Author: patmcg

Software Dev

Getting Started with Instruments

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Has there ever been a more powerful, but under-utilised tool than Instruments?

Instruments is a tool included with Xcode that helps you analyze, profile, and debug your live iOS app. Solve memory leaks. Visualize memory. Monitor disk, network, memory, and battery usage. You can even find zombies. 🧟‍♂️

It lets you do incredible things but is also overwhelming to new developers, in which case this Ray Wenderlich tutorial can come in pretty handy.

👉 Getting Started with Instruments

There’s also an Apple WWDC presentation with this same name. 😆

Visual Memory Debugger

Via iOS Dev Weekly.

The World

I Hate Quantum Mechanics 🤦🏻‍♂️

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I love science. I love philosophy. I love math. But I hate quantum mechanics.

Sorry, it just makes absolutely zero sense and hurts my brain. 🤯 It’s obviously all made up just to annoy us. 😉

It started with a Schrödinger’s cat joke on Reddit, which was perfect because the joke itself was intentionally as annoying as quantum mechanics itself.

Schrödinger’s cat jokes never get old.
Well, they do, but, they don’t.

Doesn’t make sense, right? Not funny? Annoying AF? Totally agreed.

But I had to know what this joke really meant, so then I went down the rabbit hole of what Schrödinger’s cat was all about. The good news is that the Schrödinger’s cat puzzle was actually tying to point out how silly at last one interpretation of quantum mechanics is. 👍

This trail of sorrow leads to obviously incorrect theories like quantum superposition, which says that something can be in two different states at the same time. (Thus the annoying joke. ☝️) And the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which says that nothing is ever in one specific place or traveling at any known speed. Tell that to your local traffic cop, amiright?

Science, I love you. Physics, I love you. Quantum mechanics… ehhh… okay, I love you too. But I will never understand you. 🧐

Me

All the “Things” 2020

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I’ve been using the Things app to track all my personal todo’s and projects for a couple of years now. I love this beautifully simple Mac-assed Mac app and use it all the time.

I recently discovered how to get access to the Things database and was finally able to answer some questions about how I have been spending my time.

So, with that, here are some highlights of all my “Things” in 2020.

In 2020, I completed 108 personal projects. A project can be something small like “🏓 Declutter 2nd floor”, medium like, “🛳 Renew passport”, or big like “🎸 Convert my guestroom to the studio”. (I always include an emoji in my project name because somehow it helps motivate me.)

Some favorite completed projects of 2020 were “🗳 Vote”, “🤹‍♂️ Plan for best self”, “🧠 Mental reorg”, and my favorite for 2020: “🦠 Corona?”

I canceled 9 projects, including “🌶 Home Gardening!”, “📘 Journaling”, the weird exercise kick of “🧘🏻‍♂️Qi Gong” and “🥋Grav maga”, and the most fitting cancellation for 2020: “🦃 Holiday family plans”

I completed 11 projects to “fix” things, including “🐍 Fix that slot under my door”, “🥁 Fix drums”, “🔧 Fix that broken drawer in the kitchen”, and “✍️ Basic blog fix up”

On a finer level, I completed 2565 individual tasks in 2020, or about 7 per day.

I canceled 521 tasks in 2020, about 1.4 per day.

At year’s end, I currently have 62 projects in progress. 🤔

For reference, here is a sample SQLite query to find all the projects created and completed in 2020.

SELECT title, date(creationDate, 'unixepoch') as start, date(stopDate, 'unixepoch') as stop from TMTask
WHERE type = 1
AND status = 3
AND date(creationDate, 'unixepoch') BETWEEN '2020-01-01' AND '2020-12-31'
ORDER BY creationDate

You

5 Things You Don’t Need to be Happy, Fulfilled, and Successful

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This Medium post has lots of juicy points.

👉 5 Things You Don’t Need to be Happy, Fulfilled, and Successful

It’s so good that I am just going to summarize it and quote it a lot right here per my own goals, but you should read it for yourself.

You Don’t Need A Bunch of Money – But making money encourages personal growth and gives you freedom and peace of mind. And the personal growth keeps you away from bad jobs, bad bosses, and bad commutes.

You Don’t Need to “Find Your Passion” – Just be good at something. Passion comes from being good at something, not the other way around. Being good at decent job can get you autonomy, a sense of meaning, and a positive work environment.

If you want to love what you do, abandon the passion mindset (“what can the world offer me?”) and instead adopt the craftsman mindset (“what can I offer the world?”).

Cal Newport

You Don’t Need Everyone to Like You – “The best way to get other people to like you is to learn how to like yourself.”

You Don’t Need (Or Even Want) to Be Famous – “What can you pursue if fame isn’t the answer? Pursue building a tribe instead.”

I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer.

Jim Carrey

You Don’t Need Your Life to be a Movie – “You want a feeling of accomplishment, growth, and the pride that comes from following through with your goals.”

The secret of leadership is simple: Do what you believe in. Paint a picture of the future. Go there. People will follow.

Seth Godin
You

Starting + Consistency 👉 Improvement

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Interesting story here about how this guy changed his life in one year.

👉 How I Changed My Life’s Trajectory in Only 1 Year

For him, it came down to a few simple behaviors applied consistently.

  • Being curious
  • Meditating
  • Writing
  • Reading
  • Saying no
  • Deemphasizing external approval
  • Doing these things consistently

I’m trying to do the same, but I would add exercising, playing music, and goofing around with the kids to the list as well. 😛