Task Management Tools
I am more than willing to admit it; I am horrible at managing tasks on my own. Some people are able to remember what they need to do and where they need to be all on their own. I am not one of those people. I depend on technology to be my memory. It all started so innocently back in college. I needed a reminder of when my classes were and what assignments I had due. So, I purchased a Handspring running PalmOS. I was able to keep track of my calendar, my tasks, and my contacts; everything that you would expect a PDA to do. Life was good.
Then, I started to notice that my cell phone and my PDA were bulky. I hated to carry both of them together. Plus, my address book on the PDA was always getting out of sync with the address book on the phone. I thought, "You know, if they would just put a cell phone and a PDA together, life would be good again." And lo, I discovered the Palm Treo. It was very expensive, so I just made due with what I had and gradually the PDA got less and less use until I had been working for a few years and could afford to get a Palm Treo. Now, I had my calendar, my tasks, and my contacts all together AND I could make phone calls with the same device using the same address book that I synced to my computer! Life was good again.
Then, I started to notice that my Treo and my iPod were bulky. I hated to carry both of them together. I needed the life-line that was the Treo, but I really got used to listening to music while I worked. So, I thought, "You know, if Apple would just put a cell phone, PDA, and iPod together, life would be good again." And lo, Apple did just that and released the iPhone. It was very expensive, so I made due with what I had. Finally, Apple came out with a version that had a lower up-front cost, so I jumped on that and purchased an iPhone 3G. Now, I had my calendar, my tasks, my contacts, my music, my email, the Internet, AND I could make phone calls with the same device. Life was good again.
Then, I started to notice that I had lost the ability to easily track my tasks using the iPhone. It took too long to interrupt my train of thought to pull out the iPhone and enter in appointments and tasks using the iPhone interface. Ideally, I really wanted to be able to just capture information quickly and come back and enter it in at my leisure. So, I signed up for Evernote and installed its iPhone application. Plus, Evernote also has Windows and Mac clients which make it even easier to stash information.
Finally, I became dis-enlightened with the iPhone task-tracking application that I was using. Once again, it just took too long to enter information into it. I could purchase an expensive Mac client that would wirelessly sync with it, but the keyword here is expensive. So, I decided to give Tasks a try. It has some warts, but it is the best solution that I have used so far. Plus, it is a web application, so I can enter information into it from my desktop, my laptop, or my iPhone.
Next time, I will go over my work-flow and explain just how all of these tools work for me.
Learning versus Doing
I like to learn. At any given time, I am generally juggling 3–4 books at once. Most of those 3–4 books are typically non-fiction of some form or another. A lot of those non-fiction books are computer science related, but not all of them. A quick glance at last year's reading list shows books on writing, management, a couple of biographies, networking and presenting, personal finance, and small business. This year's reading list is shaping up much the same. What these lists do not show are all of the books on my to-read pile. I have math books (mainly modern algebra and category theory), biology books (well, mostly things by Richard Dawkins, although The Origin of Species is on there as well), and several histories and biographies (mostly U.S. history and presidents). I like to learn a little bit about a large variety of topics.
My interests are not focused at all. While I am obsessed with computer science and engineering, I have never been able to focus. I flit from topic to topic; one day I am intensely studying the Cray-1, a super-computer from the late 70's, with every intention of writing an emulator for the architecture (yes, just for fun). The next day, I am just as likely to be reading about Database Systems
Case in point: I spent a great deal of time between Thanksgiving and Christmas of last year reading about Ruby on Rails. I had some ideas for a web application that I wanted to write — a project and task tracking application to replace a crufty spreadsheet that I wrote and maintain at work. So, I read a lot, worked on a couple of sample applications in Rails, and have not gotten back to actually working on my project. Well, that is not entirely true. While I have not been actively writing code for the applications, I have been giving it lots of thought and trying to work out what would be the best way to approach it. For all the thought I have put in to it, though, I am still not doing it. Granted, I am doing a lot of other things. I spend a fair amount of time reading, running a Dungeons and Dragons game, watching a bit of TV, just not working on the project that I thought was important to me.
When I finished The Creative Habit
You Can Help
Help save our oceans that is.
One of the biology blogs I follow is trying to get people signed up to help save the deep sea environment. I've already signed up and I'm hoping maybe a few of you would be interested as well. Here is the link to follow to see if you are interested. So far, it's been easy to do.
All You Have To Do Is Just One
Also, next year is the bicentenary of the birth of Charles Darwin. To celebrate, a sailing replica of the HMS Beagle will be launched. There is a site to donate and a blog to follow if you are interested. There is even a store, where t-shirt purchases include a $10 donation to the building funds. I think it's pretty cool and will end up with a t-shirt myself eventually.
Take a look and help us celebrate!
The Force is strong with this one
So, when Ashley broached the idea of a Halloween costume for Emily, I was a little hesitant. My thoughts were, "She is so young, she will not remember anything we put her in, so why bother?" My next thought was, "She is so young, she will not remember anything we put her in. This is the perfect opportunity to dress her in something embarrassingly cute!" So, without further ado, I present our daughter, Yoda.
I mean, really, how often do you get to dress your daughter up as an 800 year old little green man?
TiVoFlix: Media Nirvana
With the arrival of the new TiVo HD, I began investigating all of the features that I missed out on while only having a Series1 TiVo. That search led me to check out Amazon Unbox, a feature added to TiVo in early 2007 that allows you to rent or buy movies from Amazon and have them downloaded directly to your TiVo. My first thought was "Where do I sign up?" After doing a little more digging, I found out that each movie rental is $3.99. Each rental movie can only stay on the TiVo for 30 days. Once you start the movie, you have 24 hours to finish it before it expires. Personally, I think that this is a horrible model and that TiVo could do better.