Entries in the GTD / Lifehacks category:
Pilot Precise V5 - my weapon of choice
Friday, November 02, 2007
For a technologically-involved person, I spend a lot of time interested in analogue devices. Like pens and paper. This week, one of my trusty Pilot V5
I buy these pens in boxes of twelve, for fear they’ll stop making them. They’re reliable (they work perfectly up until the point when they meet their maker), smooth and very fine - allowing you to write neat tiny lines quickly.
At any one time probably four or five are divided between home, the office and my bag, so I’m never too far from one. When I left Dublin, my generous employer gave me a very nice Montblanc fountain pen, but that’s sitting in my pen mug at home because it doesn’t cover the paper so smoothly and precisely.
iPhone? No thanks
Sunday, July 01, 2007
it might seem an unlikely thing for a devoted Apple fan like myself to say, but I really don’t want an iPhone. I’d take any number of products from Cupertino with no bother, but there are 2 main reasons I’m holding off indefinitely on the phone, cute and all as it is, and as impressive as the touch-based UI seems to be.
I don’t need one
This is the boring but true reason - I carry my laptop with me most of the time, when I’m largely at the office (within striking distance of several wi-fi enabled cafes if I want to wander), or at home. I don’t have a long commute, I don’t travel on business (except riding my bike to visit clients), and I often carry a real camera with me in addition to the computer.
What’s a GTD boy to do?
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
So I need a new GTD solution. Christmas came a day or two early, with the arrival of my shiny new 15” MacBook Pro (a refurb bargain that cost me only slightly more than the black MacBook I was looking at). This simplifies my life greatly (as well as looking very nice on my desk), as before I had a Mac Mini G4 at work, and an old first-gen Titanium Powerbook at home (where I probably do about a third of my work).
Now I can just carry the MBP back and forth and have all the files (and processing speed) I need, wherever I happen to be. But it creates a GTD problem for me (especially with this being the New Year, and I’m all keen on setting up good working practices for 2007).
New life for old SLRs
Monday, September 18, 2006
The move to digital SLR cameras is gaining pace, as prices drop and enthusiasts look to improve on the sturdy but not spectacular results they're getting from their point-and-shoot digitals. But this is also good news for people still shooting film.
Joining the Fon Movimiento
Thursday, September 14, 2006
While many cities across the US and elsewhere are grappling with the free wi-fi for everyone issue (and telcos and cable companies giving out stink about it), one company has an alternative plan - call it citizen-powered wi-fi.
Spanish-based Fon, with some big-money backing from Google, Skype and others, offer the firmware and/or hardware to let you safely share out some of your broadband access. Fellow Foneros (who are sharing their broadband at home) get to log in to your access for free, while others (aliens) can pay. You can choose to get free access wherever you roam (being a Linus - after Torvalds), or you can get a cut of the money from people logging on through your router (being a Bill - after Gates). With 87000 Foneros around the world, that might be very handy.
Two screens good
Friday, August 25, 2006
I’d read all the stuff about efficiency being improved by having more screen real-estate, but I wasn’t sure I believed it.
For some things (like graphic design) I could see the benefit - arrange your palettes and toolbars as you like, having a scratch pile of raw images or sketches off to one side, and then the main area you’re working in - less scrolling, less window shuffling.
But for other things, like article writing, I figured too much stuff going on would be a distraction. You just want to focus on one thing, right?
But I took the plunge and gerry-built a 2-screen solution for my Mac Mini using the unfortunately-titled Dual Head2Go.
Blinksale and Tick - Web 2.0 and the small business
Friday, August 04, 2006
There’s been lots of talk about Web 2.0 - an amorphous collection of ideas and functionality that is supposed to change the way the world works (and make VC firms lots of money again). It’s mash-ups, ruby on rails, AJAX, 37 Signals’ quick and dirty approach to development, and sites like Flickr and YouTube.
That’s all great, but I want to look at some practical examples of sites that do real things that work. Close to my heart (and my bank balance, as a small business owner), is anything that helps me do the admin stuff I can’t pay anyone to do.
Blinksale - because getting paid is good
Basecamp handles the project management side of things admirably - and the added Chat feature could be useful (but I’ve not tried it yet, because I’m too busy Skyping everyone - particularly the folks in Dublin I work with regularly).
But two more recent additions to my armoury (bearing more than a few similarities with Basecamp) are also helping out. They each do one thing, and do it well at a reasonable price (nothing, in my case). Blinksale handles my invoicing elegantly and flexibly - making it quick to create, send and manage the happy documents. It handles Euros and Sterling effortlessly (for my Euro clients), and sends nice thankyou notes when the money comes in.
Current affairs lifehack - ‘The Week’
Sunday, April 23, 2006
I’m the father of a 10-month old charmer, and I divide my time between running a business and looking after her, and time is unsurprisingly at a premium for me. So it’s not a shock that it’s time off that suffers - time to read the papers or hang out with a good book, or a good TV show.
The DVR has helped in this, making sure when we slump down on the couch for an hour, there’s always something we want to watch available. My trusty RSS reader gives me the internet-based lowdown from many a site, but there’s a new kid in town that’s also more than pulling its weight - ’The Week‘ magazine.
Streaming endeavours
Monday, March 27, 2006
Flushed with the success of the DVR box, our halting plans for a more digital life got another boost over the weekend when I set up streaming to the hi-fi from the two laptops in the house. Now Marci and I can use iTunes to play our music and podcasts through the living room stereo, while also letting us put away all our CDs, just as Finn gets mobile enough to start throwing them around.
Our wireless base station has been an Apple Airport Express
Time shifting
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
So we got Tivo’d, and it’s greatly improved the quality of our TV-watching lives.
To be precise, we got the Comcast DVR offering, which shows two things: firstly, like ‘sellotape’ and ‘hoover’ (both of which only work in the UK, interestingly) ‘tivo’ has become the generic noun and verb to describe digital recording from the telly, and secondly, Tivo themselves must be worried, losing customers to the big cable companies who offer a simpler but cheaper service (and rental, not purchase, of the box itself).