Designing a better Todoist Help Page
I am currently improving Todoist. It's a great application that I know has a lot of passionate users and manages over 5 million tasks.
My first goal is to polish and improve the current features before adding new. Here is how I have improved the help page — which is critical as Todoist offers a lot of expert features. The old help page looked like this:
The redesigned help page looks like this:
The essence of minimal product design
Inspired by Ray Sison. Google Search is a prime example of a product that conquerors complexity and enables users to search through 25 billion pages in a fraction of a second. What we can learn from the Digg 4.0 disaster
The new release of Digg 4.0 seems to be a complete disaster. At least based on user riot.
Why?
What would have been a better plan?
Some products that have improved gradually over time:
Slow Dance
Vim Cast: Why vimgrep is super useful
In this screen cast I showcase how vimgrep works and why it's super useful. You can use vimgrep to find text in files - - directly from Vim.
Vim 7.3: Persistent undo and encryption!![]() Vim 7.3 was released about a week ago. I have been a Vim user for around 6 years now and I love that it keeps getting better. In this post I will highlight the two features that excite me most, namely:
Persistent undoPersistent undo is like a local version control system that you don't have to manage. I think I will use this feature a lot. To set it up simply put this in your .vimrc: set undodir=~/.vim/undodir set undofile set undolevels = 1000 "maximum number of changes that can be undone set undoreload = 10000 "maximum number lines to save for undo on a buffer reload To get more help simply type: :help new-persistent-undo EncryptionVim 7.3 provides Blowfish encryption and a elegant interface to use it. To encrypt a buffer simply type this in command mode: :X This will prompt you for a password. When you save the file it will be saved encrypted. When you open an encrypted file you will be prompted for the file's password. It's easy to use and quite elegant. MacVim with Vim 7.3MacVim is hands down the best graphical interface of Vim and yesterday it was released with Vim 7.3. Be sure to upgrade as it comes with a lot of fixes and it feels a lot snappier than MacVim with Vim 7.2. Additional posts on VimI have done about 20 posts on Vim now. Check them out, especially check out my ultimate vimrc if you want a vimrc that kicks ass :-) cronwrap: Another cure for Cron's email problem![]() cronwrap is a simple Python script that can improve your cron jobs. It offers following features:
Source: cronwrap on github Installing cronwrap$ sudo easy_install cronwrap $ cronwrap -h UsageWill email a timeout alert to cron@my_domain.com: $ cronwrap -c "sleep 2" -t "1s" -e cron@my_domain.com Will email an error alert to cron@my_domain.com, since the command crashes: $ cronwrap -c "blah" -e cron@my_domain.com Will not email any reports since it's a successful run: $ cronwrap -c "ls" -e cron@my_domain.com Will email a successful report to cron@my_domain.com, because verbosity is turned on: $ cronwrap -c "ls" -e cron@my_domain.com -v Help and usage:
$ cronwrap -h
usage: cronwrap [-h] [-c CMD] [-e EMAILS] [-t TIME] [-v [VERBOSE]]
A cron job wrapper that wraps jobs and enables better error reproting and
command timeouts.
optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-c CMD, --cmd CMD Run a command. Could be `cronwrap -c "ls -la"`.
-e EMAILS, --emails EMAILS
Email following users if the command crashes or
exceeds timeout. Could be `cronwrap -e
"johndoe@mail.com, marcy@mail.com"`. Uses system's
`mail` to send emails. If no command (cmd) is set a
test email is sent.
-t TIME, --time TIME Set the maxium running time.If this time is passed an
alert email will be sent.The command will keep running
even if maxium running time is exceeded.The default is
1 hour `-t 1h`. Possible values include: `-t 2h`,`-t
2m`, `-t 30s`.
-v [VERBOSE], --verbose [VERBOSE]
Will send an email / print to stdout on succefull run.
Hope you find it useful and happy hacking! PS:I would like to say happy Whyday! Time flies so fast and I can't believe it's one year since he left. I wrote about him on 21. august 2009 ( _why's way of living ). His influence lives on even if he is gone — a true legend!
Wilderness trip to Sweden
I was on a trip to the Swedish wilderness with some friends — one week without Internet or phone.
Here are some shots.
Dreams
Spring Summer Fall Winter and Spring
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