The Journey Within

It is a long acronym for Getting Things Done Virtual Study Group. It does what it says and broadcast their study sessions through podcast. It’s a great way to keep your GTD skills fresh. It’s also great to see how others are struggling with the same problems you are when trying to implement the GTD method. I cannot recommend it highly enough. The facebook group is here. Their website is here. I’ve subscribed to them through iTunes.

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I have lost a few articles because of some server problems from my website host. I have been trying to contact them but no reply so far. I guess I will be switching host soon, but not soon enough because there is another half a year to go (I think). So if you know a good reliable host, please let me know.

I will be reposting some old articles, but I did lose one entirely. I have used Wordpress as my backup, but didn’t backup diligently enough to maintain an offline copy. Most of the time, I just write on a simple Text software (to avoid distractions) and delete it immediately once I have published the article. This has given me tremendous power to focus on just writing the article itself, without getting distracted on what pictures to go with it, what font it should be, what links to go with it, facebook, emails etc. I can’t recommend this enough if you want total distraction free writing. Just choose the simplest text editor program. Don’t even bother with Microsoft Word. Notepad on Windows and TextEdit on Mac would do just fine.

However, now I come to a dilemma of not having an offline version. I thought of using my Journal to draft my writings first before posting, but I didn’t want to go through the hassle of setting this up on my journal. I love the simplicity of having nothing else but blank space in front of me while I fill it with words. Editing can come later.

This was one of the major lessons from Nanowrimo. I did not have time to do any editing at all. So I just write. And boy did I write. There are times when I was really tired, and words still came out, although I didn’t recognise what I was writing at all. I was in between the sleep and wake state of mind. This was what I wrote:

One day, I pushed a woman accidentally, but the tribe push trough the love camp and came back to sit and explore. They seem to possess the power of healing. They seem to be able to make sure that none of us is her match, and our main source of fuel is armed in the peoples’ latest receipt.

If you are able to decipher this, let me know.

For Nanowrimo, because I was writing everywhere (physically), I chose Google Document as my platform. You can choose to work offline for Google Docs as well if you have Google Gears installed. You can also “Hide Controls” which gives you a bigger screen estate as you write, the blank canvas that I was talking about.

Coming back to how to write on a reliable platform, I have gone back to using my Journal program. That is backed up on a weekly basis. At least now there is a version which is not linked or synchronised with any other platform. My dumping project has to do with technology as well, and I will be hunting for more stress free writing. I could always pick up a pen and paper. Hmmm… that’s a thought.

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There are different degrees of enriching uranium. You can enrich uranium to such a high grade that it can turn into a nuclear bomb. You can also choose to enrich it to a degree suitable for a power plant, producing electricity enough to power a city, a town, a village, a house, a room, a computer, a calculator, a light bulb…

The cost of enriching uranium is high. So to enrich uranium to power just a light bulb may not make economic sense. But the point is, there is a choice to the level of enrichment.

There are times when we choose to enrich ourselves through additional courses, additional work, additional challenges. As we look within ourselves, we want to improve on certain aspects of ourselves. Be it a new language, a new skill, or a new habit. We can also choose to polish our existing skills e.g. writing, communication, negotiation, sales, etc.

As with uranium enrichment, there is a choice to the level of your own enrichment. You don’t need to be the next Einstein. You don’t need to be the next Carnegie. You don’t need to be the next Warren Buffet or the next Steve Jobs. What you need to be, is to be you.

I love enriching myself. If possible, I would like to speak 10 different languages, memorise the world history better than google, able to run a marathon without loosing breath or aching legs, draw like Picasso, understand science like Richard Feynman, solve problems like Leonardo Da Vinci…

But I’m not these. I may be some of these, but I’m not all of these. I’m me. And it’s not a bad thing. The uranium enriched power plant is still producing electricity power capable of powering a small nation. The level of my own enrichment is still useful. I just need to find the right location for this power plant.

So, do you aspire to be a nuclear bomb or a power plant?

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I’ve been using this for a while now, but now that it’s much improved, I’ll just like to drop a note here to say that this blog looks good on iPhone as well! Check out the screen shot below.

And if you click on one of the post, you’ll get this.

You can play around with the menu above, which will bring you to the pages you have, or access RSS and email functions. You can also search the blog using the search button above. Categories is there as well if you like. Now, just waiting for tags…

Thanks to the WP plugin, brought to you by the folks from WPtouch!

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It started with a glance. Then I said to myself, “nah, it’ll never be as good as my Treo”. And then, it comes. First, I started noticing it more and more. Then, people start to show me how it works. I saw their fingers, gliding along the smooth skin, and then, it comes alive! To believe that such a small package can turn you on. Playing it with 2 fingers brought greater joy. It became bigger and smaller at will. And when it turns, it becomes longer and wider.

After a while, I just couldn’t stand it, and finally bought myself an iPhone.

You don’t actually ever own an iPhone. It owns you. After a while, you feel like you’re lost without it. You will play with it any chance you have. Stroke it, flip it, turn it, listen to it, watch it… If someone is watching, you’ll sneakily put it back into your pocket, only to flip it out again the next chance you get, which is most likely 2 seconds later.

3 months on, I’m still playing with it. I’ve started to accessorise it. Got a nice coat for it. It’s even got a sweat proof necklace that’s doubling up as a headphone. I’m still filling it up with things that I can exercise my fingers with. It’s a clinger I tell you… a clinger!

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I’ve recently stumbled across another GTD flavoured website – www.Gtdagenda.com. I’ve been testing it and it looks really promising. I’m still not using it fully because it hasn’t met my ubiquitous criteria, i.e. I can’t use it offline on my iPhone. Having said that, I like a few things about it:

1. The goals can be clearly seen on top.
2. It’s got a calendar at the side
3. Your contexts and projects can be seen on the same page
4. Love the checklists, especially useful for regular tasks

It even feeds into iCal if you’re a mac user. I’m still a PC user, but am awaiting the day I can be a Mac user…

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I’ve put off blogging about iPhone because I want to really try it out first to see if it really meets my expectations. As expected, it sucks as an organiser, but do well combining both a phone and my iPod. I know this even before I got the iPhone, but end up succumbing to temptation…

The weirdest thing I have to get use to about iphone is the typing. I type on a virtual screen, which only appears if I need to type something. The “official rules” recommend typing with a single finger first, then proceed to 2 thumbs typing. I started straightaway with the 2 thumbs. Initially typing very slowly because of all the errors. But once I can live with the typing errors, the correction engine actually works very well. I end up just typing what I think i’m typing, and the correct words will most likely come out of the wash. It’s ok for most of the things I type. If it’s unique words like names of people or places, the correction engine won’t do that well.

The default applications (apps) that comes with every iPhone do not actually do well. It looks pretty, but not too much functions. I guess I am comparing with Palm. For example, the default apps do not include a ToDo list. So i had to search for one I can use easily (read Paying for software for more details).

Also, birthdays, anniversaries, etc do not show up in the default calendar, which is a bit annoying. I downloaded an app called “Upcoming” to show this list. The default calendar cannot include the Lunar Calendar as well, so I had to include another app that does this. And there’s no “year view” in the default calendar, which again I downloaded another app for this. Happy that all these apps are free (for now).

All these iPhone apps can get a bit unwieldy after a while, and there’s no obvious way to organise these apps (unlike the simple categories which you can use on Palm). Even for a simple calendar, I need 3 other apps to support the one app on Palm, which will increase the number of Apps required on iPhone. The hacked iPhone seems to be more user friendly than the default one. I might consider hacking it one day.

Of course, the things that people normally gripe about (cannot copy and paste, cannot forward SMS) did not bother me too much, as these are hardly used anyway. I use the iPod function more now as i carry my phone with me all the time. I just need to remember to carry my earphones.

In summary? A quick typer, with nice phone and ipod combination. Better default apps on Palm although the growing third party softwares should be a good sign. You just need to keep looking.

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After a few trial and error, which seems to be the order of the day (see article on blunder blender), I did a few upgrades on wordpress (see previous article on Upgrading Wordpress and bookmarking).

The first thing I’ve upgraded was to include an automatic upgrade script for wordpress, many thanks to Techie Buzz. This is the one thing which I hope will make future upgrades much easier (it can’t get any easier than automatic can it?!!). So i’ve upgraded from my version 2.0.6 to a version 2.5.1.

After this upgrade, I realised Wordpress now comes with resident tagging functionality, which I’ve been waiting for for quite some time. Categories do not give the same flexibility as tags. Although my bookmarking system has now changed to an action based bookmarking system (see article on Upgrading Wordpress and bookmarking), I still prefer to have both a hierarchical system (like categories) working hand-in-hand with a more flexible system like tagging.

So I’ve recategorised and tagged all 200+ posts of mine (phew!). It has taken quite a while as Wordpress do not feature a power edit function where you can bulk edit the categories and tags for selected posts all at one go. I’ve seen this feature on Librarything, and have now suggested it to the good folks at the Wordpress community. By the way, please help vote for it if you think this is a good function too. Go to this link at wordpress.org.

As for the categories, I’ve kept it to just 5 categories for now:

• Accessories to Life (gadgets, software, money etc)
• Guides to Life (ideas, thoughts, inspiration)
• Life around Us (people and the environment around us)
• Life in motion (what we do e.g. Tai Chi, sports, running)
• The diverse Life (sounds better than miscellaneous)

Moving on to other changes, I’ve changed the theme to The Morning After, courtesy from Arun Kale at The Masterplan. With this theme, i’ve included a few plugins. One of my favourite ones is the WP-print plugin by Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan. You can now go to a print-friendly version of each post and print from there. It even comes with footnote references to the links in the post! (sorry, but these sort of things excite me…)

My other favourite plugin would be the random posts plugin, which does it what it says, i.e. show random posts from my blog. Thanks to Rob Marsh on this.

After all these, somehow, the tag line of “learning less everyday” doesn’t quite suit this blog with the new categories. I’m still thinking of a new tag line, so if you have any suggestions, please contact me or post a comment in this post. By the way, you can also click on the questions tag to find out other questions I’ve posted which is dying for some suggestions from you.

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Someone on the train chose a baby’s cries as a ring tone on her phone. Her phone rang which made everyone turned their attention to her, only to realise she’s pregnant. Someone then stood up to offer her a seat. She didn’t even thank him and seem to think it’s her right. And her crying baby kept on crying, which is very annoying, especially when I found out it’s a fake cry. Must be a bad day at home (because of the incessant phone messages). She must really like the cries, or like the attention. I wonder if she’s going to have the same attitude towards the real baby when he/she’s out.

Nevertheless, it has presented a good useful alert to others, and if you’re pregnant, your chances of getting a seat will probably be very high, unless someone is so kind enough to use other strategies, like the one suggested in this post.

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Who says washing machine is boring? I tried to buy one and it was anything but boring! Until I was overwhelmed by choices… That was when I find washing machines really boring…

When i bought my very first washing machine, there were only 2 criteria – it works, and it’s cheap, maybe not in that order. Now that I’ve been working for a while, and moving to my own place, the criteria list somehow magically expanded itself. Suddenly, I was bombarded with a slew of words which I didn’t know previously. The salesman frantically persuading me the importance of each of these words, e.g. nano-technology, inverter, direct drive, aqua-beat, jet stream etc.

I only knew of one washing machine, and that was the one with a hole in the middle. Now, I have to decide between front-loading, top-loading, and even a tilted version. And I have to decide between 5 kg to 8.5 kg. I have to think of how often will I be using it, how many people will be using it, how quickly will it dry in our weather, how much water will it consume, how much electricity will it use, how noisy will it be, how often does it breakdown, how reliable is the brand, how reliable is the servicing etc… the list just seems endless…

To top all of that, after deciding on each of those and weighing it against the price I’m paying, then comes aesthetics – let’s face it, washing machines are just ugly. Maybe Apple should venture into making a washing machine.

With all that rambling, I still don’t understand what made choosing washing machine so difficult?

I guess I am drawn to technology. As age catches on, my definition of technology seems to change. I go for simpler technology that can go less wrong in the long run, as oppose to cutting edge technology where more parts are moving, which means there are more things that can go wrong. To quote the by now heavily abused words of wisdom, commonly known as Murphy’s Law – what can go wrong will go wrong.

With that philosophy in mind, the choice suddenly became much simpler. What did I choose? A Sanyo 7 kg top-loading washing machine with a side panel and flexibility to choose the timer for each type of wash, i.e. I can choose 3 minutes of spin, 9 minutes of wash, 13 minutes of cyclone dry etc. *Sigh* it is still difficult… Less choice is definitely better.

p/s: this is the second “less is more” article in this month (see wrong place at the wrong time). I have a feeling there could be a wind of change blowing in this direction.

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