29 May 2007

Consolidation

After much musing, I've decide to combine my two blogs here. Please redirect your links there

15 May 2007

TextMate & Wordpress

Over the last few days I've been trying to get a wordpress blog on the go - to replace my personal blog. Its been a trial and education setting up my server space with my ISP.

Its all done now though and I like the idea of wordpress. One advantage over the blogger version is that I can write and post my articles from inside TextMate, a package that I've been using more and more over the last few days.

My website needs an overhaul too and I've traditionally used Dreamweaver on my PC to develop these - the WYSIWYG format is good for me. With the mac however, I'm looking around for an application to replace Dreamweaver. Obviuosly I could get Dreamweaver for the mac, but some comments I've heard recently are that its bloated and it creates pages that contain padding. I've decided I ought to know more about HTML & CSS (which will help on the blog too), so I invested in Learn HTML in 24 hours. I'm not that far into it but have discovered that I could use TextMate to develop my pages, or something with a preview function like Coda.

8 May 2007

Paper vs Electronic?

Its a dilemma that most people go through when deciding what tools to use for their productivity system (whatever flavour that might be). Some systems force you to use a particular format (which takes the decision away, but invariably means that the system could lack flexibility and customization).

This article suggests using a similar system to myself - USE BOTH. I like the quickness and spontaneity that a freeform piece of paper gives, but anything that happens on that piece of paper get condensed and fed into my electronic system at a later date to allow for archiving. The paper is just short term storage. A piece of paper also doesn't remind you of that meeting that was booked a fortnight ago that you need to travel to.

Each media has its benefits, so why not use both!! There are of course more unusual ways of using both systems at the same time.

[Paper vs Digital Debate... at LifeDev]

4 May 2007

Home Office

As part of the life laundry sessions that we have been doing at home, we plan to decorate our "relaxing" room. At the moment this room houses the desktop, a small desk and some files etc and is the only thing in there that isn't conducive to relaxation. Its hard to not notice the whir of the fans in the PC when snuggled up in front of the fire watching a movie.

So plans are afoot to move the office space to our family room, where the kids (who are now at any age to use the internet) can also utilise the space. I found this post about setting up a good home office on the trawl this morning and it has some good tips.

The uber plan is to re-develop the building at the bottom of our garden to have an office space (or get an eriba caravan). That would give us more room, the one thing that we are lacking with a "in-house" solution. Of course we are always on the look out for our ideal house to move to - but funds are restricting that idea! We could get power into the building and kit it out so it could join the wireless network.

We are currently looking at furniture items for the family room that would allow us to have the PC enclosed when its not in use, its quite restrictive, because we have a defined area for the furniture to fit into and the desktop machine that we currently run (the dream to replace that with an iMac) is quite an large case (and doesn't fit into some of the computer units we've looked at).

Would appreciate any links you have for computer storage solutions.

[Design tips for a productive home office via Lifehack]

3 May 2007

OmniFocus


I spent yesterday looking at the new OmniFocus demo video.

I've tried a few products on both the PC and my new MacBook Pro to record my GTD needs. Kinkless is the product that I've had the best results with and it is very closely related to OmniFocus.

I come across a couple of "wouldn't it be nice" moments when using kinkless, but after watching the video yesterday they all seem to have been addressed and some. The new features look REALLY good.

I've joined the mailing list for the product and I'm hoping that the posts regarding a public beta in the next few weeks are true. Can't wait to get stuck in.

1 May 2007

Posting from TextMate

So this is a general test of blogging using a new app I'm trialing. TextMate seems to be a really powerful text editing tool that can be used for pretty much anything. It has loads of plug-ins or Bundles, which allow you to perform several tasks.

I'm not really into HTML, and I'm looking for something to replace my dreamweaver on the PC (without buying dreamweaver for the mac). I'm looking at coda too, but again an understanding of html would be good. I'm not too bad on the simple link things, but complex formatting and tables is never something I've done.

If anyone has some ideas on books or sites I can visit for getting good html advice let me know.

Noooooo!

I was listening to Alex Lindsay on MacBreak last night, re-telling the story of when he cracked open his MacBook Pro to change the hard drive and didn't see two of the screws - the small crack he heard was some welding spots coming away and he now has an expensive apple door stop. Imagine my horror when I open my feed this morning and see this photo!! The article explains how to install a RAID in a MacBook Pro.

Also came across this nifty little gadget - oh how I wish I worked in a modern office. The desk I work at is so old it doesn't have cable management slots, because when it was first bought people used typewriters and drawing boards.

I finally had a chuckle at this post describing why you should go freelance