Last year in my old blog I ran a series of posts about Taming the Inbox. Where I talk about trying to get a handle on my 6+ email accounts and looking for a solution for managing my mail. I wanted to find something that was as flexible as I needed, worked well from multiple computers and my Windows Mobile cell phone. I never truly found a solution. I ended up embracing Postbox. When I started using it I tried to use the Topics to organize my mail but it didn’t last long. The biggest problem, after being lazy, is it doesn’t auto sync topics between computers. They sync as long as you have the same topics on both copies. Using lower case topic names seems to help. So I’m still looking for a solution.
For a while I’ve been thinking that the best solution would be to strive for an empty inbox. If my Messages didn’t pile up it would be easier to check them from anywhere. I’ve read some of Merlin Mann’s posts on the subject and I’m looking forward to his book inbox zero. I also looked at David Allen’s Getting Things Done work-life management system. I always felt they were a good idea, It just always seemed to much work to get started.
Last week I saw this video on smarterware.org and became inspired. Something about that video gave me the confidence I needed to try to empty my inboxes. I’m currently operating with a Virtual zero inbox. By that I mean, all my mail is still there but now it’s been tagged. Over all the virtual method is working great, Postbox as easy filtering on tags so that I can just see messages without a tag so it looks like my mailbox is empty. Of course the auto tagging of replies does cause a little bit of a problem.
The work isn’t done yet, everything from this year has been reviewed but I still have to go through the backlog from the past 3 or 4 years. I’m planning to move to actual folders soon, I’m just waiting to see if this really works for me before I commit to moving my mail. I’ll keep you posted.
For the last 3 week I have felt a little lost, my phone is broken and So I don’t have access to all things I had started to take for granted. I miss having access to my E-Mail, Calendar, Twitter, and Evernotes. I have been using Melissa’s phone, but its not the same. I don’t want to install my applications to her phone or setup my email accounts. So I have been making do, mostly by being disconnected. Of course I will loose even the limited connection when Melissa goes back to work in the coming weeks.
So the solution is obvious, get a new phone. There are 3 things keeping me from that, first my contract still has 13 months left so the deals I can get for new hardware is limited, Second is now is not the time for the added expense of a new phone. Third I don’t know what phone to get. Its probably the single biggest issue I face. Deals can be negotiated, money and can be found, but I don’t know what phone I want. I like the LG IQ, but its a resistive touch screen (Best with Stylus) and running Windows Mobile. The HTC Hero is cool but I really want a hardware keyboard. I think I want the Motorola Droid or Millstone as it will be called when it comes to Telus, I just don’t know how long I’ll have to wait. I have considered just buying a regular phone that I could use till I knew what phone I wanted and had a deal that made it worth getting. I hope to have my phone situation figured out by the end of the month. When I do I’m sure I’ll be sharing a new gadget with my readers.
The start of a new year, a time to look forward to the future. To set goals and make resolutions. This year I haven’t set any resolutions, I have three geeky challenges I’ve set myself, there are some other personal challenges that I might share on the blog in the weeks to come but for today I want to focus on the geeky ones.
Find my Blogging Voice:
I have been blogging on and off now for 4 years. During that time I have gone through 3 iterations of my blog. Michael’s Thoughts, Evolving Dad and Geek With Kids. The first two were on the same site, one just evolved into the other, which has now been taken offline. I’m pretty sure I back up the posts but as I write this I have a sneaking suspicion that I forgot to back up the MySQL databases and so I might not have kept the posts. Backed-up or not, in all that time I have yet I’ve yet to find a consistent posting pattern for my posts. I would have spurts of high activity followed by months of nothing. That was one of the reasons I started Geek With Kids, to have a fresh start. Of course it didn’t work. I had a good month of posting before falling back to just weekly picture posts.
When I took up the Challenge of NaBloPoMo three months ago, I didn’t think I would have the stamina to still be going at it, but here I am over 90 days later and I’m still posting. Of course it hasn’t been easy there have been a ton of days where I just didn’t have anything to write, but I found something to say, even if it was just a cheesy video from YouTube. Now I’m still looking for a consistency in my posts but I am posting every day. I’m hoping my other 2 challenges will help with that. By giving me something to write about on even on days when nothing is coming to me. So going into 2010 I hope to have a post every day for the year, in fact as you’ll see below I’m hoping to have more then that.
Today is Christmas Day, a day for family, food and presents. We started our day with Jacob coming into our room excited to go downstairs and see what Santa had left. We had a great time as a family sitting around the tree and opening presents. Jacob did very well, pulling the presents out from under the tree and watching and waiting while Violet opened hers. We took a bunch of photos and some video, but I’ve not had a chance to look at them yet.
After our family Christmas morning we packed up the car and headed over to Melissa’s moms place for breakfast, another round of presents and an afternoon of family before Christmas dinner. It’s been a great day so far, right now both the kids are napping. Danny is playing Modern Warfare 2, Melissa and Lynn are pealing potatoes. I’m experimenting with one Jimmy’s present. An Aspire One 10.1″ netbook. I’ve wanted a netbook for a while, but was never sure if I would like the keyboard. Or if they had enough power for what I’d want to do with it. So I thought why not write a blog post on it and give it a try.
Here is what I think:
The screen is pretty good. It’s got a 1024 X 600 res screen. Which is pretty good. On a few pages I found it a little annoying to have to scroll, but I probably get used to that. The bigger issue is the keyboard. Though as I continue to write this post I am getting faster at typing but my hands are feeling cramped. That’s something I don’t think I would be able to get used too. So I’m thinking if a netbook is in my future it would need to be a larger model, with a larger keyboard. For now I think I’ll wrap up my post, perhaps another day I’ll put it through a few more test. For now I think I should join the family instead of sitting in a corner writing my blog.
A few months back someone twittered that they had been on Twitter for some amount of weeks. It was a high number I can’t remember who it was or how long they were on twitter, I just remember wondering how long I’d been on twitter. I looked it up on www.whendidyoujointwitter.com
At the time I thought wow, I’m only less then 100 days from being on twitter for 1000 days, that’d make a good blog post. I wonder if I could find my very first post. A quick google search later and I found www.shotbeak.com/oldtweets/index.php and with I found my first ever tweet sent 1000 days ago was:
Thinking about going to sleep… Wondering if this thing’s on!!!
Not a very inspirational first tweet. It didn’t get much better from there:
Sorry for the late post tonight, I’ve been trying to get my posts up in the morning but today that wasn’t possible. Today has been a day of electronic house cleaning. It started when I decided it was time to change my website host. Then expanded when I did a wipe of my cell phone, and should have continued tonight with reorganizing my programming projects to use Subversion.
I’ve changed hosts because as I’ve been using my blog more and more, I’ve been noticing a lot of issues with my existing host. The service would be down 2 or 3 times a day, and It got to be annoying. So I spent the last week reviewing my options and had settled on one, but when I went to pay there was a bit of a unexpected bump in the price after the first month. To be fair the service was worth the full price, it’s just my limit is less then or equal to what I’ was already paying. So I went on a hunt and came up with a new host webfaction.com. Now They have all the features that I was looking for and some I hadn’t considered. The big problem is that it’s raw power. The configuration is a lot more hands on, and a less polished then the services I’m used to. So far I’m impressed.
Today while going through one of my inboxes I had an email from Live Labs with a preview code for Pivot, an experimental way to look at large amounts of data. As I sat looking at the email on my phone I found myself wondering what was Pivot. I recalled requesting an invitation, but that was it. While I was considering that I was trying to think of what to blog for today and I realised that when I started my Cloud Gazing series the plan was to write about this very thing. An interesting Application or service that I happened to have signed up for. I’ve done some of this, but I still find myself waiting way to long from using a new service to writing about it. That ends today. First with my First look at Pivot, and next week when I write about my experiences with Threadsy, Inbox2 and how I hope Mozilla’s Raindrop will wash them away. I’m also hoping to get to some follow ups, but that is for another day.
Last week I joined the social game site foursquare, I’ve been looking at it over the past few months wondering when it would come to Canada. So when I heard on Webnation that it had come to our fair city I joined up right away. Foursquare is a social gaming site where you virtually check-in to places you are. This alerts your friends and gains you points you have the more badges you unlock. The person who checks in the most at a place is granted the title of Mayor. It seems like it could be a fun way to interact with friends and random internet people.
Of course I soon released is that my old Windows Smartphone really isn’t really the best interface to play on. I’ve been trying to use the limited web interface to check in. I’ve managed to become the Mayor at my local TTC station and my Bank Branch near my work, but without a better interface or a bunch of my friends joining I don’t see using this on a regular basis.
In my last post I asked two questions (My Online addiction), today ‘I’m going to answer them.
Why do I sign up to so many online sites? This is an easy question to answer, I sign up to some many sites because I’m looking for the next big thing. The next tool or service that is either going to make my life easier or be useful in some other way. Plus I want to get my desired user name. That’s why I signed up to twitter in March of 2007, but didn’t really use it till March of 2008. So I want to keep creating accounts.
Now that I know I have a problem what do I do about it? After thinking about it, I don’t think this is the right question. I think the question should really be; What is the problem with signing up to so many sites? The short answer is that there isn’t a problem. It is the managing of the account once I have them. I need to keep track of the sites I’ve tried. A way to sift through them and find the ones that are worth going back too. To that end I’m going to start reviewing sites on a regular basis.
The series will be called Cloud Gazing. I’m planning on having 2 kinds of reviews, First Look and Reviews. First looks will just be my first impressions, this will be for most if not all the sites I sign up for. Reviews will be after I have been using the service for a while and can give a fair review. The first review will probably be appearing next week.
Of course this will renew my interest in shell scripting and if I should get into it more. I don’t run Linux so I’d either have start that or see about working with Microsoft’s PowerShell. Perhaps I should try some of the scripts from the book in ‘PowerShell’ see if they run. I’ll post about my results when I try them.
