Archive for June, 2007

change the perspective

Published on June 21, 2007 in general. Closed

Boy, it is raining here like Noah got a second ship in the making. Anyway, on my now-infuriated GTD-news-harvesting, I came across eDragonu’s site. He posts not only about GTD software, but also about what he learnt from his one year old daughter. That change of perspective really got me.

Once you’re down, there are literally a gazillion ways to get up again. It only takes just a few new moves to be learned, or a better and innovative usage of the environment…

Read the whole post here, it is well worth it.

Omni can read minds.

Published on June 21, 2007 in mac stuff and tech talk. Closed

I officially claim: The people at OmniGroup can read my mind. Today, I saw that iGTD has released yet another update. Coming from kGTD and having followed the creating of OmniFocus, I had seen but so far ignored the roaring development of iGTD with its growing fanbase - I had even withstood the fact that they integrate with my newly licenced copy of MailTags2. Still… today I felt that I have to get back to being more organized, and that means using a trusted GTD system again. I had been slow on keeping my kGTD up to date - it just did not feel natural enough to work in it, as good as it is, and just knowing that people are already using the OmniFocus alpha made me wonder why I still have to put up with its ancestors. So I did two things: First, I updated my copy of iGTD, pulled it out of the trashbin, and tried to like it (for the tenth time, at least). Did not work. I tried to add some tasks, and it gave me options that I did not want to have, it did not click with me at all. Second, I tried to find out if there is a chance that I have been already selected as alpha-tester from Omni, but did not notice - I was hoping they sent me a message that my spamfilter caught. But no - only the regular Viagra, Pornsite, Stock-trading boredom. I checked for their status of the invitations (they are working their way down the OmniFocus-mailing list chronologically) - and it said that they are up to the day BEFORE I signed up. Which made me sigh, search all email folders again, and get back to work - knowing that I will jump up and down once I can get my hands on OmniFocus, and knowing that I really don’t click with its alternatives.

Guess what happened minutes ago: I got my sweet invite. Omni can read minds! Now - I know, for most of you out there it is not imaginable how happy one can be to be allowed to get an alpha version of some piece of software. Alpha means pretty much it is under heavy development, unstable, crashy, changing every few hours / days and nothing is for granted. But still - this is not just any software: I have been reading up on 43folders and kinkless.com, later on omnigroup.com about its development, I have drank up every blog post, and watched every screencast. It was almost there, just not quite.

Now, folks, I got it. It installed my kGTD without major problems (only ignoring hyperlinks, but that is fine with me), and it is syncing well with iCal - it seems. Now all I have to do is force myself to go back to work.

ten reasons why life is good today

Published on June 20, 2007 in general. 1 Comment

When thinking about blogging today, my first sentiment was - oh great, you’ve been procrastinating, and the seemingly “productive” thing you want to sell yourself now is blogging. Congratulations, you are in the middle of a black hole! - but then again, if it gets me in a better mood to blog (especially knowing that at least one person is actually reading it, right Brandi?), it might make me more productive for real… even if some procrastinative (does that word exist?) elements need to be overcome to get there.

Anyway.

My idea was, instead of complaining, to tell you my today’s ten reasons why life is good today.

1) My phone now plays the “bom chicka wa wa”-song whenever an SMS comes in. I love it :-) … for those of you behind the moon, check bcww.com.

2) The hard drive I almost erased in the most musical way the other day still works.

3) I recently found my lost-thought Diver’s Licence. Which of course is of inherently no use at all right now as I don’t have money, time or ocean at hand to go diving - but boy, it makes me feel SO adventurous!

4) Allioli is a great way of eating lots, and lots, and lots of garlic in a socially acceptable way.

5) In our new apartment we will have a room where guests can stay, and it is so much fun inviting friends to come visit us in Hamburg already!

6) Oh, did I mention that I have scored myself a job? I thought so. Anyway: I got a cool job! In the right field, in the right town, with the right people. Awesome. They do expect me to work a lot, as I understand… but so far, it is fine. (Start November 1st though, maybe workload will be higher then ;-) )

7) We have terriffic weather here. It is a bit on the humid side these days, but it is warm and sunny and just - well, so good that working on the desk is a pain.

8) I managed to get my washine machine to make the laundry not only clean but fresh-smelling again. Luckily, there is the internet, so that on googling the problem, I found myself to be in good company with almost every alone-living male student in the world.

9) All the good things are free - really. Last weekend I got home from Leidhecken so early the next morning that the sun was just coming up behind the hills, while morning fog still hung over the landscape - just beautiful, and it did not cost a cent.

10) Writing list of stuff that make you happy does make you happier! Really - try it!

What has made your day recently?

almost killed a hard drive the fun way

Published on June 18, 2007 in Germany and tech talk. Closed

Boy, this sure taught me a lesson not to tinker with computer stuff when deprived of sleep: I just ran out of space on my computer, and considered that always getting my external hard drive to where I am or going where it is a totall cumbersome and unnecessary hardship in life. I remembered that my DSL router lets you connect a USB drives and makes it accessible to the network. So far, so good. My router stands in the hallway, on top of my beloved Marshall amp, and beside it sits a small speakerbox. What did I do? Exactly. I thought - well, under the router it might run hot, so better put it next to the router on this little wooden box. Yeah. Right. Only when the USB plug snapped to the enclosure, I realized what makes speakers work, and hard drives defunct: Strong magnetic fields. Yikes.

I am glad to report that apparently, the drive still works and no data is lost as far as I can see. Still, the jolt of adrenaline - even if it replaces the next two cups of coffee - was something that I could do without.

Transcribing Interviews

Published on June 18, 2007 in Germany and university. Closed

I have never typed so much and so long ever before. Because of some delays in my workflow (and the attendance of the absolutely essential Leidhecken event yesterday), I have condensed some of my weekend work to Sunday. This has been going on for thirteen hours now, and I guess I will need all the time until the deadline (9:30 am).

What is so damn stupid about it? The fact that you can NOT do anything else. No listening to music. No TV. No nothing in the background. You have to sit there, listen to a recording (which I put on 60% speed, so every voice sounds like it comes right off a vocoder, beautiful - but at least I can keep up with typing) and type your fingers off. I wish computers were just a wee bit more intelligent by now… I’d like to delegate that to my machine. Maybe I should have used amazon’s new mechanical turk for that… nah, I am too cheap to outsource my diploma thesis’ work :-)