• Google Trends Reveals People's Predictability - The correlation between searches on "rain" and "depression" is fascinating.
• apophenia: algorithms for dumb security questions - Great idea for creating a reusable "security question" pattern. (cf. previously here) [via anarchaia]
• David Allen Company :: GTD Gear :: *New* The GTD® Tickler File - Pretty pricey, if you're asking me, but a quick way to get started with your own 43 folders (and they do look well-constructed). [via]
• I need examples of things and secrets only a very in the know sort of person would know about - Wonderful ideas for "stuff normal people won't know." And, yes: Grenyarnia is much more exclusive than Svenborgia. Psh. Can't believe you didn't know that.
• An Entirely Other Day - Utterly Failing to Get Things Done - Greg Knauss should totally write something for 43 Folders. Am I wrong? Am I?
• Everything I Know About Presentations, I Learned in Theatre School - Terrific post that gets you thinking at a much higher level than your more quotidian "Try not to say 'um.'" tips. Highly recommended.
• Quantification Table for Site Owner - Leslie Harpold's fun personal Harper's Index makes me melancholy to see her again. Sure do miss her.

• My paperless office - O’Reilly Mac DevCenter Blog - “I’ve been using DevonThink Pro Office to catalog and manage the PDFs that the SnapScan creates. So far, I’ve got about 1,000 documents spread between three DevonThink databases.” Cf.: Ryan's post from earlier this week.
• Basement.org: Enough With The Lists - “And speaking of lists, I’ve grown to hate the list-ification of information. ‘10 Things That…’ or ‘20 Reasons Why….’” I struggle to articulate how much more I loathe this genre of “writing” each day. Like lazy babysitters feeding pork rinds to fat kids. [via Chris Glass]
• Researchers: Ron Paul campaign e-mails originating from spambots - Paul’s people say they aren’t involved. But, to quote the Dude, “It’s like what Lenin said… you look for the person who will benefit, and, uh, uh…” Too bad spambots can't vote. Yet.
• Wired editor bans PR flacks - Boing Boing - I’m struck by the absurd antics people have to resort to in order to get these loathsome choads out of their inbox. To willfully, and by deliberate human means, continue to manually provoke people who have begged not to be provoked? That shit should be actionable in court. End of story.
• Brilliant recurring calendar events? | Ask MetaFilter - Great discussion of the kind of events you’d want to be reminded of periodically. Along the lines of the time change/smoke alarm heuristic.
• Jonathan Coulton - Thing a Week 46 - You Ruined Everything- “I compare the process [of becoming a parent] to becoming a vampire, your old self dies in a sad and painful way, but then you come out the other side with immortality, super strength and a taste for human blood. At least that’s how it was for me.”

The Outsourced Brain

NYT's David Brooks on outsourcing memory, reference, and decision-making to things that theoretically do it better:

I have relinquished control over my decisions to the universal mind. I have fused with the knowledge of the cybersphere, and entered the bliss of a higher metaphysic. As John Steinbeck nearly wrote, a fella ain’t got a mind of his own, just a little piece of the big mind — one mind that belongs to everybody. Then it don’t matter, Ma. I’ll be everywhere, around in the dark. Wherever there is a network, I’ll be there. Wherever there’s a TiVo machine making a sitcom recommendation based on past preferences, I’ll be there. Wherever there’s a Times reader selecting articles based on the most e-mailed list, I’ll be there.

And, ironically enough, if you didn't catch the Grapes of Wrath reference, it's easy enough to find it. Because, if you're like me, sometimes you also outsource your pop culture knowledge to Google, Wikipedia, and IMDB.

• AppleInsider | Road to Mac OS X Leopard: System Preferences - Entertaining and nostalgic walk through the Mac's iterations on the [Control Panel](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_panel_(Mac_OS). I vividly recall sitting in the Science building at New College in 1987, staring at the 9-inch black and white screen of a Fat Mac, and thinking: "These little drawings have got to be coolest thing I've ever seen." God bless Susan Kare.
• How-to: Proper Gmail IMAP for iPhone & Apple Mail - Metric buttload of great tips for using Gmail IMAP with your iPhone. Nicely done. [via Lifehacker]
• Tasks bundle for TextMate - Henrik's TextMate bundle will surely be of interest to folks using TaskPaper.
• dotfiles.org - "community for sharing dotfiles like .bashrc, .vimrc, and .bash_profile" Handy if you're getting started with the terminal and want to trick out your profile. Get a great bash .profile and half the work is done for you. [via torrez]
• No Slippage! - Sean Bonner adds skateboard grip tape to his too-slick iPhone. So smart. I've been meaning to try this with the edges and corners of my MacBook Pro for months. Just ordered this guy to take a crack at it.
• My evenings are a waste of time. | Ask MetaFilter - "So, bottom line, what can I do (and what do you do?) to be as productive, motivated, and energetic during the evening hours as I am during the day?"
• Cool Tool: AlphaSmart Word Processor - Paul Ford has talked about the distraction-resistant AlphaSmart Neo here before. Very tempting little chunk of func.
• jwz - PSA: backups - "'OMG, three drives is so expensive! That sounds like a hassle!' Shut up. I know things. You will listen to me. Do it anyway." Possibly the simplest and most do-able approach to brain-dead backup I've seen. Recommended. [via Nelson]
• Food: Monitor Food Expiration Dates with Best When Used By - It would appear there is a web application that will help you track when your food is about to go bad. And here's a blog post that someone wrote about it. See, back in the coal-smudged, Dickensian second world of Web 1.0, you would have to monitor this kind of stuff yourself -- or you could hire someone like Bobby Hill. Alas, technology marches on, and I, for one, will not stand in its way. (Because I actually have some Bulgarian Rails developers building a web app that will stand in the way of things for me. Right now, it's in a private beta after closing a lucrative angel round.)

Hog Bay Software's TaskPaper was recently released in a completed 1.0 version (previously), and if you're the sort of person who casts about for a simple way to manage projects and tasks from a Mac, this just may be your app.

But, even more significantly, if you're not looking for a simple action management system -- if you're that particularly pathetic sort of character who's convinced that features like tagging, syncing, collaboration, graph paper generation, and the introduction of an onboard artisanal breadmaker are all that stands between you and getting your stuff done -- well, you may need TaskPaper more than anybody. Because, friends, TaskPaper is just about fiddle-proof, and, frankly, I know a lot of people who could benefit from that today.

Here's what a simple document looks like in TaskPaper: