Archive for the 'Hacks' Category

Bloglines De-Clutter

Published
by
C.G.
on September 23, 2006
in Computers, Hacks and Life
. 0 Comments

So the informational de-clutter continues.  This morning, I ravaged my RSS feed aggregator, Bloglines.  Although I do like running local applications for certain things (more functionality that what JScript can provide), web based apps like Bloglines (and Gmail and others) make it easy to have all your information in one easily accessible place.  I’ve been using Bloglines for a few months now and like it very much.  Even when I do settle on an OS, I’ll probably still use it as my RSS reader.

Bloglines makes it easy to add feeds to your list and over those few months, I’ve added over 150 feeds to my list.  They are organized by category type like news, C.G Feeds (my own or friends), Gossip, Technology, etc.  in my attempt to reduce the clutter, I deleted about 15 feeds I almost never read.  I’m going to continue to reduce the amount of feeds I watch over the next few days but I also want to organize them better.  But Bloglines only allows for category folders - not sub folders - so I am finding it hard to further tweak my feeds.

In the technology folder, for example, I could create a sub folder for software development for the HTML, CSS, AJAX, and web design blogs I read.  It could also have a gadgets folder for the many sites I read about the latest and greatest.  Still, there could be more folders for site that cover Web 2.0.  The subdivision could go on and on.  And while I don’t want to get too granular, I can’t have 50 feeds in technology and not have them narrowed down by title alone.

Nevertheless, I’m still trying my best to show less information at any given time.  I’ve changed my viewing options to only show the feeds that have updates.  So I don’t have to worry about the alphabetical organization for all the feeds - just the ones with new articles.  I’ve also turned off the option that shows updated articles as new for all but a few sites who’s news can change frequently enough to change the fact basis of the posts.

I’ve got a lot of work to do, however, and want to get my reading down to 75 feeds or less.  I also want to remove those feeds that don’t have real value (like my calendar and to-do feeds) and those feeds that have massive updates; I can’t follow Digg or AskMetaFilter because they get populated too quickly.

Anyway, thats where I stand.  I’m going to take a break from the informational work and focus on the physical work around the house and maybe go out later to break up the day.

De-Clutter Project Update:

Published
by
C.G.
on September 22, 2006
in Hacks, Life and Uncategorized
. 0 Comments

Well, I’ve started the de-clutter throwing out phase. Today, I marked more for tossing and tonight, before I go out, I’m setting it aside where I keep the trash. I’ll wait for my wife to review what I plan to throw out just in case she wants to keep something. But because I am waiting for her review, I’ve moved on to the paper and informational clutter.

The paper stuff is easy. I just set it aside (and have been doing so for a few weeks) and shred the junk mail with my personal information on it (don’t want to give it to an ID thief). Bills are shredded too - those that are paid and those that weren’t got paid. Not every piece of paper is shredded, though. I’ll finish that over the weekend or sometime next week. The bag of shredded paper is sitting just outside my doorstep and will be tossed tonight when I head out to meet my wife for dinner before she hits the theater. Now the harder task for me to tackle is the non-tangible information.
I’ve started going through my del.icio.us tags and reviewing each article associated with them. I’m removing duplicate tags and creating new ones to better define what the link is about. When I first signed up for del.icio.us, I wanted to be sure I stuck to just a few tags (in an attempt to keep it simple) but that proved to be too restrictive and in this case, I am going to let loose and use tags very freely. But I will redefine some of the tags.

For example, I’ve got tags for Shareware, Freeware, Software, Utilities, Downloads, Tools, Admin, etc…. the list goes on. But to me, Utilities and Tools are the same thing - I don’t know why I named a few of them tools but I did. And all the software whether it be Freeware or Shareware… are all downloads; its a useless category for me. So I’ve come up with a tree like structure for my del.icio.us links and am slowly migrating towards that concept. I wish that del.icio.us would allow for nested tags to help keep things organized.

Anyway, I’m done taking a break to do more stuff. I’ll keep you posted on the progress.

Google Calendar (Life) Hacks

Published
by
C.G.
on July 24, 2006
in Hacks, Life and Money
. 0 Comments

Although not much of a hack. I’ve been using Google Calendar to hack my life in positive ways. Not only am I putting everything on the calendar, I’m taking advantage of the near limitless calendars you can create in Google’s online PIM of AJAX-y goodness.

In addition to creating my own personal calendar, I made one for my wife. We share each other’s personal calendars and we share a “family” calendar that I set up too. The personal calendars are for those obviously personal appointments. I have my eye doctor visits, for example, of the my calendar and when she goes out ‘with the girls” she adds that on to her agenda; I do the same with my friends on the rare occasions I go out. When we have guests over (like we have this Wednesday) or when we are doing things together - say, going to a party - we put it on the calendar. That way, we know what each other has planned and what we have planned for each other.

Furthering the multiple calendar idea, I’ve created five additional calendars. The first calendar is for our pay days. The second is for the bills. The third calendar is for our meals. The fourth is my volunteer calendar and the fifth is actually an RSS feed of our local weather. To help distinguish one calendar from another, I use the color code system Google provides.

The pay day calendar obviously tracks when my wife and I get paid. We are on different pay cycles with my checks coming twice a month and hers every two weeks. I assigned a dull yellow color to that calendar because I wanted to be drawn to the events but not give a sense of utmost urgency.
The bill calendar is in red. That way, I’m alerted to when the bills are due. Reminders are set two days in advance so I can be prepared for the eventual drawing of funds. Eventually, I’m going to add - or create a new calendar - for the days that the bills arrive in the mailbox. Since snail-mail ends up in a pile in my office, I never pay attention to when the bills arrive. With the secondary bill calendar, I will only add an event when a bill arrives. Over time, I’ll be able to predict when the bills come in and understand the statement cycle of our payees.

The meal plan is mostly for my wife but I benefit greatly from it too. along with our Fresh Direct orders, we add the meals we plan to make that week. Today, I made buffalo burgers. Tomorrow, my wife is making turkey chili. And Wednesday, she is making salmon with potatoes and asparagus. Thursday is always pizza and beer nights for us so we never have problems remembering what’s for dinner but its always good to know its on its way. And like the pay day calendar and the bill pay calendar, the meal calendar gets its own color.

I am getting involved with a non-profit organization that promotes parks in my town. Don’t worry loyal fans, I’m not getting all granola. I want my property values to go up and parks are one way to do so - not the 1000s of condos they keep building. Anyway, I add the meetings, fund raisers, discussions, and my contributing work to that calendar with its own color so I can tell when I’ll be fulfilling those responsibilities.

The last calendar is just one that I added using Google’s RSS importer. That way I know what to wear for the day. I choose a dull gray color so I don’t get distracted with lesser important information (vs the bill payment calendar).

In the future, I’ll add my exercise routine to a new calendar so I know what workouts I’m scheduled to do on any given day. I’ve also started to train for bike races with my friend Paul and I’ll add our routes to the workout calendar or create a separate calendar for those days.

Since I now check my Google Calendar several times a day, I’m always on top of what needs to be done and what’s coming up in my life. I’m hopeful this life hack will help keep me organized. Give the multi-color, multi-calendar approach a try and see if works for you. If there are other Calendar hacks out there that have made someone else more productive and more organized, please pass them along.

Wish List

Published
by
C.G.
on July 23, 2006
in Hacks, Life and Money
. 0 Comments

So I was walking around with my wife in the city today after just saying good-bye to my two younger brothers who stayed with us for the weekend. While we walked all around the West Village, we talked about how we always seem to spend more than we should. Not that we get ourselves into trouble, mind you, its just that we always seem to not be able to do or get something we want because we spent too much the month before.

Most of what we spent money on was food. Even though we are careful to order groceries from Fresh Direct every week, we inevitably go out for dinner at least once. Add that to the lunches we buy and we are looking at lot of bought food. Almost all of the food we buy is healthy and there is a high price to pay to live low fat.

But in trying to figure out how we can pay of all our bills, save money, and still have fun, I came up with a solution I think will work well for us. I separated our expenditures into three categories: operating expenses, saving expenses, and fun expenses. Operating expenses are the mortgage, utility, transportation, grocery, and health club bills we must pay every month. Savings expenses are really just the auto-transfers into our savings account I already setup. Fun expenses would be movies, dinners, iTunes, and small miscellaneous expenses that just make us happy and keep us from quiting our otherwise unrewarding jobs.

To make sure that we stick to a soon-to-be defined monthly limit on “fun” items, I decided I would create a special checking account that we would use such purposes. Every month, we’d refill that account with the soon-to-be defined limit and if we ran out, we couldn’t do the things we wanted to do. It forces us to separate those monies from those we save and those we pay to get housed, heat, and health. The check card we get for this seperate account would be we would use to pay for purchases while on the go and we would still have our other cards around if we got into an emergency (like if we had a flat while on vacation or something).

But the fun things would be limited to small items and mundane purchases. We decided that special items like gifts, car rentals (that won’t be for vacations), most clothes, and medium-sized purchases for ourselves would be split between our fun money and our savings account. That way we don’t destroy either fund when getting things we think are needed (or deserved). Very large purchases like a new TV, car, computer, etc. will be purchased out of savings when we feel like the time is right. It means we have to work towards being good with our money in order to get the big-ticket items.

So we don’t sacrifice our mile-earning-abilities, we are going to look for a checking account provider which offers us that feature. No longer will our “fun” expenses go on a credit card that earns us miles; we will do it directly so we don’t loose track of what we spend and “surprise” ourselves the next month. With direct deposit and no minimum balance, the account is free and easy to maintain online. We think its a win-win situation.

And to help advance our goal of saving money, I decided to create a wish list on Ta-Da. This list will be separate from my other, more normal, to-do lists that I setup for the house. In the list, I write down what my wife and I want to buy with our savings and list the estimated price. That way, we can strive towards a goal that has tangible rewards vs some dollar amount written on a statement. We reward ourselves when we feel are good and where there is enough money in the account to support our purchase (making sure we don’t empty the account in the process).

I’m considering publishing this list so people can see two things: what is it that we strive for and how well we are doing in getting things off that list. Like the personal life goals I list, the list will not move quickly. In fact, with this list, I might have more items on there than I should. But the point is that they are there to motivate me into saving enough money to get them; they are my grapes to jump for. Only this time, I’m getting the bloody grapes!

Google Maps

Published
by
C.G.
on June 13, 2006
in Hacks and Site
. 1 Comment

Google Maps has changed a little and I guess I never updated my code. Now, I can’t get my maps to display. I know the code is right but the coordinates are not. Plus, some WP-Cache’ing plugin won’t serve up the latest version of the site for FireFox.

Update: I got it working - had to reverse the coordinates and change the zoom level. It should be good now.