Favorites of 2018 - Things

These posts will never happen if I don’t make it fuss free. So here is it! With little introduction or fanfare, the ‘stuff’ that made up my year. My favorite albums, live shows, apps, and ‘things’ of 2018.

The final installment features the most tangible and miscellaneous. My favorite things! The stuff that didn’t fit into any other category but that brought me joy this year.

Things

Prepd Lunch Box

This modular lunchbox helps me to better plan my lunches throughout the week. After mass prepping on Sunday night, I slam all of my meals into a weeks worth of these containers and then easily swap them out at the end of each day. This lunchbox is slim enough to fit in my backpack. There is a companion app that has recipes for meals that easily fit into the containers.

Series 4 Apple Watch

Of all the Apple products I own, this is the one that I take the most delight in. My Series 4 watch has this new watch face that allows me to slam a ton of information onto it at a glance. My current version of it I call the 'status circle' watch face. It keeps track of my progress on activity, sleep, water intake, and tasks, while also helping me stay on top of alarms, timers, and calendar events.

Rx Bars

If you are what you eat, I am a coconut chocolate Rx Bar. These energy bars are delicious, and most importantly, they are substantial. I can sub one of these out for breakfast or have it as a late afternoon snack. It carries me through. And there are tons of delicious flavors, all made with a minimal list of natural ingredients.

Rx Bars come in diverse flavors.

The Prepd lunchbox.

Hidrate Spark Smart Water Bottle

This water bottle reminds me when to drink. It automatically senses how much I drink and displays my progress on my Apple Watch. It even remembers the last location it was connected to my phone in the event that I loose it (like yesterday...) This water bottle is a big motivation for me to drink more water. I love it.

My Apple Watch Series 4, with my ‘status circle.’ watch face. When I am not taking screenshots at 2 am, the blue status ring on bottom represents the water I drink in the Hidrate Spark water bottle.

You read that last caption right! This water bottle automatically logs my water intake. And much much more.

Ableton Live Hoodie

My wife got me this last Christmas and I love it. Everyone loves it. I feel a little bit phony wearing it because Ableton is not an app I use much anymore. But it carries with it the general spirit of an audio editor. And some bright colors! I am down with that.

Nintendo Switch

Over a year into owning this thing and I am still amazed that I can play the latest Mario game the same way on an airplane that I can on my living room TV. Our latest craze is Overcooked 2. It’s the most addictive local multiplayer I have experienced in a long time.

Thrive Market

Thrive sells health food items in larger than normal quantities at discounted prices. As I continue to experiment with adjustments to my diet, this service is becoming my go to for essentials like nuts, cooking oils, fresh water fish, and more!

Territory

For busy teaching weeks (like a week where my music team puts on four concerts), it is hard to manage meal prep. For those weeks I turn to Territory. Territory makes healthy, delicious, meals that are pre-made and shipped straight to my front door. The amount of diet customization you can do with this service keeps me coming back for more. 

2018 iPad Pro

I also upgraded my iPad Pro this year and gave my old one to my wife. What is there to say? I really like this iPad. It makes the Apple Pencil feel like magic. I am still frustrated by the keyboard case, and iOS is still not an OS I can get all of my work done on. But somehow, the hardware improvements to this device (larger display, FaceID, inductive charging Apple Pencil) makes it a real delight to use.

It does not fundamentally change the way the iPad works. But it also does.

Favorites of 2018 - Apps!

These posts will never happen if I don’t make it fuss free. So here is it! With little introduction or fanfare, the ‘stuff’ that made up my year. My favorite albums, live shows, apps, and ‘things’ of 2018.

Next up, apps!

Apps

Things and OmniFocus

Task management software makes up about 50 percent my time on computing devices so it’s natural that I include what I consider to be the best two apps in this field. After seven years of using OmniFocus, I am experimenting with Things again. I plan to write about this switch in more detail but for now I leave you with this: if you are looking for a powerful way to stay on top of your tasks and don’t mind paying for a premium design, check these apps out.

The Today view in Things displays all of my tasks for the day alongside my calendar.

The Forecast view in OmniFocus is similar to the Today view in Things. Though I have it turned off in this screenshot, it actually displays your tasks inline with your calendar events so you can see where ‘due’ tasks fit into your day.

Health

The Health app by Apple is my hub for collecting all sorts of data about myself from various devices, apps and clinics. It houses data from devices like my Apple Watch, Spire respiratory monitor, Fitbit WiFi scale, and Spark Smart Water Bottle. It tracks data in third party apps like: work outs, active calories burned, steps, heart rate, sleep, water intake, nutrition, meditation minutes, caffeine intake, and blood pressure. It can now even aggregate health data from participating clinics and practices so I don’t have to log into a million web portals. My Quest and LabCorp results are a tap away. The beauty of the app is that it allows me to organize these data points and see them alongside one another so I can draw meaningful conclusions about them. Like for example, I eat better on days when I get more sleep.

Home

Apple’s Home app is the hub for controlling my smart home. I can control all of my smart things in the same user interface rather than by punching into lots of different apps. I can also use it to automate different actions. For example, my Good Morning scene automatically runs at 6:30 am every day which turns on my lights, changes the temperature, and lately, turns on the Christmas tree.

My Today view in Apple Health aggregates all of my health data regardless of which app is responsible for tracking it.

The My Home view in Apple Home shows my most used home automation devices and ‘scenes.’

Tonal Energy Tuner

Absolute must for an instrumental music teacher. Using the new Screen Time feature on iOS reveals that I spend too much time on Reddit. But also that I spend more time than any other app in Tonal Energy. It’s literally running in the foreground all day long while I’m at school, helping students to match pitch, blend, and keep steady time.

Trello

This may be my productivity discovery of the year. Trello is the team project app you have been waiting for. It’s vibrant, Kanbab board style interface will have your team, family, or Dungeons and Dragons group enjoying every minute of collaboration. Bonus points for how well this app integrates with Slack which is my preferred team communication tool.

Planning concerts in Trello allows my team to share todos, check lists, files, and more. We can give items due dates and even assign tasks to other members.

GoodNotes

GoodNotes has become my go-to handwritten note application. It acts like a bookshelf of notebooks so to speak. I take a lot of the work I create in iWork, Ulysses, and OmniGraffle, export them as PDFs, organize them into notebooks in GoodNotes, then annotate them on the go using my iPad. My favorite thing to do with it is keep a notebook of seating charts that have my rehearsal annotations on top of the names of my students. I love how you do not need to trigger an annotation mode to start scribbling on a document with the Apple Pencil. It just feels like paper.

Streaks

There are a lot of great habit building apps out there but Streaks has stuck with me because it encourages you to focus on just six habits at a time. When I am building too many habits at once, they start to feel like a todo list. The Streaks method of choosing six, along with its addictive user interface, keep me launching the app, which keeps me working towards my goals.

AutoSleep and AutoWake

Of the ten or so sleep trackers I have tried for the iPhone and Apple Watch, AutoSleep has stuck with me the most. There are numerous things I like about it, but most of all is how it figures out the most accurate number of hours I have been asleep whether I wear my watch to sleep or not. The companion app, AutoWake, wakes me up silently with haptic feedback on the watch. It does this when I am in my least deep sleep within a half hour before my alarm is set to go off. This eases me awake rather than jolting me awake. I plan to blog later this month about how I am automating some cool stuff in my house when I wake up using this app.

WaterMinder

WaterMinder is my favorite app for tracking water intake, mostly because of its well designed and space efficient widget.

Shortcuts

I did not get as much out of the Siri Shortcuts app this year as I wanted to. In fact, I had a lot of bad luck with it. But it is still an app that is working really well for me in a couple of small areas. In one tap, it generates a clean copy of my band's seating chart in GoodNotes for annotations and opens my lesson plan for the day in OmniOutliner. 

The Waterminder Widget.

Some of my Shortcuts.

CARROT⁵ Weather

This is my favorite weather app due to its clean and appealing design. It gets my pick this year because of how they continue to innovate the Apple Watch app. My favorite feature of the watch is the customizable complications. Carrot makes the best weather complication for the Apple Watch, maybe the best complication, period. Carrot allows infinite customization for how it looks on the watch, depending on which watch face you like to view it, and even in which corner of the watch face you prefer to keep it installed.

The Carrot Weather app complication can be seen in the lower left corner.

Streaks. Guess I can check off that one in the lower right corner now.

Favorites of 2018 - Live Music

These posts will never happen if I don’t make it fuss free. So here is it! With little introduction or fanfare, the ‘stuff’ that made up my year. My favorite albums, live shows, apps, and ‘things’ of 2018.

Next up, live music!

Live Shows

The Telluride Bluegrass Festival

Hard to write about this one in few words but I promised myself this would be fuss free. My wife all but dragged me to this festival, affirming all year long that it would be worth the journey. My camping chops are a long way from my Eagle Scout years. Anyway, the memories outlast any annoyance I felt camping at a music festival.

Some of the highlights include:

• Seeing Live From Here with Chris Thile recorded...well, live

• Bela Fleck featuring Brooklyn Rider String Quartet (think Bartok meets late 20th century strings for string quarter and banjo)

• Edgar Meyer and Christian McBride bass duet set

• St. Paul and the Broken Bones

• Sturgil Simpson (always killer)

• Edgar Meyer and his son, George Meyer on the small stage

• Hawktail on the small stage

• I'm With Her, Nightgrass set (You can enter a lottery to get tickets to see certain artists perform at the local opera house in town. I'm With Her sounds stunning around a single mic.)

Punch Brothers at The Telluride Bluegrass Festival

We saw them four times this year if you include three times at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival. One of the most memorable of these performances was on the main stage where they debuted their new album, All Ashore, in its entirety. It is a beautiful record and my family will share really special memories of hearing it live with the crisp mountain breeze washing over us.

But perhaps one of the most memorable shows I have ever seen was later that night when Punch Brothers performed a Nightgrass set in town. The band member’s musicianship was on full display. And due to this intimate audience, (and a long weekend of performing tightly organized sets), they let loose a little. They were kicking back Manhattans, lengthening solo sections, and engaging in banter. Things that made their earlier performances memorable for me but that have since become less a part of their live show due to a lengthier song repertoire and wider audience to please.

Let me give you an example. During the solo section of a bluegrass standard, each member completely deconstructed the I-V progression. During the banjo player Noam Pikelne’s solo, he hinted at motif from a song on the new record (in an entirely different key and time signature), and Chris made a gesture to the band. Then somehow they morphed this small suggestion into the entire introduction of the other song, while the bass still wavered between I-V, ultimately transforming completely into a performance of of the entire song, back into a I-V progression, and into more solo’s. Chris Thile’s solo (equally ridiculous) somehow managed to transform into one of the Bach Violin Sonotas, which he performed in its entirety, followed by the band transforming that back into the head of the bluegrass tune they had originally started off with.

As an encore, Chris came out into the center of the audience with Sarah Jarosz, and they sang a few old folk songs together. Chris’s parents were in the balcony, seeing him perform at the festival for the first time together since he was a kid. At one point Chris called out to his father to sing one of the verses with him in harmony. I’m not crying, you’re crying. This was an easy top five-er for me, and a reminder of all the reasons I love Punch Brothers.

The Bad Plus at The Hamilton

I am cheating by including this show. It happened right around the new year, but technically in 2017. The Bad Plus is another artist that has been with me for a while. I learned about them in a formative time of musical discovery, and while their sound has not really evolved in recent records, it was nice to see them on their last tour with Ethan Iverson playing piano. The show was bittersweet. On the one hand, they played a lot of old favorites I had not heard in a while. On the other hand, they seemed kind of done with one another.

Gabriel Kahane at Jammin’ Java

See my tidbit on Gabriel Kahane’s record, ‘Book of Travelers,’ from my recent Favorite Albums of 2018 post. He played most of the album at this show. The venue, Jammin’ Java, was small and quiet. The upright piano was inconsistent and out of tune. I thought the beauty of Kahane’s songs might be disrupted, but this quirky and intimate situation made a perfect frame for the message of Kahane’s songs.

The Centennial High School Wind Ensemble - The Peabody Institute, Miriam A. Friedberg Concert Hall

The Centennial High School Wind Ensemble was invited to perform at The Midwest Clinic this year. This is a point of pride for my teaching community because it takes place in the Howard County Public School System, the district in which I teach. More directly, my school, Ellicott Mills Middle School, is a direct feeder of students into Centennial. Having had the opportunity to work with a small few past EMMS students, and by having a private student of mine in the group, I take serious pride in the accomplishments of Centennial High School’s band program and their director, David Matchim. It was unreal to hear a high school ensemble play an hour of music at the level they did, and in December of the school year! Check out their wind octet below...

View this post on Instagram

Here is a clip of Centennial High School’s Woodwind Octet sounding absolutely BOSS. What a pleasure it was on Thursday night to hear both Ellicott Mills students and private students displaying the best of student musicianship that Maryland has to offer.

A post shared by Robby Burns (@_robbyburns) on Dec 15, 2018 at 6:39am PST

Favorites of 2018 - Albums

These posts will never happen if I don’t make it fuss free. So here is it! With little introduction or fanfare, the ‘stuff’ that made up my year. My favorite albums, live shows, apps, and ‘things’ of 2018.

First up, albums!

Favorite Albums of 2018

Johann Sebastian Bach - Vinkingur Ólafsson

Ólafsson breathes new life into the essentials.

Time - Louis Cole

What a way to close the summer! Addictive, savvy, electro pop from a master technician (both instrumentally and as a producer.)

All Ashore - Punch Brothers

For reasons that will be detailed in a Favorite Live Music of 2018 post, this album will forever be associated with an amazing summer of travel with my wife, including seeing Punch Brothers debut this album in its entirety at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival. This is an album made for the political landscape of our current time but that can be enjoyed for the beauty of its timbre, texture, and harmony alone.

Hawktail - Unless

My favorite bluegrass album in a while and my favorite bluegrass band discovery of the year. We have seen these guys a few times live this year and appreciate the relationships we have developed with the band members. If I were doing a favorite songs of 2018, the title track ‘Unless’ would be on it.

Book of Travelers - Gabriele Kahane

Around the time of the 2016 election, Gabriele Kahane took a trip all over the country by train on a search for empathy. This album features the songs inspired by this journey.

Heaven and Earth - Kamasi Washington

It would be easy to characterize this album as excessive but I see it differently. Even though many of the tracks have a similar contour, each one of them is its own epic. In combination, I am never exhausted by the result as I might expect to be, but instead rightly satisfied.

EP - The Fearless Flyers

Members of Vulpeck team up with Nate Smith on drums to create the “too-short-est” record I have ever heard. The dry texture of all three varieties of electric guitar on this record leave nothing to be desired. And Nate Smith can do more with a snare drum, bass drum, and hi hat than most drummers can do with a nine piece kit and plethora of cymbals.

Kids See Ghosts - Kanye West and Kid Cudi

I’d like to file this one under “listen to this if you don’t think hip hop is interesting.”

Dirty Computer - Janelle Monáe

If anyone wanted to argue that this is the most profound (and catchy) album of the year, I would hand it to them immediately.

See You Around - I’m With Her

Try to not enjoy listening to these sounds, even if you don’t like folk music.

Sampha - Process

Cerebral, groove centered, and colorful. One of my favorites of the favorites.

Brief experiment with Apple Music on the Amazon Echo

Read Apple Music is Now Available on the Amazon Echo for the (week old) scoop.

I have played around with this a little and there are still some major hang ups with using Apple Music on Amazon Echos.

In my limited testing, Echo did not always play requested music from my Apple Music account, even though Apple Music was set as the defaul music service to stream through when not otherwise specified.

Problem two: Amazon Echos can not stream to a group of Sonos speakers. This is pretty much a deal breaker as I can ask my HomePod to play music and have it send the output to a group of Sonos speakers via AirPlay 2. Echos can only stream from themselves.

Even the HomePod is early days enough that there are tons of hang ups with grouping speakers. It often forgets which speakers I like to AirPlay to and I have to readjust my groups in the AirPlay settings. This is a pain, but at least I have the option to do it.

I would love to see an update to the Home app and or Shortcuts app that allows me to create an automation that triggers music from pre-specified speaker groups at a specific time or based on my location. This is something that the Echo can do. Fingers crossed.

NPR’s The 50 Best Albums of 2018 - Apple Music and Spotify Playlist

Happy holidays! A tradition six years in the making has come around again.

NPR has released their list of the 50 Best Albums of 2018, and again, I have compiled it into an Apple Music playlist.

I used to do this playlist in Spotify and did not for the first time last year. By popular request, I was prepared to do it in both Apple Music and Spotify this year but found that NPR had already published the list in Spotify! I still had to make it in Apple Music (what does that say about AM?) which I wanted to do anyway because this is tradition now. So here it is. Ready to take you soaring in to the new year, I present to you a playlist of NPR’s 50 Best Albums of the Year.

From NPR:

Art is identity, scream these best albums of 2018. Even when it's pure invention. The most striking things we heard this year mined personal experiences that could feel intimate as whispers or bold and overstuffed as superhero science fiction. Even in an era where listeners have been primed for the unexpected, genuine surprises arrived steadily across the last 12 months – a cascade of introductions, breakthroughs, revelations and rebirths to reward whatever precious attention you could give. (Not a huge surprise: Most of them, after the votes from our staff and member station partners were tallied, turned out to have been made by women.) We're happy to share NPR Music's list of the 50 best albums of 2018. You can listen to them here and hear a discussion on the year in music on All Songs Considered. We'll have lots more before the year ends.

NPR’s 50 Best Albums of the Year - Spotify Playlist

NPR’s 50 Best Albums of the Year - Apple Music Playlist

I direct you now to last year’s version of this post where I highlight some of my favorites albums from these lists over the past five years.

Favorites from this year's list include:

The Other Side of Air | Myra Melford's Snowy Egret

Víkingur Ólafsson | Johann Sebastian Bach

Kamashi Washington | Heaven And Earth

Janelle Monáe | Dirty Computer

Enjoy!

Sneaking Exercise into a Busy Teaching Career (And Using it To Teach Kids)

Back on September 3rd, I posted My annual resume… and the things I learned from it. This post was 3,000ish words which is quite honestly too long to expect anyone to digest. So I have broken down its meatier portions into a few blog posts which I will be posting here in the coming days. Of course, I do recommend you read a little bit of it for some context.

In that post, I discuss a lot of the way I manage my time. I broke that down into cooking, exercise, and technology tools. Today, I am reposting the “exercise hacking” section of the post where I disect how to sneak little bits of exercise into the work day and use it as a teaching tool for music students…

Exercise ended up getting the shaft towards the middle of the year. As I mentioned earlier, I am too tired at 9 pm, so I have to do it at 5 in the morning or most nights it wouldn’t happen.

I was motivated to do this only if I was working towards something. So for the first half of the year, my wife and I registered for what felt like every 5K offered in the state of Maryland. This got me running whenever I could, even during small 30 minute cracks of transition time in my schedule.

I am also very competitive with my orchestra teaching colleague. We both have the Nike+ Apple Watch and during the months of fall would constantly compete over who could run more miles by comparing the Nike+ leaderboards every day in class. Finding a friend or coworker to work out with can be very motivating, especially when you talk about it constantly throughout the day.

We also learned to “cheat” by turning things into workouts that might otherwise not be considered exercise. We have to tear down the entire cafeteria table layout and set up 85 chairs and stands every Tuesday and Thursday morning for our before-school Symphony Orchestra rehearsals. If you do this really fast and run an Apple Watch “Other” workout, you’d be surprised how many calories you can burn. We got that routine down to seven minutes by the middle of the year. And I can do it in 16 by myself. #proud

When it got cold outside, we decided to change it up. Our principal had a pull up bar sitting in his basement. We asked for it and decided that we would start doing pull-ups at the turn of every class period. Educators as we are, we decided that we would use this as a teaching tool. Much like playing an instrument, if you do something in small increments consistently, you get better. Who knew? Not our students... they continued to think our leaderboard of pull-ups was a competition until the last day of school. But some of them caught on. We were modeling how to develop skills with consistent work ethic. It is a good message to put on display. And my upper body got way stronger.

Alright, to my final work out hack. Fact: Young wind instrumentalists don’t know how to breathe properly. To make a good sound, you have to take a deep and relaxed breath in. Kids don’t know how to do this. But the body knows how to do it naturally… when it is out of breath. So for a sectional lesson or two a year, I try to put my students into this state by making them work out as a warm up. It started with jumping jacks, but I found that didn’t wear their energetic little bodies out enough so I took this 7 Minute Workout App (this is another great way to sneak workouts in to your work day, by the way), and projected it onto the big screen in my room. I did this for an entire rotation of sectionals this year (which is seven school days long). And I teach three sectionals a day. That is three high intensity workouts a day for a week and a half. Those kids have never made a fuller, fatter tone (that lacks any sense of control whatsoever... you kind of have to tell them that, and then express the need to breathe deeply but then have a consistent airflow out).

Raw first impressions of the new iPad Pro

I am all set up with my new 12.9 inch iPad Pro. Here are my gut thoughts on the process of purchasing the device and the first few hours of use.

I ordered the 11 inch device on day one and then immediately regretted it once I heard reports of the 12.9's lightness. This mixed in with the fact that the 11 inch still runs apps in a different size class than the 12.9. For example, when you run Mail and Notes side by side, it is possible to see the list of notes/messages and the contents of the note/message on screen at once in the 12.9 model.

I went in to the Apple Store today with the idea in mind that I would test both out, most likely buy a 12.9, and then return the 11.

Things I tested in the store:

-Holding each device in hand with and without Keyboard Folio attached.

-Running two productivity apps side by side in 50/50 split view on both devices to see how much content was visible.

-Typing an email on each keyboard.

-Looking at sheet music on one half of the screen while taking handwritten notes on the other. (In landscape and in portrait)

-Fitting each device in and out of my back pack.

-Taking handwritten notes in Apple Notes while holding the device in the other hand.

Making the decision

It was a hard decision. I really miss watching movies and reading books on the couch with my current 12.9. It's too big. It is also too heavy for me to hold in one hand at length. Still, I purchased it. Because I don't want to miss out on any software features now, or down the road. The fact that you can put 15 apps on the dock of the 12.9 and that you can run apps with more features in split view was enough to sell me on it. Apple could add those features to the 11 inch later through software. But Apple could also add new features to just the 12.9. Another tie breaker was the keyboard. I just can't type on the 11 inch keyboard as comfortably. I don’t think I will regret this. An honest look at my iPad use over the past year reveals hours and hours a day reading sheet music from far away while viewing a seating chart on the other half of the screen. Can I just have two iPads? The thought crossed my mind and then I realized how needlessly complex that could be. My wallet rejoiced.

First thoughts

The inductive charging pencil that snaps to the device is brilliant. It is going to make the pencil feel so much more delightful to use.

Pencil only attaches to the top while in landscape. Bummer.

It will take some time to retrain myself to swipe up to go to home screen and double tap the pencil to change tools. These are superior methods, but habit is habit.

Using the pencil with Apple Notes is a dream. Combine the higher refresh rate (my first time experiencing this since I own the first gen iPad Pro) with the feel of the new pencil, along with the responsiveness of "tap to wake," and you get as close to paper as I can imagine. Tapping the pencil tip to the sleeping iPad screen instantly gets you handwriting in the Notes app. This feature has existed before, but it is so smooth now, that... you really just have to try it to believe it. It's so good that I am already thinking about how to work Apple Notes back into my note workflow (I can’t ever seem to avoid using less than three or four note apps at once). I was so compelled by this idea that I sketched out some workflow ideas in Apple Notes with the new pencil. I have to conceive of note apps with a healthy dose of metaphor.

12.9 is lighter but still too heavy to hold in one hand with ease. It actually feels grippier to me when the case is on. Less like I am going to drop it.

New Keyboard Folio is way easier to unfold but harder to detach from the iPad.

Apps that aren’t optimized for the screen are currently letterboxed. I don’t mind it as much as I thought I would.

This device is going to feel so much better to use all around, but as many members of the tech press have stated, it is still powered by a limited OS. iOS hasn't seen features to differentiate the iPad since iOS 11. Rumor has it that iOS 13 is going to bring a lot more iPad productivity. Until the other shoe drops, I wait in eager anticipation for what this iPad could become.

Features I would need from iOS to allow me to use my iPad for 99 percent of my work (that are within Apple's control)

-Trackpad and mouse support

-Open two instances of the same app side by side

-Faster animation when I press Command+Tab

-Desktop-ier Safari

-Improvements to the Files app (I need more control in iCloud Drive over which documents are stored in the cloud vs. local to the device. Third party providers like Google Drive do not show up in the search results when I search in Files app or in Spotlight.)

-Default apps. Not just for stuff like Mail and Maps. I need to be able to specify which app a document opens in when I tap it in the Files app.

-Ability to manage my iTunes Library.

-Logic Pro (they have to be working on this, right?)

-Bonus point: Ability to have more than one audio in or out running at the same time.

-Bonus point: some sort of rethink to the home screen. I would love to be able to launch a file or a folder from there. A widget with recent notes wouldn't suck either.

-Bonus point: three apps 33/33/33 percent at the same time.

-Extreme bonus point: keyboard intent to allow TextExpander to work.

-Extreme bonus point: extension for apps to put a window in the middle of the screen that allows for viewing or editing content. Example: a quick note function, or the ability to add a task to OmniFocus.

I think about half of the things I did not label as Bonus could happen in the next year. I would be disappointed if they don't, but fortunately, I bought the new iPad for what it is, not what it will be. And what it is is an extremely powerful iPad that is 100 percent more delightful to use in every respect. I can't wait to test this thing out in the classroom tomorrow.

Meal Planning to Save Time with a Busy Teaching Schedule

Back on September 3rd, I posted My annual resume… and the things I learned from it. This post was 3,000ish words which is quite honestly too long to expect anyone to digest. So I have broken down its meatier portions into a few blog posts which I will be posting here in the coming days. Of course, I do recommend you read a little bit of the original for some context.

In that post, I discuss a lot of the way I manage my time. I broke that down into cooking, exercise, and technology tools. Today, I am reposting the “meal planning” section of the post where I dissect some of the ways I am learning to plan healthy meals in a time efficient way.

---

From “My annual resume… and the things I learned from it”:

On to food. My wife is super generous about cooking dinners and picks up a huge weight there. But we still have to plan the other two meals of the day. So what do we do?

Our grocery list starts with the following...eggs, onion, green pepper, salmon, chicken, sweet potatoes, avocados, and asparagus. Some weeks we stock up on yogurt and nuts. I am a creature of habit and can eat the same thing every day for a while before needing to change it up.

So every Sunday, we buy all of this stuff I just mentioned. Then 1-2 dozen eggs, an onion, and a green pepper go into a bowl with salt and pepper. Next, we pour this mixture into these silicon muffin tins and cook for 20-30 minutes at 425 degrees. I eat two of these with a half avocado every morning. I can make close to the best cup of coffee imaginable in under seven minutes with Blue Bottle coffee, an Aeropress, a Baratsa Virtuoso grinder, and this kettle. 

The Baratsa Virtuoso.

An Aeropress.

Blue Bottle subscriptions are the best.

This is a slightly fancier recipe for the eggy things. By the way, Paprika is a killer app for recipe planning.

Next is lunch. Easy. All of those other vegetables get roasted with coconut oil, salt, and pepper, until lightly browned. Then the chicken and or salmon goes in the oven until it is just barely safe from poisoning me. I pre-pack these into my Prepd lunch box modular containers and all of it fits in my backpack. No need to bring a lunch box. I supplement with nuts and RX Bars.

I love my Prepd lunch box.

I am made of Rx Bars.

Edit (10/4/18): For dinner, we have had a lot of success with a Sunbasket subscription. They deliver three extremely delicious, healthy, and time efficient meals to our door once a week.

Using BusyCal and OmniFocus to Manage My Time

Back on September 3rd I posted My annual resume… and the things I learned from it. This post was 3,000ish words which honestly feels too long to expect anyone to digest. So I have broken down its meatier portions into a few blog posts which I will be posting here in the coming days. Of course, I do recommend you read a little bit of the original post for some context.

In that post, I discuss a lot of the ways I manage my time. I broke that down into cooking, exercise, and technology tools. Today, I am reposting the “Tech Tools” section of the post where I detail two of my favorite time saving productivity apps for the Mac.

BusyCal

Now on to time and energy management. Tools that help me manage the many events in my day and the tasks I squeeze in the cracks. BusyCal is my go to on the Mac. It looks and feels like the macOS Calendar app in nearly every way with a ton of great power features on top. It has weather integration, the ability to tag events with people, and more. My favorite is a persistently open “Info” panel on the right side of the screen. Instead of double clicking events to see the notes and location I have assigned them, I click once. And instead of a floating modal box, I can always see the contents of my events. This feature alone is worth the 50 dollars for me. Especially because I use the notes field to track what my private students are working on and I hate clicking so many times in the standard Calendar app to get this info to show up in those modular pop-over windows.

Each lesson, I type student’s assignment into the “notes” field of their block. My “Lessons” calendar is in Google Calendar, and I have published it to a password protected part of my website for private students only. This way, they can log in to see when their next lesson is, and also what I assigned them recently. Now there is no excuse for them to say they forgot what I assigned. And it cuts down tremendously on unneeded parent communication. 

Check out the right side of the user interface of BusyCal. Reminders and an edit window can be persistently visible on the screen.

OmniFocus

OmniFocus has been my “todo” app for years. OmniFocus has a great feature called Review where you set your task lists to be reviewed every “x” days, weeks, or months. Every day, it rolls up projects that need to be reviewed. If I wake up up early, this is what I do the moment I sit down at my desk. But it is also possible to do in little spurts throughout the day. This ensures that things don’t slip through the cracks. 

OmniFocus just released their version 3.0 for iOS. This introduces some killer new features. First of all, the Forecast view now shows your tasks inline with your calendar so that you have better context for when you should be working on them.

Next, OmniFocus 3 supports a tag that will show something in the Forecast even if it is not due. While Reviewing, for example, I simply swipe left on the tasks that I want to be thinking about for the day, and it adds them to the list. 

Forecast view shows me my todos in context with my calendar events.

OmniFocus now allows you to assign multiple tags to the same task, so I have began including tags for energy level. “Low,” “Medium,” and “High” help me to filter items based on my current state. If I have five minutes, and haven’t eaten in a while, I can look at all the “Low” energy tags and get one or two done.