48-Hour Days

Last night, Bridget and I screened Pitch Black. I’d seen Chronicles of Riddick and, to my surprise, I really liked it. So, I was dying to see the first movie.

Not that I was disappointed, but it is a completely different type of movie. About all the two have in common is Riddick, Jack, and the Imam. Pitch Black is more of a horror movie, whereas Chronicles was a sci-fi, drama movie. Chronicles had all kinds of subplots and things going on in the background, Pitch Black was missing that. It was more in the genre of the Alien series.

Spoiler Alert!

Don’t read any further if you don’t want to know what happens!

The basic plot is that a ship with a bunch of people on it goes off course and crash-lands on a deserted planet. They can’t find any of the inhabitants and quickly find carnivorous and appropriately fanged aliens living underground (surprise, surprise). They feel safe, as the planet is in constant daylight and the aliens must stay in the dark. Until the eclipse. With the planet bathed in darkness the nasty creatures have complete freedom.

Riddick is pretty much the same Riddick as he was in Chronicles. He is cool, calm, collected, and quiet in the face of certain death. Of course he performs amazing feats of strength and agility in order to lead the survivors to safety. He gets some great lines. He is a paradox, alternating between cooly watching the aliens tear people apart and braving danger himself to save the others. In a few places his facade does crack, and we see (in Bridget’s words) a fuck-you-gun-in-your-face Riddick. This seemed like a complete departure to me. It was totally out of character. These fits of anger were always directed at the cop chasing him, Johns, so maybe there was something going on there that just pushed Riddick over the edge. Perhaps if that had been explained better, Riddick’s unseemly show of emotion would have sat better with me.

Conclusion (Okay, you can read now)

I liked this movie, though not as much as I liked Chronicles. It’s a great movie when you are craving a good horror flick. It doesn’t have the complexity of Chronicles, though, so don’t expect a whole lot from it. The acting in some parts is kinda forced, but I thought on the whole it was good. These two movies are the only ones I’ve ever seen Vin Diesel in and I think the guy has talent. He’s perfectly suited to this role, in particular.

Overall, I liked this movie. I’m not sure that I would watch it again, only because now I know what happens, so the excitement is gone. However, Riddick’s character itself might be enough to draw me back in.

Last night’s meeting was another huge success. Brad Colbow took us back to the basics of HTML and CSS with a great presentation. He used a design that he’d been working on with the client’s permission to demonstrate how he broke up and styled the pieces of the page. When he showed the design, my jaw dropped. Now there is talent. I was also keenly interested in how he broke up the page, which sections were which. It was enlightening for all, I think.

Following the presentation I got to talk with some of the other members, which is always fun. I am learning that I know more than I thought. When I initially joined the group, I was really unsure of my techniques and I really wanted to find out what best practices the pros used. I’ve found that a lot of what I am doing is The Right Way, which is really an ego boost. I’m also learning about how others solve the same problems I’ve run into, or at least that I’m not an idiot because someone else actually did have the same issue.

Chris Hattery and Bridget Stewart talked abut their experience with Dreamweaver, which is something I’ve heard of, but never used. Sounds like it has a lot of the features I love from TextMate. I had thought that Dreamweaver was strictly WYSIWTF, but apparently it is a really good IDE for XHTML and CSS. Who knew?

Next month promises to be another fabulous meeting. Joseph announced that we’d be doing a CSS tips ’n tricks session, with anyone who wants to presenting on a technique they’ve used. I can’t wait!!

Anyone who knows me knows that I am an organizational freak. A place for everything and everything in its place. I drive my husband nuts nagging him to put his shoes on the shoe rack and to hang his towel on his hook and not mine, stuff like that. Even the kids’ toys are anally sorted in to separate boxes: Little People in a separate box from the Weebles, Pop-onz in a different box from Duplo blocks, etc.

I’ve learned over the years that it really takes quite a long time to find an organizational system that works for you. You can’t really pigeon-hole yourself into one system, but every one of them has something to take away. I went to a seminar on organizing files several years ago. I dimly recall the speaker instructing us on tickler files and color coding, but what I really took away was this phrase: “Usage determines storage”. That has become a mantra for me ever since.

It is only natural that I feel an overwhelming need to organize all the digital pieces of my life, especially since my job is almost entirely bits and bytes. I’ve had some success with this. For instance, I’ve become really good about putting all appointments and time-sensitive tasks into my Google Calendar. I dutifully file away in del.icio.us any sites I find that I want to find again later. But, that is about it.

One of the big problem areas for me was the multitude of bits and pieces, tips, references, notes, articles, etc. that I had collected. I desperately needed a way to find this stuff again. Many of them can be filed under several different topics, so a normal directory structure was just not cutting it. I could use grep, but that was only if I knew a specific phrase and the document I was looking for was plain text.

Enter EagleFiler. Since I have bought it, my life has changed. I can dump anything and everything into it and I always find it later. EagleFiler doesn’t store your documents in a proprietary database, but in a regular old directory structure. That means that I can still get the documents out in the same format I put them in. That also means that, should anything happen to my EagleFiler library, my files are still fine. The best is that I can tag things as well as organize them in a file hierarchy. Searching just rocks and has saved my butt more times than I care to admit. That means that even if I don’t file or tag it, I’ll still find it.

I’m learning that it might be better to not tag and/or file things right away. I pay attention to where I think the file should be or what I think it should be tagged with, then handle it once I find it via a search. This is actually starting to lead to a cohesive, consistent system of tagging/filing. It is really slow going, though.

Another great feature of EagleFiler is the ability to have multiple libraries. I not only have a catch-all Reference library, but I also have begun creating libraries for every project I work on. Then I can dump all e-mail correspondence, notes, files, web pages, etc. into my library without worrying about whether I’ll be able to find it again. I’m beginning to wonder, though, if I shouldn’t have one huge library for all projects, since there are files that belong to more than one project (e-mails especially). EagleFiler allows you to open multiple windows for one library, so this might be a better way to go. Time will tell.

I can say that EagleFiler’s developer, Michael Tsai, is super responsive and totally open to new ways of using his application. This is rare among the developers of these brain-dump applications. He’s great and I can’t say enough good things about EagleFiler, so if you are in the market for an application like this and you have a Mac (you do have a Mac, don’t you?), you must check it out.

What I Haven’t Been Able to Organize

There are things that I haven’t been able to successfully organize and I am floundering. The biggest issue for me is e-mail. Since I telecommute, I get almost all direction via e-mail. Inevitably, one e-mail will contain information on more than one project. This means that I either keep more than one copy (one in each project), or have one copy and somehow tag it for the projects. This is the main reason why I am seriously considering one really, huge EagleFiler library containing all files for all projects.

I did begin archiving e-mail into a local mailbox in Thunderbird. For me, there is no better e-mail client than Thunderbird. I’ve used it since something like version 0.5. I’ve tried others, I really have. I’ve tried to like Apple’s Mail.app. But, no other e-mail client comes close to making me as happy as Thunderbird.

That said, Thunderbird’s tagging support is buggy and simplistic, and searching for something is painfully slow and usually doesn’t yield results. I need to move the archives into EagleFiler, but the question is: keep a separate library for e-mail or go to the one monstrous library paradigm?

Seems like the decision should be easy, but it isn’t quite that simple. I do have metadata associated with the files already stored in EagleFiler libraries and I don’t want to have to recreate it. It might be that I can move files between libraries and EagleFiler will transfer the metadata; I need to test it. If it doesn’t, then I hope Michael is reading this!

The next thing I have yet to successfully organize is my task list. I just spent the better part of the weekend creating a system in Remember the Milk that I really hope will help. For me, it makes no sense to put due dates on things. My job is pretty crazy and inevitably I don‘t get to work on what I planned to work on at any given moment. I’m much better off just having priorities. What is the next action that must be taken on a particular project? That is all I’m interested in.

This means a hierarchical system of projects and tasks. Unfortunately, RTM doesn’t really support this. You can fake it, though, as someone posted in the forums. I’ve used this post as a guide in creating what I hope is a system that will work. I have tasks for projects that are preceded by two hyphens and tagged “project”. I then create the tasks for the projects themselves and tag them with a tag that follows the “p-projectcode” format. Instead of entering in due dates for tasks, I’ve picked the next three actions for the project and assigned them priorities 1, 2, and 3 in the order that I want to get them done. I have smart lists that show me just the tasks for a specific project and one that shows me all of the projects. I’ve even prioritized the projects themselves, so that I can tell exactly which next action I should be doing.

What I am really missing is a view that would show me all the prioritized tasks automatically prioritized in order by the project. I need all of the top priority tasks put in the order that I’ve given their associated projects. Does that make sense?

Also, I’ve found that I have really big projects that are broken out into smaller projects. My question becomes: do tasks for the subproject get tagged with the subproject and the parent project, or just the subproject? I may be overthinking that one a bit, though. Time will tell.

A friend of mine mentioned that Outlook allows her to break a task up into steps, then has a progress meter that shows exactly how much has been done toward completing that task. I would love to have this functionality!

I really don’t want to go looking for another project-management/to-do tracker type of site. I like RTM. They have implemented Google Gears, so I can have my task data backed up, they have a widget for my iGoogle page, my tasks show up on my Google Calendar, etc. It integrates so well with what I was already using! Recently, RTM began offering a Pro version, which is available for a small fee. I haven’t ponied up yet, but I’m just biding my time, waiting to see what Pro members will get. Right now, it is just an iPhone-compatible site. If, however, they implemented some advanced features such as the progress meter or hierarchical tags, then I would fork over the cash in a snap. Perhaps these are things in the works.

This begs the question: why not create separate lists for each project? Again, some tasks actually can pertain to more than one project, so where is the division? Also, I need to allow my boss access to my task list so he can add new things or help me rearrange priorities, or just see what the hell I’m doing. I really don’t want to have to remember to share multiple lists. Having one big list for all work-related tasks means he has access to all of that.

Last, but not least, is CSS. How the hell do you organize a stylesheet so that it is easily updatable and debuggable? When I first started a recent project, I organized (loosely) by section. This seemed to be wasteful because there were lots of properties that were being added several times because they pertained to several sections. So, I completely rewrote the final stylesheet, organizing by property instead (box model, visual effects, font, etc.). This didn’t really end up in a more usable stylesheet. So, what’s the trick here? How do you do it? What am I missing?

I’ve written a book at this point, but it does give you a feel for my mania. I’m always looking for a magic bullet that will instantly pull my several different schemes into one cohesive system. I really doubt that it is there, and I really should know better. I know that getting a system in place that works is a very personal thing. You have to let it grow, learn what you’ll use and how you’ll use it. It takes time, but soon you find yourself doing it without thinking, and when you do, you’ll know that you’ve got it right.

It is a lovely, breezy, cloudy, slightly chilly fall day. I adore these days. I’ve just opened up all the windows and doors. Doesn’t seem like we’ll get many of these, since it is getting late in the year and I know the snow is going to be upon us soon.

I just today read a blog post about the release of gcalcli. This is so awesome! I’ve paired it up with GeekTool and now I have today’s events right on my desktop. Sweet!!!

Ugh. Just received an e-mail from Key telling me have to register my computer, but there is no link to follow to register my computer! Prime example of stupid e-mail.

It just occurred to me that blogging, twittering, posting to mailing lists and message boards, and the like really increase your vocabulary. I find myself pulling words out of my head that I’m not sure I’ve ever used before. My head is getting larger and I’m really starting to feel witty.

I feel witty, oh, so witty! I feel witty and pretty and bright!

Man, am I anal. Really. I absolutely love organization and anything to do with it. As far as I’m concerned, the Container Store must be heaven (I’ve never been in one, for fear of breaking the bank, though).

So digital organization is an absolute must for me. For the longest time I’ve been looking for the killer app that would get all of my digital flotsam organized. This is a tall order becaue I have a lot of it: posts to mailing lists, snippets from web sites, manuals, correspondence from co-workers, etc. This gives me several different formats to organize and keep and contain.

Not only that, but there are all the to-dos!!! Stuff that is due on a specific date, stuff that I want to eventually do, stuff that I may want to do, stuff that should have been done yesterday, it goes on and on. So, how do you organize all of that? Better yet, and more importantly, how do you keep all of those to-dos in front of you so that you actually do them?

So far, my answer has been a combination of several applications.

Brain Dump

The first is EagleFiler. I tried all sorts of organizers: Yojimbo, KIT, DevonThink, you name it, I tried it. EagleFiler just absolutely blew them away. There are tons of great features, but the most important to me have been:

• Multiple Libraries I hated that almost all of the other applications restricted you to one library where you dumped absolutely EVERYTHING. Yeah, that is kind of what I want to do, but not really. I want to be able to categorize my brain dumps: one for home, one for work, etc. EagleFiler lets me do this.
• No Database EagleFiler doesn’t store your documents in a database. This has several great advantages. First off, this means that EagleFiler can handle any type of file, whether it recognizes it or not, because it doesn’t have to figure out how to store it. Pulling a file out of a library in the same format you put it in is very important for documents that you might need to share with others. If I am ever on a computer that doesn’t have EagleFiler installed or I for some reason decide not to use it anymore, all my data is still in tact and easily moved to something else.
• Great Developer Before making my final decision, I took a look at the forums for the applications to see what kind of development was happening on them. I didn’t want an app that was stagnant and wouldn’t be updated with bug fixes or new features. What I found was actually quite appalling. The posts from the developers of Yojimbo, at least, seemed to be complete averse to any suggestions for improvement. One post in particular stuck in my mind. A user asked if support for multiple libraries would be added in the future (something I, myself, really wanted to know). The developer’s response was basically, “You shouldn’t use our application that way and, if you are, then you’re doing it wrong.” Are you kidding me? Needless to say, I instantly uninstalled my demo and have never looked back.

EagleFiler has become completely indispensable for me. I do have a catch-all Reference library, but I also have specific use libraries. I have a Recipes library that allows me to categorize my recipes, track which ones we liked (and who liked them), which ones we haven’t tried, where they came from, etc. I also start a new library for each project I work on. I can dump all of the e-mail correspondence, random notes, research, requirements documents, etc. into this one library. Since it is searchable, I can easily find that one e-mail about how this drop-down is supposed to look on the page. Light years better than sifting through everything manually.

I’ve also started a Movies library to track my VHS tapes and DVDs. I tag them according to genre and media. This allows me to quickly see which movies I need to get on DVD. When I’m in the mood for a specific type of movie, I can easily find all of the comedies or horror movies. I can also easily track who borrowed one. I have created my own little template into which I put information from both Amazon and the IMDb. Yes, I know, Delicious Library rocks and how could I not be using it to do all this for me? Well, I’ll tell you: because I couldn’t get the scanning to work. I tried the built-in iSight in my MacBook Pro, and an external first-generation iSight. Neither worked. I think out of about 10 movies, I successfully scanned in one. Basically, that means I’d be paying $40 for a really slick interface. Don’t get me wrong, I do think Delicious Library is slick, and if the barcode scanning had worked, I would have been sorely tempted. But I’m really happy with using EagleFiler.

To-Dos

To-dos were a bit harder to deal with. Now, I’ve read David Allen’s Getting Things Done and I did find a lot of good advice there. I like the idea of splitting up your to-do lists. I like the idea of making up action items. Keeping a list of projects just didn’t work for me very well, though. I ended up spending more time keeping that up to date than I did actually doing the action items. Certainly not what Mr. Allen intended.

One thing that really stuck in my mind, basically because it just made so much sense, was to keep date-related things in a calendar. For instance, if you have something due on a particular date, it doesn’t belong on a to-do list, but on a calendar. Makes total sense, right?

Wrong. At least for me. I kept forgetting that I had to-do items on my calendar. Not only that, but I just could not find a good way of keeping my to-do lists. Being a complete geek, I really wanted to use plain text files. My real draw to that was that they are platform-agnostic and I didn’t have to have a special application to work with them. Also, I live in the command-line when I can (GUI eye-candy is just lost on me) and I think that emacs rocks. I even started writing some Lisp commands to help me out.

But, I just couldn’t come up with a good format that I could stick to. I’m also absolutely horrible at regular expressions, so parsing out any type of format is almost impossible for me. Damn. Also, I ended up with some massive text files and kept finding duplicate items. Rearranging items started to become more difficult as the lists got longer. Yes, there is primitive search capability, but it was frustrating to have to scroll through the document with each match. I decided it wasn’t going to work.

I really had my heart set on some solution that would be platform independent and available from home or anywhere else. With that in mind, I turned to some of the online to-do trackers. I briefly looked at several of them, but settled on Remember the Milk. I like the simple interface, fine-grained control over permissions for lists, and all the features. But what really drew me to it, was all the Google integration.

Long ago I drank the Google kool-aid when I got a Gmail invitation and set up an account (remember when you had to have an invitation?). Gmail has been fabulous and it really works for me. I have several filters and labels set up, and keep most of my contact information there.

Naturally, I moved all of my calendar items into Google Calendar when it became available. I have several calendars set up (including one just for my 3-year-old) and I really live by it. I get an e-mail each morning with the day’s events and I run Google Notifier to make sure I get all of my reminders. Nothing made me happier than when Google added notifications for all of your calendars.

Best of all, I was able to add RTM to my Google calendar and voila! I no longer have to worry about adding to-dos to my calendar or not. I can either manage them from RTM or from Gcal. Fabulous!

It gets even better, though. I also have a customized iGoogle page and RTM is front and center. I did have to add a few different widgets to the page so that I could keep to-dos a bit separated, but that actually helps me work better.

The Trick

Even with all of this Web-2.0–y goodness, it is useless if you don’t view it constantly. This is a main tenant of GTD and it is soooooo true. Luckily for me, I not only live in the command-line, but in my web browser as well. In my perennial favorite Firefox, I have a tab group named “Launch Pad”. It opens Gmail, Gcal, RTM, and iGoogle all in separate tabs. This keeps them all constantly in front of me and that means that I use them.

Wrap it up already!

My workflow has evolved over several years, and so have my organizational tactics. I can tell you from experience that you don’t always know right away what is going to stick and what isn’t. What I can tell you is that you must be consistent. Some day, I’ll figure out a consistent tagging/filing scheme. In the meantime I lean heavily on searching.

The more I spend time cooking in the kitchen using recipes I’ve downloaded, the more I wish I had a good spot for my computer in the kitchen. I used to think that a computer in a kitchen was just a frivolity. An “ooh, look at how techy I am!” thing.

But, recently I’ve started collecting my recipes in EagleFiler. This is perfect because I’m able to set up general categories for recipes, but I can also tag them up according to who likes them, what time of year is best to make them, main ingredient, etc. I can also add notes of my own to recipes without having to print them out every time I print out the recipe.

So what’s the problem? The printer is upstairs and the computer is downstairs. I hate running up and down every time I want to cook something different. Plus, now we have two repositories for recipes: a 3-ring binder for hard copies and my EagleFiler library for soft copies. Some recipes are in both, but most are only in one or the other. I’d love to get everything together into one place. But, that would have to be in my 3-ring binder because I use the hardcopies to cook.

So, this is where I would really like to have the computer in the kitchen. I guess I’ll just keep on dreaming.

Okay, so the Cleveland Web Standards Association is starting to design its site. We’re having a meeting on Saturday to discuss it. Meanwhile, a bit of a schism seems to be developing. There are those who want to slap up something quick and dirty, then worry about designing our own software to suit our needs. The idea is that we’ll migrate data over later.

The other camp says, “Wait! No! Slow down and let’s do this thing right from the beginning.” Which approach is correct?

One part of me agrees that we need something up now. Right now our communication is almost exclusively through Meetup.com. As far as everyone can tell, there is no API and no way to get these communications back out. This may not be the end of the world, but I think everyone is interested in keeping as much history as possible. So at the very least, we need either a message board or a forum or a mailing list.

However, I also agree that we may not need to be rushing as much as we are. Perhaps it would be much better to start at the bottom right now and continue using the Meetup site.

Personally, I think everyone needs to take a step back. We don’t have any clear list of requirements for the site. Everyone is in agreement that we need communication of some type, but exactly what? Would we prefer a forum? A message board? An e-mail mailing list? Exactly what features do we need? Moderation? Searchable archives? Downloadable archives? Skinnable interface? Plug-in API?

That said, slapping up at least a forum of our own right now would be a good idea. We really shouldn’t have to lose any of this startup communication. I don’t think anyone wants to.

Hopefully, we can hash all of this out on Saturday. I know that there is a lot of excitement about the actual implementation and what software/languages/technology we should use, but before that happens I believe we should focus on the concepts first.