• Relaxation can be incredibly difficult for type-A personalities, but not entirely unattainable.
• There is never an end to odd jobs one can find to do around, within and upon one’s home (assuming, of course, you are not a renter).
• If you stare at any cloud long enough, you can watch it make far more than one shape.

I can, of course, take life way too seriously at times. Just not right now.

• There is not a musical instrument known to man that I will not attempt to master, or at least wrestle into submission, when given the opportunity.
• Although I fully realize it’s long-term economic ramifications, I’d give up my job and gigs in a second to be a full-time dad. Fatherhood is the most fun I’ve had in a long, long time. Who knows…
• I can’t wait to see how chill I get after 5 more weeks of this.
• I haven’t turned on a ‘real computer’ in a full week (except for the one powering my studio, and then only to record stuff).
• You really can be more creative when you’re completely uncluttered or distracted. But you can also get cabin fever much faster. Finding myself ‘out for inspiration’ more often than actually writing, but my writing time is now much more focused and at least 3 times as productive as when I’m working the day job. Dizzamn.
• Removing due dates from all my to-do lists actually resulted in them getting done a LOT faster. Maybe it’s the reduced time pressure, but that’s an interesting and cool trend.
• Getting my inner Hunter S. Thompson out and exercised last week will help me get back to my inner, and much healthier muses. But it has been fun to blow it out a bit.
• I’m really glad I decided to take this sabbatical at it’s own pace. Getting back to roots is beautiful.
• How Des and I created such an amazing little boy in our son, Devin, is beyond me – and more in the realms of miracles and/or divine providence. He amazes and inspires me daily.
• Although I’m not going to waste much time thinking about it now, I’m really going to miss this sabbatical when it’s over. A lot.

And now, back to the slacking. Cheers!

It’s clear that I’ll be working on some personal music but I have consciously avoided thinking about it beyond one overriding goal – to wade through the last decade worth of half finished (or less) ideas that I’ve written, and recorded to varying degrees. As I’ve been mostly playing on other people’s material or projects it’s been a pretty diverse decade, but I honestly couldn’t tell you much more about what’s in that pile ‘o ideas as it’s stuff I documented in quick momentary flurries of inspiration – and didn’t spend much time with overall. The idea was that I’d eventually come back to them and finish each and every one – though at this point that obviously never happened nor was it likely to unless I made a concerted effort to set aside some time and do something about it. I guess that’s what sabbaticals are for, eh?

The hope is that either I find enough gems in that pile to justify finishing out a demo, or horrify myself into writing something better. So I’m going to call it creative semi-block- I guess when you’re starting with a surplus of ideas it can’t exactly be a tabula rasa type of situation. But given I have little memory of or faith in those ideas at this point, it is a bit unsettling. Here’s hoping the combination kicks me in the ass the right way. Keep posted.

That being said, not everything is hearts and flowers, but the negatives are third-party incompatibilities and not deal-breakers.

• Line 6’s most awesome Pod Farm AudioUnit plug-in isn’t yet compatible. I’m back to using real mics and amps for now, but as most of my work is mixing/sequencing right now I’ve got some time to spare for this to resolve.
• Xmarks bookmark sync (reasonably indispensible, but I know it’ll get ported quickly).
• When creating a new event in iCal using the Exchange integration, it doesn’t always invite the room I’ve specified unless I drag the event to a new time, and then back to the correct one. Weird!

All things told- still two thumbs up!

That being said, it’s time for a change, partially motivated by the impending ‘migration’ of my Adobe blog to a new Movable Type framework. I’m not particularly happy with Movable Type in general, and much more comfortable with WordPress or Drupal, so although I already did merge in some of my old Adobe blog posts here a while back (just look for the ‘Adobe’ tag), I may be doing it officially soon, and dusting off this default template with one I’ve been puttering on for a little while now.

While I figure out how this will all shake out, I might very likely be temporarily distracted with this.
Pls don’t hold it against me.

I’ve been using this randomly on conference calls lately, too. Enjoy

And I’m basically writing this post in admiration for the work my wife’s put in since then. The reason it’s delayed is that I haven’t been able to see the fruits of her labor until now. Now sure, I’ve helped indirectly with most all of these items, but she’s the one that really put the hours in, and it’s very obvious now.

• Vocabulary: although Devin’s got about 6 words he uses regularly now (Mom, Dad, Cat, Ball, Baby, and of course No), he’s got at least 25 signs that he uses even more frequently, and I’m only just starting to realize it. My friend Julie extolled the virtues of teaching babies sign language early, and although I was always on board philosophically, it’s one of those parental tasks that takes a LONG time to glean results. When Devin busted his first sign on me a couple months ago (Milk), it came out of the blue, but was absolutely, positively communication. Since then, he’s been springing out with a few new ones every week, and starting to put them together into ‘micro-sentences’ (i.e. more + food + please). The part that’s blowing me away right now is the fact that he’d been using many of his new signs for a while before we realized it. Fine motor skills and precision are not a 1-year old’s strong suit, so many of the signs he was taught came back to us in a slightly modified if not exaggerated form. However, now that he knows it’s an effective way to ‘talk’ with us, he makes sure to let us know when he’s telling us something and we’re not getting it. If Des wasn’t so consistent in always using signs for key words along with her verbal communication, I’m reasonably sure he wouldn’t be so overflowing in ’speech’ right now. It’s just plain awesome!
• Fine Motor Skills: I’m pretty much the ‘read a story’ guy, and the ‘crawl around and chase each other’ guy. I made a comment to Des a few months back that I was wondering when he’d finally start using his stacking blocks and such, and she started setting two parts of the day aside (without me realizing it) to play with him in that regard. When she opens a bottle, she hands him the cap and lets him put it back on. When she needs something picked up from the floor, she asks him to please get it for her, and he’s all over it. I didn’t realize how well this was working until today, when he picked up a water bottle cap I dropped, got mad when I didn’t put it back on, and then proceeded to pick it back up from the end table and place it solidly on my water bottle. This is now manifesting itself with him actually cleaning up after himself, and placing toys back in the basket when he’s done playing. Again, amazing. The real-world tasks have apparently not just strengthened his motor skills, but his independence and responsibility, as he often now follows after US and picks things up that have been left behind.

I suppose I’m writing this as I feel a bit like an absent dad in parts of the process, but am now incredibly impressed with how well Des’ work and parenting has paid off while I’ve been bringing home the mortgage payment. The pivotal moment was today when he was making odd gestures at me and I had to be told that he was actually talking to me – in this particular case telling me about his stuffed bear, and I just thought he was scratching his chest.

Looks like I’ve got a lot of catching up to do, and appreciation to give. This really is a learning experience for everyone involved, and one I’m humbled daily to be a part of.

Hells yeah, OmniFocus for the iPhone will be location-aware by default, and should sync beautifully with OmniFocus back on the home office machine. Desktop OmniFocus is a masterpiece, but now it’s officially become legendary with a tightly-integrated parallel mobile version. What’s not to love?

[Read more at: The Omni Group - OmniFocus for iPhone and iPod touch]

It’s great to see innovative developers start to think about location-awareness with the newly announced iPhone 3G and not just on a superficial, fluffy level. Now if I’ve added a task to pick up more transmission fluid, I can see all the auto stores close to where I’m standing, and get a map/directions to them. It could theoretically know when I’m at home, and show me my home tasks specifically.

OmniGroup software tends to be a little on the spendy side, but I can attest that the attention to detail they put into each bit is worth every cent they charge. I was on the early betas of OmniFocus and it was amazing to see how quickly they iterated the software and with the care they did so- I can only imagine how slick it’ll be to finally carry my tasks with me on the iPhone and really use the hardware for it’s strengths, not just scan a basic list with a hacked OSX-to-touch quickie software port. Whatever it costs, I’ll be lining up at the App Store to get my copy of OmniFocus iPhone as soon as it hits the streets. W00t!

Most of the problem is that Microsoft still seems to try and play number parity with the Wii and Playstation 3, yet was released almost a year before both. I can understand why they want to downplay the numbers, as it’s easy to get ahead with a 12-month headstart. However, the Wii is close to closing on the 360’s “lead”, so I’m not sure the Microsoft sandbagging is going to hold much longer.