Yesterday’s Wordle provided an opportunity to use a sacrificial word. After Guess #2 I knew what the last four letters were, but there were many possibilities for the first letter. To narrow it down, for Guess #3 I picked a word that used as many valid first letters as possible. This word was 100% guaranteed not to be the solution, but it immediately made the solution clear. Guess #3 was: PLUMB.
The notion of creating virtuous habits seems to come into vogue every so often. The idea is to identify something beneficial, endeavor to make a habit of it, and then sit back and watch as the wins accrue.
It’s also possible to acquire bad habits, which in turn generate their losses if not recognized and stopped.
But all habits imply a kind of mindlessness. When we act out of habit we are asleep.
I say: stay awake! Make a habit of breaking habits.
While working from home has much to afford in the way of flexibility, freeing up of time that would have otherwise been spent getting from Point A to Point B, and reduced carbon emissions, there are some pluses to heading into the office.
This post is about a workflow challenge when collaboratively editing an online document, say in Google Docs, and a fix for that challenge.
To set up the problem, imagine that Bob and Carol are editing a document containing an itemized list. Carol adds a bullet item and starts typing. Meanwhile, Bob gets an idea for a second item and places his cursor on the line Carol is typing:
Bob wants to add content while Carol is typing
While Carol continues to type, Bob hits Enter to add a new bullet item, breaking the line Carol is typing:
If Bob hits Enter to add a new list item, Carol’s sentence breaks but continues
Now Carol’s line is broken and Bob is no closer to being able to start typing. Frustrating right?
If Carol notices that Bob is waiting to jump in, there’s a simple step she can take to make space: hit Enter, type an ellipsis (…), repeat a few times, and then place her cursor back where we was working, and continue on:
Carol can make space for Bob by adding a few additional list items and then returning to typing
Now, Bob (and others!) can grab a list item and start typing. I call this the “bullet ahead” move. By the way, the ellipses are not strictly required, but Carol must type at least one non-whitespace character after each list item, in order to avoid breaking the list.
One of the interesting things about Facebook is that you can disappear for years and folks are still there when you come back. I try to visit on my birthday, since that’s when a lot of the activity happens. This year I posted a selfie with my wife and got so many nice notes from friends and family. Grateful!
Here’s a diagram of our setup for recording and watching Over The Air broadcast television. It’s a bit complicated, but it works well! My favorite part? The central media library and tv tuner are accessible from multiple devices, making for a nice unified experience.