Mike Vardy

A Brief Review: My 11-inch MacBook Air

I’ve had my MacBook Air for several months now – and while others have had their hands at offering a review, I think it’s time that I threw my two cents in. My 11” MacBook Air  is the best computer I’ve ever owned. And here’s why… The Great This machine is the ultimate portable powerhouse. […]

Anne

I usually reserve this sort of thing for status updates on Facebook, but based on what Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg talked about last week at the IGNITION Conference in New York1, I felt that it was appropriate to put my thoughts here in a much longer form. Anne is my wife, and she is simply

Blah, Blah, Blog

The word “blog” has become a thorn in the side of many of us who write online, and it boils down to one big reason: Devaluation. The term “blog” devalues the craft of writing – at least it does now. That’s because content farms hire “bloggers” to write stuff for them at a pittance of

The Productive Macs Bundle Returns

Today marks the return of Apparent Software’s productivity app package known as the Productive Macs bundle — and this year’s included apps are pretty darn stellar. And you can save 85% by buying them in the bundle — they’re usually $264 separately. Productive Macs is offering them all for just $39.99. Included in the 8 app bundle

My Year-End Online Home Renovation

So after many, many years of trying, I managed to finally acquire my very own “dot-com”. As in, MikeVardy.com. I was kind of caught off guard when I found out that it had become available; the person who had it before had it for what seemed like forever. I put it to Google+ as to

Path: The App First Opened

This comes from Mike Gowen, who has taken part in answering a question on Quora about the reason Path added sleeping1 as one of its five moment types: “It also has an interesting (and possibly unintended) side effect, in that it positions itself as the first app you are compelled to open when you wake

Review: Pilot Hi-Tec-C Pen

After proudly displaying my setup a while back, I wound up striking up an online conversation with Brad over at JetPens. Seeing that I’m a bit of a pen/pencil/paper junkie, he sent me some stuff to play with.1 The second item I’m going to offer up for review is the Pilot Hi-Tec-C gel ink pen I

The Journey to Markdown: On the Workflow

In this, the penultimate post in my Journey to Markdown series, I’m going to get into how Markdown integrated with my writing workflow, and how I use the apps I’ve mentioned as part of my writing workflow now that Markdown is a part of it. My Mac Workflow I’m writing this piece in Byword, which

Movember: Day Thirty

So…it’s done. I shaved off my mo’ and won’t be growing another one. I’m glad I pitched in to help fight prostate cancer this time around by putting my upper lip on the block, but next time I’ll be doing the donating. I’m not a fan of me in a moustache — and neither is