Just one last suggestion for anti-procrastination software in the shape of Freedom.
This post will complete the trilogy of posts on this subject and unless I become possessed with the spirit of George Lucas and end up posting prequels that ruin this original trilogy. (Thats unfair, I've not seen the last one yet).
Freedom is another free little app and is the simplest of them all.
You select how long you want your mac's network facilities to be disabled for and select start, thats it.
The only thing is, is that you can stop the countdown, it requires an awkward restart of your computer, but it can still be stopped.
Personally, I like the simplicity of this one. Selecting ALL network facilities and shutting them down is great, but the fairly easy way to stop the countdown kinda ruins it.
I think SelfControl is the winner of this unintended shootout.
Following on from my previous post about SelfControl.
I've also been using this nice application called Concentrate.
Its a step up from SelfControl insofar as you can select which applications you want to have open at any given time and restrict the ones you don't.
It works in a similar fashion to SelfControl but with Concentrate you blacklist applications too, play sounds, run scripts and it even tells people on iChat to piss off for a while. .
Imaging sitting down to a laptop where all you could open was Final Draft have zero internet access and a Pomodoro ticking away in the menubar? Amazing.
With Concentrate you can.
The only problem I have with Concentrate, and its a pretty big problem is that you can switch it off VERY easily, WHENEVER you want to.
This kinda defeats the propose if you ask me, but if you couple it with SelfControl you could be onto a winner.
The trial give's you 60 hours concentrating then it costs just over €20 to license.
Fingers crossed that future versions will include the SelfControl style you-can-do-fuck-all-till-the-time-elapses approach and more than justify a purchase.
Some of you creative types know the true meaning of the word procrastination. I for one, particularly when I NEEED to get shit done instantly finds distraction online.
I posted some weeks back about The Pomodoro Technique. But the problem I have with that is the time I put off before beginning a Pomodoro, in other words I procrastinate.
The thing is, its FAR TO EASY to do so when the machine you are hooked up to do do your work is ALSO hooked up the bloody internet. The internet, that mischievous mistress who can entice you with anything that can enter your mind.
Enter SelfControl, an amazing little open source app (which also amazingly means its FREE!) that I would GLADLY pay for as it helps you prevent internet access.
Its very simple, you pick the most distracting websites, even your email and ESPECIALLY social networking sites and/or forums where your mates might live, throw the URL's into SelfControl, set the amount of time you want to work for undistracted and click the start button.
Now heres the genius part. You CANNOT change your mind! You can shut down the application, you can restart your mac, you can take the battery out, shake it over your head, power the mac back up and you STLL can't get at the sites you selected until the predetermined time has elapsed.
Now thats what I call self control. Can you believe its free?
So, If you want to work for 90 mins and want to turn off twitter for the duration, download SelfControl HERE
I'll leave the last word to Steve Lambert, SelfControl's inventor, as all I can say is, thanks dude.
"I am an artist, and as anyone who creates things knows; the time you can block out to get focused work done is invaluable. Hopefully this will help you focus on whatever you need to do, from creating that project, writing your novel, studying for your exams, or whatever you want to do. Good luck." Steve Lambert
I'm not one to usually succumb to advertising and marketing techniques, but this product/service is actually quite brilliant, helpful and best of all its FREE.
For those of you reading this who write or are involved in post production know that without the project file, all hope is lost. Without that teeny weeny couple of KB's of a project file its an end to whatever it is your working on if anything were to happen to it.
So backing up that precious little file is ESSENTIAL.
Over the years I've done this in numerous ways.
If I didn't have access to an internal server I'd burn a multi session CDROM and keep that with me. Then I had an early Ngage nokia phone that I could mount on my desktop and drap and drop project files preference files onto the phone that I always had with me. I found little USB flash drives better for that kind of thing and then there was always the alternative of emailing the file to yourself, but as you know, that can be kind of messy.
Then along came MyDisk.se and it was identical to Apple's iDisc (now called MobileMe) but the best part it was FREE. Always a plus.
I've been using MyDisk.se for a couple of years now but the service is becoming quite unstable & then along comes DropBox. Unlike MyDisk and iDisc it doesn't mount on your desktop via your network, DropBox lives as a neat little menu icon attached to a shared folder on your HD that INSTANTLY syncs to your account online AND syncs to any other macs sharing your account AND your iPhone (if you have one, I don't but it works perfectly well with my Nokia N95)
With the imminent launch of CloudApp on April 1st, DropBox's direct competition, DropBox are offering an INSANE 10GB free account via referrals.
I know it aint cool spamming your mates, but I think this is worth the few inevitable pissed off heads from people. The basic free account is a mere 2gb with is what I have with MyDisk.se but through referrals I've managed to clock up a modest 4GB of free space which has allowed me to share some High Definition video with festivals & not have to post DVD's. Excellent.
For every referral you earn an additional 250MB of space and the announcement of the whopping 10GB of free space has prompted me to share this with you lot.
Here's my referral:
Please click and earn me some more space so I can backup more scripts and share more HD video. Don't forget to tell your friends and earn yourself more free space too. I don't think this will last much longer. And I'm only telling you this because its ACTUALLY a very excellent and useful service.
Where was this technology last year when I needed it???!!!???
Some of you may remember the heartache myself and my good buddy Paul Sherwood had attempting to remove the reflection cast by myself in the window of the phone box in the short film Shut The Fuck Up.
I literally gasped watching this video! Its only a matter of time before this technology can be applied to video and in particular into After Effects coupled with some smart tracking, anything could be possible from wire removal to bloody ELEPHANT removal!
I'm thinking in the meantime, Photoshop CS5 Content-Aware could be applied to a TARGA sequence! Yes, I know what your thinking, I'm mad, that would take forever over multiple frames. Maybe so, but it would be a lot less that if you had to do the whole thing by hand.
I was once an animator. I have patience for these kind of things. (kinda)
I've just been informed of this time management technique thanks to a tweet from Stu Maschwitz (Author of the DV Rebels Guide & pioneer of Red Giant Magic Bullet software, follow him here).
From his tweet feed he seems to be getting shit done, which as you know is the HARDEST fucking part of any creative process.
I've downloaded a nice little menu Pomodoro thingum from here, its designed for coder's but hay its the exact same principal! It incorporates wonderfully with Growl & Twitter. If you don't use Growl, I highly recommend it to the mac user, its a simple little monitor that informs you what your mac is doing while your working away. Its reassuring and its free and you can download it from here.
Anyway, back to Pomodoro. More information can be found on its official website The Pomodoro Technique. Including a free download of the book among other things.
This blog post is an experimental use of the Pomodoro for me to see if I can get shit done during that short window in the afternoon while my kid has a nap.
To be honest I find this quite exciting knowing there is a countdown going on while I type this post and its getting closer to a chime of some sort.
Never again will I say I don't have the time to do something, I'll just see how many Pomodoro's I can get it done in.
Devastated to learn the news of musician Mark Linkous taking his own life yesterday. It truly is a tragedy.
His music was very influential on my own from hearing his first album vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot which I immediately ran out and bought after hearing his collaboration with Radiohead for the cover of the Pink Floyd song "Wish You Were Here" which blew me away at the time (sometime in the mid to late nineties) and I have been an avid fan/follower since.
I had the pleasure of seeing him and his band Sparklehorse perform on numerous occasions down through the years and always had a goosebump moment at least once at every show.
The last time I saw him was when he was part of the Daniel Johnston & Friends line up last year and I did remark that he seemed to have lost a lot of weight and looked unwell. Having attempted suicide in the past one would be trepidatious that a person would ever actually fully recover from such a trauma.
I'm saddened to learn that he hadn't.
Seeing as this is a film related blog, I am compelled to mention his collaboration with the legend that is David Lynch, Dark Night of The Soul has won it legal battle and due for release soon.
I don't know what more shocking, the fact that rebel filmmaker Robert Rodriguez is shooting with Canon 7d's or the fact that the dude is giving me a run for my money in the portly stakes.
I barely recognized him with the extra chin.
That aside its refreshing to see a filmmaker such as himself use this kind of consumer accessible kit. Whatever you can say about his movies, he's always been a refreshing inspiration to us little guys in getting things done.
From his book Rebel Without a Crew to this new information, my hat is off as always to the man. I will celebrate by making a batch of Sin City breakfast taco's and eating them all in one sitting as he himself has obviously been doing a lot lately.
Info taken from Philip Bloom's informative site. Check it out for more info on HDSLR's.
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