From my iPhone....

Sitting in my car, doing the usual dads taxi service, I realized I hadn't done my daily blog post. I had a couple of minutes to kill so I whipped out my iPhone and logged onto the iTunes app store. Two minutes later, I'd downloaded and installed the Wordpress app. Suddenly, the music track I was listening to faded out and I get an incomming phonr call from my wife, who had just taken Nicky into Drama class. "Can you use your iPhone to see when Eclipse by Simon Armatidge was published? The drama teacher needs to know.." Called up Safari and found out it was 1997 and rang her back. Back to the blog post. Fired up 1password on the iPhone to check on the secure password for my blog. Back to the wordpress app, setup my connection details and I'm in. Ten minutes later, todays daily blog post is done! Welcome to the future.

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Something other than Macs...

I really need a hobby or an interest away from Macs and IT in general!

I'm one of the fortunate ones who work on something they love with a passion, but the downside (if you can call it a downside) is that it does consume nearly every waking moment.

I should really have an outlet where I can forget all about the Mac and the business and just let go.

Problem is, I'm not a great sporty type, and despite living in the centre of the footballing universe
(Hah! Flame bait if ever I saw it :-) ) here in Liverpool, I don't follow the footie (Sorry J.F) My son is well into American Football but I've tried and I just can't get into it.

Not being the outdoor type, fishing, hiking, running, etc., really don't do anything for me, even though I know it would do me a power of good.

So what to do?

Well, This weekend, I'm going to make an effort and start to follow the F1 season, with the first race on Sunday. It is Sunday isn't it?

Yes, I know, not very healthy slumped in front of the TV but I'm looking for relaxation of the mind!

We'll see if it lights a spark in me.

UPDATE: Well I got up at 6:30am this morning to watch the F1 race. Yeah, I enjoyed it, but still a lot to learn and I would imagine over time, it will get even more interesting. It's a start!

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I'm gonna sit right down.....

At my stage in life, health is pretty important to me. I'm not getting any younger and as a self employed person who needs to be fit and active to keep churning out content for a living, I really need to look after myself.

The exercise is on track, well at least most week days I get myself down to the local leisure facility for a swim.

The eating needs a bit more self control but we'll skip over that for now.

The other area that's been concerning me of late is the amount of time I spend in front of the Mac. You can usually find me here from 9am to 6pm, then 10pm to Midnight most weekdays. That's on a normal non production day. On a production day, or if I'm doing some commissioned work, all bets are off and I'm here for as long as it takes.

Whilst I have a pretty sweet monitor setup, and special computer glasses (fixed focal length) , I've been using a crappy "Makro special" executive chair for quite a while. One of those faux leather, high backed affairs that cost about £50. It has no adjustments, has started to get very squeaky and can get very sweaty after a prolonged editing session (too much information? Sorry!)

For the amount of time I spend in front of Mac, I really owe it to myself to get a decent chair, not so much to alleviate any current issues, but to head off any future issues.

So I've been lusting over a decent chair and whenever I do any searching on the web, one keeps on popping up on the radar and that's the Herman Miller Aeron chair. This seems to be the Rolls Royce of chairs, adjustable in every which way, moves with you, breathes with you, you name it, it does it.

It also looks pretty damn smart!

The only issue is the price... £700 .... for a chair! Excuse me!

You know, it's funny but if I had the slightest valid excuse to buy a new MacBook Pro for £2000, it would hurt, but I'd find a way somehow, and I wouldn't worry about it.

But £700 for a device that I'd be sitting on for most of my working day, every day, for three of four years, giving me comfort and proper support, pah!

£700 purlease!!!

So after several months of deliberation (seriously!) I've decided to bite the bullet and get a new chair. Well actually, not a new one, a second hand Herman Miller Aeron from eBay for £300 plus delivery.

Still, £300 is a shed load of cash for a new chair, but let's just say the money I've saved by not upgrading to the new MacBook Air will pay for it. Heck, I could have bought two for the money I've saved by not upgrading the Air. There, that makes me feel better!

So it should be here in a couple of days. I've bought it from a company on eBay that specialises in Office clearances and they had 200 to shift. eBay feedback looks good so I'm fairly confident it will be a decent second hand model.

I'll report back on my findings once I've had chance to try it out for a bit.

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Oh, What a night.....

Excuse the reference to The Four Seasons :-)

Well the night in question was the MacHeist live reveal show as mentioned in previous posts.

To be honest I'd only heard about the reveal show after finishing the bulk of the screencasts and I'd assumed that the screencasts would only be appearing on the website. Seeing them featured so prominently on the live reveal show was an unexpected bonus and I got a few plugs for ScreenCastsOnline!

I'd stayed up late to take a look so it was a fairly late night for me over here in the UK, with the show starting at Midnight (or just after) and running for what must have been over 90 minutes. It was very much a communal experience with lots of twitter activity, great fun! If you missed the live reveal show, it's still available to stream over at www.macheist.com/revealshow

As far as the show is concerned, the screencasts suffer a bit due to the low resolution of the stream but you can get a good feel for the applications.

If you don't want to sit through the live reveal show, you can see all the screencasts plus an overview screencast over on the MacHeist, but in a much higher resolution. I have to say the the MacHeist website is absolutely gorgeous, and they've integrated my screencasts amazingly well.

What I think I'll do for the ScreenCastsOnline show this week (as it's a free show), is to do a special "Behind The Scenes" show where I'll show you the workflow I used to put the screencasts together and also feature all the videos and give you some further thoughts on the applications. A bit like a Directors Commentary on the MacHeist videos. I won't be able to go into a lot of detail on how I put the videos together or delve too much into the apps, but it might be interesting to some people and I'm sure the bundle will be of interest to most ScreenCastsOnline viewers.

I might even do some full shows on some of the Apps over the coming months.

Just for full disclosure so you know where I stand on the financial side of things, MacHeist commissioned me to do the screencasts on a flat fee basis. I'll receive no commission on any of the MacHeist sales, although I think it's good to promote it independently, as it's a great deal for the buyer and 25% of the sale will go to charity. MacHeist have not commissioned or sponsored this weeks edition of ScreenCastsOnline (they aren't even aware of it!) and I'll receive no payment in respect of it. Just want to get the word out to as many peeps as possible.

I'll be back to a normal tutorial show next week, and I've started preparing for a show featuring Apples iWork application - Numbers '09. So if you're fed up hearing about MacHeist, please bare with me for just one more week!

PS Guess what, yesterday was the 30th consecutive daily post (well I started on the 25th February but I did a couple of days with more than a single post.

It's been difficult at times but has certainly re-energised the blog and I've had great feedback and the comments have increased significantly. I'll have to install some measurement software (perhaps I should have done that before setting off on my post a day for 30 day quest) but it's not really about the numbers. I'll have to see if I can keep it up for another 30 days.....

D'oh!

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Another step towards world domination...

Blogpost title courtesy of @PaulShadwell

Following on from a recent blog post where I was blown away by being featured as an online training resource for iWork on the Apple website - Link yet another significant milestone has just happened.

ScreenCastsOnline is now also featured as on online resource on the iLife resource page on the Apple website - Oh my! - Link

Now I just need to mention again, Apples stated position is:

Mention of third-party products is for informational purposes only and represents neither an endorsement nor a recommendation.

But still!

Hopefully, this will drive more people over to the ScreenCastsOnline site to partake in the weekly shows and may even get me a few more paying customers.

It's all good!

PS In case you haven't realised it yet, the super secret project I've been involved in is preparing all the short promo videos for the applications to be included in the MacHeist 3 Software bundle, along with the overview video.

They aren't like my usual screencasts going into depth on each application, but really just 60 - 90 seconds on each app pointing out the major features and showing you what they look like. You just would not believe how hard it is to produce a 90 second screencast and cover what needs to be covered, especially the numbers included in the bundle. It may take me a week or so to get over it!

I still cant say too much as the launch doesn't happen until this evening but there are some amazing apps in the bundle and it's really a no-brainer to go and get yourself a copy at the price they are putting it out for.

This one's going to break all records!

By the way, the bundle is completely separate from the MacHeist missions, it's just a straightforward purchase and a large chunk of the sales goes to charity.

You can find out more in the live bundle reveal show scheduled for tonight

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