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- Getting Things Done with 37signals’ Backpack - Why I’m Switching Back
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- Keep Your Notes in Order with the Daily Scratchpad
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Blog News: I Blog Elsewhere and People Read This
Good day, friends. Just a couple quick announcements, then you can get back to work:
I’ve recently accepted a “guest blogger” spot over at lifehack.org. I’ll be writing there once per week, posted whenever Leon feels it’s appropriate. Since lifehack and CW cover similar topics, I think you folks might enjoy it (provided you enjoy that drivel I write here) 
The first post is up today, called “The Macaroni and Cheese Project” - check it out if you can, and feedback is welcome.
Also, we hit the 1,000 RSS subscriber milestone last night (w00h00!). Thanks to all the loyal readers out there, as well as all the bot programs I wrote to pad my subscriber count (kidding).
Thanks for reading, stay tuned!
How to Go from Joe User to RSS Badass
Long gone are the days of feebly visiting every website on your daily reading list, checking for new content. These days, all the kids seem to have their favorite RSS reader dialed in with all of their favorite blogs and newsfeeds, eating it up like it’s Thanksgiving dinner. But, dear friends, there’s more to effective RSS reading that just subscribing to every feed you come across and leaving it at that…
The purpose of this post is to give you a few tips that will magically transform you from a vanilla reader of RSS feeds into a veritable RSS ninja - including choice of reader, dealing with specific types of feeds and categorization. Trust me, you don’t want to miss this one…
4 Fantastic Reasons Why GTD Converts Should All Start with Paper Systems
As I’ve said in the past, I was an analog GTDer (but have since converted to a kick-ass digital solution). I used paper products for absolutely every aspect of GTD when I started and found the experience to be extremely valuable. So much so, that I’m going to tell you now why every single person who chooses to embark on the journey that is GTD should do so with a pen and a notebook instead of a stylus and a PDA.
Think about driving for a moment. Many people (myself included) learned to drive in a car with an automatic transmission. Move the little needle above ‘D’ and stand on the gas - you’re moving. But what if your buddy (who drives a car with a manual transmission) breaks his leg or - for whatever reason - suddenly needs you to drive him to the hospital in his car? Sure, you could clunk yourself down the road, stalling the car at every red light, but you’d eventually get there. But wouldn’t you rather spend 10 seconds getting to know how sensitive the clutch is, then driving it like you were born to?
What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up? - A Meme
Well, Frank, you caught me in a good mood - so here goes
As a Kid
Truth be told, I don’t really recall. I’m sure I had aspirations of being a fireman, a police officer, etc. like most young boys do, but I can’t think of anything concrete. I have vague recollections of wanting to become a cartoonist (I was a huge fan of the Garfield comic strip when I was little).
Site Happenings: Weekend Updates/Upgrades
Just wanted to drop a quick warning that I plan on reworking certain elements of the site, including the theme. If you happen to visit and it looks nothing like you’re used to, please understand that it’s a work in progress 
Thanks, and have a great weekend!
Friday Fun: Possible Closing Lines for Law & Order
So, because all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, I’ve decided to start doing something a little different on Fridays (at least, that’ll be the goal). These posts will give you a little insight into my off-beat (or what my wife calls “weird”) sense of humor…
The other night, I was watching one of my favorite shows, Law & Order, and I realized that at the end of most of the episodes, one of the characters (typically one of the attorneys) will deliver the last line of dialog before Dick Wolf’s name appears. Sometimes the lines are funny, sometimes ironic, or even poignant or ominous. Whichever it happens to be, it’s typically very well-suited to the plot that’s just been played out. So I thought to myself “I wonder if I could come up with some ending lines to L&O that - if the viewer didn’t see the whole episode and just heard the one line - would cause the viewer to wonder ‘what the hell was this episode about?!’”. Here’s what I came up with:
An Ode to Twitter
Twitter. Oh, Twitter.
You enticed me with your bubbly logo and simple interface. You wined and dined me with your promises of increased communication and the constant knowledge of the whereabouts and doings of my friends and cohorts. You took the Internet by storm and made us all believe you were the next plateau in digital interaction. But alas, your sweet words were poisoned with lies…
WinStikker - Quickly Create New Stikkits From Your Windows Desktop
(Update: WinStikker is now Open Source!)
Any more of this stuff and people are going to start to wonder if I work for Values of n (makers of Stikkit - and no, I don’t work for them - yet ;). After writing the python script described (badly) in the previous post, I was somewhat inspired to hack out another tool to help make Stikkit even easier to use/adopt. With that, I give you WinStikker!
First of all, I have to say this - WinStikker is a hell of a lot easier to use than the Gmail Contacts script All you need is your stikkit API key (which WinStikker should prompt you for, the first time you run it). That’s it, then you’re ready to go. Here’s how it works:
Import Your Gmail Contacts into Stikkit With This Free Utility
By now, my Stikkit fanboy status is hardly a secret. And while there have been a couple of other posts around here dealing with some theoretical Stikkit coolness, I figured it was time to give something a little more concrete to my Stikkit-loving brethren. Oh, and I also thought it a good opportunity to put my money where my mouth was as far as all this programming/programmer advice.
So, with all that in mind, I have something for you all. It should make transitioning to Stikkit a bit easier for the Gmail users out there (at least, so you can start out with a full stock of ‘Peeps’ when you switch to Stikkit for your GTD purposes - Please be warned, this is a command line application and will require you to get your hands dirty a bit - but I think you’ll be pleased with the results.
This little ditty takes an Outlook-compatible CSV file (which Gmail is capable of exporting your contacts into) and your handy, dandy Stikkit API key and creates a Peep stikkit for each of your contacts by sending the data to Stikkit via their lovely API (hence, the need for the API key). Here’s how to use it:
Hacking Twitter: How to Capture Everything, from Anywhere
Most folks have downed their cup of the Twitter Kool-Aid (myself included). If you haven’t heard of Twitter, then we must be using different internets on different planets. Here’s a 2 sentence introduction:
Send a little status message about where you are or what you’re doing (via web interface, IM or cell phone) to Twitter, and it will let your Twitter buddies know what you’re up to. And there is no second sentence.
“But sir!”, you might ask, “what does this Twitter thing have to do with our beloved GTD and Productivity! Sir!”. Well, it might not be terribly apparent at first, but Twitter is actually a very slick capture tool that you can use from anywhere you have your cell phone (and reception). For example…
