Evan Hahn (dot com)

In short: I write “in short” so that people don’t have to go into depth if they don’t care.

In many of my blog posts, I have a section at the start that says “in short” and then explains the gist of the piece in a few sentences. Why do I do this?

I recently had a discussion with a member of an older generation — let’s call him Venustiano — who criticized the medium of digital information. He claimed that it doesn’t allow people to go into depth. This got me thinking.

I agreed that there is far more skimming in the digital age. Some examples: my RSS reader is absolutely packed with feeds, and I almost never read an entire blog post from start to finish. Twitter and Facebook feature streams of information that are almost meant to be skimmed. I can’t have deep debates in twelve different IM windows.

Is this bad? Only if it comes at the expense of ever going into depth.

The new digital medium allows more depth than ever before. Never before could readers of a newspaper debate a story with people they will never meet. Reference texts have always cited their sources, but the ability to read those sources in a click is unprecedented. Text can be easily supplemented with images, video, audio, and other interactive elements.

The danger that Venustiano was talking about was valid; skimming is easier now than it’s ever been, and it almost feels encouraged on a computer. But depth is also easier.

The beauty of digital information is that consumers can decide whether they’ll go intodepth. If they care, they can read infinite volumes. If they don’t, they can read a tweet.

And that’s why I write my “in short” messages — if people don’t care, they don’t have to read a novel.

In short: If we want to fix every world problem, we need to start with education.

When you see how many problems there are in the world, you see pretty quickly that you can’t solve all of them. But you’d like to try, of course.

There are two ways to solve these major issues. (1) Resources. That means volunteers or hired workers, money, food, et cetera. (2) New ideas. That means, “I just found a better way to solve this problem.”

Ideally, you could contribute both new ideas and resources. Unfortunately, you’re just one person and you’re not a problem-solving genius and you’re not a multibillionaire.

The way I see it: Contributing to education is the best way to make this happen. Better education means smarter people. Smarter people means (1) better jobs, more money which can be donated to resources (2) people with new, intelligent ideas.

I think that a brute-force, “let’s just get tons of resources” method is NOT the way to improve education. The number of teachers and the amount of money required for this effort would be unrealistically immense.

I think the best way to improve education is through the use of technology; that’s the “new idea.” And that requires two things:

(1) A question needs answering: how can we teach most effectively with technology? I don’t think we have an answer for that.

(2) Once we figure out a good way of teaching, we need to go for it. Put it all on the internet.

So if we want to fix every world problem, I think we need to improve education. And I believe the best way to improve education is to use technology.

I’m going to miss Palo Alto.

In short: People are going to stop asking “Mac or PC?” and start asking “Chrome or Firefox?” This is because most stuff has moved online.

When people ask me “Mac or PC,” I respond that they can both run Firefox so it doesn’t matter.

A quandary that has troubled nerds for centuries: Mac or PC? People make strong, often angry and NSFW points about why one operating system is better than the other. But I believe those arguments will soon become (largely) irrelevant because more and more of our computing is done online, and all (reasonable) operating systems run your favorite web browser.

I think it’s fair to say that people predict most software to move online, if it hasn’t already. That means word processing, communication, games, et cetera. Because of this shift, users of any operating system can use software without having to worry about compatibility. Developers can develop software without having to worry about user compatibility. It’s very nice.

So now the question is going to be — what’s your favorite browser?

Image credit: pandemia of Flickr.

Kaua’i is a pretty place. Also, a rooster is here.

Here is a nice photo from up in the clouds.

In short: I added a “mindless” tag to my task list for items that don’t require thought, so that when I’m out of it, I can still get stuff done.

Part 1: We all have times in which we want to accomplish something. We also have times when we are unable to accomplish much because we are tired or lazy. But sometimes you are tired and lazy, but still want to get something done.

Part 2: There are a lot of different tasks that don’t require a lot of thought, but need doing. For example, I need to log into my high school email account every so often to keep it alive. It needs doing but doesn’t require a lot of thought.

Bring these two parts together.

Tag tasks as “mindless” when adding them to your to-do list. When you’re feeling meh but still want to get something done, cross off items on your “mindless” list. This has worked pretty well for me, as I am mindless a lot of the time.

I wanted to be able to put it into GarageBand and not drop a dime. After a good deal of tinkering and Googling, I figured it out. As far as I know, there are similar instructions online but they didn’t work for me.

These instructions are pretty basic. If you already know your way around, check this short cheatsheet.

Before you start

You’ll need SoundFlower and LineIn.

In GarageBand

Open the GarageBand Audio/MIDI preferences. At the top bar, go to Garageband, Preferences, and then to Audio/MIDI.
Set the Audio Input to Soundflower (16ch) and the Audio Output to whatever your output is (headphones, speakers, etc). You will hear the Skype call through this input.
Make two new tracks. To do that, go to Track in the top menu, and then New Basic Track (twice).
Select one of these tracks to be your Skype track. Select it and click the “i” button at the bottom-right, or press Apple-I. Change the Input Source to Stereo 1/2 and turn the Monitor On.
The other track will be your voice. Select it and open that menu if it isn’t already. Change the Input Source to Mono 3 and turn the Monitor Off.

In Skype

Open the Skype audio preferences. Go to the top bar and click on Skype, then Preferences, then Audio.
Set both the Audio input and output to Soundflower (16ch). The Ringing option can be whatever you choose. I also had luck with setting the Audio input to whatever your microphone is, so if that doesn’t work, try that.

In LineIn

Change the Input to whatever microphone you’re using.
Change the Output to Soundflower (16ch).
Click Advanced. In this window, put the left and right Input channels to 1. Put the left and right Output channels to 3. Click OK.
Click Pass Thru.

In System Preferences

Open System Preferences and then Sound. Make sure that the input is whatever microphone you want to use and that the output is whatever you’re listening with (speakers/headphones).

Hit the red record button in GarageBand and you should now be able to record calls from Skype! Test it by calling the Skype Call Testing Service at echo123.

Once again, check out the cheatsheet, and enjoy!

I was under a tree and I looked up and I liked it.

I’m modestly famous (emphasis on “modestly”) at my school for my study guides. I’ve made over 50, but I’m most proud of these three. I no longer have a need for them, but other people around the Internet might. Here they are:

They’re all released under the CC Attribution license, so go and send it to the world if you wish.

If you’d like them in other formats (HTML, ODT, Word, etc), just contact me.

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