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20051026 Wednesday October 26, 2005

My Hipster PDA

When I first saw this post from the 43Folders web site, I chuckled. I then read it again and slept on it (so to speak), and now I'm a big fan.

I retired my Palm Pilot PDA, 2-3 years ago, and just gave it to my sister-in-law. My main problems with it were the input method, the constant need to sync and keep it recharged.

A couple of weeks ago, I started carrying around my own Hipster PDA, with about 15 blank 3x5 index cards (of different colors) held together with a binder clip and stored in my bum bag. I've mostly been using them to remember TODO items and various ideas I want to explore further.

Then I read all the comments to the Hipster PDA post. All 155 of them. Via a couple of intermediate links [1] [2], I arrived at an entry in Jeff's Knowledge Base, that contains various page styles in PDF format.

I've downloaded and printed out (on plain white paper) various of these formats. My Hipster PDA is now backed up a 3x5 piece of cardboard to stiffen it up a bit and give me something to easily write on. I still keep some blank 3x5 index card in my pile, just in case I have to pass something on to someone else, (I hate ripping pages out of a notebook).

Backing up is as easy as your nearest photo-copier.

Other notable links:

I've noticed that Merlin has a couple of followup posts on the Hipster PDA further along in the monthly archives, so no doubt I'll get some more ideas when I fully read them.

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( Oct 26 2005, 07:21:05 AM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [1]

20051021 Friday October 21, 2005

A Read That Later PDF Folder

I started with a 43Folders post on how to archive your receipts and account informations as PDF's and ended up with a way cool Mac OS X feature that automatically lets me archive web pages as PDF's so that I can read them later.

Bill Bumgarner is the person who blogged about this.

Yes, you can always save a web page as an HTML file, with a set of files associated with it, but this is just so much cleaner. No need to specify each time where the document should be saved. It's all automatic. And you get a single file.

And the PDF Workflow feature can do so much more. Thanks Bill!

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( Oct 21 2005, 06:31:19 AM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [2]

20051020 Thursday October 20, 2005

Printing Your Amazon Wish List

Like Merlin and others, I find it useful to have a printed copy of my Amazon Wish List with me, in case I visit a local store and want to buy something from it.

I started with the 43Folders post related to this, and followed the instructions that Merlin gave, using Firefox as my browser. My printout didn't look anything like the one in the picture. It was sort of long and thin and I had to tape two strips together. Ugh. I then looked at the comments to the post to see if there was a better solution. There was a pointer to Leonard Richardson's Pocker Wisherman, which I downloaded. This is a set of Python scripts, that use PyAmazon to get at your Amazon Wish List. PyAmazon is a Python wrapper to the Amazon web API. I also downloaded and installed the Report Lab library, which allows for PDF formatting.

The documentation for Pocket Wisherman is skimpy, but by looking at the source code, I could see that I needed to get my Amazon Wish List ID. Leonard clued me in here (thanks!). The easiest way is to go to the Amazon web site, click on the "Wish List" link near the top of the page. When you have your wish list displayed, you'll see an "About this List" area on the right side of the web page. Click on the "Edit this information" link. When that web page displays, look at the URL. Part of it will be "id=XXXXXXXXXXXX" where XXXXXXXXXXXX is your ID.

I had to make one change to the pocket-wisherman.py script. There is a check in there to make sure that your ID is 13 characters long. Mine was only 12.

Now I have a nice PDF printout of my Amazon Wish List, which I've cut out and put in the accordion section at the back of my Moleskine Pocket Ruled Notebook (also available at Barnes and Noble stores), which I carry around in my fanny pack bum bag.

I only have one gripe. It's included some entries from my Wish List that I'd deleted days/weeks ago. Those entries don't show up visibly when I go to my Amazon Wish List web page, so I'm not sure where it's getting them from.

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( Oct 20 2005, 06:50:01 AM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [1]

20051019 Wednesday October 19, 2005

Favorite 43 Folders Links (Summary)

I've been through all the complete months of the posts in the 43 Folders archives, and pulled out the links that I think will be of interest to me.

These are summarized here:

1994 Sep Oct Nov/Dec
1995 Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul/Aug Sep

So what was the purpose of this? Well, I want to get more organized and try to be more productive. For all the projects I'm working on, I want to know exactly what I'm doing, where I currently am, and what my next action should be. It looks like Merlin Mann's 43 Folders blog has a lot of stuff that will help me achieve this.

The first thing to do is separate the wheat from the chaff. Not everything is of interest to me there, and not everything is going to be the way I want to do something. So I've culled the blog down to a set of posts/links that I want to explore further (including reading all the comments for each post). From this I'll then generate a set of my own posts that describe things I've tried and how successful they were.

I'm also looking for a system that's operating system agnostic. Preferably even something that I can get access to from anywhere (i.e. web based). Some of this stuff will also go into a small notebook that I'll carry everywhere with me (I tend not to carry my laptop everywhere when I'm not working).

I've bought David Allen's Getting Things Done and I've read the first part. This has given me enough information to understand the system that Allen uses. If you rather just get a quick 1-2 page summary of this, then check out M Vance's notes, and also printout the 1 page PDF of the Getting Things Done workflow, created to Scott Moehring.

The rest of the book helps you better understand the system and how to use it. I think I'm going to need to do that, because after a week of using it, I'm finding I'm spending way too much time on keeping the projects state information correct, shuffling items from one state file to another. I do have an empty inbox most of the time now though (or as near as I can get it given how quickly new emails arrive), so I am making some progress.

More reports as I get my head around useful productivity and organisational tools and tips.

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( Oct 19 2005, 06:30:07 AM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink

20051018 Tuesday October 18, 2005

Favorite 43 Folders Links (September 2005)

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( Oct 18 2005, 07:09:37 AM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink

20051017 Monday October 17, 2005

Favorite 43 Folders Links (July/August 2005)

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( Oct 17 2005, 06:34:32 AM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink

20051014 Friday October 14, 2005

Favorite 43 Folders Links (June 2005)

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( Oct 14 2005, 10:24:00 AM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink

20051013 Thursday October 13, 2005

Favorite 43 Folders Links (May 2005)

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( Oct 13 2005, 07:37:13 PM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink

20051012 Wednesday October 12, 2005

Favorite 43 Folders Links (April 2005)

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( Oct 12 2005, 07:12:15 AM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink

20051011 Tuesday October 11, 2005

Favorite 43 Folders Links (March 2005)

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( Oct 11 2005, 06:58:43 AM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink

20051010 Monday October 10, 2005

Favorite 43 Folders Links (February 2005)

(Be sure to read the comments of these entries for extra tasty goodness).

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( Oct 10 2005, 06:46:44 AM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink

20051007 Friday October 07, 2005

Favorite 43 Folders Links (January 2005)

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( Oct 07 2005, 06:42:31 AM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink

20051006 Thursday October 06, 2005

Favorite 43 Folders Links (November / December 2004)

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( Oct 06 2005, 06:40:54 AM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink

20051005 Wednesday October 05, 2005

Favorite 43 Folders Links (October 2004)

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( Oct 05 2005, 06:59:36 AM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink

20051004 Tuesday October 04, 2005

Favorite 43 Folders Links (September 2004)

One of the January 2005 entries in my Favorite BoingBoing links post, pointed to an Introducing the Hipster PDA entry on the 43 Folders website.

Written by Merlin Mann, 43 Folders is one of those sites that's much more than a single good link. On its About page, it describes itself as mainly being:

In a similar manner to what I did for BoingBoing, I'm going to work my way through the monthly archives, and list my favorite links for this site. I've started a new 43 Folders category for this.

A lot of the links will make reference to David Allen's Getting Things Done system.

Whereas the BoingBoing links tended to mostly all point off somewhere else, a lot of the 43 Folders links will point to the full post written by Merlin. Also, different things are going to interest different people, so I highly recommend you check out the actual 43 Folders site as well.

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( Oct 04 2005, 06:25:32 AM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink