September 10, 2008 by lyngaaskhan.

For those unfamiliar with the GTD concept, I highly recommend reading David Allen’s book “Getting Things Done - The Art of Stress-Free Productivity”. (http://www.davidco.com). There are countless websites and blogs dedicated to the concepts and processes of GTD. I won’t bother to discuss the GTD process itself. Rather, I’m going to talk about a single page application that I’ve been using for a few years now to help me manage the GTD process. It’s a single html file that allows one to create projects, assign actions to the projects, and put these actions into contexts. The app is called ‘MonkeyGTD‘. It is written and maintained by Simon Baird (http://glosoli.blogspot.com).

The picture doesn’t do it justice. You really have to try it out. There is an online demo that will give you a flavor of what it’s like, but until you’ve set it up and used it for a few days, you won’t appreciate the power and simplicity of this app.

I’ve added the Simile TimeLine to it as a plugin based on the fine work of Dawn Ahukanna (http://project.dahukanna.net/tiddlywiki/timeline/sampletimeline220b5.html)  and, of course, the folks at MIT that wrote the base code. It’s a spiffy Ajaxy scrollable and dragable timeline. I have a script that creates an xml file with all of my entries and the time/date they were entered. I can then pull this up and find entries I’ve updated on particualr days or just see a graphical representation of my updates. I will be happy to post the code mods I’ve employed if anyone is interested.

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September 5, 2008 by lyngaaskhan.

Rock on completely.

I am reminded that I haven’t been playing music for a couple of months now. Definitely missing it.
My son wants to build a studio in the garage, which is something I’ve always wanted to do as well. I have various bits of equipment and a computer that is adequate for a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW). I’ll blog about the DAW another time when I get it set up again. I have a couple of software packages I plan to try out.

There are two significant challenges to overcome. First, I have to clean out the garage. It would be more accurate to refer to it as a storage warehouse. There hasn’t been a car in it for at least thirteen years. I know I could get rid of perhaps a third of it, but what to do with the rest? Where do you put the bikes, ATV’s, tools, and those items that can’t be parted with for some reason? I might be able to shove a quarter of that into the two sheds I built, but that’s about it.

Second, the area must be sound-proofed, or at least sound-reduced. My son has been playing his guitar out there during the warmer months. His preferred style of heavy metal with maximum distortion tends to wear even on me over time. I’m sure the neighbors love it. The garage is common to the house, which has a low pitched roof. I’d prefer to have a the ceiling open, but that may allow too much sound to be transmitted through the structure. With 440 square feet, I would have enough room to construct stud walls inside the outer walls with an air gap between, which should prevent sound waves from resonating with the outer walls and knock the volume down to an acceptable level as long as I insulate both sets of walls. Ventilation is a big issue in this plan. Not sure how to solve that as yet. Possibly a vent path with some diffusion and a few bends to break up the waves. It would also be useful to vent to the roof so that any sound waves are aimed up rather than toward anyones living areas, including our own.

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September 4, 2008 by lyngaaskhan.

If you use gmail a lot as I do, I highly recommend checking out Google Redesigned from GlobexDesigns ( http://www.globexdesigns.com/gr/ ). It’s a very nice looking CSS wrapped into a Firefox extension. You are using Firefox 3, aren’t you?

Here’s what the basic screen looks like:

Calendar is also skinned. The extension checks for updates automatically.

I’ve used other extensions to enhance the look and use of gmail, such as the ‘Better Gmail’ extension found on LifeHacker, but none are as good looking as this one. This is an open source project, licensed under the GPL ( http://www.opensource.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.php ), so I suppose that you could download the source and make IE compatible style sheets. Unfortunately, IE does not have the robust and developer friendly support for extensions that Firefox enjoys. I know that it can be done, but unless it’s fairly simple, there’s little to be gained by creating it as I use either browser depending on the need. Firefox is my default browser.

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