{"id":154,"date":"2005-01-19T13:37:04","date_gmt":"2005-01-19T18:37:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/index.php\/getting-things-done-the-last-two-months\/"},"modified":"2005-01-19T13:37:04","modified_gmt":"2005-01-19T18:37:04","slug":"getting-things-done-the-last-two-months","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/2005\/01\/19\/getting-things-done-the-last-two-months\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting Things Done The Last Two Months"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\nIs it wrong to want to write a blog entry just because the software you write the entry in is so nice?  I haven&#8217;t written for a couple months and every so often I&#8217;ll remember just how nice <a href=\"http:\/\/ecto.kung-foo.tv\/\">Ecto<\/a> is and want to write again.  Aside from that, a lot has happened.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nI&#8217;ve finally started reading <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/tg\/detail\/-\/0142000280\/qid=1106168840\/sr=8-1\/ref=pd_csp_1\/103-3117670-3295843?v=glance&#38;s=books&#38;n=507846\" id=\"1106168840\/sr=8-1\/ref=pd_csp_1\/103-3117670-3295843?v=glance&#38;s=books&#38;n=507846\">Getting Things Done<\/a> by David Allen.  I got two other co-workers reading it at my recommendation (before I even started reading it) and when they they really liked it, I figured I had better have a taste of my own medicine.  It lives up to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.43folders.com\">hype<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nGTD has inspired me to find a better way to get <em>everything<\/em> out of my mind and on &#8220;paper.&#8221;  I really feel his philosophy that you have to have it all out of your mind (which doesn&#8217;t know how to manage tasks based on the best time to do them) before you can really become productive and relaxed is right on.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nI&#8217;ve looked at a few options for doing this and haven&#8217;t really ruled any out yet.  These are the choices so far:\n<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A Wiki &#8211; I&#8217;d probably just use my install of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pmwiki.org\/\">PmWiki<\/a> which has been great (it&#8217;s moved now because of all the wiki spam).<\/li>\n<li>Entourage X 2004 &#8211; Theoretically this would be nice, but it has been super buggy for me and I can&#8217;t stand the instability.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/richip.dhs.org\/~sachac\/notebook\/wiki\/PlannerMode.php\">PlannerMode<\/a> (planner.el) in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gnu.org\/software\/emacs\/emacs.html\">Emacs<\/a>.  This looks like a powerful way to manage tasks\/projects etc. but requires learning Emacs.  That might not be such a bad thing, but I haven&#8217;t decided for sure if I&#8217;m up to it.  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.willisbros.net\/blog\/index.php?p=247\">This<\/a> is an article with a screenshot of what to expect.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.pocketinformant.com\/p_pocketinformant.php\">PocketInformant<\/a> &#8211; Pocket PC software that does it all.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rousette.org.uk\/projects\/\">Tracks<\/a> &#8211; a Ruby on Rails application that looks great.  I, however, have not had much luck getting it installed.<\/li>\n<li>A Paper planner<\/li>\n<li>Text files<\/li>\n<li>Something else.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\nI don&#8217;t think anything is going to be ideal.  In order to do that, it would need to:\n<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Be accessible from work and home.  At work they block every port but port 80 so I have no access to SSH or port 3000 (what Tracks seems to like to use) or anything else.<\/li>\n<li>Be accessible from both my Mac and my Pocket PC<\/li>\n<li>Be intuitive and quick.  If I&#8217;m going to enter everything I need to do, it needs to be fast.<\/li>\n<li>and it should obviously allow for the basic GTD philosophy<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>\nSo that&#8217;s where I am with that.  I still haven&#8217;t even finished the book, but I&#8217;m sold on the idea.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nI&#8217;ve also been working a lot more in Flash, programming in ActionScript.  It goes in cycles, I program for a couple months then spend awhile in production.  I definitely like the programming (and design) part of the cycles much better.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nThis time around I found <a href=\"http:\/\/macromates.com\/\">TextMate<\/a> and it also lives up to the hype.  It&#8217;s a text editor with a very OS X feel and all the features I need to keep me happy while coding.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nSince last time I wrote I&#8217;ve been to Florida to visit family, enjoyed a couple good snow storms (including one that&#8217;s going on at this very moment), redesigned <a href=\"http:\/\/www.silverfishlongboarding.com\">Silverfish Longboarding<\/a>, started work on a Masters in Instructional Design and Technology at <a href=\"http:\/\/web.odu.edu\/\">Old Dominion University<\/a> and ordered an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.apple.com\/ipodshuffle\/\">iPod shuffle<\/a> (which unfortunately won&#8217;t be here for another month).\n<\/p>\n<p>\nI&#8217;ve also gotten 4782 blogspams which were blocked by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jayallen.org\/comment_spam\/\">MT-Blacklist<\/a> as well as 634 that were moderated.  I&#8217;m seriously considering switching to <a href=\"http:\/\/wordpress.org\/\">WordPress<\/a> which my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.queenthings.com\/\">wife<\/a> uses and I get jealous of every so often.  I need to check to see if image uploading is supported by Ecto for WordPress now.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nOver the past few months I&#8217;ve read less on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloglines.com\/\">Bloglines<\/a> (the best aggregator available IMO) have been unsubscribing to blogs at a rapid pace.  I&#8217;m no less enthusiastic about weblogs, I&#8217;ve just become a little more picky about which ones I read.  I continue to be amazed at how much <a href=\"http:\/\/the.taoofmac.com\/space\/RuiCarmo\">Rui Carmo<\/a> manages to post on the <a href=\"http:\/\/the.taoofmac.com\/space\/\">Tao of Mac<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nThat&#8217;s about it for now.  Best Tool for the Job is back (again) from vacation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Is it wrong to want to write a blog entry just because the software you write the entry in is so nice? I haven&#8217;t written for a couple months and every so often I&#8217;ll remember just how nice Ecto is and want to write again. Aside from that, a lot has happened. I&#8217;ve finally started [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,3,2,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-etc","category-family","category-software","category-technology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/ppj2P-2u","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}