The 'Things That S**t Me' List

As a card-carrying member for several years of the cult of 'Getting Things Done', a way of running one's life that has proven hugely beneficial, I find that every year or so I tweak and extend the system in an effort to make it work better. For example, I've tried several different computerised systems to implement the GTD methodology, from Personal Brain to GTD Tiddlywiiki to Mind Manager. My latest incarnation is some hand-written shell scripts using a command line (bash shell) that runs on both Mac and PC and is super-fast to use. I'll blog about this in more detail some time soon.

But now I have stumbled across an enhancement to the methodology itself. If you're not familiar with it, it's basically a personal workflow system wit major steps: collect, process, organise, review, do. At first it's hard to get your head around how much work you have to do before you do any work! There are also several defined lists that you maintain, such as agendas for each person you interact with regularly, a list of things you're waiting for others to do, a 'someday maybe' list, next actions lists organised by context (such as home, work, online, travelling, out and about) etc, etc. The idea is that you capture everythhing (and I do mean everything), review it regularly and enable yourself to notch forward on many fronts in small increments in a context-optimised way just like a multitasking operating system.

So I offer to the GTD community my personal recommendation to maintain a 'things that shit me' list. Keep it up to date, capture new things into it often, review it every week, and use it as inspiration to make improvements. If you think I'm being flippant, think again. When you're angry, frustrated, stressed,or otherwise unhappy and the solution isn't immediately apparent, it's an effective short circuit just to name it, look at it next to all the other things that drive you nuts, and choose when you have the energy and time to pick some of them to turn into projects in your GTD system for improving your life. There is a very good feeling when you delete something from this list, let me tell you, and that's the real key. It's a smell if all you ever do is add to it, so make sure you pat yourself on the back each week by knocking something off your 'things that shit me' list. You'll be a nicer person to be around and that is probably the biggest benefit of all.

I assume you're interested in an example, so here's an excerpt from my current 'things that shit me' list:

The leaves in the skylight in the kitchen
I don't have enough storage space in the office at home
my house keys don't open the side door
the way my phone only starts telling you the battery is low when it has a minute of life left
I can't use my little dictaphone in bright sunlight 'cos I can't read the screen
the tree that overhangs the carport
I haven't figured out how to do my fortnightly trips with just a backpack
you can't get clip-on sunnies for my glasses
I'm not set up to scan things conveniently at home or at work
the handrail in the bathroom keeps falling off
the laundry door leaked in the last big storm we had
I never have time to play the drums
theres piles of mysterious crap in my book case
i am notsure if priorities in my gtd system should be related to projects or actions
i get so much comment spam on my blog
moving around the screen on the mac when the zoom is on is too slow
i cant print on my home printer when i'm connected to the vpn
the plumbago outt the front is out of control
wikiwords seems to have been turned off in the wiki
ruby barking drives us mad
the hard drive on the mac is just about full
i do not have a functional tickler file at least electronically
i have no way to track how much support work we're doing versus project work
we don't use a single issue tracking system
i can't print from the mac on my home network

A Revised National Anthem for Australia

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the most pathetic government in Australia's history (I mean, really, how you can keep a straight face sending troops to Iraq while funding the Iraqi regime via the AWB and locking up those who flee the chaos and seek asylum with no legal recourse is quite beyond me), I hereby present a revised national anthem in Little Johnny's honour. Just in time for the happily frequent renditions at the Commonwealth Games:

"Advance Whose Skin Is Fair"

by James Ross

Australians all let us rejoice
For we are rich and white
With golden soil and lust for oil
We reckon she'll be right
Our land abounds in nature's gifts
We've never learned to share
In history's page let every stage
Advance whose skin is fair

Beneath our radiant southern cross
We'll toil with hearts and hands
To make sure noone different
Sets foot upon our lands
For those who come across the sea
We've prison cells to spare
With courage let us all combine to
advance whose skin is fair
In joyful strains then let us sing
advance whose skin is fair

Copyright © 2006 James Ross. All Rights Reserved. Of course. This machine kills fascists.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled program of agile software development....

Back in the iLife

When I started my new job a few weeks ago, I had to wait a while before my new laptop arrived from Dell. So I turned up on the first day with my Powerbook and plugged in. I was very pleased to find that Apple Mail knows all about Exchange servers out of the box, so I was up and running with no problems and went on happily for a couple of weeks. When the Dell arrived, I spent a couple of days with both machines on the desk while getting it all set up. It was only after switching the Mac back to home use mode and starting to use the Dell for work that I was struck by an obvious solution to a problem I'd been facing for a long time. One of the reasons I switched jobs was in pursuit of a better work/life balance. To me this means drawing a sharper line between the two something I've struggled with in recent years. And here I was looking at the solution: use one computer for work and another for life. Sounds simple, but I missed it until now. So now the Dell stays off over the weekend (it stays on long enough to check the week's work in to CVS at home), and doesn't get looked at until Monday morning. The Mac, with photos, videos, electronic books, music software and fun geek stuff like Ruby and Objective C stays on all weekend and is nothing but fun. Nice.

It's Mac time now...for my old man

It's been a while since I blogged at all, having been a little busy switching jobs, having recently also switched computers (to a Mac Powerbook) and having tried to switch programming languages (learning some Objective C, which is lots of fun). But I'm convinced enough by my Mac experience to have convinced my dear old dad to jump as well (to a Mac Mini) on the demise of his old PC. So does that make me an official cult member? I've also started thinking that one of those flat panel iMacs will look pretty good next to the espresso machine for my wife and daughters to use......:P

Too busy to blog

Lately I've been too busy to blog, as I've been helping Simon write his first book. As far as we know, it's the first book on algorithms to use design patterns and TDD, but I could be wrong. Be sure to buy your mum one for christmas...:P

Having finally succumbed to the weight of my geek buddies buying Macs, I've just ordered a new Powerbook, so I reckon I'll be posting a bit about the experience. I've had to buy a copy of Virtual PC to ease the switch, but I'd like to retire all my Windows apps if I can.

Star Wars on the (really) small screen

I found another reason to dig my Pocket PC. My usual top reasons are talking books from audible.com and reading electronic books (in really big fonts!) with the Acrobat Reader for Pocket PC.

But having picked up a 1Gb SD card for next to nothing, I thought I'd investigate the supposedly forthcoming phenomenon of pocket movies. Microsoft has been making some noise about their new portable devices that play movies, but you don't need one of those. You just need a copy of this software and you're done. In about the time it takes to watch the film, it's converted to a 250Mb AVI at 320x240 resolution. That's 15 frames per second at a resolution that's higher than your TV, so it's pretty darn watchable. There is a slight weirdness to the screen when rotated to watch in landscape mode, probably because the RGB subpixels on the LCD or up/down aligned in this mode, but you get used to it.

So having recently picked up the Star Wars box set to relive my childhood like all the other 30-something males on the planet, but not having time to scratch myself like all the other 30-something males on the planet, I can now squeeze this necessary pastime into my morning commute and leave all the iPod weenies wondering why exactly they think they're so cool. Rock on.

Power Pointers

I often get asked how I go about doing a technical presentation, so I thought I'd put down a few pointers for those who would like to do some presenting but think it's all a bit intimidating.

1. Have something you want to say. This is generally not a problem for most serious geeks, although it's surprisingly common to find many who have incredible experience and insight but think nobody is interested in what they might say. That is almost never the case, either, since all of us are sponges for good stuff of all kinds.
2. Care about your audience. It's important to really want to connect with the audience and make them feel important. Even in a stand and deliver situation, I often survey the audience to get a feel for their likes, dislikes and interests. This can help you focus on what they need and want over what you thought they might like.
3. Don't start in PowerPoint. I never, ever begin my presentations by opening PowerPoint and looking at a blank slide. I always open a Word document instead and switch to Outline View. Then I just start brainstorming, imagining I'm having a one-on-one conversation with someone, explaining the topic at hand. No structure is present yet. It's all about noting down all the things you might want to say first. Then it's a matter of learning to use the outline view's features of indenting, outdenting, dragging and dropping to apply some structure to the thoughts. This is very much like the test, code, refactor cycle in development of code. The test is that you can explain the idea. The code is recording the points you need to do that. The refactoring is cleaning up the structure. And just like coding, it works really well if you treat these as distinct tasks and switch between them cleanly.
4. Generate the slideshow from the outline. Once you're done in Word, just hit File->Sent to->PowerPoint and voila! All your top level headings become slides, and the subpoints become bullet points underneath them. You can then click Format->Apply Design Template, go looking for a pre-canned  slideshow and bingo! your show is just about done without a single tedious minute in PowerPoint itself. If you have time, add some pictures and animation, but remember they're the icing, not the cake.
5. Less is More. I much prefer slides with fewer words on them. I do not consider a slide to be of any value without me in front of it to turn it into the presentation experience. Resist the temptation to turn a slideshow into a whitepaper. It's just there to remind you what you wanted to say and help the audience to follow; it's not there to say it for you!
6. Remember that nobody finds it easy. Public speaking is daunting for everyone, and I do mean everyone. I sweat bullets for days before an important presentation, but once it starts it's almost like it's someone else doing it, not me, and in a way it's easy. If you're serious, look into Toastmasters for some training (I did it 20 years ago and am still grateful) or try your hand at a low-risk venue like a user group or other friendly and supportive environment.
7. Have fun!

 

Have Hair Dryer, Will Boot

Having moved house recently, I was dismayed when one of my PC's (the one that's built for music and video editing) refused to boot. The primary hard disk was not being recognised by the BIOS. Dammit. Now yes, I have all the important data backed up, but it's pretty tough to backup full quality video footage at the best of times, and this box has had years of tweaking put into it, so rebuilding it from scratch was a rather sphincter-puckering concept. Having a couple of weeks paternity leave to sort it out, I started ringing around the pro data rescue market, and the prices were all in the $2,000 range. Hell, I could just buy a whole new box for that.

So being a software guy, I rang my buddy the hardware guy and told him my story, of how the box had been running happily for 18 months without being turned off, then it was shut down for a couple of weeks during the house move/new baby transition. "Ah-hah", says he, "just get out the hairdryer and heat that drive up for 20 minutes; it'll boot first go". And bugger me if he wasn't right on the money! A quick plug in of a new drive onto which I ghost-ed the dying one, switcheroo and off we go.

Phew!

Who gives a toss about software anyway?

I mean, really, I'm as guilty as the next geekblogger of making software and its myriad cultural spawn the centre of the universe, but when you hold your new baby girl in your arms it really does seem all a little silly. So here's to the arrival of Ella Rose....and yes, I did buy her a domain name before she was born!