Hi, I'm Henrik Joreteg
I'm a happy, geeky, husband and very-soon-to-be-dad. I love skiing, web dev stuff, and independent thought.
Joreteg.com is where I occasionally write about the things that interest me and come spilling out of my brain.
I live in West Richland, WA and happily work at &yet where I do a bunch of Javascript, Django and Python stuff.
Contact
Email:
Or you can just push this big button to call me:
Links to My Other Stuff
Latest From Twitter
7th
2010
How to magically run stuff when you’re near your Mac… or not
What you need
- A Mac
- Some type of bluetooth device you always have with you (let’s get real, if you’ve got a mac you’re using an iPhone)
Step 1.
Download and install Proximity:
Step 2.
Open AppleScript editor and create a script to run when you’re near your computer. Mine is super simple. It just turns off the screen saver and sets my chat status in “Adium” (if it’s running) to available. But obviously you could do anything you can do in AppleScript. Mine looks something like this:
tell application "ScreenSaverEngine" to quit
if appIsRunning("Adium") then
tell application "Adium" to go available
end if
on appIsRunning(appName)
tell application "System Events" to (name of processes) contains appName
end appIsRunning
And create another one for when you’re away. Once again mine’s super simple:
tell application "ScreenSaverEngine" to activate
if appIsRunning("Adium") then
tell application "Adium" to go away with message "Appears to have stepped away for a bit."
end if
on appIsRunning(appName)
tell application "System Events" to (name of processes) contains appName
end appIsRunning
I saved these two scripts in a “Scripts” folder I created in my home directory (fancy that!).
Step 3.
Now all you have to do is give tell Proximity which script to run when and which bluetooth device you want it to look for. If Proximity is running you’ll see a small (somewhat ugly) bluetooth lookin’ icon in your toolbar. Click it to open preferences. My preferences look like this:
Step 4.
Tell @HenrikJoreteg on twitter that it worked for you and that you’d give him a high-five if you were within reasonable high-five range.
31st
2010
Twitter is useless! Unless you want to land your dream job.
I used to think twitter was useless. My take was something like: “unless you’re going to share it with me I don’t care what you’re having for lunch.” Turns out that was a very limited perspective. When I took my first real developer job at ESRI I met Josh Highland (@joshhighland). Josh is a special kind of crazy, and I mean that in a good way. He’s a straight edge, christian, heavy-metal loving, pomade-selling, muy-thai fighting, iphone/web developer, nerd-meets-rockstar kind of guy. He’s completely addicted to twitter and all things web. He’s even promised to get a huge fail-whale tattoo when he gets to 20,000 followers. I have him to thank for getting me into twitter again (I already had an account). But also, as a developer I whipped up a little python script on a cronjob that followed anyone who mentioned django. This was few years ago before everyone and their mother’s developer (no that’s not a typo) started using django. Before long I went from following 20 some peeps to about 500 developers. That’s when the magic unicorns starting drinking from the celestial well of far-away galaxies.
Fast forward a few months and the wife and I were in Palm Desert for a little weekend getaway. I’m just chillin’ and reading twitter, ya know… like ya do, and I was unfollowing people that my script had followed who mainly seemed to ramble on about nonsense. If you follow my boss-turned-friend-who-I-can-therefore-make-fun-of @adambrault on twitter you know that he totally fits into that category. His tweets are quite clever, but really random at times, especially if you don’t know him. So I was finger-over the ‘unfollow’ button in Tweetie and I noticed that he was in the Tri-cities Washington. Now, Holly and I were going to go up to Spokane just a few weeks after that and I had been asking around about potential job options in the Northwest. So rather than unfollowing, I DM’ed him and asked if he knew of anything and to my surprise, got quite coherent and friendly responses. After a few messages back and forth we decided to meet for lunch when I came up there.
At the time, his company &yet consisted of just him, Amy and Angela. We met for lunch had a good talk and I soon realized that this guy knew his stuff, was really sharp and had a strong vision for where he wanted to take his company. We didn’t talk about employment or anything, but about a week later, I got a phone call from him asking if I had any interest in a job. It was a huge gamble for us to leave our friends and family, leave my job, despite the suddenly-willing-to-negotiate everything boss at ESRI. But a few months later we’re happily getting settled in the TC.
&yet has turned into a strong team of 6 awesome developers and a “team mom”/admin Lisa in a sweet new custom office, rockin’ new iMacs and iPads working on amazing projects like this awesome still-in-progress app: Recon Dynamics. We’re also releasing a couple projects of our own. Turns out this “huge gamble” (according to my ESRI boss) of moving to the tri-cities was one of the best choices Holly and I have made in a long time.
All because of twitter. You know, that worthless social tool for sharing pictures of breakfast:
(I’d give credit to where this came from, but I can’t locate the original source, here’s a place I saw it).
5th
2010
On Happiness. My reactions to reading “Flow.”
I’ve read a lot of books about improving yourself and improving your life. These books tend to focus on how to change your circumstances to be more in-line with how you want your life to be. This book was quite different. It’s not about becoming healthier and wealthier. It focuses on learning how to control your attention and your attitude in such a way as to more thoroughly enjoy yourself in everyday activities.
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (P.S.) by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (No, I have no clue how to pronounce that either).
In the past, I’ve fallen victim to the mentality that happiness is, by and large, something that is dependent on your circumstances. Our consumerist society instills in us a strong belief that if we were wealthy and had infinite time for for leisure, we’d be happy.
In reality, that’s not the case. People with all the time and money in the world are often times no happier than a bum on the streets (if you don’t believe that, read the book). I’ll confess, I’ve bought into that false belief. I already knew that money doesn’t by happiness, but whenever someone stated that cliché that I would always say: “True, money doesn’t buy happiness, but neither does poverty.” Of course, by that I meant that it’s better to be wealthy than to be poor.
After reading this book I’ve realized that I was in some ways totally right by saying “neither does poverty.” Neither wealth nor poverty can buy happiness. In fact, happiness is not very closely tied to money or circumstances at all. By pointing out empirical evidence in my own life, as well as lots of supporting studies is that my attitude is what ultimately determines my happiness. The good news in that is that attitude and attention is something that we can actually learn to control. This concept was quite eye-opening for me.
As a quick explanation, “Flow” is the optimal experience where you’re engrossed in what you’re doing. When you’re in a state of flow, time seems to fly and you’re not distracted by other thoughts or concerns. We’ve all experienced it at some point. It’s essentially the reason I loved to ski so much. It’s a state where you’re challenging yourself, pushing your boundaries and enjoying increasingly complex experiences. Certain activities such as sports are inherently more conducive to producing “flow” experiences. However, the book goes on to explain how to turn everyday life into “flow experiences.”
I’m not doing the concept justice, the book explains it much better than I do. Be warned: at times, the book is kinda dry and dull, and in my opinion it’s a bit too academic. I think the book could have been condensed to half its length and been better for it.
Also, be aware that the author tends to explain religion and God as merely having been invented as a means of experiencing “flow.” In fact, the book gets a bit odd in the last chapter, because he argues that we should essentially embrace science and our ongoing evolution as our “religion.” As a Christian, I don’t agree, but that doesn’t take away from the many great points and recommendations the author makes in the rest of the book. Despite it’s shortcomings, this is a book that has already changed how I approach my life. I definitely think I’ll be better and happier for it. I highly recommend it.
30th
2010
25th
2010
I wonder if I can add one of these to my Amazon Wish List. This is the new Audi RS5. I wouldn’t have picked red, but the car is ridiculously beautiful.
11th
2010
My Buzz Feedback
I just submitted feedback to Google regarding Buzz. Here’s what I said, if you agree, please do the same:
I’m a fan of Buzz so far. One request though:
If I follow a user with a lot of followers such as Seesmic founder Loic Lemur, they will inevitably get tons of comments on their posts. I don’t want them at the top of my list just because anybody has commented on their post. I just end up seeing the same Buzz post over and over again at the top. That’s too much noise and is not helpful.
I don’t think they should end up at the top of the list unless I’m part of the comment stream. Until that changes it will be hard for Buzz to replace Twitter for me.
I also included this screenshot. I really don’t care about 62 people saying hi to Loic. No reason to put it at the top. Sorry Google, please change this!
