Mark Dalton

So Eleanor reached the grand old age of two on the 25th November, but as this fell mid week we decided to have the get together over the weekend. We also had Ebony, my cousin, visiting from Australia so we decided to roll both events into one. It was a great day and Eleanor was on top form despite frowning for this photo.T he rest of the photo’s I took can be found here or here.

I have been using PDFPen from Smile on my mac as part of my workflow for a while now and it’s a fantastic product. I use it mainly when I scan in documents either to simply carry out OCR before filing in DevonThink or to make amendments to PDF documents I have been sent.

However for a while now I have been wanting to do a little more advanced work with PDF’s, including creating PDF forms. The standard version of PDFPen doesn’t support this but Smile on my mac also offers a Pro version of the software aptly named PDFPenPro. At $99.95 I found PDFPenPro a little expensive for the extra’s it offered over PDFPen which retails for a not inexpensive $49.95, but it is still a lot cheaper than the Adobe offerings. Smile on my mac also offers an upgrade route from the standard version to the Pro version but there isn’t any saving to be had by following this route, other than deferring the cost, and gambling on the exchange rate in my case.

However this weekend I needed to create a customer form and couldn’t stand the thought of trying to do it using any of the standard Microsoft tools so I upgraded to PDFPenPro. It was very simple to get going and within a short period of time I had the basics of the form laid out, and for what I needed to achieve this weekend that was sufficient, but I do have a few issues. Now I understand I am still on a bit of a learning curve so I have emailed the support team to seek confirmation.

I will let you know how I get on!

November 22, 2009 @ 7:52 PM – : Well the team at Smile on my mac have responded, multiple times, with suggestions as to what I may be doing wrong. I did try what they suggested prior to emailing them however but at their request have sent them the file in question for them to take a look at. In my book this is great service. I am probably missing a very simple step, but how many companies to you know respond within a few hours to a request. I am impressed.

November 23, 2009 @ 9:24 PM – : So this evening I received a response from the team at Smile on my mac advising that they had found what appears to be a bug and have raised the issue with the development team, but in the meantime provide a work around. They also had found a number of issues with the way that Preview handles PDF Form fields and in particular form text box borders and the “Required” property. I do however now have a finished product and all in all it was a simple process. I have a few idea’s on how the product could be further improved but will feed them back once I have done a little more with the product.

If you are a regular reader of my blog you will remember my Digital Filing Cabinet Series (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3). Well, since writing the series I have been tweaking my workflow here and there to make things smoother, especially when it comes to repetitive tasks. Now one area that I hadn’t really focused on to much was email. I generally have a good approach to email thanks to Merlin Mann and his Inbox Zero methodology, but I started to look into some of the emails I get on a regular basis and analyse how I process them, and if I could do anything better.

I found out that the email I get can be put into 5 main categories. My approach to processing them is inline with Merlin’s, but I wanted to look at how I could improve my own personal workflow using some of the tools I use already, and I thought I would share it with you in the hope that it helps somebody at some level as it is likely, if you are a Mac user, you have the same toolset.

1) Junk - This is in essence spam and while I have several layers of protection you can’t avoid getting the odd one through. In my case these are normally emails from friends and family that require me to prove my love in some way by forwarding on some “Give me a Hug” email to everyone I know. Now usually I just delete these, but thinking about it that doesn’t really resolve the problem. So using Text Expander from Smile on my Mac I have crafted a number of canned responses that politely request that the sender doesn’t send me any more of this type of mail. I have certain “Insert Name Here” type fields to personalise the reply, which I find usually works a lot better with people.

2) Informational – This type of mail is usually from Mailing Lists I have subscribed to or from organisations that I am interested in and contains information on their latest projects or services. Now I would normally look at these and leave them in my inbox until I had time to read them properly. This is distracting as it really takes the focus away from the more important email that I need to process. So using Mail.App Rules I have simply set up a number of rules to move these to other folders. This way I can read them when I have time. I also class all email I am CC’d on as “Informational” and move, via a Mail.App rule to a dedicated folder and mark it as read.

3) Reports / Files – This type of mail is usually an automated report I have requested such a Google Analytics or a database backup of my website which I have scheduled and receive via email. In both cases I treat these in the same way as I do “Informational” email using rules using a Mail.App rule to move the message to another folder which in this case is the trash but not before running an AppleScript that saves the attachment to my Downloads folder. Why do this? Well, email is simply a delivery mechanism here. I do not want to keep these files in my email as they would take up far to much space, and in my view email is not a suitable storage medium. Now at present, like “Informational” email I tend to check these when I have time, but I do intend to find a way to automatically create a “To-Do” item to ensure I review these in a timely manner. After all I have requested the data for a purpose and there is little point in doing so unless there is an action tied to the request.

For those that are interested the AppleScript I use to save email attachments is below. This script doesn’t do anything amazing and contains no real logic, it does exactly what it says on the tin.

** Note the part in red is the full path to MY Downloads folder. You will need to change this to the folder you want the files to end up in, if you can’t find the full path in Finder select the “Show Path Bar” option from the Finders View menu **

using terms from application "Mail"
	on perform mail action with messages theMsges
		set theAttachmentPath to "Macintosh HD:Users:Mark:Downloads:"
		tell application "Mail"
			repeat with ThisMessage in theMsges
				set Attached to mail attachments of ThisMessage
				repeat with ThisAttach in Attached
					set FileName to name of ThisAttach
					save ThisAttach in theAttachmentPath & (FileName)
				end repeat
			end repeat
		end tell
	end perform mail action with messages
end using terms from

using terms from application "Mail"
	on run
		tell application "Mail" to set sel to selection
		tell me to perform mail action with messages (sel)
	end run

Once the attachment has been saved to my Downloads folder I use Hazel from Noodlesoft, which allows me to define file level system rules that can manipulate files and folders, for example I have a rule that monitors the Downloads folder and watches for my weekly Google Analytics report, renames it something friendly and moves it to an appropriate location in my DropBox. I do the same thing with my weekly web site database backup files. The Google Analytics report is an example where I need to create a corresponding To-Do item as I request it to identify potential issues with the site.

4) Delegate – These are emails that I need to send on to other people, but don’t need to do anything with personally. These I tend to forward, create a to-do to follow up on later, and then file. Now this is where I use another application called Mail Act-On from indev Software. I tried out Mail Act-On in my Digital Filing Cabinet Series and at the time thought it was more than I needed. However since then I have tried it several times and each time found it more and more useful, as it allows me to move / copy / etc an email with the press of a few buttons. This is useful as I don’t need to take my hands off the keyboard when processing email to drag and drop the item into what could be a deep folder structure.

5) Actionable – These are emails I need to something with. I try to respond to these as quickly and succinctly as possible and then file them, once again using Mail Act-On. What I have determined however is that I need to get away from my hierarchical folder system of storing messages. This is probably where I can see Mail Tags coming in, but for me that is a big change in thinking and one I am likely to struggle with, although it may help with the follow up side of email processing that can often be overlooked.

What does all this mean, well it means that right now I have no email in my inbox. I still have a number of area’s that I need to address, such as ‘How long should you keep email?” and how I might use DevonThink to do this in a way that works for me.

I use a very similar approach at work, although there I am using Windows 7 and Outlook 2007. I have slightly different classifications but they amount to the same thing. Now if I could use the Mac…..

05:00 and I am wide awake, could it be the excitement of returning to work? I don’t think so! Something to do with the bl**dy car alarm that has been going off every hour since 02:00, not really! The overwhelming desire to watch the sun come up? In Basingstoke, are you kidding me? If I analyse it deeply I think it had something to do with the fact that I was rested, relaxed, and in bed by 10:30 last night, and maybe the slightly weird dream I had about ducks! All I will say is that my first job tonight is to adjust the timing on the heating, dam 05:00 is cold.

So I hit the override button on the heating control and after a cigarette and glass of orange juice went back and laid in bed, waiting for the heating to kick in. I didn’t doze back off which I fully expected to, but when the alarm went off at 06:00 I was laying there trying to remember what I had watched on TV that would encourage the duck dream. Showered and dressed and still none the wiser regarding the ducks I stuffed the laptops into the bag and headed for the car. Once outside I really noticed how cold it was and getting into the car I felt the need to test the heating on HIGH and make sure the heated seats were fully functional.

I had to renew my train ticket and luckily my early start paid off as while there was only one guy serving he was the one with 90% of the brain cells and powered through the queue. Even more luck when I pulled into the car park and the car in Bay 1, yep the golden bay, the bay right next to the exit, was pulling out. Parked, smiling, and still cold I headed for the station and then I realised the shorter walk didn’t allow me to finish my smoke before entering the station, so I had to either stand with the private school students who had all been kicked from Dad’s Merc into the cold or ditch it. I ditched it and headed for the coffee shop.Then it happened, Yes I had the quick queue, yes I had the gold parking spot, but the coffee shop was closed! I nearly gave up then and there but figured I could wait until I got on the train. Then it happened, the 06:51 was delayed by 4 minutes due to slippery tracks. Now most people would shrug and say four minutes, what’s the fuss? After 10 years commuting however I saw the look in the other commuters eye’s. The rules now change and the shuffle starts. You take the gamble you take your spot and you pray to the great train god that the doors will open in front of you. If they don’t, your screwed, and there was no chance of the much needed coffee elixor. There will be 10 people to each seat, and it will be elbow warfare. In my relaxed state of mind I was no match for them, and with low nicotine levels and zero caffeine this was a fight I was not ready for. So I hung back and watched the chubby cyclist squeeze in between the suited guy and the rather sleepy goth bloke and decided it was better to save the fight for another day.

As the 12 coach 07:17 arrived I smiled, the train gods had respected my peaceful, non combative stance and rewarded me with an empty train, and as I boarded I thought to myself “Don’t get to smug, it can all go so wrong”. We arrived at London Waterloo on time and intact, and without seeing one duck.

Then it started….the working day. I can’t really say I got into it or really took any notice of what transpired but as I packed up I thought, what was with the bl**dy ducks? The journey home was uneventful and the golden parking bay position paid off as I pulled out of the car park in poll position.

Arriving home, showering, and changing I felt that I had won. Maybe not the war, but certainly the battle. Logging on to check my email I noticed a post from my little sister and remembered I hadn’t caught up with her after her Halloween party. After hearing about her day and my niece Eleanor not being well I logged into her laptop remotely, using the free LogMeIn service and installed the Adobe Reader software for her, and set up a separate account for her husband, so he could use the laptop without messing up anything she was working on.

So now I am ready to sort the heating timer out, grab something to eat, and then chill out in front of the TV. I hope tomorrow goes this well, but you never know the mood of the train gods!