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Welcome to the Cranking Widgets Blog. We exist to help you get more done by showing you ways to be more effective and let go of the stuff that doesn't make you awesome. Be sure to subscribe to our feed and follow us on Twitter here.

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!

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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!

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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(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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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, [...]

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