1000umbrellas.com
Hi, I'm Michael Descy, and this is my personal web site. As such, it is a showcase of my work, primarily my writing and programming.
This Site's Content
Writing
1000umbrellas.com is mostly a showcase for my creative writing. I have posted short stories, essays, and plays, all worth reading. The story to start with is Practice.
Music
In high school and college I spent a lot of time playing guitar and bass, writing songs, and playing in bands. My high school band was called Moondog, and we recorded some of our original songs, which are presented here.
Coding
Programming in Swift, C#, and Objective C is a hobby of mine. I specialize in writing text-based to-do apps for various platforms.
About Me
A short bio and copholon.
My Other Projects
SwiftoDo Desktop
SwiftoDo Desktop is the official App Store version of TodoTxtMac (see below), which is the best native todo.txt client on the platform. This application currently tracks TodoTxtMac, but adds sandboxing and is App Store-signed, so it plays nice with Gatekeeper. It is available via the Mac App Store.
TodoTxtMac
TodoTxtMac is a minimalist, keyboard-driven to-do app for Mac OS X that I wrote in Objective C/Cocoa. It conforms to the todo.txt format spec, and is an open source project hosted on GitHub.
Plaintext Productivity
Plaintext Productivity is my guide to simple workplace productivity for knowledge workers.
Plaintext Productivity contains numerous articles and tutorials that show you a smart way to set up your Windows computer for fast and simple task management, writing, and file organization. As the title suggests, there is a focus on using plaintext files whenever possible as a simple, universal format that will never lock you in to a single vendor or software stack.
I recommend some great software, show how to set it up, and suggest a few simple habits to help you prioritize and focus better on your work.
Todotxt.net
I am proud to be a contributing developer to Todotxt.net, which is my favorite to-do list app on Windows. It is an open source project led by Ben R. Hughes. I have contributed many patches to add features and fix bugs, and am now the #2 contributor to the project.
TodoTxtWin
I created a .NET library for working with todo.txt-format tasks, task lists, and files. It is a highly-optimized library with dozens and dozens of unit tests. It is hosted on GitHub and is BSD licensed.
Bliss FreeBSD Init Script
I wrote installation instructions and an init (rc.d) script for running the Bliss music library management software on FreeBSD and FreeNAS. It is hosted on GitHub and is CC0 licensed.