NebuloCity: 2013

Wednesday, August 07, 2013

Self building lawn chair (and how it was done)

This is just a little bit ridiculous (in a good way). Firstly, see this stop motion story of a lawn chair getting built (seemingly without any human intervention):

Then, watch the video about how the stop motion video was made:

The woodworking for the chair itself was enough to impress me (I got as far as making a chopping board in my high school manual arts class). The stop motion video presentation of the chair getting made just took it to another level or three... bravo!

Friday, July 26, 2013

To do: find replacement to do app

Being forced to replace an app to which you've grown accustomed is, on the one hand, a first world problem, and on the other, a genuine frustration. Particularly so if the app works just about perfectly for your needs. Exhibit A: Google Reader. It wasn't that long ago I made the move to feedly, and whilst it wasn't all smooth sailing I've adjusted to the post-Google Reader/feedly way of life. Now it's Astrid's turn for retirement, and the hunt begins for a suitable replacement.

Features I was looking for:

free
support for recurring tasks by due date and completion date
notes for tasks (ie separate notes field / additional to the task title/name)
reminders independent of due date
sync to cloud / PC / other devices (I currently sync between Google Tasks and Astrid on two devices)
automatic backup, restore, and export (see next point)
data compatibility with other similar apps (ie in case need to transition again)
(optional) priority levels

Some of my research:

My shortlist of candidates and selected findings:

Gtasks

syncs with Google Tasks
does not support recurring tasks in free version
the above limitation pretty much killed it for me, so I uninstalled Gtasks after installing TickTick and importing from Gtasks to TickTick

TickTick

based on/evolved from Gtasks? No longer tied to Google Tasks.
can import from Gtasks, but sync is with own cloud
reminder/alarm is tied to due date
cannot set recurrence by completion date (only due date)
cannot set recurrence by more than 2.5 years (30 months) - I currently have one task that I want to recur every 5 years
overview screen/list only displays 1/1st line of task title
the combination of the above few limitations meant my search was not yet over

Wunderlist

can only import from Astrid.com

I wasn't using Astrid.com, but could do a one off sync from Android to Astrid.com, then use astrid.wunderlist.com to do the import into Wunderlist - this produced duplicates of everything, but otherwise worked fine

sync is with own cloud
can maintain multiple lists
can set reminder separate from due date
email notification setting done via website seems to apply for normal reminders as well as what the website suggests (other things)
cannot set recurrence by completion date (only due date)
overview screen/list only displays 1/1st line of task title… (but at least this is denoted by "…" cf no indication of more text in TickTick)
selected sort order (eg by due date) does not autorefresh after changing a task's due date (or it might take a minute or more, which is a bit off-putting)
reminder notification cannot be persistent (as Astrid's could be)

I liked the cleanness and simplicity of TickTick, but it was lacking in some features I wanted. Wunderlist is in some ways more complex/more bloated than what I need, but it offers some features that TickTick doesn't. Wunderlist also has a much larger user (and fan?) base and potentially greater likelihood of sustained future support.

I also briefly considered how I might extend my use of Evernote, or play around more with Google Keep, but they're notetaking apps and not to do apps. I also subsequently found out I could keep using Astrid offline / syncing only to Google Tasks (which was my syncing regime in any case), but figured I didn't want to be 'stuck' with old and frozen software.

So, Wunderlist it is... but I am going to miss Astrid.