And so help me, I’ve finally come up with a system that works for me.

Like any sane e-mail system I’ve ever heard of, it’s based on Merlin Mann’s Inbox Zero system, which in its turn is based on David Allen’s Getting Things Done.

If you spend any amount of time at all on the Internet, you’ll find a ton of e-mail management systems. The problem with most of them—at least it’s a problem for me—is that they tend to be designed for people with ADD. Which I don’t have. And they tend to invite endless fiddling and knob-turning. Which makes sense what with the ADD-tendencies that spawned the systems.

Fiddling and knob-turning are death for any system that’s supposed to let you work more efficiently.

So here’s my system in all its simplicity.

The e-mail account gets two folders: _Action and _Assorted. The underscores are there only to make the folders sort to the top.

Any new e-mail that comes in gets the basic GTD treatment: If it’ll take a few minutes or less to deal with, I’ll take care of it and move it to _Assorted. This includes meetings: anything with a hard date goes on the calendar and then the e-mail goes into the _Assorted black hole.

_Assorted could just as well be called _CYA.

If it’ll take more than a few minutes to process, the e-mail goes into _Action. Yes, _Action is a primitive to-do list, which breaks GTD dogma, but it works for me since most of my actionable e-mails are information-dense enough that it would take a lot of time to capture in a “normal” GTD way.

There’s no step three. That’s it. Easy enough that I’ll keep doing it even when things get hectic, which is when the more complicated systems break down.

The end result is a teensy bit of manageable chaos in the _Action folder and a wondrously empty inbox. The joy of looking at an empty inbox simply can’t be overstated.

You might wonder why there’s only an _Assorted folder instead of separate folders for projects/people/dates, etc. The reason is that we can search e-mail now, so there’s no reason to spend the mental overhead organizing the detritus of the past into a folder structure.

I also have a few server rules that put e-mails that aren’t time-critical into separate folders to peruse when I have the time. A bonus of this is that those e-mails don’t show up on my iPhone—I have to go into those folders for them to refresh when I’m mobile. Nice bonus.

And there you go. Ridiculously simple, but it works.

As a bonus it’s always great to see Brad Pitt play white trash. He seems to love it so much.

It takes a supremely self-confident director to make this kind of movie, and especially to give himself the time needed to let some of the scenes really work.

An astonishing work.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End: I have a formula for determining the absolute suckitude of a movie: Multiply the suck factor of the movie with the cost of making it.

By that formula this may just be the worst movie ever made.

World’s End is a clanking, soulless, CGI nightmare with a plot like somebody put a 100 frat boys in a room, doused them with absinthe, had them write down their hallucinations, and then employed a particularly slow-witted orangutang to cut-and-paste the hallucinations into a script.

Lord, it’s bad. So bad. There can’t be a loving god who would allow something like this to be made.

Rollerball (1975): Yes, it’s from 1975, and no, some aspects haven’t aged well at all, especially the “cool futuristic” sets.

Be that as it may, Rollerball is definitely a classic. The basic premise is that in the future corporations run everything and have created a game called rollerball for the masses to focus on instead of, you know, paying anything to what’s going on around them. Rollerball involves two teams of skaters. To up the brutality, each team also has two motorcycles. The teams chase a lethally heavy ball around the court. It’s an exercise in horrid brutality with bloody casualties a large part of the enjoyment.

The in-game scenes are well executed, and are furiously fast-paced for 1975, which for our jump-cut addled brains in 2010 feels slow and detached. But despite the pacing, they are still rousing and intense.

Apart from the sports scenes, Rollerball is an exploration of dystopia and the corrupt, cynical people who run it.

James Caan does an incredible job as the best rollerballer on the planet, portraying him with both tender sadness in his private life and as a raging menace on the field. It’s a captivating portrayal.

Rollerball is worth watching just for Caan’s performance, but add in the well-executed rollerball scenes, the thoughtful portrayal of dystopia and the weight of malaise and futility that permeates the movie and this one is a classic.

District 13: Ultimatum: Big, dumb, preposterous and fun action movie like Hollywood used to make in the ’80s. Lots of karate, lots of parkeur, lots of stuff blowing up.

If you can put your brain in pause and just go along with it, District 13: Ultimatum is a lot of fun.

The Brotherhood of the Wolf: French thriller taking place a few years before the revolution in which a monstrous beast is terrorizing a remote region.

It’s well made with intense action sequences and, since it’s French, some completely gratuitous boobies.

The Brotherhood of the Wolf clocks in at 2 hours and 24 minutes, which is way too long and leads to spacing issues. Parts of it drag severely. Cut down to about an hour and a half, this could be a taut, intense thriller.

Miracle: I’m not big on either sports or nationalism, but Miracle—telling the story of the 1980 US olympic hockey gold in Lake Placid—is a spectacular feel-good movie.

Watching coach Herb Brookes—portrayed splendidly by Kurt Russell although with a Minnesota accent that drifts in and out—get his ragtag team of athletes ready to compete with and ultimately beat the presumed-invincible Russian hockey machine is spellbinding.

Excellent pick-me-up movie.

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans: Wow, really? Werner Herzog, aka “I make crazy dark movies about the futility of the human condition” Werner remakes Bad Lieutenant, one of the most hardcore and depressing movies ever and the result is meh? What?

Nicolas Cage, despite the volume of abominable dreck he’s been starring in, is a fantastic actor, but he spends the entire movie channeling Christopher Walken. Which is weird, but not weird enough. In the original Bad Lieutenant Harvey Keitel is frightening and doomed, in this one Nicolas Cage is … well, goofy.

Herzog really phoned this one in.

Very disappointing. Watch the original Bad Lieutenant again instead.

Crazy Heart: I’m sorry, but I just can’t work up a lot of sympathy for a has-been country and western star. I thought being a drunken self-centered loser was part of the job description?

As he always does, Jeff Bridges puts in a stellar portrayal of a pathetic loser with dignity and gravitas, but it’s mind-numbingly boring to watch.

Although there may have been space combat scenes with robots and lasers toward the end of the movie. I wouldn’t know. I turned it off.

It’s probably just me, but this theme Hollywood keeps regurgitating about how you can be a self-centered shit your whole life and make everybody hate you, but as soon as a hot woman young enough to be your effing grand daughter for some reason decides to calms you down everything will be okay and your self-loathing will disappear seems like wish-fulfillment of the highest orders for the sociopathic scum at the top of the totem pole in Hollywood.

Sherlock Holmes: Fun high-energy movie that has more to do with the Bourne Identity than with Sherlock Holmes.

You like Bourne, you’ll like this, even though you’ll have to work pretty hard to get past the über-silliness of the plot.

Crimson Rivers: French thriller about a series of off-the-charts-grisly murders that lead to the discovery of a Dark Secret From the Past™.

Not the greatest thriller ever, and suffers from some overwrought camera work, but worth watching if nothing else for Jean Reno as the Grizzled Detective™ with bags under his eyes that need their own passports. Reno is the man.

And yes, the movie does explain what the title actually means.

Crimson Rivers 2: Angels of the Apocalypse: Stunningly bad sequel to Crimson Rivers. This may very well be one of the worst thrillers I’ve had the misfortune of seeing. Oh, dearie me.

Try not to laugh when the monks in robes start doing parkour. Really.

Jean Reno spends most of the movie looking acutely embarrassed, as well he should.

Up in the Air: This is the kind of movie that makes you think. George Clooney pays Ryan Bingham, a man whose job it is to travel across the country and lay people off. As you’d expect from a person who makes a living out of causing people pain, he is emotionally dead and has traded human connection for the service smiles of his endlessly traveling lifestyle, living in hotels and airports, unencumbered by human relationships.

So, he’s a narcissistic shitheel. But at the same time it’s hard to not see the attraction. Binghman is self-contained in his element, smug and untouchable as he goes through the motions of his pointless existence.

Up in the Air is a good movie in that it makes you think—it’s a breath of fresh air to get a completely different perspective on reality. But it’s also painful to watch. If you’ve ever been laid off, the firing scenes are near-unwatchable.

Still, Clooney and the rest of the cast do a pitch-perfect job and the movie is beautifully shot.

For myself, I’ve always loved airports and the sense of freedom and solitude they provide and can certainly see the attraction of Bingham’s lifestyle. Which is kind of difficult to admit since he is an emotional cripple.

Zombieland: Art House movie about the loneliness of the human condition, cleverly disguised as a shlock horror/comedy movie about life after the Zombie Apocalypse, filled with over-the-top action and painful one-liners.

Despite the grisly zombie-killing sequences, the plot is admirably focused and spare, and Zombieland moves to its conclusion with great economy.

It’s always nice to see movies that can be watched on different levels.

From Russia With Love: James Bond movie from 1963. That’s right. 1963.

It’s always great to watch good Bluray transfers from film, and this is an example.

From Russia With Love really hasn’t aged well, what with the entire world view shifting since it was released, but it’s well worth watching as long as you remember that the Bond movies always showcase the absolutely coolest tech and the coolest looks imaginable in an era. So the way people dress and talk was the penultimate of cool back in 1963.

Pinstripe suits, slim ties, and only street thugs and gypsies failed to shave daily and wear a natty hat.

Everybody smoked. Everywhere. All the time.

And the tech … oh, the tech! James Bond had a car phone in 1963! Can you even imagine how totally future it seemed in 1963 that you could talk on the phone in your car.

Darkness, despair, and futility on a stick.

To be honest, I didn’t really know what to make of The Road: It’s written in a style to make it more of a parable than a story. Things like us never finding out the man and boy’s names, never finding out what the apocalypse was, and McCarthy’s strange and to my mind pretentious quirk of leaving out the apostrophes from words like “wouldnt.” No idea what that was all about.

Unnecessary spelling issues aside, McCarthy’s prose is what makes The Road bearable. It’s sharp and honed, often poetic, rendering the story in a fugue state that accentuates the characters’ plight. Or perhaps one shouldn’t look at them as characters but as icons. Again, The Road feels like a parable. I’m really not sure what the parable is about, but if I had to make a guess, I’d say it’s about never losing faith in Deus Ex Machina.

Because I have a huge issue with the ending. This review is spoiler-free, but let’s just say McCarthy completely punked out. I put the book down really angry after I finished it. Like, kicked in the nuts angry.

Nevertheless, it’s a unique book, which all by itself makes it worth reading. And perhaps I’m over-sensitive to bad endings. It’s worth reading for the prose style alone.

Michael Lewis, author of Liar’s Poker and Moneyball tells the story of the subprime mortgage meltdown from the perspective of some of the very few traders who saw through the irrational exuberance of the housing market and actually did the work of figuring out how the Collateralized Debt Obligation machine worked and saw it for the Ponzi scheme it really was.

While the focus of the book is the personal experiences of the traders, The Big Short also does an able job of explaining some of the more baroque financial instruments created by Wall Street, instruments made purposefully as byzantine as possible in order to deceive both customers and ratings agencies. As one of the traders says after he finally gets to the bottom of how the system works, “How is this legal?”

The greed and stupidity displayed by the people whose very job it was to understand the financial instruments will make your blood boil.

The Big Short is a fast, easy read that will make you want to get on a flight to New York to go to Wall Street and stab people in the face.

Read it.

Obviously, soccer has had a hard time raising interest in the States, but now that the U.S. is participating and has a decent chance of making something of it, Americans who’ve never cared about the game before are giving it a go. Which is great. Soccer, when played at world-class levels, is a sublime sport.

But from the chatter I’m seeing and hearing, the most common complaint is that the games are too low-scoring.

0-0? 1-2? What the hell? This is boring.

And sure, there are few goals in soccer when great teams are playing—they don’t let themselves get scored on. Goals come about from defensive screw-ups. A tight defense means you don’t suffer a goal from the other team. You want to see goals aplenty? Subject yourself to watching bush-league soccer and you’ll get your plenty of goals. But the teams in the World Cup are far too good for that.

Obsessing over the number of goals is a misunderstanding of the game: goals are few and far between, but that doesn’t matter because what you’re doing is watching the game unfold. It’s all about watching the players react in real-time to fluid situations and making non-stop tactical decisions, including attempts at goal.

What you pay attention to are the situations on the pitch. Even in a low-scoring game, there are tons of situations to watch and be carried away by.

The goals are cherries on top.

It’s easy to see why Americans not used to soccer fail to understand this. If you look at the typical American sports, especially baseball and football, they have two things in common: constant stop-start with measurable results, and micro-management.

No, no, bear with me.

Look at baseball: Each pitch is as a mini game of its own with a clearly defined beginning and end. The pitcher is told how to pitch. The runners are told when to stay and when to run. For all their physical skill, they are pawns for the coach, executing his tactics. And you know when each mini-game is over, since the players go back to staring into space and scratching their balls and the TV switches over to a commercial. Baseball—oh yes, and football—is a background sport where you can talk to your friends and drink a beer and be alerted whenever something’s actually happening. You are not encouraged to pay attention to the whole game. Although from the baseball I’ve seen on TV, you sure are encouraged to drink a lot of crappy beers.¹

Compare to soccer, where the coach of course has a plan and has drilled his players in how he wants them to perform, but when it comes to the actual game, the players don’t execute plays, they execute strategy. The coach can do little but yell while the players are on the field. Which means they are infinitely more autonomous than baseball or football players. Their plays are their own, and above all, soccer is designed to let those plays unfold in the time they need.

So when you watch a high-caliber soccer game, if you sit with your nose in your beer² until you hear a whistle, you are missing the point of the game—which is what happens between goals during the play. Which is completely unpredictable. Which makes it compelling.

So if you want to watch a game where you can let your attention wander and know that you’ll be alerted whenever something happens that you should see, stick to baseball and football. If you want to watch a game where two teams fight it out on a pitch using only their wits and cunning, keep watching soccer.

Those were good times.

But now it exists as a device—a mundane, ordinary device that people actually use—so the premature ejaculators of the Internet have moved on to hyperventilate about other things.

So what’s the iPad like in actual usage?

Since the Internet does love teh fail, let’s start out with the area where it falls short.

Document management

This is a huge issue for the way alpha nerds use the iPad. I want to be able to bring a document on to the iPad, edit it and bring it back to a computer to put the finishing touches. At this point this is doable but so painful I just won’t do it.

My naïve thought was to use Google Docs for this, circumventing all the distasteful e-mailing of files, etc., but that dream is a ruined wreckage. The iPad can view Google Docs files, but can’t edit them (apart from spreadsheets, in a seriously suboptimal way). Sigh. There are third-party apps that will provide this functionality, but it leaves a bad taste to have to spend money on an application to provide functionality that should just be there.

Both Google and Apple are aware of the issue, and I expect it to be resolved when iPhone OS 4 lands. Not because I have any kind of inside knowledge, but because it would behoove both companies to get this resolved.

The lack of Google Docs editing—sorry to disappoint the fail brigade—is the only real pain point I have with the device at this point. The rest smells a lot like success. At least it does as long as you recognize the iPad for what it is: An information appliance. Technically, it’s a computer—screen, processor, RAM, keyboard, all that computer-y stuff; but functionally it’s an appliance. If you expect a device that will do what it says on the box, you’ll be happy. If you expect to h4x0r it to do all kinds of stuff Apple never intended, you’ll end up wallowing in bitterness and ranting about “not open.”

The iPad and the Web

At first I felt like the iPad is large enough you don’t need native apps—just use the web. But after you use the iPad for a while, you get so used to interacting with it by touching the screen that “normal” Web use becomes jarring.

As an example, Facebook works really well in the browser on the iPad, but let’s say you get a notification. Little red indicator, fine, click it, find out who did what, and then you have a popup menu open on the screen. Which is no problem—click somewhere else. Except clicking somewhere else doesn’t make the popup go away like it does in a native iPad app. That’s not how the Web site works.

So we are in a weird kind of pidgin zone when using Web apps on the iPad.

But in general, the “normal” Web works fantastically, and there’s little of the need for apps you have on the iPhone, where visiting a Web site is a last resort. Which isn’t to say apps aren’t nice, but they’re much less of a necessity than on the iPhone.

Oh, and Flash? I sure don’t miss it. Although it’s a bit of a deal breaker for my seven-year-old who spends her computer time doing nothing but playing Flash games. But she didn’t pay for the damn thing.

Saving the press

I have no idea in what feverish brain this harebrained idea that the iPad was going to (announcer voice) saaaaaave journaliiiiism first appeared, but I wish whoever it was would shut the hell up.¹

Yes, the iPad is an information appliance. Yes, it provides a very nice experience for watching videos and reading books and magazines. People are going to buy a bunch of books to read on their iPads and they’re going to buy movies. A lot of people will read newspaper and magazine websites. Will that saaaaaave journaliiiiism? Uhm, no.

Here’s a memo for the magazines that sell each month’s copy as an app that (hold on while I roll my eyes) costs more than purchasing the magazine: What are you smoking? Why the hell would anybody spend more on bits than they would on atoms?²

At the same time, kudos for trying. Action instead of talk is exactly what the industry needs. And who knows, I may be wrong.

There’ll be revenue dripping in from sales to iPad customers, sure, but will it save an industry hell-bent on its own destruction? Of course not.

You can’t create on an iPad

This is another meme that gives me a nose bleed. Of course you can create on an iPad. You can create with mud. Give me a freaking break.

What the people who get themselves all in a huff about the supposed anti-creativity of the iPad mean is that they can’t use the tools they’re used to on their computer when they’re on the iPad. Which is true. But getting all Byronic over how the iPad will turn you into an extra in Idiocracy is just offensively stupid.

For us old-timers, it’s scary to think that the iPad screen is physically slightly larger than the screen on the Mac Plus. I laid out books on my black-and-white Mac Classic with a 512-by-342 resolution back in the day, and the iPad has a larger screen, color, and is infinity-plus-one faster.

Oh, won’t somebody think of the children! Bite me.

Apple’s “draconian” control

There’s this idea going around that Apple’s gone mad, mad, I say, mad! with their “draconian” control of the software that goes on the iPhone OS. A heuristic here is that if anybody uses the word “draconian” non-ironically in an article about Apple you should stop reading that article and never darken the door of that website again. The author is either a clue bird or just trolling for page views.

Yes, Apple, and Apple alone, gets to decide what software goes on the iPad. That’s not a bug, it’s a feature. When you go to the App Store and download an app, you can be damn sure it’s going to work and do what it says on the tin. And the App Store means there’s one and only one place to get apps for the iPad and that’s the App Store. Which means that everybody can find the apps for the iPad and download them without difficulty. Do not underestimate the power of that. If you don’t understand why that’s such a big deal, find a grizzled nerd and ask her what it was like to find and install software on the PalmPilot. Really. Also ask around at the retirement home and find out how many PalmPilot owners installed any third-party software at all on their devices.

Which is not to say that there aren’t real issues with Apple’s approval process. Investing a lot of time in an application and then having it rejected from the App Store for some arbitrary reason is not exactly a great way to fly. So it’s certainly understandable if some developers don’t want to play by Apple’s rules. That’s their call. If a developer doesn’t want to deal with Apple, there are other smartphone platforms out there, and there’s also this thing called the Web. Build a website. Apple can’t keep you from doing whatever you want on the Web.

Life involves tradeoffs. Deal.

Coda

One side effect of spending a lot of time on the iPad is that when you go back to a “real” computer, the screen feels absolutely huge. Monstrous. Oh, the vast vistas! And hey! A mouse! Whoa!³

If you use the iPad for what it’s made for—an information appliance—it’s an amazing device. And yes, it’s the beginning of a whole new class of computer.

Do you need one? No! You need food, water, and shelter. But if you use an iPad you will definitely want one.

Seriously, I get that you need to ask for the sale, but there’s a difference between offering and preloading alternatives so every visit to a GoDaddy page means having to triple-check to make sure you don’t end up buying a freaking yacht.

And of course, I don’t want to support a company that treats me like a knuckledragger while it picks my pocket.

After some searching around for alternatives, I ended up following Gina Trapani’s lead and switched to NameCheap.

It took a while, since apparently the rules for switching name hosts were written back in the days when zeppelins ruled the skies. Can’t transfer a domain within 60 (yes! 60!) days of renewing it, and domains can’t be transferred if they’re within seven days of renewal.

The transfer itself takes about a week. Yes, about a week. Silly me, I thought there were, oh, what are they called? oh yes, computers involved in this process, but apparently not.

So patience is key. Patience and writing down all your current DNS settings at the current registrar so you can recreate them.

Oh, and NameCheap? Their website sure won’t win any design awards, but it’s functional and doesn’t try to sell you a yacht while it distracts you with boobs, so it’s all good.

Hamburgers on the grill

Today I grilled the perfect burger. Seriously. The best damn burger I ever ate.

In the process I proved two things: 1) Practice makes perfect; and 2) I’m a slow learner.

So how do you make a perfect burger? It’s actually really simple, but executing right takes some practice. If you’d like your next BBQ session to end up in something delicious instead of charcoal pucks, read on.

First, you need to buy good ground meat. 15% fat works well for grilling. If you can get ground sirloin, do it.

Right before you fire up the grill, make your patties. I recommend at least half a pound of ground meat per patty. Roll the meat into a ball, then squish it into a patty shape. The key here is to touch the meat as little as possible. You’re not at the prom with the meat—just make the shape, then leave it alone. Make the patties concave, that is, put a big indent in the middle. This is crucial. The indent means you won’t need to squash the burgers when you grill them, which would drain the juices. You want the juices. The juices are good.

Preheat the grill to hot, and then keep the burners on high when you grill. This will give the patties a nice crust.

Keep a close eye on the grill. You will get grease fires. Once that happens, move the meat away from the fire.

Put the patties on the grill and leave them for 10 minutes, then turn.

Check the patties again after about 5 minutes. If you like your meat pink it might be done by now. If not, turn it.

Wait another five and check again. If you want your burger well done, it should be done by now.

Where people go wrong is that they think they have to micromanage the grill. You don’t. You want the lid to be closed.

If there’s a lot of smoke, you probably have a grease fire. In that case, move the meat, then close the lid. Remember, a closed lid is a good lid.

So, police your grease fires, but apart from that, leave the patties alone and let the grill do its thing.

You do this, and you will have some seriously fantastic burgers.

Enjoy!

My way of introducing the method is to perform blind tests on grilled meats. It’s been a huge hit with my daughter—every time we get ready to cook on the weekend she asks if we’re doing another blind test. We’ve already explored if salt will tenderize meat. If you don’t want to click the link, the answer is nope. Negatory.

Today we moved on to test if lemon juice tenderizes meat. From what I’ve been told, lemon juice contains enzymes that break down the proteins in the meat, thus rendering it more tender. Which seems reasonable to me.

The process is simple: Buy two slabs of meat—in our case, flat iron steaks, since they make wicked good burrito fillings—subject one piece of the meat to marinating in lemon juice for an hour, and leave the other as a control. Then the meat is grilled and my wife and daughter perform a taste test.

In this case, they both picked the wrong meat. So for short runs, I’m calling lemon juice snake oil. It’s quite possible marinating in lemon juice overnight would yield different results, but you know, that would take much more planning than I’m willing to put into this.

So far we’ve performed two tests and both have been negative. I hope to find one that actually works for the next time.

Stay tuned to the next episode of BBQing with SCIENCE!.

Richard K. Morgan is best known for his Takeshi Kovacs novels where he melded the grit of noir with science fiction. The Steel Remains is his interpretation of classic fantasy—most of the fantasy tropes are there, including a dark prophecy, warring kingdoms, and magic. Morgan overlays the classic elements with thick layers of ultra-violence, cynicism, profanity, and graphic sex. Including, it should be pointed out, graphic gay sex. Very gay, very graphic.

The result is stunning. The Steel Remains successfully brings the fantasy genre into more fully realized—and above all gritty—territory. The plot is turbo-charged, the characters walking the fine line of being interesting while vacillating between being cynics and completely amoral, and the world Morgan has created exhibits a lived-in vastness with lots of room to grow.

In a lot of ways, The Steel Remains reminds me of Joe Abercrombie’s fantastic First Law Trilogy—the same grit, harshness, noir sensibilities, violence and sex. Although Morgan does go one step further by bringing in the hot man-on-man action.

Best of all, The Steel Remains is the beginning of a trilogy, so there’s plenty more goodness to come.

If you’re ready for a fantasy novel that’s a kick in the nuts, The Steel Remains is where it’s at.

Highly recommended.

You can read all Core Dump Richard K. Morgan reviews.