04/23/2014 19:00:00 ¶ ●

Some of My Personal Drafts Actions

Some of My Personal Drafts Actions

I’m using Drafts because it’s great. It’s a general note taking that puts text everywhere else. I wanted to share some of the Actions that I use personally. Things that I haven’t shared anywhere else yet because the workflows are too personalized and/or trivial, and also not very many. I thought some of you might still be interested though, so here we go.

URL Actions

• Meditate: I shared this before but find it’s worth sharing again. Geeking Meditation Timers 2nd Edition (Drafts, Due, Day One) (Install)
• Laundry: So I do live alone. I can take care of myself. I can wash clothes… with Drafts… and Due… and this Action. This basically creates a reminder named “Laundry” and passes the draft as &minslater= parameter. (Install)
• URL Encode: Simple. URL Encodes the entire draft. Puts contents on clipboard. Deletes everything it has created along the way. (Install)

Dropbox Actions

My second, actually my most-used category are some Dropbox actions.

• Record Weight: I weight myself almost every day. This action takes the current date and draft and appends everything to a .csv file in Dropbox. Because I love stats and I’m a huge nerd. (Install)
• Record Receipt: I like to keep a record of personal receipts. I don’t need these for business purposes, only for me to see where my money goes. Similar to the previous action, this one takes the contents of the draft and appends a line to .csv file. It’s different in the way it creates the file. I wanted to be able to record receipts I forgot as well. So I’m using [[line|1]] to determine the date, [[line|2]] for the store, [[line|3]] for paid price, [[line|4]] as notes field. (Install)
• Send Later: A simple action that uses Launch Center Pro’s Share Sheet (or the iOS share sheet for that matter) to share text over Twitter, Facebook, Mail, or copy text to clipboard. Very useful because people are lazy. (Install)

Maybe additionally: I use the Drafts badge to have an indicator of ‘inbox’ items. Similar to this.

04/21/2014 19:00:14 ¶ ●

Things I Learned From `ffmpeg`

Recently a friend had issues playing particular video files with his Plex media center. I told him to send me the files and I’ll have a look at them. I also have some experience with the command line utility and would like to share some things I learned along the way.

• I wrote previously about ffmpeg's “-acodec copy -vcodec copy" option. Apparently there is a shorter version "codec copy”, which copies both streams without reencoding.
• Copying the stream, either via -acodec copy -vcodec copy or codec copy does the job for nearly 90% of my video encodings. I recently updated all my videos to a format iTunes Mavericks in 64-bit mode (AVFoundation) would understand. Copying the streams worked in most cases. Also all downloads from YouTube or Vimeo convert wonderfully.
• You can actually shorten the command to ffmpeg -i movie.avi movie.mp4 to convert straight from AVI to MPEG4.
• youtube-dl and jDownloader are two really useful tools.
• That said, tools like MediaInfo and Invisor make your life as video pro a lot easier. Both base on MediaInfo, and there is a CLI available for MediaInfo.
• ffmpeg had a -sameq option, which some users made believe it means “same quality, but it’s not. It means "same quantizers", which is something totally different.
• To actually convert something using 1:1 quality use the -qscale 0 option (which the CLI recommends when you accidentally invoke sameq).
• The current default to try is: ffmpeg -y -i movie.avi -codec copy movie.mp4. Then I’d suggest using something else.
• If CLI is to hard to use for you, use VLC directly or use an alternative app, that is much easier to use, like HandBrake.

04/20/2014 19:00:30 ¶ ●

My Launch Center Pro Search Action

This is my take on a Launch Center Pro Search Action. I think mine’s based on Patrick’s, but I’m not sure anymore.

My search list is essentially the same. I’ve removed some things and I’ve added some others. Here’s the one split into separate lines for readability:

http://[[list:Search|Google=google.com/search?q= |Google Images=duckduckgo.com/?q=!gi%20 |YouTube=youtube.com/results?search_query= |DuckDuckGo=duckduckgo.com/?q= |App Store=search.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSearch.woa/wa/search?media=software&term= |fnd=fnd.io/#/search?term= |Alternative.to=alternativeto.net/SearchResult.aspx?search= |MacUpdate=macupdate.com/find/mac/ |Amazon=amazon.de/s?ie=UTF8&index=blended&keywords= |StackExchange=stackexchange.com/search?q= |Wikipedia=en.wikipedia.org/?search= |Wikipedia (DE)=de.wikipedia.org/?search= |Wolfram=wolframalpha.com/input/?i= |IMDB=imdb.com/find?s=all&q= |Twitter=mobile.twitter.com/search?q= |reddit=reddit.com/r/search/search?q= |MOSX.Tumblr=google.com/search?q=site:mosx.tumblr.com%20]][prompt:Query]

Import into Launch Center Pro

Mine is sorted differently. First come the search engines I’m most likely to use, then come those to search for products and apps, then information search engines, followed by communities/public knowledge and lastly this blog.

Enjoy.

04/20/2014 18:05:53 ¶ ●

Just

"Why don’t you just start running everyday? Over time you will run more and more. If you do that for just 3 months or so, running will have grown into a habit and you will do it automatically.”

People don’t get it, do they? Change is not "just". You don’t just creep out of your bed one day and be like “I go running every day now”, and then you do it and it will stick and then you’re a runner. Change is never “just”. You can’t tell a smoker to quit smoking using the “just” method. Inside people’s heads, these things are more complicated than “just” quitting to smoke.

Every person has their own beliefs. This is what makes it hard to do “just”. Things don’t just pop into existence, things grow that way. A person has to hit rock bottom before they are able to turn things around.

A really simple example. Think of your last relationship. Normally people are together until there’s one day where they are like “I can’t take this shit anymore!”. That is known as hitting “rock bottom”, from this point on, someone realizes in what kind of situation they’ve gottem themselves into and now it is important to get out of there. This means removing all the obstacles until they are where they want to be.

This all sounds easy, but it’s really not. Getting out of a relationship is kinda-sorta easy, but getting out of marriage is an entirely different thing. You have to sign contracts, attend meetings, etc. When you are “just” in a relationship you might “just” have to move out, or you might have to do a little more than that. It’s all complicated and easy at the same time.

Ones’ surrounding often times recommends some easy step to take to get where someone wants to be. (or where they think the other person wants to be. differnt story.)

"Oh I wish I would weigh a little less."
“Why don’t you just start running? It will do wonders to your health as well!” “Well, it is not so easy. I think I’m so overweight that my joints are going to hurt.”

In this small conversation alone there are so many hidden anxieties, beliefs, borders, limitations, that one person almost impossibly can overcome, and the other person doesn’t see the problem at all. For them it is more like “why don’t you just fucking start running?”, but for us it is more like “before I can go running, I want to accomplish this thing, and when I got that thing I want to do this thing, when I finally got there I think I can go for my first run.”

Running is easy for me. I do this for over ten years. I don’t see the point. But my experience as lecturer tells me that it’s “not so easy” for other people. I can see the smaller steps that eventually lead to ones first run. You start walking. Maybe walk one kilometer a day. Maybe just one kilometer three times a week. That’s the first step. Not “buy some fancy running shoes and go for a run, sweat, moan, and suffer in pain”.
But that’s easy for me to say, they say, but how can I be such a dick to recommend that first step when there has to be thing x first. Well, that’s you. If I’d have to start running today, I’d go for a walk. If you can’t see the point that walking will eventually become running, then that’s you. Everybody has to find their own way. I truly believe in that.

Let’s backpaddle for a second. Sharpening the axe. Most people want to do great things in their life. One year they’re all like “sexual liberation!”, the next year they’re all for “alternative living!”. Whatever floats your boat at the moment, I think, it all boils down to sharpening the axe. It’s personal development, is it not? For me sharpening the axe means to be able to cut down the bigger trees. I don’t have to sharpen the axe for trees I can chop down already. I need to improve the axe or get a better axe in order to chop down trees I couldn’t chop down before. And to sharpen the axe means: focus, saying no to stuff, effort, pain, energy, learning, improving, and ultimately, becoming dull. I’m going to write about dullness in a second. Let’s first take a look at energy and focus.

Focusing is one of the first things one needs to do to become a better version of themselves. Focus is “saying yes to one thing, while saying no to thousands of other things”. The “saying no”-part is actually what is going to cause your axe to become dull. Focusing means putting energy into one thing, while not putting energy into the other. Let’s take running again as an example. You can become a great runner, but at the same time not become a great hacker. Both are very different activities, and while one can become great at both, at the same time, it is unlikely because one activity involves a lot of movement, the other a lot of thinking. This is a radical example, I know, and it’s just here to demonstrate the point. Focusing means saying no. Do you want to become a great runner? Then you have to fucking run, Forrest!

Actually Forrest Gump is a rather nice analogy. Isn’t he? I mean Forrest seems so unintelligent not to see all the boundaries he exists in. And still he manages to become a great, wealthy person. Anyway…

Say you are a great hacker at the moment. Your axe is really sharp in those woods. But now you decide to become a great runner. So you walk in the “running” forest and start chopping. Not a single tree is going to fall at first. Maybe you get some small bushes, maybe some short trees, but the big trees are not for you yet. Someone has to start at the bottom and work their way up first, before they can take on the big trees.
Isn’t this correct? I have many nerdy readers. If someone would walk up to you and say “I want to get into computers, but I don’t know where to start”. What would be your answer? I know I could take 10 readers into a room and get 10 different approaches. Everyone would be able to tell from their own experience what things work, and what things don’t. The thing is that the other person doesn’t know yet. Their experiences differ, their intelligence is different, their everything is… just not you. Whatever you recommend as their beginning might just be 100% exactly what they need, or it might be a complete miss. But whatever they learned from your advice is valuable to them. If they hit a miss, they know “OK, so this doesn’t work.” If this doesn’t work, then they need to take a different approach. The one obstacle right in front of them might just have become so huge that they turn away and leave the forest or it might have woken up their inner warrior. “Wait? That tree I can’t chop down? I am going to cut that tree into bits, and if it’s the last thing that I’m doing!”

Your recommendation might go either way, after all, it is not you who walks their way - they have to. But remember, just because you chop down those trees easily, doesn’t mean they chop them down as easily.

Dullness. If you think about experiences, be them personal, work related, spiritual, whatever. Whatever we focus on, means we defocus on other things. When we defocus on our body and focus on the mind, the mind becomes stronger and the body weakens. You can’t have one cake and eat it too. If you put in a lot of energy and effort into improving one thing, over time, some other area where you built up a lot of momentum and know-how, will deteriorate. If I focus on meditation for an entire year, I become pretty good at it. If I then go ahead and focus on martial arts for a year, I get better at that, but I also miss out some of the things in the meditation area. You see again this is about balance. Of course you can focus on both, but then it will take you longer to become the best you can be at both. If you want to become the best at one thing, then you have to let go of the other.

Do you see how all of this is not so easy after all? You don’t just become a runner, you don’t just become a programmer, you don’t just eat healthy, you don’t just period.

Beliefs, boundaries, believed boundaries. What is so hard about change is that boundaries exist. You built them or other people built them for you. Experience tells us that there is a set border that is “normal”. Whatever normality may mean to you. You might think that you need to dress clean. If that’s your thing, then you dress neatly every day so that you are “normal”. See, other people wear rags, punk, and they still feel pretty confident about themselves. They don’t have that border, it is easy for them to go in rags, because that’s just what they do. That doesn’t mean that came easily. Beliefs had to be removed before. Maybe the belief that ones value can be judged by outer looks. Maybe the belief that one has to dress neatly to look neat for other people. Do you get my point? Maybe you were the same when you were younger. There were things you believed once were true, but then later realized that it’s just some rubbish society has taught you.
Let me take you for a spin. Soap. Do you use soap? What kinds of soap do you use? You use hand soap, I guess. But do you also use hair conditioner? Do you use shower gel? Why the fuck do you buy three different products for one and the same purpose?
That does something to you, doesn’t it? Did it ever occur to you that you could use “hand” soap to clean your hair? Why not? Who made you believe that soap is for hands only? Was it society? Was it some sort of nifty marketing? Do I need to be any more clear about this? We believe certain things are true, when in reality they’re not; or maybe they are, who knows. Reality is what you make of it. Where you see an inviolable insurmountable wall, I might not even see a line on the floor.

I might be like: “What’s your problem, dude? Why don’t you just do it?” Because it’s not just, it is never … just.

04/20/2014 18:00:37 ¶ ●

The 7 Easy Steps You Need to Take to Turn Your Life Around Completely

You didn’t really believe that it’s easy to change your life, did you?

¹

04/18/2014 19:00:22 ¶ ●

iTunes Match: Make Artwort Appear on All Your Devices

I’ve been suffering from this issue ever since I got iTunes Match. Songs that I didn’t buy from iTunes directly, sometimes don’t have their artwork showing up on some of my devices. This seemed to be unrelated to the operating system (OS X/iOS). After some research I found some steps to resolve the problem. Please stay calm and seated while reading these instructions.

I read somewhere that the first track of an album should have at the artwork. Sometimes the problem seems to be that an artwork didn’t get applied to the entire album. What you can do to resolve the problem:

• In a playlist where a song doesn’t have the artwork. Click the circled arrow next to the song’s name and choose “Show Album” or “Show Artist”.
• The Music list loads with the album selected.
• Click one of the songs that you know has the artwork.
• Click on Artwork and ⌘C it.
• Click the album’s name next to the big artwork view. That is above the first song’s name, and right from the artwork placeholder. Choose “Get Info”. Yes, you want to edit information for multiple tracks.
• If the entire album doesn’t have artwork, the artwork placeholder will be empty. Click it to highlight get keyboard focus, then press ⌘V.
• Click OK.

In most cases this has solved the issue. Sometimes I needed to take further steps to get the artwork to show up. I either had to supply an album name or some other info. Even in some cases I had luck to download the album artwork when all the album information had been entered correctly, then using “Get Album Artwork from iTunes”.

Maybe a small side note: My Mac showed the artwork after a short while usually about 1-5 minutes. My iPhone didn’t show the artwork, but after a reboot the artwork showed up eventually.

Hope this helps to make your artwork woes disappear!

04/15/2014 19:00:00 ¶ ●

My iOS Photo Workflow

🐑 🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑 🐑

I thought I should share my “photo workflow” here, mainly because I don’t take that many pictures and consider myself a “non-photo-workflow person”. I was hoping this would add a new light on the “photo workflows” postings that you see around the web.
That said, I do like to take pictures, and I do like to add filters and edit them on a regular basis, but the moments that I actually find worth capturing are just not that often.

Taking Pictures

When I take a photo on my iPhone or iPad it gets saved in whatever app I’m using. Currently my favorites are the built-in Camera app, Camera+, KitCam, VSCOCam, and ProCamera. I use the built-in Camera and 8mm for videos.

I want to go into depth about the editing, because that’s something I have been unhappy with for quite some time and just recently got my joy back. Using one of the apps mentioned above I usually do a couple of editing steps:

• Straighten: find right angles and make them align with the border. This requires an app that does fine angles. All photo apps mentioned above do this well.
• Crop: not as often, but sometimes I need to cut off something I didn’t want to capture.
• Aspect: usually I want to share on Instagram (@zettt). Instagram has 1:1 pictures only. It makes sense to crop out unnecessary parts, before putting on any filters and borders.
• Correct: it also makes sense to correct some things like color balance and temperature when the lighting is a tad off. Also taking care of levels so that colors are better distributed. Contrast, exposure, saturation, and tint sometimes need correction as well.
• Filters, borders, effects: after all this is done and I’m happy with my capture, I put on some filter that works well with the picture. If the picture works well without, then I don’t. In most cases I want to add a border as well. I think it makes the picture stand out a little more. It just underlines the fact that the picture is an emulated “old style” photo, rather than a shiny, clean, modern picture. That said, VSCO doesn’t have borders, nor does ProCamera.

Normally all the editing, or correcting, rather, I can do in any of these apps. Sometimes though, I need to edit things more carefully. These cases are:

• Hide personal information
• Move things around
• Other edits that require more complicated editing

In the past I used PhotoForge for this. It wasn’t too fancy, but it got the job done. Blurring out personal information required putting a blurred layer on top of the original and some masking. Typically not too big of a deal for someone who knows his way around image editing apps. But just as KitCam isn’t available in the store anymore, so is PhotoForge. I tried Filterstorm again, but Filterstorm Neue just doesn’t cut it, to put it mildly. Don’t take me wrong, this app is awesome! But for blurring out parts of an image, you have to jump through so many hoops, and the app does so many weird things along the way, it causes more frustration than I can handle.

Just the other day I was checking out Photoshop Express and Photoshop touch. Both are solid apps. I tried them, and you know what? I love them. PS Express has quite a different audience than PS touch. Express is more an app for users who want to add effects and makes things look awesome, whereas PS touch has layers, edge detection, effects, editing, warp, etc. It’s absurd. Both apps have found a place in my iOS photo editing, and, right now, I don’t want to miss the two.

Other notables mentions:

• Picfx: one of the first filter apps that I had on my phone and I still like it.
• Moldiv: the collage maker I use. I like it because it also allows me to put captions and whatnot on a picture as well.
• Facetune: corrects faces. Does more. Really cool.
• Decim8 and PowerUp: well, if you want to destroy a picture, here you go. I personally am a bigger fan of Decim8, but PowerUp takes GameBoy pictures. I mean that’s cool, right?
• iPhoto: if I had the space available on my phone, this would probably replace PS touch or Express, but because iPhoto also has photo management built in, this app does more than I want it to, therefore doesn’t add anything to my experience, and therefore isn’t worth so much precious space.

Photo Management

I have “My Photo Stream” turned off in iCloud settings, but have enabled “Photo Sharing”. The reason is that I don’t want to randomly share photos I take on my iPhone to be uploaded and be available on my iPad and Mac. I would rather pick the photos that get transferred. I set up a Photo Stream named “Photo Stream”. It is not public, and only I can post stuff to it. When I take a screenshot on my iPhone that I want to use on my Mac, I go into the Photos app and add it to this Photo Stream.

It will take some moments, but the photo will show up in iPhoto shortly. That’s good enough for me. It doesn’t have to be immediate, it doesn’t have to have Push Notications, it doesn’t have to be fancy. Just don’t be automatic, and don’t have all photos. That said, if iCloud refuses to work, then I just use Dropbox.

I’m testing out Dropbox photo management, but the way Dropbox does it is far from ideal. Dropbox’ Camera Uploads feature creates a separate “Camera Uploads” folder at root level and doesn’t allow to change this. No go. Sharing screen shots automatically? Why would I want to do that? Also: doesn’t allow to change the folder. Unbound, while being a nice app, still doesn’t allow subfolders to show up in the list view. What is up with that? PhotoSync transfers all pictures in the Photos app’ Camera Rool automatically, without realizing which photos it has transferred and ignoring those which exist already. Really?

Carousel is nice, but it’s a 1.0. It’s a nice start, but it’s far from being perfect. I really like the private chat in it. If I had a girlfriend, I’d probably recommend to her that we do most of our chatting through Carousel. Though, from experience, Facebook is so dominant that most people just use their chat and don’t care much about privacy issues, etc. Sad, but true fact.

So… my Dropbox photo experience hasn’t been so great. I stick with it for some time going forward though, but eventually if it is more complicated to sift through my photos than iPhoto (OS X) then it’s not worth my effort and time.

04/09/2014 19:00:00 ¶ ●

A Good Shave

OK. So I’m 32 now. I used an electric razor pretty much exclusively for my entire life (as long as I can imagine having facial hair). I tried wet razors in the past, but I never really got used to them. Actually I hated shaving so much that I rarely shaved at all. I just let it grow until it was too long and then cut it all off, before the cycle started again. December last year I wanted to try a new 30-day-challenge. I was wondering about my shaving skills. Am I able to keep my face shaved for 30 days straight? That sounded like a rather pleasing 30DC, so I tried it.

I succeeded. For 30 days (almost) straight I was clean shaven. My surroundings reacted to it. They realized something was different. I got compliments how good I’m looking. When I started this particular 30DC I changed only one small thing in my daily routine, which made it so easy to be clean every day. The change: I simply shaved under the shower. That’s it. No other secrets. Instead of shaving after the shower, I simply shaved in the shower. Just a (wet) razor, pouring water, done. Boom! I went with a 5-blade Balea precision5, which you can buy in a German DM store. The razor is not too expensive, cartridges are cheap too.

I shaved with a wet razor for about two months until it hit me. How much is this going to cost? Is this really the best I can do for my face? Because, in the end, preferably, I wouldn’t just want to be clean, but also to look neat. This includes having the skin clean as well.
Some weeks before this event, I also made the decision that I wanted to wear a beard. It became pretty clear what type of beard I wanted early on, and I could tell from the picture I had in my head that it would be hell on earth to style this beard with a cartridge razor. Combine all of that and you easily enter the world of: double-edge safety razing.

Principles

I found communities of men discussing this topic. Whether the one blade is better than the other, what the best shave creams are, why, or if, “canned goo”¹ is bad for a man, and how the “shaving industry” forces products onto the masses that are easily produced, marketed to millions, but are not tailored specifically to a person’s individual needs and skin.

One additional note: these mass products may also contain non-vegan or non-vegetarian ingredients and may also be animal-tested. Products are out of the question for some people.

I don’t want to go into detail on everything, but I want to touch on the most eye-opening things that I learned over these weeks. As always I’d like to share my knowledge in a meaningful way so that you, the reader, can make the most out of it.

The question was: Was it really true? Was old-school shaving, with a razor my grandpa would use, actually better than mass-marketed shaving with cartridge razors?

Canned Goo

If you take nothing from this article, but only one thing, then please consider throwing away the canned foams. Maybe you are wet shaving already, then you probably know how all the hairs get stuck between the blades when using shaving gell. It’s a total pain to get the hairs out of between the blades.

Know what? Just switch out the foam with a shaving cream or soap and a shaving brush. You wouldn’t believe the difference! Stroke, hairs stuck between blade, rinse, hairs gone.

There are so many shaving creams out there. I can hardly recommend anything, mainly because I have such a broad readership that comes from across the world. Recommending a German product won’t help you anything. I recommend some below nonetheless.

If you change anything about your shaving, try shaving soap.

The Price Tag

Now that I recommended something, I also briefly want to talk about money. A lot of men, and women mind you(!), start getting into DE shaving because cartridge razors are so much more expensive than DE razors. The thing that costs so much money is actually not the razor itself, but the cartridges one needs to buy to keep the thing running. It works with printers, why shouldn’t it work with razors, right? Over time the cartridges cost a multifold of an old-school DE razor. Here is an article that I just quickly googled.
Initially the costs of a DE razor are actually higher than the ones for a cartridge razor, but over time the costs flip dramatically, favoring DE razors.

First Year Annual Double Edge Razor Cost: $52.68
First Year Annual Cartridge Razor Cost: $64.46

…

11 Years of a Double Edge Razor: $99.68
11 Years of a Cartridge Razor: $619.46

Now we’ve got that out of the way. When you go for traditional shaving, you can spend hundreds and hundreds, of whatever currency, on stuff. There are shaving brushes for $10, and there are ones for $300. As I wrote, if you change anything, then try a shaving cream and a cheap brush for 10 bucks. If anything, you lost $15, at most. Throw it away or give it to a DE-Razor-Aspirant®. They will be happy to take the brush!

Shaving soaps come in neat mahogany bowls. Brushes come from bores or badgers. Razors comes from all over the world, but, if you happen to live in Germany, take a look at Merkur’s razors.² Steel, shine, weight. If that doesn’t cry “man”, I don’t know what else it does. (Let’s actually keep that thought for some paragraphs later.)

Double-Edge Safety Razors

I started with a DE razor, I still used to have at home, from about 5 years ago when I first tried out DE shaving. At that time I just thought the razor didn’t work very well. I bought the Wilkinson Classic, which comes with 5 Wilkinson blades. I know the packaging looks horrible, and the razor doesn’t have much appeal either, but if you take a look at traditional shaving, most things aren’t made to shine, they are made to work.

DE shaving is an entirely different beast than cartridge or even electric shaving. The reason I thought the razor didn’t work so well was because I didn’t know how to use the razor correctly. Cartridge razors are nice because they forgive your laziness. Cartridge razors are made so that you can wake up hung over and with a headache and just put the razor on your skin, move it up and down some times and the skin is clean³. Not so with a DE razor.

Remember the thought some moments ago? Yeah, being a man, a real man. Apparently being a real man means that you need to cut yourself, that you need to get nicks and the skin needs to bleed. Now, if that doesn’t cry men, I don’t know what else does. So if you are a real man, then bleeding is the way to go.

I’m just kidding.

I agree that you (probably) (most likely) (if you are not careful) may get cuts and nicks, but the truth is you might not. A face isn’t entirely straight. Therefore when you shave take a look at your face’s contours first and how the grain grows. Then it will be much much easier and less likely for you to get cut.

Don’t use pressure either. Bad habits have been formed with cartridge razors. Unlearn them. A DE razor is sharp. A cartridge razor, while being sharp, is produced so that you don’t hurt yourself. That’s why so many people push the razor into the skin when they are aiming for a BBS shave.⁴ A DE razor pushed into the skin will hurt you, resulting into bleeding and other nastiness you don’t want to have. Take your time. It took me about 3 weeks to get a half decent shaving routine going. It doesn’t come over night. Learn and practice.

Shoot for “a good shave” not a baby butt smooth face. Every shave is different. Some days you may get all the hairs, some days you may not. Overall it doesn’t matter that much, because there’s always going to be another day to shave again. And it’s more important to be shaved well, than to be shaved perfect. For the days where you need a perfect shave, you can put in the extra time to shave perfectly smooth. Heck, you might even enjoy shaving after a while.

Also an entirely new concept was “lather a second or third time”. I was like “wha?”, but it’s actually not a bad idea, if you think about it. Instead of using the razor to go over a just freshly-shaven area again and again and again, until all the hair is gone, just re-lather and shave, re-lather and shave. Results: less nicks, less cuts, happier looking skin.
Remember also that most cartridge razors have multiple blades. When you use a razor with 3 blades, you actually cut the skin 3 times in 1 stroke. A DE razor has one blade. To get a clean shave it makes sense to go over the same area again. Most people recommend to do three strokes total. One with, one across, and one against the grain. The one against the grain is the one that’s going to make your skin smooth like a baby’s butt, but it’s also the most painful one, when not careful.

Actually I don’t want to get into the technical stuff too much. I learned the basics on YouTube, but the main part of learning happened in the bath room. I can’t save you from the same experience. I can recommend the Sharpologist channel, he has an “Introduction to Traditional Wetshaving” series, which gets you up and running in about 50 minutes.

Skin Care

Just some brief words on skin care. Actually, maybe more words than I would like to write about this topic.

First, let’s talk about the good world. Taking care of your skin, when you basically cut the first layer of your skin off, with a razor that sharp, is a good thing. Moisturize after the save with a cream or some other skin care product. Maybe also put an extra layer of safety on your skin using a pre-shave oil.

Second, the bad side. The beauty industry has discovered men as target audience and they want to market products to us. While this market is still under-developed compared to the women’s market, this means the industry can make big profits from us because we’re such a small niche. Some of the products that we can buy are just over-marketed.
I would recommend not to buy anything that you see in the grocery store. Do some research and then buy a product. Typically useful products aren’t as shiny as quality products. That said, German’s DM market is not bad. They got some in-house brands that specialize on 100% natural products (Alverde) as well as their “cheap alternative” brand, Balea. Also German-based is Weleda.
I sent this article to a friend for proof-reading. He mentioned two more products. In Germany we also have Speick, who makes some very good and natural soaps. I personally haven’t tested or read much about Alaun blocks, but that’s another thing he mentioned.
You can look on Amazon for international products. Amazon is a good way to get American products in Germany. It works the other way around too.

That said, if you do get cuts in the beginning, do yourself a favor and don’t just shave for the sake of being shaved. Stop for a day or two, maybe go back to your old shaver. No matter what you do, let your skin heal first before you try again. After a shave, wait a couple of hours before the first red spots appear. If you see red spots, then you know where you did wrong. Again, wait for things to heal up, then try again. If, no matter how often you try, you still get red spots, then that’s an indication that some product you use may not be right for you. Switch to something for sensitive skin. Do you use an after shave with alcohol in it and you think “the burn” is helping? Then you will hopefully be happy to hear, that the burning doesn’t have to be part of your shaving routine at all. We have made lots of advancements since the early days of alcohol-based after shaves. After shave balms contain soothing, moisturizing, and cleaning ingredients for your skin. No burning necessary.

Time

What about time, I hear you say? Doesn’t it take much longer to shave with a DE? Yes, it does. In my case, think of my scenario, I knew I was going for a beard and that I couldn’t continue to shave in the shower anymore. It made perfect sense to change things up a little. And so it doesn’t hurt me to put in that extra time.

Showing Skill, Getting Compliments, Being Awesome

Think of it this way: I find it satisfying to show myself that I got the skill to shave with a DE. See, I could go back to a cartridge at any time, but right now it just gives me a good feeling to take care of myself and to make me feel nice.

People will recognize that something has changed when you (start to) take care of yourself. I think it’s because you feel good inside yourself, that creates enough good energy to emanate through you to others. I don’t know. That may be the little buddhist in me talking.

I’ve been learning shaving for the last couple of months. That doesn’t go without any skill being built. I don’t know, but it felt like I owe it to myself to show that skill… just a little bit. I didn’t want a standard goatee or mutton chops. I wanted something a little bit more involved, just so that I can take the time to style my beard every day. Something people are going to notice. When I talk with other folks now, I can see it in their face when they start to examine “the beard”. Their faces tell stories: “Oh it has a straight line from here to there, and it connects to here, but it doesn’t go to there, but then there’s a straight line… wait, did he really put the extra time in to cut that part straight? He did. So what’s up with the … Oh I see…” That’s pretty much the experience I’m getting. Not many people are going to notice, but the few who do, massage the ego that much more.⁵

Oh, did I tell you about my other 30-day-challenge? I’m this close to being done⁶:

Suck it, laziness!

How does that help you? Maybe you want to take care of your face as well, show some skill, and show that you do care. Most other men I know simply don’t care much. Right now I see a lot of men wear a full beard, mainly because, I don’t know why, maybe because it’s just the beard that’s easiest to shave. You shave it once a week and otherwise just let it grow. Read this again: almost everyone else doesn’t take care, so if you do, you’re going to stick out like a sore thumb!
Even with a full beard you can do better. Here are some tips to make people notice:

• Trim: That’s right. Trim the thing. Maybe you have a clipper already⁷. Trim your beard to medium length, if you want to go for the scruffy look. Scruffy men are sexy. But going for scruffy doesn’t mean the hair has to be all over the place. Keep it trimmed and other people will recognize that you “don’t just let it grow”, that you intentionally look scruffy, and that you also put in the extra effort to make “scruffy” look “neat”. And that is what’s going to catch people’s attention!
• Cut edges: When I let my beard grow, I knew that there were areas that I would shave off for 100% certainty. I don’t like mustaches, so I shaved my hair above the lip. I also noticed the hair on my cheek doesn’t run in a “geometrical” shape entirely across the cheek. I decided to fix that by shaving the few little extra hairs off, so that it looked like there was a perfect rounded line on my cheek. I thought no one is going to notice, but then the other day, I was attending an afterwork event. One of the folks in the audience looked at me briefly, then away. Then from the corner of my eyes I could see an act of amazement. His eyebrows went up, making his eyes really big, before he squinted. Usually a sign that a thought occurred that now needs some investigative research. I rotated my head slightly, so that my entire cheek points straight at his face, so that he can examine better. His eyes wandered from my ear, to the nose, to the edge of my chin, with one eyebrow down. Needless to say, he noticed. Another example: Here in Germany, we have a lot of Turkish barbers who shave you a really really neat beard with contours so sharp, everybody will notice. If you want to make people go “ooh”, just pay one of these guys, and you know what I want to tell you with this entire article.

Take care!

04/04/2014 19:00:33 ¶ ●

Send Later using Launch Center Pro and Due

Sometimes I amaze myself when I discover what a smart cookie I am! Sometimes the smart cookies come late…

Maybe you remember the app Later, which I covered recently. Later allows you to set up texts to send later via Twitter, Mail, etc. Launch Center Pro has an iOS Share Sheet, which allows for several ways of sharing: iMessage, mail, Twitter, Facebook, Copy to clipboard. Perfect for what I had in mind.

Since Due can launch URL, we can setup a URL that call the LCP iOS Share Sheet with prepared text so that it can be sent later. Voilà:

due:///add?title=[prompt:Reminder]{{ launch://sharesheet?text=}}[prompt:Later Text]&minslater=[prompt:Time]

Cool? Give it a like!