaner than on IAnnotate

Conclusion: IAnnotate is a clear winner so far. Better UI does not match better Features at this point.

What is a successful life? why i am Nietzschean.

 

I will try to be very concise here. I could come back and improve this post from time to time.

Baseline

This is my postulate. It is probably difficult to understand my propositions below if you don’t agree with this.

“God is dead” – Nietzsche (Gay Science). I don’t mean here that god does not exist. I acknowledge the fact that I don’t know and will never will. I acknowledge that the truth is beyond my reach (see also Gödel's incompleteness theorem). So we must accept the world as we see it as the only truth.

What is a successful life?

Nietzsche gives us a criteria to define what a good life should be: The eternal recurrence. A successful life is a life that we would be willing to live for ever.

“Live so that you may desire to live the same life again.” Friedrich Nietzsche

“What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: "This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence - even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!"” – Nietzsche (the gay science)

To live in a way that give us the desire to live this life again! This brings us the next question, how can we decide what is the life we would like to live for ever?

The Grand style

If Life as no “meaning”, No meaningful outcome, life is nothing else than sum of moments. We need to strive to make each one of them a masterpiece.

The “grand” life style is intense and harmonious. Like the perfect martial art movement.

Intense Life

What is an intense life? It is our will to push our life to an extreme. This is well define in the notion of “will of power” from Nietzsche.

[Anything which] is a living and not a dying body... will have to be an incarnate will to power, it will strive to grow, spread, seize, become predominant - not from any morality or immorality but because it is living and because life simply is will to power... Nietzsche (beyond good and evil)

The will to power describes what Nietzsche believed to be the main driving force in man; achievement, ambition, the striving to reach the highest possible position in life; these are all manifestations of the will to power.

Harmonious life

An harmonious life is one that take into account who we really are. Our strength and weakness. An happy life of course. A movement that would use our self completely (intellect, reason, feelings, fitness, emotions, …).

What is a successful life? my selection of books

Most important question of all time. What is the best way to live our only life? I am trying here to summarize some of the most important books on the subject for me (I am open to suggestion as well) and some of their key messages.

What Is the Good Life? - Luc Ferry

This is one of my only book near my bed in my bedroom at all time. I always need to re-read one or two paragraph of it. This book explains how the different philosophies in the history tried to answer this question. From Stoicism, Nietzsche, Freud and Christians, Luc Ferry is giving us a philosophic course and stay clear and simple at the same time. This is a must.

Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis

A novel about the meaning of life. The main character is Alexis Zorba. Zorba plays the santuri, has had a family and many lovers, has fought in the Balkan Wars, has lived and loved-his knowledge is rooted in love, suffering, sweat, and blood. He is a simple but deep man who lives life without shame, bares himself, has no guile or guise, and lives every moment fully. I wish i could sing, dance and enjoy life as Zorba.

Happier by Tal Ben-Shahar

Quick and simple book that summarize the last scientific studies on happiness. A bit repetitive and fuzzy but still a good read. Useful to get practical daily advice to become happier.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People - Stephen R. Covey

Super famous book from Covey. Everybody know this one. There is a reason why it is successful though. Practical steps to have a successful life.

Minimalist Windows Desktop

I wrote about this in the past. I don’t like cluttered Desktop. I don’t understand why windows users tuning their desktop are tyring to copy the Mac interface (way too cluttered for me).

The best way to have a clean Windows desktop (without files and icons everywhere) is to remove the possibility to get anything in it. That way, it stays simple all the time.

The best way to avoid a behavior (cluttering the desktop) is to design a desktop that cannot be cluttered. (see this blog post on this general topic: Willpower is overrated).

coming back to the main topic.

Here is my requirement:
- Minimal CPU and memory utilization. My PC needs to be lightning fast.
- Simple and clean environment (no distraction) and *impossible to clutter it*
- Possibility to let message or Post-it in the background

I found this very good blog post about windows explorer replacement: Five best destop customization tools

I was able to do this with those tiny and free applications:

1) Emerge Desktop - is a replacement windows "shell". It replaces the windows explorer. Part. Super lean, simple and flexible. You can remove everything from your desktop (task bars, icons, everything!).
2) Launchy – I need a way to launch quickly my applications. This is done with Launchy.
3) Vistaswitcher - Because I removed everything from my desktop, I need a way to switch between application more efficiently than with the normal Windows tools. Vistaswitcher is the best tool for this.
4) BGinfo – Possibility to add text on your backround image. 0 CPU utilization when it is done. Completely transparent. Just amazing.

Here is a screen capture (yes, there is nothing to see that is the main goal).

Cross Post between Facebook and a Personal Blog

 

Why do we need to choose between Facebook and our personal blog? It is obviously painful to post manually the same information on Facebook and on our blog. At the same time we don't want usually to post the same type of information.

On Facebook: Casual post, short and aimed to our tech savvy friends (they need to use Facebook regularly)

In a Personal Blog: Usually longer post targeted to our non tech savvy friends

Bottom line, we need to be able to share content automatically between a Blog and Facebook but not all of it. How can we achieve that?

Let's start with what we cannot do:

1) Share RSS feeds from the Blog to Facebook - It copies *everything* and sometime this is an issue. Not possible to "filter" the feed.

2) Share the RSS Facebook feed in the blog - This is not possible as they change the link all the time! Facebook worked very hard to make the news feed not RSS capable. That is a shame but a reality. And this solution as anyway the same issue than above: it shares *everything* which is not our goal.

So, here is what I am doing now… the solution is different for my laptop and my mobile device (iphone)

On my laptop: I am just using the “share” button on my blogger account as explained here.  With this simple solution, I just publish once and then pick and choose which post I want to share.

on my iphone: I tried Seesmic or ping.fm without success (impossible to download an image on blogger with those apps, I am getting an error message all the time). They should also seriously invest in some documentation for the ping.fm web site. this is *so* confusing. I am now using pixelpipe to cross post with great success.

Parental control for Starcraft 2

I started playing Starcraft2 2 weeks ago and I am now completely addicted. As I have a work a and a family that I want to keep, I was trying to find a parental control software for me…

Looking inside Starcraft2 , there is still no parental control. At least no good enough to limit my time of play per week.

I tried Rescuetime as well but it is not possible to block an application. Wierd because it seems they clearly could but for whatever reason, you can only block some web site and not even all the time.

So the solution for me was timesheriff. It seems to be a very solid application. Very flexible (you can control your time per week, per day, …) It is not free but with a one month trial period, you have well the time to test the application or just give up playing the game.

As a note, I am limiting my game time to 4 hours a week so far. Seems to work fine for me.