Undocking from an Apple Thunderbolt Display

Posted by: on Sep 23, 2011 | 6 Comments

Apple finally has a “dock” for its notebook computers. That dock is the Thunderbolt display. The Thunderbolt display has its own power cable for charging your Apple notebook, as well as a Thunderbolt cable to serve as the single connection for display, ethernet, sound, USB, and Firewire connectivity. This means you can connect your Firewire, USB, and Thunderbolt drives into the back of the display and have them all “dock” when you plug in the single Thunderbolt cable.

Unfortunately, unplugging the monitor may not be so easy if you have several external drives. By using Applescript, you can basically create an “undock” application that you can simply open when you want to unplug the display. I’ve also provided the app for you: Undock.app

  1. Open “AppleScript Editor.app” found in the Applications -> Utilities folder
  2. Paste the following code into “Untitled” applescript window: 
    tell the application "Finder"
	eject (every disk whose ejectable is true)
end tell
  3. Go to File -> Save. Name the file “Undock” and choose “Application” as the file format. You can now run this from Spotlight or create a shortcut in your dock if you prefer; just as with any other application. Your external drives will be ejected after running this script.

Agile iPad Part I: Taskpaper and User Stories

Posted by: on Sep 14, 2010 | One Comment

When I recently purchased an iPad, I thought it would be something that I could use to poke around the web from the couch in the evenings. I’m finding that I use it just as much at work and it is becoming an integral part of my toolkit.

One of the most heavily used apps on my iPad is Taskpaper from HogBay Software. I previously dabbled with TaskPaper on my Mac, but I had to drop it because it didn’t have any type of cloud based syncing with the iPhone. HogBay recently added support for syncing via a Google App Engine based app called SimpleText.

Neat, but how does Taskpaper and an iPad help me be more Agile? A picture is worth a thousand words here:


As you can see, I have an Inbox project for tracking incoming tasks. I borrowed this from the GTD methodology. I also have an “ABC Company” project for my client. I have a high level task for the current story I’m working on and underneath it I break down underlying tasks that I need to get done in order to complete the story.

The nice thing about TaskPaper is that it has become ubiquitous. My list is with me on my mac, on my iPhone, on the web, and on my iPad. All are kept in sync.

You’ll notice in order to complete the “Add ORM to Villian table” task, I need to ask Captain Caveman a question. Captain Caveman doesn’t always come through clearly, so I capture exactly what he said just in case there is any question later. I capture this as a note shown in light grey.

I also add other questions as I think of them to the underlying tasks. As soon as I save the document on my Mac, the SimpleText client syncs with the web site and the notes are available on my iPad. When I need to correspond with the users, I can simply pickup my iPad and take my list with me. I can even add notes on the iPad and I’ll have them when I’m back at my computer, pounding out code.

Each day during the daily scrum meeting, I take my iPad and bring up my list. I’m able to see exactly what I completed the day before, so it makes it a bit easier to keep track and burn items off of our sprint planning wall. I also add tasks I’m planning to work on today, so that I’ll have those available to mention as well.

Taskpaper is simple. It mimics paper and lets one organize lists however he pleases. If you have an iPad, I encourage you to try it on your Mac and if you like it, then buy it for your iPad/iPhone. It has greatly simplified my day to day task tracking and helps me stay focused when things get hectic.