Getting control over your time and inbox

So, it’s been a while since I wrote, a lot of things happened. Often I started a blog post but didn’t post it. Here is one that I think it will be useful.

My inbox has been at zero in last probably 7 years, it is a habit that when I learned, I just kept it and I don’t really have to think about it much any more. I am surprised when I read tweets and posts about otherwise capable people, struggling with getting inbox to zero. And on top of that I never did that email bankrupcu thing that some people do when they erase emails for them. If you sent me, I read it, or not, but I sure don’t miss it accidentally (happened rarely, few times).

I will explain how to get there simply and easily, this is simple way to get more productive and efficient, feel better and communicate better.

So, how do you get your inbox there?
Very simply, take a deep breath and decide to do it. You don’t even have to do everything in the same day, if you really get a ton of emails, but decide.
Then create folder ‘past inbox’. Move all of your emails there, just select all and move. From that moment on, you will decide about every email that comes to you.
Next step is to start from the top of past inbox pile and decide about emails. You will do following things with it:
* respond to it (you can create folder action and move it there, I respond it right away)
* decide this is something you don’t need, VERY IMPORTANT, don’t just delete it, if it is a newsletter make sure you click and unsubscribe. From now on, any newsletter, mailing that you don’t really have time to read, can find info online etc, click on unsubscribe and then delete.
This way you will save yourself work in the future.
* any regular mailings that you receive but really don’t need your immediate attention, just filter into appropriate folder. Being wise there is of utmost importance.
I love getting sales info from NewEgg and like, however every sale newsletter from them goes to newsletters/sale folder. I can find them whenever I need them
* shopping notices go to shopping folder, account creating emails go to account folder, facebook updates go to facebook folder (which I rarely check).
* If you have server monitoring and think that you need to see those emails, it is fine, I would still filter them into folder but check it, however, for some finance related stuff, I just make filter that would mark it with appropriate label, but will leave them in my inbox. That way I can take a look and then just archive them.
* Delete a lot, most of information that is coming to your inbox can be easily found online, unsubscribe whenever you can.
* project based, client based emails, make filters for people you corespond to label them, then if you see something you want to respond later, you can just archive them and check them later. No need to do anything more then once that can be automated.

Now that I made my inbox clean, I don’t really check it that often, no need, rarely emails are that important. But when I do, there is never too much and it is easy to respond.

One more thing I noticed, if you don’t like something, if client is unreasonable or plain silly, put that email aside and respond in 30 mins.

Hope I made you productive, I already am.

Best,
Zeljko Dakic

Making DIY IPad stylus

So, few things iPad is missing are: SD card reader and good stylus. It turns out, at least for this other thing there is an easy remedy.

After seeing one my colleague Mat got, I realized it could be easily made. Here is the one he got, it is very flimsy and doesn’t give you very good feel.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2358529,00.asp

I started off with experimenting with different materials. It turns out that those gummy kitchen sponges works exceptionally well.

After that I experimented with how to fit sponge into pen and which one would be good for it. It turns out, from my vast collection of pens and writing paraphernalia, very few can be used. Only Parker Jotter was close and because of how deep barrel of the pen is, I have to give up of sticking sponge through it.

I had to think long and hard what could be used for it and then it hit me to use drinking straws for it. For a moment it looked like this will not be good, but it turns out it works fantastic. Responsiveness of touch-screen to it is awesome. It is very easy to manipulate icons as well as to draw in drawing apps.

 

I hope this will inspire other people to make their own, maybe few in different colors. Let me know how it goes.

 

Now I am trying to find good app for jotting down notes and sketches. If you have any recommendations, please let me know.

turned into apple fanboy

Lately I went all out Apple. I got laptop, iPhone and now ipad. I just saw all the gadgets on my desk and realized how much things have changed. Can’t explain in any other way then peer pressure. I am surrounded with genuine apple fanboys. I got laptop for my consulting gig last week as my then laptop just could’t cut it, everyone else had a Mac so I got one. Then one thing led to another and here I am, all hip. I have to admit I miss variety of choices a little bit, and connectivity, now every cable has to be at least $30.

In the mean-time aside from hardware I got interested very much into lean methodology, I got to experience corporate agile quite a bit and few other very interesting things. Oh, yes, let’s not forget my new found love for JavaScript, I am completely into it.

Use ack to search code

I needed something to search codebase with and after trying to do

sudo gem install rak

and rak installed like that is a little flaky. Probably something missing but I didn’t want to spend time researching, so ack to the rescue.

ack is perl utility to search codebase.

In ubuntu install is super simple.

sudo apt-get install ack-grep

however on OSX things usually require more work. Here is how to install ack on OSX that worked for me (Snow Leopard)

download it: curl http://betterthangrep.com/ack-standalone > ~/ack
make it executable: chmod 0755 ack
move it to bin so it would be in path: sudo mv ack /usr/local/bin/

enjoy.

more info at http://betterthangrep.com/

Zappos get acquired by Amazon

I was genuinely surprised when I heard that Amazon acquired Zappos. Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh is person I genuinely admire and is true inspiration. My first reaction was disappointment, as I was secretly looking forward to battle between Amazon and Zappos, two great internet retailers. However when I think about it, this is really fantastic news, provided Zappos, as they are promising, will continue to be unique place with great customer service.

I would also like to add, that Jeff Bezos is also inspiration and very few people could have steered and grow Amazon for such long time.

This is video with Tony Hsieh talking about making of Zappos and it’s culture.

Software Craftsmanship

There seems to be much interest in steering software development away from rigid planning and engineering methods as it was tried in the past and more towards a craft and discipline that is not that much precise and predictable and is more indirectly controlled. This year in Chicago we will have a conference on Software Craftsmanship, with Robert Martin as leading speaker. There is a manifesto .  And my immediate excuse to write this post is article by Jeff Atwood at Coding Horror:’Software Engineering: Dead?’, which in turn references this article by Tom DeMarco.

It seems that we came to a point to realize that software development process even though it does look like engineering, it is more similar to some other disciplines and that current metaphors we use are not adequate to describe it. I am not sure how far software craftsmanship will go, it is certainly a valuable concept and idea. It moves process of creating software away from McDonalds analogy where every little step will be well defined and even if you are dumb, you just have to follow steps and you would be good. This never worked well with software and failure and exorbitant price of outsourcing projects to far-away places like India are proof of that.

So one trend is moving away from well defined practices in development of software. On the other hand, new practices, that are represented by agile methods of development are coming into view. They require that developers who work, even though they have to follow very specific and well defined process and steps, they need to be well versed in development of the software, semi-educated, copy and paste developers just can’t do this (or didn’t figure out how to do this at the moment).

I think it is good that we are rethinking how to develop software and what are optimal ways. Generally I am all for agile practices, I think they are liberating in many ways and bring quality to software development. They also are not without craziness, like when it is expected that project sponsors start and finance project without any idea about time and cost. Unfortunately this is one of the agile ‘values’. But another time about crazy side.

I am happy to see software development maturing into profession, that can be distinguished by tools, techniques and methods people are using, which has still long way to go.  But then, if it was a well defined profession like medicine, who knows if it would be this fun to work, if you already have rigid set of rules and procedures.

Oh, Google OS

Oh boy what excitement Google announcement created. They will create a browser OS?! And this is somehow special and unique (InstantOn anyone?). Mike Arrington is up in flames posting on tech crunch. He can already see his CrunchPad running with beautiful new OS.

As always I am skeptical. For start the most important reason is:

* They DIDN’T SHOW ANYTHING !

It is not typical of Google not to show a thing. I suspect that what they have is not that big deal and if they shown it people would be disappointed. With Wave they had unfinished product yet it didn’t prevent anyone to admire it even when it crashes, because it is unique and beautiful.

Secondly they will run browser on top of reduced Linux. So Debian with few Google tweaks, how is that special in any way? I am surprised we didn’t see more solutions like that already. There are few InstantOn OS’es that  are like that but most of them cost money, and this will be free? Ubuntu Remix is free.

My only concern is whether you can run Skype on this thing. Maybe I am not as excited over it as Mike Arrington, but I can see myself using CrunchPad in the future with browser on top, Google or not.

Update:

I’ve been following TechCrunch as they seem perfect recepient of the googleness of GOS, seems that after initial hype they are coming to see the reality, which is still very good, just not as paradigm shifting as thought initially. Josh Bigs explains.

“ChromeOS will beat Windows or even OS X is like expecting Coby to come up behind Sony and Samsung next year…”

Upgrading to Win7

Today I took a plunge and went ahead to get Win7 early. Thing is that however nice Win7 is, it doesn’t really bring that much in terms of innovation, frankly I was considering not spending the money if it is $200, especially because we don’t have one, but 4 win machines. So being early I got it at barely acceptable price of $100 per upgrade (professional). Now just to wait till October. I do have evaluation copy installed, in fact I am writing this from win7. It is very nice and pleasant operating system. I wish few more things were present that can be found standard in Linux for example, like more visual themes, virtual desktops (a must) to name the few. I did get all that already but with third party additions, I will write about that in seperate blog post.

I wish MS would sell and upgrade OS like Apple does, I don’t know who doesn’t have multiple computers and providing family packs is good way to go about it. Plus it is cheap, even though they take more money from each person then MS because they release every year. That would be fine with me. I heard some rumors that MS will offer family pack but it was not available at the moment and I am pretty certain I wouldn’t pay $200 for upgrade, so I took what was available instead of waiting for something uncertain.

Can’t wait to get my hands on it because I plan to do a lot of customizations and knowing I will upgrade to Win7 kind of stops me from doing major things.

Wolfram Alpha launches today

I have one thing to say to that unfortunate google inspired startup called cuil: ‘watch and learn’ .

Today we got one more search engine,  very unique in it’s design, very interesting and with fresh approach. I don’t think it will replace google, but it added new quality to how we can get information off the net.

Wolfram Alpha officially started today. live coverage provided by justin.tv, their inaugural blog post, and finally some examples how to use it.

Customizing Visual Studio looks

I’ve been tinkering with colors and font sizes in VS for a while. This is mostly because I have copy on desktop and laptop, so when I move from one to another, I discover things look different then what I was used to. Anyhow, the way I like things is Consolas font, with size 12-ish or so.

Today it crossed my mind to google and see if there are already premade dark settings for Visual Studio. It turns out there is and there are few quite good ones.

First I came across recommendation to try to use Insolsolata font, which I tried enthusiastically. Unfortunately, it gets rendered crappy, so I had to abandon it. It squishes text quite a bit, which I can understand why some people might like. So I am back to Consolas and this is very solid choice, I was happy to change to it in all my code editors.

As for themes, I did originally wanted dark background but I found Tanzim Saqib’s choice really pleasant and to my taste.

There are also good links on Scott Hanselman post and I like Brad’s Dark Theme as well, so when I feel like change I can always switch to that.

Oh, yes, it is worth mentioning that you update these settings by using import/export settings option from tools menu (kind of lame not to have theme option in VS)