Who doesn’t make fun of my typewriter? Sheesh.

Fast Company: The Pen is Mightier Than The Phone

“When it comes time to rewrite a messy or mostly done list, merely facing the idea of writing out the same task for the fifth time can be enough motivation for me to do it right then, so it never has to be written down again”

Exactly right. A paper todo list helps prevent procrastination simply by making it a pain in the ass to put things off. Many times I find myself saying, “Fine, shut up, I’ll do it already!” to avoid writing the task yet again on a later page. Sometimes I’ll take care of some quick task just to prevent myself from writing it down the first time.

Historically, I waffle between terrifically complicated todo apps like Omnifocus and a simple handwritten list in whatever notebook I’m using that week. Both options are great, but I’m never comfortable fully committing to one or the other. Lately, I’ve taken to using OmniFocus only for longer term lists like “Movies to watch” or “Books to read.” I also use the handy quick entry in OmniFocus to capture thoughts and tasks while I’m in the middle of something else. What’s weird is that I later write them down in a notebook. I find that the act of writing a task down on paper helps to cement that thought in my head. There may be some inner-workings-of-the-brain reasons for this, but all I know is that it helps. A quick glance at my handwritten list and I can recall things about any item simply based on its location on the page.

Tasks in OmniFocus move around too much. I add contexts and projects to each and they get handily filed away, making them quite easy to ignore from then on. Plus, they all look exactly the same. It’s all very neat and orderly and can be very effective, but can also lull me to sleep.

Short answer, hand-written todo lists are great. I may have finally lapped myself on the GTD Merry Go Round

Ben Brooks - Personal Information Tracking via The Fitbit:

Giving the Fitbit a goal of 5,000 steps a day is useless. It’s useless because it does’t count that I walk up and down 12 flights of stairs everyday. Useless because it doesn’t know when I am carrying additional weight while walking (unloading groceries, carrying a computer bag, etc.). The amount of steps I take each day in no way correlates with how active I was.

I think I understand his point, but I’m not sure I agree with the “useless” part. When I have my Fitbit with me I am always more active. I have a goal of 10,000 steps per day. That’s a lot of steps, and so each time go anywhere I take the long way. I do things like park as far away from entrances as is reasonable. I go up 2 extra floors to use the bathroom. I hit the office Walkstation for an hour. I walk the dogs even if I don’t feel like it. All this because a little passive device in my pocket makes me want to.

Yes, it’s silly, but on days I forget the Fitbit I tend to skip the extra steps simply because I’m not getting credit for them. So, while he’s right that the Fitbit doesn’t actively help me, and it can’t tell how active I am, I’ve found it incredibly useful. If walking more a good thing, then the Fitbit has fulfilled its purpose for me.

Ben also says…

It syncs with your computer only through a special cable.

I wouldn’t call it a “special cable.” I’d call it a USB dock. The Fitbit, once set up, syncs wirelessly via this doc. After setup the only thing I use the dock for is to charge the Fitbit and that only happens once every 10 days or so. I love how it syncs automatically every time I get anywhere near the dock. This is much more convenient than the UP, which (I believe, since I don’t own one) requires that you remove the cap and plug it into your iPhone to sync every time.

His comment that…

…these activity tracking devices are about as good as the Palm Treo was when all we were looking for is an iPhone.

…may be true, but right now I’m finding the Fitbit to be darn helpful. For $99, I’m not going to wait for what’s next, but I’m certainly looking forward to it.

It is a great time to be a reader. Great books are plentiful and can be easily distributed and read on any number of new devices. I was in front of the line when Amazon released its funny looking first-generation Kindle, and I’ve never looked back. Now we have iPads, Nooks, and any number of Android devices. And of course we still have real books. I alternate between using the Kindle for non-fiction, real books for fiction, and the iPad for magazine and newspaper articles. Like I said, it’s a great time to be a reader.

One method of reading I had never tried was that of listening to books. Audio books seem like a pretty good idea. The benefit I hear touted often is that audio books save time by allowing one to “read” while driving or doing things around the house. That seemed useful.

It takes about 15 minutes for me to drive to the office each day. That’s not a lot of time, but still adds up to a couple hours spent in the car each week, not counting errands and such.

While in the bookstore a few weeks ago, I saw Neal Stephenson’s “REAMDE” in audio book format. I’d totally forgotten about this new book, so I bought the box of 32 CDs and started listening to them the on the way home.

What a disaster. I gave it a week and gave up. I found that I couldn’t pay attention to the story and still drive safely. I would drift along and a few minutes later realize that I hadn’t been listening at all. I found the simple act of paying attention to the story impossible while driving. On top of that, it’s a pain just managing the CDs and player. Once in a while I’d listen to some other CD and in order to continue the book I’d have to try and remember which track I been listening to and manually select that track. At least the old books on Cassette tape would pick up where you left off. I gave up and bought a “real book” copy of “REAMDE” and it’s a much better experience.

I have decided that audio books are not for me. I enjoy the physical act of sitting down quietly, picking up a book, and reading. Listening to a book while driving or doing other things is not reading.

My parents gave me a Canon AE-1 Program when I graduated from high school in 1982. I thought it was the coolest thing ever. For a while, I carried that camera around everywhere, photographing everything I could think of.

Most of my friends did not have cameras, or if they did they rarely carried them. The problem with having a bunch of no-camera-having friends is that there are not that many photos with me in them. Most of the photos of me at that age involve either a mirror or a tripod and self-timer.

A friend of mine recently sent me a shot he took during our post-graduation class camping trip. And what do you know, I’m in it (and using my new Canon.)

It reminded me of one that I’d taken, and sure enough, mine was the exact same scene, but from the opposite end.

Would have been neat if we’d have done more like that.

When I bought the Nikon F100 a year ago I knew deep down that it was a camera I chose instead of the mythical F6. Of course at the time I convinced myself that the F100, which is a terrific camera, was all I needed. More than I needed. And for less than $200 it might just be the best deal in film cameras ever. Problem was, I knew the F6 existed, and I knew it was better. Every time I grabbed the F100 I felt the tiniest little tinge reminding me that, hey, I should’ve just gone for the good camera.

Then I bought a D700 and solved that problem for good. Right?

Not so fast. An odd thing happened after using the D700 - arguably one of the greatest digital SLRs you can buy - I got no joy from using it. Sure, it’s terrifically built and can practically see in the dark. The full-frame sensor means that there’s no crop factor to deal with and the files are oh so nice. All great, but meaningless if it’s not any fun. I liked everything about the D700 except that there was nowhere to put film in. That’s when the F6 started to come up in my daydreams. Everything about it attracted me, and every review or article I could find had nothing but wonderful things to say about it.

So I bought an F6. I picked it up from keh.com in “bargain” condition. It was listed as bargain probably because there’s a significant wear mark near one of the strap lugs and it came with nothing, not even a body cap. Released in 2004, the F6 sold for a bit over $2500. That’s about the same as a new D700 today. My scratched up “bargain” cost close to $1,300. Many sell for $1,500 or more. New (old stock) still fetch near the original price. It’s a crazy price for a film camera these days. I wonder if the D700 will still be worth more than 60% of its original value in 7 years.

I love the camera so far. It feels so good in hand. Solid as a brick. It’s got all of the actual picture-taking technology of the D700, but I get to use film. Modern, crazy-fast autofocus. The meter seems to be foolproof. It can use all the latest Nikon lenses. The CLS flash system is available and can be used with the newest SB-900. It even records shot/exposure information. I can push an “info” button after shooting and see shutter speed and aperture for that frame. Basically, the F6 is a completely modern, professional film camera.

Besides all that, the thing that really clinches it for me is that I can be sure that no one is going to suddenly release a better 35mm SLR. The F6 will probably always be the best film SLR ever made. I find that comforting. On the other hand, Nikon is poised to announce a D800 any day now - instantly making the D700 feel like an also-ran.

Some days become what I call “Good Computer Days.” You know the kind; Everything seems fun, new things are discovered, old stuff gets dealt with, and so on. Today was one of those days.

I switched back to OmniFocus for my GTD system.

This happens every few months, and is a regular and accepted part of my productivity cycle. For my GTD system I switch between OmniFocus, The Hit List, TaskPaper, and a paper notebook. It depends on how much I’m into GTD at the time. The cost of change is minor, taking my an hour or two to migrate everything from the “old” system. This migration process is more than just moving from one app to another. There’s a reason.

I tend to ignore certain tasks day after day until eventually a blind spot is created and the task becomes invisible. Moving everything to a new system forces me to look at and evaluate every single task. It’s refreshing and I find that it shakes out a lot of buried stuff that has been neglected for too long.

I’ve never been much into using contexts, which is one reason I become weary of OmniFocus after a while, since so much of it depends upon constant context maintenance. I understand why contexts are important, but sometimes don’t feel like dealing with them. Today, I felt like it, so I spent some time re-evaluating my contexts.

I’ve changed my contexts to reflect types of work and energy required rather than the sort of resource availablity constraints I’ve used previously. I’m always at a computer, so contexts like @Computer have become less useful. Now for example, when I feel like writing, I have a writing context for things that need some quality writing time. Contexts are based on the “mode” I’m in rather than where I am or if there’s a phone or computer available. Notice there’s a “Low Energy” context. It’s my new favorite and is reserved for those times I’ve got an hour to kill but I just don’t feel like doing much. It’s nice to have a few things lined up for times like that.

The latest OmniFocus (when using iOS 5) includes a geo-fencing feature for contexts, much like the built-in Reminders app. I created location-aware contexts for those. The “Leave Home” context, for example, will trigger an alert within a mile or so of leaving the house. Perfect for things like “Pick up donuts for the office.” Location-based alerts are something I didn’t even realize I needed until they showed up. Now I’m using them like crazy.

OmniFocus is the most complete GTD app available and the iPad and iPhone apps are very very good. The Forecast and Review modes of the iPad app are worth the price of the entire OmniFocus suite.

OmniFocus is too “fussy” for many people, and that’s fine. Sometimes it is for me to, but I find that when I try to simplify my system and start using a Moleskine notebook or whatever, I quickly outgrow it - again. And so the cycle continues.

My brain is broken, and switching GTD systems every now and then makes for a nice workaround.

Not long ago I swore off anything that required using a terminal on my Mac. Then, last night I did almost exactly the opposite and moved all 1686 blog posts from this nearly 12 year old Wordpress blog to Octopress.

No reason, other than it sounded like fun.

A number of smart bloggers have been pushing ”baked blogs” and I love the idea, but not for many of the reasons they cite as so important.

One argument for having a baked blog is that if it gets “Fireballed” (we used to call that “Slashdotted”) the server won’t get buried under the load. For most of us, that’s not a concern. Almost no one reads this. Besides, several decent and easy-to-configure Wordpress plugins have the performance issues mostly solved anyway.

Honestly, I wanted to do it because serving up a completely static site using nothing but a simple web server is a neat way to do it - almost retro in a way. It just feels clean somehow. No database, no PHP/Rails/Whatever. I can serve the site from anywhere, including S3, Github pages, Heroku, all with a simple configuration change and minor setup time.

And besides, Matt Gemmell wrote up such a nice article about the process that I figured even I could do it. I was right. It took about two hours to convert the Wordpress XML export and massage things into shape. Octopress makes using Jekyll easy. I had no intention of starting with a bare Jekyll install. Too complicated.

Anyway, this is new. I’m using the out of the box template but that will change when I have time.

Onward!

UPDATE 11/08/2011: That lasted less than a month. A static blog is cool, but a pain in the ass to maintain overall. Images are tough to deal with. Plus it takes Jekyll like 8 minutes to rebuild everything each time I want to change something. Life’s too short. Maybe whatever Marco Arment is working on will be worth a look.

Sweept: iPod nano with Multi-Touch. | Apple - Bill’s Words.

The motion is beautifully imperceptible, just like a real watch.

But it’s not a real watch. It’s a computer strapped to your wrist. So not the same.

Edgar Allen Poe died October 7th, 1849. I thought it would be appropriate to listen to one of my Favorite records from The Alan Parsons Project: “Tales of Mystery and Imagination” (1976).

Interesting note, The Raven was, according to Wikipedia, the first rock song to utilize a vocoder.