Calendar
February 2012 M T W T F S S « Apr 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 Tags
Category Archives: gadgets
gtd – in practice
I finally caved in and bought David Allen’s Getting Things Done. Although I’ve been using the system for a couple of years now, I didn’t feel like I’ve been using it effectively. Mostly this was because it was my understanding of the system based on the summaries I’ve read about it on the ‘net (wikipedia, google etc). I felt like I was missing something fundamental.
Instead of writing my own summary of the book, I recommend people just buy it and read it. Instead, I will be focusing on how I use it in practice using emacs + orgmode + mobileorg (for iPad). I recently organized a birthday party using gtd and I must say, it was very successful.
Collecting
One of the fundamental stages of gtd is collecting everything you need. One of my problem was that I tried to collect and process at the same time. The problem is, I then got stuck in a stage in-between collecting and processing, unable to move forward. What priority does this item go into? Is it in the right order? Don’t do this.
Instead, collect. That is, write down everything that’s on your mind, no matter how insignificant it is.
Mobileorg on the iPad (also available for android) was a godsent, although you could probably use a normal pen-and-paper too. The point is, have something to write your thoughts down at any time. I could be reading a book or just zooming out on the train, and suddenly I had this thought about something regarding the party. Just write it down. Doesn’t matter if I have written it down before, or it doesn’t make sense, or has nothing to do with any of your current projects. Just write it down. It’s the collecting phase.
Once I get home, sync the mobilorg app with my desktop system, and go to the next phase.
Process
In the process phase, I go through each of the items I have collected in the previous phase. Is it part of a project (say the birthday dinner)? File it under the project. Is it just something I need to know, file it under Reference. Is it just some random thought, trash it if not useful, file it if potentially useful.
Once everything is files away, I go through the projects I have going and organize it. Are there actionable items? What is the next step for the project? Do I need to retrieve more information from somewhere (creating a new action item).
Review
Unfortunately, this is one stage I’m still not very good at. I try to review my projects at least once a week to see if there are any progress, but I know I could get better at this.
Still, by using gtd, I feel I have much better control over my projects. By taking something like the birthday dinner and organize it like a project, I never felt like I was not in control at any point. I could always go back to my list to check out where I was and what I needed to do next. And even when things changed at the last moment, it still didn’t spin out of control.
Is gtd for everybody? Probably not. It works for me given the tools I have, and it does make my life a little less stressful. I do miss something like a mobileorg for the phone, but that’s a minor issue. In general, I highly recommend the book and system that everybody should at least try.
HP LaserJet M1522n
It used to be installing a printer in Linux was somewhat a pain. I remember installing my first printer, a Canon inkjet. It would work in one version of Linux, and then when upgrading to the next version, the printer would stop working because of something had changed. And this was a local printer. It was very annoying (especially when you are a student ands needs to print your homework. Well, not really, since we just ended up going to the computer lab before class).
That said, ever since I got introduced to CUPS, printing has become much more enjoyable (well, the fact that I usually go for HP printers probably helps too). I usually connect the printer through the USB port to a local server, and use CUPS to set up a printserver for the local network.
LaserJet M1522n is one of HP’s multifunction printer. It is also network based, and I was curious whether it would cause problems installing on Linux. Surprisingly (or maybe not at this point), installing the printer part was pretty painless. Printer got discovered by CUPS. Just answer some questions, and away I went, having a network printer. I had some problems with the scanning part (xsane would not discover a network scanner), but I finally found the solution.
Run # hp-setup -i, and download some hplip-plugins, and away you go. Discovered by xsane, scanning fine over the network. Pretty happy by at this point
TV slave – here I come
I just broke down and bought myself a TV. I haven’t owned a TV since I moved back to Norway, although I have watched some TV when visiting the old folks.
It’s been an interesting experiment. I can’t say I missed it too much. I don’t really watch TV too much anyways (most of my free time is spent on the Internet). I do miss watching movies whenever I feel like it. Watching it on the computer is not the same as watching it on the big screen while leaning back on my couch (much more comfortable than my office chair).
What really changed it was that i got a serious case of the flu (swineflu?) this past week. Really boring. Problem is, didn’t feel well enough to sit in the chair reading article after article. OTOH, didn’t feel like reading a book. Didn’t have a TV to watch. Made for really boring sick days.
Since my apartment is wired for IPTV, and the mediabox is basically a Windows Media PC with built-in DVD, I don’t really need to buy a DVD player. The only problem is that the stupid DVD player is wired to be region 2, and most of my DVDs were bought while I lived in the US (region 1). Very annoying. I might build another media box and just rip all my dvds. Haven’t really decided yet.
While I was at it, and buying the TV, I ended up buying a PlayStation 3, mostly for the Blu-Ray player. Hopefully, I can do some gaming too, but don’t really see any games I might be interested in yet…
New Computer
I’ve been wanting to build myself a new computer lately. Although my current computer kind of serves my current needs, I do sometimes get annoyed by its limitations. Mostly, I want a little more power to run more virtualization. I would also love to be able to try out some of the games, like Mass Effect (I so love those BioWare games). It’s annoying to have the game on the shelf and not being able to install it because I don’t have good enough graphic card.
My two last systems were laptops, which kind of served me well. It was nice having a system I could easily take with me when travelling between US and Norway. With the new netbooks, I’ll probably just build a really powerful workstation, and then a simple and cheap netbook for travel.
Of course, I could just get a gaming console and then I don’t have to worry about gaming on my system. Still thinking about that.
I do want a want to run 64-bit system on my main system, though, and I really want to check out those new Intel’s i7 CPUs. Hmmm… choices, choices. Nice to be a childless bachelor sometimes
Posted in gadgets
Leave a comment
Nokia N97 review
Recently upgraded my phone to the Nokia N97. It was a huge upgrade to the N70, since it came with wireless connection and a proper browser.
- Touch screen. Not as responsive as Apple’s iPhone. Somewhat inconsistent interface (sometimes you can use the whole screen to scroll, other times you need to use the scrollbar at the side).
- Navigation/GPS. Works great, includes voice navigation. Drove from Drammen to Lillestrøm and back (about 55 km) without much problems. Navigation controls is somewhat confusing. And direction sometimes gets confused (you’re on a highway and it ask you take continue pass the intersection when you drive over an overpass etc)
- Browser. Works OK. Opera Mini does better caching. That is, the included browser is good, but when you navigate back to a previous page, instead of loading it from the cache, it will try to download the page again.
- Ovi Store. OK. Not sure how to compare with Apple’s AppStore since I’ve never used the latter. Ovi store is somewhat redundant in Europe since there are so many other places you can download and install S60 software
- Email. Still crap. Can’t move email from one folder to another in IMAP
Overall, I must say I’m happy with the phone and would probably recommend it with some caveat.
Nokia E-65
I received a Nokia E-65 for work. These days, at least in Norway, people don’t get a desk phone. Rather, they get a mobile phone. It does make it easier if you have to move around according to which project you are in, since your phone number then always stay with you.
The initial impression is that’s it’s a really good phone. It feels nice, with the leather back, really light-weight, really clear screen.
Functionality wise, I don’t think there are any complains. It syncs with my Notes calendar, which make it much easier to remember all the meetings you have to go to. The email functionality has also been upgraded, compared to the Nokia N-70. That is, you can custom define the different ports you need to use to email. Wireless works great, and it’s a great way to save money on my the surfing habits. I installed Google Maps on it, and it seems to work pretty well.
E-65 comes with a mapping software, but you need to have GPS receiver, which kinda defeats the purpose, I think. If you have a GPS, you don’t really need the E-65 to show you the maps, do you?
The one thing I don’t really like about the phone is the camera. No, not because it has a “low” quality camera, but that there is a camera on it in the first place. It seems to me that a business phone like the E-series try to be, shouldn’t have a camera. There are places where you aren’t allowed to bring a camera into the office. And a camera doesn’t really fit in to the functionality of a business phone. Not that the camera is that good either. So, it seems Nokia put a camera there just to get past the reviewers that would complain about it, but not that good of a camera that would make it unusable in a business setting (no zoom, no flash etc).
Looking at the Nokia E-serie offerings, they have all cameras. I would love to get a phone with the functionality of E-65 without the camera. But other than that small thing, it’s a fine phone.
Posted in gadgets, reviews
Leave a comment
Spent the day trying to install a PCI USB2.0 card into the computer I use for the server in Norway. The problem is that we have a HP LaserJet 1022, and after some extended testing, it turned out that if you print using an USB1 connection, one A4 page will take about 30 min to print. Too long. So, I bought a USB2.0 card to plug into the server. Sounds easy enough, right? Nope, of course not. Turned out the server didn’t have enough power to both power the USB and the rest of the system (230W). So, I’m back to the old system with the printer connected directly into the Windows machine, and none of the other computers on the network can print.
Posted in gadgets
Leave a comment
Wow, I can’t believe it’s been almost 6 months since I updated this site last. Time really flies when life is interesting. Not that I’m going to write much about that here (what do you think this is, MySpace?)
I’m not going to be able to graduate this spring as originally planned, mostly because I didn’t finish one of my required classes. Not fun. Looks like I will be graduating March next year. Oh, well…
I bought a new laptop, when the old one started dying on me (sorry, but a system shouldn’t shut down because of overheating just because I’m compiling the Linux kernel). I’m more or less happy with the buy. It’s a very nice system.
Otherwise, I spent the day today, learning about subversion. In fact, I moved the all the homepage files from CVS to subversion. One of the reason I hadn’t moved to subversion before was because there didn’t seem to be very good support for it in my favorite editor, Emacs. Fortunately, subversion does come with en Emacs extension that lets Emacs manipulate subversion repositories, even though it’s not as nice as the default revision control controls in Emacs (no ctrl v v).
So far, I really like subversion. It does let you do stuff that was hard to do in CVS, like deleting or moving directories or files. On the other hand, subversion does seem to impact your project layout, something that CVS never did (ie. branching and tagging is not meta data in subversion, but rather a copy of your trunk, intersting concept). I need to play with it some more before I know if I really like it, but so far so good.
Posted in gadgets, life, website
Leave a comment
Nokia N70
I bought a new cellphone, the Nokia N70, replacing my Nokia 7250. One of my criteria, is that it will work both in the US and Europe (must be tripple bandwidth support). I also wanted one that could play MP3 files, because I don’t always carry my Ipod with me. So far, I must say I really like my new phone.
One of the new applications I really like is the world clock. This makes it possible to have the phone keep track of the timezones. All I need to do is specify the city I’m in, and the time gets updated accordingly. Really nice when you cross timezones a lot like I do. Especially, if you are moving from England to Norway, and you can’t really remember whether you updated the clock yet or not. The music player is not too bad. I can’t really hear anything wrong with it. The screen is big and bright, and the keyboard is pretty comfortable. The updated menu system is somewhat confusing, especially compared to the Sony Ericsson, but it might just me not being used to it.
I love the fact that N70 uses a RS-MMC. That means that, although you can use the Nokia PC Suite to put software, pictures and music on the phone, you can also copy the media over to the multimedia card. It’s nice, since I’m using Linux, and it means I don’t have to find a Windows machine to update my phone.
One of the things I don’t like is the battery life. I bought my phone Saturday morning, and by Monday morning, the battery was dead. I hadn’t even used it that much. That’s pretty bad. The old 7250 lasted at least one week without a recharging the system. This means that I can go away for a weekend without bringing a charger with me. This is pretty silly, since Sony Ericsson seems to be able to have much better battery life on their phones with the same basic functionality.
Overall, I’m pretty happy with my phone.
Posted in gadgets, reviews
Leave a comment
I’ve been back in Norway for almost a month now. As much as I love my parents, living under their roof again is a pain in the ass. Now, maybe if you are from one of those Asian countries, you don’t mind living with your mummy until you get married, but I just find it really restricting. Maybe it’s because I’ve been living alone for so long. Or maybe because I spent a year at home least year. In any case, I’m thinking of spending a week off somewhere on the European continent, not Norway. Prague sounds nice, or Dublin… Haven’t really decided.
I recently purchased a iPod Color. Really happy about that. The battery actually lasted the whole trip from San Francisco, USA to Oslo, Norway, with stop-over in New York, a little over 12 hours trip. The harddisk is big enough so that I didn’t have to listen to the same song twice during that time. Pretty nice. The only thing I didn’t like was iTunes jukebox. Don’t see what’s so impressive about the program. It might have been great when it first came about, but something like amaroK has pretty much surpassed it now. It doesn’t matter really, since I spend most of my time in Linux, so I essentially use amaroK all the time. amaroK also automagically converts the music I have stored in FLAC format to mp3 that the iPod can play, something iTunes can’t.
I so love my toys…
Posted in gadgets, life
Leave a comment