Graham Chastney (oak-grove)

My Tools: iTunes and iPod

One of the pieces of technology that quickly and easily became integral to my day-to-day work was my iPod.. Prior to getting my iPod I used a number of other media players; everything from a cheap MP3 player to the media player on my Windows Mobile phone. The integrated iTunes + iPod experience provides a significantly different experience.

The main benefits for me come in the podcast experience where it's the simple things that count:

• Simple selection and synchronisation with iTunes
• Remembering the last playing position
• Having podcasts listed in a specific menu structure
• Good handling of previously played items including synchronisation back to iTunes.

I don't just use it for podcasts though, there is a lot of music on there too classical, rock, jazz, instrumental.

It really becomes a significant tool in a number of scenarios. Here are some examples:

• Technology information - I subscribe to a number of different technology podcasts. These are a reasonable way of keeping my technology knowledge current. It's not my primary way, which is RSS, but the change of medium does give me different insights.
• Quiet space - when I am wanting to focus on something I find that quiet classical music is a great way of removing a lot of distractions. I have a couple of playlists set up.
• Contemplation and meditation - I try to make meditation a part of every day. There are a couple of podcasts that are produced specifically to help in this process. They provide a great way of slowing down.
• Gym - Listening to upbeat music makes a difference to my work rate in the gym. I'll also use this time as a time to consume more podcasts.

My next investment is likely to a kit for the car to extend my access to podcasts primarily.

I tend not to use iTunes that much for playing tracks, when I am working from home I'll use last.fm to provide tracks - primarily classical.

The update process for iTunes is still a pain in the rear.

Technorati Tags: itunes,ipod,podcasts

The five P's of IT

A quote from Robert X. Cringely to ponder on this morning:

The five P's of IT are Pride, Prejudice, Politics, Price, and Performance, with the last two being by far the least important.

Anyone like to disagree?

My Brain: Habits

It's been a while since I've written anything in the "my brain" series. It's not because I've not been thinking about it, but more to do with the path of assimilation that I set myself.

Recently I have been thinking about habits and how we change them, or develop new ones. I've got a number of bad habits that mean I am generally overweight and unfit, I'm also too busy and drink too much coffee.

I've been trying to decide whether it is best to focus on breaking these habits or to build new ones that supplant the old ones.

Today I came across this article in the New York Times entitled: Can You Become a Creature of New Habits?

I'm not sure it answers the question I've been trying to answer, but it says some interesting things. In particular it talks about being in a position of "stretch":

Comfort is the realm of existing habit. Stress occurs when a challenge is so far beyond current experience as to be overwhelming. It’s that stretch zone in the middle — activities that feel a bit awkward and unfamiliar — where true change occurs.

Although, in my current over-weight circumstance I quite liked the following piece of news:

“Getting into the stretch zone is good for you,” Ms. Ryan says in “This Year I Will... .” “It helps keep your brain healthy. It turns out that unless we continue to learn new things, which challenges our brains to create new pathways, they literally begin to atrophy, which may result in dementia, Alzheimer’s and other brain diseases. Continuously stretching ourselves will even help us lose weight, according to one study. Researchers who asked folks to do something different every day — listen to a new radio station, for instance — found that they lost and kept off weight. No one is sure why, but scientists speculate that getting out of routines makes us more aware in general.”

This leads me back to where I started this journey.

Recently I have been trying to stretch myself with a new set of crosswords, it's quite depressing moving from a situation where you are used to completing a crossword to one where you can only complete half of it without help. If it was easy it wouldn't be a stretch.

Personally I think I spend more time in the "stress" zone than the "stretch" zone but hopefully I am coming out of the other side of it a bit. This week I have done an excessively long week and my brain is definitely feeling the strain. So I'm going to try and use this weekend to rest my brain, because that is important too.

Playing with Typepad on my Blackberry

There's a new application on my blackberry today - typepad. It's an interesting idea. Not sure how much I will use it but it's interesting all the same. There doesn't even seem to be a way of breaking paragraphs?

My Tools: Windows Live Writer

Every one of the blog services provides an adequate online post creation capability - but I prefer to use an application on my PC. I've tried the online capabilities, they are adequate, but there is something about them that impacts upon my creativity. I don't really know what it is, perhaps it's just the way I have been wired after years of using client based applications, perhaps it's something more fundamental than that. I'm not a trained psychologist or a creativity expert so it's just a perception.

My current preferred client application is Windows Live Writer. I've been using WLW all the way through the various beta iterations and onto the current 2008 version.

It's interesting to go back to a very simple editor after years of using more complex ones with lots of formatting capabilities. Having the format constrained actually helps my writing, the fact that there is really nothing to fiddle with helps me focus on the words. It's not dissimilar to the effect of the clean interface of outlining in Word.

There are lots of plug-ins available, but I only really use one of them and that's Flickr4Writer. Flickr4Writer, as it's name suggests, allows the easy insertion of Flickr pictures. I have tags set up on my Flickr sets so that I know which pictures I've already used, and which ones I haven't. It's a process that isn't perfect, but it works well enough.

I also try to add categories and tags to each post so I've set up WLW to remind me before it posts. These are both very easy to add with WLW, I keep meaning to go and look for an automatic tagging plug-in but haven't, so it can't be that big a deal.

Some of my most popular posts are ones about the dictionary in WLW, they still get lots of posts even though they are largely redundant, especially from a UK English point of view.

Technorati Tags: Windows Live Writer,Flickr4Writer

My Tools: BlackBerry 8800

Yes, I'm a BlackBerry user. Unlike some, though, my BlackBerry is currently my only mobile communication device - phone, email, IM, Twitter - everything.

I've been trying to de-clutter my life, so I'm trying out the integrated communication experience yet again. I don't know how many times I've tried to get to an integrated experience but failed because of some issue or other. I'm hopeful that this time will be different.

One of the challenges that any integrated communication device has to overcome is that ever changing array of ways that people want to communicate. Having voice and email integrated onto a single device isn't really that much good anymore, I expect voice, email, IM, browser, twitter, SMS.

Perhaps surprisingly I don't yet expect photo or video. I love taking pictures, but I don't yet use it as part of my day-to-day activity, this means that the 8800 (without a camera) works for me. I know this will change and that video input is really important to many people already. As an example, we went shopping this evening, we got separated from my son, Jonathan, while he went to try some cloths on. Rather than choose there and then, he took photographs of himself in the mirror to look at later, and what did he use for this, the camera on his phone of course. I would never have thought that way, but it was natural to him to use the camera for this purpose.

I have to say, that as an integrated communication device, the BlackBerry 8800 is the best thing I have used by a long way. That doesn't mean that there aren't some niggles, but that's not why I write these posts, and I'll take more time to explain them later. Because the BlackBerry has become such a capable communicator it's difficult to really explain all of the ways that I use it, so here are some examples:

• The email capabilities are great; now that I have become reasonably efficient with the keyboard. There's a story behind that, but it can wait for another time. I tend to only use it for short emails, but try to make the short emails meaningful all the same. I find that some others just respond because they think that there is a need to respond, this makes them respond with little meaning.
• Our internal SameTime system is integrated with the Enterprise Messenger and that is a great experience for such a small form factor. The status code are quite limited though, and that can be a problem (active, away, do not disturb). This capability has been of the most use during meetings when I need to clarify something with someone outside the meeting.
• I use twitterberry to keep up to speed with twitter. I suspect that 50% of my posts on twitter are from my BlackBerry. I keep getting caught out by this though, because others are reading my posts they ask me questions that I'm not expecting as soon as I walk in the room.
• The voice dialling capability is my preferred method of dialling, especially when I am in the car. My experience is that it's very accurate for my contact list which is just short of 100 people, I'm not sure whether that would degrade with more contacts. I love it even more now I have found the lady with the English accent and I no longer have to say "mobil" rather than "mobile".
• I don't use voice dialling in the office, that will definitely get you some funny looks.
• My preference for mapping is the Google Earth capability. I find that it downloads the images faster than the built in maps.
• I sometimes use the inbuilt browser, and sometimes use Opera Mini. The difference is in the site that I am wanting to access. Opera Mini gives a really good approximation of the way the page would look on a larger screen. The inbuilt browser gives you a more compact representation.
• NewsGator Go! acts as a supplement to FeedDemon, but the grazing experience isn't as good, but much of that is a form factor issue rather than an application issue. The power here is that it's using the same synchronisation engine.
• I don't use to-do at all, not for technical reasons, because I prefer to mange my tasks via bits of dead-tree media.
• I don't use many of the media capabilities, because I find that my iPod gives me such a good experience that I'm not sure that I want to operate two different media devices.
• I regularly use the key on the top with the power symbol on it. I believe that this button is an optional extra on some peoples devices, or at least you would think it was by the number of times they actually turn it off.

I'll write some more another time about some of the foibles that annoy.

Technorati tags: blackberry, google earth, twitterberry, newsgator go!

My Tools Summary: April 2008

I am so behind.

Some people suggested that a summary of the "My Tools" posts would be helpful so I decided to do one every month. Unfortunately I haven't had chance in April, but here we go anyway:

• Introduction - why on earth am I doing this.
• Word Outlining - you really should learn how to write documents this way.
• Twitter and Twhirl - not sure how to summarise Twitter
• FeedDemon - my feed reader of choice.

Enjoy, more coming soon, honest.