Monthly Archives: January 2007

Wikimapia: Let’s describe the world!

This past Friday, during a discussion of Google maps (while using it to find something on my phone), Feilim Mac Gabhann alerted me to a site called Wikimapia.

It’s Google Satellite, but you can draw a box and then describe what’s in the box. Which boxes are shown depends on your level of zoom, so it’s both scale-appropriate and manageable.

This is the coolest thing I’ve seen in a while, except maybe the iPhone. You really should go check it out.

ADDENDUM: You can also load the information in Google Earth as discussed in this blog post. Even cooler!

Email Issues

I’m sorry if I haven’t been approving or responding to your comments. Apparently I’m not getting the emails for some reason. I’m looking into it now.

UPDATE: I recently switched to Tuffmail for my mail hosting, and they’ve been doing a good job, but apparently my webserver does not meet their exacting anti-spam qualifications. I’ve whitelisted the server, so hopefully I will get emails about comments now.

Iceboating on White Bear Lake

My father sent me a couple of movies of him iceboating on White Bear Lake. I YouTubed them at some loss of quality, but they’re still worth watching. The first one is first person, the second one is third person (point of view).

First Person:

Third Person:

First Week Back in 2007

This has been a good, productive week. I’ve been making an effort to have a life aside from work, and it’s paying off. I’m happier all around, I’m doing things I want to do (and have needed to do) at home, while making good progress at work. I’m feeling pretty on top of things.

I did my weekly review in the morning today. I used to do it in the afternoon, but too many things got in the way by Friday afternoon, and I often found myself pushing it back till Saturday, or not putting in the proper effort. Today it took me 2 hours and 45 minutes, because I’ve had so much stuff going on, so many ideas bouncing around in my head, and so on. Through the course of the review I generated 36 to-do items in my inbox, which I then of course processed and entered into the system appropriately.

Now it’s time to pay myself back for such a good week — it’s Happy Hour!

Capture While Running

One of the pillars of a good GTD implementation is the ability to capture ideas or thoughts in writing whenever and wherever they occur. This can be a problem when running, biking, or in other situations where one doesn’t want to carry something as substantial as a notepad or PDA.

Several months ago, I found a great solution to this problem: Take a pen (of good thickness) and wrap a sticky note around it, sticking it to itself. This works best when the pen has a clip, under which you should slide the sticky note. Please see the example below:

Ultraportable Capture Device

The clip is also good for holding the pen in your pocket, on your belt, or whatever. If you use both sides of the sticky note, the amount of writing space is actually pretty substantial.