Scarlet Umbrella|Adventures in Mobile Technology

Meet the Life Hackers

I just finished reading the New York Times article on Life Hackers.  Among the interesting finds:  some of the most productive people use the most simple solutions to keep track of things e.g. living out of a giant text file or emailing themselves reminders.  This seems to be counter-intuitive initially.  However, it does make surprising sense.  Why spend so much time learning complicated software when you can search through a text file?  Why spend money for a Palm when you can email yourself a file?  The rate-limiting step to simplification in my case is that I love gadgets and software.  Adopting Planner was a compromise for me.  It’s customizable so I can play around with it but it outputs simple common file formats so I don’t have to worry about compatibility. 

The article also goes into how we humans are coping with the growing distractions in our lives and some possible tools for increasing productivity.  A study was also discussed which indicates that workers seem to be more productive using larger moniters. Workers were asked to perform a task using a basic 15″ moniter and on a computer with a large moniter with a 42″ screen.  The results were that people were able to complete the tasks at least 10% more quickly using the larger moniter and some completed the tasks up to 44 % quicker than the workers with small screens.

I can give my own anecdotal support to this.  At my lab, I work on dual-screen moniters.  Coming home to a single-screen 15″ laptop was painful.  Virtual desktops help but there is something to be said for being able to view multiple files at the same time and cross-reference.  I have finally bought a 19″ moniter to supplement my 12″ Powerbook, and I am loving it.

productivity, life hacks, emacs

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I’ve mentioned previously that I have been using Emacs with Planner mode to manage my actions a la GTD. I’m in the process of perfecting my method. Right now I am using planner along with remember and planner-diary. My setup is as follows:

All of my tasks are in the TaskPool. I contextualize each task by prepending the context, e.g, @home, @computer, etc. so that my tasks tend to look like:

@home: wash clothes

This is not the best notation but it works. I’m trying to figure out a way to get Planner to alphabetize my contexts. Alternately, I’ve debated making each of my contexts a wiki-page and then just changing the date so that the next action will appear on the current date page. The downside to this is that I really like to have all of my tasks right in front of me. I do add a link to a project page for all of my projects so that I can have my task list for each project in one page.

I use remember to jot down any notes which can be linked to a date or to a project. Remember asks you for a headline and the notes are time-stamped for convenience. I use diary and planner-diary to keep track of my appointments. Jody Klymak has written a neat function so that you can make appointments from a current buffer using C-x C-d and have the ability to make hyperlinks like the rest of planner mode. I use planner-diary to display the entries on the current page.

I sync my computer to my Palm using the publish function (C-c C-p) and Plucker. Plucker is a static html reader that allows you to subscribe to a channel (in my case, localhost) and Plucker pulls an index file and any links of a certain depth which is user-defined. It’s pretty easy to sync between the two, and my only complaint is that you are only seeing a static html page of your to-dos, and you don’t really get the cathartic feeling of checking off an item. This is only a minor complaint. I’m still fine-tuning the method so there will probably be more changes to come.

gtd, productivity, emacs

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The feeling that comes with realizing that you have all of your next actions written down, all of your appointments in your agenda, and that you are on target for your goal, in short, it feels great. The funny thing is that after I have spent all this time repairing my system, my brain is still a bit on panic mode. I keep reanalyzing my list to think of something that I should be doing or something that I should be worried about. Isn’t it strange how you can become accustomed to living in panic mode?

gtd, productivity

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I dug out my Tungsten E today to play around with a more high-tech GTD method. In the process, I am once again reminded of the short-comings in dealing with PDAs and Macs and some shortcomings with PDAs in general. The main problem is the Palm has always had minimal support for Macs and of course Pocket PCs don’t work without installing further software such as Missing Sync. My number one complaint is the lack of support for Entourage. Okay, you may start your Microsoft bashing now, but the iCal/Mail combo is too lightweight for my needs. I like to be able to switch easily from my calendar to my email and Entourage allows me to do that. I also am learning to like the project center. And yes, I know that Missing Sync now supports Entourage. But I would like to be able to purchase a product with out of the box support. There is also the disturbing habit of data disappearing and Palm’s announcement that they will no longer support Macs.

Frankly, I think that Palm is shooting itself in the foot. The PDA market is ailing and Palm is cutting off some of its user base. Palm would be wise to cultivate Mac users since we would be more likely to buy Palms over Pocket PCs if they offered better support for Macs. Also, the PDA market has been rather lackluster in its output. So here are my suggestions for what I think PDAs need.

• Wi-Fi is becoming ubiquitous and Wi-Fi should be standard, not a high end option (this goes for smartphones as well).
• There needs to be better support for RSS. Most PDA browsers are weak. RSS is *designed* for this kind of thing.
• Better support for SMS.
• Bluetooth- again needs to be the default.
• How about a microphone so I can record voice memos?

Oddly, Nokia has made a lot of progress in this department. The 9300 looks pretty nice (but again, no Mac support!) as does the upcoming Nokia 770. The Mac/PDA market is pretty barren. We all know that Steve Jobs hates PDAs (or at least the Newton) so would somebody please step up and start designing PDAs/smartphones with Mac compatibility in mind?

gadgets, palm, pda, smartphone

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Following up on my previous post on academic writing, I’ve discovered Emacs Muse Mode. Muse Mode is a modular publishing environment. It operates using “styles” which include Blosxom, HTML, XHTML, XML DocBook, LaTeX, and even poems. How cool! It also integrates nicely with Emacs planner mode which I have been playing around with recently.

I know that trying out new productivity tools can be a dangerous trap to fall into but lately, my GTD setup just hasn’t been working as well as it should. My main complaint is ease of update. I want something that I can update instantly. I like GTD_Tiddlywiki. Printing index cards is very cool, but at the same time, it can be time consuming. So I have decided to downgrade my system to handwritten index cards and Emacs planner mode for a while. If that doesn’t work, I can always dig out the old Tungsten.

emacs, gtd, productivity

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I learned today that they have come out with a new version of Endnote.  Yay.  The torture continues.  I say this because we use Endnote at work.  Endnote is a bibliography manager with integration into Word.  By bibliography manager, I mean software that will randomly crash and/or decide that it only wants to display your chemistry journal references in APA format.  By integration with Word, I mean will cause you to have a nervous breakdown before your paper is written because it helps Word crash every 5 seconds.  By Word, I mean most evil word processor ever created.

Needless to say, I have been exploring other options even though Endnote/Word is the standard in my department.  I’ve been playing around with Sente which features integration with Mellel instead of Word.  I’ve never actually tried Mellel, but I’ve heard good things about it.  I’m also exploring using LaTeX.  I know that there is a learning curve but the advantage is more control of how your document is set.  I have Carbon Emacs on my Powerbook already so I am thinking about learning AUCTeX.  Sente has an export function to BibTeX so theoretically I could use it to manage my bibliography and use either Mellel or Emacs for the actual writing of the paper.   (Yes, I know how difficult Emacs can be, but trust me, when you get it set up right, it can be incredible).

technorati tags: academia, emacs, software,

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Over 12 hours of continuous watching of Most Haunted has got me thinking about the paranormal.  In a way, the internet is very close to the idea of the akashic record.    The akashic record supposedly contains every thought, feeling, and event that has ever happened or will happen.  While the internet does not contain everything, humanity now has at its fingertips more knowledge in one place than ever before.  Unfortunately, it is horribly disorganized, inaccurate, and much of it is repetitive.  I can’t help but imagine an uberwiki that would organize this information into a useful resource for managing the internet. Of course, this would be *the* UberWiki as discussed on RubyGarden. Impossible I know, but a girl can dream…

FYI, I’m using Flock to write this entry.  For a bleeding edge release, it’s pretty good and fairly straightforward to use.  I like the idea the links are easy to add and that it integrates with my del.icio.us account.

Technorati Tags: internet, akashic record

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