Month: February 2009

Time Management

Had an interesting little meeting this morning on time management strategies. It was one of those “break out into little clusters and write lists of suggestions” type meetings. I think that’s ironic given the massive amount of duplication in the suggestions and the time taken to report back to everyone.

But I wonder. Does anyone have any good time management ideas they can share? I spend a lot of time reading about how to be more productive and this hasn’t necessarily translated to increased productivity. I’m enjoying Ben Bathgate’s introductory series “Getting Things Done” philosophy – anyone who reads lifehacker knows about the GTD philosophy already. It seems like a good idea – and I’ll no doubt be sharing a lot of Ben’s posts via my shared links posts.

The funniest bit of today’s meeting was that I was in the breakout group with our CEO – a noted perfectionist – and one of my “miscellaneous time management” suggestions was that the pursuit of perfection can be a time waster. The difference between “good enough” and “perfect” can be minimal but achieving perfection often takes a long time. She “agreed with the sentiment” but couldn’t find the words to describe it when we were reporting back to the team.

Any good tips you’ve got for me – or others – share them in the comments

The best bits – February 16, 2009

Here's what has excited me from the blogosphere today.

Maths fail

I have been meaning to post this for a while. Spot the problem. From failblog.

All fixed now

Well, almost. My blog was down for a while today. My hosting provider – dedicated host – had some issues switching over to a new payment system. They lost payment details and suspended my account. Apologies to anybody who has been trying to get on today…

Dedicated Host have the best customer service I’ve experienced from an online company. I emailed today at about 4.00pm notifying them of the problem and I had a response in minutes and the problem fixed very shortly thereafter. And a free month’s hosting as a sweetener. They get an A+ for customer service.

As do Coffee Dominion. My coffee machine issues were not as simply fixed as I thought last weekend. There was a leaking seal spraying water all over the control panel’s circuitry. Water and electricity don’t mix. I normally order parts online through coffeeparts.com.au – who are good. But postage for a small o-ring is expensive and the Coffee Dominion team pointed me to their local seal supplier. Who were also helpful. My machine is now up and running safely.

I isolated the power issues in my computer – my video card died a painful death at the hands of either the tropical heat or humidity. I’m not sure which. But it’s working now too. Thanks to the onboard video card. 

So, now it’s just the breadmaker. Which has been almost completely dismantled. In fact, everytime I overcome one problem with it and get a little excited, I break something else in my haste. There aren’t many more pieces left to break. And I now know exactly what goes into a breadmaker. I guess that could be exciting for some people.

The best bits – February 15, 2009

The best bits – February 14, 2009

Here's what has excited me from the blogosphere today.

Race around in blocks

Little sister number two has a long held, deep seeded (or seated?) ambition to install lego boards into her car’s dash and keep pieces for passengers to play with in the glove box. She’s been outdone. Check out this Flickr set. There are a bunch of other car modification ideas here. 
 

People say she’s crazy she’s got diamonds on…

The soles of her coffee machine? Well, that’s one way to solve these economic blues.

What do you buy the coffee lover that has everything? How bout a Swarovski crystal encrusted coffee machine? Why? I don’t know.

Autocomplete this sentence…

Autocomplete based on popular google searches is a pretty dangerous thing. Don’t type random vowels into YouTube – you’re likely to be shocked by what other people are looking for. 

I don’t know if this is a photoshop job – I haven’t tested it yet. But I will.

Update – I tested these phrases in the autocomplete searchbar in Chrome. It seems they’re legit.

Gizmodo has shared a couple of pretty funny stories about Google autocomplete this week. Pictures below. Click them for a link to the full sized image if you can’t see the hilarious autocomplete results. 

A short history of the internet

Everything you didn’t need to know about the internet but may have been curious about… I saw this a few weeks ago and ummed and ahhed about posting it. I decided it is worthy.

Vader after dentist

There’s a growing trend of reply and counter reply videos being made for popular YouTube videos. Here’s a great response to the “David after Dentist” video I posted last week… It made me laugh. Out loud.

Rethinking the classics

A few weeks ago, or was it only one or two, I posted a bunch of movies re-envisaged as old books. There’s now a gallery of computer games given the same treatment over at Kotaku. A game focused blog that’s worth reading if you’re that way inclined. Here are two of my all time favourite games.

I like how World of Warcraft looks like a toilet.

The best bits – February 13, 2009

Here's what has excited me from the blogosphere today.

Will it blend: coffee

Will it Blend is the viral marketer’s dream. Who’d have thought getting the managing director of the company to blend cool stuff with this magic blender would capture the attention of hundreds of thousands of regular viewers. 

Now, Will it Blend’s Blendtek blender takes on the high end coffee grinder market. 

How to keep track of what you’ve read

I have a great deal of respect for John Piper. Which reminds me of a post I was going to write about all the sermons we listened to on the road in New Zealand. I’ll get to that one day.

John Piper is the “preaching pastor” of a wildly successful evangelical church in the US. He gives very few interviews. He’s old(ish) and seems pretty humble, passionate and level headed. He recently did do an interview online and here’s a great tip for keeping track of important bits from books. Create your own index. Piper doesn’t reread anything – but here’s how he keeps track of ideas:

When you finish a book, what system have you developed in order to remember and reference that book in the future?

“I index books as I read them, by writing short notes in the front of the book with page numbers beside them. In a good book there may be over a hundred such notes.”