bruceb

My new habit of logging out of IM in the evenings and not logging on again until after getting morning work and stuff done is paying off, I think. As is my new habit of fixing a substantial meal for myself about 1 am. It's a time I am virtually always awake, and eating a real, good, healthy meal then seems to be paying off in better sleep when I do get to sleep.

Now to see what I can do about the quality of my rest during daytime lying-down times.
 

I keep dabbling with this stuff and flaking out about it. I'd like to stick to it this time:

I aim to log out of IM and e-mail each night when I go to bed, and not to log on until I've had at least two hours in the morning to see about breakfast, exercise, research reading, and like that.

I've been approaching this as a productivity issue, and it is that - those morning hours can be really good ones for me. But it's also a health issue. As I track my eating, I see that I'm not far above the intake Weight Watchers recommends for me, but I am some above, and need to cut down a touch. Morning meal is crucial to that. If I don't eat decently early on, I get distracted, go too long without eating, and then overeat. No good. I need to stabilize this stuff right away.

Now, here's how my sleep cycle is working at the moment...

I'm up around 7 each morning because Mom and I are trading wakeup calls. It seems to do us both some good to have that much of a fixed schedule. I'm usually up for a few hours after that, and then I go sleep, with my primary waking time being at night. So there will be days when I log off at night and then am not on until afternoon or evening the next day. Those of you who keep tabs on how I'm doing (and my deep thanks for it): don't worry. If I'm having actual trouble, I'll connect long enough to let someone know, and then again as I'm recovering. No news just means rest and sleep.
 
I do intend to tune up my incoming contact channels. I want people with need to be able to get ahold of me for emergencies. But I don't quite know yet how I want to do that, so I'll be thinking who to give what contact info, and then add a basic "If you need to get hold of me right away" to my user info page here.

When my daily list gets too long, I tend to blow it off more often. I need to consolidate. Seems like about 7 daily entries is a practical limit; beyond that, things stack up for days on end, particularly when I feel blah.

Today I snagged the 3.1 patch from a mirror site and applied it, just in case there are things I want to do by way of administrivia or whatever before my account runs out in June, then moved WoW onto my external "stay there until I put you on CDs or something" drive. Since then I've spent almost all day experimenting with rearrangements of my working tools: what goes on the dock, what just goes into Overflow, reactivating Spaces and seeing what conceptual categories seem satisfying, and so on.

I realized that I'd sacrificed a fair amount so as to free resources for WoW's increasing overhead. With that off my plate as a consideration, I am freshly impressed by just how much this system can do without fuss, and reinforced in my sense that I did make a good choice last year when I settled on it.

A friend pointed out this afternoon just how often I say "wow" in my posts about evaluating and recommending this or that. And it's true, I do say "wow" a lot, because a lot of things genuinely do delight me, and I've made a deliberate decision to aim at being as openly enthusiastic about what I like as I am critical about what I don't. Given the intensity of negativity I can unleash, that sometimes calls for a lot of "wow"s. :)

Anyway, Dropbox. This is a service for storing files outside your own computer. Once you run their setup application, Dropbox is an extra folder in your file system, and whatever you put in it gets synced up to Dropbox's site. There's a folder that's open to the whole world by default, and others that are private by default. You can make new ones, and share them with chosen individuals. The syncing is thoroughly seamless, and pretty well-behaved: it tussles a bit with Bit Torrent and the like, but doesn't insist on always holding every scrap of bandwidth, and it looks like it will voluntarily remain and a slow upload rate for a while after extended demands for bandwidth from other apps.

For free, you get 2 Gb of space. For $10 a month or $100 a year, you get 50 Gb. (Plus some for referral bonuses. If you're thinking of checking it out, e-mail me and I'l gladly toss you a referral. Extra space for both of us.)

I am really, really pleased with it so far. If it holds up over the next few months, I can see myself going ahead and letting .Mac go. If you've tried moving large files or a lot of them to an iDisk, you know that it's slow. Slow slow slow. It's also got no provision for resuming interrupted transfers. A file is all the way there or it has to start all over again. Dropbox, by contrast, does indeed hold partial files.

But what really makes the sparkle in my eye is that Dropbox tracks revisions and can retrieve old versions. Yes, if I want to recover a bit of prose in a document I took out in a fit of over-eager editing, why, there it is. And yes, I actually did do that this afternoon. The deletion was a lapse in judgment. The recovery, done via their simple and clear web interface, was utterly hassle free. That warrants an extra "wow" for someone like me.

Check it out!

At the start of the week, I said I'd write up my thoughts about DEVONthink, a personal database sort of utility, and particularly about DEVONthink Pro Office, the version I ended up purchasing. (Here's their various editions and their features.) Executive summary: wow.

So what's this all about, you ask? Or at least you could ask. Here's the deal: apps like DEVONthink and Evernote are repositories of whatever you'd like: text (and a variety of word processing formats), images, bookmarks, you name it. DEVONthink will take in whole PDFs and treat them like any other data. In fact the pro office version will, get this, do OCR on an incoming PDF. (See footnote below.) Evernote is, to my taste, better for casual quick note-taking, with an on-the-fly system of tagging. DEVONthink works off a single hierarchy you construct as you go, much like setting up the file system on a computer. But you can do what it calls replicating a file, making duplicate entries for it in multiple places, and they all update, if you don't want independently editable copies.

( Read more... )

Confound you, viktor_haag . Your repeated mentions of DEVONthink got me thinking that when I'm in unfamiliar territory, I should avoid being hasty. So I went ahead and downloaded the trial version of DEVONthink Pro Office 2, and fired it up...

I'm not entirely sure that I will want to shell out for this. But I'm quite sure that I don't not want to. :) If I'm understanding how this works, I either want this, or something that does pretty much all the same stuff, because I can see it genuinely saving me from some seizure-like episodes induced by neurotransmitter depletion from sustained intense concentration.

I will have a fuller comment in a day or two, once I've put it through a few more paces, but in the meantime, thanks.

The computer one, that is, though I've got the physical one in my sights too. Stuff I'm experimenting with:

Forwarding the .Mac mail to GMail, and Google Notifier going. Mail.app closed, and GMail only open when I've got new mail. (Google Notifier gives me a pop-up window for composing new mail in, which is nice for when I want to send something out and then move on.)

Chax letting me see multiple IM accounts' buddy lists in one pane. Adium closed.

RSS list fully consolidated into Google Reader. NetNewsWire closed.

Overflow installed. This came along with DEVONthink as a MacHeist freebie, and I tried it on a whim. I like it a lot. One key press to get a paned list of apps, a couple of clicks to launch. It's no faster, I think, than using the Dock, but it's more convenient because it comes to where my pointer happens to be. Dock trimmed and moved to one side.

The improved responsiveness of my computer isn't huge, but it is noticeable. Fewer things to go wrong and stumble over, too.

Next up will be experimenting with arrangement of writing apps to see what's handiest for my two major modes of writing, sustained primary though not exclusive focus and quick jotting of ephemera.

A tip of the hat to PNH for this great page explaining the use of bookmarklets in web browsing, and linking to a whole bunch of really handy ones.

I'm dinking around with my mail handling. Mail to my .Mac/me.com address is getting forwarded to GMail, and I'll be doing some answering from within it. Just letting you know, if you're one of the people I exchange e-mail with; I'm by no means abandoning either address.

I've continued using both Things and OmniFocus for task and project management, and I've settled on Things. It has two advantages for me: I just plain like the interface and feel comfortable with it, and it doesn't tempt me to try to play the part of a power user or someone else I'm not.

This second one is looming large in a lot of my decisions these days. For a long time I was something of a computer hobbyist, keeping up on aspects of software and hardware well beyond anything that income and disability would allow me to mess with personally. I took part in Usenet's structural arguments (and influenced a few policy decisions, I think), and so forth and so on. At this point, though, I'm most comfortable thinking of myself as just another user.

I have tended to get tangled up in software that was really set up for the needs of someone who needs a lot more than I do, and to put a lot of time into learning features that I have never, ever really needed for any of my actual work or play. Gradually I'm clearing all that out: out with Photoshop, for instance, in with GraphicConverter, which does all that I ever actually do with images that I can't do with Preview and iPhoto. On several fronts I'm still figuring out what it is that I am doing and therefore which tools are worth keeping. But the principle is clear enough: Don't load up on features that don't matter to me.

There's a pleasant side effect to the simplification in not losing time hassling bugs associated with features that don't matter to me. The more I focus, the less that happens, and I like that a lot.

I've been thinking for a while about doing some major overhaul on my bookmarks collection, and then mysticalforest mentioned doing just that with his, and so off I went. Putting my Getting Things Done hat on, I thought, well, what is it I'm actually doing with my bookmarks?

I ended up breaking it down into three categories: very frequently visited sites, regularly consulted sites, and archives. Each gets its own handling.

Very frequently visited sites: I noticed sort of by accident that Safari 4, at least, assigns Cmd-1 through Cmd-9 to the first 9 entries on the bookmarks bar. That suggested a simple adjustment: get all these folders off the bookmarks bar, and strip it down to nine entries I use a lot. (Safari 4's Top Sites feature was also an inspiration in this regard.)

So I did. Now the bookmarks bar consists of links for Google Reader, Twitter, my friends page at LiveJournal, Facebook, GMail, and Tiny URL; blogger login for Tor; and javascript bookmarklets for Instapaper and Evernote. Each one's marked in the bookmark bar with its current command key option, to remind me that I can do that.



Regularly consulted sites: Folders for these got moved off the bookmarks bar and into the bookmarks menu. It's just not that onerous for me to click the menu.

In addition, I've done some aggregating. Lots and lots of separate blog links are now in my Google Reader file (which I also exported, to have on hand for the next time I try out any other RSS reader). I'm on the lookout for other opportunities to consolidate stuff that way, too.

Archives: These are the hundreds of bookmarks I've accumulated in Safari, plus a few hundred more in clippings in several folders on my desktop, for things I may want to refer to again but am not using at the moment—software home pages, DNS setup help, syllabi, and so on. This is all going into Evernote.

Safari isn't made to be a catch-all data manager, but to be a web browser. As I get this stuff organized, it's doing less and less duty as something else, and this makes me happy.

It turns out that it's not so much a matter of Things being unable (or unwilling :) ) to do things I'd like it to do, as that its organization and terminology are different enough from those in OmniGroup that I actually did have to read the manual. Answers are there. The more I dig them out, the happier I am with Things.

I'm taking Things out for a test drive to see how I feel about it versus OmniFocus. It's trimmer, and the question is whether I actually use the stuff OmniFocus has and Things doesn't. I'll give it a week or so - I figure that's enough time to take it through my basic cycle of chores.

I've been consolidating to-do lists sorts of stuff in OmniFocus, so as to have an integrated record of what I've been doing and what I need to be planning ahead for. Tonight it paid off in a small but really handy sort of way.

I've set it to prompt me for morning supplements before noon and evening supplements before 9 pm. I can fiddle with the timing as I go, but those seemed reasonable stating points. Tonight it had gotten to be 10:30 or so and I realized that I had no memory of taking my supplements. I started in, then thought, wait, maybe I did. Let me check. OmniFocus showed that I'd checked it off at 7:33. iChat showed Mom logging off of a chat at 7:31. Oh, yes, I remembered, Mom was off for early bed and I thought I should take my supplements right away because I was a little droopy, so I did.

The great thing is that I can know what I did even though I didn't at first remember it at all. This is a gloriously warm secure feeling.

I discovered a pattern in my division of tasks/apps between desktop and handheld recently, and once I realized I was doing it subconsciously I set about doing it more intentionally. I'm gathering more and more of the little spur-of-the-moment time-filling things onto the handheld.

I don't spend a lot of time pondering this myself or whining about it to others, but I really do sometimes feel the isolation of being almost entirely housebound very strongly. I'm working on improving my ability to get out and around, but the process is inevitably both long and slow. I've been poking at different ways of giving myself more time away from the desk and chair, even when that just means going into another room for a while.

Having social networking apps along with reading and games and such on the handheld contributes to this. I can get away from the desk and still not be isolated, but I'm getting to be in touch in different ways. (If I could move my IMing over there I probably would, but not being able to leave it running in the background makes it not suitable for this kind of thing. Maybe in future OS updates....) In turn, I'm getting better focus on what I'm doing when at the desk, and clearing more notional space for the writing work I really yearn to do.

(I should also pause here to note that I've been freshly reminded almost daily how very fortunate and blessed I am. There are a lot of people out there with hardships worse than mine and none of my advantages in raising, cultural position, friends, and so on. So I'm trying to keep the gripes in proportioned, and directed more toward "What can I do to make life better?" than looping complaint.)

One of my ongoing tasks right now is to identify the things that I never do actually use and get them cleared out. I'm aiming for a situation where more and more of the choices I face when I look at bookshelves, closets, kitchen cupboards, or hard drives are choices I know I've liked or have serious plans to try out. Google's OSX desktop search-and-launching utility turns out to help me with that.

I've used Quicksilver for years - I think it was still in a single-digit beta release when I first tried it out, or at least a much smaller two-digit number than is now the case. And it does a fine job with program launching and the accompanying search for data and apps I may be wishing to use. But as time goes by, it seems like it's been adding more and more features I have no use for and often don't understand at all, and when I'm prone to being flustered or frustrated, that's bad news. In a low-keyed sort of way I've been on the lookout for something that might do just the stuff I want to do in that regard.

Google Desktop for Mac turns out to be what I'm looking for. It keeps an updated index of the volumes I mark for it to track, and brings up a search-and-launch window that's set up well for me, with large type and a very wide entry window. (Quicksilver has a bunch of options for presentation, but none of them suit me so well.) It's pretty quick to come up, quick to interpret my search, and then launches something and/or goes away itself without a fuss.

And that's all it does.

So it's suiting me very well.

This business of taking myself mostly offline when I go to bed and having morning hours to poke at stuff with fewer distractions is definitely paying off - and these will be benefits whether or not I end up sticking with this particular arrangement. I've gotten a huge mass of drafts, downloads, and other file cruft sorted out, with many duplicates eliminated and backups of the stuff it turns out I want to keep. Then I went on to outline the first of two 4e projects I've committed to, and to spend time re-reading Whispering Vault and jotting notes for its second edition, and set up files and preliminary outlines for a couple other things.

Feels good.

It seems like my brain is good for maybe 3-4 hours of this kind of thing each day. So if I stick it up front and use it, then I can kick back and take care of other things (like WoW) later.

I've done well carving out days where I'm out of most real-time touch, but it's not a perfect solution - it still involves tensions building up between days off. So I'm going to try an experiment of a slightly different configuration: logging out of IM and stuff when I go to bed, and leaving it off for a few hours after I get up. I'll try for regular writing and related business in that time, plus the housework and such, and connect maybe noonish.

I have no idea if this will help, but I figure that it'll probably become clear one way or t'other fairly quickly.

I've been having the usual "I'm swamped" vibes that I get in the days before having Mom for company, amplified by the fat-burning crud and this and that. None of it's really unmanageable, but it piles up, and gives me fresh incentive to try and maneuver my way around and/or through it. And I'm making a little progress, I think. Two useful things:

Merlin Mann on smarter to-do lists: Mann is starting to sound in my head like rdansky, because a lot of this advice simply applies the same principles to other tasks. Use the active voice. Be specific. Each point must be something you can actually do, so as to know whether you've done it or not. And so on. There's very little new here for me, but novelty's overrated; good communication takes both useful presentation and an audience internally prepared to receive it. This is my time to say "ah ha!" whether I've got Baby Roo or not.

Toodledo: Possibly the single most baffling omission in the iPod software lineup (to me, anyway) is the absence of syncing with iCal's to-do lists. However, there turn out to be some fine alternatives. In fact there are a lot of them. A dazzling, not to say boggling, proliferation. Right now the one I've become fond is Toodledo. It has a compact little iPhone/Touch app, and syncs data with their web site, which I can consult from my office desk's computer. What pleases me is that the syncing with the iPod is wireless. This may not sound like a big deal to some of you, but for me, the ability to make a note while in bed or the living room and know it's backed up without having to tromp back into the office is significant. And it's got space for a paragraph or so of notes, which is nice too.

As for the keyboard...a couple weeks in and I'm finding my speed and accuracy way up. It's slower than learning Graffiti for the Palm OS was, but then I'm older and not as flexible. It's coming along pretty well now - well past the "geez, for this much effort I could have done it by hand" threshold and into the realm where a paragraph-long note isn't a thing to fear.

The upshot of all this is that I have a very long to-do list—something like two dozen items—but feel less intimidated because each entry is something I can manage, I think. The acid test will be how I feel come Monday evening, the night before Mom's arrival. :)

(Oh, and for those who see me in IM and stuff: Yeah, I'm logged out of most things, and probably will be through the housework days. I'll be on some when I need a break, but expect me not to be around a whole lot until I come rejoicing with a long list of items done.)