De-escalate

The final trick to blogging from your iPhone or iPod Touch is to install the free and OpenSource WordPress ap. I have tested blogging from Safari on iPod before, but the ap is better. It speeds things up with well-designed forms, account management, and a lot less “pinching out” and scrolling around a large web interface. In fact, I am using it to write this post. The only remaining difficulty is inserting long links with no copy and paste capability in the iPhone OS.

Part of the secret to successful blogging is a slick workflow that can take you from newsfeed or webpage to blog post with minimal fuss. There are many nice solutions for this including ScribeFire for Firefox.

As a dedicated Vim user, particularly after MacVim received some much-deserved attention, I was happy to read this post by Tri Nguyen: Posting to Wordpress from Vim with tags and Markdown”.

He starts out, “Only a certain kind of geek will delight in the following post.” I agree — without going into reasons to love Vim here. I am that kind of geek.

iPod Touch is a great PDA

Here at De-escalate there are a number of reasons for having an iPod Touch:

• Mobile website development and testing
• Email on the go
• Tasks management with OmniFocus
• Tracking iCal appointments
• Managing contact information
• Portable portfolio

That’s what I use mine for, anyway. I’ll follow up here with a little more information on each of those tasks in subsequent posts.

No Stranger to PDAs

Way back in the Bronze Age of PDAs, I had a Handspring Visor Deluxe in Blue.

It was a near flawless PDA. It synced correctly, it rarely crashed, and the interface required very few taps to get to anything.

Since then, I’ve had two iPaqs. They were fantastic machines. Nice looking, nicely built, rich in features, but the interfaces were horrible. Windows Mobile required egregious menu-diving to accomplish every-day tasks, syncing left duplicate appointments strewn through my calendar and contacts. On the later model, wireless never really worked.

The Apple iPod Touch represents the perfect fusion of the Visor and the iPaq. It’s solid and beautiful, but it also has reliable syncing and a beautiful interface.

This is a test of the ScribeFire broadcast system. This is only a test.

It’s working. It’s working…

And much more to come.

In the last post I asserted that stress hurts memory. After some preliminary research, it’s clear the relationship is more complex. There are different kinds of stress with different effects. Here is a list of articles (in pseudo-APA cite form) on stress and learning. I will follow up later:

• Radecki, Daniel; et al. (Oct. 2004) “BDNF protects against stress-induced impairments in spatial learning and memory and LTP.” Hippocampus 15(2): 246-253.
• Kuhlmann, Sabrina; Piel, Marcel; & Wolf, Oliver T. (March 2005) “Impaired Memory Retrieval after Psychosocial Stress in Healthy Young Men” The Journal of Neuroscience 25(11):2977-2982.
• Joëls, Marian; et al. (April 2006) “Learning under stress: how does it work?” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 10(4):152-158.
• Buchanan, Tony; Tranel, Daniel; & Adolphs, Ralph. (2007) “Impaired memory retrieval correlates with individual differences in cortisol response but not autonomic response” Learning & Memory, 13:382-387.

Considering its central role in my thinking about design, it seems fitting to quote Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.I have had these words in mind from the inception of De-escalate Design. What Pirsig says about maintenance is equally true of design. Design is the first instance of maintenance.

“Peace of mind… [is] the whole thing. That which produces it is good maintenance; that which disturbs it is poor maintenance. What we call workability of the machine is just an objectification of this peace of mind. The ultimate test’s always your own serenity. If you don’t have this when you start and maintain it while you’re working you’re likely to build your personal problems right into the machine itself.

I’ve had more than a few experiences using technology in a frantic mental state. The more I rushed it, the more times I had to backtrack and start again. Machines mutinied. Since they are (at least currently) mindless, I can only conclude that Pirsig is right. The personal problem gets built into the machine itself.

Users and readers experience this, if only sub-consciously. Rushed, frantic, pressured people usually don’t retain information. Calm enhances retention. De-escalate Design creates calm spaces in the frenetic Internet where users want to slow down and pay attention for a few minutes.

“The test of the machine is the satisfaction it gives you. There isn’t any other test. If the machine produces tranquility it’s right. If it disturbs you it’s wrong until either the machine or your mind is changed. The test of the machine’s always your own mind. There isn’t any other test….”

Well, everything is working. De-escalate Design Blog is just putting down roots, breaking through into the sunlight. The first action I plan to take here will be updating from the default theme. It must integrate with the rest of the site.

In the next few days, I will also introduce myself, De-escalate Design, and its mission. Here it is in four sentences for now. I am a law student and the founder of the De-escalate Design. We exist to create simple, elegant, cohesive presentations of client information. We specialize in small business websites, but work with other clients and media, too.

This blog is dedicated to:

1. Collecting and disseminating information about good design
2. Sharing what I learn about WordPress
3. Showcasing some of our work as we complete it
4. Highlighting the benefits of simplicity and focus in other areas of life, especially personal productivity