Starting July 1, and every day for a year, I will get rid of something. I will donate, discard, re-gift or recycle some bit of debris accumulating in my house. Anything non-perishable considered, exempting books and music.

My climbing partner TJ and I hatched this last week on an (overly encumbered) hike to Alamere falls in Marin. It’s one aspect of a larger goal to apply the philosophy of minimalist alpinism to everyday life: light, fast, with minimal protection—your wits, your experience and the strength of your companions.

Backdated to July 1, the first thirteen: two pair headphones, one Maglite, one pair Pumas. Two pillows, one remote-control wand, a coffee thermos and a padlock. A retired pair of glasses, one cable modem and one rain jacket.

July 1, 2011 is the summit. Or maybe base camp.

Update: Follow #less365 on Twitter (thanks Tim and Caterina!)

For two weeks I’ve eaten a vegan diet. It was an experiment to see if this card-carrying bacon abuser could dine & be happy. Ten years ago, this would have been unlikely, if impossible. Certainly living next to Whole Foods and a few blocks from Gracias Madre has contributed.

This continues to be an interesting challenge.

First big smile of the new year, via Elliot Clowes:

1951

2009

Update

As of iOS 4.2, Apple Mail has native support for archive in Gmail and MobileMe.

The Problem

Like many folks, I consume email using a GTD-ish approach of an Inbox and an Everything Else box. I’ve disabled autocheck on my Mac, and cranked the polling time on my iPhone to an hour.

My personal email is hosted on Google Apps, which provides the great Gmail web experience along with an excellent IMAP implementation. Likewise for my previous and current company mail. The Gmail Inbox / All Mail paradigm maps neatly to the aforementioned GTD approach.

On the desktop, I use Mail.app. I prefer it over the Gmail interface for a number of reasons including offline search and its ability to aggregate a number of accounts with the “magic” folders Inbox, Sent and Junk.

One place where Gmail’s interface punks Apple Mail is one-button archiving. It even has a keyboard shortcut! Wham. Hit one key, and that email disappears from the Inbox forever.

With Apple Mail, archiving a message requires a click, drag and a prayer, exacerbated by every additional email account. You could drive a truck through the hole Fitts left in your otherwise optimized process.

The Solution: Archive via Delete

It’s possible to bend Gmail, IMAP and Apple Mail to your will. The following steps describe how to configure things so that Delete acts like Archive: one click (or keypress) archives messages in Apple mail on the desktop and the iPhone.

Step 1. Enable advanced IMAP controls. You’ll find this under the Labs tab in Gmail settings.

Step 2. Enable auto-expunge. This is found under the IMAP/Pop tab in Gmail settings. This sounds scary, but isn’t. Gmail keeps a copy of each message in All Mail, regardless if it’s in the Inbox or not.

Step 3. Configure Apple Mail. Uncheck “Move deleted messages to The Trash mailbox” and set the IMAP prefix to “[Gmail]”.

Step 4. Use “All Mail” for sent messages. Since Gmail already stores every message, sent or received in All Mail, this step just instructs Apple Mail to work that way too. If you have multiple accounts, Sent is aggregated just like Inbox.

Step 5. Configure your iPhone.

Presto! Faster email consumption.

In Apple mail you’ll see something like this:

On an iPhone, the Delete icon will remove messages from the Inbox, but leave them in All Mail. Note: Be careful not to tap Delete when viewing messages in All Mail—they’ll be permanently deleted!

TL;DR

• Use Gmail, IMAP, and Apple Mail tricks to read & process email faster.
• Uses fun terms like “auto expunge” and training yourself that hitting Delete is okay.
• Vader.

Postscript

I’ve been using this to manage my email for 2 years. It works great, is fast, and frankly hitting Delete when I’m done with an email is really satisfying.

Had a chance to see Roxy Paine’s Maelstrom on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art earlier this month:

C, like an AK-47: when you absolutely, positively gotta kill every last CPU cycle in the room. Slides from Felix von Leitner’s talk on C and compiler optimizations (PDF).

(via Hacker News)

Hiking with Lily, Matt, Mike and Susan through the Alakai Wilderness, the highest swamp in the world.

Google addresses an incredibly complex task with scale and grace:

(via googleblog.blogspot.com)