Maybe mobile will help

Using the iPod Margo helped me buy, I'm hoping to find it easier to post here. Content unlikely to improve in quality.


- Posted by iPod

I forgot to blog

I know. It happens to us all at some time or another. In the rush to keep living, I have I suppose that's fair, since I seldom read blogs either.
I'd sure like to know the answer to one question: why does anyone read a person's blog? Really. It's probably just me, but the things I have read are seldom worth the time it takes to read them. Certainly, that is true of what I have previously posted. I don't even read my own blog.
I do, however, make my living as a writer. Or did, until recently. (That's a whole other story). That means that I know how to write and do not consider it a trivial thing. Maybe that's the problem. Is blogging really writing? Or is it a form of diary one has no intention of keeping secret?
I don't really write in a diary, either. Except as a cathartic, I don't see the point. I have the diaries my grandmother and my mother kept, back in the days when a person bought a hardbound book for the year and wrote actual entries for each day. Most of the ones my grandmother wrote consist of "tired today" and little else. Some few are very sad. No happy entries. I guess I never gave much thought to whether or not she was happy while I knew her. Now that she's gone, there's not much I can do.

My mother's diaries are a bit happier, but I never knew her as she died when I was age two.
Is that what I leave for others to read when I'm gone? This blog? Man, how depressing is that?

A New Plan

I often have the feeling that the day has fled past with little to show for the hours.

I would have said that there is no good that can come from that feeling, but it turns out that is not the case. I'm a list-maker by nature. I like to know that I haven't missed anything. There is also the satisfaction that comes from checking a box on a line item. At the end of the day, those checked boxes let me feel as if I have accomplished something.

My new plan involves making a list of the major areas in which I spend my time. For me, that is:

• Writing (game articles, second book in the Shrine trilogy, short stories)



• At home tasks (transcriptions, cleaning, groceries, etc.)



• Work tasks (THWmodule, DocBook, etc.)

I found a good mind-mapping package called MindNode. The company offers a free version and I used it to brainstorm a table-full of things I do in an ideal day.

This was all inspired by an article on incorporating OPML into a writer's work flow, if you can imagine that. Investigation into workflow as a concept led me to discover that I don't have a very good idea of how I spend my time when I'm not at work.

That's not good, in my opinion.

So I selected two writing projects. I broke the home tasks into Chores and Errands, the difference being whether or not the task is at home or away. And I added a section for Trivia: things such as email and reading. (No, neither of these is really trivial, but they don't contribute much to my sense of accomplishment and are therefore put in this category.)

Using MindNode, I learned that I can better organize my day. Here's what I do each morning:

• In NoteBook, I copy yesterday's organizing page to a new page and date it for today.



• I delete any unique tasks that were checked off yesterday and clear the checks from any recurring tasks.



• I clear the copied journal entries at the bottom of the page, making ready for today's entries.



• I make sure that I have launched my daily tools:



• 
  
  
  
  • MindNode for brainstorming
  
  
  
  • Scrivener from Literature and Latte for serious texts.
  
  
  
  • EagleFiler from C-Command sort, store, and tag my files by project.
  
  
  
  • Notebook, which is already running.
  
  
  
  • EverNote to capture snippets of text and other off-topic ideas as they occur during the day.
  
  
  
  

To make all this work for me, I also had to be a bit clearer about my disk organization. Over the last few months, I have started a number of projects (visit Barbara Sher's Scanner Tribe if you want to understand why) and had let them grow in an uncontrolled manner. That had to be fixed.

Because I have two computers, I also run DropBox. I confirmed that the key applications all work with DropBox. Each project has a folder in DropBox, and all the files (mind maps, outlines, drafts, notes, and snippets) all land in the appropriate folder.

Don't misunderstand me. My days are not "organized". I still flit from thing to thing as the mood/need takes me. But when I sit down a moment, I can bring my notebook page to the front and get reminders about what else there is to be done.

If I think of something new, it gets a line item on the notebook page. If I decide it will be a project (i.e. it has 3 steps or more), it gets a project folder, a page in the notebook all of its own, a tag in EagleFiler, and a section in EverNote.

Now, at the end of the day, I am rewarded with the feeling that I've accomplished something. It's all right there: notes, checked boxes, drafts, sketches. Everything.

Very satisfying.

Happy Head of the Year

As with most years, I tried to spend January First doing the things I want more of in the coming year and avoiding the things that I wish to see less of.

For me, that means I played a game and cooked and read and visited with the children.

That was two good and one mediocre. Not bad.

The game was me as a British indian scout in 1754, hunting an incursion into our territory by persons unknown. My character, Swift Cloud, survived and sometimes that's all one can expect.

The dinner was not so successful, I'm afraid. I hit the wrong spot on the turkey with the thermometer and so got an underdone bird. I had to microwave the legs. And the vegetables were not up to my standards either.

However, the high point had to be the Skype visit with Rachel and her new laptop. She no longer has to intrude upon her husbands office space to video chat with us. We truly love that! Thanks, Rachel!

Other than those things, I am struggling with mood today. I don't believe that "putting on a happy face" results in a better mood. At best, it reduces the stress placed upon those with whom you interact. At worst, it encourages one to ignore the issues at hand.

Much more practical might be identifying what's wrong, what needs to be addressed.

On the 100 Things front (getting rid of 100 things): all's going well! All of the railroad items are gone. We took an entire trunk load of books, magazines, cars, and track to Sandy, in the hopes he can find a good home for it all. Even if he does not, it's moved along. There might have been 100 things right there if I count books and magazines. A dozen cars, etc...

Today I'm transcribing recent recipes and will try to update the cooking blog as well. Oh, but I have the game to add to the NovaAlbion blog, too. I guess I"ll be busy for a while.

Felice capo d'anno, tutti!

The hunt continues

I usually use Blogo to build my blog posts, on those rare occasions when I actually do post something. But today I notice that there's an error reported now. Following up on that, I learned that Blogo won't run under Lion, the next upgrade to Mac OSX.

So it has to go.

Now I'd like to have $40 to spend on MarsEdit, but earlier this year I tried it and for some reason, ended up with Blogo instead. I tried to try it out again, but MarsEdit remembers that I tried it already and won't let me have a second attempt.

I won't put out $40 so easily, so now I'm trying Ecto. Pardon me if there's silly images posted; IIRC, ease of image posting is why I went with Blogo in the first place.

So here's a pointless image, for testing purposes:

OK, that wasn't too hard.

Thanks for watching...

Flies like...

Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.

Real Life interfered with posting, as happens even to the unemployed.
First was the trip to Roseburg to lend aid to my sister. Then Thanksgiving. Then cold weather. And December seems to have happened, too. No bike rides in all that time.
And no plausible excuse in sight. Oh, sure, it was cold, but not cold-cold! If I can ride at 50°, I should be able to ride at 45°, right?
Yes, the bronchitis (now on its fifth week) could, in theory, have made riding the bike unpleasant, but I didn't try it so I don't know.

Instead, I set myself a "100 things" challenge. Not the one from the book and the web pages; my own version. I won't be reducing my personal items until they number a mere 100. Instead, I am starting easy and making a list of 100 things I can get rid of.
Just as when I gave up all my unpainted wargame figures, I feel as though I'm being given back time I'd felt should be allocated to those hobbies.

So far I've sent away all the polymer clay: supplies, tools, oven, and pasta roller. That felt pretty good.
I have a slide projector and a few carousels to part with, as well as some art that I will never hang on my limited wall space. (more on that later)
I'm ready to part with the Delta bench planer, the vacuum system, and a band saw. Add the Japanese mortise chisels, the skew chisels, and a few wood planes, and I'm doing well.
But the biggest step so far has been the dismantling of my model railroad. If you count the building kits, the engine, the cars, the scenery, the wiring and controls, and the entire 5' by 9' layout, it's a huge step. And I now have 16' feet of wall space to hang art!

I will also part with the nice Trek mountain bike, the binoculars, a few camera bags, and a pile of railroad books and magazines.

I feel so much better!
Now if I could just kick this cough, maybe I could get out on the road bike before it snows...

Reflexes Rule

It's all about the reflex action on a bicycle.
I crashed today because my first action was mental rather than physical.
I was pedaling the mountain bike up a gravelly alley when there was a "thunk" and the pedals spun free.
Here's where the wrong reflex cost me. I looked down to see what happened.
In the time it took to look down and think "oh, damn, the chain has gone," I had come to a stop and was falling sideways. It was too late to get unclipped and I rolled into the gravel.

Looking back, it would have better to unclip as soon as there was a problem (the reflex) and THEN look to see what it was.
I wasn't hurt; I'd already stopped. It was less a "crash" than it was a Laugh-In tip over.
And of course, being a guy, the first thing I did was jump to my feet and look around to see if anyone saw me fall.
No one did, so I was safe.
I walked back and picked up the chain, wrapping it around the seat post for the long walk home. Three miles in mountain bike shoes. <sigh>

And before you ask, yes I had a chain tool in the tool kit. But without my glasses, there was no way I could see well enough to work on the chain on a cloudy day. And therein lies a second flaw in my preparation for bike rides: there's not much point having the tools with you if you can't see to use them.

So work on those reflexes. Unclip first, automatically. Then look around.
Look before you leap. Or crash, as the case may be.