Yes, actually.

On this week’s episode of The Weekly Briefly, I talk about how distraction and resistance are universal things we all face when trying to get things done. I believe it’s important to know what to focus on, to be good at working through distractions, and reduce to the essentials when it comes to projects and our environment. But it’s also possible (if not easy) to obsess so much on Focus that we’re not even getting things done because we’re too concerned about minimizing and stuff.

Sponsored by:

• Desk: A premium writing and blog publishing app for lovers of words, prose, and narrative. Fall in love with writing, again.

• The awesome members of shawnblanc.net: Their support makes the work I do a sustainable possibility.

Great work by Bradley Chambers:

With the growth of social media, video games, and streaming services, many people are finding they don’t use their cable subscription enough to justify the continued expense. We get our news, entertainment, movies, and TV shows through other channels now. This guide is about getting the right gear to make a smooth transition away from cable or satellite into cheaper alternatives.

“Cord cutting” is the term people use when they refer to cutting off their cable or satellite subscription. Most do it to save money — TV subscription pricing alone has continued to tick higher year after year.

Hooray! The new 4.0 version of VSCO Cam brings support for the bigger iPhones and — finally — iPads. And your presets and library photos sync between multiple devices. It’s a great update.

The only thing missing is support for extensions in iOS 8. Curious if that is a technical hurdle they haven’t yet overcome, or if it’s a philosophical move. Perhaps there’s no extension support because VSCO Cam wants to be your one-stop shop for everything photos — your camera, photo library, editing software, Instagram-esque publishing platform (Grid), and photo-centric blogging platform (Journal).

You’re a writer. You’re a blogger. You demand the best tools for the job and yet there’s so much “bloatware” out there that has totally forgotten what a writer truly needs.

We haven’t forgotten and we’ve created a surprisingly-powerful yet simple hyper-focused writing and publishing app just for you. We hope you fall in love with writing and consequently share more of those amazing must-read narratives with the world.

Say “Hi” to the last desktop publishing client that you’ll ever need: Desk.​

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My thanks to Desk for sponsoring the site this week.

This week’s sweet setup interview is with the inimitable Fraser Spears. Fraser shares about his Mac, iPhone, and iPad setups and how he uses each one.

Josh Ginter:

The Air 2’s body is thinner and lighter to hold, the laminated screen is jawdropping to look at, and the triple-core processor and added RAM are lightning fast. Oh, and Touch ID. And a new camera.

This update is far more significant than I originally thought.

On this week’s episode of The Weekly Briefly I talk about the just-announced Amazon Echo. What can you use this first version for? How cool and practical will it actually be? What are some seemingly-glaring omissions in Echo’s functionality? Are devices that just listen for us to talk to them the future? How does an always-on, always-listening device like the Echo help us to “unplug”?

Sponsored by:

• Tinderbox: The incredibly flexible and powerful tool for notes. Listeners save $50 when purchasing from this link.

• The awesome members of shawnblanc.net: Their support makes the work I do a sustainable possibility.

In local news, I’ll be speaking at this month’s Coffee & Design meetup. If you’re in the area you should come.

It’s on Friday morning, November 21, and will be held at Meers Advertising (map). The meetup is free, and we’ll be serving free coffee and bagels.

Side note about Coffee & Design: it’s an awesome, monthly gathering of designers, developers, makers, etc. I’ve been a handful of times and it’s always really great. Even if you can’t make it out for this month’s event, you should keep their monthly events on your radar.

We’re celebrating Fountain Pen Day over at Tools & Toys with a roundup of pen inks — er, links.

Khoi Vinh on the new iPads:

Apple knows better than anyone that computing technology doesn’t win the market on specifications. What wins is superb software that makes people recognize how their lives could be made better by owning the underlying hardware. […]

I do believe that the cure for Apple’s iPad woes will not be thinner, more powerful hardware alone, but also a whole new class of apps that take a completely different tack to imagining how people can work with computing technology.

Ever since I set up my iMac, I’ve been having a few hiccups with Keyboard Maestro.

Some of my macros work, but not all of them. And Keyboard Maestro keeps telling me it needs to be given accessibility permissions in Yosemite’s System Preferences even though I’ve already granted the app permissions.

Turns out, this is a common problem if you install or migrate Keyboard Maestro to a computer that has a clean install of Yosemite. The problem is that though Keyboard Maestro itself is being granted accessibility permissions, the Keyboard Maestro Engine is not getting those permissions. Thus, it has issues running in the background.

But! There is a fix. These steps outlined by the KM developer, Peter Lewis, worked for me:

Generally you can force the system to add Keyboard Maestro Engine with this sequence:

• Open the System Preferences → Security & Privacy preferences.
• Switch to the Accessibility settings.
• In the Finder, control click on Keyboard Maestro.app, and choose Show Package Contents.
• Drill down into Contents / Resources and find the Keyboard Maestro Engine.app
• Switch back to System Preferences.
• Click the Lock icon in the bottom left and enter your admin password.
• Drag the Keyboard Maestro Engine.app into the list.

Even if nothing appears in that last stage, it may still have worked. Launch Keyboard Maestro and see if the setting is actually enabled, and if not, try restarting.

This year’s Christmas Catalog feels like it has circled back to the first holiday guide I ever put together on Tools & Toys. It was late November of 2011, and I still clearly remember writing that year’s catalog from a hospital room.

My wife and I were about 5 months pregnant with Noah, and she began having some bleeding. It was serious enough that we went to the hospital to make sure the baby was okay. Fortunately everything was fine. But — as hospitals are wont to do — they kept us there for 72 hours so they could monitor Anna and the baby.

Anna was immobile, so she spent her time wrapping up the final edits to the book she was writing. And since I could work anywhere with an internet connection, I just logged on to the hospital Wi-Fi and decided I’d spend my 72 hours putting together Tools & Toys’ first holiday gift guide.

My wife and I now have two amazing boys. And I can’t help but consider with deep gratitude what the holidays will mean for my family this year. For me, the things I want most are the things which cannot be bought: time, health, memories, deep conversations, roaring laughter, rest, and the opportunity to serve others.

And it is with this in mind that we tried to take a different approach to this year’s guide. As I wrote in the opening letter, this year we have done our best to avoid listing out a vast array of crap that has found the inferior sweet spot between impractical, unaffordable, and meaningless.

We’ve also chosen three charities that we’ll be giving 10% of our gross income for November and December to, and we’re inviting you to do the same.

And, speaking candidly, this gift guide is a huge contributor that helps us keep the lights on. November and December are our biggest months for income, and help average out the slower summer and fall months. You don’t have to buy something on our list to support us — you can share the guide with your friends and family, and you can even just click through our links to Amazon before buying something else — we’ll still receive a kickback that way.

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Now that November and the holidays are upon us, I am genuinely looking forward to the upcoming weeks. Work-wise, we have some awesome articles and reviews in the pipeline for both Tools & Toys and The Sweet Setup. But also, personally, the holidays are a fun and special time. My cousin Nate is coming to town for Thanksgiving, and I’ll be slow-cooking the turkey in the backyard smoker. My oldest son is old enough to enjoy the Christmas Tree shopping trip. Etc.

Moreover, I am hoping that this season I’ll be able to serve you, dear reader. I hope the work we do on Tools & Toys and The Sweet Setup will help you save time and energy for any gifts you may be buying. And I also hope we’ll be able to contribute to the sound of reason. Helping remind ourselves others that even in the midst of the holiday hustle and bustle, quality time with friends and family is the best thing.

Tinderbox is the tool for notes, a powerful way to visualize, analyze, and organize your most important projects. Tinderbox lets you create smart documents that help organize, reorganize, and evolve your thoughts over the course of months and even years. It’s a great tool for writers planning their next book, teachers planning their courses, product developers and designers who need to create their next big thing, and anyone who wants to organize their thinking.

A professional tool, Tinderbox normally costs $249, but this week save $50 and pick up a copy for $199. A household license has been discounted to $239.

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My thanks to Tinderbox for sponsoring the site this week. It’s called a tool for notes, but it is so much more than that. It’s an incredibly deep and feature-rich application meant to help gather and organize tasks, ideas, plans, research, information, and so much more. You can use it to outline, mind-map, organize and analyze data, write, and so much more. Tinderbox truly is professional grade.

I love that James Fallows — who wrote one of my favorite gadget reviews of all time — uses Tinderbox.

Tinderbox 6 was just recently released. It was a product two years in the making, and as it says in the copy above, this week Tinderbox has been discounted 20-percent for shawnblanc.net readers. An individual license is normally $249, but is now just $199. They’re also offering $5 off Mark Bernstein’s book, The Tinderbox Way.

Josh Ginter:

Undoubtedly, one of the best covers out there is the Hellbrand Leatherworks Field Notes cover. It has a simple design and a utilitarian purpose. Best of all, the Hellbrand Leatherworks cover looks better the older it gets — just like your trusted Field Notes books themselves.