The Marble Jar Channel

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll share my slightly off the wall use of the AnyList app for remembering stuff when you are leaving the house for multiple activities.  If you'd watched some of my other videos, you might know that my ADHD brain has issues keeping more than 3 things in it at any one time -- otherwise known as working memory.  I'm a mom with active teenagers and this deficit is particularly annoying when we forget important things that they need for activities. I remember showing up to football practice once with Crocs and no cleats -- that didn't go over well with the coaches. And we have forgotten tennis racquets for clinics more times than I care to recall. I won't bore you with more examples, but believe me when I tell you there were MANY and I really needed a system to prevent it from continuing to happen.  The biggest problem was not when we have just one activity. My kids and I...

Hi, everyone! This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll share my thoughts on why I LOVE Twitter.   You may have already seen my video on why I quit Facebook.  That was many years ago.  But about a year ago, my husband started reading me funny things from his Twitter feed, so I decided to sign up and now I have a full-blown Twitter addiction.  It's bad enough that I have to have self-imposed rules about when I can look at Twitter, for how long, and what things I need to have accomplished before I indulge myself.   THE BASICS So, basically, I started by following a bunch of my favorite comedians.  Then I added a bunch of authors whom I respect and whose opinions I value.  From there, I basically decided that my favorite tweets were insightful commentary on current political news events and so I follow actors, directors, journalists, statisticians, activists, politicians, social media influencers, professors,...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll share some of my random thoughts on the minefield topic of PC Culture or political correctness.  Full disclosure -- I'm super liberal and not ashamed of it.  But please hear me out -- I know that there are always two sides to every issue.  Opinions around political correctness are complicated and problematic.  I know this because even some of my most liberal friends and family feel like it's gone way too far.   Definitions First, let's establish some definitions.  Here is the first definition that comes up in a Google search and it's a pretty good one. So, this is anything from terms perceived as derogatory like calling Italians Wops, to stereotypes about groups of people (even positive ones) like All Asians are good at math, to celebrations of events or people that are not important to OR actively offend folks, like Columbus Day or s...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll show you how I use Notability and Google Sheets for paperless packing lists. I'm always amazed at people who don't use packing lists.  I would forget at a minimum 10% of the stuff I needed to bring, which would be inconvenient in the extreme.  Even if I don't use a packing list to aid while packing, for shorter trips for example, I always use one as a check afterwards to make sure I remembered everything.   I know that there are a billion apps out there specifically designed to create packing lists -- and I've tried out a bunch of them.  But for whatever reason, I really prefer having all of my packing items on a single "piece of paper" and marking them off one by one.  I don't like having things organized by someone else's categories or the effort required to change those categories.  I want to be able to sort my list in a way that makes packing...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll share how I use Markup and Notability to fill out forms paperlessly.  This is hardly a revelation, it is so straightforward, but I stubbornly refuse to fill out paper forms anymore.  You get a form by email, print it out, fill it in by hand, and then what?  Scan it back in in order to email it?  No.  Instead, I use either iOS's built in Mark-up tool or Notability (which is my favorite handwriting integrated app).  I fill out forms and then email them back without touching a printer or a piece of paper.  If needed, of course you can choose to print them from Notability.   Markup Tool Just a quick note about when I use the built in Mark-up tool.  This is a new iOS tool for PDF and photo markup and is really coming along!  You can access it by either pressing on an attachment to get additional options and choosing Markup or by opening ...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll show you how I transfer my photos from my iPhone to my computer using iFunbox. This is part of a series of videos on organizing and accessing digital photos. I love many things about the iPhone and iPad, but one thing that makes me a little crazy is that in Apple's quest for ease and simplification, they have taken away a lot of the control that you have as a user.  One particular pet peeve of mine is that you don't have direct access to the file structure of your iPhone.   The reason I originally discovered the free iFunBox program is that I had a bunch of phantom photos on my iPhone. In other words, my phone said that I had 3GB of photos even after I had cleaned off the phone and only had about 10 photos showing in my Camera Roll.  I downloaded iFunBox on my PC and hooked up my phone to get access to my iPhone's full file structure and was able to find and delete al...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll share a couple of systems that I use to find things in my house!  This is part of a series on my ADHD brain and all of the systems I use to compensate for a lack of internal structure and organization.   In almost every household, there is one "finder."  Something is lost?  Call in the Finder.  From my extremely informal polling, I've found that the Finder tends to be the woman of the house, but that is not true in mine!  My husband is definitely the Finder. He is frequently tasked with finding shoes, tennis racquets, mobile devices, stuff in the fridge and in one embarrassing incident, the keys that I was searching high and low for -- sneakily located in my right hand.   When I started staying at home with the kids over a decade ago, I found myself calling him multiple times a day to ask where things were.  I quickly found that to be an unsust...