Validate Your Life

Polemics, Plausible Progress, and Protuberant Projects

Triple-Boot OS Windows 7, Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx), Mac 10.6 (Snow Leopard) Photo-Journal

I originally had far too much on my plate trying to simultaneously Triple-Boot, sync calendars, email, and personal data across three operating systems.  The poorly written (but highly extensive) post to that insanity can be found here, as a previous post.  I never got the triple boot going in that post; this time, however, I DID!

July 18, 2010 — 1:43 PM  I’m really proud of this post.  I put a lot of time and effort and troubleshooting into it.  But most of all it’s rewarding and a project that was (on the rare occasion) an actual great use of my time, and congruent with my career, interests, and passions, and definitely aligned with computer science.  Plus, it’s essential to my interest and studies in operating systems.  So, jolly good!

First off, acknowledgements…Invaluable or at least moderately helpful sites for accomplishing the triple boost:

(more…)

, , , , , , ,
2010/07/26 at 7:27 AM Comment (1)

Moving Away From What Don’t Want, Towards What Want.

Here’s  the Translations of the fields of study that I eliminated to their present and future and these may likely slightly fluctuate but meh.

I’ve evolved my past 5 studies to more uplifting, validating, clarifying studies.  The transduction are as follows:

  • Psychology —> Video Games!  Simply the opposite of psychology. Instead of imprisoning one self with self-dialogue “snares” , actually just doing things in a game or real world.  Escaping prison of mind.  This one’s complex and I fully don’t understand it honestly, but it’s something along the lines of gamers are a community, they’re a niche (or “we” are a niche really).  We help each other out.  Friends are the best shrinks, psychologists, coaches in teh world and better. So gamers are friends, thus gaming (via the community of gamers) eclipses psychology completely, replacing it with something progressive, fun, cooperative, exciting as, and full of tons of free expression within the uplifting confines of a great game.  There’s room for passion and interacting but always the forward-moving, measurable progression in game.  Both those (the progress and passion) create massive clarity and peace.  This sounds a bit “zen huey-looey” but hey, I reckon I take gaming seriously.  I’m serious enough about it and the gaming community to recognize that hte best “therapy” one could ever provide or receive occured with mates!  Heck, I even consoled a mate about his dad’s cancer on vent once!  Bloody hell! I don’t expect gaming community to be that intense, but video games are moving in the right direction: involved, not paralyzed behind a 4th wall, and not to mention fun and structured.  Most of all, I LIKE video games!  I get charged with a group of gamers cooperatively working together in a player verse player basis to meet a goal that can only be ascertained with such cooperation!  Rockin’ good time!
  • Computers —>  Neuroscience and Mnemonics and NLP and a few “conditionals” to conduct social interactions.  Utilizing the mind with it’s far-more-advanced technology than a computer as if it were a computer that’s always with you! Mnemonics has been a massively reoccurring interest in my life.  I studied it extensively after returning from my trip in the Mexico Yucatan in 2002.  I had the lobes of the brain on my desktop throughout college (this is also because my computer(s) basically are my brain(s) haha!), and NLP can create some aligning visualizations and NLP is great for anti-persuasion, so I only make choices that are keyed in with what I want and need not because someone else is effective at sales or persuading me off center.  NLP has some interesting hypnosis trance stuff which I may be trying to avoid but at least learning about it is effective.  The computer science moving towards social behavior deserves some explanation.  In fact all of these transmutations, uncertainly deserve more explanation, but hey, one step at a time.  Using computer science for social conditionals would mean setting up, for example, and if statement so that:
    • if (xyz_conditional) {
    • do_abc_expression;
    • }
    • which would conduct and organize my social interactions producing more flow, greater ease, heightened simplicity, and less anxiety because it’s all “programmed”!  This could be imprisoning in once sense, but when you’re constantly worried about what to say or do, this creates a very stabilizing ease.  Excellent!
  • Drama        —> Music, namely classical, and Math.  ufoMathematical, auditory, some music has “performance” but is so much more precise, it makes drama look like sludge.  A comparison I think would be a commercial is to drama as a great feature film i to music.  That aside, some talented performers are very musical in their performance even if labeled “drama”.  Drama, especially with Eric Berne’s “drama triangles” with social “transactions” is the exact rubbish that I am moving away from.  Perpetually hold the adult title and discard the time-consuming and confusing states of stagnation and stuckness that produce quagmires of social confusion.  Math and classical music are the respective left and right brains of crispness and clarity. Quality times.
  • English       —-> Voice work.  Not stuck trapped communicating through keyboard-pecking and expressing self though voice but WITH the structured composition learned from writing is marvelous and unquestionably an advancement.  I just spent about an hour photographing for digital archive, my book…that I wrote…that was basically notes on self-help book rubbish…and (it was called Validate Your Life) and get this utter blithering insanity…I actually took notes and highlights and bloody MARGIN comments on my own book!  So I photo-scanned all that in and put all the crumpled paper in a bag to burn, discard or just rummage through for remembering of how pathetically stuck my life was in the past withe self-help rubbish and religion infecting my thoughts! Math, anatomy, games, all of these new transmutations have revealed to me that illusion spell I was under in writing that self-help rubbish which was just regurgitated self-help rubbish I had previously read.
  • Politics        —> Honesty and Journal-writing and Sharing!  Additionally possibly aquatic, swimming workouts, health.   The antithesis of politics.  My goal is not to be invulnerable, but vulnerability makes you incredibly solid and strong and connected.  To quote an unsophisticated source, Ferguson says “if you’re honest, you’re bullet-proof”.  I’m interested imperfection.  Conveying my faults, my problems, my confusions, my anxieties.  That’s being real for me and that leaves politics in a pathetic useless mangled dusty pile of rubbish.  Journaling and sharing that is clarity.  Also I know a lot of aquatic fun is tied in with these transmutations.  Maybe swimming and aquatic snorkeling and whatnot would be the antithesis of politics because there’s absolutely no red-tape (assuming you’re allowed to swim where you can) and there’s no political sticky rubbish.

(more…)

, , , , , ,
2010/06/02 at 12:45 PM Comments (0)

Dejunking Escapades: I don’t know what to do with this stuff?!

clothes,  household, kitchen stuff, piles of books (didn’t attach photo).  What do  I do with that stuff? It’s not worth much but I don’t want to buy it again if/when move.  I never feel safe to stay in place because have moved (or been moved) around so often.  minimal is best idk there’s more stuff than that. that’s about all the clothes processing at the moment though.  do people still wear suits? ? I have like 5 suits  3 officially mine a few inheritted (heirloom haha).  I don’t wear them, if I don’t wear the suits I shouldn’t haul them around.  the household belongings.

Don’t need to respond at all, just kind of sharing process.   The piles of books are big a lot of chess books, miscellaneous sport/helath/martial arts , miscellaneous travel language stuff (like spanish).

(more…)

, , , ,
2009/12/11 at 9:03 AM Comments (0)

Distinguishing Smart from Stupid People

I’ve given this a tremendous amount of thought.  No, more.  I’ve written chapters in books to this topic. No…More.  I’ve devoted many years of my life to interacting with people and trying to treat all people as equal of equal intelligence.  My mantra, rubric, guideline, personal manifesto, what have you, was something along the lines of this (outlined in the 8th chapter of the complete rubbish book I wrote, Validate Your Life):  “Everyone is of equal intelligence; we all simply channel our intelligence cultivate intelligence rather into different areas.  Meaning that someone watching tv beomces “an intelligent couch potato”, someone who studies manifolds and topology, becomes an intelligent mathematican.” Right, sounds elagitarian, equal,  all for one one for all nice humanitarian perspective of the world and the minds it, right?

You are not a leming.

(more…)

, , , ,
2009/11/09 at 2:05 PM Comments (5)

Richard Feynman — Unquestionably a Hero.

Richard Feynman was one of the greatest physicists ever.   think the most provocative and admirable quality of Richard Phillips Feynman (okay more than one) is:

  1. The fearlessness, humor, and outspokenness of his voice (when he speaks he just speaks his mind and he’s usually thought about what he says a great deal, so he just projects, barks it out and delivers truthful and illuminating utterances.  When he detailed how the O-Ring on the Challenger Shuttle lost resilience below 0° celcius at the Presidential Rogers Commission of 1986, he just dunked the ring in ice water and spoke this discovery.  It was the crucial key-pin discovery that explained the Challenger catastrophe, and he just opened his mouth and said it.  He didn’t conceal his words nor use trickery nor politics of any kind and it showed in his voice.  I aspire to do the same and sometimes recognize (albeit short) pronounced moments where I feel I have the same simultaneous clarity, boldness,and just naturalness of communicating as Feynman.  But his “communicational style” is not the interest with this point.  Don’t get confused. It’s the clarity, intelligence, self-integrity, and humility that he held that make his voice fearless and outspoken.  I think one could say he didn’t care about perceptions, but he was viciously committed to explaining how things worked to people. What I mean by this is if he wanted to explain the details of the weak nuclear force he would just say it like it is, no strings attached, no air of pomposity, no boasting, no bragging.  Indeed! That is the very most admirable quality of Feynman’s voice that he DIDN”T try to communicate.  See a lot of people, I guess you can bring Reagan, the Great Communicator, into this although he’s a bit of an acception being a pretty solid guy it seems.  But a lot of people try to communicate.  They focus on pronounciation and delivery and how to stand or when to say what or something and their message is hollow.  I guess it’s kind of like trying to build a house and all you do is focus on the where to put the house and the millions of details of placement and foundation etc but you never actually construct anything when you speak.  Feynman on the other hand, just seemed to think about things and then just “build the house” to follow this increasingly odd analogy.  In other words, he didn’t have an agenda under than making someone understand.  Now THAT is extremely, extremely rare.  Even people whom I met whom have that agenda, usually their’s some splinter of “I want to look smart so I’ll explain this” or ” I want to have some reputation of a good explainer” or something of the sort.
  2. 2)His ability to Discover.  Feynman said  “The thing that doesn’t  fit is the most interesting!– (Feynman)” Because it means that that’s some new law of nature (or of the great grand chess game or something which he referenced as an example of figuring things out) and it menas you’re just spotted a hidden (and tip of the iceberg emerging) element of a whole other law of Physics or detail of Nature.   He talked about how he loved interpreting Russian and Mayan hierglyphics just because they were this awesome puzzle to work out.  I love puzzles because solving them is an accomplishment in itself.  ”The reward of a thing well done is to have it done”, wrote Emerson.  And Feynman’s discoveries and excitement to intellectually discover earned him man got-it-well-done rewards.
  3. 3)His intelligence. The guy was wicked smart. Done.
  4. 4)His adventuresome almost partying personality.  If anyone ever thought of the idea of a “Rock Physicist”, Feynman would probably fit the depiction.  He frequented a strip club now and then, played the bongoes like no other and played some excellent pranks, but still — first and foremost — held the dignified and well-qualified demeanor and hosted the cognitive abilities of a Nobel Prize winning theoretical Physicist.
  5. 5)His total and utter lack of snobbiness.  He easily could have held the “I know how this works and you don’t” POV, but it he didn’t.  He told stories.  He was extremely kind (but not in the cheesy “look at my generosity” way), but in a sharp kind of way, mitigating the chances of his intelligence being exploited — of that I seriously admire as well.  He made attempts to explain these freakishly complex quantum topics to laymen.  He Shared a good laugh and was an awesome gentleman dude.

Man, this guy was just so indescribably awesome!  But I will attempt to describe.  He was a master of logic.  Things he says and describes are always clear and rock-solid in their structure and stability.  Meaning, when Feynman described something you also were getting a dose of logic, natural sciences, math, learning process-theory, and probably a dash of humor.

He was clear, pure, genuine.  The kind of person from which you could learn heaps of truly worthwhile stuff and trust that you’re in Good company.  I distinguish worthwhile learning (actually truthful knowledge of natural sciences and math) from unworthwhile learning (religion, subjective beliefs, New Age bs, most all of psychology — indeed Feynman condemned psychology as a crock, which it is — for starters) because what Feynman knew and taught – Natural Sciences, specifically theoretical quantum physics — was the undeniable truth and quintessentially, inexplicably “worthwhile”.  That’s how things worked.  That’s how and why the sun rises and sets (okay that’s more of the classical mechanics branch of physics).  But the composition of matter is the very stuff in which he explored and made breakthroughs.  If anyone thinks that kind of knowledge isn’t worthy to learn, they should get their head checked.  I guess he kind of new the underpinnings of matter and energy and as a result of that incredibly electrifying (couldn’t help the pun) knowledge, he always had that never-pompous, always humble, but joyful look in his eye of “I know how this works.  I figured it out, and if there’s still more to discover, I’ll enjoy figuring that out too.”. Indeed,  if there was any person who directly personified Emerson’s quote of getting a job well done, it was Feynman.  I don’t think Feynman saw things as work or play.  Of course not.  He couldn’t.  That capacity of not distinguishing between work and play is something I do (but of course on a much less advanced caliber than Feynman) and it definitely puts you at a different rhythm or cadence with the wolrd (most whom of which lives for the weekly paycheck and operates as a brain drone living paycheck to paycheck never bothering to discover why they don’t atomically sink through the floor when the particles of the floor and their own feet are mostly empty space).

(more…)

, , , , , ,
2009/09/29 at 7:18 PM Comments (12)

Top 10 Reasons Why Life is Infinitely Better Reading Books

…and not watching movies. (This is in reference to non-fiction books, btw — and quality reads, not crap).

  1. Movies leave you under a spell; an illusory haze so you cannot see. Books give control of the haze others are under.
  2. Movies manufacture illusion without you knowing it, while books allow you to choose experience illusion, without decoupling awareness from experience.
  3. Books enable to you to explain and teach about illusions and reality, placing you at “cause” instead of at “effect” where you are a victim of illusion. You’re in the driver’s seat reading and writing books.
  4. Books clarify and provide understandings. Movies merely create suspence and foreshadowing. Movies are hollow, they foreshadow and build suspense, but they leave you empty with no treasure, no gem. Books have the gem. Books, sure, create suspense, intrigue, and connection. I remember countless “on the edge of my seat” reads of Sherlock Holmes and bawling at the end of Where the Read Fern Grows in early elementary school. And just in 2008, I was completely engaged and in awe of the adventure created by Jules Verne in around the world in 80 days. Those fiction reads provided massive suspense, BUT BUT BUT, unlike movies, the books also provided incredible value and understanding!! I learned so many lessons from those books above. For example, inductive observational skill from Doyle’s book (Sherlock Holmes), the touching experience of pet comraderie (from Where the Red Fern Grows), and the necessity of time, precision, and the cool collected travel making things happen skills of Mr. Fogg from Around the World in 80 days. Because I READ those experiences as books as opposed to watch what was blasted at me with pixels from a movie, I experienced them more wholistically and I acquired the lesson and understanding, with the entertainment and fun of a very absorbing and exciting read!
  5. You think more clearly with a book because your brain gets neurological activity firing that is congruent with the logic of the book. Kind of like a “mental-cerebral” version of “if you smile, you’ll feel happy”. If you read a smart book, you’ll think more intelligently. Movies trick and obfuscate intelligence.
  6. Books, you have total control over the pace, and “order you read”, movies (unless you fumble with FF and RW buttons, you do not have the same control.
  7. Books, your vision is the movie and you are the director; movies lack that customization.
  8. Books teach and entertain and create more cohesive thinking; movies, merely entertain with an inkling of “teaching”.
  9. Both movies and books inspire, but books provide an inspiration that is more enduring beacuse it is “your own version” of the inspiration.
  10. Finally, books don’t need electrical outlets, high-tech dvd players, surround sound and the like. Books are portable; you can bring them anywhere. Laptops are fixing that with movies, but with a book, you use your “built-in” surround sound, imax, widescreen mental imagery vision, which is infinitely more crisp, alive, and exciting than a movie screen.

I’m a former movie junkie (thousands and reruns) and have rediscovered the joy of reading!

(more…)

, , , , ,
2009/07/12 at 7:55 PM Comments (4)

I am not you, and you are not me — Transcending the Limitation of “Universal One”

I am not you, and you are not me.  That is the way things are.  I like that.  As you ponder that, let me explain to you why I find tremendous value in that distinction.

Distinctions create boundaries.  Without distinctions, everything would be porous and absorbing this information or that information would generate confusion.  But that confusion is instantly absolved when we utilize distinctions.

There’s a tendency for people with whom I communicate to think that we have some connection, as-if they “know me”.  The way they communicate and the advice they give comes from the perspective of “I know this person in every dimension and in every aspect”.  But then I mention something that I have done that the person with porous distinctions has not done, like ran multiple marathons,  the person shirks back and immediately says “Oh, I couldn’t do that!”.  Instantly their slurring and blurring of our distinctions of you being me, and me being you –gets mutilated when an element of capacity enters the conversation.

You see, as you listen to this closely and intently you realize that intention should govern our behavior (and often it does when we are not being persuaded, manipulated, or under a hypnotic trance by the media), but  many times our perception of capacity limits our behavior.  When I mention to someone actions I have taken that they deem outside of their capacity (for example having written 4 books, or ran multiple marathons, or any other task of which people are incredibly capable of doing, but don’t believe they have that capacity to do so) who has a ruptured their perception of boundaries, what happens in their mind?  First they recoil.  They instantaneously have a thought process of “this person is not whom I thought they were and there exists a distinction in our capacity”.  Such distinctions are good.  Because in many ways, what makes you you, and me me, is our logical levels, which of course, include beliefs, identity, capabilities, and behavior.  If I am talking to you in person, we share the same environment.  That is it.  I’d say environment is roughly 3% of “who I am” and “who you are” at best.   Without logical levels, we are all practically identical twins because our only differences would be blemishes on our epidermal layer of our skin, hair coloration, simple, trivial distinctions bound into the same sequences of deoxyribonucleic acid.  So it’s truly our logical levels that spark this kind of Lamarakian

For awhile in my junior year in college I engaged this belief that we were all this spiritual, interconnected, “Universal One” person.  I enjoyed entertaining that belief because of many reasons.  Reasons for entertaining the “universal one” delusion: (more…)

, , , , , , , ,
2009/07/08 at 9:40 AM Comments (19)

Flow Plan for Stock Options: Savviness Explained!

Buy Stock Option
Example:  July $50 call option for Walgreens is $1.66 (1.66/share, always in round lot, so $166)
July = Expiration Month (it’s always the 3rd friday of the month!)
$50 = strike price
When the Option Expires.  Decision Flow

(more…)

, , , , ,
2009/06/16 at 7:57 AM Comments (2)

Science: The journal of Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion

Science: The journal of Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion just announced a possible breakthrough for astronauts enduring long-distance space travel. The earth is protected from meteorites, high velocity cosmic rays, and other space debris from its surrounding “magnetosphere”. Cutting edge physicists aim to simulate this magnetosphere around a space craft. Scientists intelligiently merely mimicked the sophisticated protection mechanism already surrounding the earth and voila, a new breakthrough that could extend space travel incredibly.

Bottom-Line: Magnetic Force field aims to protect astronauts from space harshness.

Future astronauts could benefit from a magnetic “umbrella” that deflects harmful space radiation around their crew capsule, scientists say.
The super-fast charged particles that stream away from the Sun pose a significant threat to any long-duration mission, such as to the Moon or Mars.
But the research team says a spaceship equipped with a magnetic field generator could protect its occupants.
Lab tests are reported in the journal Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion.
The approach mimics the protective field that envelops the Earth, known as the magnetosphere.
Astronauts’ risk
Our star is a constant source of charged particles, and storms that arise on the Sun’s surface result in huge numbers of these particles spilling into space.
As well as this plasma, or “solar wind”, high velocity particles known as cosmic rays also flood through our galaxy.
The Earth’s magnetosphere deflects many of these particles that rain down on the planet, and our atmosphere absorbs most of the rest.

The first time we switched it on, it worked
Ruth Bamford
International space agencies acknowledge that astronauts face a significant risk of ill health and even death if they experience major exposure to this harsh environment.
And even the spacecraft themselves are not immune to the effects. A solar flare crippled the electronics on Japan’s mission to Mars, Nozomi, in 2002, for example.
But researchers from the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL), the Universities of York and Strathclyde, and IST Lisbon have shown how it might be possible to create a portable mini-magnetosphere for spaceships.
People scale
In its experimental set-up, the team simulated the solar wind in the laboratory and used magnetic fields to isolate an area inside the plasma, deflecting particles around the “hole”.
It was not initially clear the idea would work, said Ruth Bamford, who led the research.
“There was a belief that you couldn’t make a little hole in the solar wind small enough to do this at all,” Dr Bamford, from RAL, told BBC News.
“It was believed that you had to have something very large, approaching planetary scale, to work in this way.”
The team has had to take into account the physics of plasmas at the comparatively tiny human scale. To create its metre-sized trial, the team used a plasma jet and a simple $20 magnet.
“The first time we switched it on, it worked,” said Dr Bamford.
What is more, the trial field seems to adjust itself automatically. “It does have the capacity to be somewhat self-regulating, just like the Earth’s magnetosphere is,” Dr Bamford explained.
“When it gets a strong push from the solar wind, the bubble gets smaller. The video shows us increasing the pressure of the solar wind, and the shield gets smaller but brighter.”
Power issues
Many more experiments are needed, Dr Bamford admits, to understand how best to harness the effect; and a practical implementation is probably 15 to 20 years away.

(more…)

, , , ,
2008/11/09 at 3:50 AM Comments (0)

Tuesday News Blip: Apple Innovations, Stocks Skyrocket, and More D

apple_computer_logosvg.png

Technology: Apple’s innovation cease to amaze. The cutting edge rumor is that they intend to release a special laptop known as “the brick”. Doing its name justice, “the brick” is supposedly carved out of a solid “brick” of titanium, making it seamless and screwless! The price for such water-blasting crafted item sounds like it would be extraordinary. While it may not be 100% indesctructible, the durability of Apple’s new laptop technology will be a practically unprecedented release sturdy portability. Here are some cool factoids about it:

Macenstein had the best prediction of its bizarre codename:

“it is likely that it is simply a name for an upcoming product (or group of products) that Apple thinks will be sexy enough to pull a huge marketshare away from Microsoft. After all, how do you break “Windows”? You throw a brick through them!”

(more…)

, , ,
2008/10/14 at 4:44 AM Comments (0)

News Blip: LHC

The Large Hadron Collider was such massive news that it definitely needs its own article.

LHC will reveal to us details about dark and antimatter. It’s like an opportunity to replicate some never before-seen conditions, and answer millions of unknown questions; doing that, sometimes scares people! haha.

It excites me and most scientists, too, though.

Basically it gives us an inside look into how the universe was created, re-manufacturing some big-bang like instances that will answer jumbles of of scientific questions, clarify models (like the Stand Model) that were purely theoretical practically, and illuminate a lot of “shaky and uncertain” areas of science. Basically the LHC will provide is with a “Director’s Cut Edition” on the making of the movie of the “Universe”. haha!

Here’s the breakdown of what the components will do. They basically track different things, some of which we haven’t ever known about until now.

Anti-matter tracking — LHCb is in charge of this. We’ve got a TON of matter in the universe, but can’t seem to find the anti-matter! The big bang had equal amounts of matter and anti-matter, but all we’ve been able to put our fingers on is matter. LHCb will track where the anti-matter goes in the miniaturized, microscopic Big Bang replica.

(more…)

,
2008/09/16 at 12:55 AM Comments (2)

POP Suite Part 4: Electronic Organization and "Brain Trust" Part 2

If there’s one thing I have to say about electronic organization, it’s this: close open loops FAST! I’ve surfed the net many a time and accumulated 8 open windows, and over 30 tabs in less than an hour. That’s a lot to sort through. Just develop the habit of executing lightning-fast decisions to quickly archive, capture, delete, discard, dismiss, are do things that catch your interest. In fact, the general rule of thumb should be “nothing should catch your interest for too long!”

Okay, I speak a lot about soft-copy containers. Do that, that’s great. I believe you should start extremely low-level so you develop patterns and experience how a structured GTD program could expedite stuff you already do. If you just jump into a program, you’ll likely never learn good core GTD practices. However, after working with .txt files for awhile, the program I recommend jumping into is “Things”. It’s exceptional and amazing; possessing the fluidity of omnifocus but without omnifocus’s cluttered, superfluous “junk” options. You’ll use just about every feature in the program. The hotkeys for tags and the unstructured fluid concept of tags makes adding tasks seamless and fun. Additionally the fact that each task as a max of only 4 highly useable components (name, tags, notes, due date) makes this app intuitive and simple. No need to go into an in-depth explanation of how it works. A video demo has already been done.

A solid GTD must be simple, intuitive, and not add to clutter in your life! MANY GTD apps actually increase clutter because of the multiple annoying, superfluous, patheticall useles check boxes and extra options for each tasks (Omnifocus does the extra clutter method perfect, so don’t use that). Things has the speed and extensibility to get a LOT organized quickly but it still has all the geeky awesome GTD features to shift around tasks automatically and structure them via tags. If you’ve used mailtags, you’ll feel at home with Things, but it’s far better than Mailtags. It’s definitely an exceptional program where you aren’t locked into “contexts” but have the freedom to tag based on context or whatever you choose. While omnifocus is rigid and annoying, Things offers dynamic flexibility with tags. I tried Actiontastic, Omnifocus, and others, and this definitely takes the entire cake. Nothing is better than Devonthink for file structuring and truly limitless database organization of todos, but nothing is better than things for Task management. Together you’ll have the most potent gtd system possible. But Actiontastic is great, simple, and intuitive (and free) as well.

But starting off low-tech is best! It may be tedious, but you’ll discover patterns and trends of how you structure them enabling you to fully customize a GTD app later on so it works for you instead of you working for it. One example is “watcings”, “listenings”, and “readings”. No GTD app has those categories (yet, I may try to craft one!) and I wouldn’t have had awareness that I like to structure things that way without that knowledge gained from doing low-tech GTD. You learn very useful knick-knacks of your own organizational sysytem very quickly from doing low-tech first.

(more…)

, , , ,
2008/08/22 at 8:45 PM Comments (2)

POP Suite Part 4: Electronic Organization and "Brain Trust" Part 1




ToDo.gif

Welcome back to the Productivity and Organizational Progress (POP) Suite. Today we’re talking about electronic organization.

We’re jumping straight to the nitty gritty here. In today’s age, “paper-based organization” is an incredibly small percentage of the organization management we conduct; mostly all of it is electronic.

I think the best first step in structuring and organizing your electronic management first starts with “contexts” of electronic. By “context” in e-management we do not mean “store”, “house”, “office”, etc, but rather applications! Just capture all your contexts for these types of information

Rss Feeds
Email
Web Bookmarks
New Notes
New Tasks
Projects
Reference Files

(more…)

, , , ,
2008/08/22 at 8:28 PM Comments (0)

eReader iPhone App

Well, iPhone continues it’s assault in knocking off numerous other electronic devices. Along with GPS devices, household-wide remotes, now it’s the killer device for the Amazon Kindle Kindle.

kindle.jpg

It’s also going to slaughter the less popular Sony Reader

sony_ereader.gif

eReader.com released an elegant and intuitive eReader app on the app store. The app itself and the ereader.com account that let’s you download full books are both free. Sure you pay for modern books, but I just downloaded Jules Verne’s “Around the World in 80 Days” for free (most all classics are free) and can view it with the beautiful flip technology on the iPhone. If you can find a book on project Gutengerg, it will most likely be on eReader.com from which you can view it on your iPhone with eReader’s cool “page-flipping” software.

Here’s some photos I took utilizing iPhone 2.0′s image-capture technology.

(more…)

, , , ,
2008/07/12 at 6:57 AM Comments (0)

« Older Posts

This blog is monetized using Are-PayPal WP Plugin This work is licensed by John Thomas "Kooz" Kuczmarski and Validate Your Life under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/.