512 Pixels

I’m a couple of weeks into indie life and things are going pretty well. It may be a side effect of having done most of my work on the side for so long, but I haven’t hit any real surprises yet.

Sure, there’s stress about workspace and finding the right balance between work and home life, but except for being late for a phone call today, nothing’s really come off the rails.

I’ve been interested in where my time goes, so starting last week, I have been tracking it with an iOS app called Hours.

Hours can be incredibly fine-grained for billable hours, but I’m using it to track my time in big buckets. I’m less interested in how much time any one individual task takes me as I am in where chunks of time go. I ran an export of my hours last week and the results can be seen here:

My work falls into four main buckets: Relay FM, this website, consulting and freelance writing. For those bad at math, I exactly clocked 38 work hours from Monday, August 10 to Saturday, August 15.

There are no real surprises in this chart to me. The hours break down about how I felt they would break down, with Relay FM taking up about half my time and everything else going down from there. I suspect that consulting number will shrink as I wrap up some stuff for my former employer, but for now, I think this balance works. It’s a decent reflection of where my income is, which is encouraging. If I was spending 50% of my time for 15% of my income, I’d be worried, but so far, so good.

Michael Bierut:

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration Design Program is a modernist vision for an optimistic future. The logo (often referred to as the “worm”) evokes qualities of unity, technical precision, scientific capabilities and uniqueness. Reduced to its simplest form; the one width, continuous-stroke letters are as contemporary today as when the logo was first introduced by Richard Danne (Design Director) and Bruce Blackburn (Designer) at Danne & Blackburn, New York, NY) more than 37 years ago. How then, in 1992, after 19 years, did such an emblematic design program for a future-oriented Federal Agency be dropped for it’s previous (now current) Insignia (the “meatball”)? What follows is a heartfelt personal account from Mr. Danne on the obstacles and achievements of one of the century’s most important and widely published design programs.

This is a fascinating read, whether not you’re into space stuff or not.

In addition to Liftoff, we’re also announcing Top Four, a podcast hosted by Tiffany and Marco Arment in which they basically rank things like movies, TV shows, games and more. It’s a ton of fun to hear.

Over the past six months or so, I’ve been writing, talking and thinking a lot more about space and how we get there.

That’s led — somewhat inevitably — to a new podcast on Relay FM. We’ve named it Liftoff.

Here’s the fancy description my cohost Jason Snell came up with:

Liftoff is a fortnightly podcast about space, the universe, and everything. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to understand the latest developments as explained by enthusiastic space fans Stephen Hackett and Jason Snell.

Jason’s a huge space nerd, and it’s been a ton of fun working with him on this project. As the description says, we’ll be keeping things casual on the science end. We believe these topics should be approachable by anyone.

Episode 1 is out today, and we’ll be publishing every other week. Go subscribe to hear us talk about space lettuce (!) and the Curiosity rover on Mars.

I owe a huge thanks to our talented and mysterious designer for the Liftoff art. All I said was “it should look like a mission patch,” and I think it’s my new favorite art on the network.

Magic Number is the calculator for the rest of us. Unlike other calculators, it lets you do math naturally.

You can see math as math. Typing is completely ‘what you think is what you type’. Editing is delightfully simple. Everything clicks. Magic Number is all about making calculations easier and enjoyable.

No wonder The Loop calls it a fantastic calculator for OS X.

And you can do more. You can zip through tax and time. Help your kid with fractions and algebra. Sail through statistics and complex numbers. Nothing gets in your way. You feel empowered.

Here’s the best part: Magic Number is 50% off until the end of August. That’s $5 instead of 10.

Don’t miss out. Treat yourself with Magic Number.

Mark Harris at The Guardian:

Apple is building a self-driving car in Silicon Valley, and is scouting for secure locations in the San Francisco Bay area to test it, the Guardian has learned. Documents show the oft-rumoured Apple car project appears to be further along than many suspected.

In May, engineers from Apple’s secretive Special Project group met with officials from GoMentum Station, a 2,100-acre former naval base near San Francisco that is being turned into a high-security testing ground for autonomous vehicles.

In correspondence obtained by the Guardian under a public records act request, Apple engineer Frank Fearon wrote: “We would … like to get an understanding of timing and availability for the space, and how we would need to coordinate around other parties who would be using [it].”

Apple declined to comment.

Apple’s car project — dubbed Project Titan — has been in the news already this year, with reports of Apple poaching employees from Tesla and other companies.

This article definitely adds fuel to that fire (sorry), and seems to confirm that at least part of the project involves self-driving cars, as this facility specializes in such testing.

My feelings on this are still rather conflicted. While its hard to reconcile why Apple would be doing this, I know objectively that a company as big as Apple always has to be looking into the future, beyond its current scope. I’m sure that my conflicted feelings are in line with how people felt when their favorite computer company started making music players 15 years ago.

Joseph Keller:

Apple has introduced a new feature for iCloud on the web that allows you to restore deleted items. Not only can you recover files that you’ve deleted, but also restore contacts, calendars, and reminders. This new feature also shows you how long it will be until those items are permanently deleted if you choose not to restore them.

This is a huge addition to iCloud. While this still doesn’t seem as robust as Dropbox’s versioning system, it’s nice to know what I do keep in iCloud has an extra layer of protection.

Apple:

You can use Boot Camp to install Windows 10 on supported Mac models that have OS X Yosemite installed.

Finally.

Mitchel Broussard at MacRumors:

Apple yesterday began contacting some customers who recently purchased third-generation Apple TVs, informing them that their devices had shipped with an unspecified faulty part and offering an exchange for a brand-new unit shipped from the company.

As Broussard points out, this is a highly irregular way for the company to be dealing with this, leading many to believe (myself included) that this affects a very small number of units.

This week on Connected:

This week, Federico returns to discuss Force Touch on the iPhone with Stephen and Myke, then the trio discuss the upcoming iOS 9 review on MacStories.

My thanks to our sponsors this week:

• Fracture: Photos printed in vivid color directly on glass. Use code ‘CONNECTED’ to get 15% off.
• Hover: Simplified Domain Management. Use code ‘SUMMERTIME’ for 10% off your first purchase.
• Squarespace: Build it Beautiful. Use code WORLD for 10% off.

Next Tuesday at 1:15 PM Eastern, Myke and I will be taking questions on the live stream to celebrate the first anniversary of the network. You can submit questions on Twitter using #RelayQA and come hang out in the IRC with us.

When the inevitable happens:

If your Newton freezes or “hangs,” take your stylus and press the Reset button in the battery compartment on the back of your Newton. This should allow you to restart your Newton.

Today, astronauts on the International Space Station sampled space-grown lettuce:

The red lettuce eaten Monday – accompanied by a dash of vinaigrette dressing – was grown in a specialized canister aboard the International Space Station during recent weeks and had sprouted from seeds that were glued into place on Earth. Astronauts placed the seeds and their pouches in a system that provided the water and light needed to make the plants grow. Half of the landmark crop was eaten while the other half will be returned to researchers at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for closer study.

While at NASA this summer, I got an up-close look at a duplicate of the rig used to grow these space veggies. While this may not seem like the most exciting science experiment, growing food in space will be critical on manned missions to Mars.