Sean’s Blog

This weekend, I went ot PodcampOhio.  It was just a really awesome new media conference here in Columbus.  I learned a whole bunch and met some cool people.  I thought I would share some of the things I picked up for everyone who couldn’t attend.

• Blackbird - A lightweight Twitter client for the Blackberry.  No need to use text messages for tweets.  Not as pretty as twitterberry (which I’ve been using for a while now), but (as far as I can tell) faster.  I’ve switched to Blackbird.
• Multiple Loops In Wordpress.  Requires some Wordpress hacking, but this looks to be a really cool setup.  I am currently playing with this on my Wordpress test install.  Here are the link to Mitch’s slides (from Studionashvegas.com) on how to do it.
• Custom Fields in Wordpress - Also from the slideshow, how to add custom fields for a sort of graphical tagging ability.  Currently playing with this in dev as well.
• CMSMadeSimple - I’ve been looking into CMSs for a side project I am working on but the learning curve for Joomla seems a bit steep for my liking.  CMSMadeSimple seems like an awesome solution.
• JungleDisk - I’ve heard of this service offered by Amazon, but after hearing some of the praises for it, I am really considering using it for backup.
• Summize - A way to dig into twitter for subjects.  Just about everyone seemed to be using it.

I really had a good time and would like to thank all the presenters and organizers.  I was really surprised to find something like this in my home town.  Do some digging in yours and you may be surprised.

For a while now I’ve been using Remeber The Milk and while it is useful, the reason I’ve really come to love it is for how it lets me keep track of books.  I read a lot and, like most of you, I am always finding or hearing about books I would like to read.  The problem is that I can never remember them, let alone while I am browsing at the library or bookstore with eight thousand other books staring at me.

Enter Remember the Milk.  Whenever I run across a book that I might be interested in reading, I add it to the list.  Most of the time, I’ll  check  to see if it’s  available at my local library as well.

When I go to the library, I’ll check out some books from the list.  If I see anything that catches my eye browsing, I’ll add it to the list.  This is where the mobile feature of being able to use it on my Blackberry really shines.

When I get home, I’ll add a personal task to return the books I checked out due by the date and mark the books in the list as completed.  This system should really work with any task manager, but RTM just makes it really easy for me.

So May 16th has come and gone and no Economic Stimulus Check has shown up in my bank account.  I was getting pretty worried that there was some sort of snafu, but then I ran across this piece of information.

Apparently, if you used TaxAct software to file your taxes (like I did) and chose direct deposit, you will be getting a paper check.

Looks like Taxact routed the direct deposit through a 3rd party bank, which neither they nor the government is going to do for the rebate check.  So now I know where it is, it just means that I am going to have to wait at least another 2 months for it.  What a pain in the ass.

That being said, I liked filing with TaxAct and will probably do it again.

Here’s the schedule for those of us waiting for paper checks.

I finally got rid of the little Dell 720 printer I’ve been using.  It did kind of a crappy job, was slow and the ink ran out fast and was expensive.  So the other day I boght a big whopping multi function laser printer from Brother.

Brother actually supports Linux, so we can get the drivers which is nice.

The scanner setup was easy as well and I have included it at the bottom.

When you install your 7420, Hardy will detect it and set it up with the wrong printer drivers.

All you need to do for it to work correctly is got to Brother’s web site and download the Linux drivers.

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This week I went ahead and installed Ubuntu 8.04 on my laptop and am generally pretty happy with it. As usual the install was painless quick from the upgrade button on the Update manager. I have been holding off on installing on my desktop because I want to make sure everything is running smoothly before I do a full switch.

One of my grips though is why Firefox 3 beta 5 was included. I like it and it seems to be pretty stable, but several of my plugins don’t work. Google notebook appears to work, but when you try to open it, it just pops open a new blank window. Google Gears is not yet supported in FF3. Several days ago the del.icio.us plugin was upgraded to work at least.

Here are a couple tips that I found useful doing this install:

• If you get a message when you try to run something through wine that says “failed to reserve range: xxx-xxx” try following the instructions here. Fixed it for me.
• Since I use Wine a lot, and by default wine is in a hidden folder (.wine) you can create a link for easier access. At the terminal in your home directory simply type “ln -s .wine wine” (without the quotes) and the will create a link to the folder that you can access without unhiding all directories.

I almost feel like I’ve been cheating for the past week. After a long time pimping MonkeyGTD, I’ve switched to Remember The Milk. I don’t think I am going to be switching back anytime soon either. After I wrote the post last week about staying organized away from the computer I started to look into applications that would work on my Blackberry.

Remember The Milk got some serious love on Lifehacker’s Best GTD applications and I though I would give it a try. I was pretty much immediately blown away. RTM had everything I was looking for and more.

First off, it is web based and free (for the non-pro version). It easily manages my tasks and has a mobile interface (this was the killer for MonkeyGTD in my book). It integrates with Google calendar and can send me messages when tasks are due.

One of my killer apps was to be able to jot down books I wanted to read and then have access to that list at the library. I simply created a list called Books, and started keeping track of books I wanted to read whenever I came across them. Then when I made a trip to the library, i just logged on top the mobile interface, pulled up my book list and grabbed several of them. I added a couple books on the fly at the library that I didn’t want to take out yet, but wanted to read in the future.

When I got home, I put in a task to return the library books due on the books due dates.

The Pro version has tools that will actually sync with the native Blackberry applications, but right now I don’t need that level of integration.

MonkeyGTD is a great tool, but I am going to be sticking with Remember The Milk. Give it a try. It rocks my geeky world.

Last week, when I installed the new theme for my site (Xplosive from BlogOhBlog), I noticed my stats in Wordpress.com Stats plugin dropped to 0. I thought this might just be a fluke, since every once in a while I will have a day where the visits are in the single digits. But by day two I was getting worried. Then I received a message from a friend using the Contact page and I knew something was up since it was still showing 0 hits.

I was still getting a page count via Google Analytics, but I love Wordpress.com Stats. The stats are (almost) real time, and it gives me just enough information for a quick over view of what has been going on. After some digging I found that this sometimes happens.

The fix is pretty easy, although it will require you to modify actual PHP pages (which is not that hard with the Wordpress Theme editor. I am assuming Wordpress 2.5 for this (although everything should work in earlier installations). Simply go to the Design Tab->Theme Editor. Now we will need to add the function in 3 places:

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Mark Bittman has a post on his blog and a column in the New York Times about visiting Merida, on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. Jess and I visited Merida in the fall of 2006 and it was one of the best trips of my life. Merida is an old colonial city in Mayan Mexico and the capital of the State of Yucatan. The streets are narrow and paved with brick. The architecture is exactly what I though of for a colonial Mexican city. The people are friendly and life revolves around the main square (or zocalo).

Although not a huge tourist destination, there are a ton of things to do there. A couple of my favourites:

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I’ve generally gotten pretty good about keeping organized while I am at the computer.  Using MonkeyGTD and keeping my inbox clear have really helped.  But at least 75% of my time is spent not in front of the computer and without any of these tools I’m not much better then my previous unorganized self.  There are tons of methods on the web about keeping organized away from the computer.  But most involve notebooks or PDAs and i really don’t like to carry anything extra.

What I do always have is my phone.  Because I always carry it, making sure I have some important lists on it has really been a life saver.  One of my big annoyances is books I want to read.  I have a context in MonkeyGTD where I keep a list to read, but when I’m actually at the library, I generally don’t have it handy.  So what I’ve started doing is emailing myself a message and then copying it to a memo.

Now there are some obvious problems with this setup.  First off, you need to be able to access your email on your phone.  I have a Blackberry, so this isn’t a problem for me.  You also have to remember to send and update your lists.  There should be some way to automate it so when I enter something in whatever I am using, I won’t need to do these multiple steps.  I’ve tried brining up MonkeyGTD in the built in Blackberry browser, but it is completely unreadable.

I think I am going to try another task manager, even though I really like MonkeyGTD, that may handle mobiles a little better.

Work email has always been one of my real challenges.  I don’t have much choice in what program I use or the ability to really customize it.  So when I realized I needed to take control of my email, I needed something simple and flexible that was almost completely platform independent.  I needed a process since I couldn’t really use a tool.  I liked Merlin’s Inbox Zero process over at 43Folders, but it seemed like overkill for what I really needed.

So I came up with something quick and dirty that knocked out my inbox and has kept it clean for several weeks.

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